Validity of law cannot be challenged for violating Basic Structure: Supreme Court

‘The reason is that concepts such as democracy, federalism, and secularism are undefined concepts. Allowing courts to strike down legislation for violation of such concepts will introduce an element of uncertainty in our constitutional adjudication’

The Supreme Court on Tuesday (November 5, 2024) held that the validity of a law cannot be challenged for violating the Basic Structure of the Constitution.

A three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India, while upholding the State’s power to legislate to regulate madrasas, was responding to whether the Basic Structure doctrine can be applied to invalidate an ordinary legislation.

Authoring the judgment, Chief Justice Chandrachud said the Basic Structure doctrine was made up of “undefined concepts” such as democracy, federalism and secularism.

“Allowing courts to strike down legislation for violation of such concepts will introduce an element of uncertainty in our constitutional adjudication,” the Chief Justice reasoned.

The Allahabad High Court finding that the Uttar Pradesh Madrasa Education Board Act, 2004 had disregarded secularism must be traced to specific constitutional provisions dealing with the Basic Structure concept.

“In a challenge to the validity of a statute for violation of the principle of secularism, it must be shown that the statute violates provisions of the Constitution pertaining to secularism,” Chief Justice Chandrachud wrote.

Raj Narain case

Chief Justice Chandrachud quoted the various judges on the Bench in the Indira Nehru GandhiversusRaj Narain case, widely considered as the case which led to the National Emergency in 1975. The top court had used the Basic Structure doctrine, evolved in the 1973 Kesavananda Bharati case, for the first time in the Raj Narain case to strike down a Constitutional Amendment.

The judges on the Raj Narain Bench had differentiated between an ordinary statute and a Constitutional Amendment.

Chief Justice Chandrachud referred to the observation made by the then Chief Justice, A.N. Ray, that applying the Basic Structure doctrine to test the validity of a statute would amount to “rewriting the Constitution”.

Justice K.K. Mathew had also found the Basic Structure concept “too vague and indefinite to provide a yardstick to determine the validity of an ordinary law” while his colleague on the Bench in the 1975 case, Justice Y.V. Chandrachud, had opined that Constitutional Amendments and ordinary laws operate in different fields and were subject to different limitations.

“The majority in Indira Nehru Gandhi versus Raj Narain held that the constitutional validity of a statute cannot be challenged for the violation of the basic structure doctrine,” Chief Justice Chandrachud noted.

Published - November 05, 2024 09:16 pm IST