Court Data
Number of Constitution Bench decisions
Till date there have been 2187 constitution bench decisions rendered by the Supreme Court.
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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