CHENNAI: It is a well-settled legal position that there is a limited scope of judicial review in the matter of challenge to any executive policy, said the Madras High Court while setting aside a single judge’s order to expand the scope of the Moovalur Ramamirtham Ammaiyar Ninaivu Marriage Assistance Scheme in TN to all women who are entitled to minimum wages.
The observation was made by the first division bench of Chief Justice Manindra Mohan Shrivastava and Justice G Arul Murugan. The bench allowed an appeal filed by the TN government against the single judge’s order on a writ plea by a woman, S Chitra, who was denied the benefits under the marriage aid scheme as the income certificate issued by the local revenue department showed an annual income of Rs 1.08 lakh whereas the aid eligibility is Rs 72,000 per annum.
Concurring with arguments of Advocate General PS Raman, the bench said, “We are of the considered view that the direction issued by the single judge was not only beyond the scope of the writ plea but also amounts to substituting one executive policy for the other.”
It noted, in the absence of there being any law that the benefit of marriage aid shall be extended to those who are earning minimum wages or less, extension of that benefit to a larger class is only in the realm of the executive function and could not be ordered in exercise of judicial power under Article 226 of Constitution.
It is a well-settled legal position requiring no authority to be referred to that there is a limited scope of judicial review in the matter of challenge to any executive policy. In the present case, the only basis for the single judge to hold that the policy was bad is a comparison with the minimum wages, it said.