5 (c) ‘Article 368 does not enable Parliament to alter the basic structure or framework of the Constitution’.

Article 368 of the Indian constitution provides for the amenability of constitution. The constitutional validity of the 1st Constitutional Amendment Act, 1951which curtailed Right to Property was challenged in Shankri Prasad case 1951.( The constitution had initially provided Right To Property as a fundamental right. The government could not bring in land reforms.) The court distinguished between constitution power and legislative power of parliament.

It held that an amendment introduced under Article 368 does not come under the scope of word ‘law’ in Article 13. It expressed the view that an amendment under Article 368 was the utilization of the constituent power of parliament.

However, in the Golak Nath case 1967, the court held that the fundamental rights were sacrosanct and the parliament had no power to amend them. The parliament responded by enacting the 24th Constitutional Amendment Act. It amended Article 13 and Article 368 and provided for parliament the power to abridge or take away any of the fundamental rights.

The Supreme Court Kesvananda Bharati case 24th April 1973 reversed it’s stand Golak  Nath verdict but held that the power of the parliament to amend the constitution was not unlimited. It concluded that the constitution could be amended by the parliament, provided that the basic structure (or basic feature) was not altered.

The court did not define what the basic feature is, but judicial pronouncements have brought our some of elements of basic structure. They are secularism, distribution of powers, judicial review, rule of law, supremacy of constitution and so on. The parliament reacted to the Kesvananda Bharati judgment by enacting the 42nd Constitutional Amendment Act 1976. It declared that there were no limitation on the parliament and it was free to amend any part of the constitution including fundamental rights.

The court struck down this provision and upheld the basic structure doctrine in the Minerva Mills case, 1980. The judiciary held that by the exercise of the limited amending power conferred upon the parliament, it could not convert it into the absolute power. Again in Woman Rao case, 1981 the court clarified that the basic structure doctrine would apply to amendments after Kesvananda Bharati verdict.

Thus the judicial innovation of basic structure has placed effective restrictions on the parliament to amend the constitution.