Prior Presidential sanction under Article 304(b) cannot be avoided by later enactment after the Constitution comes into force.

Prior Presidential sanction under Article 304(b) was treated as a mandatory constitutional safeguard for a Bill of the relevant kind, and the proviso was read purposively to prevent circumvention through later amendments or post-Constitution enactment. A narrow construction limiting the sanction requirement only to the date of introduction was rejected because it would allow the constitutional protection to be defeated after the Constitution came into force. The result stated in the text is that the Bill and the resulting enactment were invalid for non-compliance with the prior sanction requirement, and the challenge to the impugned proceedings succeeded.

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Issues: Whether the prior Presidential sanction required by Article 304 of the Constitution was necessary when a Bill introduced before the Constitution came into force was later passed into law after the Constitution commenced.

Analysis: The proviso to Article 304(b) was construed purposively to prevent evasion of the constitutional safeguard. The Court rejected a narrow reading that confined the requirement only to the date of introduction of the Bill, observing that such an interpretation would permit circumvention of the constitutional mandate through later amendments and passage. The phraseology of the proviso was read as requiring previous Presidential sanction for the introduction or movement of a Bill and for the movement of any amendment of the relevant kind. The earlier view that the enactment was invalid for want of sanction was therefore affirmed.

Conclusion: The Bill and the resulting enactment required prior Presidential sanction, and the challenge to the impugned proceedings succeeded.

Final Conclusion: The petition was allowed because the impugned action rested on an enactment which was held to have been validly invalidated for non-compliance with the constitutional requirement of prior Presidential sanction.

Ratio Decidendi: Where a constitutional proviso requires previous Presidential sanction for legislation of a specified kind, the requirement cannot be avoided by relying only on the pre-Constitution date of introduction if the Bill is later processed and enacted after the Constitution has come into force.

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