INDRA SAWHNEY Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) 'Equality of status and of opportunity.' the rubric chiselled in the luminous preamble of our vibrating and pulsating Constitution radiates one of the avowed objectives in our Sovereign, Socialist and Secular Democratic Republic. In every free country which has adopted a system of governance through democratic principles, the people have their fundamental inalienable rights and enjoy the recognition of inherent dignity and of equality analogous to the rights proclaimed in the 'Bill of Rights' in U.S.A., the 'Rights of Man' in the French Constitution of 1971 and 'Declaration of Human Rights' etc. Our Constitution is unquestionably unique in its character and assimilation having its notable aspirations contained in 'Fundamental Rights' (in part III) through which the illumination of Constitutional rights comes to us not through an artless window glass but refracted with the enhanced intensity and beauty by prismatic interpretation of the Constitutional provisions dealing with equal distribution of justice in the social, political and economic spheres.

(2.) Though forty-five years from the commencement of the Indian independence after the end of British paramount and forty-two years from the advent of our Constitution have marched on, the tormenting enigma that often nags the people of India is whether the principle of 'equality of status and of opportunity' to be equally provided to all the citizens of our country from cradle to grave is satisfactorily consummated and whether the clarion of 'equality of opportunity in matters of public employment' enshrined in Article 16(4) of the Constitution of India has been called into action With a broken heart one has to answer these questions in the negative.

(3.) The founding fathers of our Constitution have designedly couched Articles 14, 15 and 16 in comprehensive phraseology so that the frail and emaciated section of the people living in poverty, rearing in obscurity, possessing no wealth or influence, having no education, much less higher education and suffering from social repression and oppression should not be denied of equality before the law and equal protection of the laws and equal opportunity in the matters of public employment or subjected to any prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth.