14.4 Doctrine of Severability

The doctrine: when a statute is partly inconsistent with the Constitution, the court asks whether the valid part can stand alone — if the invalid portion is separable from the rest (not so intertwined that excision changes the legislature's scheme), only the inconsistent part falls; the statute survives in mutilated but operative form. If the valid and invalid parts are inextricably mixed, or the legislature would not have enacted the valid part without the invalid, the whole statute falls. The tests (in order): (1) is the offending part mechanically severable (a clause, a section)? (2) after excision, does the remainder make legislative sense? (3) would the legislature have enacted the remainder without the offending part (the intention test)? The burden of demonstrating inextricability lies on the party seeking the whole statute's fall — a corollary of the presumption of constitutionality. The Nepali anchor: Article 133(1)'s precision — a law inconsistent is void "to that extent" (Article 1) — textualises severability: the default is partial invalidation, the whole-statute voidance the exception. And the Court's choice between voiding ab initio and from the decision date (133(1)) is severability's temporal twin.