Source: https://indconlawphil.wordpress.com/category/the-legislature/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 21:07:49+00:00

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(This is a guest post by Suhrith Parthasarathy, on the eve of the final day of hearing in the Tribunals Case).
Over the course of the last five years, several laws of substantial and wide-reaching importance have been enacted without securing the Rajya Sabha’s assent. These have included, among others, legislation such as the Aadhaar Act, the Specified Bank Notes (Cessation of Liabilities) Act, 2017, which provided imprimatur to the government’s demonetisation programme, and the Finance Act of 2017, through which a raft of statutes was amended, and various different judicial tribunals were either newly created or merged and integrated together. The government achieved this circumvention of the Rajya Sabha’s checks by having the Lok Sabha’s speaker certify the draft of these legislation as money bills.
(g) any matter incidental to any of the matters specified in sub clause (a) to (f).
Article 110(3) further states that in cases where a dispute arises over whether a bill is a money bill or not, the Lok Sabha Speaker’s decision on the issue shall be considered final. But, in its judgment in the Aadhaar case, despite clause 3, the Supreme Court did, in fact, review whether the Speaker was correct in branding the Aadhaar Bill as a money bill, albeit concluding that the certification in the case was correct. Now, however, arguments are once again afoot on whether such decisions by the Speaker can at all be subject to judicial scrutiny.
Last week, in challenging the provisions of the Finance Act of 2017, insofar as they affected the functioning of tribunals, Mr. Arvind Datar, for the petitioners, contended that the Speaker’s certification, in this case, amounted to a fraud on the Constitution. The provisions of the law, through which tribunals were either merged together or newly created, he argued, related to matters entirely beyond the scope of the enlisted items in Article 110(1).
In response, the Union government, represented by the Attorney General, argued that the speaker’s decision in certifying the Finance Bill of 2017 as a money bill was final and binding. In the government’s belief, the majority’s judgment in the Aadhaar case does not represent an authority for the proposition that the speaker’s endorsement is amenable to judicial review.
Admittedly, as I pointed out in my previous post, the leading opinion in the Aadhaar case, authored by Justice AK Sikri, is riddled with inconsistencies on this question. Had the court approached its decision-making process logically, it would have first rendered a conclusive opinion on whether the Speaker’s decision was capable of being judicially examined, before proceeding to consider the question of whether her decision was, in fact, correct on a consideration of the Aadhaar Bill. But not only did the court fail to do this, it adopted an altogether bizarre approach by first reflecting on whether the Aadhaar Act infringed any fundamental right or not. In doing so, it concluded that section 57 of the Act alone was unconstitutional. As a result, when considering arguments on the bill’s certification under Article 110, the majority considered a version of the law that was deemed to exclude section 57. This is inexplicable because the Speaker, when attesting the draft legislation, one would have thought, would have considered its provisions as a collective whole.
(i) Sub-Committee on Judicial Accountability v. Union of India & Ors.
(ii) S.R. Bommai & Ors. v. Union of India & Ors.
(iii) Raja Ram Pal v. Hon’ble Speaker, Lok Sabha & Ors.
(iv) Ramdas Athawale v. Union of India & Ors.
(v) Kihoto Hollohan v. Zachillhu & Ors.
397) It was emphasised that the creation and composition of the Rajya Sabha (Upper House) is an indicator of, and is essential to, constitutional federalism. It is a part of basic structure of the Constitution as held in Kuldip Nayar & Ors. v. Union of India & Ors.147. Therefore, Rajya Sabha could not have been by-passed while passing the legislation in question and doing away with this process and also right of the President to return the Bill has rendered the statute unconstitutional.
404) The Rajya Sabha, therefore, becomes an important institution signifying constitutional fedaralism. It is precisely for this reason that to enact any statute, the Bill has to be passed by both the Houses, namely, Lok Sabha as well as Rajya Sabha. It is the constitutional mandate. The only exception to the aforesaid Parliamentary norm is Article 110 of the Constitution of India. Having regard to this overall scheme of bicameralism enshrined in our Constitution, strict interpretation has to be accorded to Article 110. Keeping in view these principles, we have considered the arguments advanced by both the sides.
405) We would also like to observe at this stage that insofar as submission of the respondents about the justiciability of the decision of the Speaker of the Lok Sabha is concerned, we are unable to subscribe to such a contention. Judicial review would be admissible under certain circumstances having regard to the law laid down by this Court in various judgments which have been cited by Mr. P. Chidambaram, learned senior counsel appearing for the petitioners, and taken note of in paragraph 396.
Although the court didn’t expressly hold Siddiqui to be wrongly decided, it would be reasonable for us to assume, especially from paragraph 405, that the majority in the Aadhaar case rejected the government’s argument that the Speaker’s decision under Article 110 is beyond judicial review. Indeed, the court having agreed with Mr. Chidambaram proceeded to then examine whether the Aadhaar Bill (sans section 57) could be classified properly as a money bill. On this, the court concluded that the Speaker’s certification was correct, and the law was, in fact, validly enacted.
For all the aforesaid reasons, we are of the opinion that Bill was rightly introduced as Money Bill. Accordingly, it is not necessary for us to deal with other contentions of the petitioners, namely, whether certification by the Speaker about the Bill being Money Bill is subject to judicial review or not, whether a provision which does not relate to Money Bill is severable or not. We reiterate that main provision is a part of Money Bill and other are only incidental and, therefore, covered by clause (g) of Article 110 of the Constitution.
Now, had the court thought the speaker’s certification final and incapable of being scrutinised, it’s unfathomable why it would even consider whether the Aadhaar Bill’s introduction as a money bill was correct in law or not. Yet, paragraph 412 has left open an avenue for the government to continue to insist that the Speaker’s endorsement under Article 110 is beyond judicial review. But as I have argued previously, Article 110, if abused, is capable of producing great public mischief. What is more, as Justice DY Chandrachud’s opinion in the Aadhaar case shows us (here Justice Bhushan too concurs), the decision in Siddiqui proceeded on a grossly mistaken belief that a certificate issued under Article 110 is merely a matter of procedure. The ongoing case over the validity of the Finance Act, 2017, insofar as it relates to tribunals, represents a great opportunity for the court to irrefutably settle the issue. It’s time the court explicitly overruled Siddiqui, for to hold otherwise is to undermine the fundamental democratic role that the Rajya Sabha performs.
