Beghar Foundation & Anr. v. Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) & Ors.
Background
This batch of seven connected review petitions challenged the Supreme Court's 2018 Constitution Bench judgment in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Aadhaar-5J.) v. Union of India, which had upheld the Aadhaar Act's certification as a "Money Bill" under Article 110 of the Constitution: a classification that let it bypass the Rajya Sabha. The petitioners, including Beghar Foundation, Jairam Ramesh, M.G. Devasahayam and others, argued the majority's reasoning on why the Aadhaar Act qualified as a Money Bill was flawed. After the original judgment, a separate Constitution Bench in Rojer Mathew v. South Indian Bank (2019) expressed doubts about the correctness of that very "Money Bill" reasoning and referred the underlying legal question to a still-unconstituted larger bench.
Decision Breakdown
The majority (Justices Khanwilkar, Ashok Bhushan, Abdul Nazeer and Gavai) dismissed all the review petitions, holding that no case for review of the 26.09.2018 judgment was made out, and that a later or doubting decision of a coordinate or larger bench cannot by itself be a ground for review. Justice Chandrachud dissented, reasoning that since a coordinate Constitution Bench (in Rojer Mathew) had already doubted the correctness of the very Money Bill analysis under review and referred it to a larger bench, dismissing these petitions now would wrongly seal the issue's finality before the larger bench could rule, and that the petitions should instead have been kept pending until that larger bench decided the reference. The larger bench reference from Rojer Mathew remained unconstituted at the time of this order.
Lesson Learnt
A review petition before the Supreme Court is dismissed unless it shows an error apparent on the face of the original judgment; merely pointing to a later, doubting, or conflicting decision of another bench is not by itself sufficient ground for review, even though, as this split verdict shows, judges can reasonably disagree on how much weight a pending larger-bench reference should carry.