Laws are normally prospective
A law made by the legislature is always prospective in nature unless it has been specifically stated in the statute itself about its retrospective operation. But the reverse is true for the law which is laid down by a Constitutional Court, or law as it is interpretated by the court.
Case laws are retrospective
The judgment of the court will always be retrospective in nature unless the judgment itself specifically states that the judgment will operate prospectively, says the Supreme Court (SC) in Kaniskh Sinha v State of West Bengal [2025 INSC 278].
The purpose is to avoid unnecessary hardships
The prospective operation of a judgment is normally done to avoid any unnecessary burden to persons or to avoid undue hardships to those who had done something with the understanding of the law as it existed at the relevant point of time.
It is done not to unsettle something which has long been settled, as that would cause injustice to many.
SC was explaining why a judgement was prospective
The SC made these observations while holding that the 2015 judgment in the case of Priyanka Srivastava v State of Uttar Pradesh [AIR 2015 SC 1758] would apply prospectively. The said judgment mandated that complaints filed under Section 156(3) of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) for initiating police investigation must be accompanied by the affidavit by the complainant. The said direction was issued to check the trend of frivolous complaints.
The language indicates judgement’s prospective nature
SC added that such a step could only be prospective in nature, and this is clearly reflected from the very language used by the Learned Judges in Priyanka Srivastava (supra). The language of the judgment conveyed that what the court intended was that from now onwards it would be necessary that an application would be accompanied by an affidavit.
Hence, the Court held that a complaint filed before the date of the said judgment could not be rejected on the ground of not having an accompanying affidavit.
References
- Kaniskh Sinha v State of West Bengal [2025 INSC 278]
- Priyanka Srivastava v State of Uttar Pradesh [AIR 2015 SC 1758]
