The Supreme Court on Friday asked if the Preamble of the Constitution could have been amended without changing the date of its adoption on November 26, 1949.
The Preamble was amended only once in December 1976 by the Indira Gandhi government to introduce the words ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’.
The phrase “unity of the nation” was replaced with “unity and integrity of the nation”.
The changes were made in the Preamble through the 42nd Constitutional Amendment during the Emergency.
Originally, the text of the Preamble declared India as a ‘sovereign, democratic republic’. The words ‘socialist’, ‘secular’ were inserted between ‘sovereign’ and ‘democratic’.
“From an academic point of view, could the Preamble have been changed by keeping the date intact?” Justice Dipankar Datta, sharing a Bench with Justice Sanjiv Khanna, asked.
The Bench was hearing a petition filed by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy to delete the words socialist and secular from the Preamble.
“Originally these two words [socialist and secular] were not there… This is the only Preamble that I have seen that comes with a date… The text says ‘in our Constituent Assembly this 26th day of November, 1949, do hereby adopt, enact, and give to ourselves this Constitution’,” Justice Datta said.
Justice Datta said “it was not that the Preamble could not have been amended”, but could it have been done without changing the date. In fact, the largest Bench in the history of the Supreme Court (13 judges) in the Kesavananda Bharati case had held that the Preamble was an integral part of the Constitution and was subject to the amending power of the Parliament, provided the basic structure was not tinkered with.
Advocate Vishnu Jain said the Preamble “did come with a date. Therefore, amending it without any debate” had been suspect.
Dr. Swamy said the amendments were pushed through during the Emergency.
‘Infamous amendment’
Advocate Sriram Parakkat, appearing for Communist Party of India (CPI) leader Binoy Viswam, said the 42nd amendment was indeed “infamous”. It had after all tried to reduce the power of the Supreme Court and High Courts.
“While subsequent amendments more or less restored the Constitution to what it was pre-1976, this change made in the Preamble… that we are secular and socialist… was retained,” Mr. Parakkat submitted in court.
The court agreed to hear further arguments in the week commencing April 29, 2024.
