Court caseAIR 1955 SC 549

The Punjab Government adopted a policy of nationalising school textbooks. It invited authors to submit books, paid them a royalty of five per cent and took over printing, publishing and sale. Publishers of Punjab, led by Ram Jawaya Kapur, moved the Supreme Court under Article 32. They argued that the Government had no law behind the policy and that trade in textbooks was their business under Article 19(1)(g); the executive, they said, could not enter a trade or spend public money without legislative sanction.

The petition was dismissed. Mukherjea CJ held that the Constitution does not demand a law for every executive act. Executive power cannot be defined precisely; it is ordinarily the residue of governmental functions that remain after legislative and judicial functions are taken away. The executive may act without prior legislation so long as it does not infringe anyone's legal rights, and a spending decision needs only an Appropriation Act. No publisher had a right to have his book prescribed, so no fundamental right was infringed. On the structure of government, the Court said that India has a Cabinet system: the President is the formal or constitutional head and the real executive power is vested in the Ministers.