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

Question 1

What specific date did the Supreme Court use in the Waman Rao case of 1981, as the dividing line for deciding whether a law placed in the Ninth Schedule should still be tested against the basic structure doctrine? This date matched an earlier landmark judgment.

Question 2

What judge delivered the single dissenting opinion in the Minerva Mills case of 1980, disagreeing with part of the majority's reasoning even while still agreeing that Parliament's amending power could not be made unlimited? This judge later became a well known Chief Justice.

Question 3

What specific matter, concerning how many seats each State actually holds inside Parliament, is also named in the proviso to Article 368 as requiring State ratification if changed? This matter directly affects every State's national voice.

Question 4

How many judges sat together on the Supreme Court bench that decided the Minerva Mills case in 1980, a notably smaller bench than the one that had earlier decided Kesavananda Bharati? This smaller bench still delivered a hugely significant ruling.

Question 5

What did the Supreme Court actually do to these two controversial new clauses added to Article 368 by the 42nd Amendment, in its final ruling in the Minerva Mills case? This outcome directly protected judicial review itself.

Question 6

What did the Supreme Court decide regarding the 24th Amendment, one of the three amendments directly challenged within the Kesavananda Bharati case itself? This decision confirmed the amendment's continued validity.

Question 7

What specific Directive Principles did the newly inserted Article 31C originally protect, in its narrower, first version created by the 25th Amendment of 1971? This narrow original scope was later expanded, and then restored.

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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.