Colourable - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition colourable

Definition :

Colourable, 'Colour', according to Black's Legal Dictionary, is 'an appearance, semblance or simulacrum, as distinguished from that which is real.... a deceptive appearance.... a lack of reality'. A thing is colourable which is, in appearance only and not in reality, what it purports to be. In Indian terms, it is maya. In the jurisprudence of power, colourable exercise of or fraud on legislative power or, more frightfully, fraud on the Constitution, are expressions which merely mean that the legislature is incompetent to enact a particular law although the label of competency is stuck on it, and then it is colourable legislation, R.S. Joshi v. Ajit Mills Limited (1977) 4 SCC 98: (1978) 1 SCR 338: AIR 1977 SC 2279 (2286). (Constitution of India, Art. 246)