ONOE Bill passes muster on the basic structure!
Mathews J. Nedumpara
9820535428
12.07.2025
ONOE Bill passes muster on the basic structure!
In today’s Times of India, I happened to read that ex-CJIs Khehar and Chandrachud have reportedly told the JPC headed by P. P. Chowdhury that the ONOE Bill passes muster on the basic structure. I am afraid to say that I could not control my anger at the nation being fooled by a few “legal luminaries”, senior lawyers, and judges uttering the mantra “basic structure” to subserve their vested interests—nay, to usurp position and power and yet escape with impunity. Using the words “basic structure”, they treated Parliament as an inferior tribunal and “quashed and set aside” the Constitution 99th Amendment Act and the NJAC Act.
The judges found, perhaps to their own surprise, that Parliament and the government accepted the “judicial supremacy” without even a murmur. It is only people like my humble self who dare to call it a coup d’état. The basic structure theory is a fraud, which the elite lawyers—nay, the Bombay lobby—have so cleverly played on the people of this country.
The folly of the basic structure theory can be exposed in two sentences. Before Kesavananda Bharati, Article 32 was invoked complaining of violation of fundamental rights: right, remedy, forum. After Kesavananda Bharati, Prashant Bhushan and his ilk invoke Article 32 asserting that none of their fundamental rights are infringed, but that the basic structure is infringed. The judges do not ask them: if their fundamental rights are not infringed, what does it matter to them if the basic structure is infringed? The judges don’t tell them: if your complaint is that your fundamental right is infringed, say that only, and not “basic structure”—a theory which the court has to cull out from half a million words!
This is not the first time I am raising this question. I have done so many times. I haven’t yet heard convincingly from anyone why I am wrong and the basic structure theory, which Justice Chandrachud had called the “north star”, is not a fraud on the nation.
It is so sad and unbelievable that through the basic structure and PIL, the courts have usurped the powers of Parliament and reduced it to a subordinate tribunal—even when it was sitting as a constituent assembly, as in the NJAC case. The basic structure theory is undemocratic. It has made it possible for busybodies to approach the court and secure orders concerning you and me—the common citizens of this country—behind our back.