Amendment of the Constitution & Basic Structure Quiz — 7 Free Questions

Question 1

What did the I.R. Coelho case of 2007 finally decide, regarding laws placed into the Ninth Schedule after the April 24, 1973 cutoff date first established in the Waman Rao case? This ruling connected the Ninth Schedule directly to specific Fundamental Rights.

Question 2

What State's land reform law, restricting how much land a person or institution could actually own, directly triggered the legal challenge behind the Kesavananda Bharati case of 1973? This same State also featured in earlier Directive Principles case law.

Question 3

What Schedule of the Constitution, dividing law-making subjects between the Union and the States, is also specifically named in the proviso to Article 368 as requiring State ratification if amended? This Schedule lists three separate Lists.

Question 4

What did the 42nd Amendment do to the power of judicial review held by High Courts over State laws, through changes made to Article 226 and Article 227? This change significantly weakened an important judicial check.

Question 5

What specific feature of the Constitution's basic structure did the Supreme Court particularly affirm and protect through its ruling in the Indira Nehru Gandhi versus Raj Narain case of 1975? This feature protects the integrity of India's own democracy.

Question 6

What did the Kesavananda Bharati ruling do to the earlier Golaknath decision, regarding whether Parliament can ever amend Fundamental Rights at all? This marked an important reversal of the immediately preceding precedent.

Question 7

Where can a Constitutional Amendment Bill actually be first introduced, according to Article 368's own procedure? This rule excludes one type of legislative body entirely.

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About Amendment of the Constitution & Basic Structure

Article 368, found in Part XX of the Constitution, lays down the procedure for amending India's Constitution. It gives Parliament wide power to change almost any part of the document, but it does not make this easy or careless. Depending on what is being changed, an amendment needs either a special majority in both Houses of Parliament, or that same special majority plus approval from at least half of India's State legislatures. A handful of smaller changes elsewhere in the Constitution can even be made by a simple majority, like an ordinary law. This careful mix of methods is often described as a thoughtful blend of rigidity and flexibility, inspired partly by the Constitution of South Africa.

For the first two decades after independence, courts and Parliament disagreed sharply over just how far this amending power actually reached. Early cases like Shankari Prasad in 1951 and Sajjan Singh in 1965 held that Parliament could amend any part of the Constitution, including Fundamental Rights. The Golaknath case in 1967 then swung the other way, ruling that Fundamental Rights could not be touched at all. Parliament responded with the 24th Amendment in 1971, restoring its wide amending power, followed by the 25th Amendment, which tried to protect certain laws from being struck down for violating Fundamental Rights.

This tug of war reached its most famous turning point in the Kesavananda Bharati case of 1973. A very large bench of the Supreme Court ruled that while Parliament could amend any part of the Constitution, it could never destroy the Constitution's basic structure, its most essential, defining features. This basic structure doctrine has since been used again and again, striking down parts of the 42nd Amendment in the Minerva Mills case of 1980, and shaping later rulings like S.R. Bommai in 1994 and I.R. Coelho in 2007.

This subcategory also covers some of India's most significant individual amendments, from the First Amendment's creation of the Ninth Schedule in 1951, to the sweeping 42nd Amendment of 1976, often called a mini-Constitution, and the 44th Amendment that later reversed many of its more controversial changes. Well known later amendments, like the 52nd Amendment on defection, the 61st Amendment on voting age, and the 101st Amendment creating the GST, show just how often and how variously this single Article has been used since 1950.

This subcategory covers Article 368's procedure and the entire basic structure story in simple, clear language, along with the landmark cases and amendments connected to them, to help students build a strong and accurate base for their IAS and other competitive exams.