The State of Manipur & Ors. vs. Surjakumar Okram & Ors.
Background
In 2012, the Manipur Legislature passed a law letting the Chief Minister appoint MLAs as "Parliamentary Secretaries" with the rank of a Minister of State. A near-identical Assam law had already been struck down by the Supreme Court in 2017 (Bimolangshu Roy) for lacking legislative competence. The Court held that creating such offices was not something the "powers, privileges and immunities" entry in the Constitution allowed a state legislature to do. Following that ruling, Manipur repealed its 2012 law in 2018, but added a "saving clause" protecting everything already done by the Parliamentary Secretaries during their tenure. The Manipur High Court went further and declared both the original 2012 Act and the saving clause in the repealing law unconstitutional, prompting the State and the former Parliamentary Secretaries to appeal to the Supreme Court.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that the High Court erred in declaring the 2012 Act itself unconstitutional, since it had already been repealed by the time the case was decided, there was no live law left to strike down, and a repealed law is treated as if it never existed except for specific saved purposes. The Court also rejected the argument that the Assam precedent was wrongly decided and needed reconsideration, confirming that creating this kind of office fell outside the legislature's constitutional authority. However, on the key issue, the Court agreed with the High Court that the state legislature had no power to write a "saving clause" protecting the appointments and actions taken under the earlier unconstitutional-in-substance law: an unconstitutional law confers no rights and cannot be revived by a legislative rescue clause. To avoid disrupting the many official decisions genuinely taken by the Parliamentary Secretaries in the meantime, the Court used its special constitutional power (Article 142) to protect only the actual acts and decisions already carried out, while still striking down the saving clause itself.
Lesson Learnt
A law that is constitutionally invalid cannot be given a second life through a legislature's own "saving clause" when it repeals that law, but courts can still use their equitable powers to prevent public chaos by protecting genuine actions already taken in good faith under such a law, without validating the law itself.