Arbitrary - Indian Laws - General

Expression arbitrary Black s Law Dictionary describes the term arbitrary in the following words: Arbitrary.- -1. Depending on individual discretion; specif., determined by a judge rather than by fixed rules, procedures, or law . 2. (Of a judicial decision) founded on prejudice or preference rather than on reason or fact. This type of decision is often termed arbitrary and capricious. To the same effect is the meaning given to the expression arbitrary by Corpus Juris Secundum which explains the term in the following words: Arbitrary.-- Based alone upon one s will, and not upon any course of reasoning and exercise of judgment; bound by no law; capricious; exercised according to one s own will or caprice and therefore conveying a notion of a tendency to abuse possession of power; fixed or done capriciously or at pleasure, without adequate determining principle, non-rational, or not done or acting according to reason or judgment; not based upon actuality but beyond a reasonable extent; not founded in the nature of things; not governed by any fixed Rules or standard; also, in a somewhat different sense, absolute in power, despotic, or tyrannical; harsh and unforbearing. When applied to acts, arbitrary has been held to connote a disregard of evidence or of the proper weight thereof; to express an idea opposed to administrative, executive, judicial, or legislative discretion; and to imply at least an element of bad faith, and has been compared with willful . East Coast Railway and Anr. v. Mahadev Appa Roa and Ors.- 2010 (7) TMI 967 - SUPREME COURT There is no precise statutory or other definition of the term arbitrary . In Kumari Shrilekha Vidyarthi and Ors. v. State of U.P. and Ors.- 1990 (9) TMI 323 - SUPREME COURT , this Court explained that the true import of the expression arbitrariness is more easily visualized than precisely stated or defined and that whether or not an act is arbitrary would be determined on the facts and circumstances of a given case.