The doctrine of severability, applied by courts to laws that violate Fundamental Rights, is also known as the doctrine of:

The doctrine of severability is also called the doctrine of separability. Under it, if only a part of a law is unconstitutional, that part is struck down, while the rest of the law remains valid, provided the valid part can stand on its own.

Constitutional basis:

• Article 13 says that any law inconsistent with or in derogation of the Fundamental Rights shall be void "to the extent of the inconsistency" or "to the extent of the contravention".
• The words "to the extent of" form the basis of the doctrine of severability.

How the doctrine works:

• The court examines whether the invalid part is separable from the rest of the law.
• If the remaining part can work independently and the legislature would have passed it even without the invalid part, it is kept.
• If the valid and invalid parts are so closely linked that they cannot be separated, the whole law is struck down.

Important cases:

In A.K. Gopalan v. State of Madras (1950), the Supreme Court struck down only Section 14 of the Preventive Detention Act, 1950, and upheld the rest of the Act.

In R.M.D.C. v. Union of India (1957), the Court applied the doctrine to a law on prize competitions, keeping the valid part relating to gambling competitions.

In the Kihoto Hollohan case (1992), the Court struck down one paragraph of the Tenth Schedule while upholding the rest.

Other important doctrines:

• Doctrine of eclipse: a pre-constitutional law that violates Fundamental Rights is not dead but only eclipsed; it becomes active again if the conflict is removed by an amendment.
• Doctrine of pith and substance: used to decide whether a law falls within the legislative competence of the legislature that made it, by looking at its true nature.
• Doctrine of colourable legislation: a legislature cannot do indirectly what it cannot do directly.
• Doctrine of harmonious construction: courts interpret conflicting provisions so that both can work together.

Why not the other options?

• ✗Eclipse, pith and substance and colourable legislation are other doctrines.