# Article 142: the Supreme Court's power to do complete justice

# Article 142: the Supreme Court's power to do complete justice

**TL;DR:** Article 142(1) of the Constitution lets the Supreme Court pass any order "necessary for doing complete justice" in a matter before it. The Court has used this single sentence to approve the Bhopal gas settlement, hand a disputed religious site to a trust while allotting land for a mosque, and dissolve dead marriages that no statute would dissolve. The power is wide, but it is not unlimited. In Supreme Court Bar Association v. Union of India (1998), the Court itself held that Article 142 cannot override express statutory provisions. The provision became a national flashpoint in 2025, when the Court used it to "deem" ten Tamil Nadu bills as assented, drawing a sharp rebuke from Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar and triggering a Presidential Reference. In November 2025, a five-judge bench answered that reference and pulled the reins back in. This article explains what Article 142 is, where it came from, how it has been used, where the limits lie, and what it all means for an ordinary litigant.

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## On this page

- [What Article 142 actually is](#what-article-142-actually-is)
- [The text and where it came from](#the-text-and-where-it-came-from)
- [Landmark uses of complete justice](#landmark-uses-of-complete-justice)
- [Divorce on irretrievable breakdown](#divorce-on-irretrievable-breakdown)
- [The Tamil Nadu Governor flashpoint of 2025](#the-tamil-nadu-governor-flashpoint-of-2025)
- [The Presidential Reference and the pullback](#the-presidential-reference-and-the-pullback)
- [The limits: what 142 cannot do](#the-limits-what-142-cannot-do)
- [The separation-of-powers debate](#the-separation-of-powers-debate)
- [Criticism and defence](#criticism-and-defence)
- [Why it matters to ordinary litigants](#why-it-matters-to-ordinary-litigants)
- [Try Niyam for constitutional research](#try-niyam-for-constitutional-research)
- [Frequently asked questions](#frequently-asked-questions)

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## What Article 142 actually is

Most provisions of the Constitution tell a court what it may decide. Article 142 tells the Supreme Court how far it may go to give effect to a decision. It is a remedial power, not a jurisdictional one. The Court does not use Article 142 to take up a case it could not otherwise hear. It uses Article 142 to fashion the relief once a case is already before it.

In plain terms, the provision answers a practical problem. A statute may be silent. A statute may be slow. A statute may produce a technically correct outcome that nobody would call just. When that happens, an ordinary court is stuck. It must apply the law as written, even if the result is harsh or incomplete. The framers gave the Supreme Court a release valve for exactly those moments. Where doing full justice requires a step that no specific statute authorises, the Court can take that step under Article 142.

This is why the phrase "complete justice" carries so much weight. It is not decoration. It is the standard the order has to meet. The Court is not asked whether a remedy is convenient or popular. It is asked whether the remedy completes the justice the case demands. The width of that idea is also the source of every controversy that surrounds the provision. A power defined by a value rather than a rule will always invite the question of who decides what justice requires, and how far they may go to deliver it.

It helps to set Article 142 next to its neighbours. Article 32 gives every person the right to move the Supreme Court to enforce fundamental rights. Article 136 gives the Court its discretionary power to grant special leave to appeal from almost any order of any court or tribunal. Article 142 sits one step downstream of both. Once the Court is seized of a matter through these or any other route, Article 142 governs what kind of final order it can pass to wrap the matter up justly. If you want to understand how these articles fit together in a real judgment, our guide on [how to read a judgment](/blog/how-to-read-a-judgment) walks through the structure section by section.

A second feature sets Article 142 apart, and it is one that surprises people. The power is not confined to the High Courts or to subordinate courts at all. Only the Supreme Court holds it. A High Court has wide writ powers under Article 226 and supervisory powers under Article 227, but it does not carry a complete-justice clause of its own. This makes Article 142 a genuinely apex tool. When a litigant says the High Court "should have done complete justice," the answer is usually that the High Court had no such free-standing mandate. It had to apply the law as written. Only the final court of the country was trusted with the release valve, which tells you something about how seriously the framers treated it.

