Invoking Exception Clause of a Statute

Exception Clause and Exceptional Circumstances go hand in hand. It is always required to be strictly interpreted. Hardship to any individual is no answer to dilution of Exception Clause invocation.

https://twitter.com/Nagamani1956

Exception clause is to be invoked only in exceptional circumstances where the conditions incorporated in the exception clause itself exist. It is a settled legal proposition that exception clause is always required to be strictly interpreted even if there is a hardship to any individual. Exception is provided with the object of taking it out of the scope of the basic law and what is included in it and what legislature desired to be excluded. The natural presumption in law is that but for the proviso, the enacting part of the Section would have included the subject-matter of the proviso, the enacting part should be generally given such a construction which would make the exceptions carved out by the proviso necessary and a construction which would make the exceptions unnecessary and redundant should be avoided. Proviso is used to remove special cases from the general enactment and provide for them separately.

Proviso may change the very concept of the intendment of the enactment by insisting on certain mandatory conditions to be fulfilled in order to make the enactment workable.(Vide: S. Sundaram Pillai, etc. v. V.R. Pattabiraman, AIR 1985 SC 582)