What are Extrinsic Aids

What are Extrinsic Aids?

Statutory interpretation is the process of interpreting and applying legislation. Some amount of interpretation is always necessary when case involves a statute. Sometimes the words of a statute have a plain and straightforward meaning. But in most cases, there is some ambiguity or vagueness in the words of the statute that must be resolved by the judge. To find the meanings of statutes, judges use various tools and methods of statutory interpretation, including traditional canons of statutory interpretation, legislative history, and purpose. In common law jurisdictions, the judiciary may apply rules of statutory interpretation to legislation enacted by the legislature or to delegated legislation such as administrative agency regulations.

Acceptance of Extrinsic Aids as an aid to Interpretation

The Supreme Court has accepted the necessity of external aids in interpretation of statutory provision. O.Chennappa Reddy J. in B. Prabhakar Rao and others v State of A.P. and others , AIR 1986 SC 120 has observed :

“Where internal aids are not forthcoming, we can always have recourse to external aids to discover the object of the legislation. External aids are not ruled out. This is now a well settled principle of modern statutory construction.” (para 7)

Recently, in District Mining Officer and others v Tata Iron & Steel Co. and another , (2001) 7 SCC 358, Supreme Court has observed:

“It is also a cardinal principle of construction that external aids are brought in by widening the concept of context as including not only other enacting provisions of the same statute, but its preamble, the existing state of law, other statutes in pari materia and the mischief which the statute was intended to remedy.” (para 18)

So far as admissibility and utility of these external aids are concerned, law is almost settled in our country now. The Supreme Court in K.P. Varghese v Income Tax Officer Ernakulam, AIR 1981 SC 1922 has stated that interpretation of statute being an exercise in the ascertainment of meaning, everything which is logically relevant should be admissible.

This is the general position in Indian Courts but the practice is uniform all over the world.The external aids are resorted to in case there is ambiguity or obscurity in the process of Construction of Statute.

Why extrinsic Aids

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