PRESUMPTION AGAINST

INCONVENIENCE AND ABSURDITY

 PRESUMPTION AGAINST
INCONVENIENCE
• It is presumed that legislature never intends its enactments to work
public inconvenience or private hardship; and if a statute is doubtful
or ambiguous or fairly open to more than one construction, that
construction should be adopted which will avoid such results.
• It is always presumed that legislature intends the most reasonable and
beneficial construction of its enactments, when their design is obscure
or not explicitly expressed, and as such will avoid inconvenience,
hardship or public injuries.
• Hence, if a law is couched in doubtful or ambiguous phrases or if its
terms are such as to be fairly susceptible of two or more constructions,
the Courts, having this presumption in mind, will attach weight to
arguments which will remove the inconvenient and absurd.
• While it is quite true that where the language of a
statute is plain and admits of but one construction,
the Courts have no power to supply any real or
supposed defects in such statute, in order to avoid
inconvenience or injustice yet , where the terms of
the statute are not plain, but admit of more than
one construction, one of which leads to great
inconvenience and injustice and possibly to the
defeat or obstruction of the legislature intent, then
the Court may, with a view to avoid such results,
adopt some other more in accordance with the
legislative intent.
• If words are ambiguous and one leads to
enormous inconvenience and another
construction does not, the one which leads to
the least inconvenience is to be preferred.
• Thus, if it is apparent that, by a particular
construction of a statute in a doubtful case,
great public interests would be endangered or
scarified, it ought not to be presumed that such
construction was intended by the legislature.
• But if there is no doubt, obscurity or ambiguity on the face of
the statute, but its meaning is plain and explicit, the argument
from inconvenience has no place. In other word, the
inconvenience created by the statute where its provisions are
clear and is capable of only one interpretation, such
inconvenience can be avoided by a change in law itself i.e., by
the legislature and not by judicial action.
• Example: where a statute gives to a husband the power, by his
last will, to extinguish the common law rights of his widow
and where the language of the Act is clear and not ambiguous
and is sufficiently include every widow, whether sane or
insane and the Act makes no exception in favour of latter, the
Courts cannot make any such exception, from consideration of
the hardship and inconvenience which may result.
PRESUMPTION AGAINST ABSURDITY

• It is presumed that the legislature does not intend an absurdity,

or that absurd consequences shall flow from its enactments.
Such a result will therefore be avoided, if the terms of the Act
admit it, by reasonable construction of the statute.
• By an “absurdity” as the term is here used, is meant anything
which is irrational, unnatural or inconvenient that it cannot be
supposed to have been within the intention of men of ordinary
intelligence and discretion.
• The presumption against absurd consequences of legislation is
therefore no more than the presumption that legislators are
gifted with ordinary good sense.
• It is applicable, like all other presumptions thus, if by applying
the literal rule of interpretation, the construction is being absurd
then it should be avoided.
• But it must be observed that if the legislature will enact an
absurdity in clear and specific terms, the Courts are not at liberty
to divert the statute from its intended object by process of
construction.
• If absurdity is an impossibility, the Act will be inoperative.
• Thus, when the language is explicit, its consequences are
irrelevant and if the language is plain and unambiguous, the
Courts have to give effect to it regardless of consequences
thereof.
• Any plea of injustice, hardship, inconvenience or anomaly shall
not be admissible. The Court cannot legislate under grab of
interpretation.
• In Om Prakash v. Radhacharan (2009) 15
SCC 66, It was held that the sentiment or
sympathy alone would not be a guiding factor
in determining the rights of the parties which
are otherwise clear and unambiguous.