There is one more thing worth getting clear at the outset. Article 142 is a remedy, not a cause of action. You cannot file a petition titled "under Article 142" the way you file a writ petition under Article 32. The provision attaches to a case that is already alive before the Court on some other footing, whether an appeal, a writ, or a transferred suit. It then governs the shape of the final order. Treating it as a standalone door to the Supreme Court is one of the most common misunderstandings, and it leads parties to ask for relief the provision was never meant to supply on its own.

## The text and where it came from

The operative words are short. Article 142(1) reads: "In the exercise of its jurisdiction the Supreme Court may pass such decree or make such order as is necessary for doing complete justice in any cause or matter pending before it." Article 142(2) adds practical teeth: the Court can secure the attendance of any person, compel the production of documents, and punish contempt of itself, subject to laws made by Parliament.

The origin of the provision is quieter than its later life. The Constituent Assembly took up draft Article 118, which became Article 142, on 27 May 1949. According to the [Constitution of India archive](https://www.constitutionofindia.net/blog/desk-brief-a-brief-history-of-the-supreme-courts-complete-justice-power/), the article was adopted the same day with little debate. The framers seem to have agreed, without much argument, that the apex court of a new republic should hold inherent, plenary power to do justice where ordinary law fell short.

The text did not appear from nowhere. Its primary ancestor is Section 210 of the Government of India Act, 1935, which gave the Federal Court a comparable power. As [legal commentators note](https://testbook.com/articles/article-142), draft Article 118 carried almost the same title as Section 210, with "Federal Court" simply replaced by "Supreme Court". The colonial provision was narrower in practice, but the constitutional version inherited its basic shape: a final court armed with a flexible remedial mandate.

There is a deeper lineage too. The idea that a superior court holds equitable power to do justice beyond the strict letter of the law is older than the Indian Republic. It draws on the equity tradition, where courts of conscience softened the rigidity of common law. Article 142 is the Indian Constitution's compact statement of that tradition, handed to a single institution and tied to a single phrase.

The quiet adoption is itself worth a moment's thought. Provisions that later turn out to be powerful are sometimes the ones that pass without a fight, because the framers do not anticipate how far a future court will carry them. The Constituent Assembly was thinking, in 1949, about a new court that might face situations the statute book had not yet imagined in a young republic. They were not thinking about deemed assent to state bills or divorce on a ground no statute lists. The text they wrote was broad enough to reach those things decades later, which is precisely why the debate about its limits is a debate the framers did not have. The Court has had to draw the boundaries the founding generation left open.

It is also useful to notice what Article 142 does not say. It does not list the kinds of orders the Court may pass. It does not enumerate exceptions. It does not carve out subjects, like criminal law or property, where the power should not run. It simply ties the order to the standard of complete justice and leaves the rest to judgment. Most powerful provisions in the Constitution come hedged with conditions. This one comes almost bare. That bareness is the source of both its usefulness and the unease it generates, and every limit on the provision has had to be supplied by the Court rather than read off the page.

| Source | Provision | What it granted |
|---|---|---|
| Government of India Act, 1935 | Section 210 | Federal Court power to do complete justice |
| Draft Constitution | Draft Article 118 | Renamed for the Supreme Court |
| Constitution of India | Article 142(1) | Plenary power to do complete justice in any pending matter |
| Constitution of India | Article 142(2) | Power over attendance, documents, and contempt |

## Landmark uses of complete justice

The reach of Article 142 is best understood through the cases where the Court actually reached for it. Three early examples show the range.

The first is the Bhopal gas disaster. After the catastrophic leak of December 1984, litigation over compensation dragged across years and jurisdictions. In Union Carbide Corporation v. Union of India, the Court approved a settlement under which the company would pay 470 million US dollars in full and final settlement. As recorded on [Indian Kanoon](https://indiankanoon.org/doc/27098883/), the Court invoked Article 142 to withdraw the suits pending in the Bhopal District Court to itself and dispose of them in terms of the settlement. No ordinary procedural rule allowed the apex court to pull pending trial-court suits into its own hands and close them by settlement. Article 142 did. The settlement remains contested to this day, but the mechanism was pure 142.

