Can the Preamble of the Constitution be amended without changing the date? Ask SC

The Supreme Court on Friday questioned whether the preamble of the Constitution can be amended while leaving the November 26, 1949 date of adoption unchanged. The question was asked by former Rajya Sabha member Subramanian Swamy and lawyer Vishnu before a bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta · Proposed by Vishnu Shankar Jain, they sought to remove the words “socialist” and “secular” from the preamble of the Constitution.

“For academic purposes, can the preamble containing the above date be changed without changing the date of adoption? Otherwise, the preamble can be modified. There is no problem,” Justice Datta quoted News agency PTI.

Swamy replied: “That is exactly the question.” Justice Datta further said: “This is probably the only preamble I have ever seen with a date. We had this Constitution submitted to us on such and such a day in such and such a year and initially this The two words (socialist and secular) do not exist.”

Jain said the preamble of the Indian Constitution has a specific date and therefore cannot be changed without discussion.

Swamy intervened and said that the 42nd Amendment was passed during the Emergency (1975-77).

Justice Khanna started by telling Swamy that the judges had received the case file early in the morning and they were yet to review it due to lack of time.

The bench said the matter needed to be discussed in detail and postponed the hearing of both petitions to April 29.

On September 2, 2022, the Supreme Court placed Swamy’s plea for hearing along with other pending matters filed by Balram Singh and others. Both Swamy and Singh sought to remove the words “socialist” and “secular” from the preamble.

Under the 42nd Constitutional Amendment proposed by the Indira Gandhi government in 1976, the words “socialist” and “secular” were inserted into the preamble of the constitution.

The amendment changed the description of India in the preamble from “sovereign, democratic republic” to “sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic”. In his plea, Swamy argued that the preamble cannot be altered, altered or abrogated.

In his plea, he said that the Preamble not only indicates the essential features of the Constitution but also the basic conditions on which the Constitution was adopted to create a unified and comprehensive community.

(Inputs from PTI)