Kurian Joseph, J.

“Adherence to precedent should be the rule and not the exception” says Benjamin N.Cardozo, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court during 1932-38. “The labour of judges would be increased almost to the breaking point if every past decision could be reopened in every case, and one could not lay one’s own course of bricks on the secure foundation of the courses laid by others who had gone before him……. We have had ten judges, of whom only seven sit at a time. It happens again and again, where the question is a close one, that a case which one week is decided one way might be decided another way the next if it were then heard for the first time. The situation would, however, be intolerable if the weekly changes in the composition of the court were accompanied by changes in its rulings. In such circumstances there is nothing to do except to stand by the errors of our brethren of the week before, whether we relish them or not.”[The Nature of the Judicial Process-third Indian edition-2000]. In these days of frequent hesitation for the judges to follow the track, these words of wisdom give us some good guidance. Not that there is no exception to t