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New Delhi: The year 2025 will be remarkable for the Supreme Court for several reasons. For one, it completed 75 years of existence, and second, it will be remembered for the reversals of its own orders.

Last year the Supreme Court recalled at least eight of its own orders – three of which were passed by Justice J.B. Pardiwala’s bench – ranging from subjects like judicial discipline, environmental issues and corporate matters.

The top court highlighted this “growing trend” in the November Sk. Md. Anisur Rahaman judgment. The bench comprising Justices Dipankar Datta and A.G. Masih “painfully observed” how “verdicts pronounced by Judges, whether still in office or not and irrespective of the time lapse since pronounced, [were] being overturned by succeeding benches or specially constituted benches at the behest of some party aggrieved by the verdicts prior in point of time.”

The bench said, “The pronouncement of a verdict by a bench on a particular issue of law (arising out of the facts involved) should settle the controversy, being final, and has to be followed by all courts as law declared by the Supreme Court.”

“However, if a verdict is allowed to be reopened because a later different view appears to be better, the very purpose of enacting Article 141 would stand defeated,” the bench added. It said that the “prospect of opening up a further round of challenge before a succeeding bench, hoping that a change in composition will yield a different outcome, would undermine this Court’s authority and the value of its pronouncements.”

Stray dogs

In July 2025, the Supreme Court bench comprising Justices Pardiwala and R Mahadevan took suo motu note of a newspaper report headlines ‘City Hounded by Strays, Kids Pay The Price’. A month later on August 11, the bench made scathing observations on the “systematic failure of the concerned authorities over the past two decades” while issuing stark time-bound directions including banning stray dogs from public places, sterilising and immunising the stray dogs, action against those resisting this exercise, and building shelter homes, dog pounds for at least 5,000 dogs and a dedicated force to carry out the order if required.

The Justice Pardiwala bench’s order was met with nationwide outrage with critics alleging that stakeholders were not heard, that it was in conflict with past orders on similar issues and that the order went beyond judicial limits. Beyond the interventions filed in the case, animal rights groups immediately knocked Supreme Court doors a day later seeking a stay on the August 11 order.

The outrage prompted then Chief Justice of India B.R. Gavai to transfer the matter to a different three-judge bench led by Justice Vikram Nath who not only stayed the August 22 order but expanded the ambit of the issue pan-India included all stray animals and issued directions of its own.

The bench comprising Justices Nath, Sandeep Mehta and N.V.........

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