KESAVANANDA BHARATI VS STATE OF KERALA CASE

“ This case is famous for the victory of Indian

Constitution, and is remarkable for the fight between the
Parliament and Judiciary ”

This was a landmark judgment that was delivered by a 13 bench judgement of

the Supreme Court and by a majority of 7 by 6, 7 major and 6 minor judges.
This Judgement has changed the democracy of India.

Before getting into the case let's study the background in the constitution of
India which was framed on 26 January 1950. Article 368 stated that the
Parliament will be given certain power of amendment. We borrowed this
Article from the South African constitution.

After Article 368 was created a very big question around the amending powers
that the Parliament has, are those powers power unlimited?
This issue to judgement aroused:-
● IC Golaknath vs State of Punjab, 1967
It was an 11 bench judgement
The Supreme Court pointed out that Article 13(2) states that no law of
the state can violate any Fundamental Rights of any person in India,
thus it was held that the Parliament DOES NOT have the right to amend
Fundamental Rights under Part III Of the Constitution.
● RC Cooper vs Union of India, 1970
This was also 11 bench judgement
Pincode pointed out that if the government acquires any private
property the owner has a right to seek compensation, anyone can move
to the court if his or her fundamental rights are violated or adequate
compensation is not sought.

After this judgment, the government brought two amendments: the 24th
amendment and the second was the 25th amendment of the constitution.
The 24th amendment was created to dilute the Golaknath judgement and it
stated that

the Parliament has unlimited powers to amend any part of the

Constitution, including fundamental rights.
it further stated that the president will be under an obligation to provide filled
Ascend to the constitutional bill

25th amendment was created to dilute or seek judgement and its stated that

The Parliament has the right to decide the compensation to be given

when the government acquires any land.
if the state acquires any property of any person the state of the Parliament
will decide the compensation and the court cannot intervene

THUS THEY REMOVED THE RIGHT TO PROPERTY FROM THE

FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT

These two 11 bench judgements were very important but they were removed
from the amendment Why the powers of the government were reduced.
So in 1973, there was the chief priest of a temple in Kerala, this priest was
called Kesavananda Bharati, they used to run a religious mutt. There was a
Kerala Land Reforms Act, introduced in 1969. Under this Act, a little piece of
land of the mutt belonging to this Priest, which he used to own, was taken
away by the Government.

Now this Priest thought that this was a violation under the Fundamental
Rights, as we are given any right to acquire property under article 19, and the
right to freedom under articles 25 and 26.
These rights were violated so he moved to the supreme court. This became
fairly insured in the Supreme court as it had already passed the judgement of
the 11 charge bank in which Parliament had died by passing amendments -
the 24th and 25th amendments.

So for this case, the supreme court sat down a 13 bench statement as 11
judges benchement had already happened and this 13 bench judgement will
have an overriding effect of those judgements as well as amendments which
had come in the Parliament.
The 13 judge-bench finally decided that whatever was given in the 24th
amendment by the parliament has the right to amend fundamental rights. This
statement is right as long as they do not touch the basic structure of the Indian
Constitution because these are certain points on issues that are very
necessary for the liberty and fundamental rights of people staying in our
country. But the problem around that the supreme court did not define the
basic structures which are now known as the doctrine of basic structure.

The supreme court did not define the basic structure but gave us points on
what can the basic structure be:-
● Rule of law
● independence of judiciary
● The doctrine of separation power
● Federalism
● secularism and many more

These points were kept by Justice HR Khanna, one of the judges of 13 judge
bench.
This basic structure Idea came from Germany as it was a classic example as
World War 2 was going and we noticed that Hitler changed all the laws and
constitutions according to his wills and fancies and this change led to a
massacre of people.

This is the reason for the basic structure of a product in this case which
cannot be amended at all. This becomes important because we have seen
that since 1952-2020 in the entire 70 years in our constitution there have been
more than 100 amendments.

Even today any fundamental right is violated, we still move the supreme court
or High Court in India because we have that power as the government cannot
do any business or fancies on the supreme court can always interfere and
protect the fundamental rights. They should call this statement the Sachin
Tendulkar of Indian judgement because this judgement was announced on
24 April 1973 the same day Sachin Tendulkar was born!