Article 356 and Judicial Review
Buddhdev Pandya2001, Indian Journal of Public Administration
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Abstract
BEFORE THE sad denouement of partition of the country had unfolded and became afait accompli, the constitution-makers had conceived to frame the Constitution on the strict pattern of federalism. Now it came loom large into the eyes that if the fissiparous tendencies , relently masquerading on the political scene, were not curbed and contained the nefarious trend, set in by the creation of Pakistan, would prove only a thin adage to the wedge and would take it to gargantuan proportions of complete dismemberment of the country. This diabolical and disastrous trend unleashed by forces of heterodoxy, going to the limits of intransigence and alienation and subsisting on the grounds of caste, community, language and region, often coinciding with territorial boundaries, was an imminent threat to the territorial integrity of the country. If this excruciating denouement, which had unhinged the nation from its very moorings with the creation of Pakistan, had to be dissipated, the federal element of the Constitution had to be diluted to the extent necessitated by the exigency of keeping the country-one and united. Dictated by their saviour-faire and ingenuity, the Constitution-makers made a departure from the theory and practice of the federal system lest the fissiparous forces should succeed in cocking a snook at the success of the Constitution. Of all the exceptions, making for the deviations from the ideals of federalism, the most important was the provision contained in Article 356. It envisaged the suspension of state automony and the imposition of President's rule when the constitutional machinery in state was broken down. Since it was a drastic remedy, making both the federal and parliamentary bases of the constitution to yield and brook the dilution of their ethos, it was intended that this extraordinary remedy should be called into operation in rarest of rare occasions when parliamentary remedies had failed to redeem the situation. 1 In a parliamentary system every crisis of whatever dimension and complexity 1 Dr. Ambedkar said, "If at all they are brought into operation, I hope the President, who is endowed with these powers; will take proper precautions before actually suspending the administration of the provinces. I hope the first thing he would do is to issue a warning to the province that had erred , that the things are not happening in the way in which they were intended to happen in the Constitution. If that warning fails, the second thing for him to do wilt be to order an election allowing the people of the provim:e to settle matters by themselves. It is only when these two remedies fail that he would resort to this article. i•(eA. Deb., Vol.ix.pl (7).
