How SC read right to property and its limits

The recent judgment is not a ringing endorsement of a privatised political economy - far from it

- Gautam Bhatia

The Constitution of India is a document of compromises, which was drafted by a Constituent Assembly whose members had diverse - and sometimes - competing sets of interests. One of the starkest examples of the compromise nature of the document - when it was enacted - could be found in its property rights clauses. The Constituent Assembly was aware of the deeply unequal property structures that the country was inheriting from its colonial history, and the urgent need for land reform. This is reflected in various provisions of the Directive Principles of State Policy, which mandate the State to undertake policies that would lead to a more egalitarian distribution of resources among the country's people. At the same time, however, the Constituent Assembly was wary of radical change: They wanted incremental change that could be controlled from above. The Constitution, therefore, also contained a set of enforceable rights that would serve as guardrails within which the legislature could pursue its reforrnatory policies - but not beyond. These included a fundamental right to property, a requirement that land acquisition only be for a public purpose, and accompanied by compensation, and so on.

The initial years of the Constitution saw multiple amendments to the text, as Parliament saw its land reform laws often stymied by Supreme Court judgments that held that the property clauses had been violated. However, Parliament continued to keep the basic structure of the property clauses intact, even as it tried to exclude judicial review over its laws.