In his article "Too big to de-allocate?" (September 29), Abheek Barua has made powerful arguments about the courts not passing judgments on a policy or process. Whether this argument covers the 2G licences or coal mine cases may be a matter of debate, but the general position has to be that if the appropriateness of government policy is subject to judicial review, then we will have a clear case of judicial overreach. The courts should clarify whether the principle of estoppel applies against the government and whether those dealing with the government can presume that the dealing officer has the necessary authority. However, the argument that these two sets of cancellations are "retrospective" in nature is flawed. The Supreme Court order was posited on the interpretation of the 1993 coal mines amendment law and not following a consistent and fair process. Courts, by definition, can consider only past events and can't be restricted to give direction for the future only. The imposition of penalty on the mine owners is indeed curious since it has not been established that all of them had committed any crime.
P Datta Kolkata
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