Reltion

Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles

Since both the Fundamental Rights and the Directive Principles were of common origin, it is clear that they both had the same objectives, namely to ensure the goal of a welfare society envisaged by the Preamble. If the Fundamental rights seek to achieve the goal by guaranteeing certain minimal rights to the individual as against State action, the Directives enjoin the State to ensure the welfare of the people collectively. Whenever the State makes laws, they should be made consistently with these principles with a view to establishment of an egalitarian society. [1] 

The idea of embodying a code of Directive Principles has been borrowed by the framers of the Constitution from the Irish Constitution of 1937, which contains similar provisions.

The preamble, the Directive Principles and the Fundamental Rights constitute the more important features of our Constitution. The Directive Principals of the State Policy enshrined in Part IV and the Fundamental Rights, guaranteed in Part III of the Constitution.

Although Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles appear in the Constitution as district entities, it was the Assembly that separate them; the leaders of the freedom struggle had drawn no distinction between the positive and negative obligations of the states. Both types of rights had developed as a common demand, products of national and social revolutions, of their almost inseparable intertwining and of the character of Indian polity itself.

The directive principles, though fundamental in the governance of the country, are not enforceable by any court in terms of the express provisions of Article 37 of the Constitution, while fundamental rights are enforceable by the Supreme Court and the High Court in terms of the express provisions of Article 32 and 226 of the Constitution. This doest not, however, mean or imply any dichotomy between the two. It social aspect can, however, be amended only by legislation to carry...