Nain Sukh Das And Another vs The State Of Uttar Pradesh And Others

Rewritten Version Notice: This is a rewritten version of the original judgment.

Court: supreme-court

Case Number: Petition No. 69 of 1953

Decision Date: 22 May, 1953

Coram: M. Patanjali Sastri, B.K. Mukherjea, Ghulam Hasan, Natwarlal H. Bhagwati

In the matter titled Nain Sukh Das and Another versus the State of Uttar Pradesh and Others, the Supreme Court of India delivered its judgment on 22 May 1953. The bench that heard the case consisted of Chief Justice M. Patanjali Sastri, Justice B. K. Mukherjea, Justice Ghulam Hasan, and Justice Natwarlal H. Bhagwati. The decision was reported in the 1953 AIR 384 and 1953 SCR 1184 reporters. The petitioners, who were residents of a municipal area, filed a petition under article 32 of the Constitution asserting that they had been denied the right to vote and to stand as candidates in several by-elections to the Municipal Board. They contended that those by-elections had been conducted on communal lines, employing separate electorates, which they argued violated the constitutional provisions. Accordingly, they sought writs under article 32 to prevent the elected candidates from taking their seats on the Board and to restrain the District Magistrate and Civil Judge from convening any Board meetings.

The Court held that a statutory provision authorising elections on the basis of separate religious electorates contravenes article 15(1) of the Constitution, and any election conducted after the Constitution’s commencement in accordance with such a provision would be void under article 4. However, the Court observed that the petitioners’ claim, grounded in their status as rate-payers demanding that the Board be properly constituted, fell outside the scope of article 32 because it did not constitute a fundamental right within Part III of the Constitution. The Court further noted that the alleged infringement of the petitioners’ rights under articles 15(1) and 14 related to a discrimination that pertained to rights the petitioners had never actually exercised or attempted to assert, despite having a reasonable opportunity to do so. Consequently, the petitioners were not entitled to any relief under article 32. The original jurisdiction for the matter was Petition No. 69 of 1953, filed for enforcement of fundamental rights. Counsel for the appellant included S. C. Isaacs with Mr. Jai Prasad Agarwal, while the respondents were represented by K. B. Asthana and S. P. Sinha with Mr. R. Patnaik. The judgment was delivered by Chief Justice Patanjali Sastri, addressing the application for protection of the petitioners’ fundamental rights under article 32.

The petitioners, who were three inhabitants of Etah in Uttar Pradesh, filed an application under article 15 (1) claiming that their fundamental right to equality had been infringed by the respondents. They alleged that the by-elections to the Municipal Board of Etah, conducted on 2 November 1951, 8 December 1951 and 17 March 1952, resulted in the election of respondents 4, 11 and 12 respectively, and that the petitioners had been denied the right to cast their votes and the right to stand as candidates because those elections were organized on communal lines by means of separate electorates, a procedure they said contravened constitutional provisions. In addition, the petitioners contended that the government’s nomination of respondent 3 as a member of the Board was unlawful, arguing that the community interest that respondent 3 was intended to represent was already adequately represented on the Board. Consequently, the petitioners prayed that the Court issue writs of quo warranto, mandamus and any other appropriate writs or directions to respondents 3, 4, 11 and 12, requiring each of them to disclose the authority under which they were acting as Board members and to restrain them from functioning in that capacity. They further sought writs directed at the District Magistrate of Etah (respondent 2) and the Civil Judge of Etah (respondent 13), ordering these officials not to convene or permit any meeting of a Board alleged to be illegally constituted.

