Top Quotes From The Top Court : Supreme Court Weekly Review [January 2-8]

Every week, starting from now, we will bring to you a compilation of most impactful observations made by the Supreme Court, a judicial ‘action recap’, as it were! Here are our top picks from the week starting from Monday, January 2: 1. Parliament should be concerned with general principles and not technical issues “For considering the question as to whether the RBI Act provides guidance to the delegatee [Central Government] or not, the entire scheme, object and the purpose of the Act has to be taken into consideration. The guidance could be sought from the express provision empowering delegation or the other provisions of the statute, the preamble, the scheme or even the very subject-matter of the statute. If the guidance could be found in whatever part of the Act, the delegation has to be held to be valid. A great amount of latitude has to be given in such matters. It has been consistently held that Parliament and the State Legislatures are not bodies of expert or specialists. They are skilled in the art of discovering the aspirations, the expectations, and the needs of the people whom they represent. It has been held that they function best when they concern themselves with general principles, broad objectives and fundamental issues instead of technical and situational intricacies which are better left to better equipped full-time expert executive bodies and specialist public servants…The RBI is an expert body entrusted with various functions with regard to monetary and economic policies. Perusal of the scheme of the RBI Act would reveal that it has a primary role in the matters pertaining to the management and regulation of currency. We, therefore, find that there is sufficient guidance to the delegatee when it exercises its powers under the RBI Act, from the subject matter of the statute, and the other provisions of the Act…One another aspect that needs to be taken into consideration is the nature of the body to which the delegation is to be made. In the present case, the delegation is made to the Central Government and not to any ordinary body. [It is] the highest executive body of the country. We have a Parliamentary system in which the Government is responsible to the Parliament. In case the Executive does not act reasonably while exercising its power of delegated legislation, it is responsible to Parliament who are elected representatives of the citizens for whom there exists a democratic method of bringing to book the elected representatives who act unreasonably in such matters” [Justice B.R. Gavai (majority judgement on behalf of himself and Justices S. Abdul Nazeer, A.S. Bopanna, and V. Ramasubramanian) in Vivek Narayan Sharma v. Union of India, 2023 LiveLaw (SC) 1] 2. Not proper for courts to enter into area of economic, monetary and fiscal policy “Insofar as the economic, monetary and fiscal policies are concerned, the same are best left to the experts possessing requisite knowledge. The RBI as well as the Central Government are bodies having contingent of experts in the field. It will, therefore, not be proper for the Court to enter into an area which should be best left to the experts…It is not the function of this Court or of any other Court to sit in judgment over such matters of economic policy and they must necessarily be left to the Government of the day to decide since in such matters with regard to the prediction of ultimate results, even the experts can seriously err and doubtlessly differ. The Courts can certainly not be expected to decide them without even the aid of experts. Our inquiry has to be limited only to find out as to whether there is an illegality in the decision-making process, i.e. whether the decision makers have understood the law correctly which regulates the decision-making power and as to whether the decision-making process is vitiated by irrationality, i.e. the Wednesbury principles. The test that would have to be applied is that the decision is such that no authority properly conducting itself on the relevant law and acting reasonably could have reached thereat, and as to whether there has been a procedural impropriety.” [Justice B.R. Gavai (majority judgement on behalf of himself and Justices S. Abdul Nazeer, A.S. Bopanna, and V. Ramasubramanian) in Vivek Narayan Sharma v. Union of India, 2023 LiveLaw (SC) 1] 3. Mere errors in judgement by government not subject to judicial review “Another submission was that the objective with which the Notification was issued, i.e., to combat fake currency, black money and parallel financing, has utterly failed…However, we do not wish to go into the question as to whether the object with which demonetization was effected is served or not or as to whether it has resulted in huge direct and indirect benefits or not. We do not possess the expertise to go into that question and it is best that it should remain in the domain of the...

Top Quotes From The Top Court : Supreme Court Weekly Review [January 2-8]

Awstika Das

Our top picks from the impactful observations made by the Supreme Court in the week starting from Monday, January 2.

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