SC rejects plea vagueness not a ground to set aside S-66A of

The Supreme Court today rejected the government's plea that "vagueness" was not a ground to declare a provision "unconstitutional" if it is "legislatively competent and non-arbitrary".
The government, while defending the constitutionality of Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, had said that there is presumption in favour of constitutionality of a law.
"The legislature is in the best position to understand and appreciate the needs of the people. The court will, therefore, interfere with the legislative process only when a statute is clearly violative of the rights conferred on the citizen under Part-III of the Constitution.
"There is a presumption in favour of the constitutionality of an enactment. Further, the court would so construe a statute to make it workable and in doing so, can read into it or read down the provisions that are impugned," Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta had told the bench of justices J Chelameswar and R F Nariman.

The Constitution does not impose impossible standards of determining validity. Mere possibility of abuse of a provision cannot be a ground to declare a provision invalid," he said.
The ASG had cited various judgements and said, "vagueness is not a ground to declare a statute unconstitutional if the statute is otherwise legislatively competent and non-arbitrary."
The bench said: "However, the ASG argued before us that expressions that are used in Section 66A may be incapable of any precise definition but for that reason they are not constitutionally vulnerable. He cited a large number of judgments in support of this submission.

"None of the cited judgments dealt with a Section creating an offence which is saved despite its being vague and in capable of any precise definition. In fact, most of the judgments cited before us did not deal with criminal law at all," the bench said.