Chapter 4 explained the positive claim of this book: that the UK's model of rights protection is superior to that in India on account of the nature of the remedy available in the UK (the declaration of incompatibility),

which enables British courts to express their genuine rights reasoning in cases in which Indian courts, although armed with the power to strike down legislation, find it difficult to do so.

This chapter will therefore consider the institutional apparatus accompanying the declaration of incompatibility in the UK on the one hand, and informal recommendations to change the law (or intermedi­ate remedies falling short of the power to strike down legislation) in India on the other. Although the declaration of incompatibility may look like a freestanding advisory remedy at first glance, it is given sig­nificant institutional purchase by the JCHR and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (Strasbourg Court). The work of these institutions will be compared with India's National Human Rights Commission in New Delhi (NHRC), which finds it difficult to influ­ence legislative activity.

Before proceeding, a brief point of clarification is in order. A formalist would perhaps be perturbed by comparisons between institutions that are quite differently composed, and that exercise varied powers and func­tions. It, therefore, bears justifying why a joint parliamentary committee, Balanced Constitutionalism: Courts and Legislatures in India and the United Kingdom. Chintan Chandrachud.

© Oxford University Press 2017. Published 2017 by Oxford University Press. a supranational court, and an independent human rights monitoring body are collectively considered. As explained in the Introduction, this book prefers function over form and adopts a moderate version of func­tionalism. It is within the mandate of the JCHR, the Strasbourg Court, and the NHRC to follow up on declarations of incompatibility or judicial recommendations to amend the law and these institutions, to one extent or another, comply with this mandate. These three 'collateral institu­tions',^[846] therefore, can fairly be described as functional equivalents worthy of comparison for the purposes of this study.

Nevertheless, this does not imply that the differences between them can be overlooked. In fact, as the chapter progresses, it becomes clear that differences in respect of (a) whether monitoring declarations of incompatibility or judicial recommendations to amend the law is a primary or peripheral function of the institution; (b) the overall scope of the institution's functions; and (c) the resources at the disposal of the institution have a major bearing on the manner in which they are able to perform these functions in practice.