UPSC Prelims 2018 Question:

Consider the following statements

1. The Parliament of India can place a particular law in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution of India.
2. The validity of a law placed in the Ninth Schedule cannot be examined by any court and no judgement can be made on it.
   
   

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

Explanation:

• The Ninth Schedule contains a list of Central and State laws which cannot be challenged in courts. The Schedule became a part of the Constitution in 1951 when the document was amended for the first time.
  • It was created by the new Article 31B, which along with 31A was brought in by the government to protect laws related to agrarian reform and for abolishing the Zamindari system. While Article 31A extends protection to ‘classes’ of laws, Article 31B shields specific laws or enactments.
    
    
• The Supreme Court of India has upheld the validity of Article 31-B and Parliament’s power to place a particular law in the Ninth Schedule. So, statement 1 is correct.
  
  
•  In I.R. Coelho case (2007), the Supreme Court ruled that there could not be any blanket immunity from judicial review of laws included in the Ninth Schedule.
  •  The court said that the laws placed under the Ninth Schedule after April 24, 1973, are open to challenge in court if they violated fundamentals rights guaranteed under Articles 14, 15, 19 and 21 or the ‘basic structure’ of the constitution. So, statement 2 is not correct.
    
    

Therefore, option (1) is the correct answer.

Subject: Polity | Fundamental Rights