Facts in Brief

The Petitioner was a company owning a textile undertaking, which was subsequently nationalised and taken over by the Central Government under the Sick Textile Undertakings (Nationalisation) Act, 1974. The Petitioners contended that Section 4 and Section 55 of the 42nd Amendment Act, 1976 to the Constitution of India were constitutionally invalid.

Section 4 substituted the words in Article 31C with “all or any of the principles laid down in Part IV,” which earlier was restricted to only Article 39. This thereby took away judicial review of any law on any alleged violation of the Fundamental Rights guaranteed by Articles 14 and 19, if it supposedly seemed to further the principles of the Directive Principles of State Policy.

Section 55 inserted clauses (4) and (5) in Article 368, which swept away judicial review from any amendment made to the Constitution by the legislature, including Part III (Fundamental Rights) of the Constitution.

Arguments

Relying on the decision in Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala, AIR 1973 SC 1461 — that “the Constitution is a heritage, hence do not destroy its identity” — it was contended by the Petitioners that since the Constitution itself provided limited powers of amendment, Parliament could not, in the exercise of that limited power, enlarge that limited power into absolute power; hence Section 55 was unconstitutional.

As regards Section 4, it was argued that though the Directive Principles were mandatory as the ends of government, they could be achieved only by permissible means — that is, by reading them in harmony with Fundamental Rights. Section 4, which made the Fundamental Rights subordinate to the Directive Principles, was not agreeable to the structure of the Constitution.

Defending the impugned Sections, the Attorney General argued that when a law was enacted to further social and economic justice as advocated under the Directive Principles, it could never cause any injustice or violate any fundamental right. Moreover, Section 4 did not snatch away judicial review totally; rather, questions such as the reasonable and actual nexus of the law with the essence of the Directive Principles supposedly furthered would still be exposed to judicial scrutiny, and hence the provision was not unconstitutional.

Judgment

Accepting the challenges made, the Court declared both Section 4 and Section 55 as unconstitutional. The Court observed that by virtue of Section 55, Parliament was doing something, in the garb of an authority, which was not permissible by the mandate of the Constitution. Section 4 attempted to legitimise all future laws infringing fundamental rights, yet the judiciary would be paralysed to the extent of only drawing out and stretching the law to meet the nexus with the principles of the Directive Principles.

For the Common Man

Owing to this decision, while the text of the Constitution of India bears the words “principles of Part IV” in Article 31C, the same has been declared invalid by this case. The case therefore shows the extent to which the judiciary would go in order to preserve the inherent character (basic feature) of the Constitution.

Further, in Tinsukhia Electric Supply Co. v. State of Assam, AIR 1990 SC 123, the Court read the “doctrine of reasonable nexus” to enunciate that it was not that every statute enacted with the dominant object of giving effect to the Directive Principles is entitled to protection, but only those statutes which are basically and essentially necessary for giving effect to the Directive Principles are protected.