Backdoor amendments are disapproved by the Article 370 judgement

In order to clarify that the “Constituent Assembly” of J&K would now refer to the “Legislative Assembly” under Article 370, Parliament introduced a new clause under Article 367.An important lesson from the Constitution bench verdict on the abrogation of Article 370 was the Supreme Court’s disapproval of the Center’s method of amending Article 370 by using an interpretation clause in another article of the Constitution. This could discourage governments from introducing a back-door amendment.The five-judge bench unanimously decided that the constitutional order that changed Article 370 by changing Article 367 was extra vires because it changed Article 370 using an interpretation clause rather than following the process laid out in the Constitution.

“Although the ‘interpretation’ clause can be employed to explain or define certain phrases, it cannot be used to change a provision without following the prescribed method. The bench, which included Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Sanjiv Khanna, Bhushan R. Gavai, and Surya Kant, as well as Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud, decided that this would negate the point of having an amendment procedure.In order to clarify that the “Constituent Assembly” of J&K would now refer to the “Legislative Assembly” of J&K under Article 370, Parliament introduced a new clause under Article 367.

The bench agreed with the petitioners that the presidential order to make significant amendments to the Constitution cannot be issued under Article 367, which deals with interpretation of the document, due to its inherent limitations. Instead, the procedure outlined in Article 368 or under subclauses of Article 370 for amending Article 370, must be followed.”Permitting changes through a convoluted process would have terrible consequences. Numerous clauses in the Constitution could be changed to circumvent the process outlined in Article 368 or other clauses. The judgement written by the Chief Justice of India (CJI) on behalf of Justices Gavai and Kant held that amendments cannot be implemented by circumventing a process that has been established for that reason.