SC dismisses plea seeking direction that President must inaugurate new Parliament building

Advocate C R Jaya Sukin, who filed the PIL, told the bench that no act provides the executive head the power to inaugurate the Parliament. As he cited the President’s role in addressing the joint session of Parliament, the bench asked him to show how that is related to the inauguration.

“You please show us how the address is correlated to inauguration,” Justice Maheswari told the counsel and added, “Nothing to do. It is not a function of the court to look into”.

The counsel said the action to have it inaugurated by the Prime Minister is in “total violation of Article 79” which says that there shall be a Parliament for the Union which shall consist of the President and two Houses to be known respectively as the Council of States and the House of the People.

“President is the head of the Parliament and should open the building because the head of the executive does not have any jurisdiction over Parliament. Executive head is only a member of Parliament,” he submitted.

“We have seen Article 79. We put a question to you: how is it correlating?”, the bench responded. The counsel said there is no provision that gives the head of the executive the power to inaugurate the Parliament and asked how then could the executive decide on its own to have it unveiled by the Prime Minister.

As the bench started to dictate the order, the counsel urged it to let him withdraw the petition if the court was considering dismissing it.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said that he will go to the high court if allowed to withdraw. “Withdrawal would mean he will go to the High Court and pray for the same relief. Instead let Your Lordships finally conclude that these issues are not justiciable”.

The court asked the counsel if he was going to approach the high court and said it will curtail him from doing that.

The petitioner replied that he will not move the high court and requested the court not to dismiss it saying “dismissing the petition would mean giving certificate to the executive. That is not right.” The bench then went on to dismiss the plea.