On Thursday, the Supreme Court reserved in its judgment in appeals filed by the Union of India, the Gujarat High Court’s decision affecting certain provisions of the 97th Constitutional Amendment relating to cooperatives.
The Gujarat High Court had left the amendment to Article 368(2) of the Constitution to be ratified by the state legislatures.
A three-judge Bench of Justice RF Nariman, Justice KM Joseph, and Justice BR Gavai, after hearing extensive arguments by Advocates General KK Venugopal, Ed Masoom Shah and Senior AdvJain, and Advocates, reserved the order.
After a day’s hearing, the Bench today heard the arguments by the Respondent, Intervention and Attorney General.
Shah said it was only up to him to show that if the procedure under 368 is not followed, it would not be an amendment and the Constitution would not be amended.
Shah further said that the multi-state cooperative society aspect was not widely argued before the High Court, but the challenge was a broad one.
“Only two provisions of Part 9B in my submission would show that a substantial change has been made to entry 32 of List II and Article 246(3).”
“The convenience of making a constitutional amendment on the basis of questionable, rather than common law, is more appealing to the authority of common law. Therefore, my submission is merely to declare that this Part IXB is unnecessary.
Therefore, the adoption of amendments to parliamentary laws in cases that affect existing parliamentary legislation is not within the scope of the provision because it is a meaningless exercise.” Said the Attorney General
Whether this amendment has changed anything in subsection A to E of Article 368 (2) has already been abolished by Ritika Sinha, an IIM professor advocate who is attending Intervenor.
Lawcutor 