Sajjan Singh v. State of Rajasthan (1965)

Sajjan Singh v. State of Rajasthan (AIR 1965 SC 845) is a five-judge Constitution Bench decision of the Supreme Court of India delivered on 30 October 1964 that examined whether Parliament's amending power under Article 368 extends to the fundamental rights guaranteed in Part III of the Constitution. The immediate trigger was the Constitution (Seventeenth Amendment) Act, 1964, which inserted additional state land-reform statutes into the Ninth Schedule, thereby insulating them from judicial review under Article 31B. The petitioners, landholders affected by Rajasthan tenancy and land-ceiling legislation, contended that the amendment abridged their fundamental rights to property under Articles 19(1)(f) and 31, then guaranteed in Part III. The case directly revisited the question first settled in Shankari Prasad v. Union of India (1951), in which the Court had held that the word "law" in Article 13(2) does not include a constitutional amendment passed under Article 368.

The procedural posture turned on a specific textual argument. The petitioners argued that the Seventeenth Amendment, in addition to adding entries to the Ninth Schedule, altered the scope of judicial powers because it affected the jurisdiction of the High Courts under Articles 226 and 227. If so, the amendment fell within the proviso to Article 368, which requires that amendments touching the enumerated entrenched provisions — including the powers of the High Courts and the distribution of legislative powers — secure ratification by the legislatures of not less than one-half of the States, in addition to the special majority in Parliament. The Court was therefore asked to decide two linked questions: first, whether the impugned amendment required State ratification under the proviso; and second, the broader constitutional question of whether a constitutional amendment is "law" for the purposes of Article 13(2) and thus voidable if it abridges fundamental rights.

The majority, in an opinion authored by Chief Justice P. B. Gajendragadkar for himself, Justices K. N. Wanchoo and Raghubar Dayal, held that the Seventeenth Amendment did not directly affect the powers of the High Courts and therefore did not attract the ratification proviso; the effect on Article 226 jurisdiction was incidental and consequential rather than direct. On the larger question, the majority reaffirmed Shankari Prasad, holding that the power conferred by Article 368 is plenary and includes the power to amend fundamental rights, and that a constitutional amendment is an exercise of constituent power distinct from ordinary legislative power, hence outside the reach of Article 13(2). The majority expressly declined to read any implied limitation restricting Parliament's competence to alter Part III.

The decision is most significant for the doubts expressed in the concurring opinions. Justice M. Hidayatullah, while concurring in the result, questioned whether fundamental rights were intended to be "the plaything of a special majority" and signalled reluctance to treat Part III as freely amendable. Justice J. R. Mudholkar's concurrence is the more consequential: he raised, for the first time at the level of the apex court, whether the Constitution possesses certain basic features that lie beyond the amending power, invoking the distinction between amending the Constitution and altering its fundamental character. These reservations, voiced from the Bench in 1964, planted the intellectual seeds that would germinate in subsequent litigation in New Delhi over the following decade.

Sajjan Singh must be distinguished from the cases that bracket it. It is a direct successor to Shankari Prasad (1951), which it followed, and a precursor to I. C. Golak Nath v. State of Punjab (1967), which overruled both by an eleven-judge bench, holding by a 6–5 majority that Parliament could not abridge or take away fundamental rights through a constitutional amendment. Golak Nath was in turn overruled on this point by Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala (1973), which restored Parliament's power to amend Part III but subjected it to the basic structure doctrine — the very concern Justice Mudholkar had foreshadowed. Sajjan Singh thus occupies the middle position in the trilogy that defines the early evolution of Indian amendment jurisprudence, distinct from the later Article 31C cases such as Minerva Mills (1980).

The principal controversy surrounding the case concerns its analytical fragility: although the majority reached the same conclusion as Shankari Prasad, the unanimity of 1951 had dissolved by 1964, exposing a deep judicial unease about an unlimited amending power capable of eviscerating the rights chapter. The case also illustrates the recurring tension between agrarian reform — a central plank of post-independence economic policy — and the property guarantees of the original Constitution, a tension Parliament resolved through successive constitutional amendments and the expanding Ninth Schedule until I. R. Coelho v. State of Tamil Nadu (2007) subjected even Ninth Schedule entries to basic-structure review.

For the working practitioner, civil-services aspirant, and constitutional researcher, Sajjan Singh is a fixed point in the General Studies Paper II polity syllabus and in any account of the amendment power. It demonstrates that doctrine evolves through dissent and concurrence as much as through holdings, and that the basic structure doctrine — now the bedrock constraint on Indian constitutional amendment — emerged not fully formed in Kesavananda but incrementally, with Sajjan Singh marking the moment when judicial doubt about absolute parliamentary supremacy over fundamental rights first entered the official record.