RAS question
Which Amendment added the Ninth Schedule to protect certain laws from judicial review?
Correct answer: (A) 1st Amendment (1951).
The Constitution (First Amendment) Act, 1951 added the Ninth Schedule to protect specified laws from being invalidated on constitutional grounds.
Explanation
The Ninth Schedule was added by the Constitution (First Amendment) Act, 1951. The official Act inserted Article 31B and then added the Ninth Schedule after the Eighth Schedule. Its protective design was that the Acts and Regulations listed in the Ninth Schedule, or their provisions, would not be treated as void merely because they were inconsistent with protected constitutional rights. That is why the amendment is linked to shielding certain laws from judicial review. The protection was not left unlimited forever: in I.R. Coelho v. State of Tamil Nadu (2007), the Supreme Court held that Ninth Schedule laws added after 24 April 1973 can still be reviewed if they violate the basic structure.
Why the other options are wrong
- (B) The 42nd Amendment made wide constitutional changes in 1976, but it was not the amendment that inserted the Ninth Schedule.
- (C) The 44th Amendment came in 1978 and is associated here with reversing some 42nd Amendment changes, not with creating the Ninth Schedule.
- (D) The 7th Amendment of 1956 dealt with the reorganisation of states, whereas the Ninth Schedule had already been added in 1951.
Concept
This tests constitutional amendments, schedules and judicial review, a recurring RAS theme because land-reform-era protections and the basic-structure limit often appear together in polity questions.