Document Fragment View

Matching Fragments

75. The proposition of law which emerges from the judgments referred to above is that, in discharging its interpretative function, the court can even correct obvious drafting errors. In an 5 AIR 1978 SC 548 appropriate case, “the court will add words, or omit words or substitute words”. But “before interpreting a statute in this way the Court must be abundantly sure of three matters: (1) the intended purpose of the statute or provision in question, (2) that by inadvertence the draftsman and Parliament failed to give effect to that purpose in the provision in question; and (3) the substance of the provision Parliament would have made, although not necessarily the precise words Parliament would have used, had the error in the Bill been noticed.”