The power granted to the Supreme Court by the Constitution for interpretatng law is a “small slit” and cannot be a floodgate, Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar said on Sunday.
Dhankhar made the remarks at Constitution Day celebrations held by the Union law ministry in Delhi.
“Parliament alone is the architect of the Constitution,” Dhankhar said. “To put it in layman’s language: Parliament can’t script a judgement on the Supreme Court and similarly, the Supreme Court can’t script law for us, that’s our domain.”
He added that democracy grows when the executives, the judiciary and the legislature work in harmony, tandem and togetherness.
“There is a well defined constitutional domain for the executive, the judiciary and the legislature,” he said. “It is a constitutional mandate that all these organs of the state function in their respective domain. The arrogation of authority of one organ by the other was beyond the contemplation of framers of the constitution.”
The comments come as the Centre and the Supreme Court remain entangled in the disagreement about the collegium system of the appointments of judges. Under the collegium system, five senior-most judges of the Supreme Court, including the chief justice, decide on the appointments and transfers of judges to the top court and the High Courts.
The Bharatiya Janata Party government in the Centre in 2015 had tried to replace the system by introducing the National Judicial Appointments Commission Act.
Under the proposed law, judicial appointments could have been made through a body comprising the chief justice, two senior Supreme Court judges, the law minister and two other eminent persons nominated by the chief justice, the prime minister and the leader of the Opposition.
However, the Supreme Court had struck down the law.
On Sunday, Dhankhar said that the supremacy of Parliament as the sole architect of the Constitution is unquestionable. He said that legislature is not amenable to intervention either from the executive or the judiciary.
“The sovereignty of Parliament is synonymous with sovereignty of the nation and the same is impregnable,” he said “The executive survives only if it has strength in Parliament. I don’t want to be a loudmouth; but the other institution also survives only when it is sanctified by Parliament. Therefore, such a body, the foundation of which is the mandate of the people, cannot allow any incursion in its domain.”
He said that such an incursion will disturb the governance in a democracy.
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