Important Constitutional Amendments: List, Years and PYQs

A constitution that cannot be changed becomes a museum piece, and one that can be changed too easily stops being a constitution. The framers of the Indian Constitution chose a middle path: Article 368 in Part XX allows Parliament to amend the Constitution, but the majority required depends on what is being amended, and the basic structure of the Constitution cannot be destroyed. More than a hundred amendment Acts have been passed since 1950, and a handful of them are asked in almost every General Knowledge paper because each one changed something a student can see: the right to property disappeared, the voting age fell to eighteen, village panchayats became constitutional bodies, and a single tax replaced a forest of State levies.

How the Constitution is amended

An amendment Bill can be introduced in either House of Parliament, by a minister or a private member, and it needs no prior permission from the President. There is no provision for a joint sitting if the two Houses disagree, so each House must pass the Bill separately. Three kinds of majority appear in practice. A few provisions, such as the creation of new States or the change of State names and boundaries under Articles 3 and 4, are altered by a simple majority and are technically outside Article 368. Most provisions need a special majority: a majority of the total membership of each House and two-thirds of the members present and voting. Provisions that touch the federal balance, such as the election of the President, the distribution of legislative powers, the Supreme Court and the High Courts, the representation of States in Parliament and Article 368 itself, need that special majority plus ratification by the legislatures of at least half the States. The President must give assent to a Constitution Amendment Bill; he can neither withhold it nor return it, a duty made explicit by the 24th Amendment of 1971.

The amendments that redrew the map

The 7th Amendment of 1956 carried out the States Reorganisation Act, abolished the fourfold classification of Part A, B, C and D States and created the categories of States and Union Territories that are used today. The 36th Amendment of 1975 made Sikkim a full State of the Union. The 69th Amendment of 1991 gave Delhi the name National Capital Territory of Delhi with a Legislative Assembly and a Council of Ministers. The 100th Amendment of 2015 gave effect to the land boundary agreement with Bangladesh by exchanging enclaves and adjusting the territories of four States.

The amendments asked most often

The 42nd and the 44th Amendments

The 42nd Amendment of 1976, passed during the Emergency, is called the Mini-Constitution because it altered the Preamble, the Directive Principles, the Fundamental Duties, the emergency provisions and the powers of the courts in one sweep. It inserted the words socialist, secular and integrity into the Preamble, added Part IVA with ten Fundamental Duties on the recommendation of the Swaran Singh Committee, moved education, forests, weights and measures, protection of wild animals and birds and the administration of justice from the State List to the Concurrent List, and extended the term of the Lok Sabha and the State Assemblies to six years. The 44th Amendment of 1978 reversed much of this: the term went back to five years, the right to property was taken out of Part III and placed in Article 300A as an ordinary legal right, the words armed rebellion replaced internal disturbance as a ground for National Emergency, and the Cabinet was required to advise the President in writing before such a proclamation.

Amendments of the 2000s

The 91st Amendment of 2003 capped the Council of Ministers at fifteen per cent of the strength of the House and disqualified a defector from holding office as a minister. The 97th Amendment gave co-operative societies constitutional protection by adding Part IXB and Article 43B. The 101st Amendment of 2016 brought in the Goods and Services Tax, inserted Article 246A and created the GST Council under Article 279A. The 102nd Amendment of 2018 gave constitutional status to the National Commission for Backward Classes through Article 338B, and the 105th Amendment restored the power of the States to prepare their own lists of socially and educationally backward classes. The 103rd Amendment of 2019 provided ten per cent reservation for the economically weaker sections in education and public employment. The 104th Amendment of 2020 extended the reservation of seats for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the Lok Sabha and the State Assemblies and ended the nomination of Anglo-Indian members. The 106th Amendment of 2023, the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, reserved one-third of the seats in the Lok Sabha, the State Assemblies and the Delhi Assembly for women.