fact or law was followed. He contended that whichever of the two alternative contentions of counsel supporting the 39th Amendment was accepted by us, his submission, that the amendment was ultra virus, arbitrary, and improperly motivated was made out. 520. The essence of judicial or quasi-judicial function is the application of a law which is already given by the law making authority to the judicial or quasi-judicial authority to apply. This law has to be applied to certain findings after determining the disputed questions of fact in a manner which must conform to the canons of natural justice. Learned Counsel for the election petitioner contended that it was not necessary to go beyond clause (4) to reach the conclusion that what was being done was to decide a dispute which could, under the law as it existed till then, only be judicially determined in the mode prescribed by Article 329 (b) read with the Act of 1951 which could not be circumvented even before Article 329-A engrafted exceptions on it and the Act of 1951 had been repealed retrospectively in its application to the Prime Minister. The result of a sort of consolidated legislative-cum-adjudicatory function was sought to be embodied in Article 329-A (4) by purported Constitutional amendment. He contended that we were bound to consider and decide whether the ‘‘constituent power’’ contained in Article 368 of the Constitution was meant to be used in this manner. Such use would, he submitted, fall outside Article 368. Hence, he submitted, there was no need to resort to principles emerging from a consideration of what may be spoken of as the basic structure or essential features of the Constitution. It was enough if we held that ‘‘constituent power’’ did not cover such a use made of it. Learned Counsel for the election petitioner had thus advanced an alternative contention based upon the meaning of the term ‘‘constituent power’’ introduced by the 24th Amendment; and in my opinion, we are duty bound to interpret Article 368 and determine the precise meaning of ‘‘constituent power’’ when properly called upon by a party before us to do so. Indeed, the very contention that we should so construe ‘‘constituent power’’ as to deny ourselves the jurisdiction to decide the validity of what was done under a purported exercise of such a power involves a determination of its meaning. I fail to see how our jurisdiction to do this could be barred by the provisions of the very amendment whose constitutional validity is challenged before us was repealed. 521. Learned Counsel supporting the 39th Amendment had, in defence of the Amendment advanced arguments which go beyond the position which was adopted to support the amendments considered by us in Kesvananda Bharti’s case (AIR 1973 SC 1461) (supra). The new argument now advanced, to use the language of the Solicitor-General in his last written submissions, is that ‘‘the power of amendment under Article 368 is ‘‘the very original power of the people which is unbroken into the legislative and the executive and the judicial.’’ He submitted that the implied limitations, to which the majority decision in Kesavananda Bharti’s case (supra) has committed this Court for the time being, are no longer available when considering this ‘‘unbroken’’