Article 39(B) Of The Constitution and private Properties

 

Article 39(B) Of The Constitution and private Properties

In Context:

§  Recently, the Supreme Court (SC) of India has begun hearing on legal questions arising from various petitions about whether the government can acquire and redistribute privately owned properties.

§  The question raised before the Court is whether private properties can be considered "material resources of the community" under Article 39 (b) of the Constitution, which is part of the Directive Principles of State Policy (DPSP).

Legal View on Private Property and its Distribution:

Constitutional View:

Articles 19(1)(f) and Article 31: This article guaranteed the property as a fundamental right.

However, the 44th Amendment Act of 1978 removed this right from the list of fundamental rights and placed it under Article 300A as a constitutional right.

Article 300A: This article declares that no person shall be deprived of his property save by

authority of law.

9th Schedule: It lists specific laws that cannot be challenged in courts on the grounds that they

violate fundamental rights, including the (once) Fundamental Right to Property. Laws included

in this Schedule like Land reforms (abolition of zamindari system).

Article 39: It lists certain Directive Principles of State Policy (under Part IV of the Constitution), which are meant to be guiding principles for the enactment of laws, but are not directly enforceable in any court of law. Article 39(b) places an obligation on the state to create policy towards securing “the ownership and control of the material resources of the community are so distributed as best to subserve the common good”. Article 39(c) ensures that wealth and the means of production are not “concentrated” to the “common detriment”.

Article 31C: Article 31C saves the laws giving effect to certain directive principles. As per Article 31C, these particular directive principles (Articles 39(b) and 39(c)) cannot be challenged by invoking the right to equality (Article 14) or the rights under Article 19 (freedom of speech, right to assemble peacefully, etc).In the Kesavananda Bharati case, 1973, the Court upheld the validity of Article 31C but made it subject to judicial review.