Are the Principles and the Duties Enforceable

In one line

Neither Article 48A nor Article 51A(g) can be enforced by itself, and both decide cases every year, and the whole of this chapter is the explanation of how both statements are true.

MU asks candidates to "evaluate the provisions incorporated in the Indian Constitution for conservation and protection of environment". Evaluate means say what they are worth. An answer that lists the Articles has described them. An answer that explains this paradox has evaluated them.

The bare position

Part IV

Article 37: "The provisions contained in this Part shall not be enforceable by any court, but the principles therein laid down are nevertheless fundamental in the governance of the country and it shall be the duty of the State to apply these principles in making laws."

So no writ issues to enforce Article 48A. No damages lie for its breach. A statute is not void for being inconsistent with it. A citizen has no right under it.

Part IVA

Article 51A has no equivalent of Article 37, and that cuts both ways. Nothing declares the Fundamental Duties unenforceable, but nothing provides any machinery to enforce them either. There is no penalty, no cause of action and no writ. Part IVA is a statement of what citizens owe, with nothing behind it.

So the honest starting position is that both provisions are, in themselves, unenforceable. A student should say this plainly and early. What follows is not a contradiction of it but an account of what the courts have built on top of it.

The four routes

One: as a ground of review

This is Sachidananda Pandey v. State of West Bengal, 1987 AIR 1109. The Supreme Court held that "Whenever a problem of ecology is brought before the Court, the Court is bound to bear in mind Art. 48A of the Constitution ... and Art. 51A(g)", and that when called upon to give effect to the Principle and the Duty the Court "is not to shrug its shoulders and say that priorities are a matter of policy and so it is a matter for the policy-making authority. The least that the Court may do is to examine whether appropriate consideration are borne in mind and irrelevancies excluded."

What that does. It converts an unenforceable Principle into a mandatory relevant consideration. A decision-maker who never considered the environmental effect has left out something the Constitution requires to be weighed, and the decision can be set aside for that reason. The Article is not being enforced; the administrative law duty to consider relevant matters is being enforced, and the Article supplies the content.

And note the other half of the same holding. If the Government is alive to the various considerations and has arrived at a conscious decision after taking them into account, the Court may not interfere in the absence of mala fides. The petitioner in Sachidananda Pandey lost, and lost for exactly that reason. The route is real but it is a route of process, not of outcome.