Study Guide · Chapter 17
Exam Traps & Flags
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- Shayara Bano (2017): confirm the year is 2017 (judgment delivered 22 Aug 2017) — occasionally miscited as 2016 owing to the year the petition was filed.
- Sabarimala: the 2018 holding (4:1) is what to memorise as the operative judgment, but a 2019/20 nine-judge reference on "essential religious practices" across all faiths remains pending — present both dates and don't treat the reference as a reversal.
- NCT of Delhi: there are two separate 5-judge Constitution Bench rulings — 2018 (the LG's general role) and 2023 ("services" specifically) — don't conflate them, and remember Parliament legislatively overrode the practical effect of the 2023 ruling later that same year.
- Puttaswamy-Aadhaar's "Money Bill" finding (2018): upheld 4:1, but doubted by Rojer Mathew (2019) and referred to a still-larger bench — present as "upheld, but under live challenge," not settled law.
- "Puttaswamy" is two different cases: the 2017 nine-judge Privacy case and the 2018 five-judge Aadhaar case share a petitioner's name but are distinct judgments answering different questions — always specify which one a question means.
- Kesavananda Bharati's bench and margin: 13 judges, 7:6 — the narrowest possible majority for the most cited constitutional case in Indian history; a common trap is misremembering it as unanimous.
- Golak Nath vs Kesavananda relationship: Golak Nath said Parliament cannot touch Part III at all; Kesavananda didn't reaffirm this — it overruled Golak Nath's absolute bar while still limiting Parliament via Basic Structure. They are not the same holding.
- Sec. 124A (sedition) is still on the books: Kedar Nath Singh (1962) read it down, it did not strike it down — don't confuse this with cases (like Shreya Singhal's Sec. 66A) that struck a provision down entirely.
- Navtej Singh Johar vs Suresh Kumar Koushal: Koushal (2013) upheld Sec. 377's criminalisation by reversing a Delhi HC ruling; Navtej Singh Johar (2018) then overruled Koushal itself — track the direction of each reversal carefully.
- "Judges cases" numbering: First (S.P. Gupta, 1981) favoured the executive; Second (SCAORA, 1993) created the collegium; Third (1998, advisory) expanded it to 5 members; Fourth/NJAC (2015) struck down the attempt to replace the collegium — the ordinal numbers, not just the case names, are what's usually tested.
- Supreme Court's sanctioned strength: raised from 34 to 38 judges (including the CJI) via the Supreme Court (Number of Judges) Amendment Act, 2026 — the second such increase since 2019 (30→33 then); sanctioned strength and actual working strength at any given time are routinely different figures.
- M.C. Mehta cases are a series, not one case — match the correct sub-topic (Oleum gas/absolute liability, Ganga pollution, Taj Trapezium, vehicular/CNG pollution) to the correct sub-case rather than treating "M.C. Mehta v. Union of India" as naming a single judgment.
- Shankari Prasad/Sajjan Singh vs Golak Nath: the first two upheld Parliament's unrestricted power to amend Fundamental Rights; Golak Nath is the one that reversed this — a frequently inverted trap in sequencing questions.
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