S. Narahari & Ors. vs. S.R. Kumar & Ors. (referral order)
Background
The dispute traces back to a 1945 will under which a landowner left property to his two daughters for their lifetimes, to pass thereafter to their male heirs. Decades of litigation followed between the daughters' heirs over partition, a lease to the appellants for construction of a commercial complex, and possession of part of the property. After a series of suits, appeals, and a remand, the appellants' challenge to the High Court's 2019 dismissal of their appeal was itself dismissed by the Supreme Court, with liberty granted only to seek review before the High Court. That review was also dismissed, and the appellants then filed a fresh Special Leave Petition before the Supreme Court challenging both the original 2019 order and the review dismissal.
Decision Breakdown
The Court did not decide the underlying property dispute at all. It first addressed a threshold objection: whether a second Special Leave Petition is maintainable when the Supreme Court's earlier order dismissing the first SLP gave liberty only to file a review in the High Court, without expressly permitting a further SLP afterward. The Court agreed that ordinarily, under Order XLVII Rule 7 CPC and prior Supreme Court rulings (Vinod Kapoor and Sandhya Educational Society), no fresh SLP lies without such explicit liberty. However, it noted a "crack" in this settled position arising from a separate line of authority (Khoday Distilleries) holding that a non-speaking dismissal of an SLP does not attract the doctrine of merger and does not amount to a binding declaration of law, reasoning that, if followed to its logical end, could permit a fresh SLP even without explicit liberty. Finding this an important, unsettled question of law, the Bench declined to resolve it itself and referred the question to a larger bench, directing that the papers be placed before the Chief Justice of India for that purpose.
Lesson Learnt
Even a seemingly small procedural question, such as whether you can go back to the Supreme Court a second time after being told only to pursue a review in the High Court, may not have a settled answer, and litigants should always seek explicit liberty to re-approach the Supreme Court if there is any chance they may need to come back after an intervening remedy fails.