Ritu Garg & Ors. v. Board of Governors (BoG) 2025 INSC 1285 - Legislation - Removing Basis Of Judgment
Legislation -Though the legislature has no power to sit over the judgment of a Court or usurp judicial power, but, subject to the competence to make law, it has the power to remove the basis which led to the Court’s decision (Para 32) - If a judgment of a Court holds a particular action of the executive to be bad and illegal because such action suffers from certain procedural defect(s), the legislature/executive, as the case may be, by an amendment in the law/rules, may cure the defect on which the judicial order was premised and such curing would not amount to overreaching the judgment of the Court. (Para 36)
Service Law - Grant of notional promotion to a post with retrospective effect cannot mean gaining experience from that day, because to gain experience one has to work. Notional promotions are given to take care of some injustice but a person so promoted cannot gain experience from the date of notional promotion; it has to be from the date of actual promotion. (Para 33)
Interpretation of Statutes - Holistic understanding is the first in terms whereof the statute has to be read as a whole instead of focusing on isolated parts. Secondly, the emphasis is on contextual understanding requiring the circumstances and objectives which triggered the statute’s enactment to be taken into account- The statute has to be interpreted in a manner that advances its intended purpose and objectives - Statute which is explanatory or clarificatory of the earlier enactment is usually held to be retrospective. (Para 29-31)
Case Info
- Case name: Ritu Garg & Ors. v. Board of Governors (BoG) & Ors.; with Poonam Jindal v. Hanuman Devidas Chalak & Ors.
- Neutral citation: 2025 INSC 1285.
- Coram: Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice Augustine George Masih.
- Judgment date: October 29, 2025 (New Delhi).
Caselaws and citations
- RBI v. Peerless General Finance & Investment Co. Ltd., (1987) 1 SCC 424.
- S.S. Grewal v. State of Punjab, 1993 Supp (3) SCC 234.
- State of Kerala v. Peoples Union for Civil Liberties, (2009) 8 SCC 46.
- Bakhtawar Trust v. M.D. Narayan, (2003) 5 SCC 298.
- Union of India v. M. Bhaskar, (1996) 4 SCC 416.
- Ravi Oraon v. State of Jharkhand, 2025 SCC OnLine SC 2192.
Statutes/laws referred
- National Institutes of Technology, Science Education and Research (NITSER) Act, 2007:
- Section 26(2), 26(3), 26(4) (Visitor’s approval; Board of Governors’ consent).
- First Statutes of the National Institutes of Technology (and amendments):
- First Statutes (Amendment) Statutes, 2023, notified June 30, 2023; Section 1(2)/(3); Statute 9(one‑time relaxation for NIT Kurukshetra).
- Executive communications:
- Ministry letters dated October 6, 2017 and November 17, 2017 (one‑time relaxation).
- Recruitment Rules (Schedule‑E amendments referenced in Section 5(d), (f) of 2023 notification).
#SupremeCourt reiterates that the legislature has no power to sit over the judgment of a Court or usurp judicial power, but it can remove the basis which led to the Court’s decision. https://t.co/GPbJZGJ9FJ pic.twitter.com/11A0Ua53CF
— CiteCase 🇮🇳 (@CiteCase) November 6, 2025
