Rajinder Sachar, former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, has said that “anybody suggesting that you can take secularism away from the basic feature of the Constitution is committing treason”.
Interacting with the faculty members and students of the Cochin University of Science and Technology here on Monday as part of a lecture on ‘Minority rights in contemporary India’, Mr. Sachar said that this was not acceptable.
“Anybody suggesting that you can take away secularism from the basic feature of the Constitution is committing treason”, he said.
Referring to the media reports that the government was now trying to pacify the anger [over the debate on whether the words ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ should continue to be part of the Preamble],
Mr. Sachar said that “one was horrified at the stupidity, at the shamelessness [of it]; to talk about changing the basic feature of the Constitution”.
Recalling the Supreme Court verdict in the Bommai case, Mr. Sachar said that the Preamble is the basic feature of the Constitution.
“The Supreme Court has said that you can amend any part of the Constitution but you cannot amend what is a basic feature of the Constitution. It says secularism and socialism are basic features of the Constitution,” he said.