Question

Principle: Only Parliament or State Legislatures have the authority to enact laws on their own. No law made by the State can take away a person's fundamental right.

Facts: Parliament enacted a law, which according to a group of lawyers is violating the fundamental rights of traders. A group of lawyers files a writ petition challenging the Constitutional validity of the statute seeking relief to quash the statute and further direct Parliament to enact a new law.

• A. No writ would lie against Parliament, as the court has no authority to direct Parliament to enact or re-enact a law
• B. The court can quash existing law if it violates fundamental rights and can direct Parliament to make a new law
• C. The court can quash the existing law if it violates fundamental rights but cannot direct Parliament to make a new law.
• D. None of these

Hint:

The Principle has two sentences. Test the prayer for quashing against one, and the prayer for a direction to legislate against the other. They do not both survive.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is C

Step 1: Understanding the Question:
The lawyers have asked the court for two separate reliefs. The first is to strike down a statute that allegedly takes away the fundamental rights of traders. The second is a direction to Parliament to pass a fresh law. The answer has to be built only from the two sentences given in the Principle, not from anything else.

Step 2: Key Formula or Approach:
Split the Principle into its two limbs and test each relief against one limb.
Limb one: "Only Parliament or State Legislatures have the authority to enact laws on their own." The words "only" and "on their own" shut every other body, including a court, out of the law making function.
Limb two: "No law made by the State can take away a person's fundamental right." This puts a ceiling on what a validly passed law may contain, so a law that crosses that ceiling has no force.

Step 3: Detailed Explanation:
Take the first relief, quashing the statute. Limb two says a law that takes away a fundamental right cannot stand. A court deciding a writ petition is the body that declares whether a statute crosses that line. Striking such a law down is not the court making a law, it is the court refusing to let an invalid law operate. So this relief sits comfortably inside the Principle.
Now take the second relief, a direction to Parliament to enact a new law. Limb one reserves the enacting power to the legislature alone, and adds that they exercise it "on their own". A judicial direction ordering Parliament what to enact would mean the legislature is no longer acting on its own. So the court cannot grant this relief.
Put the two results together. One relief is available, the other is not.

Step 4: Checking the wrong options:
Option (A) claims no writ lies against Parliament at all. It is right on the second half but wrong on the first, because it would leave a rights violating statute untouched, which limb two does not permit.
Option (B) allows the court to do both things. It ignores the word "only" in limb one and hands the court a power the Principle expressly reserves for the legislature.
Option (D) is ruled out the moment a fully correct option exists.

Step 5: Final Answer:
The court can quash the offending statute but cannot order Parliament to make a new one. That is option (C).