The Supreme Court of India was pulled into another controversy on Wednesday when a three-judge bench headed by Justice Madan B Lokur raised questions of judicial discipline in an order passed by another three-judge bench on February 8 in a land acquisition case. As a result, on Thursday, a two-judge bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra, who was part of the bench that passed the February 8 order, referred similar land acquisition cases that came before it to the Chief Justice of India. The order said: “In view of the order of this Court dated 21.2.2018 in Special Leave Petition(C)...... CC 8453 of 2017 titled as State of Haryana and Others versus M/s G.D. Goenka Tourism Corporation Limited and Another, that has been placed before this Court, we consider it appropriate that these matters be referred to the Hon’ble the Chief Justice to constitute an appropriate Bench and to see whether we can proceed with the hearing or not. Since a larger issue is involved, we refer the matters to the Hon’ble Chief Justice to be dealt with by an appropriate Bench, as His Lordship may consider appropriate. This reference was made despite the fact that the larger bench led by Justice Lokur made it clear on Wednesday that it would decide on the reference in the next hearing, and requested all other benches and the High Courts to defer hearing similar land acquisition matters. These developments have brought back to the limelight the rumblings in the apex court, which started when four senior judges held an unprecedented press conference on January 12. The judges accused Chief Justice Dipak Misra of not following convention in allocating cases to various benches. The fundamental question related to Wednesday’s controversy was how the three-judge bench, on February 8, overturned a judgement settled by another three-judge bench in 2014. In the Supreme Court, a judgement of a bench can be overturned only by a larger bench.