The bench rejected the Uttar Pradesh government's decision to provide reservation in promotion on the ground that it failed to furnish sufficient valid data.
[10][11][12] In an unprecedented overnight hearing at 3:20 am IST on 30 July 2015, a 3 judge bench comprising Dipak Misra, Prafulla Chandra Pant and Amitava Roy rejected 1993 Mumbai serial blasts convict Yakub Memon's appeal to stop his execution which resulted in his hanging at the Nagpur Central Jail a few hours later.
[16] Justice Misra authored the landmark judgement confirming the death penalty of four convicts in the brutal 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder case which shook the nation and spurred the genesis of a stringent anti-rape law.
In his verdict, Justice Misra termed the convicts as those who “found an object for enjoyment in her... for their gross, sadistic and beastly pleasures... for the devilish manner in which they played with her dignity and identity is humanly inconceivable”.
[17] It was a bench of the Supreme Court headed by Justice Misra that settled the 120 year old dispute over the Cauvery river, also called the Ganga of the South and considered to be the lifeline for Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
He further wrote: “any kind of torture or torment or ill-treatment in the name of honour that tantamount to atrophy of choice of an individual relating to love and marriage by an assembly, whatsoever nomenclature it assumes, is illegal and cannot be allowed a moment of existence”.
[34] He is hailed as a 'warrior of gender equality' as he led various constitutional benches which passed historic judgements that upheld equal rights for women and the LGBT community, like the scrapping of Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code, legalising homosexuality by partially striking down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code and allowing entry for women of menstruating age group into the Sabarimala temple in Kerala.
[35] On 12 January 2018, four senior judges of the Supreme Court; Jasti Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan Lokur and Kurian Joseph addressed a press conference criticising Misra's style of administration and allocation of cases.
[36][37][38] Legal experts like Soli Sorabjee and Ujjwal Nikam said that this rebellion of the four judges against the Chief Justice of India is going to hurt the judiciary by eroding public faith in it.
[40] On 23 April 2018, the petition was rejected by Venkaiah Naidu, primarily on the basis that the complaints were about the internal administration and not misbehaviour, and that impeachment would seriously interfere with the constitutionally protected independence of the judiciary.