Court’s observations on homeless and slum dwellers

In his 32-page judgement, Justice Hari Shankar said that when the poor and deprived knock at the doors of the Court, it is required to be sensitive, sensitised and alive to the fact that these litigants do not have access to exhaustive legal resources.

“As one of the three coequal wings of the government, albeit functioning independent of, and uninfluenced by, the other two, the judiciary is required to remain as sensitive to the call of Articles 38 and 39 as the legislature, or the executive. Law, with all its legalese, is worth tinsel, if the underprivileged cannot get justice,” the judgment said.

At the end of the day, our preambular goal is not law, but justice, he underscored.

“At the end of the day, our preambular goal is not law, but justice. Law is but the instrument, the via media, as it were, to attain the ultimate goal of justice, and law which cannot aspire to justice is, therefore, not worth administering.”

Justice Hari Shankar further said that the homeless, who live on pavements and inaccessible nooks and crannies of the city, do not live but merely exist.

Life, as envisaged under Article 21 of the Constitution is unknown to them, he lamented.

“Even a bare attempt at imagining how they live is, for us, peering out from our gilt-edged cocoons, cathartic. And so we prefer not to do so; as a result, these denizens of the dark continue to eke out their existence, not day by day, but often hour by hour, if not minute by minute,” he stated.

The court said that alleviation of the plight of the poor and homeless is subsumed in each of these directive principles which, though they are not enforceable by Court, are nonetheless fundamental in the governance of the country, and mandatorily required to be borne in mind by the State while making laws.

“Every statutory instrument, be it plenary or subordinate, is required to be so interpreted as to render it constitutional, rather than unconstitutional. Juxtaposed, these principles require all statutes, and instruments of state policy, to be interpreted in a manner which would harmonize with the directive principles of state policy, contained in Chapter IIIA of the Constitution of India,” the Court opined.

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