The landmark Judgment : Keshvanand Bharti case
The Land mark judgments: Keshvanand Bharti case
The origins of the Kesavananda Bharti case can be traced back to the land reforms that were introduced in the Indian state of Kerala in the 1950s and 1960s. These reforms were aimed at redistributing land from large landowners to the landless and the poor.
In 1963, the Kerala government passed the Kerala Land Reforms Act, which placed a limit on the amount of land that a person could hold. The Act provided for the acquisition of excess land from landowners and its distribution to the landless and the poor. In 1970, the Government of Kerala imposed restrictions on the ownership of land held by religious institutions. The Edneer Mutt, headed by Sri Kesavananda Bharati, challenged the constitutionality of the Act in the Kerala High Court. The case eventually reached the Supreme Court, which ruled in favour of the state government.
The Parliament of India in the meantime passed the 24th Amendment to the Constitution, which sought to curtail the powers of the judiciary and limit the scope of judicial review. The 25th & 29th Amendments were also passed, which sought to limit the fundamental rights of citizens and give Parliament the power to amend any part of the Constitution. Sri Kesavananda Bharati filed a petition challenging the validity of these amendments, arguing that they violated the basic structure of the Constitution. This led to the landmark Kesavananda Bharati judgment, which upheld the basic structure doctrine and placed limits on legislature power of parliament.
The Kesavananda Bharati case was heard by a bench of 13 judges of the Supreme Court of India, making it one of the largest benches in Indian legal history.
The Supreme Court, in a historic 7:6 majority decision, propounded the basic structure doctrine of the Constitution, which holds that certain fundamental features of the Constitution, such as democracy, secularism, federalism, and the rule of law, cannot be amended by parliament. The court also held that the power of judicial review is an integral part of the basic structure of the Constitution, and cannot be taken away by Parliament through constitutional amendments.
he court held that the Parliament’s amending power under Article 368 is not unlimited and that it cannot alter the basic structure of the Constitution. This has served as an important check on the power of the Parliament to amend the Constitution.
Basic structure doctrine and Western Philosophy – Decided on April 24, 1973 the judgment was itself influenced by the German constitutional scholar Dieter Conrad, and his arguments in favour of a limited amending power. Drawing upon constitutional debates after the World War II, With burnt memories of Nazi regime Conrad suggested in a public lecture at Benaras Hindu University in February 1965 that even if there was some ambiguity regarding the unlimited nature of people’s constituent power exercised on their behalf by the Constituent Assembly, the amending power of parliament was inherently a limited one. Being a creature of the constitutional text, the amending power could not be deployed to abrogate the constitution itself or alter its fundamental identity as an organic whole.
Reference of earlier similar cases
A.K. Gopalan v. The State of Madras (1950) dealt with the constitutionality of preventive detention laws. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of such laws, holding that the fundamental rights guaranteed under the Indian Constitution, including the right to life and personal liberty, were not absolute and could be curtailed by the state for reasons of national security.
Sri Sankari Prasad Singh Deo v. Union of India and State of Bihar (1951) dealt with the power of the Parliament to amend the Constitution. The Supreme Court held that the power to amend the Constitution under Article 368 was absolute and unfettered, and that the validity of a constitutional amendment could not be questioned on the ground that it violated any fundamental rights guaranteed under the Constitution.
Sajjan Singh v. State of Rajasthan (1965) dealt with the Constitutional validity of the 17th Constitutional Amendment. The Supreme Court upholding the validity of the 17th Amendment held that the Parliament has the authority to amend any part of the Constitution including any Fundamental Rights. The Supreme Court in the Judgement even stated that if the Constitution makers intended to exclude the fundamental Right from the scope of amending power they would have made a clear provision in that behalf.
I.C. Golak Nath & Ors. v. State of Punjab & Anrs. (1967) dealt with the power of the Parliament to amend the Constitution. The Supreme Court, in a landmark judgment, held that the power to amend the Constitution under Article 368 was not unlimited and that the fundamental rights guaranteed under the Constitution could not be abrogated or abridged by a constitutional amendment
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