One second, about the matter which we will discuss, first of all, we should know the importance of the matter.

So whenever a student enters law college, his teachers and seniors must tell him about the Kesavananda Bharti case and say have you ever heard about this case.

Which is the longest case in India.

The proceedings of this case lasted for 68 days and more than 100 cases were traversed for this case to understand what is right and what is wrong.

Constitutions of more than 70 countries were compared.

The judgment of this case is 703 pages long, and most importantly this (Kesavananda Bharathi Case Vs State of Kerala) is one of the important cases of our Indian Constitution and we will discuss this case in today’s video.

Kesavananda Bharathi vs. State of Kerala | Most important issue of the Indian constitution

So let’s understand the background of this matter.

After independence, every state was rebuilding its social and economic conditions and after the formation of the constitution, when the citizens got their fundamental rights

Realized that equality is their right.

At that time the system was such that the means and means of production belonged to certain people only.

And gradually they realized that the concentration of wealth is not good at all.

And to change this all the states were ready to make changes in their existing laws and system.

And so the state government of Kerala did the same to rebuild the social and economic status of their state

Like the zamindari system, land ownership, and tenancy law for its reconstruction, he passed the Kerala land reform act in 1963, and now this land reform act banned that. How much land can one have, basically it restricted the property rights of the citizens, so using this act Kerala government acquires the land of Edneer Math in Kasargod district, after this acquisition by the government the Math Income is completely affected.

And they were facing problems to manage the daily affairs of Math. So this land acquisition was challenged by the head of Edneer Math.

The head of Thi Edneer Math was Kesavananda Bharati and the case was represented in the Supreme Court by Nana Bhai Falkiwala.

This land reform act imposed restrictions on the property rights of the citizens, so in March 1970, Kesavanand Bharati opposed and challenged this act.

And filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court saying that this land reform act violates their fundamental rights such as Article 14, Article 19(f) Article 25 and Article 26

His point was to own the land and manage it. The fundamental rights of a citizen and these fundamental rights should be protected.

At that time many such cases were going on in the Supreme Court.

Like Bank Nationalization Case, Madhav Rao Scindia Case, Golaknath Case etc.

In all these cases you will see that the two strongest parties of India were fighting with the powers and these parties.

The Parliament was there and the Supreme Court was, on the one hand, the Parliament said that through Article 368 they have the power to amend the constitution as per their wish and they have unlimited powers.

But the Supreme Court did not agree with this statement of the Parliament.

The case of Golaknath v. State of Punjab in which an 11-judge bench of the Supreme Court was constituted.

And when he was faced with the question that if the Parliament has such vast powers to amend the constitution and change the fundamental rights as per its wish.

Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala | Most important case of the Indian Constitution

So this question was answered in this case by the Supreme Court and they put several restrictions on the powers of the Parliament to amend the Constitution.

After that, the Parliament introduced the 24th, 25th and 29th Amendment Acts to lift the restrictions on them and they can regain their powers.

So let us now understand these 3 amendments as well.

, The 24th Amendment Act gives the Parliament the power to amend Fundamental Rights.

And it says that the Parliament has the power to amend any of the provisions. The 25th Amendment Act of the Constitution said that curtailment of the property right.

There can be restrictions on the property right.

And the government can acquire private property for public use.

And the compensation for this will be decided by the Parliament and not by the court. Next is the 29th Amendment Act, this amendment put the Land Reforms Act under the 9th Schedule. What is special about the 9th Schedule?

Laws that come under the 9th Schedule cannot be questioned.

Laws cannot be reviewed in court, so the Land Reforms Act was placed under the 9th Schedule, so along with the Land Reforms Act, those 3 constitutional amendments were challenged in the Kesavananda Bharti case, so basically From this case, many questions were raised.

But the main question, in this case, was – can the Parliament amend the fundamental rights?

And second, if the answer to the first question is “yes”, what powers will the Parliament have?

And which provisions of the constitution the parliament can amend.

These were the 2 main questions of this case, let us discuss the arguments of both the petitioner and the respondent side one by one, in this case, first of all, we will discuss the arguments of the petitioner side then the first point of the petitioner was that, para 368 of the Constitution which gives the Parliament the power to amend is not an absolute power this power is limited

Therefore, the Parliament cannot change the provisions as per its wish as this power is limited and restrictive.

His second point was that the rights given in the constitution are meant to protect the liberty of the citizen.

such as art. 19(1)(f) which says about the property right.

Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala | Most important case of the Indian Constitution

But the petitioner contended that the 24th and 25th Amendment Acts were inserted by Article 31 which puts restrictions on the fundamental rights of the citizen which it curtails.

Which is wrong.

The respondents said that the Parliament has unlimited and absolute powers to amend the constitution, according to them every state has to improve its social and economic condition, so in such a situation no restriction should be imposed on the power of the Parliament.

Because if their power gets restricted then they will never be able to meet the needs of society from time to time.

According to the defendants, the Parliament has powers to impose restrictions on certain fundamental rights such as freedom of speech and expression, the right to form an association, and freedom of religion.

Do you know that in this case now the largest bench of 13 judges of the Supreme Court was constituted? In this case then let’s look at the decisions of this case also, so the decision of this case came with a majority ratio of 7:6,

Wherein the previous case of Golaknath v. State of Punjab it was said that Parliament cannot amend. Fundamental Rights This judgment was said to be wrong and was set aside.

And with this, the 24th Amendment Act was challenged in which the Act says that the Parliament can amend any provision of the constitution which it was told to be valid.

And the Supreme Court also said that under Article 368 the Parliament has full power to amend any provision of the Constitution.

But all this answers the first question.

Now we will take care of the second question which asks the question, Parliament has the right to do what area?

So the Supreme Court answered this question entirely and said that the Parliament has the power to amend any provision of the Constitution.

But they can exercise their amendment powers only to the extent that they cannot interfere with basic and essential facilities.

And this is called the basic structure theory.

And with this, the 25th and 29th Amendment Acts were also declared valid in this case and also said that if there are any laws which have been placed under Schedule 9, but if they violate the basic features of the Constitution If violated, those laws can be judicially reviewed and challenged in court, hence this landmark judgment on 24 April 1973 introduced the Basic Structure Doctrine, no detailed list was given in this case that these are some of the features only the core elements should have

Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala | Most important case of the Indian Constitution

But an indicative list was given that these features would qualify for core elements and it was also said that many more features could be added to this list in future.

But whether any element is an essential element and whether any feature is a fundamental feature or not will be decided by the court on a case-to-case basis.

This case is so important because in this case the Supreme Court used its creativity and introduced a new principle “Doctrine of Basic Structure”, through this they gave unlimited and absolute powers to the Parliament on one hand, but on the other hand, they said that Parliament cannot interfere in infrastructure.

Also Features This one case protects India’s democracy for years to come So this was today’s video between Kesavananda Bharti Vs.