Name: Promila
Country: India

Year: 2017
Volume: Volume-2, Issue-2 (July-December)
Page Number: 1-7

It is necessary here, to evaluate the role of judiciary in respect of Article 44 of the Constitution, although like all other constitutional directives, the mandate of Article 44 too, is not enforceable in a Court of Law. And it is also necessary to mention that judiciary is not specifically included in the definition of “State” as applicable to Directive Principles enshrined in Part IV of the Constitution. Therefore, judiciary cannot be expected to have taken any direct step to ensure the implementation of the mandate. Nevertheless, the role of judiciary is much more appreciable than that of executive process, in one way or the other, towards achieving this Constitutional goal, either by upholding the validity of the unifying or partly unifying social legislation when challenged on the ground of unconstitutional discrimination or by upholding those legal provisions which if liberally interpreted would furnish uniform family law in fragments, applicable to all citizens. Thus in Shahulameedu v. Zubaida Beevi while interpreting the rule relating to wife’s maintenance contained in Section 488(3) of the (old) Criminal Procedure Code, the High Court of Kerala did not deny its benefit to the wife of a bigamous Muslim staying away from him after his second marriage. Here in this case, specifically referring to the mandate of Article 44, Justice Krishna Iyer said: “The Indian Constitution directs that the State should endeavor to have a Uniform Civil Code applicable to the entire Indian community, and indeed when motivated by a high public policy, Section 488 has made such a law. It would be improper for an Indian court to exclude any section of the community born and bred up on Indian earth from the benefits of that law…