NEED TO TURN A FORGOTTEN KEY FOR JUDICIAL ACCESS

The framers placed Article 32(3) in the Constitution to ensure justice can come closer to the citizen. Yet, means and location continue to affect citizens' access to the judiciary

- MANISH TEWARI

THE right to constitutional remedies, which is the heart and soul of the Constitution, contains a silent provision waiting to be activated to meet the demands of changing times. Article 32(3), a deliberate construct of the Constituent Assembly, empowers Parliament to confer the Supreme Court's writ jurisdiction upon other courts.

The historical record is unequivocal: this was not a mere procedural footnote, but a conscious design to plant the seeds of constitutional remedy across the judicial landscape, ensuring that the enforcement of fundamental rights would not be the exclusive preserve of distant top courts. Today, the continued relegation of writ jurisdiction solely to the Supreme Court and the 25 high courts has precipitated a systemic crisis.

It has created a debilitating bottleneck in justice delivery and stands in stark contradiction to the decentralised vision articulated by the framers of the Constitution. The activation of Article 32(3) through parliamentary legislation to empower subordinate constitutional courts with limited writ authority is, therefore, no longer a matter of legal discretion, but an imperative of constitutional fidelity and judicial pragmatism.

The Constituent Assembly debates reveal a clear intent to expand, not constrict, the avenues for obtaining writ remedies. The initial draft of what became Article 32 contained the pivotal phrase, "Without prejudice to the powers that may be vested in this behalf in other courts." It sparked an insightful debate on May 2, 1947. K Santhanam perceptively questioned which authority would hold the power to vest such jurisdiction, warning against a scenario where rights could be stifled by making the Supreme Court the only original forum, a place prohibitively distant for the ordinary citizen, or by relegating remedies to a dilatory appellate process from the lowest magistracy.