The Court observed that there could be no serious dispute that any statute permitting elections on the basis of separate electorates for members of distinct religious communities violated article 15 (1) of the Constitution, which states: “15 (1) The State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them.” This constitutional command forbidding the State to discriminate on the ground of religion extended not only to civil rights but also to political rights; therefore, any election held after the Constitution came into force and conducted in accordance with a law that mandated separate communal electorates, even if such a law were subject to clause (4), would be void as contrary to the Constitution. The Court then turned to the question of whether the petitioners were entitled to the relief they sought under article 32. While noting, as the Cross-Roads case had held, that article 32 sometimes afforded a more effective remedy than article 226 of the High Courts, the Court emphasized that article 32’s jurisdiction was narrowly confined to the enforcement of fundamental rights guaranteed by Part III of the Constitution. Rights that the petitioners might have as municipal rate-payers to compel a legally constituted Board, or to prevent individuals who were not properly elected or nominated—namely respondents 3, 4, 11 and 12—from participating in Board proceedings, were not fundamental rights under Part III and thus lay outside the scope of article 32, even if such rights existed in other legal contexts.

The Court noted that the petitioners’ counsel argued that the fundamental right guaranteed by article 15(1) of the Constitution to the petitioners as Indian citizens had been violated because the elections in dispute were conducted on a basis that discriminated against the petitioners on the ground of religion. According to that argument, the election process barred the petitioners both from exercising their franchise with respect to all candidates and from contesting the elections, irrespective of the communal reservation of seats. The counsel further submitted that the delimitation of constituencies along communal lines denied the petitioners equality in their political rights and, in that respect, also infringed the petitioners’ fundamental right under article 14, as noted in the decision reported in [1950] S.C.R. 594. The Court expressed that it could not agree with these submissions. It observed that the protection afforded by article 15(1) is directed at each citizen individually and serves as a guarantee that a citizen will not be subjected to discrimination with respect to the rights, privileges and immunities that belong to a citizen generally. The Court pointed out that the petitioners had not claimed that any present discrimination or threat of discrimination was being applied to them. Their grievance, as the Court understood it, was that the system of separate electorates created on communal lines involved a form of discrimination with respect to seats that were not reserved for the petitioners’ own communities, thereby preventing them from voting for those seats or standing as candidates for them. The Court observed that there was no indication that the petitioners had ever attempted to assert those rights by initiating appropriate proceedings seeking the removal of the bar and demanding that the election be conducted in conformity with the Constitution. In fact, the petitioners had acquiesced in the conduct of the elections under the old system of separate electorates and had not felt that any discrimination had been perpetrated against them until a recent no-confidence motion was moved against the former Chairman, a motion that succeeded and caused the Chairman to lose his seat. Consequently, the Court concluded that the alleged infringement of the petitioners’ fundamental rights under article 15(1) and article 14 involved discrimination that the petitioners now complained of, but that discrimination related to rights which the petitioners never actually sought to exercise and for which they took no steps to assert while the opportunity still existed, and that the chance to exercise those rights had now been lost. The Court further considered the argument presented by counsel Isaacs, which contended that, because the elections of respondents 4, 11 and 12 were void, those respondents were no better than usurpers and that the petitioners were entitled to prevent them from acting as members of the Municipal Board. The Court observed that, as previously remarked, the petitioners might be able to obtain such relief in their capacity as rate-payers of the municipality through properly framed proceedings, but that such a claim would not involve the enforcement of a fundamental right under article 15(1) or article 14. Moreover, the Court found even less basis for seeking relief on that ground against respondent 3, who was only a nominated member. In sum, the Court held that the petitioners had misunderstood the appropriate remedy and had incorrectly invoked article 32 in their application.

In the concluding part of the proceedings, the Court held that the petition could not be sustained and therefore had to fail. Accordingly, the Court ordered that the petition be dismissed and that the costs of the litigation be awarded to the respondents, specifying that the costs be awarded in a single set. This order expressly recorded the dismissal of the petition and indicated that no further relief would be granted to the petitioners. The Court noted that the petitioners were represented by counsel identified as K. L. Mehta. The first respondent, designated as respondent No. I, was represented by counsel C. P. Lal. The fourth respondent, designated as respondent No. 4, was represented by counsel S. P. Varma. By naming these agents, the judgment identified the legal representatives who appeared for each party at the final stage of the case. The award of costs in a single set means that the petitioners were required to bear the expense of the entire litigation and that the respondents would receive one consolidated calculation of those costs. The dismissal with costs thus concluded the matter, leaving the petitioners without any successful claim and obliging them to satisfy the respondents’ costs as directed by the Court.