Real judgements, distilled
Court judgements broken down into the case type, how the decision played out, and the lesson worth remembering, with the full judgement available as a PDF.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1094
An older qualification must still satisfy the eligibility rules governing the appointment sought. Here, the certificate's early date did not secure reinstatement, and rejection of eligibility should not be confused with a conclusive finding that the certificate was forged.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1095
A party benefiting from a conditional stay must meet its deposit requirement or face enforcement. The additional ₹15 crore deposit secures the pending dispute; it does not settle the land's final compensation or amount to an immediate payment to the landowners.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1093
An alleged attempt to kill does not become a lesser offence simply because the victim avoided a fatal injury. Restoring this charge means the accusation must be tried; it does not establish that the accused is guilty.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1090
For the assessment in this case, assistance reducing ordinary manufacturing costs was taxable even though the government wanted to encourage industry. The purpose and actual operation of the particular subsidy mattered more than its general development label.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1091
Proof that someone caused a serious injury does not by itself prove the additional ingredients of robbery. A court can substitute a lesser offence supported by the evidence; the sentencing reduction here depended on Appa's particular circumstances.
Special Leave Petition (Civil) · 2026 INSC 1092
Someone challenging an election must ensure that the personal-presentation requirement is met and can be proved. Merely entering the court building does not establish compliance, and a filing defect can end the challenge before the election allegations are examined.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1088
An employee who retires on 30 June may be entitled to the increment that falls due on 1 July after completing a year of service. Authorities that delay paying the amounts due must pay interest after the deadline set by the court.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1089
Recruitment must follow the qualifications stated in the advertisement and the governing Recruitment Rules. A court will not override a merit-based eligibility decision made under those rules merely because the candidate concerned was higher in the written test.
Writ Petition (Criminal) · 2026:DHC:8797
A person who occupied property only because of employment has no independent right to remain once the employment and decree end. Even when a petition fails, courts can make practical arrangements to let a person recover personal belongings.
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Log in to see moreThe respondents were foreign companies engaged in offshore oil and gas drilling who filed tax returns claiming a special presumptive-tax status. When the tax department proposed to vary their declared income, it had to first pass a "draft" assessment order and give the companies a chance to object before a Dispute Resolution Panel, before finalizing the assessment: a special procedure under Section 144C of the Income Tax Act, reserved for such "eligible assessees." The core legal dispute was whether the extra time this special procedure takes must fit inside the ordinary overall time limit for completing an assessment (Section 153), or whether it runs separately and adds time on top. The Bombay High Court had ruled in the companies' favour, holding the assessments in this case were time-barred; the tax department appealed to the Supreme Court.
The two-judge bench could not agree. Justice Nagarathna held that the timelines under Section 144C must be read as falling within, not on top of, the overall limitation period under Section 153, meaning that once the draft assessment order was passed close to the outer deadline, no valid final order was possible, and the returns as originally filed had to stand; she therefore dismissed the tax department's appeals and upheld the High Court's ruling in the companies' favour. Justice Satish Chandra Sharma reached the opposite conclusion, holding that Section 144C's own timelines operate independently for the draft order/Dispute Resolution Panel process, and that reading them as swallowed by Section 153 would practically deny genuine assessees the benefit of that special procedure; he would have set aside the High Court's judgment and allowed the department's appeals. Because of this direct disagreement on how to interpret the law, the two judges jointly ordered, in a short "Order of the Court," that the matter be placed before the Chief Justice of India to constitute a fresh, appropriate bench to decide the question afresh, leaving the underlying legal issue formally unresolved for now.
Even senior judges can genuinely disagree on how to interpret the same tax statute, and when that happens the Supreme Court does not simply average out or postpone the dispute. It refers the legal question to a differently constituted bench so a clear, binding answer can eventually be given. For taxpayers and tax authorities, this means the exact deadline rules for assessing income of certain "eligible assessees" (including many foreign businesses) remained unsettled as of this judgment and will need to be watched for a future ruling.
