New Delhi, April 10
The Supreme Court will on
Monday hear a plea by a group of farmers' organisations that the
re-promulgated land ordinance be quashed as it was ultra vires of the
Constitution and devoid of morality, and therefore the government should
be restrained from enforcing it.
The apex court bench of Chief
Justice H.L. Dattu and Justice Arun Mishra said on Friday that the
matter would be taken up for hearing after senior counsel Indira Jaisinh
urged for an early hearing of the plea.
The Bharatiya Kishan
Union, Delhi Grameen Samaj, Gram Sewa Samiti and Chogama Vikas Avam
moved the apex court contending that "the Right to Fair Compensation and
Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement
(Amendment) Ordinance, 2015, is unconstitutional, null, void and ultra
vires Articles 14 and 123 of the constitution and hence void ab initio".
The
petitioner organisations, while describing the ordinance as a
"colourful exercise of power" by the government, have sought direction
to restrain the government from "acting upon" the measure.
Describing
the re-promulgation of the ordinance as "arbitrary and violative of
Article 14 of the Constitution", the farmers' organisations have said
that it was a "fraud on the Constitution itself".
Pointing holes
in the re-promulgation of the land ordinance, the petitioner
organisations have said that "deliberately proroguing the Rajya Sabha on
March 28, 2015, whilst it was in budget session only for the oblique
and malafide purpose of re-promulgating the impugned ordinance goes
against the very spirit and raison d'etre underlying Article 123 of the
Constitution".
The petitioners have contended that the action of
the government in re-promulgating the ordinance was malafide, amounting
to Ordinance Raj and thus open to challenge.
Asserting that the
government has "abandoned all principles of constitutional morality" by
re-promulgating the ordinances, the petition said that "adherence to
the principles of constitutional morality by the different organs of
government is as much a mandate to be enforced strictly like the letter
of the written Constitution".
The discretionary power of the
president to promulgate ordinances has to be "exercised judiciously and
within the strict paradigm of the circumstances, circumscribing the
exercise of such discretion under Article 123", the organisations have
contended.
The law-making function under the Constitution is
vested in parliament and the same cannot be usurped by the executive,
the petitioner organisations have contended.
They said: "If the
executive was permitted to continue the provisions of an ordinance by
issuing successive ordinances without submitting the same to the voice
of parliament, it is nothing but usurpation by the executive of the
law-making powers of the legislature."
"Merely because it does
not have numbers in the Rajya Sabha, the executive cannot be permitted
to continue the law-making exercise by way of an ordinance" and "the
life and liberty of citizens cannot be regulated by ordinances", the
petition said.
The government "deliberately" did not move the
2015 bill for discussion in the Rajya Sabha after its passage in the Lok
Sabha between March 10 and 20 "due to lack of its numbers, political
will or consensus", the organisations said.
The petitioners have
argued that the "issuance of the impugned ordinance goes against the
very purpose, intent, and spirit underlying Article 123".
