India has the largest democracy in the world. After ruling the subcontinent for over two hundred years, the British surrendered power and India became a free country. India adopted the path of parliamentary democracy. The British parliamentary system left a lasting impress on it; due to the colonial legacy the framers of the Indian Constitution borrowed this system primarily from England. The freedom of the judiciary was taken from the USA. The USA did impart considerable power to the judiciary and made the judiciary free of the biased influence of the executive and the legislature.

Parliamentary democracy, which is the basic foundation of our Constitutional setup, presupposes the sovereignty of the people. As a prerequisite for a functional parliamentary democracy, the Constitution of India has provided for’ ‘separation of powers’ for securing the basic rights of the people. It lays down the structure and defines the limits and demarcates the role and functions of every organ of the state, including the judiciary, and establishes the norms for their inter-relationship, checks and balances with a very important object of ensuring that the power is not concentrated in any particular organ of the state, which can assume undesirable
proportions.

Independence of the judiciary is essential for upholding the rule of law. The grave problem, however, that courts are often faced with is this: on the one hand, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land and, on the other hand, in the garb of interpreting the Constitution, the court must not seek an unnecessary confrontation with the legislature, particularly since the legislature consists of representatives democratically elected by the people. The court certainly has power to decide constitutional issues. However, as pointed out by Justice Frankfurter in West Virginia State Board of Education vs. Barnette 319 U.S. 624 (1943), since this great power can prevent the full play of the democratic process, it is vital that it should be exercised with rigorous self restraint.