Article 14: Equality before the law and equal protection of the laws :
Article 14 of the Constitution says that “the State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India”.
As is evident, Article 14 guarantees to every person the right to equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws. The expression ‘equality before the law’ which is barrowed from English Common Law is a declaration of equality of all persons within the territory of India, implying thereby the absence of any special privilege in favour of any individual. Every person, whatever be his rank or position is subject to the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts. The second expression “the equal protection of the laws” which is based on the last clause of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the American Constitution directs that equal protection shall be secured to all persons within the territorial jurisdiction of the Union in the enjoyment of their rights and privileges without favouritism or discrimination. Article 14 applies to all persons and is not limited to citizens. A corporation, which is a juristic person, is also entitled to the benefit of this Article (Chiranjit Lal Chowdhurary v. Union of India,
1951 SC 41). The right to equality is also recognised as one of the basic features of the Constitution ( Indra Sawhney v. Union of India, AIR 2000 SC 498).
As a matter of fact all persons are not alike or equal in all respects. Application of the same laws uniformly to all of them will, therefore, be inconsistent with the principle of equality. Of course, mathematical equality is not intended. Equals are to be governed by the same laws. But as regards unequals, the same laws are not complemented. In fact, that would itself lead to inequality.
Equality is a comparative concept. A person is treated unequally only if that person is treated worse than others, and those others (the comparison group) must be those who are ‘similarly situated’ to the complainant. (Glanrock Estate (P) Ltd. v. State of T N (2010) 10 SCC 96)