India's Supreme Court building was drawn as a giant pair of scales
Seen from above, the Supreme Court of India forms a balance: a central wing with two side wings as the arms, each ending in a semicircle representing a pan. At the centre stands a bronze Mother and Child, a statue that lawyers once protested because the mother seemed to resemble Indira Gandhi.
The court first sat at 9:45 am on 28 January 1950, just after the new Constitution made India a republic, and that date counts as its founding. It replaced the Federal Court and the Privy Council's Judicial Committee as the final court of appeal, with H. J. Kania as the first chief justice. Its lineage runs back to 1862, when British letters patent created High Courts in Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. For its first years it met in the Chamber of Princes in Parliament House, sitting from 10 to 12 and 2 to 4 for 28 days each month.
The Constitution began with eight judges including the chief justice, and a full bench heard every case. As work piled up, Parliament kept expanding the bench, which now allows up to 37 judges plus the chief justice. Its powers are sweeping. It can strike down ordinary laws and even constitutional amendments under the basic structure doctrine it developed in the 1960s and 1970s, advise the president on referred questions, and issue any order needed for complete justice. It can also punish contempt: in May 2006 it sent a serving Maharashtra state minister to jail for a month.
President Rajendra Prasad laid the building's foundation stone on 29 October 1954, and the court moved in during 1958. Ganesh Bhikaji Deolalikar, the first Indian to lead the Central Public Works Department, designed it in an Indo-British style on a triangular 17-acre plot, with a 27.6 m dome over the chief justice's courtroom. Chintamoni Kar's 210 cm bronze, installed on 20 February 1978, portrays Mother India sheltering a young republic holding an open book of law.
Symbols keep evolving. In October 2024 a new Lady Justice was unveiled without a blindfold, wearing a sari and holding a book representing the Constitution in place of a sword. A deep blue flag followed for the court's 75th anniversary in September 2024. Its seal carries a 32-spoke wheel and the Sanskrit motto meaning whence justice, thence victory.
Source: Supreme Court of India
