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

Question 1

What specific event directly triggered the S.R. Bommai case of 1994, leading to the dismissal of the Karnataka state government under Article 356? This event involved elected legislators switching their political loyalty.

Question 2

What key new rule did the S.R. Bommai case establish, regarding exactly how a State government's majority should properly be tested before it can be dismissed under Article 356? This rule reduced the Governor's own personal discretion.

Question 3

What kind of member of Parliament may actually introduce a Constitutional Amendment Bill, according to Article 368's procedure? This rule does not restrict the privilege only to government ministers.

Question 4

What common description is often used for India's overall amendment procedure under Article 368, comparing it favourably against two very different extremes found in other countries? This description highlights a careful, deliberate balance.

Question 5

What did the 44th Amendment do to the powers of judicial review held by the High Courts and the Supreme Court, directly reversing one of the 42nd Amendment's own earlier restrictions? This restored an important judicial check.

Question 6

What did some judges do in their opinions during the Sajjan Singh case of 1965, even while the majority still upheld the 17th Amendment, following the earlier Shankari Prasad precedent? This showed an early crack in judicial agreement.

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.

📚 All Quizzes

Browse every category and see the full list of quizzes on BriskQuiz

→

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.