The Supreme Court’s judgment in the Aadhaar case is troubling at many different levels. As Gautam Bhatia’s post highlights, the majority’s opinion, authored by Justice AK Sikri, on behalf of himself, Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justice AM Khanwilkar, is riddled with doctrinal inconsistencies and fails to so much as a maintain a sense of internal logic. This makes criticism of the judgment an especially demanding task. Not only are the court’s chosen standards of review questionable, its application of those flawed choices is often equally unsatisfactory. These fallacies are, perhaps, best exemplified by the majority’s approach to the questions concerning the enactment of the Aadhaar Act as a money bill. The court’s decision in this regard is productive of consequences that are likely to have a deep bearing on India’s democracy.
When the Aadhaar scheme was originally introduced in 2009, the government thought it unnecessary to enact a suitable legislation. In what represented a blatantly illegal move, it thought an executive notification would suffice for the purpose. Eventually, when the draft of a statute was presented in December 2010, to purportedly validate the scheme, it was introduced in the Rajya Sabha as an ordinary bill. This meant that the bill, like most other laws in India, required the assent of both houses of Parliament to turn into law. As it happened, the draft bill was sent to a Parliamentary Standing Committee even before it could secure the Upper House’s clearance. After substantial concerns were raised by the committee, the government, now under a different dispensation, withdrew the bill from consideration in March 2016, and introduced, in its place, a new draft legislation, titled the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial & Other Subsidies, Benefits & Services) Bill, 2016. But this time the draft statute was introduced in the Lok Sabha with an added certificate from the speaker of the House classifying the proposed legislation as a money bill. This meant that all that the bill needed to turn into law was the Lok Sabha’s affirmation, which the bill secured within days of its introduction. And with that, the Aadhaar Act came to be enacted.
A number of the petitions challenging the Aadhaar programme in the Supreme Court explicitly questioned the introduction and enactment of the law as a money bill. The petitioners in these cases argued that the court possessed the power to judicially review the speaker’s decision, and, what’s more, his decision to certify the law as a money bill was patently unconstitutional.
Critically, Article 110(3) adds that in cases where a dispute arises over whether a bill is a money bill or not, the Lok Sabha Speaker’s decision on the issue shall be considered final. It was this provision that the government placed particular emphasis on in its defence. The Union of India argued that the speaker’s decision was altogether immune from judicial review. In any event, according to it, the categorisation made in this case was in conformity with clause 1 of Article 110.
In deciding the case, common logic ought to have dictated that the court considered the question of whether the Aadhaar Act was a validly enacted legislation first. After all, if the court were to find that it had the power to review the speaker’s decision and if it found that the decision made in this case was unconstitutional, the entire legislation would have been rendered null and void, effectively making every other argument advanced in the case moot. Yet, the court chose a different path. For reasons best known to the majority, it chose to frame the question concerning the validity of the Aadhaar Bill’s categorisation as the sixth issue for consideration. Bizarrely, issues that preceded this included questions over whether the Aadhaar Act created a surveillance state, whether the Act violated the right to privacy, and whether children could be brought within the sweep of the programme. Thus, the majority chose to decide what ought to have been a preliminary question only once it gave its imprimatur to the general architecture of the Aadhaar programme. This approach, it must be said, runs counter to the most fundamental principles of judicial decision-making.
Making matters worse, the court’s ultimate approach in deciding the issue was just as illogical. Quite opposed to addressing, at the outset, the government’s objection that the speaker’s certification was beyond judicial review, the court first chose to consider whether the bill, in fact, met the requirements of Article 110(1). Once it did this, and once it found that the bill fell within the categories prescribed in Article 110(1), the court altogether brushed aside the question of whether a speaker’s decision is judicially reviewable or not. Now, it’s difficult to understand whether we can presume from the fact that the court conducted an examination on the provisions of the bill to conclude that it was a money bill that the majority did believe the speaker’s decision to be reviewable. The majority offers no clear and precise answer for this.
But, given that the government’s argument wasn’t entirely meritless, in that it was backed by at least one decision of a 3-judge bench of the Supreme Court, in Mohd. Saeed Siddiqui v. State of UP (2014), in the present post we shall endeavour to consider the issue by first answering the question of whether a speaker’s decision under Article 110 is judicially reviewable or not.
In Siddiqui, the question before the court concerned a categorisation made under Article 199 of the Constitution, which defines a money bill for the purposes of state legislatures. The provision is in pari materia with Article 110, and, as such, any decision made interpreting Article 199 ought to apply directly to Article 110 too. There, the Supreme Court had ruled that a Speaker’s decision to classify a draft statute as a money bill was not judicially reviewable, even if the classification was incorrect, since the speaker’s mistake constituted nothing more than a mere procedural irregularity. The court arrived at its decision, as Justice DY Chandrachud’s dissenting opinion in the Aadhaar case correctly points out, on a misunderstanding of a constitution bench judgment in Mangalore Ganesh Beedi Works vs. State of Mysore (1963).
In Mangalore Ganesh Beedi Works, the court had found that the Indian Coinage (Amendment) Act, which introduced a new system of coinage, was not a taxing measure. The petitioners had argued that through the substitution of 2 naya paisas in place of 3 pies as tax, there was a change in the tax imposed by the Mysore Sales Tax Act, which could only have been done by passing a Money Bill under Articles 198, 199 and 207 of the Constitution. Since no money bill had been introduced, the Act itself, the petitioners argued was illegal and invalid. It was in those circumstances, having found that a substitution of coinage did not result in an enhancement of tax, that the court ruled that Article 199 was simply not attracted. The further observation made by the court that the “the validity of an Act cannot be challenged on the ground that it offends Articles 197 to 199 and the procedure laid down in Article 202” ought to therefore be viewed in light of the ratio decidendi of the judgment.
