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Jawaharlal Nehru opposed idea of SC being final arbiter of compensation: A Ranganathan

There is no review of reasonableness of amount of compensation. Result can be just compensation or confiscation, dependent on Parliament’s mood, wrote A Ranganathan in 1962.

Essentially the Indian Constitution,” observed Sir Iver Jennings “is an individualist document. Its prophets are Burke, Mill and Dicey; yet some at least of the members of the Constituent Assembly thought in collectivist terms. The result is a curious dichotomy. On the one hand the individualism of the nineteenth century has sought to limit the powers of the government in the interest of liberty; on the other hand the collectivist trend of the century has sought to expand the powers of government in order that the state may regulate economic life and incidentally restrict liberty.” 

And since Indian Independence, there has been a gradual but sustained effort to increase the powers of the executive at the expense of the courts. Indeed, Pandit Nehru had opposed the idea of the Supreme Court being the final arbiter of compensation on the plea that the Supreme Court ought not to make itself a “third House of Parliament”.

It is well known that the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments to the American Constitution constitute a source of reserved power for the judiciary to act as a restraining influence on legislative and executive bodies when they tend to limit the freedom of the individual. While there is no Due Process Clause as such in the Indian Constitution, the Indian judiciary became empowered to regulate property rights in India.

The ‘Right to Property’ was originally guaranteed by Article 31 of the Indian........

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