Golak Nath

I.C. Golak Nath & Ors. v. State of Punjab (AIR 1967 SC 1643) was an eleven-judge bench decision of the Supreme Court of India, delivered on 27 February 1967 by a 6:5 majority under Chief Justice K. Subba Rao. The petitioners, the Golak Nath family of Jalandhar, challenged the Punjab Security of Land Tenures Act, 1953, which had been placed in the Ninth Schedule by the Seventeenth Amendment, arguing it violated their fundamental rights to property (Article 19(1)(f) and Article 31, then in force) and equality (Article 14). The central constitutional question was whether Parliament's amending power under Article 368 extended to abridging or taking away the fundamental rights guaranteed in Part III of the Constitution.

The majority, speaking through Subba Rao C.J., overruled the earlier rulings in Shankari Prasad v. Union of India (1951) and Sajjan Singh v. State of Rajasthan (1965), which had upheld Parliament's power to amend fundamental rights. The Court held that a constitutional amendment under Article 368 was "law" within the meaning of Article 13(2), and therefore could not abridge fundamental rights; Article 368 merely laid down the procedure for amendment and did not itself confer the power to amend. To avoid administrative chaos from invalidating past amendments (notably the First and Seventeenth), the Court invoked the American doctrine of prospective overruling—introduced into Indian jurisprudence for the first time—ruling that its decision would apply only to future amendments, leaving the impugned amendments intact for the past.

The Golak Nath ruling provoked a direct legislative response. Parliament enacted the Twenty-fourth Amendment, 1971, which amended both Article 13 and Article 368 to expressly declare that Parliament could amend any provision, including Part III, and that such amendments were not "law" under Article 13. This conflict was finally resolved in Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala (1973), where a thirteen-judge bench overruled Golak Nath, upholding Parliament's power to amend fundamental rights but simultaneously propounding the Basic Structure Doctrine—holding that Parliament cannot alter the essential framework of the Constitution. Golak Nath thus stands as the pivotal precursor that forced the judiciary to evolve the basic-structure check, marking the transition from absolute rights-protection to a calibrated limitation on amending power.

For the UPSC examination, Golak Nath is a recurring high-yield topic in the Indian Polity and Governance segment of General Studies Paper II (Mains) and frequently appears in Prelims multiple-choice questions on constitutional amendments and judicial review. Aspirants must master the precise chronology—Shankari Prasad (1951) → Sajjan Singh (1965) → Golak Nath (1967) → 24th Amendment (1971) → Kesavananda Bharati (1973)—and grasp the conceptual core: the relationship between Article 13, Article 368, and the doctrine of prospective overruling. Questions typically test which case introduced prospective overruling, what Golak Nath held about fundamental rights, and how it was subsequently overturned, making conceptual and chronological accuracy essential for scoring.