Interestingly, Justice Bhushan in his separate opinion agrees with Justice Chandrachud that Siddiqui requires explicit overruling. It is unfortunate that despite the length of its opinion the majority has singularly failed to engage with this central point of contention.
What the majority does do, though, (and here Justice Bhushan agrees with it) is to hold, erroneously, that the speaker’s certification of the Aadhaar Bill as a money bill was in conformity with Article 110(1).
The government had argued that since Section 7 of the Aadhaar Act, “which was the heart and soul” of the legislation concerned subsidies, benefits and services, for which the expenditure was to be incurred from the Consolidated Fund of India, the requirements of Article 110(1) were met. It was sufficient, according to the government, if a law, in pith and substance, met the tests laid down in Article 110(1). In other words, so long as a draft legislation broadly concerned itself with one of the elements contained in clauses (a) to (f) of Article 110(1), the speaker was well within his rights to categorise the law as a money bill.
The substantive provisions of the Act are, however, not confined to the object specified in the Preamble. Indeed, they travel far beyond the boundaries of a money bill under Article 110(1). The enrolment on the basis of demographic and biometric information, generation of Aadhaar number, obtaining consent of individuals before collecting their individual information, creation of a statutory authority to implement and supervise the process, protection of information collected during the process, disclosure of information in certain circumstances, creation of offences and penalties for disclosure or loss of information, and the use of the Aadhaar number for any purpose lie outside the ambit of Article 110. These themes are also not incidental to any of the matters covered by sub-clauses (a) to (f) of Article 110(1). The provisions of Section 57 which allow the use of an Aadhaar number by bodies corporate or private parties for any purpose do not fall within the ambit of Article 110. The legal framework of the Aadhaar Act creates substantive obligations and liabilities which have the capability of impacting on the fundamental rights of residents. [Paragraph 107].
To facilitate this, UIDAI is established as Authority under the Act which performs various functions including that of a regulator needing funds for staff salary and it’s own expenses. Respondents have rights remarked that the Authority is the performer in chief, the predominant dramatis personae. It appoints Registrars, enrollers, REs and ASAs; it lays down device and software specifications, and develops softwares too; it enrols; it de-duplicates; it establishes CIDR and manages it; it authenticates; it inspects; it prosecutes; it imposes disincentives; etc. And all this it does based on funds obtained by appropriations from Consolidated Fund of India (Section 24).
It’s difficult to understand the majority’s precise point here. But if its intent is to suggest that virtually any governmental activity would fulfil the condition laid down in Article 110(e), given that most government functions would be funded out of the Consolidated Fund of India it can only be a ruling that is predicated on a flagrant misunderstanding of the Constitution. The entire idea behind Article 110(e) is that the law must contain “only provisions” that involve “the declaring of any expenditure to be expenditure charged on the Consolidated Fund of India or the increasing of the amount of any such expenditure.” In other words, under clause (e), a money bill must deal with the declaring of any expenditure to be expenditure charged on the Consolidated Fund of India.
What Section 7 does is to enact a provision allowing for Aadhaar to be made mandatory, in the case of services, benefits or subsidies which are charged to the Consolidated Fund. Section 7 does not declare them to be a charge on the Consolidated Fund. It provides that in the case of services, benefits or subsidies which are already charged to the Consolidated Fund, Aadhaar can be made mandatory to avail of them. Section 7, in other words, is a provision for imposing a requirement of authentication and not declaring any expenditure to be a charge on the Consolidated Fund of India. Hence, even Section 7 is not within the ambit of Article 110(1)(e).
The majority’s troubling holding on the money bill issue doesn’t end here. It also holds that by virtue of it striking down Section 57 of the Act, it was unnecessary for it to consider whether the provision was merely incidental to the other provisions, specifically to Section 7. This finding is yet another instance of the judgment’s incoherence. The Aadhaar Act was enacted as a package. Section 57 was very much a part of the bill which was presented for the Lok Sabha’s consideration. So, if Section 57 wasn’t merely incidental to Section 7 (and it would have involved a huge stretch even of the majority’s logic to hold that it was), the draft legislation simply could not have been categorised as a money bill.
In other words, the majority effectively inverts basic judicial reasoning. Instead of considering the Aadhaar Act as a whole, and testing whether it qualifies as a money bill, the majority first examines provisions of the Act for substantive compliance with the Constitution, strikes down Section 57 as unconstitutional, and then turns around and says, “hey, now that Section 57 is gone, the remainder of the Act is a money bill after all.” As explained above, this is simply absurd.
Ultimately, the court’s ruling here creates a dangerous precedent. Now, virtually any legislation can be pushed through as a money bill, by ensuring that the law contains an “element” of one or the other of the clauses contained in Article 110. If the judgment is allowed to stand on this point its impact could be far-reaching. It will give government a carte blanche to enact all manners of laws by-passing the Rajya Sabha altogether.
The majority’s judgment in the Aadhaar case, therefore, requires immediate overruling. It will be interesting to see when the government next amends the Aadhaar Act (as it’s surely likely to do) if it will introduce the draft amendment as a money bill. Any such effort must serve as an opportunity for the court to reverse the majority’s findings here, and to restore, in Justice Chandrachud’s words, “the delicate balance of bicameralism” which lies at the heart of India’s parliamentary democracy.
