VARKEY MARUTHANAMKUZHI Vs. STATE OF KERALA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner is stated to be the former President of the Chunkathara Panchayat and Chairman of the Chunkathara Panchayat Vikasana Samithi. He is also stated to be the Vice-Chairman of the Bharanaparishkara Vedi, a voluntary organisation concerned among other things about the weeding out of corruption from various places of social life. The petitioner, who claims to be a socio-political activist, filed this writ petition to challenge certain provisions of the Kerala Public Men (Prevention of Corruption) Act, 1983 (Act 6 of 1984), (the Act).

(2.) It was submitted by Dr. Vincent Panikulangara, the learned counsel for the petitioner, that the petitioner had already filed a complaint before the Commission constituted under the Act against the 3rd respondent; that it had come up before the Commission on 31-7-1984 for preliminary investigation under S.10 of the Act; and that it now stood adjourned to a subsequent date. One of the grievances of the petitioner is that he is considerably handicapped in collecting evidence against the 3rd respondent, with respect to the allegations made by him in his complaint to the Commission, inasmuch as sub-ss.(4) and (5) of S.8 of the Act contain constraints with respect to the publication of the contents of the complaint. For the sake of convenience, we would extract sub-ss.(4) and (5) of the Act:

(3.) Dr. Panikulangara also submitted that the provisions contained in sub-secs.(4) and (5) of S.8 of the Act are inconsistent with what is seen stated in the preamble of the Act. It is a well-known proposition that preamble normally does not control the provisions of an enactment, and as such this argument does not merit any detailed discussion.