Any case can be heard by a different number of judges, depending on the corresponding rules of the court and the stage at which the matter is being heard. For example, usually at the District Court/Original Side of the High Court, matters are heard by a single Judge. Further, a Division bench of the High Court consists of two judges, and this bench is usually approached only after the remedy before the Single Judge has been exhausted. It can also be the situation that the type of the matter requires it to be directly heard by a division bench. At the Supreme Court of India, usually the matters are directly listed before a bench consisting of two judges, though there are also benches consisting of three judges hearing matters on a regular basis. Any bench consisting of 5 or more judges is referred to as a Constitutional Bench and for a matter to be referred to such a bench, special instructions are required to be given by the Chief Justice of India, usually at the request of the judges who ask for the referral. For any legal help contact JOTWANI ASSOCIATES is a top Indian law firm based in New Delhi, India.

Any two benches consisting of the same number of judges are referred to as Coordinate benches. The rule of precedent dictates that the decisions of previous benches must be treated on the same pedestal as being law. An interesting outcome of this rule is that coordinate benches which are hearing a matter on the same issue which has been decided by a previous coordinate bench must treat the old ruling as being right. This is referred to as the previous decision being binding on the new bench. 

In case the newly appointed bench feels that the matter has been wrongly decided or that it does not feel that the law as laid down is relevant in the present context, it should ideally not pronounce its judgment on the matter and should refer the matter to a larger bench i.e. a bench consisting of a higher number of judges. But another issue that may arise is that the newer bench is simply not apprised of the fact that a previous decision is applicable to the case and therefore it might pronounce a judgment that differs from or is in conflict with the previous decision.   

When two or more coordinate benches of the same court give differing or conflicting judgments on the same issue, it is known as a “conflict of decisions”. The Indian judiciary has established various mechanisms to resolve such conflicts. One such mechanism is the referral of the case to a larger bench. The larger bench will then review the conflicting decisions and provide a binding judgment that will be followed in future cases. Another mechanism is that the senior judges of the court may constitute a “Full Court” to consider the conflicting decisions and reconcile them.

In case the conflict remains unresolved, the matter can be referred to the Supreme Court for a final decision. You can contact the best Supreme Court Lawyers for more information.

Regardless, situations may arise where there are in existence two or more decisions which are conflicting with one another or are different in substantial ways. This scenario has been dealt with in the judgment of the Constitution bench of the Supreme Court in the matter of Jaisri Sahu v. Rajdewan Dubey and Others (1962) 2 SCR 558 where the Supreme Court opined: 

“The better course would be for the Bench hearing the case to refer the matter to a Full Bench in view of the conflicting authorities without taking upon itself to decide whether it should follow the one Bench decision or the other. We have no doubt that when such situations arise, the Bench hearing the case would refer the matter for the decision of a Full Court.”

An important point to note is that there is no clarity as to whether dissenting opinions need to be considered while deciding whether the previous decision of the coordinate bench is binding. For example, if the previous decision rendered by a 3 judge bench has been decided on a 2:1 majority (2 judges deciding, one judge dissenting) it would still need to be considered as a 3 judge bench decision, which might bind a subsequent 3 judge bench which might be trying to come up with a unanimous decision which is different from the previous decision (which, effectively speaking, was actually passed by 2 judges only.)

Another scenario which is also likely to occur is when a “lower” court is faced with conflicting decisions from higher courts, which would mean that it has two or more different precedents to follow in a single matter (for example, a district court might be faced with conflicting judgments from the High Court under which its jurisdiction lies). Such a situation is completely impractical and untenable. The logical conclusion would be for the lower court to refer the matter forward to the full bench or the higher court. A few authors suggest that the lower court in such cases should consider the earlier decision as binding, but the present author feels that this logic is not foolproof as it might be the case that the later decision is actually more proper in law.