This post is a response to Karan Lahiri’s absolutely fascinating post, on the recent decision of the Supreme Court in Kalpana Mehta & Ors. v. Union of India & Ors. Lahiri argues that Chandrachud’s J.’s invocation of the idea of the “Constitution as a transformative document”, was incorrect in the context of legislative privileges. To Lahiri, Article 105 of the Constitution, which provides for powers, privileges and immunities of the Houses of Parliament, is an instance where the Constitution is not “transformative” – it rather creates “explicit continuities” with India’s colonial past. Lahiri then asserts that Article 105 is better viewed as provision that is a “gateway to transformation”, since its wording imbues the Parliament with transformative potential in defining its privileges. Thus, Lahiri’s argument has two components: (i) that the Constitution was not transformative on the issue of legislative privilege but was rather an explicit colonial continuity; and (ii) that Article 105 though not transformative in itself, was pregnant with transformative potential. This post is not very concerned with part (ii) of Lahiri’s argument. It does, however, engage with part (i) seriously. I argue that the Indian Constitution was transformative qua the issue of legislative privilege, in at least one sense of the term, and in exactly the sense that Lahiri asserts it not to be. Moreover, it certainly cannot be regarded as a “colonial continuity”. In fact, Article 105 radically reverses a significant feature of the colonial rule, i.e., the pre-eminence of British Parliament over the colonial legislatures.
It would help to fix concepts a little here. What do we mean by a “transformative constitution” and “colonial continuity”?
As I understand it, there can be at least two conceptions of a “transformative” statute or constitution. In one sense, it could simply mean that the law “stands transformed” by virtue of statute or constitution that is enacted, i.e., a new law is brought into force that represents a radical and clean break from the position of law that preceded it. Or it could mean that the statute or constitution “has a transformative purpose”, i.e., that a change in law is brought about that is purposed to have a transformative impact on its field of action. The first conception focuses on the change in the content of the law itself and asks if the law has transformed beyond recognition. The second conception focuses on whether the change in law (which may or may not in itself be radical) is purposed to transform something else (other than the law) radically.
Differentiating between these two conceptions of a “transformative constitution” has analytical utility. It recognizes the possibility that the parts of the constitution can be transformative in the former sense, i.e., it brings about a radical change in the content of the law, while not necessarily having a “transformative purpose”. Similarly, a transformative purpose could potentially be achieved through minor changes in the law that could not be regarded as transformative of the content of law.
Thus, as noted by Chandrachud J., the conferment of fundamental rights to individuals was transformative in both senses of the word. It was purposed to achieve social transformation, and was transformative in the content of Indian law, by granting rights to individuals against the state in a radical, new way.
However, a law need not always be transformative in both senses of the term. In some cases, the content of law could stand radically transformed because of a preceding social transformation. Here, the law could stand transformed by a new “constitution”, but not with any transformative purpose. As I will seek to demonstrate here, the Constitution clearly transformed the “content” of the law of legislative privilege in India. Whether this change in the law’s “content” on legislative privilege was purposed to bring about social transformation of another sort, or whether it was occasioned by a preceding/underlying social transformation is less clear.
It would also help to fix the meaning of the term “colonial continuity”. I should note that Chandrachud J. does not use this term, which Lahiri uses in his blog post. However, Lahiri is not clear on what he means by the term, though he indicates that Art. 105, by referring to the British House of Commons “establishes a colonial continuity”. If by this, he merely means that any constitutional provision referring to / establishing linkages with an institution of the erstwhile colonizer establishes a “colonial continuity”, then the concept does not really have much analytical utility. It says nothing about whether there was anything inherently “colonial” about the law on legislative privilege, and whether this “colonial” aspect of the law was “continued” by the Constitution. If, however, Lahiri means “colonial continuity” to refer to the continuation of a fundamental feature of colonial project, then Article 105 does no such thing, and Lahiri is incorrect in stating that it does. In fact, as I see, Article 105 is a radical break from the colonial law on legislative privilege in India, and the constitution fundamentally “transformed” the law in this regard, as I will illustrate below.
He provides little evidence to substantiate any such transformative purpose to Article 105 of the Constitution, and this is rightly pointed out by Lahiri in his post. Thus far, Lahiri’s analysis is excellent. I also have no quarrel with the larger point which Lahiri makes, i.e., that there must be rigour in invoking the notion that the constitution is a “transformative document” when it is sought to be used as an interpretive tool. When invoking the “transformative constitution” as an aid to interpretation, judges must necessarily ask: (i) whether or not that part of the Constitution that they are interpreting was transformative: (ii) in what sense was it transformative, i.e., did it transform the content of pre-existing law? (or) did it have a transformatory purpose?. The “transformative constitution” should not be used as a carte blanche to interpret any and all parts of the Constitution in a free-wheeling liberal way. Indeed, Lahiri’s is an important cautionary note struck at a time when the idea of the “transformative constitution” appears to be gaining substantial recognition. Too often have Indian courts and academics used flowery language to mask flawed logic and lazy reasoning.
After correctly identifying Chandrachud J’s failure to identify or argue for a “transformative purpose” behind Article 105, Lahiri incorrectly goes on to assert that that Article 105 (both as originally enacted and after the 42nd and 44th constitutional amendments) is an instance of explicit “colonial continuity”. He bases his assertion on the fact that Article 105(3) made the privilege rules of Indian Parliament effectively the same as the British House of Commons. This was done by the original constitutional text through explicit reference to the House of Commons, and after the 44th amendment, through a slightly circuitous route. According to Lahiri, this explicit reference to the privileges of the British House of Commons creates an explicit colonial continuity”. I argue that this in incorrect. On the contrary, Article 105 radically reverses a significant feature of the colonial rule, i.e., the pre-eminence of British Parliament over the colonial legislatures.
Lahiri’s analysis is incomplete in one crucial respect. He fails to ask: what were the privileges enjoyed by pre-Constitutional legislative bodies in India? Surely, “continuity” in the context of an Indian parliament would make sense only when viewed with predecessor legislative bodies in India. When thus viewed, the transformative character of Article 105 becomes immediately apparent. It was indeed transformative, as originally enacted. A large part of the analysis that follows borrows heavily from an excellent research paper by P.N.Malhan of the Punjab University, published in 1942 in the Indian Journal of Political Science. The paper provides a very good picture of the privileges enjoyed by pre-constitutional colonial legislatures in India, under both the Government of India Acts 1919 and 1935.
“71.-(1) Subject to the provisions of this Act and to rules and standing orders regulating the procedure of the Legislature, there shall be freedom of speech in every Provincial Legislature, and no member of the Legislature shall be liable to any proceedings in any court in respect of anything said or any vote given by him in the Legislature or any committee thereof, and no person shall be so liable in respect of the publication by or under the authority of a Chamber of such a Legislature of any report, paper, votes or proceedings.
