Judicial sparring oven a missing phrase in final judgment

Justice Nagarathna in her verdict quoted Justice Chandrachud as observing that "The Krishna Iyer doctrine does a disservice to the broad and flexible spirit of the Constitution."

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A landmark 7:2 verdict of the Supreme Court recently held that not all private properties form part of material resources of the community that can be taken over for distribution to serve the common good under the Constitution.

It provided a definitive interpretation of Article 39(b), which specifies “that the ownership and control of the material resources of the community are so distributed as best to subserve the common good”. The verdict settled an important legal question on the rights of individuals against the state’s authority to control resources for public good.

The then Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud authored the 193-page majority judgment on behalf of six others - justices Hrishikesh Roy, J B Pardiwala, Manoj Misra, Rajesh Bindal, Satish Chandra Sharma and Augustine George Masih. Justice B V Nagarathna partially concurred with the majority view while Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia dissented.

The majority judgment did not agree with the erudite view expressed by Justice V R Krishna Iyer in the case of Ranganatha Reddy of 1978 wherein he held that private properties could be regarded as community resources. The words Justice Chandrachud chose to critique Justice Krishna Iyer’s verdict were quite loaded, drawing rather sharp criticisms from justices Nagarathna and Dhulia. More about that later.

Justice Chandrachud faulted the minority judgment authored by Justice Krishna Iyer in Ranganatha Reddy being relied upon by a subsequent coequal bench in the Sanjeev Coke case, though the majority verdict in the Reddy case specifically said “it must not be construed that it agreed with the observations of Justice Krishna Iyer.” He described it as a lapse of judicial discipline.