{"id":71649,"date":"2025-11-02T15:40:56","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T10:10:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=71649"},"modified":"2025-11-06T10:56:56","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T05:26:56","slug":"what-is-doctrine-of-severability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/what-is-doctrine-of-severability\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctrine of Severability"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><b>Doctrine of Severability Latest News<\/b><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Supreme Court clarified that the Doctrine of Severability is applicable in Suits for Specific Performance, but only in exceptional cases.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>About Doctrine of Severability<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is a fundamental legal principle that plays a crucial role in <\/span><b>addressing the constitutionality of laws when some provisions are inconsistent with the Fundamental Rights<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> guaranteed by the Constitution.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>In such cases, only the conflicting <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">or repugnant <\/span><b>part of the law will be considered void<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> by the courts, <\/span><b>not the entire statute.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In simpler terms, if a specific part of a law violates the Constitution but can be separated from the rest of the law without affecting its functionality, only that problematic part will be removed, not the entire law.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Another aspect of the doctrine of severability is that <\/span><b>if a law combines good and bad provisions using words like \u2018and\u2019 or \u2018or,\u2019 <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and the <\/span><b>enforcement of the good provision does not depend on the bad one, they are considered severable.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The<\/span><b> good provision will be upheld and enforced<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> even if the bad one cannot or does not exist.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On the other hand, <\/span><b>if there\u2019s a provision that can be used for both legal and illegal purposes, it is invalid<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and cannot be allowed even for legal purposes.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The<\/span><b> court will declare the entire Act <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">as <\/span><b>void if the valid and invalid portions are so intertwined that they cannot be separated.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is also called the <\/span><b>doctrine of separability.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><b>Landmark Cases on Doctrine of Severability<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>A.K Gopalan vs State of Madras:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The <\/span><b>court held that if the preventive detention provision (section 14) was removed,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the <\/span><b>rest of the Act would remain valid <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and effective. The violative part was separable from the valid part.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Minerva Mills vs Union of India: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The court <\/span><b>struck down section 4 of 55 of the 42nd Amendment Act, 1976,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> as it<\/span><b> exceeded the amending power of Parliament<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. However, the remaining provisions of the Act were upheld and considered valid.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b style=\"font-size: inherit;\">Kihoto Hollohan vs Zachillhu: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The court <\/span><b style=\"font-size: inherit;\">declared paragraph 7 of the Tenth Schedule (inserted by the 52nd Amendment Act of 1985) unconstitutional<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. However, the rest of the Tenth Schedule, excluding paragraph 7, was upheld and considered constitutional.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Source<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: <\/span><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.verdictum.in\/court-updates\/supreme-court\/canara-bank-v-kl-rajgarhia-2025-insc-127-doctrine-of-severability-specific-performance-1596516\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">VERD<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Doctrine of Severability allows invalid parts of a law violating Fundamental Rights to be removed while keeping the rest of the law constitutional.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":71817,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2014,246,21,22,23],"class_list":{"0":"post-71649","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"tag-doctrine-of-severability","9":"tag-prelims-current-affairs","10":"tag-prelims-pointers","11":"tag-upsc-current-affairs","12":"tag-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","13":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}