google.com, pub-1675275063806243, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0 INDIAN POLITY AND INDIAN HISTORY : CRITIVISM OF THE AMENDMENT PROCEDURE

Saturday, 21 February 2015

CRITIVISM OF THE AMENDMENT PROCEDURE

Despite these defects it cannot be denied that the process has proved to be simple and easy and has succeeded in meeting the changed needs and conditions. The procedure is not so flexible as to allow the ruling parties to change it according to their whims. Nor is it so rigid as to be incapable of incapable of adopting itself to the changing needs. It, as rightly said by K C Wherare, ‘strikes a good balance between flexibility and rigidity ‘⁵. 

In this context, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru said in the Constituent Assembly, ‘while we want this Constitution to be as solid and permanent as we can make it, there is no permanence in a Constitution. There should be certain flexibility. If you make any Constitution rigid and permanent, you stop the nation’s growth, the growth of a living vital, organic people’⁶.

Similarly, Dr B R Ambedkar observed in the Constituent Assembly that, ‘The Assembly has not only refrained from putting a seal of finality and infallibility upon this Constitution by denying the people the right to amend the Constitution as in Canada or by making the amendment of the Constitution subject to the fulfillment of extraordinary terms and conditions as in America or Australia, but has provided for a facile procedure for amending the Constitution’⁷.

K C Wheare has admired the variety of amendment procedures contained in the Constitution of India. He said, ‘this variety in the amending process is wise but rarely found’. According to Granville Austin, ‘the amending process has proved itself one of the most ably conceived aspects of the Constitution. Although it appears complicated, it is merely diverse’⁸.

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