municipality and validating the electoral rolls prepared in respect of other municipalities. Thereupon, B filed a writ petition before the High Court contending that the Ordinance was unconstitutional. The High Court found that the Ordinance contravened Article 14 of the Constitution, that it did not successfully cure the invalidity and that it offended Article 254(1) of the Constitution, as it was inconsistent with many Central Acts falling in the concurrent list and was unconstitutional. The State and the Councillors appealed and challenged the findings of the High Court. 316. This Court held that S. 3(1) of the Ordinance effectively removed the defects in the electoral rolls found by the High Court by its judgment and that it successfully cured the invalidity of the electoral roll and of the elections to the Cuttack Municipality. 317. The Solicitor General also cited other decisions to show that a legislature can validate proceedings rendered invalid by judgment of Court. As I said, they all involved substitution of new law with retrospective effect for the old one and the basic facts were all taken to have been admitted or not controverted. If the facts are not admitted the legislature cannot determine them except by employing judicial process. Besides, those cases being cases of legislative validation, need not pass the test of the theory of basic structure which, I think, will apply only to constitutional amendment. 318. Counsel for the appellant also brought to the notice of the Court certain election validation Acts passed by the House of Commons in England. These Acts removed with retrospective effect disqualifications of members of parliament. In none of these cases was an election which was being contested validated by parliament. Nor can these instances of legislative removal of disqualification furnish any assistance to this Court for the reason that in England there is no theory of basic structure operating as a fetter on the power of parliament. 319. It was argued for the respondent that if the amending body exercised judicial power and held the election of the appellant valid, its act was unconstitutional also on the ground it damaged another basic structure of the Constitution namely, the doctrine of separation of powers. 320. The major problem of human society is to combine that degree of liberty without which law is tyranny with that degree of law without which liberty becomes licence; and, the difficulty has been to discover the practical means of achieving this grand objective and to find the opportunity for applying these means in the ever-shifting tangle of human affairs. A large part of the effort of man over centuries has been expended in seeking a solution of this great problem. A reign of law, in contrast to the tyranny of power, can be achieved only through separating appropriately the several powers of Government. If the law-makers should also be the constant administrators and dispensers of law and justice, then the people would be left without a remedy in case of injustice since no appeal can lie under the fiat against such a supremacy,. And, in this age-old search of political philosophers for the secret of sound Government, combined with individual

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