Today, October 4, marks a significant juncture in the Indian judiciary as the Supreme Court’s constitution bench is poised to re-examine the 1998 PV Narasimha Rao judgment. This influential ruling, which has stood its ground for over a quarter of a century, was recently referred to an expanded seven-judge bench in the case of Sita Soren v. Union of India. The bench is graced by the presence of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, accompanied by Justices AS Bopanna, MM Sundresh, PS Narasimha, JB Pardiwala, Sanjay Kumar, and Manoj Misra.
In the PV Narasimha judgment, a five-judge bench of the apex court had firmly declared that members of the parliament or state legislatures were
“immune from prosecution in bribery cases revolving around any speech or vote in the house,”
safeguarding them under the parliamentary privilege as enshrined in Articles 105(2) and 194(2) of the Constitution.
The catalyst for this revisit is the case centered on allegations against Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) leader Sita Soren. She stands accused of
“accepting a bribe for a 2012 Rajya Sabha vote.”
Adding to the gravity of this hearing is the fact that it’s the first time in six years that a bench of this size has been assembled. The previous seven-judge ruling was in the CS Karnan case in 2017. Here, a bench spearheaded by then-Chief Justice JS Khehar had sentenced the sitting Calcutta High Court judge CS Karnan to six months behind bars for contempt of court. The ex-judge had stirred controversy by leveling allegations of
“corruption and caste-based discrimination against Supreme Court judges”
and had even
“passed a controversial order convicting the chief justice and six puisne judges of the top court under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.”
Yet, the significance of today’s proceedings doesn’t merely rest on the case at hand. This session is historically unparalleled as it’s the inaugural live-streamed seven-judge bench hearing, following the Supreme Court’s landmark decision to live-stream constitution bench sittings last year. This pioneering move ensures that
“this is the first time in the long history of the Indian Supreme Court that a seven-judge bench hearing will be streamed live, allowing people from all corners of the world to observe it remotely – making it a truly exciting moment for our judiciary.”
While the Supreme Court had embarked on the journey of live-streaming Constitution Bench hearings during the tenure of then CJI UU Lalit in the previous September, all those sessions were exclusively before
“5-judge benches.”
To provide a broader perspective, data from the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) reveals that a total of
“twenty-four 7-judge bench matters”
are currently awaiting resolution in the Supreme Court.