Could the Preamble have been amended without changing its date of adoption, asks Supreme Court
The Hindu
A Bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Justice Sanjiv Khanna hears a petition filed by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy seeking to delete the words ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’ from the Preamble
The Supreme Court on Friday asked if the Preamble of the Constitution could have been amended without changing the date of its adoption on November 26, 1949.
The Preamble was amended only once in December 1976 by the Indira Gandhi government to introduce the words ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’.
The phrase “unity of the nation” was replaced with “unity and integrity of the nation”.
The changes were made in the Preamble through the 42nd Constitutional Amendment during the Emergency.
Originally, the text of the Preamble declared India as a ‘sovereign, democratic republic’. The words ‘socialist’, ‘secular’ were inserted between ‘sovereign’ and ‘democratic’.
“From an academic point of view, could the Preamble have been changed by keeping the date intact?” Justice Dipankar Datta, sharing a Bench with Justice Sanjiv Khanna, asked.
The Bench was hearing a petition filed by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy to delete the words socialist and secular from the Preamble.