Instances when SC held special sittings on non-working days

The Supreme Court on Saturday held a special sitting after taking suo moto cognisance of an order passed by a single bench of the Calcutta High Court that termed as ”illegal” a division bench order in a case of alleged irregularities in admission of MBBS students in West Bengal’s state-run medical colleges and hospitals.

A five-judge bench comprising Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud and justices Sanjiv Khanna, B R Gavai, Surya Kant and Aniruddha Bose stayed all proceedings before the Calcutta High Court in the matter and issued notice to the West Bengal government and the original petitioner in the case.

This is one of the many instances when the apex court has held a special sitting on a non-working day.

The past few years have witnessed the top court constituting special benches to hear during the weekend cases dealing with matters of personal liberty, political crisis in states and pollution in the national capital, among other things.

On July 1 last year, the Supreme Court constituted two separate benches, one after the other, to hear a plea by activist Teesta Setalvad seeking interim protection from arrest in a case of alleged fabrication of evidence to frame innocent people in 2002 post-Godhra riot cases.

In a special late-night hearing on a Saturday, a bench of Justices B R Gavai, A S Bopanna and Dipankar Datta questioned the denial of time to Setalvad to appeal against the High Court order, saying even an ordinary criminal is entitled to some form of interim relief.

The three-judge bench heard the matter in a special sitting after a two-judge vacation bench differed on granting interim protection from arrest to Setalvad.

In 2023, the apex court took suo motu cognisance and stayed on a Saturday an Allahabad High Court order asking the head of the Department of Astrology, Lucknow University to decide whether a woman, an alleged rape victim, is ‘manglik’ or not.

A Special Bench of justices M R Shah (since retired) and Bela M Trivedi had assembled on a Saturday, October 15, 2022, to suspend a Bombay High Court decision to discharge ex-Delhi University professor G N Saibaba in a Maoist links case.

Earlier, a bench headed by the then chief justice N V Ramana had assembled on November 13, 2021, also a Saturday, to direct the Centre and the Delhi government to take ”emergency measures”, even proposing a two-day lockdown, to bring the air quality in the capital back to normal.

Apex court judges have also held sittings on Sundays. A three-judge bench heard an urgent petition filed by Congress, Nationalist Congress Party and Shiv Sena against the swearing-in of BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis as Maharashtra chief minister on November 24, 2019, a Sunday.

The then chief justice of India Ranjan Gogoi held a special hearing on April 20, 2019, to probe a larger conspiracy behind sexual harassment allegations against him.

The hearing of the case, titled as a matter of ”great public importance touching upon the independence of the judiciary”, was held after stories were published on some news portals about sexual harassment allegations levelled by a former employee of the apex court against the CJI.

In 2020, the top court heard on a Sunday a plea of the late journalist Vinod Dua seeking quashing of a sedition case against him.