Supreme Court Strikes Down Unconstitutional Provisions

*Supreme Court Strikes Down Unconstitutional Provisions*

Indian constitutional framework does not subscribe to parliamentary sovereignty, nor does it vest unqualified supremacy in the judiciary. The architecture of our Constitution is firmly rooted in the principle of constitutional supremacy. Thus, under the model of constitutional supremacy, every organ of the State derives its authority from the Constitution and remains bound by the limitations it prescribes. Parliament, though entrusted with wide legislative powers, must enact laws within the contours of its legislative competence and in conformity with constitutional rights, values, and structural principles. The power to assess whether a law comports with these limitations is expressly vested in the courts. When the Court interprets the Constitution and pronounces upon the validity of a statute, that pronouncement becomes the authoritative and binding declaration of the law. As has long been recognised, the Constitution is what the Court says it is, not in the sense of aggrandising judicial authority, but as a necessary corollary of the Court’s role as the final arbiter of constitutional meaning. Once the Court has struck down a provision or issued binding directions after identifying a constitutional defect, Parliament cannot simply override or contradict that judicial decision by reenacting the very same measure in a different form. Parliament, like every other institution under our constitutional scheme, must operate within the bounds of the Constitution. Its discretion is broad but not absolute. Where a legislative measure attempts to nullify or circumvent a binding constitutional judgment without curing the underlying defect, it not only exceeds Parliament’s authority but also violates the doctrine of constitutional supremacy itself. If a legislative measure infringes fundamental rights, violates structural principles such as separation of powers or judicial independence, exceeds legislative competence, or frustrates binding constitutional directions, the Court may strike it down. The minimum age bar of fifty years for all appointments, the truncated four-year tenure with upper age caps of 70/67, the requirement that the Search-cum-Selection Committee forward a panel of two names for each vacancy, and the fixing of allowances and benefits to those of equivalent civil servants are all provisions, which have already been judicially tested and struck down. The Court has expressly held that these measures are arbitrary, destructive of judicial independence, and amount to an impermissible legislative override of binding directions. Merely shifting the same content from the amended Section 184 of the Finance Act into Sections 3, 5 and 7 of a stand-alone statute, while using the non obstante formula “notwithstanding anything contained in any judgment or order”, does not cure the constitutional defects. It simply reenacts them in another avatar. The Tribunal Reforms Act, therefore, does not “cure” the law declared earlier, but consciously defies it.

Citation : *Madras Bar Association v. Union of India [2025] GCtR 1709 (SC)*