The Supreme Court has refused to hear a plea seeking a direction to the government and the Central Board of Secondary Education to introduce moral science as a separate discipline in school curriculum.
A Bench of Chief Justice of India T.S. Thakur and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, in a judgment, observed that it was not up to the court to decide how, and in what form, moral education should be imparted.
‘We lack the expertise’“While there can be no dispute about the need of providing value-based education, what form this should take and the manner in which values should be inculcated ought not to be ordained by the court. The court singularly lacks the expertise to do so,” Justice Chandrachud wrote in the recent judgment.
“The jurisdiction of this court under Article 32 is not a panacea for all ills but a remedy for the violation of fundamental rights. The remedies for such perceived grievances as the petitioner has about the dominant presence of materialism must lie elsewhere...,” the judgment said.
Executive’s jurisdictionJustice Chandrachud, on the petition filed by lawyer-petitioner Santosh Singh, observed that matters of the policy were “entrusted to the executive arm of the State”, and the court was concerned with the “preservation of the rule of law”.
“There is a tendency on the part of public interest petitioners to assume that every good thing which society should aspire to achieve can be achieved through the instrument-ality of the court.
“The judicial process provides remedies for constitutional or legal infractions. Public interest litigation allows a relaxation of the strict rules of locus standi . However, the court must necessarily abide the parameters which govern a nuanced exercise of judicial power,” the verdict said.
