Judgment

KRISHNA IYER, J. - The distance between societal realities and constitutional dilettantism often makes for the dilemma of statutory validity and arguments addressed in the present batch of certificated appeals and writ petitions evidence this forensic quandary. Likewise, the proximity between rural-cum-slum economics and social relief legislation makes for veering away from verbal obsessions in legal construction. A constitution is the documentation of the founding faiths of a nation and the fundamental directions for their fulfilment. So much so, an organic, not pedantic, approach to interpretation, must guide the judicial process. The healing art of harmonious construction, not the tempting game of hair-splitting, promotes the rhythm of the rule of law. These prologuic observations made, we proceed to deal with the common subject-matter of the appeals and the writ petitions.

2. A bunch of counsel, led by Shri Nariman and seconded by Shri B. Sen, have lashed out against the vires of the Maharashtra Debt Relief Act, 1976 (for short, the Debt Act). The former has focused on the fatal flaw in the Act based on Article 301 of the Constitution and the latter has concentrated his fire on the incompetency of the State Legislature to enact the Debt Act. A plurality of submissions by a procession of lawyers has followed, although the principal points have been comprehensively covered by Shri Nariman and Shri B. Sen. To encore is not to augment, and yet, some counsel, who had not much to supplement, claimed the right to be heard and exercised it ad libitum, essaying what had already been forcefully urged and forgetting that a fine, fresh presentation of a case is apt to be staled by a second version of it and pejorated by a third repetition. While in constitutional issues of great moment this Court is reluctant to ration oral submissions it is important, by comity of the Bench and the Bar, to conserve judicial time in the name of public justice so that internal allocation, avoiding overlapping may be organised among many counsel who may appear in several appeals, substantially dealing with the same points. A happy husbandry of advocacy is helpful for judge and lawyer alike and to streamline forensic business is the joint responsibility of both the limbs of the institution of justice.

3. Back to the beginning. Article 301 of the Constitution mandates:

"301. Freedom of trade, commerce and intercourse.-

Subject to the other provisions of this Part, trade, commerce and intercourse throughout the territory of India shall be free.

We may also read the cognate provision viz., Art. 304 (b):

304 (b). Restrictions on trade, commerce and intercourse among States.-

Notwithstanding anything in Article 301 or Article 303, the Legislature of a State may by law-

x x x x

(b) impose such reasonable restrictions on the freedom of trade, commerce or intercourse with or within that State as may be required in the public interest:

Provided that no Bill or amendment for the purposes of Cl. (b) shall be introduced or moved in the Legislature of a State without the previous sanction of the President.

4. The unmincing submission of Shri Nariman is that money-lending is very much a trade, that the Debt Act deals drastically with money-lenders in defiance of Art. 301, and, since the manacles on money-lenders and money-lending are unreasonably harsh and callously indiscriminate, the freedom which belongs constitutionally to professional money-lenders is breached by the statutory liquidation of their loans. Nor can the invalidatory consequence of this violation be obviated by Art. 304 (b). This latter provision salvages statutes which contravene freedom of trade, commerce and intercourse only if they possess the virtues of reasonableness and public interest. The injustice of wiping out the debts of marginal farmers, rural artisans, rural labourers and workers as provided in the scheme of the Act was anathematised by Shri Nariman as an unwarrantedly unreasonable annihil