Judicial Control Over Delegated Legislation

Abstract

The Indian Constitution has established a Welfare State which mandates that the State shall legislate on innumerable activities touching human lives in order to promote the ‘maximum happiness of the maximum number of people’. Consequently the State has to undertake legislation on a variety of subjects. In view of this increasing legislative activity, the legislatures will not find adequate time to legislate on every minute details and limit themselves to ‘policy matters and leaving a large volume of area to executives to frame rules to carry out the purposes of legislation. Thus, the need for delegation became indispensable and it was sought to be justified on grounds of ‘speed’, flexibility and adoptability’. The application of law to changing circumstances was made feasible through the instruments of ‘rules’ framed by the executive. It is not a surprise to find that during the years (1973-77) spanning a period of 4 years Parliament enacted 300 statutes but the rules framed by the executive exceeded 25000. This has been observed by the apex court in the Arvind Singh’s case.