The second is Ayodhya. In M. Siddiq v. Mahant Suresh Das, decided on 9 November 2019, a five-judge bench unanimously awarded the disputed 2.77 acres to a trust for construction of a temple. In the same breath, as the [Supreme Court Observer summary](https://www.scobserver.in/reports/m-siddiq-mahant-das-ayodhya-title-dispute-judgment/) records, the Court directed that a separate five-acre plot be allotted to the Sunni Central Waqf Board for a mosque. That second direction had no statutory basis in any property law. It was an act of balance, passed expressly under Article 142, to complete the justice the Court felt the title dispute required.

The third pair sits slightly apart, and the distinction matters. People often list the cancellation of the 2G spectrum licences and the coal block allocations as Article 142 cases. They were not, strictly speaking. In Centre for Public Interest Litigation v. Union of India (2012), the Court [cancelled 122 telecom licences](https://scroll.in/article/862349/if-there-was-no-2g-scam-why-did-the-supreme-court-cancel-122-licenses-in-2012) for breaching Article 14 and the public trust doctrine. In Manohar Lal Sharma v. Principal Secretary (2014), the Court [quashed coal block allocations](https://indiankanoon.org/doc/41130429/) made between 1993 and 2011 as arbitrary and violative of Article 14. The constitutional engine in both was Article 14, the equality clause, not Article 142. The same is true of Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma (2020), which settled daughters' coparcenary rights through [statutory interpretation of the Hindu Succession Act](https://indiankanoon.org/doc/67965481/), not the complete-justice power. We flag this because precision about the source of a holding is the whole point of careful citation. Our note on [how to cite Indian judgments](/blog/how-to-cite-indian-judgments) explains why getting the basis right is not pedantry.

| Case | Year | What the Court did | Was it Article 142? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Union Carbide v. Union of India | 1991 | Withdrew Bhopal suits, approved 470 million dollar settlement | Yes |
| M. Siddiq v. Mahant Suresh Das (Ayodhya) | 2019 | Allotted 5 acres for a mosque alongside the title award | Yes |
| Shilpa Sailesh v. Varun Sreenivasan | 2023 | Dissolved marriage on irretrievable breakdown | Yes |
| Centre for PIL v. Union of India (2G) | 2012 | Cancelled 122 licences | No, Article 14 |
| Manohar Lal Sharma (coal blocks) | 2014 | Quashed allocations from 1993 to 2011 | No, Article 14 |

## Divorce on irretrievable breakdown

The most personal use of Article 142 touches marriage. Indian statute does not recognise irretrievable breakdown of marriage as a ground for divorce. The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 lists specific grounds, and a dead-on-paper marriage where neither fault ground is made out can leave both spouses trapped. Section 13B allows divorce by mutual consent, but builds in a waiting period of six to eighteen months.

In Shilpa Sailesh v. Varun Sreenivasan, decided on 1 May 2023, a Constitution Bench resolved both problems. As the [case summary](https://testbook.com/landmark-judgements/shilpa-sailesh-vs-varun-sreenivasan) records, the Court held that under Article 142(1) it can waive the statutory waiting period under Section 13B where the marriage has clearly ended. It went further. The bench held that the Court can grant divorce on the ground of irretrievable breakdown itself, even though no statute lists that ground, and even where one spouse opposes it.

This is Article 142 at its boldest. The Court did not strike down the Hindu Marriage Act. It did not read a new ground into the statute for all courts. It held that the apex court, and the apex court alone, can dissolve a dead marriage to do complete justice in the case before it. The reasoning is that forcing two people to remain legally bound to a relationship that has no life left in it is itself an injustice, and the Court should not have to wait for Parliament to say so. The judgment is also a study in restraint, because the bench was careful to say this power must be used with caution and on a full picture of the facts, not as a routine shortcut.

The practical effect on families has been real. Before Shilpa Sailesh, a couple who both wanted out still had to sit through the six-month cooling-off period, and a couple where one spouse dug in had almost no exit at all unless a fault ground could be proved. The first problem produced years of avoidable waiting; the second produced marriages that existed only on paper, sometimes for a decade or more, while one party used the legal bond as leverage. The judgment addressed both. It let the Court compress the timeline where reconciliation was plainly impossible, and it let the Court act even over one party's objection where the marriage was beyond repair.

