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.
14543 more judgements for members
You're seeing the newest cases. Log in — it's free — to keep scrolling, search by name or judge, and filter by court or legal area.
Log in to see moreFor over a century, Karnataka (formerly Mysore) and Tamil Nadu (formerly Madras), along with Kerala and the Union Territory of Puducherry, had disputed how to share the waters of the river Cauvery, going back to agreements signed in 1892 and 1924 between the British-era Madras Presidency and the princely State of Mysore. After decades of failed negotiations, the dispute was referred in 1990 to the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal, which delivered its final award in 2007 allocating specific shares of water to each State. All four parties (Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Puducherry) filed civil appeals before the Supreme Court challenging different aspects of that award, including the validity of the old agreements, how much water each State should get for irrigation, drinking water, and industrial use, and how the sharing should be implemented and monitored.
The Supreme Court held that the 1892 and 1924 agreements were not invalid or "unconscionable," but that the 1924 agreement's binding force had lapsed in 1974 after its stipulated 50-year review period. The Court affirmed the Tribunal's use of the international "principle of equitable apportionment" (drawn from the Helsinki Rules and similar international water-sharing norms) rather than any historical or "natural flow" entitlement, and largely upheld the Tribunal's findings on irrigated areas and crop-water needs for each State. However, it revised the final shares: Karnataka's allocation was increased from 270 to 284.75 TMC (thousand million cubic feet), crediting it with an additional 10 TMC for groundwater available to Tamil Nadu and 4.75 TMC for the full drinking-water needs of Bengaluru city (not just the one-third falling within the river basin), while Tamil Nadu's share was correspondingly reduced from 419 to 404.25 TMC. Kerala's 30 TMC and Puducherry's 7 TMC allocations, along with 10 TMC for environmental protection and 4 TMC for unavoidable outflow to the sea, were left undisturbed, keeping the total at 740 TMC. The Court also directed the Central Government to frame an implementation scheme (a "Cauvery Water Management Authority") under Section 6A of the Inter-State Water Disputes Act within six weeks to enforce the revised monthly release schedule.
Water from a river flowing through multiple States is treated as a shared national resource to be divided on principles of fairness and actual need (drinking water first, then irrigation, then industry) rather than on whoever happens to be the upper or lower riparian State or on old colonial-era agreements being treated as permanently fixed; and ordinary citizens' basic needs, like a city's drinking water supply, can outweigh rigid geographic boundaries like "river basin" lines when courts decide how to split such a scarce resource.
