"You Don't Want India To Be Secular?": Supreme Court On Preamble Petitions
NDTV
The Supreme Court was hearing a PIL seeking the removal of the terms "socialist" and "secular" from the Preamble to the Constitution.
The terms "socialist" and "secular" are part of the Constitution's basic structure and the courts have repeatedly emphasised this in multiple judgments, the Supreme Court said today. The court made the remarks while hearing a Public Interest Litigation seeking the removal of the terms from the Preamble to the Constitution. Among the petitioners is BJP leader and former MP Subramanian Swamy.
Arguing before the bench of Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice PV Sanjay Kumar, petitioner and advocate Vishnu Shankar Jain said the 42nd Amendment to the Constitution in 1976, which affected these changes, was never debated in Parliament.
Justice Khanna responded that the matter has been debated at length. "Please see Mr Jain, the words have varied interpretation. Both words have different interpretations today. Even our courts have declared them, time and again, as part of the basic structure (of the Constitution)," he said.
