SANCTION BEHIND DIRECTIVE PRINCIPLES‌

Sir B.N. Rau, the Constitutional Advisor to the Constituent Assembly, recommended that the rights of an individual should be divided into two categories-justiciable and non-justiciable, which was accepted by the Drafting Committee. Consequently, the Fundamental Rights, which are justiciable in nature, are incorporated in Part III and the Directive Principles, which are non- justiciable in nature, are incorporated in Part IV of the Constitution.

Though the Directive Principles are non-justiciable, the Constitution (Article 37) makes it clear that 'these principles are fundamental in the governance of the country and it shall be the duty of the state to apply these principles in making laws’. Thus, they impose a moral obligation on the state authorities for their application, but the real force behind them is political, that is, public opinion. As observed by Alladi Krishna Swamy Ayyar, 'no ministry responsible to the people can afford light-heartedly to ignore the provisions in Part IV of the Constitution’. Similarly, Dr.

B.R. Ambedkar said in the Constituent Assembly that 'a government which rests on popular vote can hardly ignore the Directive Principles while shaping its policy. If any government ignores them, it will certainly have to answer for that before the electorate at the election time’11 .

The framers of the Constitution made the Directive Principles non-justiciable and legally non-enforceable because:

1. The country did not possess sufficient financial resources to implement them.

2. The presence of vast diversity and backwardness in the country would stand in the way of their implementation.

3. The newly born independent Indian State with its many preoccupations might be crushed under the burden unless it was free to decide the order, the time, the place and the mode of fulfilling them.

'The Constitution makers, therefore, taking a pragmatic view, refrained from giving teeth to these principles. They believed more

in an awakened public opinion rather than in court procedures as the ultimate sanction for the fulfilment of these principles’12 .