The Supreme Court has dismissed by an 8:1 majority a batch of petitions filed by the Centre and its instrumentalities seeking to overturn the bench’s August 14 ruling that states are entitled to seek a refund of royalties totalling several thousand crores collected by the Union government towards mineral tax.

It also dismissed the plea for an “open-court” hearing of the review petitions, mostly held within closed chambers of judges without the presence of lawyers or litigants.

However, Justice B.V. Nagarathna, who was the sole dissenting judge in the August 14 verdict, iterated her stand that only the central government had the power to collect tax on minerals and states have no such right.

But since it is the majority view that will have a binding effect, the dissent of Justice Nagarathna would have only academic interest.

The two orders dismissing the review petitions were passed on September 24 but came into the public domain on Friday.

On August 14, the constitution bench had by an 8:1 majority ruled that states were entitled to seek a refund of royalty amount running into several thousand crores collected by the Centre towards mineral tax and overruled a 35-year-old judgment of another constitution bench which took a contrary view.

However, in the original judgment on August 14, the bench took note of the Centre’s plea, along with several PSUs like Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL), that it would inflict a heavy financial burden on them and ultimately affect the common man. The apex court prescribed that the cut-off period for refund would be April 2005 and the levy of interest and penalty on demands made for the period before July 25, 2024, would stand waived for all assesses.

Subsequently, the government and the PSUs made a renewed plea in the form of an application seeking clarification that the judgment would have prospective effect, i.e. with effect from August 14, which was also turned down.