A.M. Bhattacharjee, J. - (1.) " I am the Parliamentary draftsman, I composes the country's Laws, And of half the litigation I am undoubtediy the cause. " I do not know who composed this jingling couplet and when; but the little knowledge that I have about our laws and litigations has convinced me about its truth beyond all doubt. I would, however, like to add that if the draftsman, who composes statutes and other legal instruments, is responsible for half of our litigations, the Judges who interpret them and the lawyers who aid such interpretation, are also responsible for the major chunk of the other half. And there are good many, reasons.
(2.) Firstly, words do not, and obviously cannot, always have any divine or mathematical or any exact clear -cut precision and if they had, much of our Literature would have been poor stuff. As Tennyson has said," "words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within" and very often we go only by the revealed half. And then, then law persons with their legal expertise attempt to extract the half -concealed soul to get at the whole, they very often arrive at amazingly perplexing products because, (as Vivian Bose, J., put it in the Supreme Court decision in Seksaria Cotton Mills - : AIR 1953 SC 278 at 281 -282), "it is not till one is learned in the law that subtleties of thought and bewilderment arise at the meaning of plain English words which any ordinary man with average intelligence, not versed in the law, would have no difficulty in understanding."
(3.) The case at hand is a typical example as to how careless drafting without proper advertence results in proliferation of meritless litigations. But I do not propose to blame the departmental officers or their legal advisers, if any, for such a piece of draft which has given rise to this litigation, for even in respect of Constitutional Amendment Act, obviously expected to be drafted, with the greatest possible care, caution and attention, Bhagwati, J., had to say in Minerva Mills Ltd. ( : AIR 1980 SC 1789 at 1823) that "slovenliness in drafting is becoming rather common these days.";