Vidya Sagar Gupta & Ors. Vs. State of U.P. & Ors.
Email(Under Article 32 of the Constitution of India)
(Under Article 32 of the Constitution of India)
Judiciary – Judicial Review – Article 14, 16 Duty of Court to supply vitality, blood and flesh to balance the competing rights – Supreme Court is not bound to accept an interpretation which retards progress or impedes social integration – It has to make available rights to social justice and has to see that rights of employees of either category do not violate Article 14 – Court to see whether retrospective operation of a law will accelerate or retard its operation – Court is not impotent to adjust the competing rights of parties – Decision in Mandal’s case postponing operation for five years from judgment is an instance of and an extension to the principle of prospective over ruling – Power of judicial review is most important weapon to protect the citizen against violation of social, legal and constitutional rights – Power of judicial review should be exercised with in sight into social values to supplement the changing social needs Judicial review ensures stability and progress of society.
Power of judicial review, a constituent power has, therefore, been conferred upon the judiciary which constitutes one of the most important and potent weapons to protect the citizens against violation of social, legal or constitutional rights. The judges are participants in the living stream of national life, steering the law between the dangers of rigidity on the one hand and formlessness on the other hand in the seemless web of life. The great tides and currents which engulf the rest of the men do not turn aside in their course and pass the judges idly by. Law should subserve social purpose. Judge must be a jurist endowed with the legislator’s wisdom, historian’s search for truth, prophet’s vision, capacity to respond to the needs of the present, resilience to cope with the demands of the future and to decide objectively disengaging himself/herself from every personal influence or predilections. Therefore, the judges should adopt purposive interpretation of the dynamic concepts of the Constitution and the Act with its interpretative armoury to articulate the felt necessities of the time. The judge must also bear in mind that social legislation is not a document for fastidious dialects but a means of ordering the life of the people. To construe law one must enter into its spirit, its setting and history. Law should be capable of expanding freedoms of the people and the legal order can, weighed with utmost equal care, be made to provide the underpinning of the highly inequitable social order. The power of judicial review must, therefore, be exercised with insight into social values to supplement the changing social needs. The existing social inequalities or imbalances are to be removed and social order readjusted through rule of law, lest the force of violent cult gain ugly triumph. Judges are summoned to the duty of shaping the progress of the law to consolidate society and grant access to the Dalits and Tribes to public means or places dedicated to public use or places of amenities open to public etc. The law which is the resultant product is not found but made.
By judicial review, the glorious contents and the trite realisation in the constitutional words of width must be made vocal and audible giving them continuity of life, expression and force when they might otherwise be forgotten or ignored in the heat of the moment or under sway of passions or emotions remain aroused, that the rational faculties get befogged and the people are addicted to take immediate for eternal, the transitory for the permanent and the ephemeral for the timeless, it is in such transitory for the permanent and the ephemeral for the timeless. It is in such surging situation the presence and consciousness and the restraining external force by judicial review ensures stability and progress of the society. Judiciary does not forsake the ideals enshrined in the Constitution, but makes them meaningful and makes the people realise and enjoy the rights.
The Judges, therefore, should respond to the human situations to meet the felt necessities of the time and social needs; make meaningful the right to life and give effect to the Constitution and the will of the legislature. This Court as the vehicle of transforming the nation’s life should respond to the nation’s needs, interpret the law with pragmatism to further public welfare to make the constitutional animations a reality and interpret the Constitution broadly and liberally enabling the citizens to enjoy the rights.
Common sense has always served in the court’s ceaseless striving as a voice of reason to maintain the blend of change and continuity of order which is sine qua non for stability in the process of change in a parliamentary democracy.
Therefore, it is but the duty of the Court to supply vitality, blood and flesh, to balance the competing rights by interpreting the principles, to the language or the words contained in the living and organic Constitution, broadly and liberally. The judicial function of the Court, thereby, is to build up, by judicial statesmanship and judicial review, smooth social change under rule of law with a continuity of the past to meet the dominant needs and aspirations of the present. This Court, as sentinel on the qui vive, has been invested with more freedom, in the interpretation of the Constitution than in the interpretation of other laws. This Court, therefore, is not bound to accept an interpretation which retards the progress or impedes social integration; it adopts such interpretation which would bring about the ideals set down in the Preamble of the Constitution aided by Part III and Part IV – a truism meaningful and a living reality to all sections of the society as a whole by making available the rights to social justice and economic empowerment to the weaker sections, and by preventing injustice to them. Protective discrimination is an armour to realise distributive justice. Keeping the above perspective in the backdrop of our consideration, let us broach whether the rights of the employees belonging to the general category are violative of Article 14; inconsistent with and derogatory to right to equality and are void ab initio. (Para 47, 48, 50 & 51)
