A Constitution Bench on Monday held that a Supreme Court judgment of 2014 which declared invalid a legal provision mandating the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to take prior permission before investigating corruption cases against senior government officials has a retrospective effect.
A five-judge Bench headed by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul said the provision in question, Section 6A of the Delhi Special Police Establishment (DSPE) Act, the statute that governs the CBI, was void from the very day of its insertion on September 11, 2003.
The 106-page judgment held that Section 6A violated fundamental rights, and “once a law is declared to be unconstitutional, being violative of Part-III (fundamental rights) of the Constitution, then it would be held to be void ab initio, still born, unenforceable and non est”.
