Article 226

In one line

The High Court's writ power covers more kinds of wrong than the Supreme Court's does, and covers less of the map: any legal wrong, but only within the territory that High Court serves.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: article 226 empowers every High Court to issue directions, orders or writs, including the five named writs, to any person or authority including any Government, "for the enforcement of any of the rights conferred by Part III and for any other purpose". It is therefore wider than article 32 in subject matter, not being confined to fundamental rights, and narrower in territory, running only throughout the territories in relation to which that High Court exercises jurisdiction, extended by clause (2) to any High Court within whose territories the cause of action wholly or in part arises. The remedy is discretionary, and an adequate alternative remedy is the commonest ground on which it is declined. Article 227 gives the High Court superintendence over all courts and tribunals in its territories. Both powers, with article 32, are part of the basic structure and cannot be excluded, as L. Chandra Kumar v. Union of India held.

Why the law has this at all

If article 32 were the only writ jurisdiction, two things would follow. Every person wronged by the State would have to come to Delhi, which for most of the country is a remedy on paper. And a great many public wrongs would have no writ remedy at all, because they are not breaches of fundamental rights: an authority acting outside its statute, a tribunal exceeding its jurisdiction, an appointment made in defiance of a statutory qualification. Article 226 exists so that there is a court close enough to reach and wide enough to hear them.

The provision

Article 226(1): "Notwithstanding anything in article 32, every High Court shall have power, throughout the territories in relation to which it exercises jurisdiction, to issue to any person or authority, including in appropriate cases, any Government, within those territories directions, orders or writs, including writs in the nature of habeas corpus, mandamus, prohibition, quo warranto and certiorari, or any of them, for the enforcement of any of the rights conferred by Part III and for any other purpose."

Article 226(2) extends that power to "any High Court exercising jurisdiction in relation to the territories within which the cause of action, wholly or in part, arises for the exercise of such power, notwithstanding that the seat of such Government or authority or the residence of such person is not within those territories."

Article 226(3) deals with an interim order made without notice. Where the party against whom it was made applies to have it vacated, the High Court "shall dispose of the application within a period of two weeks", and if it is not, "the interim order shall, on the expiry of that period... stand vacated."