(2) In other respects the privileges of members of a Chamber of a Provincial Legislature shall be such as may from time to time be defined by Act of the Provincial Legislature, and, until so defined, shall be such as were immediately before the commencement of this Part of this Act enjoyed by members of the Legislative Council of the Province.
The upshot of the above is this. It could be argued that one of the features of the colonial project was the pre-eminence of British Parliament over colonial legislatures. One manifestation of this pre-eminence was in the special privileges that British Parliament had that colonial legislatures, including colonial legislatures in India, did not. Article 105 of the Constitution represents a radical break from the past, by conferring the same privileges upon Indian Parliament that were enjoyed by the British Parliament at the time the Constitution came into force. The equation of Indian Parliament to British Parliament is to be viewed as a radical act that is a complete break from a colonial past which subordinated Indian Parliament to British Parliament. It can by no means be regarded as an “explicit constitutional continuity” as Lahiri puts it. In addition, I would argue that the Article 105 was indeed “transformative”, just not in the way that Chandrachud J. meant it. It does not seem to have a discernable “transformative purpose” as Lahiri puts it, at least in terms of social transformation. Without doubt, however, it legislates a substantial transformation in the law on legislative privilege in India.
 The transformative potential in Section 71(2) was limited by Section 71(3). The privileges could be increased through legislation but could not confer upon Chambers of Legislature a power to punish or discipline akin to that enjoyed by a court.
Ever since the present Chief Justice assumed office, he has been presiding over what is effectively a permanent Constitution Bench, that has been hearing – and is scheduled to hear – a total of thirteen cases. In the first half of the year, the Bench handed down two judgments that have constitutional implications. The first was Common Cause v Union of India (now better known as the “passive euthanasia” case) and the second one was Kalpana Mehta v Union of India (the “parliamentary standing committees” case).
I do not think that either of these cases require a granular examination; the questions before the Court were broad, and were answered in broad terms. I shall briefly summarise the holdings, but before I do so, I think it is important to note, in passing, that Common Cause clocks in at 538 pages, and Kalpana Mehta at 338 pages. The length of both these judgments could be significantly shortened if the Chief Justice resisted the temptation of spending reams of pages philosophising about life and death in the first case, and about democracy in the second case. They could also be significantly shortened if the judges – none of whom dissented in either case – resisted the temptation of writing 100+-page concurring opinions (Common Cause has four separate opinions, Kalpana Mehta three).
It is respectfully submitted that the eminently laudable purpose of not adding ink is best served by, well, not adding ink. The provocation to express one’s own thoughts in one’s own way is an understandable one, but judges are, after all, meant to be made of stuff stern enough to recognise and avoid such provocations. This is not to say that the concurrences shouldn’t exist – for example, in Common Cause, Chandrachud J. has a significant disagreement with the other judges on the issue of causation, a disagreement that can be expressed only through an opinion that concurs in the result, but sets out its own separate reasoning. That apart, however, in both these cases, the five judges agree on almost everything. In such circumstances, a single opinion of the Court would make everyone’s life much easier.
In Common Cause, the Constitution Bench unanimously held that passive euthanasia was legal, grounded in the “right to die with dignity” under Article 21 of the Constitution, and ancillary concepts, such as the freedom of choice (to refuse medical treatment), personal autonomy, bodily integrity. The Court only legalised passive euthanasia (that is, to put it simply, the removal of life-supporting machinery from a terminally ill patient), not active euthanasia (mercy killing) or suicide. Following the Vishaka model, the Chief Justice laid down detailed guidelines (which immediately proved controversial) to facilitate the right through the mechanism of “Advance Directives”, and to prevent abuse.
I’m not quite sure how this split in the approaches towards the act/omission distinction will play out in future cases, but – for obviously reasons – it seems to me that Justice Chandrachud’s approach – which detaches justification from the analytical classification of an event into an act or an omission – is far sounder (later on in his judgment, he – again, correctly in my view – recognises that the distinction is nevertheless maintained in the penal law, and therefore, active euthanasia can only be legalised by the legislature (para 93); and then, still later – this time, wrongly, in my view – links it to mens rea (para 98)).
The second interesting feature that I want to highlight is a little more abstract. When you pare it down to essentials, Common Cause was about a right of refusal. At one level, it was the right to refuse life-prolonging medical treatment. At a second level, however, it was also a right to refuse unwarranted technological intervention into one’s body, or – to put it in another words – the right to refuse being conscripted into a technological system, whatever its beneficial purpose. All the judges recognised this – whether it was the Chief Justice with his striking question about whether an individual should be made “a guinea pig for some kind of experiment”, or Justice Chandrachud’s repeated use of the word “intervention”.
Individuals have the right to engage with technological systems on their own terms, the right to opt into or opt out of such systems without suffering for it, and the right not to be subjected to technological intervention without being given meaningful choice. Let us call this the principle of technological self-determination: or the right of every individual to determine how, on what terms, and to what extent, she will engage with technological systems.
In Common Cause, the stakes were relatively low; however, in the years to come, as technology becomes ever more ubiquitous and ever more intrusive, the idea of technological self-determination will become crucial. One does not even need to look to the future: technological self-determination is a key aspect of the Aadhaar constitutional challenge, presently awaiting judgment. Aadhaar is a complex technological system that operates at the stages of collection, storage and use of personal data; mandatory Aadhaar authorises the government to set the terms by which individuals must engage with this system.
Technological self-determination may or may not feature in the Aadhaar judgment, but it has, at least, made an incipient appearance in Common Cause, and gives all of us something to build on for the future.
The Constitution Bench’s second judgment dealt with the use of Parliamentary Standing Committee reports in Court. The reference arose out of a PIL, which is unsurprising: it is primarily in PILs – where broad and far-reaching (and often continuing) remedies are sought, and the Court takes on the role of an administrator – that the findings of Parliamentary Standing Committees become particularly useful.
