Passage Based Questions: Legal Aptitude - 19 | Passage Based Questions for CLAT Preparation PDF Download

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the questions.
Article 15(2) stipulates that citizens shall not on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, or place of religion , race , caste, sex, or place of birth be denied access to shops, public restaurants, hotels and places of public entertainment. Yet, on occasion, this right, which applies horizontally, inter se individuals, comes into conflict with the rights of persons to associate with others, often to the exclusion of certain groups. This is why every time a case of discrimination is brought, the party that discriminates claims that he possesses a liberty to do, that he must be free to act according to his own sense of conscience.
The Supreme Court, in 2005, in Zoroastrian Cooperative Housing Society vs District Register Co-operative Societies (Urban) and Others, endorsed one such restrictive bond, when it ruled in favour of a bye-law of a Parsi housing society that prohibited the sale of property to non- Parsis. This right to forbid such a sale, the Court ruled, was intrinsic in the Parsis’ fundamental right to associate with each other. But in holding thus, the judgment, as Gautam Bhatia points out in his book, Th Transformative Constitution, not only conflated the freedom to contract with the constitutional freedom to associate, but also overlooked altogether Article 15(2).
At first blush, Article 15(2) might appear to be somewhat limited in scope. But the word “shops” used in it is meant to be read widely. A study of the Constituent Assembly’s debates on the clause’s framing shows us that the founders explicitly intended to place restrictions on any economic activity that sought to exclude specific groups. For example, when a person refuses to lease her property to another based on the customer’s faith, such a refusal would run directly counter to the guarantee of equality.
An overruling of the verdict in Zoroastrian Cooperative, while desirable, in unlikely, however, to serve as a panacea. India is unique among democracies in that a constitutional right to equality is not supported by comprehensive legislation. In South Africa, for example, a constitutional guarantee is augmented by and all-encompassing law which prohibits unfair discrimination not only by the government but also by private organisation and individuals.