The Supreme Court has cautioned the judiciary against plunging into policy-making and advised courts to limit their intervention only to government policy decisions found arbitrary and found to offend the basic tenets of the Constitution.
The court said it was not the judiciary’s job to consider whether a public policy was wise or whether the government could have evolved a better policy. These are best left to the discretion of the executive and the legislature.
The observations were part of a judgment delivered by a Bench led by Justice Dipak Misra on Friday setting aside two decisions of the Madras High Court given in 2008 and later in 2010, directing the Census Department to conduct a caste-wise census.
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Caste-wise census was stopped as a policy since 1951, the apex court said. Census only includes Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and not other castes.
Spelling out the rules of judicial review of a government policy, the judgment said, “It is clear as noon that it is not within the domain of the courts to embark upon an enquiry whether a particular public policy is wise and acceptable or whether a better policy could be evolved.”
It said “the court can only interfere if the policy framed is absolutely capricious or not informed by reasons or totally arbitrary and founded ipse dixit offending the basic requirement of Article 14.” “It is not within the domain of the court to legislate. The courts have the jurisdiction to declare the law as unconstitutional. That too, where it is called for,” the Bench, also comprising Justices Rohinton Nariman and U.U. Lalit, observed.
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