There is a subtle but important boundary inside the ruling. The Court was clear that this is its own power under Article 142 and does not hand the same authority to family courts or High Courts. A trial court still cannot grant divorce on irretrievable breakdown, because that ground is not in the statute it applies. Only the Supreme Court, exercising the complete-justice power, can. This keeps the innovation tethered to the apex court and prevents it from quietly rewriting matrimonial law for every court in the country. For a litigant, the takeaway is that this relief lives at the very top of the system, not at the trial-court door, and it is granted on the strength of the facts rather than on demand.

## The Tamil Nadu Governor flashpoint of 2025

For most of its life, Article 142 lived in the world of private disputes, settlements, and one-off equities. In 2025 it walked into the heart of a federal power struggle, and the temperature rose fast.

The dispute was simple to state. The Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly had passed bills. Under Article 200, a Governor presented with a bill must either assent, withhold assent, or reserve the bill for the President. Governor R.N. Ravi did none of these cleanly for ten bills, leaving them in limbo for an extended period. The State went to the Supreme Court, accusing the Governor of inaction and delay that frustrated the legislative will.

On 8 April 2025, a bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and R. Mahadevan ruled for the State. As the [Supreme Court Observer summary](https://www.scobserver.in/reports/pendency-of-bills-before-tamil-nadu-governor-judgement-summary/) sets out, the Court held the Governor's conduct illegal and erroneous. It read timelines into Articles 200 and 201, requiring action within fixed periods. Then it took the decisive step. Using Article 142, the Court declared that the ten bills were "deemed to have been assented to" on the date they were re-presented after reconsideration. In effect, the bills became law without the Governor's signature.

That single move turned a state-versus-Governor dispute into a national constitutional argument. The reaction came quickly. On 17 April 2025, Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar said, in remarks [widely reported](https://www.deccanherald.com/india/nuclear-missile-against-democracy-vp-dhankhars-salvo-at-supreme-court-3499334), that "Article 142 has become a nuclear missile against democratic forces, available to the judiciary 24x7." He argued that judges were legislating, performing executive functions, and acting as a super-Parliament without accountability. The phrase travelled across front pages and turned a technical provision into a household term.

## The Presidential Reference and the pullback

The April judgment did not end the matter. It started a constitutional process. On 13 May 2025, President Droupadi Murmu invoked the advisory jurisdiction under Article 143 and referred fourteen questions to the Supreme Court. The questions, as [Supreme Court Observer documents](https://www.scobserver.in/cases/presidential-reference-on-powers-of-the-governor-and-president-re-assent-withholding-or-reservation-of-bills-by-the-governor-and-president-of-india/), went to the root of the April ruling: can courts read timelines into Articles 200 and 201, does "deemed assent" exist in the Constitution, and can Article 142 fill a constitutional silence by substituting for the Governor's act.

A five-judge Constitution Bench heard the reference and delivered its advisory opinion in November 2025. The opinion drew the limits clearly. As [SCC Online reported](https://www.scconline.com/blog/post/2025/11/20/discharge-of-governor-and-president-functions-under-arts-200-201-sc/), the bench held that the President and Governors cannot be bound by judicially imposed timelines for acting on bills, that their decisions under Articles 200 and 201 are not justiciable in the ordinary sense, and that the concept of "deemed assent" has no place in the constitutional scheme, because one constitutional authority cannot simply substitute for another. The Court did keep a door open: prolonged, unexplained, indefinite inaction can still attract limited judicial scrutiny.

The opinion is significant because it is the Court correcting the Court. The April bench had stretched Article 142 to manufacture assent. The advisory bench, without naming any villain, said that stretch went too far. This is the system working as designed, with the apex court using its own machinery to police the outer edge of its own most powerful tool. It is also a reminder that an advisory opinion under Article 143 is itself a check, allowing the constitutional questions to be settled by a larger bench rather than left to a two-judge precedent.

| Stage | Date | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| Tamil Nadu judgment | 8 April 2025 | Court deemed 10 bills assented under Article 142 |
| Dhankhar remarks | 17 April 2025 | "Nuclear missile against democratic forces" |
| Presidential Reference | 13 May 2025 | President refers 14 questions under Article 143 |
| Advisory opinion | November 2025 | No deemed assent, no binding timelines, limited scrutiny survives |

## The limits: what 142 cannot do

The 2025 episode was not the first time the Court drew a line around Article 142. The foundational limit came in 1998, and it came from a five-judge bench acting on the provision directly.

