Forty-second Amendment of the Constitution of India

The amendment's fifty-nine clauses stripped the Supreme Court of many of its powers and moved the political system toward parliamentary sovereignty.

It curtailed democratic rights in the country, and gave sweeping powers to the Prime Minister's Office.

The clampdown on civil liberties and widespread abuse of human rights by police angered the public.

The Janata Party which had promised to "restore the Constitution to the condition it was in before the Emergency", won the 1977 general elections.

On 31 July 1980, in its judgement on Minerva Mills v. Union of India, the Supreme Court declared two provisions of the 42nd Amendment as unconstitutional which prevent any constitutional amendment from being "called in question in any Court on any ground" and accord precedence to the Directive Principles of State Policy over the Fundamental Rights of individuals respectively.

[6] In a speech in the Lok Sabha on 27 October 1976, Gandhi claimed that the amendment "is responsive to the aspirations of the people, and reflects the realities of the present time and the future".

[5] The bill, after ratification by the States, received assent from then President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed on 18 December 1976, and was notified in The Gazette of India on the same date.

[4][11] The fourth purpose was to make any law passed in pursuance of a Directive Principle immune from scrutiny by the Supreme Court.

[5] The amendment's fifty-nine clauses stripped the Supreme Court of many of its powers and moved the political system toward parliamentary sovereignty.

[18] Article 74 was amended and it was explicitly stipulated that "the President shall act in accordance with the advice of the Council of Ministers".

The interval at which a proclamation of Emergency under Article 356 required approval from Parliament was extended from six months to one year.

"[18][15] The 42nd Amendment granted power to the President, in consultation with the Election Commission, to disqualify members of State Legislatures.

The 44th Amendment repealed this change, shortening the term of the aforementioned assemblies back to the original 5 years.

Shah proposed an amendment seeking to declare India as a "Secular, Federal, Socialist nation".

What should be the policy of the State, how the Society should be organised in its social and economic side are matters which must be decided by the people themselves according to time and circumstances.

Encouraged by these positive signs and distorted and biased information from her party supporters, Gandhi called for elections in May 1977.

The 42nd Amendment was widely criticised, and the clampdown on civil liberties and widespread abuse of human rights by police angered the public.

The constitutionality of sections 4 and 55 of the 42nd Amendment were challenged in Minerva Mills v. Union of India, when Charan Singh was the caretaker Prime Minister.

[16][23] In the judgement on Section 4, Chief Justice Yeshwant Vishnu Chandrachud wrote: Three Articles of our Constitution, and only three, stand between the heaven of freedom into which Tagore wanted his country to awake and the abyss of unrestrained power.

Article 31C has removed two sides of that golden triangle which affords to the people of this country an assurance that the promise held forth by the preamble will be performed by ushering an egalitarian era through the discipline of fundamental rights, that is, without emasculation of the rights to liberty and equality which alone can help preserve the dignity of the individual.

In other words, Parliament can not, under Article 368, expand its amending power so as to acquire for itself the right to repeal or abrogate the Constitution or to destroy its basic and essential features.

[10] The Supreme Court's position on constitutional amendments laid out in its judgements in Golak Nath v. State of Punjab, Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala and the Minerva Mills case, is that Parliament can amend the Constitution but cannot destroy its "basic structure".

[16][18] On 8 January 2008, a petition, filed by Sanjiv Agarwal of the NGO Good Governance India Foundation, challenged the validity of Section 2 of the 42nd Amendment, which inserted the word "socialist" in the Preamble to the Constitution.

[25] In its first hearing of the case, Chief Justice K. G. Balakrishnan, who headed the three-judge bench, observed, "Why do you take socialism in a narrow sense defined by communists?

In October–November 1976, an effort was made to change the basic civil libertarian structure of the Indian Constitution through the 42nd amendment to it.

The most important changes were designed to strengthen the executive at the cost of the judiciary, and thus disturb the carefully crafted system of Constitutional checks and balance between the three organs of the government.