Balancing Individual Rights with Social Welfare: An Analysis of Judicial Interpretations

Balancing Individual Rights with Social Welfare: An Analysis of Judicial Interpretations in India 1 Maisnam Loyalakpa Meitei The relationship between Part III and Part IV of the Constitution of India implicates a captivating legal and philosophical gap. These two Parts under the Constitution often seemingly represent odds when the questions and issue of individual rights and social welfare mandates by Part III & Part IV of the Constitution in motion. This poses serious imbalance and far causing complicacies in between the two Parts of the Constitution. This paper seeks to exhibit the role of the judiciary, and how the judiciary harmonized the imbalanced mandates of the Constitution giving way out ultimately the governance of the country then and now. The complexities of the judicial pronouncement though is insanely complex than any reader thought of, yet this paper tries to lay only the few brief crux. Post-independent India, but in the first decade, legal positivism often led to guide judicial pronouncements. This often led to giving effect to social legislation than fundamental rights of the individual. The mandate of Part IV of the Constitution gain considerable recognition than individual fundamental rights. Prominent case like Re. Shankari Prasad case is an exemplary landmark judicial pronouncement. Denying the fact that only until the coming of Re. I.C. Golaknath case and the culmination of Re. Kesavananda case finally led to surpass all the earlier judgments. These later cases’ pronouncement of the Apex court gives unshakable prominence of the fundamental rights of the individual. This paradigm change balances the conundrum between Part III and Part IV of the Constitution by propounding the Basic Feature theory in the Constitution. This harmonization through judicial interpretations of the Supreme Court of India in between the Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles of State Policy became fundamental to policy making and ultimately in governance. With this analysis, the paper tries to illustrate the role of the judiciary, her impeachable virtue to check and balance; the brave dexterity of the judiciary and judicial interpretation, and her triumph of giving justice to fundamental rights of every individual and social welfare at large. Keywords: fundamental rights, judiciary, judicial interpretation, Part IV, etc. 1 PhD Research Scholar, Department of Law, Manipur International University, Imphal 795140, Manipur, India MIU Registration No. MIU/PhD/2023/S1009 Email: [email protected] (M) +91 9436815735