Rules made to exercise powers of State Legislature constitute “law” under Article 13: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court recently reiterated that rules made to exercise the powers and privileges of State legislatures constitute "law" within the meaning of Article 13 of the Constitution [Ashish Shelar v. Maharashtra Legislative Assembly]..- Supreme Court reiterated that rules made to exercise the powers and privileges of State Legislature constitute law within the meaning of Article 13;- State argued that the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly Rules were not binding on the house and were akin to society bye laws;- This submission was found to be without force and was thus rejected by the Supreme Court;- Concluded that Rules framed by Legislative Assembly under Article 208 are “procedure established by law” for the purpose of Article 21 of the Constitution..This observation came as a part of the ruling by a Bench of Justices AM Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari and CT Ravikumar setting aside the one-year suspension of 12 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLAs from the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly for allegedly abusing and manhandling Speaker Bhaskar Jadhav..The Bench noted that in a Special Reference it was held that when State Legislatures purport to exercise such power, the enactment of such a law would have to be treated as a law within the meaning of Article 13, as the State would be acting under Article 246 of the Constitution..This came in response to the State’s argument that it was open to the Legislature to deviate from the Rules framed by the House under Article 208 of the Constitution. It was submitted that such rules were only akin to bye-laws of society that were not enforceable and cannot be regarded as statutory rules..However, the apex court found this argument to be of “no avail.” It was emphasised that although the Court had previously held that parliamentary law was of a higher quality and efficacy than the Rules under Article 118, this did not whittle down the legal exposition that the Rules framed by the Legislative Assembly under Article 208 of the Constitution are “procedure established by law” for the purpose of Article 21 of the Constitution."It is, however, enough for the present to observe that the rules framed under Article 208 acquire the status of procedure established by law for the purpose of Article 21 of the Constitution as noticed in M.S.M. Sharma. This observation has been quoted with approval by another Constitution Bench again in Raja Ram Pal , inter alia, in paragraphs 53, 167, 338, 416 and 417,” the Court said..[Read Judgment]