EPFO APFC 2023 General Studies · Question 57 of 120

Correct — D, (d) 1 and 3. Statements 1 and 3 are both correct, statement 2 is not, and the two together give the printed answer. Statement 1 is correct. The curative petition is a device of the Supreme Court alone. It was created by a five-judge Constitution Bench in Rupa Ashok Hurra v. Ashok Hurra, reported at (2002) 4 SCC 388, to answer a question no earlier case had settled — whether anything at all can be done about a final judgment of the Supreme Court after a review petition has already been dismissed. The Court held that, to prevent abuse of its process and to cure a gross miscarriage of justice, it may reconsider such a judgment in the exercise of its inherent power, and it called the resulting application a curative petition. The foundation is the Supreme Court's own power to review its judgments under Article 137, read with the power under Article 142 to pass any order necessary for doing complete justice, and Article 142 belongs to the Supreme Court and to no other court. A High Court has review powers and writ jurisdiction, but it has no curative jurisdiction, and no statute or rule creates one. Statement 2 is therefore not correct: it extends to the High Courts a remedy that exists only at the apex. Note also that statements 1 and 2 contradict each other, so a candidate who is sure of either one has settled the other. Statement 3 is correct. Certification by a Senior Advocate is a procedural condition of the remedy, laid down in Rupa Ashok Hurra itself and carried into the Supreme Court Rules, 2013 in the Order dealing with curative petitions. The petition must state specifically that the grounds now urged were taken in the review petition and that the review was dismissed by circulation, and it must carry the certificate of a Senior Advocate that those requirements are met. The purpose of the certificate is filtration: because a curative petition attacks a judgment that has already survived an appeal and a review, the Court insisted on a responsible member of the Bar putting his name to the assertion that the case really does fall within the narrow gateway. The rest of that gateway is worth knowing alongside the certificate. The grounds are confined to a violation of the principles of natural justice — the petitioner was not a party and yet the judgment affects him, or he was a party but was never served with notice and the case proceeded as though he had been — or to an apprehension of bias, as where a judge did not disclose his connection with the subject matter or a party. The petition is first circulated to a Bench of the three senior-most judges along with the judges who passed the judgment complained of, if they are available; it is ordinarily decided by circulation in chambers rather than in open court; and the Court may impose exemplary costs on a petitioner whose plea it finds to be without merit and vexatious.

• (a)1 only — This gets the forum right and then discards a genuine requirement. The certification by a Senior Advocate is not an informal practice but part of the procedure prescribed when the remedy was created, and it is reproduced in the Supreme Court Rules, 2013: the petition must state that the grounds were taken in the review and that the review was dismissed by circulation, and a Senior Advocate must certify that these requirements are fulfilled. A candidate arrives at this option by treating the curative petition as an ordinary application and assuming that any advocate on record may simply file it. The extra filter exists precisely because the judgment under attack has already been through an appeal and a review, and the Court wanted a professional gatekeeper in front of a jurisdiction it described as exercisable only rarely and with circumspection.
• (b)3 only — This accepts the certification requirement but rejects the proposition that the remedy lies in the Supreme Court alone — and rejecting statement 1 while also rejecting statement 2 leaves the curative petition with no forum at all, which cannot be right. The remedy grows out of the Supreme Court's inherent power to reconsider its own final judgments, resting on Article 137 and Article 142, and Article 142 is available to the Supreme Court alone. High Courts are not without remedies against their own orders — review under the Code of Civil Procedure, and their inherent and writ jurisdiction — but none of them is a curative petition, and the expression has no meaning in a High Court.
• (c)2 and 3 — This picks the wrong one of the two mutually exclusive statements. Statement 1 and statement 2 cannot both be true — one confines the remedy to the Supreme Court and the other extends it to the High Courts as well — so the work of the item is to decide which of the pair is right, and the answer is the first. Extending the curative petition to the High Courts would mean that a High Court could revisit its own final judgment after a review had failed, which no provision authorises. The certification requirement in statement 3 is correctly included here, so a candidate choosing this option has done half the work and then attached it to the wrong half. On any statement set containing a contradictory pair, settle the pair first: it halves the option list before anything else is considered.

