Do resources of individuals belong to community, asks SC
A nine-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court on Thursday asked the Union government whether all material resources created by individual human labour constitute the resources of the community.
The Bench is hearing a reference on the contours of Article 39(b) of the Constitution, including whether privately-owned resources could be considered as “material resources of the community”. The Article provided that the state should direct policy in such a way that the ownership and control of material resources of the community were distributed to best subserve the common good.
Attorney General (AG)
R. Venkataramani, appearing for the Union of India, submitted that “all things in the material world which are available and made available by human interaction or engagement constitute the material resources of the community”.
“Once resources are in the hands of the state, no further questions about ownership and control issues will make sense,” the AG said.
This prompted Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud, heading the Constitution
Bench, to ask the AG if he was suggesting that “everything created by the application of private labour was the material resource of the community”.
“So I build a house using my own income, is it the material resource of the community? I own a car, is it the material resource of the community? Is there no concept of private property,” Chief Justice Chandrachud queried.
Mr. Venkataramani responded that “if it goes beyond the boundary of private consumption, there is an element of the community having a call on the resource”.
Justice Hrishikesh Roy, on the Bench, reacted by observing that it was dicult to imagine that whatever human resource produced was the resource of the community.