Indian Polity Quiz: Landmark Supreme Court Judgments

The judgment was delivered on 24 April 1973 by a bench of thirteen judges, the largest ever assembled in the Supreme Court, and the majority of seven to six held that Parliament may amend any provision of the Constitution but cannot damage or destroy its basic structure.

Golaknath v State of Punjab. In 1967 an eleven-judge bench held by six votes to five that an amendment of the Constitution is law for the purposes of Article 13, so Parliament could not abridge fundamental rights, and it softened the blow by applying the doctrine of prospective overruling to…

The case arose from the impounding of a passport, and the court held that the procedure by which the state takes away life or personal liberty must be just, fair and reasonable, which read the substance of due process into Article 21 and replaced the narrow view taken in A.K.

That amendment had added clauses to Article 368 declaring that an amendment could not be questioned in any court and that there was no limit on the amending power; the court held those clauses void because judicial review and the balance between fundamental rights and directive principles are part of…

In the case known as the Fourth Judges Case the court held by four to one that the commission would let the executive influence the appointment of judges, that the independence of the judiciary is part of the basic structure, and that the collegium therefore revived.

Decided in 1992 by a nine-judge bench, it upheld reservation in central services for other backward classes, fixed an ordinary ceiling of fifty per cent on total reservation and directed that the better off among the backward classes, the creamy layer, be kept out.

Puttaswamy v Union of India. A bench of nine judges held unanimously in 2017 that the right to privacy is intrinsic to life and personal liberty under Article 21 and to the freedoms guaranteed by Part III, and it overruled the older view taken in the M.P.

In Vishaka v State of Rajasthan the court, acting because there was no statute on the subject, framed binding guidelines for employers, including complaints committees, and these guidelines governed workplaces until Parliament enacted a law on the prevention, prohibition and redressal of such harassment in 2013.

The nine-judge bench held that the proclamation of President's rule in a state is open to judicial review, that the material on which it rests must be relevant, and that the majority of a government must be tested on the floor of the legislative assembly rather than assessed in the…

Decided in 1981, it held that laws placed in the Ninth Schedule before 24 April 1973, the day the Kesavananda Bharati judgment was delivered, stay protected, while those added afterwards can be examined for damage to the basic structure, a position confirmed in I.R.