--By Advocate Ankita Sarangi--
Wednesbury principle, emanating out of a classic administrative law case, is basically a tool to challenge any administrative action subject to a test of unreasonableness or also called the Wednesbury test. When an administrative decision relating to punishment in disciplinary cases is questioned as 'arbitrary' under Article 14, the Court often considers the Wednesbury principle as secondary mainly because it is stricter than the normal test of unreasonableness. It has given rise to the principle of proportionality.
Basically it is used to ensure the courts do not improperly interfere in the executive's domain.
The principle can be best understood by first understanding the Wednesbury case.
What was the famous Wednesbury case about?
The plaintiffs were the proprietor of the cinema theatre of Wednesbury, had sought to obtain from the court a declaration that a certain condition imposed by the defendant, The Corporation of Wednesbury (that theatres cannot open on Sundays) to be unlawful/ illegal. The plaintiffs had applied to the local council to allow trading on Sundays to which the council agreed, subject to some conditions such as, no one under the age of 15 should be allowed inside the cinema even if they were being accompanied by an adult. A certain statute at the time empowered the authority to allow theatres to open on Sundays subject to conditions imposed by them. This was challenged in the court on the ground that the action by the local authorities was ultra vires and that they should use the power reasonably, thus failing to do the same would imply that they were arbitrary and unlawful. The court agreed to the contention of reasonableness but discussed threadbare what would be included in the definition of reasonableness in this context. Since courts could not review the merits of the administrative decision. That is when they adumbrated that the bar had to be so highly set that one could only challenge the administrative authority in court if an authority had come to a conclusion so extreme or "so unreasonable that no reasonable authority could ever have come to it".
But in this case they felt the council passed the test since the condition imposed by them was not too extreme or outrageous.
In the past these principles were consistently being followed in UK and in India to judge the validity of an administrative action. However, over the years the principle has experienced some weathering and has been limitedly used as a standard set for judging unreasonableness.
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