Parts of the Indian Constitution: I to XXII

The Constitution of India is not a single running text but a document divided into Parts, each Part holding the articles on one subject. An examiner can therefore ask the whole chapter in one line: which Part deals with Citizenship, which Part holds the Emergency provisions, which Part was repealed. Learning the Part numbers with their article ranges turns a large book into a table of about twenty-five rows, and that table alone answers a question or two in every SSC, Railway, Banking, Defence, Teaching and State examination paper. This note sets out the Parts in order, the subject of each, the articles it covers and the amendment that brought it in.

How the Constitution is arranged

The Constitution as adopted on 26 November 1949 had a Preamble, 22 Parts, 395 Articles and 8 Schedules. Amendments have since inserted four Parts and repealed one, so the document today has 25 Parts, more than 470 Articles and 12 Schedules. The article numbers were never renumbered: an article added later carries a letter with its number, such as Article 51A for Fundamental Duties or Article 300A for the right to property, and a whole Part added later carries a letter too, such as Part IX-A for the Municipalities. This is why the highest article number is still 395 although the Constitution now has far more articles than that. Parts are numbered in Roman numerals, and a long Part is further divided into Chapters: Part V, for instance, has separate Chapters for the Executive, Parliament and the Union Judiciary.

Parts I to XIV-A with their articles

Parts XV to XXII with their articles

The Parts added by amendment and the Part repealed

• Part IV-A, Fundamental Duties, and Part XIV-A, Tribunals, were both inserted by the Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976, on the recommendation of the Swaran Singh Committee for the duties.
• Part IX, the Panchayats, was inserted by the Seventy-third Amendment Act, 1992, and Part IX-A, the Municipalities, by the Seventy-fourth Amendment Act, 1992. Part IX earlier carried the heading on the territories in Part D of the First Schedule and had been repealed.
• Part IX-B, the Co-operative Societies, was inserted by the Ninety-seventh Amendment Act, 2011, which came into force on 15 February 2012.
• Part VII, which contained Article 238 on the administration of the States in Part B of the First Schedule, was repealed by the Seventh Amendment Act, 1956, when the classification of States into Parts A, B, C and D was abolished after the States Reorganisation Act.

Reading the Parts as a map of the Constitution

Read in order, the Parts tell the story of a federal republic. Parts I and II settle the territory and who belongs to it; Parts III, IV and IV-A set out rights, goals and duties; Parts V to VIII build the governments at the Centre, in the States and in the Union Territories; Parts IX to IX-B carry the government down to the village and the town; Parts X to XIV divide powers, money, trade and services between the two levels; Parts XV to XVIII cover the machinery of elections, protective provisions, language and the three Emergencies; and Parts XIX to XXII close the document with miscellaneous provisions, the amending power, transitional arrangements and the repeals. Part XXI is worth a second look because it carries the articles that gave special provisions to several States, including Article 371A for Nagaland and Article 371J for the Hyderabad-Karnataka region, as well as Article 370, the provisions of which relating to Jammu and Kashmir were made inoperative in August 2019.

Points candidates mix up

• Fundamental Duties are in Part IV-A, not in Part IV, and consist of one article, 51A.
• The Emergency provisions are in Part XVIII, while the amendment procedure stands alone in Part XX.
• Part XII ends at Article 300A, the right to property, which the Forty-fourth Amendment Act, 1978, shifted out of Part III.
• Only one Part, Part VII, has been repealed; Part IX was replaced, not simply deleted.