practice and procedure – Procedure is the handmaid not the mistress of justice – What may appear to be legislative inaction to fill in the gaps in the Statute could be on account of justified legislative concern and exercise of care and caution – However, when a yawning gap in the Statute, in the considered view of the Court, calls for temporary patchwork of filling up to make the Statute effective and workable and to sub-serve societal interests a process of judicial interpretation would become inevitable – The exercise of jurisdiction by Constitutional Courts must be guided by contemporaneous realities/existing realities on the ground – Judicial power should not be allowed to be entrapped within inflexible parameters or guided by rigid principles. True, the judicial function is not to legislate but in a situation where the call of justice and that too of a large number who are not parties to the lis before the Court, demands expression of an opinion on a silent aspect of the Statute, such void must be filled up not only on the principle of ejusdem generis but on the principle of imminent necessity with a call to the Legislature to act promptly in the matter – Constitution of India , Art. 142
2019 SCeJ 1080, 2019 PLRonline 18190
