NEW DELHI: The nine judges of the Supreme Court headed by CJI DY Chandrachud on Tuesday, it ruled unanimously that Section 31C of the Constitutionwhich presumed the legality of the legislation giving effect Directive principles of state policyand which was partly validated by the 13 judges of the SC in Kesavananda Bharati case, continue to hold on.
The bench said that the SC 1980 Minerva Mills stopwhich struck down Section 4 of the 42nd Emergency Amendment amending the contours of Section 31C, would not completely erase the provision, although the constitutionality of specific laws passed to give effect to it could be subject to judicial review.
The original text of Article 31C, which was inserted into the Constitution in 1971 through the 25th Constitutional Amendment, provided that no law giving effect to the directive principles of state policy, as specified in the clauses (b) and (c) of Article 39, “shall not be held void on the ground that it has violated Articles 14 (equality) and 19 (freedom of expression)”. The Kesavananda Bharati judgment upheld this part of section 31C.
However, it had struck down the second part of section 31C, which provided that no law containing a declaration that it is intended to give effect to such a policy shall be questioned in any court on the ground that it does not give no effect of such a policy.
Through the 42nd Amendment, Parliament had amended Article 31C to extend its scope far beyond clauses (b) and (c) of Article 39 and had incorporated in its place “any or all of the principles set forth in Part IV – Directive Principles”. The Minerva Mills judgment overturned this amendment, restoring the form of section 31C as it existed after the Kesavananda judgment.
The question before the nine judges was: “Whether Article 31C (as upheld in the Kesavananda Bharati judgment) survives in the Constitution after the amendment to the provision by the 42nd Amendment has been struck down by this court in the Minerva Mills decision? »
Writing the majority opinion, the CJI said that Parliament, through the 42nd Amendment, had intended to extend immunity to laws incorporating provisions of Directive Principles and it cannot be suggested that the Parliament would have repealed the words “the principles specified in clause (b) or clause (c) of Article 39” as they originally existed in Article 31C.
“Having Minerva Mills invalidating Section 4 of the 42nd Amendment, the composite legal effect of Section 4 is set aside and the unamended text of Section 31C is restored,” the bench said.
“The text of unamended Section 31C was challenged and the first part of the section was upheld by a 13-judge decision in the Kesavananda Bharati case while the second half of the section was struck down. By Therefore, the first half of the unamended Section 31C, which is the subject of the present controversy was undoubtedly constitutional… We conclude that the unamended Section 31C remains in force,” he said .