Supreme Court: Dangerous to say pvt property can’t be taken over to subserve common good

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 24

Amid a raging political debate over redistribution of wealth, the Supreme Court today said it would be “dangerous” to say that private wealth of an individual can’t be regarded as ‘material resources of community’ and taken over by the State to subserve “common good”.

Article 39 (b) of the Constitution

At the heart of the debate is Article 39 (b) of the Constitution, which casts an obligation on the state to create policy towards securing “that the ownership and control of the material resources of the community are so distributed as best to subserve the common good”.

“It may be a little extreme to suggest that ‘material resources of the community’ only means public resources and we do not have their origin in the private property of an individual. I will tell you why it would be dangerous to take that view,” said CJI DY Chandrachud, who is heading a nine-judge Constitution Bench, examining if privately-owned resources can be considered “material resources of the community”. “Take simple things like mines and even private forests. For instance, for us to say that the governmental policy will not apply to the private forests under Article 39 (b)... therefore keep the hands off. It will be extremely dangerous as a proposition,” said the Bench, which also referred to Zamindari abolition.

Emanating from a challenge launched by Property Owners Association of Mumbai and others against a Maharashtra law that allows taking over dilapidated private buildings for redevelopment, the present case was filed in 1992 and was referred to a nine-judge Bench by a seven-judge Bench in 2002.

As the petitioners opposed the proposition that private properties can be taken over by the state under the garb of constitutional schemes of Article 39 (b) and Article 31 C of the Constitution, the Bench said it would be decided independently.

As the Bench said it would also examine Article 31 C which granted immunity to laws meant to give effect to provisions of Directive Principles of State Policy, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta opposed it, saying the issue was not referred to the nine-judge Bench. He, however, said if the Bench wanted to go into it, he would assist it.

The CJI said, “The socialist concept of property is the mirror image which attributes to property, a notion of commonality. Nothing is exclusive to the individual. All property is common to the community. That’s the extreme socialist view,” the CJI said.

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