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The power of judicial review to stricke at excess or mala fides is always there for vigilant exercise untrammeled by the narrow precedents of Victorian vintage. Prof. H.W.R. Wade's note of judicial activism, in his recent Hamlyn Lectures, will set the sights right:

Brainwashed though British lawyers are in their professional infancy by the dogma of legislative sovereignty, they ought to excuse rather than criticise the logical contortions and evasions to which Judges must resort in their struggle to preserve their powers. I do not see how they can fairly be accused, to borrow words used by Lord Devlin, of moving too far from their base. They would be much more open to criticism if they remained content with the wretchedly narrow base to which they confined themselves 30 years ago, when they took clauses of the "if the minister is satisfied" type at face value. For judicial control, particularly over discretionary power, is a constitutional fundamental. In their self-defensive campaign the judges have almost given us a constitution, establishing a kind of entrenched provision to the effect that even Parliament cannot deprive them of their proper function. They may be discovering a deeper constitutional logic than the crude absolute of statutory omnipotence. I have no doubt even the crude drafting of s. 23 (4) by the unwanted 'subject to' will not whittle down the power, why the obligation, to distribute vacant land, not according to personal, political or official fancy but strictly geared to the good set down in Art. 39 (b) and (c) The question of basic structure being breached cannot arise when we examine vires of an ordinary legislation as distinguished from a constitutional amendment. Kesavananda Bharati cannot be the last refuge of the proprietariat when being legislation takes away their 'excess' for societal weal. Nor, indeed, can every breach of equality spell disaster as a lethal violation of the basic structure. Peripheral inequality is inevitable when large-scale equalisation processes are but into action. If all the judges of the Supreme Court in solemn session sit and deliberate for half a year to produce a legislation for reducing glaring economic inequality their genius will let them down if the essay is to avoid even peripheral inequalities Every large cause claims some martyr, as sociologists will know. Therefore, what is a betrayal of the basic feature is not a mere violation if Art. 14 but a shocking, unconscienable or unscrupulous travesty of the quintessence of equal justice. If a legislation does go that far it shakes the democratic foundation and must suffer the death penalty. But to permit the Bharati ghost to haunt the corridors of the court brandishing fatal writs for every feature of inequality is judicial paralysation of parliamentary function. Nor can the constitutional fascination for the basic structure doctrine be made a Trojen horse to penetrated he entire legislative camp fighting for a new social order and to overpower the battle for abolition of basic poverty by the 'basic structure' missile. Which is more basic? Eradication of die-hard, deadly and pervasive penury degrading all human rights or upholding of the legal luxury of perfect symmetry and absolute equality attractively presented to preserve the status quo ante? To use the Constitution to defeat the Constitution cannot find favour whit the judiciary I have no doubt that the strategy of using the missile of 'equality' to preserve die-hard, dreadful societal inequality is a stratagem which must be given short shrift by this court. The imperatives of equality and development are impatient for implementation and judicial scapegoats must never be offered so that those responsible for stalling economic transformation with a social justice slant may be identified and exposed of. Part IV is a basic goal of the nation and now that the court upholds the urban ceiling law, a social audit of the Executive's implementation a year or two later will bring to light the gaping gap between verbal valour of the statute book and the executive slumber of law-in-action. The court is not the anti-hero in the tragedy of land reform urban and agrarian.