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 moreFive employees of Una Nagar Palika (a municipality in Gujarat), who had been appointed between 1990 and 1998, sought payment of pension and pensionary benefits on reaching superannuation (or, for four of them who had since died, their legal heirs did). The municipality refused, claiming they were not eligible or entitled to pension. The employees succeeded before a Single Judge and then a Division Bench of the Gujarat High Court, prompting the municipality's appeals to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court noted that the identical question, whether municipal employees are entitled to pension, had already been decided by the Gujarat High Court in an earlier case (Chief Officer vs. Mohmad Irshad Husenbhai Baloch), which the Supreme Court itself had upheld by dismissing a prior SLP in 2013, giving that ruling finality. The municipality tried to distinguish the present employees (who were appointed directly by the municipality) from those in the earlier case (who had transferred from a Panchayat), but the Court found this distinction immaterial because the municipality itself had enrolled all these employees in the General Provident Fund (GPF) and deducted contributions from their salaries throughout their service: a key fact-pattern shared with the earlier, binding precedent. The Court dismissed the municipality's appeals and directed it to finalize and release the pension within four months.
An employer's own conduct, such as consistently deducting provident fund contributions from an employee's salary for years, can be used as evidence that it always treated that person as a regular, pensionable employee, even without a specific rule explicitly granting pension; and a legal question that has already been conclusively settled by a binding precedent cannot be reopened by drawing artificial distinctions between similarly situated employees.
