Judgment

KRISHNA IYER, J, (on behalf of himself and O. Chinnappa, Reddy, J.) :- The challenges in these writ petitions compel us to remind ourselves that under our constitutional system courts are havens of refuge for the toiler, not the exploiter, for the weaker claimant of social justice, not the stronger pretender who seeks to sustain the status quo ante by judicial writ in the name of fundamental right. No higher duty or more solemn responsibility rests upon this court than to uphold every State measure that translates into living law the preambular promise of social justice reiterated in Article 38 of the Constitution. We might have been called upon to examine from this angle of constitutionalised humanism, the vires of the Punjab Cycle Rickshaws (Regulation of Rickshaws) Act, 1976 (Punjab Act 41 of 1975) (the Act for short), designed to deliver the tragic tribe of rickshaw pullers, whose lot in sweat, toil, blood and tears from the exploitative clutches of cycle rickshaw owners by a statutory ban on non-owner rickshaw drivers. But negative bans, without supportive schemes, can be a remedy aggravating the malady. For the hungry human animal, euphemistically called rickshaw pull