NEW DELHI: Supreme Court on Wednesday turned its critical gaze on its own functioning. On the growing trend of benches overturning orders of earlier ones within days or months of them being pronounced – such as on the menace of dog bites, retrospective environmental clearance, Bhushan Steel Ltd’s insolvency and the ban on fire crackers – the apex court observed “painfully” that the practice would “undermine this court’s authority”.In another instance, though it was done through a curative petition filed against SC’s 2021 verdict on the dispute between Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) and Reliance Infrastructure’s Delhi Airport Metro Express Private Ltd (DAMEPL), the court had overruled the judgment last year, quashing the Rs 7,687-crore award in favour of DAMEPL.A bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Augustine George Masih said that public confidence in the judiciary would be undermined if cases were reopened and special benches set up to re-hear them at the behest of parties aggrieved by the verdicts. Quoting Justice Robert Jackson, it said, “We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final.””In the recent past, we have rather painfully observed a growing trend in this court (of which we too are an indispensable part) of verdicts pronounced by judges, whether still in office or not and irrespective of the time lapse since the pronouncement, being overturned by succeeding benches or specially constituted benches at the behest of some party aggrieved by the verdicts prior in point of time. To us, the object of Article 141 of the Constitution seems to be this: the pronouncement of a verdict by a bench on a particular issue of law (arising out of the facts involved) should settle the controversy, being final, and has to be followed by all courts as law declared by SC,” the bench said.It said that if a verdict was allowed to be reopened, the very purpose of enacting Article 141 (law declared by SC is binding) would stand defeated. The court passed the order while hearing a plea seeking relaxation of bail conditions for an accused who was directed not to leave Kolkata during trial of a murder case. The court noted that he had filed an application after the retirement of the apex court judge who had imposed the condition, and dismissed his plea.The bench held that judicial discipline, propriety and comity demanded that a succeeding bench of different judges defers to the view expressed by the earlier bench, unless there was something so grossly erroneous on the face of the record or palpably wrong that it necessitated a relook in exercise of inherent jurisdiction either through a review or curative petition. “…As judges of this court, we are alive to the position that overturning a prior verdict by a later verdict does not necessarily mean that justice is better served,” the bench said.”However, with an over looming sense of dissatisfaction and remorse, we propose not to walk that path. While it is true that in a case of the present nature – where an issue of a citizen’s right to move freely throughout the territory of India is involved – the principle of finality may not be applied strictly against the party whose right has been so restricted, but the antecedent facts in the light whereof the restriction is imposed assume significance and must, of necessity, bear serious thought. Any restrictive order of the nature under consideration has to be and must be premised on some worthy reason,” the bench said.