Indian procedure gives a losing party a descending ladder of chances, and the curative petition is the last rung. A judgment of the Supreme Court may first be attacked by a review petition under Article 137, filed within thirty days and ordinarily decided by circulation in chambers by the same judges. When that fails, the judgment is final in every ordinary sense. Rupa Ashok Hurra v. Ashok Hurra, decided by a Constitution Bench of five judges in 2002, held that the Court nevertheless retains an inherent power to reconsider a final judgment where a gross miscarriage of justice would otherwise stand, and it created the curative petition as the vehicle. The remedy is deliberately hedged. The grounds are limited to a violation of the principles of natural justice — the petitioner was not heard, or was never served and the case went on as if he had been — and to a reasonable apprehension of bias, typically a judge's undisclosed interest. The petition must specifically state that these grounds were taken in the review and that the review was dismissed by circulation, and it must be certified by a Senior Advocate that the requirements are met. It is placed before the three senior-most judges together with the judges who delivered the judgment under challenge, decided by circulation unless an oral hearing is specifically allowed, and dismissed with exemplary costs if it is found vexatious. The Supreme Court Rules, 2013 carry the procedure in their own Order on curative petitions. The device belongs to the Supreme Court because it rests on that Court's unique combination of powers — the power to review its judgments under Article 137 and the power under Article 142 to make any order needed for complete justice — and because it was fashioned by the Court for its own judgments. The best-known instances are in criminal and mass-tort litigation; the Union's curative petition seeking enhanced compensation in the Bhopal gas leak case was dismissed by a Constitution Bench in 2023.

Judiciary questions in this paper are set as statement items testing whether a candidate knows the boundaries of a remedy rather than its history. That is the useful preparation: for each remedy, who may grant it, on what grounds, at what stage, and with what procedural conditions. The design here rewards a candidate who notices structure as well as content, because statements 1 and 2 are mutually exclusive and settling either one disposes of half the option set. The distractors are then built to punish partial knowledge from both sides — one option knows the forum but not the procedure, another knows the procedure but not the forum. Note the printed form of the options: the first two carry the word only and the last two do not, and both forms are reproduced as printed. Nothing turns on that difference in this item, but it is worth registering, because in some statement sets the presence or absence of only is precisely what changes the meaning of an option.

• The curative petition was created by a five-judge Constitution Bench in Rupa Ashok Hurra v. Ashok Hurra, (2002) 4 SCC 388, as a remedy against a final judgment of the Supreme Court after a review petition has been dismissed.
• It lies in the Supreme Court alone, resting on the power to review under Article 137 together with the power to do complete justice under Article 142; High Courts have no curative jurisdiction.
• The grounds are confined to a violation of the principles of natural justice — the petitioner was not heard or was never served — and to an apprehension of bias, such as a judge's undisclosed connection with a party or the subject matter.
• The petition must state that the grounds were taken in the review petition and that the review was dismissed by circulation, and it must be certified by a Senior Advocate that these requirements are fulfilled.
• It is circulated to the three senior-most judges and the judges who passed the judgment complained of, and is ordinarily decided in chambers by circulation rather than in open court.
• The Court may impose exemplary costs where it finds the petition to be without merit and vexatious; the procedure appears in the Supreme Court Rules, 2013.
• The ordinary ladder of remedies runs appeal, then review under Article 137, then curative petition; in a death sentence a mercy petition to the President under Article 72 lies outside the judicial process altogether.

• Assuming that a remedy available in the Supreme Court has a counterpart in the High Courts; the curative petition does not
• Treating the certification by a Senior Advocate as an optional formality rather than a stated requirement of the procedure
• Confusing a curative petition with a review petition; the curative petition comes after the review has been dismissed and is confined to narrower grounds
• Believing a curative petition can be used to reargue the merits; only natural justice and bias grounds are open
• Missing that two statements in a set contradict each other, which is free information about the option list

The judiciary appears in this paper as short statement sets about the scope of a named remedy, its forum and its conditions. Expect one statement to name a procedural requirement that sounds too technical to be true, and expect a contradictory pair of statements about jurisdiction. Preparing a one-page table of remedies — appeal, review, curative, writ, mercy — with the forum, the ground and the stage for each covers most of what can be set.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  A curative petition in the Supreme Court of India can be filed

  • (a)instead of a review petition, at the choice of the party
  • (b)only after a review petition against the same judgment has been dismissed
  • (c)only in criminal matters involving a sentence of death
  • (d)within thirty days of the judgment complained of

  Answer(b) only after a review petition against the same judgment has been dismissed — the curative petition is the last rung of the ladder, and the petitioner must state specifically that the grounds now urged were taken in the review and that the review was dismissed by circulation. It is not confined to any class of case, and no fixed limitation period of thirty days applies to it as it does to a review.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The curative petition was evolved by the Supreme Court of India in which one of the following cases?

  • (a)Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala
  • (b)Rupa Ashok Hurra v. Ashok Hurra
  • (c)Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India
  • (d)S. R. Bommai v. Union of India

  Answer(b) Rupa Ashok Hurra v. Ashok Hurra — the 2002 Constitution Bench decision that held the Supreme Court may reconsider a final judgment, after a review has been dismissed, to prevent abuse of its process or to cure a gross miscarriage of justice, and that laid down the grounds and the procedure, including certification by a Senior Advocate.