My Years in the Supreme Court continues...

The President referred the Delhi Laws Act to the Supreme court for its advisory opinion. In an earlier case the Federal Court had held such omnibus delegation of the power to legislate illegal. Following an earlier precedent set by the Federal Court, all the eight judges of the Supreme Court gave separate opinions in the case.

I held that with the setting up of a democratic republic in India, such a delegation of the power to legislate for Union territories was unconstitutional. It has been often said that our separate opinions made it rather difficult to discover what advice the Court had given to the President in the matter.

After the police action in Hyderabad in 1948, that State became a part of India. His Exalted Highness, the Nizam of Hyderabad had a Privy Council in the State which used to hear appeals from the decisions of the High Court of Hyderabad. On the Constitution of India coming into force this jurisdiction of the Nizam lapsed and all the cases pending before the Privy Council of the State were transferred to the Supreme Court of India.

Following a representation from the Hyderabad bar, the Ministry of States suggested to the Supreme Court that some Urdu knowing Judges should form a Bench of the Supreme Court in Hyderabad to dispose of these cases as it would be very expensive and troublesome to the litigants and the lawyers engaged in them if all these cases were to be heard in New Delhi.

I was asked by the Chief Justice to take over this work and proceed to Hyderabad as and when it suited me and sit there along with two Judges of the Hyderabad High Court—Chief Justice Nayak and the senior puisne Judge—who had been appointed as ad hoc judges of the Supreme Court for those cases. I told the Chief Justice that in my view, the setting up of this bench with a single judge of the Supreme Court to begin with was unconstitutional

To be continued...