NEW DELHI: A nine-judge Supreme Court bench Tuesday rescinded a 46-year-long socialist interpretation of Article 39(b) of Constitution to authoritatively rule that community resources cannot encompass every private property. By a seven-to-two majority judgment, authored by CJI D Y Chandrachud for himself and Justices Hrishikesh Roy, J B Pardiwala, Manoj Misra, Rajesh Bindal, S C Sharma and A G Masih, the apex court said it cannot subscribe to an expansion of the definition of community-owned material resources to bring in its ambit privately owned assets. Justice B V Nagarathna partially agreed with the CJI but Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia penned a dissent, adopting a socialist interpretation of Article 39(b).
Article 39(b) says the State shall "direct its policy towards securing that the ownership and control" of material resources of the community "are so distributed as best to subserve the common good". The CJI said theoretically, material resources of the community may include privately owned resources. But he discarded the expansive socialist interpretation of Article 39(b) by Justice Krishna Iyer in the 1978 judgment to mean material resources of the community subsumed all privately owned resources.
1978 judgment reiterated by a five-judge bench ruling in 1982 The 1978 judgment was reiterated by a five-judge bench ruling in 1982. In his 194-page opinion, the CJI said, "Not every resource owned by an individual can be considered a 'material resource of the community' merely .