Karnataka High Court: Declaring the Karnataka Religious Institutions and Charitable Endowments (Amendment) Act, 2011 and the Karnataka Religious Institutions and Charitable Endowments (Amendment) Act, 2012 discriminatory and violative of Constitutional Rights, the High Court held that if the law passed by a legislature is struck down by the Courts as being invalid for one or the other reason, it would be competent for the appropriate Legislature to cure the said infirmity and pass a validating law so as to make the provisions of the said earlier law effective from the date when it was passed. But the changed or altered conditions should be such that the previous decision would not have been rendered by the Court if those conditions had existed at the time of declaring the law as invalid.
In Sri Sahasra Lingeshwara Temple v. State of Karnataka, SCC OnLine Kar 525, the Karnataka Hindu Religious Institutions and Charitable Endowments Act, 1997 was declared discriminatory and violative of Article 14 and 26 by division bench of Karnataka High Court on the ground that though the Act was enacted to provide a uniform religious law and abolished five local religious Acts, the State chose to exclude a mutt or a temple attached thereto from the scope and application of the Act. Such mutts or temple attached thereto were used to be governed by the local Acts but the effect of the enactment was that such mutts were no longer subject to provisions of any law. Though a mutt may stand on a different footing in terms of religious practice and rituals, the basic object of religion and religious activities is carried on in Hindu mutts also. Thus, such exclusion resulted in violation of Article 14. A matter preferred against this decision is pending before the Supreme Court. However the State Government amended the impugned Act twice in 2011 and 2012.
While allowing the writ petitions challenging the viresof the amending Acts, the High Court held that the amended provisions of the Act were more or less same as the unamended provisions which were struck down by the division bench. The Legislature through the impugned amendments sought to reintroduce the offending provisions with mere cosmetic changes. Thus the amendments brought about were bad in law. [Shri Maha Ganapati Shankara v. State of Karnataka, decided on 17.11.2015]