In Supreme Court Bar Association v. Union of India, the Court confronted an earlier ruling that had used Article 142 to suspend an advocate from practice, a step normally governed by the Advocates Act, 1961. The bench held that this went too far. As recorded on [Indian Kanoon](https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1666530/), the Court ruled that the power under Article 142 is curative in nature and cannot be used to ignore the substantive rights of a litigant or to supplant the substantive law applicable to a case. The phrase that has been quoted ever since is that Article 142 "cannot be used to build a new edifice where none existed earlier, by ignoring express statutory provisions dealing with a subject and thereby to achieve something indirectly which cannot be achieved directly."

That sentence is the spine of the limits doctrine. Article 142 supplements the law. It does not replace it. Where Parliament has spoken expressly on a subject, the Court cannot use the complete-justice power to write a different rule. The provision fills gaps and softens injustice at the edges. It does not let the Court legislate by another name.

The doctrine has held up. Courts continue to refuse Article 142 pleas that would override clear statutory bars. In one recent example, the Court declined to use Article 142 to direct issuance of a sale certificate to an auction purchaser, holding again that the power [cannot be used to supplant substantive law](https://lawbeat.in/supreme-court-judgments/article-142-cannot-be-used-supplant-substantive-law-supreme-court-junks-plea-auction-purchaser-issuing-sale-certificate). The shape of the limit is consistent: 142 can do almost anything the law has not forbidden, but it cannot do what the law has plainly forbidden.

The 1998 ruling matters for a second reason that is easy to miss. It was the Court limiting itself. Three years earlier, in Vinay Chandra Mishra (1995), the Court had used Article 142 expansively to suspend an advocate. The 1998 bench looked at that approach and stepped back from it. An institution disciplining its own earlier overreach, through a larger bench, is the healthiest form of constitutional self-correction, and it set the template for what would happen again in 2025. The complete-justice power has never been policed mainly by Parliament or the executive. It has been policed by the Court reading its own past with a colder eye.

A few other limits deserve mention because litigants run into them often. Article 142 cannot be used to grant relief that would prejudice a person who is not before the Court. It cannot be used to override the basic principles of natural justice, since an order that denied a hearing could hardly be called complete justice. It cannot be used to reopen settled questions merely because a party is unhappy with the result. And it cannot be wielded to bypass the express conditions Parliament has attached to a statutory remedy, such as limitation periods or pre-deposit requirements, where the statute makes those conditions mandatory. Each of these is a corner where parties have asked for the moon under the banner of complete justice and been told that justice has a shape, and that shape includes the rights of others and the words of the statute.

There is a tension worth naming. Shilpa Sailesh granted divorce on a ground no statute recognises, while the 1998 rule says 142 cannot override express statute. The reconciliation is that the Hindu Marriage Act does not bar irretrievable-breakdown divorce; it is simply silent on it, and silence is a gap the Court can fill, not an express provision it must obey. The line between a gap and an express bar is where most Article 142 arguments are now fought.

## The separation-of-powers debate

Strip away the headlines and the real argument is structural. India's Constitution distributes power across three branches: a legislature that makes law, an executive that administers it, and a judiciary that interprets it. Article 142 sits at the seam between interpreting and doing. When the Court deems a bill assented or dissolves a marriage no statute would dissolve, critics say it has crossed from interpretation into legislation or administration.

Defenders answer that the seam is exactly where the framers placed this power on purpose. A constitution that lists three branches in airtight boxes cannot deliver justice in the messy cases that fall between the boxes. Article 142 is the deliberate flexibility built into the system, a recognition that the highest court will sometimes need to do something the rulebook did not anticipate.

