Hemant Nimesh vs Central Board Of Secondary Education ... on 23 May, 2019
11. I am of the view that the present case is entirely covered by the
judgment of this Court in Imran Ali Khan (supra) though Mr. Ashok
Kumar, learned counsel for the CBSE, would seek to submit that the
judgment in Imran Ali Khan (supra), should be read as having been
rendered in personam and not in rem. The submission obviously is
totally without any basis, and is accordingly rejected. Precedent is one
of the sources of law in our legal system, and the overarching
consideration of consistency in the exercise of judicial decision-
making accords it pride of place. The binding value of judgments
cannot be sought to be avoided by any tenuous attempt at treating
decisions, otherwise binding, as having being rendered in personam,
unless the judgment itself contains unmistakable indicia that is,
indeed, a judgment rendered in personam. Court lower in the
precedential hierarchy have no authority to categorize decisions of
"higher" courts as rendered in personam. Any such attempt would
erode at the very foundation of the precedential edifice.