There is some doubt on this last point, as it appears that Justice Chandrachud and Sikri’s joint opinion envisioned a slightly more prominent role for PSCs, where it factual determinations could be impacted by virtue of being part of a PSC (this is my reading, and I am open to correction on this). However, even if that was the case, it would put them in a minority: on my reading, the majority holding in Kalpana Mehta is what I extracted in the paragraph above.
“In matters involving issues of public interest, courts have been called upon to scrutinize the failure of the state or its agencies to implement law and to provide social welfare benefits to those for whom they are envisaged under legislation. Courts have intervened to ensure the structural probity of the system of democratic governance. Executive power has been made accountable to the guarantee against arbitrariness (Article 14) and to fundamental liberties (principally Articles 19 and 21).
Committees of Parliament attached to ministries/departments of the government perform the function of holding government accountable to implement its policies and its duties under legislation. The performance of governmental agencies may form the subject matter of such a report. In other cases, the deficiencies of the legislative framework in remedying social wrongs may be the subject of an evaluation by a parliamentary committee. The work of a parliamentary committee may traverse the area of social welfare either in terms of the extent to which existing legislation is being effectively implemented or in highlighting the lacunae in its framework. There is no reason in principle why the wide jurisdiction of the High Courts under Article 226 or of this Court under Article 32 should be exercised in a manner oblivious to the enormous work which is carried out by parliamentary committees in the field. The work of the committee is to secure alacrity on the part of the government in alleviating deprivations of social justice and in securing efficient and accountable governance. When courts enter upon issues of public interest and adjudicate upon them, they do not discharge a function which is adversarial. The constitutional function of adjudication in matters of public interest is in step with the role of parliamentary committees which is to secure accountability, transparency and responsiveness in government. In such areas, the doctrine of separation does not militate against the court relying upon the report of a parliamentary committee. The court does not adjudge the validity of the report nor for that matter does it embark upon a scrutiny into its correctness. There is a functional complementarity between the purpose of the investigation by the parliamentary committee and the adjudication by the court….
I do not know if this addresses the problem to the fullest extent – to be fair, I don’t know if the problem can be addressed within existing legal vocabulary, which simply doesn’t envisage the Court as permanent administrator – but it does, at least, acknowledge the misfit, and make a start towards addressing it. Justice Chandrachud’s invocation of the “transformative Constitution” at the end of the Opinion, as an anchoring principle, is interesting, and I shall examine it in some detail in a subsequent post.
(This is a guest post by Udit Bhatia. It is based on the article, Cracking the Whip: The Deliberative Costs of Strict Party Discipline in the journal, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy).
The anti-defection law, introduced by the 52nd amendment to the Indian Constitution, prohibits legislators from voting against their party’s whip on any legislation, or voluntarily giving up membership of their party. Legislators who violate their party’s whip stand to lose their place in parliament. Much of the rationale for such law – indicated by the Parliamentary Debates that went into its framing – seems to have been the prevention of horse-trading. This was evidenced in recent fears about corruption in the aftermath of the Karnataka election. But the scope of the amendment is wider than that, since it does not just forbid legislators from voting against their party during a trust motion or no-confidence vote. Rather, it also seeks to stop them from voting against the party line on any legislative matter where a whip is issued. Following the Supreme Court’s 1996 ruling in G. Viswanathan vs The Honourable Speaker, Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly, the law binds a member of parliament (MP) to her party’s directives even if that party has expelled her. India is among a handful of states—the others being Pakistan, Bangladesh and Fiji—that bind MPs to the will of the party leadership in this manner.
The anti-defection law, thus framed, has important negative effects on parliament’s capacity for discussion. Why, one might ask? After all, the anti-defection law merely prohibits legislators from voting against the party. But this would ignore ways in which restrictions on the vote affect legislators’ voices as well. Constraints on how legislators vote can restrict the formation of opinions contrary to their party’s line. If the only position that an MP is required to endorse is the one mandated by their party, this leaves them with little incentive to engage in the demanding task of scrutinising alternative ideas. Fetters imposed by the anti-defection law can also restrict the expression of dissent through their chilling effect on backbench MPs. If a legislator criticised her party’s stance and publicly expressed disagreement, she would ordinarily be expected to demonstrate consistency by voting against it. This is particularly true where disagreement runs deep or revolves around an issue considered central to her political project. But if one criticises the party on a wide range of issues, or vehemently so on some particular issue, electors might ask why one yet continues to remain member of that party and vote in accordance with its whips. ‘Why not just vote against your party if you disagree that much’, electors could ask. Party leaders could raise the cost of cross-voting by penalising dissenting voters. At the same time, legislators do not wish to be viewed as hypocrites. As a result, putting up a façade of consistency means that one is unlikely to express opinions contrary to that one is required to vote for. Finally, the anti-defection law also restricts the uptake that legislative dissent is likely to receive. In well-functioning parliaments, even when backbenchers ultimately vote with their party, they can exercise considerable influence behind the scenes. Party leaders have to anticipate their backbench’s reaction, and put effort into allaying their concerns so as to secure their consent. In India, on the other hand, the anti-defection law takes away any such incentive for party bosses to do so, by enabling them to rely on whips rather than discussion with their backbench colleagues.
Such constraints on legislation have important implications for legislative discussion. In the first instance, they undermine the benefits of the legislature’s numerical size. There is a reason why parliaments, compared to judiciaries, are large-sized bodies. With their total strength of 545 and 250 members, the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha are considerably larger institutions than the highest court in the country. This is because legislatures are supposed to pool information widely dispersed across a society. Their role is to ensure that varied interests in a large, heterogeneous country like India’s find representation through an appropriately sized body of persons. Following recent innovation in the social sciences and political theory, we conceive the primary strength of parliaments as their ability to manifest the wisdom of the multitude. For instance, following Scott Page and Lu Hong’s experimental work, Helene Landemore’s book, Democratic Reason draws upon their ‘diversity trumps ability theorem’, and argues that inclusive groups of diverse decision-makers outperform small groups of expert ones. However, the anti-defection law undermines the numerical benefit of the legislative chamber, restricting effective decision-making to a small, relatively homogenous group of party leaders.