The honest position is that both sides describe something real. The Tamil Nadu deeming order genuinely produced a legislative result, a bill becoming law, without the constitutional actor the text names. The November advisory opinion genuinely recognised that danger and reined it in. The system did not choose between an all-powerful court and a powerless one. It let the power run, watched where it went, and pulled it back through its own internal checks. That cycle, expansion followed by correction, is the actual life of Article 142, and it is more stable than either alarm or applause suggests. The same dynamic of doctrine being expanded and then disciplined runs through the basic structure cases, which we cover in our piece on [Kesavananda Bharati](/blog/kesavananda-bharati).

It is worth separating two complaints that critics often blur. The first is that the Court reaches the wrong result in a particular case. That is an ordinary disagreement, the kind that follows every contested judgment, and the remedy is review, a larger bench, or in the constitutional space a reference. The second complaint is structural: that the Court is using a remedial power to occupy ground reserved for other branches. Only the second complaint is really about Article 142. The Tamil Nadu episode triggered both at once, which is part of why the argument ran so hot. People who disliked the outcome and people who feared the method ended up using the same vocabulary, and the provision took the blame for both.

There is also a quieter structural point in favour of the power. The legislature and the executive have their own ways of correcting a court they think has gone too far. Parliament can amend the law to close a gap the Court filled, as it has done many times. The executive can decline to read a one-off order as a general rule. And the Constitution itself supplies the Article 143 reference, which is exactly the route that was used in 2025. So the picture of an unaccountable court with no counterweight is incomplete. The counterweights exist; they are just slower and more deliberate than a single dramatic order, and the 2025 sequence showed all of them working in turn.

## Criticism and defence

The 2025 controversy produced two clear voices, and quoting them fairly matters more than taking sides.

The criticism came most loudly from the Vice President. In his [17 April remarks](https://www.deccanherald.com/india/nuclear-missile-against-democracy-vp-dhankhars-salvo-at-supreme-court-3499334), Jagdeep Dhankhar said Article 142 had become "a nuclear missile against democratic forces, available to the judiciary 24x7", and warned of judges who "act as super Parliament" without accountability. The thrust of the critique is democratic: elected and appointed constitutional actors, not judges, should make and administer law, and a court that substitutes itself for them weakens the accountability that elections provide.

The defence came from senior advocate Kapil Sibal, then President of the Supreme Court Bar Association. As [Live Law reported](https://www.livelaw.in/top-stories/calling-article-142-nuclear-missile-extremely-problematic-sibal-on-vice-presidents-comments-against-judiciary-289758), Sibal called the "nuclear missile" framing "extremely problematic" and said he was "saddened" that a constitutional functionary would speak this way. His core point was that Article 142 is not a usurped power but a power the Constitution itself conferred on the Court to do complete justice, and that the Court's task is to interpret the Constitution and deliver that justice.

Both arguments deserve to be weighed rather than scored. The critic is right that a value-defined power can drift toward overreach. The defender is right that the power is textual, deliberate, and old. The November 2025 advisory opinion can be read as the institution itself acknowledging the first concern while preserving the second: it disciplined a specific overreach without abolishing the power. That is the neutral reading, and it is the one a careful litigant should carry, rather than the slogan from either side.

## Why it matters to ordinary litigants

It is easy to treat Article 142 as a spectacle about Governors and Vice Presidents. For most people who will ever benefit from it, the reality is smaller and far more human.

Consider the spouse stuck in a marriage that ended in everything but law, where the other party refuses to sign and no fault ground fits. Before Shilpa Sailesh, that person had years of litigation ahead. After it, the apex court can end the marriage in the right case. Consider the litigant whose statutory remedy produces a technically valid but plainly unjust result because of a procedural gap nobody foresaw. Article 142 is the reason the Court can still reach a fair outcome instead of shrugging at the rulebook.

It also matters for the broad public-interest cases that shape policy, even when the constitutional engine is not 142 itself. The cancellation of the 2G licences and the coal blocks rested on Article 14, but the Court's willingness to pass sweeping consequential orders, to manage timelines, and to supervise the cleanup afterwards draws on the same remedial instinct that Article 142 embodies. For citizens, the practical upshot is that the apex court can do more than declare a wrong. It can order the steps that undo the wrong, which is what turns a paper victory into a real one. That capacity is one reason public-interest litigation became a force in Indian life.

