This week, the Supreme Court used its special powers under Article 142 of the Constitution to quash FIRs filed against those who took part in the nationwide exam protests led by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP).A bench led by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana closed the cases after the Centre said that it had “consciously decided“ not to pursue them, and ordered compensation, within three months, for families of students who died by suicide over the leak of the NEET-UG 2026 exam. All FIRs linked to the July protests were quashed except those involving roughly 2,873 individuals, said to have “serious and grave criminal antecedents”. During the hearing, CJP was also asked to make a statement in open court that it would call off a protest march planned on September 5. In effect, the court was the neutral venue to facilitate the government’s execution of a key demand made by CJP in July. This order, giving legal force to the government’s assurance, puts fresh focus on Article 142, a provision legal scholars have argued over since the Constitution came into force.What is Article 142, and where did it come from?Article 142 lets the Supreme Court pass such “decree or order as it is necessary for doing complete justice in any cause or matter pending before it”. Unlike most Constitutional provisions, it does not define “complete justice” or specify when it may be used.The origins of this provision can be traced back to Section 210 of the Government of India Act, 1935, and beyond that, to the colonial-era practice of deciding disputes on “justice, equity and good conscience” where written law was silent. In the Draft Constitution, it appeared as Article 118 and was adopted by the Constituent Assembly on May 27, 1949, without a debate. Two amendments to it were moved and then withdrawn.Also Read | Threatening students for asking questions is misuse of power: Justice Ujjal BhuyanThe closest the Assembly came to discussing its spirit was almost incidental: during an earlier debate on a related Article granting the court special leave to hear appeals, the member Krishna Chandra Sharma compared the court’s proposed powers to the old Privy Council’s own power to step in wherever justice demanded it, appeal or no appeal. Beyond that, the scope of what would become the court’s single most expansive power was left for the court itself to work out, case after case, over the next seven decades.How has the Supreme Court used this power before?Story continues below this adThe open-ended nature of Article 142 has made it one of the court’s most used tools. The provision, giving it extraordinary powers, has been invoked in a wide range of consequential cases — The 1989 Bhopal gas tragedy settlement to secure a $470 million payout from Union Carbide and quashing the criminal cases against the companyThe Ayodhya title dispute to settle the “preponderance of probability” and give five acres of land to the Muslim sideTo order the release of Rajiv Gandhi assassination case convict A G Perarivalan in 2022The court can also use the provision to grant divorce if it finds the marriage has irretrievably broken down and in public interest litigations, among other cases.Also Read | Why Centre says ‘creamy layer’ cannot apply to SC/ST quotasAn empirical study by the researchers at IIM Ahmedabad examined every case between 1950 and 2023 that cited “Article 142” or “complete justice”. The study found 1,579 references and 791 direct invocations, mostly in civil matters.Has the court tried to limit its own discretion?A description often invoked for the Supreme Court is that it is one of the most powerful Constitutional courts in the world, and much of that power can be traced to how it wields its powers under Article 142. The effect of the discretion multiples in a polyvocal court where 38 judges sit mostly in benches of two judges. Story continues below this adThe top court itself has also tried to fence this provision to not allow undue discretion to judges.In Prem Chand Garg versus State of Uttar Pradesh (1962), it held that orders under Article 142 must still be consistent with fundamental rights and the law. In Supreme Court Bar Association versus Union of India (1998), it held that Article 142 can supplement a statute, filling a gap the law leaves open, but cannot supplant it or override an existing statutory scheme. However, the SC has also often ignored its own caution.How does the CJP order test that limit?An FIR is ordinarily examined on its own facts before being quashed under Section 528 of the Bharatiya Nagrik Suraksha Sanhita. A court is supposed to ask whether an offence is even made out or if the cases are plainly malicious. Also Read | Who is a ‘distinguished jurist’, and why has India never appointed one to the Supreme Court?In the CJP order, thousands of FIRs across several states were clubbed together without scrutiny as part of a negotiated settlement between the Centre and a protest group. This order, for the sake of convenience, circumvents the statutory scheme for dealing with quashing and supplants the court’s wisdom under Article 142 on how the law ought to operate. The court also uses its discretion under Article 142 to decide who is left out of the relief.Story continues below this adLegal scholar Gautam Bhatia argues that criminal law provisions can’t be overridden through a blanket judicial decree.Is this the first time Article 142 has drawn criticism?When the court used the same provision last year to deem the long-withheld Tamil Nadu Bills as assented to, Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar called it a “nuclear missile” against democratic institutions. It is a criticism that K K Venugopal, former Attorney General of India, has made in the past. In 2017, he wrote that while the provision had done “tremendous good” for deprived sections of society, it was time to build in checks and balances.The following year, after the Sabarimala judgment, he went further, unfavourably describing Article 142 as a “Kamdhenu from which unlimited powers flowed”. He suggested that only Constitution benches of five judges should be allowed to invoke it, so that it could not turn on the reading of a single, smaller Bench.