Further, the anti-defection law can also deprive us of the benefits of having two chambers. There is a reason why the framers of the constitution insisted on establishing two legislative houses: the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha. One of the primary thrusts behind this design was that law-making bodies, like any other collective, are fallible. They can make errors, pass laws in haste, or fail to adequately consider some relevant interests. Bicameralism offers the opportunity to obtain a second opinion on legislative affairs. At the moment, the ruling party lacks a majority in the Rajya Sabha. But what if this were not the case? In that case, the government, with its majority in parliament, could enact laws in the Lok Sabha, and issue a whip to see those measures through in the Rajya Sabha as well. In such cases, second chambers cannot really offer a second opinion on decisions adopted by the first chamber. For second chambers to serve this purpose, they must be constituted of a distinctive set of persons. To see why, imagine that all members of the ruling party in the second house were chosen from that party’s MPs in the first house. In this hypothetical case, some legislators would serve a dual role as members of the first and the second chamber of Parliament. This situation would be deemed unacceptable as a way of offering a second opinion rather than allowing members of the first chamber to re-affirm their own decision. After all, MPs already do so in the course of multiple readings of a bill in the first chamber. Deliberative autonomy and the ability to form independent judgments is crucial for the distinctiveness of legislators. But distinctiveness cannot be simply about the physical presence of two different sets of legislators. If the only permissible view they can voice is the one sanctioned by the party’s leadership, and if they lack the capacity to form opinions that differ from that view, then distinctiveness no longer obtains. We, then, lose, an important benefit that bicameral division of the legislature offers.
Finally, there is a third negative cost that the anti-defection law imposes on legislative discussion. Part of the role of a well-functioning legislature is to clarify for the wider public the different shades of opinion that exist on any topic. Parliamentary discussion should be oriented at demonstrating the underlying dimensions on which various political disagreements exist, locating different political parties on the space of political reasons. By stifling the expression of dissenting views, the anti-defection law undermines parliament’s ability to offer this map of opinion. In doing so, it can also foster sharp polarisation, because we fail to see how internally variegated parties are, and how there are political actors across the aisle who might actually agree with us. Consider, for example, a debate on a healthcare policy. It is valuable for us to see how, despite the opposition party leaders’ criticism of that policy, there are members within that very party who agree with the government.
In India, the deliberative costs of the anti-defection law are exacerbated by its lack of adequate intra-party discussion. Were parties to offer vibrant internal mechanisms for deliberation, we might think that the constraints they impose within are parliament are less troublesome. However, the dictatorial state of our parties precludes such a stance. So far, much of the commentary on the Indian parliament has focused on the lack of adequate discussion caused by frequent disruptions. This is understandable. The scale of disruptions and the rowdy scenes we have come to witness in recent years are worrying symptoms for the health of our democracy. But we should not assume that all our legislators need to do is behave themselves and conduct themselves in an orderly fashion. As I have tried to show, the problem lies much deeper. What they can and are likely to say is conditioned by the anti-defection law. Even if disruptions stopped, and legislators could speak more freely, parliamentary discussion is likely to fall short of deliberative ideals.
Money bills seem to be all the rage these days. What is generally relegated to the annals of arcane legislative procedure is now at the forefront of a public debate that has raised accusations of executive arrogance, been defended as efficient law-making, and for our purposes, is begging questions of constitutional propriety. In this post, I look at the specific legal question of whether the role and conduct of the Speaker in classifying bills as ‘money bills’ is open to judicial review; this very issue is presently before the Supreme Court of India in Jairam Ramesh v. Union of India, as it hears a petition by a former cabinet minister who has challenged the passing of the Aadhaar Act, 2016 as a money bill, among other things. The question is important, because under the Constitution, the Rajya Sabha cannot exercise its customary legislative veto upon money bills. Consequently, the Speaker’s decision to classify a bill as a money bill or not has important ramifications.
It is true that in two recent cases, Mohd. Saeed Siddiqui v. State of Uttar Pradesh and Yogendra Kumar Jaiswal v. State of Bihar, the Supreme Court has held that the Speaker’s decision is not subject to judicial review. However, this post seeks to locate these judgments within the broader jurisprudence of the Supreme Court, with which they appear at odds with. The present petition offers the Court a rare opportunity to unambiguously articulate its position with sufficient reasoning, while acknowledging consequential implications, whichever way it rules.
Article 110 of the Constitution defines a money bill, and sets out six specific subjects which a money bill might cover (imposition of taxation, regulation of government borrowing etc.), so as to merit such classification, as well as any matter that is “incidental” to those six subjects. This is an exclusive list. Clause (3) provides that whenever any question arises to the propriety of classification under article 110, the decision of the Speaker of the Lok Sabha shall be final. However, the question remains: does the finality of the Speaker’s decision necessarily oust the jurisdiction of the courts? Article 122 explicitly bars courts from inquiring into the proceedings of Parliament. As the text of clause (1) suggests, this bar applies to any question on the ground of “irregularity of procedure”. The Supreme Court has, on several occasions, opined on the contours of this restriction.
In M.S.M Sharma v. Dr. Shree Krishna Sinha, it was affirmed that legislative business cannot be invalidated even if they are not in strict compliance with the law. As Chief Justice Sinha observed, these issues fall within the realm of what is a ‘special jurisdiction’ of the legislature – to regulate its own business; and the general rule is one of non-intervention. Historically at common law, this was also a privilege extended to Parliament and its officers, such as the Speaker. The powers of expulsion, censure, contempt et cetera are freely exercised by the UK Parliament without the threat of judicial review. However, the guiding principle of Indian law is constitutional supremacy, not parliamentary supremacy. For this reason, Indian jurisprudence has not been as kind to power unchecked by other branches of government. It has been repeatedly clarified in cases such as State of Rajasthan v. Union of India that the Constitution is ‘supreme lex’, which limits the authority of each branch, including that of the legislature. Judicial review offers an invaluable tool in checking Parliamentary belligerence, and this role is integral to the Indian constitutional scheme, as clarified by the Court in Sub-Committee on Judicial Accountability v. Union of India. From these cases, what is clear is this – the affairs of a legislature are generally the domain of that legislature alone, while the judiciary could play a significant role in review if the former strays from its constitutional circumscriptions.
