Private Property Can Be Used For Public Welfare If Needed- Supreme Court

The court said that it would be wrong to believe that a person’s private property cannot be considered a community material resource under Article 39B and the government cannot distribute it for the welfare of the common people.

Written by Bharat Express English April 25, 2024

Supreme Court

A hearing was held in Supreme Court today on a 32-year-old petition regarding considering private property as a material resource of the community. During this, the Supreme Court has said that private property can also be used for public interest if needed. The court said that it would be wrong to believe that a person’s private property cannot be considered a community material resource under Article 39B and the government cannot distribute it for the welfare of the common people.

CJI supported Gandhian ideology

During the hearing, the Chief Justice supported Gandhian ideology. The CJI said that the directive principles of the Constitution are influenced by Gandhian ideology. CJI DY Chandrachud mentioned the capitalist, socialist ideology in his remarks. The CJI said that while the capitalist ideology emphasizes on private ownership of property, the socialist ideology even says that no property is private property, all property belongs to the society. The CJI said that the directive principles of our policy follow Gandhian ideology. We neither adopt extreme capitalism nor extreme socialist ideology. We do not go to the extent of the socialist model where there is no private property. We consider property as that which we preserve to hand over to the coming generations. But the wealth that we keep for today’s generation is also preserved with the belief that it will be used in the future for the broader interests of the society.

Consideration of matters related to personal property

A nine-judge Constitution bench headed by the Chief Justice is considering whether one’s private property can be considered ‘community material resource’ under Article 39B of the Constitution and whether it can be used by the government for public interest. Article 39B states that the government will make its policy such that the distribution of community material resources is such that it serves the welfare of the general public.

During the hearing of the case, Attorney General N Venkataramani said that we are talking about this amalgamation of social, economic, political dimensions of a society. For a long time we had a dialogue that civil and political rights would be given priority over social and economic rights, but all this comes under human rights. They are all part of a common human rights effort. So there was an interrelationship between them. So if 39B was to die a natural death, then Marxism died once and for all. This is a different answer. The AG smiled and further said that I don’t think we probably want to answer this. Anyway, there was a dispute on whether Marxism is dead or not, thankfully the CJI got the issue of Gandhiji. There was a large amount of criticism when Gandhiji made a very interesting proposal. There was a lot of potential in this. Because there the Marxists had criticized Gandhiji saying that he was, to borrow a Marxist expression, serving the interests of the capitalist class.

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