2 Enforcement Mechanism of Directive Principles, Policies and Obligations

1. The non-justiciability rule (Article 55): directives not enforceable in court — the classic bar; no writ lies to compel a directive's implementation; why: the separation of policy from adjudication — courts cannot budget, prioritize or govern; the political branches' accountability runs to the electorate, not the bench; 2. The enforcement that exists despite the bar: - Political enforcement: Parliament's question-and-debate machinery; elections as the directives' sanction; the annual reports of constitutional bodies (the Auditor General's and NNRFC's reports as directive-audits); - Legal- implementation enforcement: statutes that convert directives into rights (the Social Security Act, the labour-and-education statutes — the legislature's directive-executing duty); - Interpretive enforcement: the courts' duty to read statutes and executive action harmoniously with the directives (below); 3. The obligations' special position (Article 52): closer to justiciability than the policies — some obligations (fiscal transfers, the three-tier system's operation) are directly implemented by justiciable structures (Article 60's machinery; the Inter-Provincial Council's dispute forum); 4. The resource-reality critique: directives as the "cheque on a bank that pays according to its balance" (the classic metaphor-family) — Nepal's development-budget constraints as the directives' operating ceiling.