Law plays an important role in today’s society. People have elected and given powers to the government in return the government gave them protection against the wrong. The government has various bodies and to keep check and balance on the power of each body of government we have further adopted Judicial Review. Judicial review is the process by which the court declares any law which goes against the constitution as void. We have adopted this feature from the United States Constitution. But it took a lot of time and efforts to fix this feature in our constitution. Judicial Review can be of Constitutional Amendments, Legislative actions and Laws made by the legislature.
In India, there are three organs of government which are, Legislature, Executive and Judiciary. The Legislature performs the function of making the laws, the Executive enforce the laws made by the Legislature and the Judiciary keeps a check on both the organs and makes sure the laws being made and implemented are not ultra vires to the Constitution of India. To make these organs work in their prescribed limits our constitution has the feature of Separation of Power. Article 50 of the Indian Constitution talks about the separation of power. The Judiciary has the power to set aside any law passed by the parliament if it is against the Constitution of India. Any law passed by the legislature that contravenes the Constitution can be made null and void by the Judiciary. Under Article 13(2) of the Constitution of India, any law made by the parliament that abridges the right conferred to the people under Part 3 of the constitution is void-ab-initio. Judiciary can be termed as the protector of the Constitution of India. Laws made by centre and state both are the subject to the judicial review. All the laws, order, by laws, ordinance and constitutional amendments and all other notifications are subject to judicial review which are included in Article 13(3) of the constitution of India. The concept of judicial review needs to be attracted and applied. The Supreme court cannot itself apply for judicial review. It can be used only when a question of law or rule is challenged before the Hon’ble court.
Here in India we have adopted the concept of Separation of power so we cannot assume the power of judicial review in full extended form. If the courts presume full and arbitrary power of judicial review it will lead to the poor performance of work by all the organs of government. So to keep all the functions work properly each has to work in its provided sphere. In India, we have the concept of judicial review embedded in the basic structure of the constitution. It helps the courts to keep a check and balance upon the other two organs of government so that they don’t misuse their power and work in accordance with the constitution. Finally, we have developed the concept of judicial review and it has become the part of basic structure in case of Minerva Mills V. Union of India. So, at last, it is correct to say that judicial review has grown to safeguard the individual right, to stop the use of arbitrary power and to prevent the miscarriage of justice.
BY- ARVIND PANDA
