On Wednesday Supreme Court said it will not adhere to Justice V R Krishna Iyer’s 1977 Marxian interpretation of Article 39(b) of the Constitution that a community’s material sources will include private properties for reallocation to subvert the common good.
A nine-judge bench of CJI D Y Chandrachud and Justices Hrishikesh Roy, B V Nagarathna, S Dhulia, J B Pardiwala, Manoj Misra, R Bindal, S C Sharma and A G Masih said there must be a distinction between community resources, held in trust by the present generation for future generations.
The CJI said, ‘We don’t have to go as far as the Marxist socialist interpretation by Justice Krishna Iyer (of Article 39(b) in Ranganatha Reddy case of 1977), But community resources will surely include resources which the present generation holds in trust based on inter-generational equity’.
He added there were two extreme views on this: ‘The Marxist socialist view is everything belongs to the state and the community. The capitalist view puts importance on individual rights. And there is the Gandhian view of holding resources in trust for protecting inter-generational equity’.
The CJI indicated community property would include natural resources, exploitation of which is governed by the SC-defined sustainable norms, as these are held in trust by the present community for future generations.
CJI D Y Chandrachud says, ‘We cannot say Article 39(b) has no application to privately held properties like water, forests and mines. But it should not be taken to the level of taking someone’s personal property for distribution’.
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