Supreme Court Gears Up For First Seven-Judge Bench Live-Stream In History

A constitution bench of the Supreme Court will begin hearing today (October 4) the reference of the 1998 PV Narasimha Rao judgment, which was referred last month to a larger bench of seven judges(Sita Soren v.Union of India). The bench will comprise Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, and Justices AS Bopanna, MM Sundresh, PS Narasimha, JB Pardiwala, Sanjay Kumar, and Manoj Misra.

In PV Narasimha, a five-judge bench of the apex court held that members of the parliament or state legislatures were immune from prosecution in bribery cases revolving around any speech or vote in the house, in the enjoyment of the parliamentary privilege conferred by Articles 105(2) and 194(2) of the Constitution.

Now, a constitution bench is set to revisit this significant judgment on legislative immunity and bribery, which has held the field for more than 25 years. Interestingly, this is also the first time in six years that a bench of this strength is being assembled. The present case relates to the allegation against Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) leader Sita Soren of accepting a bribe for a 2012 Rajya Sabha vote.

The last seven-judge ruling was given in CS Karnan (2017), in which a bench led by then-Chief Justice JS Khehar sentenced sitting Calcutta High Court judge CS Karnan to six months in jail for contempt of court. The former judge had made allegations of corruption and caste-based discrimination against Supreme Court judges and passed a controversial order convicting the chief justice and six puisne judges of the top court under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.

But that’s not all! Another reason why the proceedings scheduled to start today have already made history before beginning is that this is the first seven-judge bench hearing after the top court's pivot to live-streaming of constitution benches last year. In other words, this is the first time in the long history of the Indian Supreme Court that a seven-judge bench hearing will be streamed live, allowing people from all corners of the world to observe it remotely - making it a truly exciting moment for our judiciary.

Although the Supreme Court started the live-streaming of Constitution Bench hearings in September last year during the tenure of the then CJI UU Lalit, all those hearings so far have been before 5-judge benches.

As per the data from the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG), twenty four 7-judge bench matters are currently pending in the Supreme Court.