Ratlam Municipality vs Vardichand and Ors. [29 July, 1980]

A municipality that says it has no money is a sentence you have probably heard about your own building's lift or your street's potholes. In 1980, a whole town said exactly that to the Supreme Court of India, after its residents dragged it to court over open drains and raw sewage running past their homes. The Court's answer — that a public body cannot plead poverty to escape a duty to public health — is one of the most quoted lines in Indian law.

In two minutes

Municipal Council, Ratlam v. Vardichand (1980 AIR 1622) held that a municipality cannot excuse itself from its statutory duty to provide sanitation and remove a public nuisance by pleading a lack of funds, because public health is a first charge on a local body's resources.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Legal Language and Writing on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.