Shankari Prasad v. Union of India (1951)

Shankari Prasad Singh Deo v. Union of India, decided by the Supreme Court of India on 5 October 1951 and reported as AIR 1951 SC 458, was the first constitutional challenge to Parliament's power to amend the fundamental rights guaranteed in Part III of the Constitution. The case arose directly from the Constitution (First Amendment) Act, 1951, which had been enacted by the Provisional Parliament on 18 June 1951 to insert Articles 31A and 31B and the Ninth Schedule, principally to immunise zamindari abolition and land-reform legislation in States such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh from judicial attack under Articles 14, 19, and 31. Several affected landholders petitioned under Article 32, contending that the amendment abridged their fundamental right to property under Article 31 and was therefore void. A five-judge Constitution Bench headed by Chief Justice Harilal Kania, with Justices Patanjali Sastri, B.K. Mukherjea, Sudhi Ranjan Das, and Vivian Bose, heard the matter.

The pivotal legal question was the interaction between Article 13(2) and Article 368. Article 13(2) declares that the State "shall not make any law which takes away or abridges the rights conferred by this Part," and that any such law shall be void to the extent of the contravention. The petitioners argued that a constitutional amendment enacted under Article 368 was a "law" within the meaning of Article 13(2), and consequently that any amendment abridging a fundamental right was itself void. They further contended that the amendment was procedurally defective and that it encroached on subjects within the judiciary's domain. The respondent Union countered that constitutional amendments are an exercise of constituent power, qualitatively distinct from ordinary legislative power, and therefore fall outside the prohibition of Article 13(2).

The Court unanimously rejected the petitioners' submissions. Speaking through Justice Patanjali Sastri, the Bench drew a sharp distinction between constituent power and ordinary legislative power. It held that the term "law" in Article 13(2) refers to ordinary legislation made in exercise of legislative power, not to constitutional amendments made in exercise of the constituent power conferred by Article 368. On this reasoning, Parliament was competent to amend any provision of the Constitution, including the fundamental rights in Part III, and Article 13(2) imposed no fetter on that power. The Court also dismissed the procedural objections, holding that the Provisional Parliament was competent to enact the First Amendment and that ratification by State legislatures was not required because property and the rights in question did not fall within the proviso to Article 368 demanding such ratification.

The doctrine of Shankari Prasad was reaffirmed and elaborated over the following decades. In Sajjan Singh v. State of Rajasthan (1965), a five-judge Bench upheld the Constitution (Seventeenth Amendment) Act, 1964, by a 3–2 majority, with Justices Hidayatullah and Mudholkar expressing doubts that foreshadowed later jurisprudence. The position was then reversed in I.C. Golak Nath v. State of Punjab (1967), where an eleven-judge Bench held by 6–5 that Parliament could not abridge fundamental rights at all, treating amendments as "law" under Article 13. Parliament responded with the Constitution (Twenty-fourth Amendment) Act, 1971, which amended Articles 13 and 368 to make explicit that nothing in Article 13 applies to amendments under Article 368. The entire controversy culminated in Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala (1973), in which a thirteen-judge Bench overruled Golak Nath, restored the broad amending power affirmed in Shankari Prasad, but subjected it to the basic structure doctrine.

Shankari Prasad must be distinguished from the basic structure doctrine that succeeded it. Shankari Prasad established only that fundamental rights are amendable; it did not address whether there exists any implied limitation on the amending power. The basic structure doctrine, articulated in Kesavananda Bharati, accepts that amendments are not "law" under Article 13 yet holds that Article 368 does not permit the destruction of the Constitution's essential features. The case is also distinct from challenges to ordinary statutes under Article 13(1) and (2), which remain fully justiciable. Aspirants must not conflate the procedural amending power under Article 368 with the substantive limits later read into it.

The decision attracted enduring criticism for facilitating the insertion of the Ninth Schedule, which Parliament subsequently expanded to shield laws of dubious constitutional pedigree from review. In I.R. Coelho v. State of Tamil Nadu (2007), a nine-judge Bench held that laws placed in the Ninth Schedule after 24 April 1973—the date of the Kesavananda judgment—are open to judicial review if they violate the basic structure, thereby qualifying the absolute immunity that Shankari Prasad had appeared to bless. The case thus stands as the foundational point of a constitutional dialogue between Parliament and the judiciary that continues to define Indian constitutionalism.

For the civil-services aspirant and the working analyst, Shankari Prasad is indispensable as the origin of the amendability debate that runs through GS Paper II polity. It anchors a chronological chain—Shankari Prasad (1951), Sajjan Singh (1965), Golak Nath (1967), the Twenty-fourth Amendment (1971), Kesavananda Bharati (1973), and I.R. Coelho (2007)—that examiners repeatedly test through both prelims factual questions and mains analytical prompts. Understanding why the Court separated constituent from legislative power clarifies the doctrinal foundation on which the modern equilibrium between parliamentary sovereignty and judicial review ultimately rests.