Reading the majority opinion in the ‘material resources of the community’ case

IN his last week in office, the former Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dr D.Y. Chandrachud delivered the majority opinion in Property Owners Association versus State of Maharashtra on behalf of seven out of nine judges.

The nine-judge Constitution Bench was deciding two major issues— (i) Whether Article 31C survives in the Constitution in the aftermath of an amendment replacing the reference to Article 39(b) and (c) with the entire Part IV of the Constitution, and the subsequent adjudication of the above amendment as being unconstitutional in Minerva Mills; and, (ii) Whether the interpretation of ‘material resources of the community’ in Article 39(b), as adopted by Justice Krishna Iyer in Ranganath Reddy, and followed in Sanjeev Coke, which includes resources that are owned privately and not by the State within the ambit of the phrase, should be reconsidered?

In a nutshell, the majority held that (i) Article 31C as upheld in Kesavananda Bharati survives; and that (ii) although the phrase ‘material resources of the community’ includes privately owned resources ‘theoretically’, not every resource owned privately can be considered to be a material resource of the community, and that such determination had to be made ad hoc, must be context-specific and subject to a non-exhaustive list of factors.

This article is limited in scope to the second issue and makes a two-pronged argument against the correctness of this judgment. First, it attempts to trace the history of constitutional practice relating to the subject matter, arguing that the Bench ignored the socio-temporal and economic backdrop thereof.

Second, it looks at the method of interpretation adopted and argues that it is a case of judicial overreach in the realms of economic policy, and imposes restrictive transaction costs on what are arguably much-required economic reforms.