There is a practical lesson here for anyone preparing a matter. Article 142 is not a self-service button. The Court invokes it on its own assessment of what complete justice requires, usually only at the Supreme Court level, and almost always within limits the Court itself has drawn. A litigant cannot demand it; a litigant can only present facts so compelling that justice clearly requires the extra step. Understanding when the Court has been willing to take that step, and when it has refused, is the difference between a realistic argument and a wishful one. Tracking how the Court actually uses the power, month by month, is part of why we publish round-ups like [Supreme Court this month](/blog/supreme-court-this-month-may-2026).

The provision also shapes outcomes you never see. The threat of complete justice changes how parties behave. A respondent who knows the apex court can cut through a procedural trap is more likely to settle fairly. In that sense, Article 142 works even when it is not invoked, as a quiet promise that the highest court holds the tools to finish the job justice started.

## Try Niyam for constitutional research

Article 142 is a perfect example of why legal research in India is hard. The text is one sentence, but the meaning lives across dozens of judgments that expand it, limit it, and distinguish it, often in the same term. Getting it right means reading the actual holdings, not the headlines, and knowing which case rested on 142 and which rested on Article 14.

Niyam is built for exactly this. It lets you search Indian judgments by issue, trace how a doctrine like complete justice developed across decades, and pull the precise paragraph where the Court drew a limit, so you cite the holding and not a summary of it. You can start for just ₹100 and put it to work on your next constitutional question. Create an account at [app.niyam.ai/register](https://app.niyam.ai/register) and see how much faster careful research can be.

## Frequently asked questions

**What does Article 142 of the Constitution actually say?**
Article 142(1) says the Supreme Court may pass any decree or order "necessary for doing complete justice in any cause or matter pending before it." Article 142(2) lets it secure attendance of persons, production of documents, and punishment of contempt, subject to laws made by Parliament. It is a remedial power exercised in matters already before the Court.

**Can Article 142 override a statute passed by Parliament?**
No. In Supreme Court Bar Association v. Union of India (1998), a five-judge bench held that Article 142 is curative and cannot supplant substantive law or ignore express statutory provisions. It can fill gaps and soften injustice where the law is silent, but it cannot rewrite a rule Parliament has clearly laid down.

**How did the Court use Article 142 in the Bhopal case?**
In Union Carbide Corporation v. Union of India, the Court used Article 142 to withdraw the pending Bhopal suits from the district court to itself and dispose of them through the 470 million dollar settlement. No ordinary procedural rule allowed that, so the complete-justice power supplied the authority.

**What was the Tamil Nadu Governor controversy of 2025?**
On 8 April 2025, the Supreme Court held that the Tamil Nadu Governor's withholding of ten bills was illegal and, using Article 142, declared the bills "deemed assented." Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar criticised this as a "nuclear missile against democratic forces," and President Droupadi Murmu later referred fourteen questions to the Court under Article 143.

**Did the Supreme Court change its position after the Presidential Reference?**
Yes, in effect. In November 2025, a five-judge Constitution Bench advised that there are no judicially imposed timelines binding Governors and the President on bills, that "deemed assent" does not exist in the Constitution, and that decisions under Articles 200 and 201 are not ordinarily justiciable, though prolonged unexplained inaction can still attract limited scrutiny.

**Can the Supreme Court grant divorce using Article 142?**
Yes. In Shilpa Sailesh v. Varun Sreenivasan (2023), a Constitution Bench held that the Court can waive the statutory waiting period and dissolve a marriage on the ground of irretrievable breakdown under Article 142, even where one spouse objects and even though no statute lists that ground. The Court stressed this power must be used with caution.

**Why is Article 142 controversial if it has existed since 1950?**
The text has not changed, but its uses have grown bolder, moving from private settlements into questions of federal and executive power. A power defined by the value of "complete justice" rather than a fixed rule will always raise the question of how far a court may go, which is why each major use reopens the debate.