(1) By the Constitution Explanation: As originally enacted, the Constitution of India provided for a Supreme Court with a Chief Justice and seven lowerranking Judges - leaving it to Indian Parliament to increase this number. In the early years, a full bench of the Supreme Court sat together to hear the cases presented before them. As the work of the Court increased and cases began to accumulate, Parliament increased the number of Judges from the original eight in 1950 to eleven in 1956, fourteen in 1960, eighteen in 1978, twenty-six in 1986 and thirty one in 2008. As the number of judges has increased, they have sat in smaller Benches of two or three (referred to as a Division Bench) - coming together in larger Benches of five or more (referred to as Constitutional Bench) only when required to settle fundamental questions of law.