The judgment was delivered by a nine-judge Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud with Justices Hrishikesh Roy, Abhay S Oka, BV Nagarathna, JB Pardiwala, Manoj Misra, Ujjal Bhuyan, Satish Chandra Sharma and Augustine George Masih.
The majority on the Bench, comprising eight judges including CJI Chandrachud rendered one judgment, while Justice BV Nagarathna gave a dissenting judgment.
Reading out the majority judgment, CJI Chandrachud said:
“Royalty is not in the nature of tax … We conclude that the observation in India Cements judgment stating that royalty is tax is incorrect … Payments made to the government cannot be deemed to be a tax merely because a statute provides for its recovery in arrears.“
Source: Barandbench
