Art 39(b) was left vague to help make appropriate future laws: SG

NEW DELHI: Solicitor General Tushar Mehta on Tuesday extensively quoted B R Ambedkar while trying to find an answer to the 50-year-old question — whether material resources of the community included private property?

Arguing for acceptance of Ambedkar’s views before a bench of CJI D Y Chandrachud and Justices Hrishikesh Roy, B V Nagarathna, S Dhulia, J B Pardiwala, Manoj Misra, R Bindal, S C Sharma and A G Masih, the SG said the main architect of the Constitution was aware of the intricacies that future govts and Parliament would face in providing social, economic and political justice to citizens and, hence, left the wording of Article 39(b) deliberately vague to allow them to devise appropriate legislations.

Mehta quoted extensively from the Nov 1948 Constituent Assembly debate on finalisation of the draft of Article 39(b) in the Directive Principles of State Policy.

Ambedkar was faced with the question of how to bring about economic democracy. He answered it by saying, “There are various ways in which people believe that economic democracy can be brought about; there are those who believe in individualism as the best form of economic democracy, there are those who believe in having a socialist state as the best form of economic democracy, there are those who believe in the communistic idea as the most perfect form of economic democracy.

“Having regard to the fact that there are various ways by which economic democracy may be brought about... we have left enough room for people of different ways of thinking... to strive in their own way, to persuade the electorate that it is the best way of reaching economic democracy...”

“India is a social democracy that aligns closely with the principles of a social welfare state. Social and economic justice is not to be understood in crude terms of ‘distributive justice’ aimed at wholesale allocation of material resources of the community to the public at large in one go,” he said.

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