New Delhi, May 23 -- In an extraordinary institutional moment at the Supreme Court, an unprecedented clash of judicial views between two coordinate benches over bail jurisprudence under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) spilled into the open on Friday, with one of the criticised benches formally asking the Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant to constitute a larger bench for an "authoritative resolution" of the law. A bench of justices Aravind Kumar and PB Varale, while hearing bail pleas by Delhi riots accused Tasleem Ahmed and Khalid Saifi, referred to the CJI the larger question of how the Supreme Court's landmark three-judge ruling in Union of India Vs KA Najeeb (2021) ought to be applied in UAPA cases involving prolonged incarceration. The development came barely days after another two-judge bench comprising justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan openly criticised the January 5 judgment authored by Justice Kumar in the Delhi riots conspiracy case involving Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam, holding that the earlier ruling had adopted an unduly restrictive understanding of bail under the anti-terror law. Friday's order effectively transformed that judicial disagreement into a formal institutional reference, setting the stage for a constitutionally significant reconsideration by a larger bench of how courts must reconcile national security concerns with personal liberty in anti-terror prosecutions. Also, it may finally settle the increasingly visible doctrinal divide that has emerged within the Supreme Court itself over the meaning and reach of KA Najeeb. "Judgments of this Court are not to be answered by counter-observations from another bench of equal strength. The discipline of precedence demands a higher institutional method," the bench said.P4...