Reserve Bank of India v. Jayantilal N. Mistry & Anr.
Background
In its 2015 judgment in RBI v. Jayantilal N. Mistry, the Supreme Court had held that the RBI could not refuse to disclose information such as bank inspection reports under the RTI Act by claiming a "fiduciary relationship" with banks, since the RBI's duty was to the public, depositors and the economy. Several banks (led by HDFC Bank and later joined by others including the State Bank of India) were not parties to that original case, but filed applications years later seeking to "recall" the 2015 judgment, arguing they were directly affected but never heard, and that the judgment ignored the right to privacy and was otherwise legally flawed.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that there is no provision in the Supreme Court Rules for "recall" applications as such, only formal review petitions, and that labelling an application as one for "recall" instead of "review" does not change its real character; courts look at the substance, not the label. Since the banks were seeking to reopen the correctness of a concluded 2015 judgment (a matter for review) rather than showing they were never given a chance to be heard before an order was passed against them specifically, their applications amounted to disguised review petitions and were not maintainable. The Court dismissed all the miscellaneous applications, while clarifying this did not shut out the banks from pursuing any other lawful remedies, and noted that separate writ petitions challenging specific RBI disclosure notices would be heard on their own merits.
Lesson Learnt
You cannot use an application labelled "recall" to sidestep the stricter requirements of a formal review petition and reopen a final Supreme Court judgment: if you were aware of a case affecting you and chose not to get impleaded in time, courts generally will not let you in years later merely by renaming your challenge.