Subordinate legislation does not acquire legal force the moment it is signed or uploaded online. It becomes binding only when it is published in the Official Gazette. Drawing this clear boundary, the Supreme Court has ruled that rights cannot be restricted and obligations cannot be imposed on citizens unless delegated legislation is formally brought into the public domain through Gazette publication.
A bench of Justices P.S. Narasimha and Alok Aradhe underscored that once Parliament prescribes a specific mode for bringing a law into effect, the executive has no authority to invent substitutes. A notification, the Court said, cannot operate in pieces—alive for the government but invisible to the public. In the eyes of the law, it is “born” only on the date it appears in the Official Gazette.
The Court warned that accepting any other interpretation would legitimise unpublished delegated legislation burdening citizens, a notion consistently rejected in earlier rulings. Publication, the bench stressed, is not a procedural ritual but the very act that transforms an executive decision into enforceable law.
Explaining why Gazette publication is indispensable, the Court noted that delegated legislation is framed behind closed doors, without the transparency of parliamentary debate. Mandatory publication therefore serves two constitutional purposes: it ensures that those governed by the law receive proper notice, and it imposes accountability and seriousness on the executive’s law-making power. Courts, the judgment observed, have repeatedly insisted that strict compliance with publication requirements is a precondition for enforceability.
The dispute before the Court arose from steel import contracts entered into by importers in late January and early February 2016. Irrevocable Letters of Credit were opened on February 5. On that very day, the Directorate General of Foreign Trade uploaded a Minimum Import Price (MIP) notification on its website, marked as “to be published in the Official Gazette.” Actual Gazette publication, however, took place several days later.
The notification exempted imports backed by irrevocable Letters of Credit opened before “the date of this notification,” in line with the Foreign Trade Policy’s protection for pre-existing contracts. Authorities treated the website upload date as the operative date and denied the importers the exemption, arguing that their Letters of Credit were opened on the same day.
After the Delhi High Court upheld this approach, the matter reached the Supreme Court.
Setting aside the earlier ruling, the Court held that under the Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act, a notification gains the force of law only upon Gazette publication. The phrase “date of this notification,” the Court clarified, can only mean the date on which it is published in the Official Gazette.
Since the importers had opened their Letters of Credit before that publication date and complied with the relevant policy conditions, the Court found no legal basis to deny them the benefit of the exemption. The transitional protection under the Foreign Trade Policy, it held, squarely applied.
The appeal was allowed, restoring the exemption and reaffirming a fundamental principle: in a system governed by law, secrecy has no binding power—only what is officially published can govern the public.