For more guidance on what that potential role could be, we may look to Keshav Singh’s case. It held that while legislative bodies are not subject to judicial control as far as their internal procedures are concerned, there are certain caveats to such a proposition. It was held that a court of law may question legislative procedure if the impugned action rests not on mere irregularity, but from an ‘illegality’ or ‘unconstitutionality’ of procedure. In Ramdas Athavale v. Union of India, the Supreme Court extended that standard to article 122, as it pertains to procedural actions of Parliament. More tellingly, in Raja Ram Pal v. Speaker, Lok Sabha, the Court had applied this standard to article 105 (3), which sought to import those privileges, powers, and immunities enjoyed by the House of Commons into the Indian scheme (as an interim measure, until the Indian Parliament itself legislates on those matters). This case dealt with the expulsion of certain members of Parliament, by the Speaker. A plain reading of this clause and Parliamentary practices in the House of Commons might suggest a finality to procedural decision of the Speaker in confirming the expulsion, in terms that are analogous to article 110. The Court however noted that the Indian Constitution did not provide for expulsion as a means to effect a vacancy in the house, and the procedure was therefore illegal and unconstitutional, rather than merely irregular. The Speaker’s decision was held to be open to judicial scrutiny, and the expelled members were reinstated by the Court.
Given this precedential matrix, the question now turns to whether the decision of the Speaker to classify a bill as a money bill under article 110 amounts to a procedural matter; and even if it does, whether patently erroneous classification would amount only to mere irregularity of procedure. In Siddiqui, the Court considered a controversy with regard to identical provisions of the Constitution pertaining to state legislative assemblies. Here, the Court validated the finality of the decision of the Speaker, with only a passing reference to the rule clarified in the wealth of cases before it, and dismissed them without any substantial scrutiny. It did not offer any reasoning for this conclusion – in fact, it refrained from attempting to make the crucial link between irregularity of procedure and judicial review. The Court merely reiterated the text of article 110 (3), despite the broader avenue of intervention that has existed as far back as Keshav Singh.
More recently in Jaiswal, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the holding in Siddiqui that any decision of the Speaker in this regard, however flawed, could only amount to a “mere irregularity”, and thus outside the ambit of judicial review. Despite seemingly settling the question once and for all, closer scrutiny shows that the only source relied upon to this end is the conclusion in Siddiqui itself. It does not offer any independent assessment of the issue or unique reasoning – to say, ‘because Siddiqui said so’, holds value only if Siddiqui had done so on solid legal grounding in the first place. To that end, the Court missed an opportunity to detail the reasoning that informed its conclusions, particularly in light of the remarkable consequences of its decision. As anecdotal evidence from oral proceedings in the Ramesh case seems to suggest, the Court does not appear to be inclined to let blatant mischaracterisation go unchecked; Khehar CJ is reported to have observed, “If the Speaker says blue is green, we will tell her that blue is blue and not green”.
The Rajya Sabha is the indirectly-elected, upper-house of the bicameral Parliament of India. As such, it was envisaged to be an active participant in the legislative process – among other things, it would be consultative, advisory, and contributory towards law-making, without being subject to the vagaries of electoral politics. These features are supposed to, in theory, improve the quality of laws that are enacted by acting as a check on the untrammelled legislative intentions of the directly-elected, lower house of Parliament. With respect to ordinary legislation (i.e. non-money bills), the Rajya Sabha finds itself on equal footing with the Lok Sabha, as the former’s views cannot be ignored by the latter since the passing of such a bill by both houses of Parliament is the sine qua non of becoming law. On the other hand, once classified as a money bill, the Rajya Sabha’s legislative role is severely inhibited by reducing it to an advisory position – advice that is not binding on the Lok Sabha.
If the Court is to yet again affirm the conclusions of Siddiqui and Jaiswal in the forthcoming Ramesh case, unthinking reliance on those two cases would be another opportunity wasted as it does not truly answer the question of whether an erroneous certification of money-bills, as such, merely amounts to procedural irregularity. The Court must offer clear reasons as to why patently improper decisions by the Speaker does not amount to any of the other substantive flaws laid down in Keshav Singh and Pal. The obligation on the Court is to show why our constitutional scheme envisages the vesting of so grave a power with the Speaker that may be abused or incorrectly applied, yet not meriting judicial review. The very distinction between money bills and ordinary bills, as envisaged by the incorporation of article 110 in the Constitution, harks to the expectations of a participative and involved upper house. What does it mean for our democratic institutions if this process is obviously abused to exclude the participation of the upper house?
The Court may very well hold that the text of article 110 (3) is unencumbered by other constitutional standards and that the Speaker’s conduct is beyond review. But doing so entails a significant overhaul of our expectations and the Court must have the conviction to account for the implications of such a finding. It should acknowledge that such a reiteration of Siddiqui and Jaiswal emasculates the Rajya Sabha’s legislative function, implies that the ordinary-money bill distinction is specious despite the text of the Constitution, and that the Lok Sabha is paramount in the legislative process – the Court must justify why such radical empowerment of one house alone in a bicameral Parliament is appropriate.
In the absence of such an explicit and forceful finding, the guiding principle should remain those broader grounds for review envisaged in Keshav Singh, Pal et cetera, rather than the assertions of Siddiqui and Jaiswal. The Supreme Court may very well follow Siddiqui and Jaiswal, but it should also take care to detail the contours of such a deviation from the collective wisdom of its earlier jurisprudence on judicial review of legislative procedure – and contend that the Rajya Sabha is thus relegated to legislative redundancy. Bereft of such reasoning, the article 122 standard and the consequential extension of judicial review to the Speaker’s decision under article 110 appears more constitutionally sound.

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