A question of law referred to a Larger Bench of the Rajasthan High Court more than two decades ago, arising from a PIL over toll collection on a road project, came up for decision long after the project, and the toll period, had ended. The Court declined to answer it: where supervening events have made the controversy academic, the mere pendency of a reference does not compel adjudication, and the question is best left open for a live case.
Jodhpur: A three-judge Larger Bench of the Rajasthan High Court has held that a court is not compelled to pronounce upon a substantial question of law referred to it, once subsequent events have rendered the underlying controversy academic, and has accordingly left open the question of the interpretation of Section 20 of the Rajasthan Motor Vehicles Taxation Act, 1951 that had been referred to it [Mohd. Sharif and Another v. State of Rajasthan and Others].
A Bench of Chief Justice Sanjay K. Agrawal, Justice Vinit Kumar Mathur and Justice Sameer Jain disposed of the matter, which had been referred to a Larger Bench by an order of November 2003.
The background
The petitioners, practising advocates at Makrana, had filed a public interest litigation concerning the improvement of a road and the levy of toll on it, under an arrangement in which the successful bidder was permitted to recover its investment through the collection of toll for a defined period. The dispute raised a question on the interpretation of Section 20 of the Rajasthan Motor Vehicles Taxation Act, 1951, which a Division Bench, considering it a matter of vital importance with large-scale implications, referred to a Larger Bench in 2003, leaving the parties free to raise all their pleas before it.
By the time the reference was taken up, however, the underlying project had been completed and the concession or toll-collection period had come to an end years earlier. The petitioners did not appear before the Larger Bench to press their contentions or to demonstrate any surviving cause of action.
A reference does not compel an answer to an academic question
The Court accepted that the referred question was a substantial question of law that would ordinarily require consideration, but held that the mere formulation or reference of such a question does not, by itself, compel the Court to pronounce upon it irrespective of subsequent events that have rendered the controversy academic. The jurisdiction of the Court, it observed, is exercised in the context of an existing lis; where the lis itself has ceased to survive, the Court must consider whether answering the referred question would have any consequential effect on the rights of the parties, and, if it would not, is ordinarily justified in leaving the question open to be decided in an appropriate case where the controversy is live.
This approach, the Court held, accords with the settled discipline that courts should not decide more than is necessary to determine the controversy before them, invoking the maxim judicis est judicare secundum allegata et probata, that the judicial function is to decide according to the matters alleged and proved. With no subsisting concession period and the contractual arrangement long concluded, the reliefs sought were incapable of meaningful implementation, and the petitioners had not shown any continuing prejudice; what may have been a live controversy when the petition was filed had, by efflux of time and supervening events, ceased to retain its original character.
The parting note
In a parting note, the Court observed that the mere pendency of a reference for a long period cannot, by itself, justify the adjudication of an otherwise academic question. A court must first ascertain whether a live lis survives and whether determining the referred question would have any operative consequence in the proceedings before it; where supervening statutory developments, the efflux of time and intervening circumstances have extinguished the controversy, the appropriate course is to leave the question open. Accordingly, holding that in the peculiar facts no live controversy survived, the Court left the referred question of law open and disposed of the writ petition.
Why it matters
The judgment is a clear statement of the principle that courts adjudicate live disputes, not abstract questions. Even a substantial question of law formally referred to a Larger Bench does not have to be answered if, by the time it is taken up, the dispute that gave rise to it has evaporated; to decide it anyway would be to render an advisory opinion untethered to any concrete controversy, which the judicial function does not ordinarily permit. The Court’s reliance on the discipline of deciding no more than necessary, and on the maxim that adjudication proceeds on what is alleged and proved, situates the decision within a well-established tradition of judicial restraint.
The outcome also reflects the practical reality of very long-pending references. Where a question has been referred and then remains pending for many years, the underlying facts, here a time-bound toll-collection arrangement, may cease to exist long before the reference is heard, leaving nothing on which an answer could operate. The Court’s approach ensures that the mere passage of time, and the sunk effort of a pending reference, do not become reasons to decide a question that no longer matters to anyone before it, while expressly preserving the question for authoritative decision when a live case next requires it.
For the law on Section 20 of the Rajasthan Motor Vehicles Taxation Act, therefore, nothing has changed: the interpretive question remains open and undecided. What the judgment settles is not that question but the anterior one, of when a court should, and should not, answer a referred question at all, and its answer is that a live controversy, not merely a pending reference, is the precondition for adjudication.
Case Title: Mohd. Sharif and Another v. State of Rajasthan and Others [D.B. Civil Writ Petition No. 1668/2002]
Bench: Chief Justice Sanjay K. Agrawal, Justice Vinit Kumar Mathur and Justice Sameer Jain, High Court of Judicature for Rajasthan at Jodhpur
Date of Judgment: September 16, 2026
Status: Writ petition disposed of. Larger Bench declined to answer the referred question on Section 20 of the Rajasthan Motor Vehicles Taxation Act, 1951, holding the controversy academic; the question of law is left open for an appropriate live case.