Court Data
Number of Constitution Bench decisions
Till date there have been 2187 constitution bench decisions rendered by the Supreme Court.
There have been 2187 Constitution Bench decisions by the Supreme Court of India.
A Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court consists of at least five judges. It is formed to decide a case involving a substantial question on the interpretation of the Constitution of India.
See Article 145(3) of the Constitution.
The scope of Article 145(3) was decided in Rao Shiva Bahadur Singh v State of Vidhya Pradesh, (1955) 2 SCR 446 which held that only substantial questions involving interpretation of the Constitution must be heard by a Constitution Bench, and other ancillary questions can be referred back to a smaller Bench to decide.The first matter to be heard by a Constitution Bench was A.K. Gopalan v State of Madras which dealt with the interpretation of Articles 21 and 22.
Sources: Krithika Ashok (2017) Disinclined to dissent? A study of the Supreme Court of India; Nick Robinson (2012) A Quantitative Analysis of the Indian Supreme Court’s Workload