Courts can’t go into the loopholes of economic laws: SC

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has said law relating to business, commerce and trade cannot be quashed even if there are “crudities and inequities” in them.

“Every legislation, particularly in economic matters, is essentially empiric and it is based on experimentation or what one may call trial and error. Therefore, it cannot provide for all possible situations or anticipate all possible abuses,” observed a Bench of Justices Arijit Pasayat and L S Panta.

“There may be crudities and inequities in complicated experimental economic legislation, but on that account alone it cannot be struck down as invalid,” they said while upholding a Central Excise and Gold Control Appellate Tribunal order, saying the authorities had rightly denied small-scale exemption to Reiz Electrocontrols Pvt. Ltd.

Relying on a judgement of the US Supreme Court in 1950, Judges said courts couldn’t be converted into tribunals for relief from such crudities.

“There may even be possibilities of abuse, but that too cannot of itself be a ground for invalidating the legislation, because it is not possible for any legislature to anticipate as if by some divine prescience, distortions of its legislation,” the apex court said.