frontiers, but of mutual restraints, or of what afterwards came to be known as “checks and balances”. (p. 10). The three organs must act in concert, not that their respective funtions should not ever touch one another. If this limitation is respected and preserved, “it is impossible for that situation to arise which Locke and Montesquieu regarded as the eclipse of liberty – the monopoly, or the disproportionate accumulation, of power in one sphere". (p. 19; Allen). In a federal system which distributes powers between three coordinate branches of government, though not rigidly, disputes regarding the limits of constitutional power have to be resolved by courts and therefore, as observed by Paton, “the distinction between judicial and other powers may be vital to the maintenance of the Constitution itself".* Power is of an encroaching nature, wrote Madison in “The Federalist'. The encroaching power which the Federalists feared most was the legislative power and that, according to Madison, is the danger of all republics. Allen says that the history of both the United States and France has shown on many occasions that the fear was not unjustified.** 689. I do not suggest that such an encroaching power will be pursued relentlessly or ruthlessly by our Parliament. But no Constitution can survive without a conscious adherence to its fine checks and balances. Just as Court ought not to enter into problems entwined in the “political thicket”, Parliament must also respect the preserve of the Courts. The principle of separtion of powers is a principle of restraint which “has in it the precept, innate in the prudence of self-preservation (even if history has not repeatedly brought it home), that discretion is the better part of valour”.† Courts have, by and large, come to check their valorous propensities. In the name of the Constitution, the Parliament may not also turn its attention from the important task of legislation to deciding court cases for which it lacks the expertise and the apparatus. If it gathers facts, it gathers facts of policy. If it records findings, it does so without a pleading and without framing any issues. And worst of all, if it decides a Court case, it decides without hearing the parties and in defiance of the fundamental principles of natural justice. 690. The Parliament, by clause (4) of Article 329-A, has decided a matter of which the country's Courts were lawfully seized. Neither more nor less. It is true, as contended by the learned Attorney-General and Shri Sen, that retrospective validation is a well known legislative process which has received the recognition of this Court in tax cases, pre-emption cases, tenancy cases and a variety of other matters. In fact, such validation was resorted to by the legislature and upheld by this Court in at least four election cases, the last of them being Kanta Kathuria v. Manak Chand Surana, (1970) 2 SCR 835 = (AIR 1970 SC 694). But in all of these cases, what the legislature did was to change the law retrospectively so as to remove the reason of disqualification, leaving it to the Courts to apply the amended law to the decision of the particular case. In the instant case the Parliament has withdrawn the application of all laws whatsoever to the disputed election and has taken upon itself to decide that the election is valid. Clause (5) commands the Supreme Court to dispose of the appeal and the cross-appeal in conformity with the provisions of clause (4) of Article 329-A, that is, in