622. If the constituent bodies, taken separately or together, could be legally sovereign in the same way as the British Parliament is the Constitutional validity of no amendment could be called in question before us. But as it is well established that it is the Constitution and not the constituent power which is supreme here in the sense that the Constitutionality of the Constitution cannot be called in question before us, but the exercise of the constituent power can be we have to judge the validity of exercise of constituent power by testing it on the anvil of constitutional provisions. According to the majority view in Kesavananda's case (supra), we can find the test primarily in the Preamble to our Constitution. 623. A point emphasized by J. C. Gray (See : "Nature & Sources of Law" p. 96) is that unless and until Courts have declared and recognised a law as enforcible it is not law at all Kelsen (See : "General Theory of Law & State" p. 150) finds Gray's views to be extreme. Courts, however, have to test the legality of laws whether purporting to be ordinary or constitutional by the norms laid down in the Constitution. This follows from the Supremacy of the Constitution. I mention this here in answer to one of the questions set out much earlier : Does the "basic structure" of the Constitution test only the validity of a constitutional amendment or also ordinary laws? I think it does both because ordinary law making itself cannot go beyond the range of constituent power. At this stage, we are only concerned with a purported constitutional amendment. According to the majority view in Kesavananda Bharati's case (AIR 1973 SC 1461) the preamble furnishes the yard-stick to be applied even to constitutional amendments. 624. Learned Counsel for the election petitioner has strongly relied upon the very first purpose of the Constitution stated in the premble to be Justice (with a capital "J") which includes "Political Justice". His contention is that if a majority party is to virtually act as the judge in an election dispute between itself and minority parties whose cause according to the learned Counsel the election petitioner represents it would be a plain denial of "political" justice. I do not know why this question should be termed as one of "Political justice" and not of plain and simple elementary justice except that the contending parties represent political causes which are for purposes of plain and simple justice with which we are really concerned irrelevant. We are not asked to judge a political issue directly as to who should be the Prime Minister of this country. We are only asked to hold that even a constitutional amendment, when made by Members of a majority party to enforce their own views of what is politically and legally right as against the views, on these matters of minority paries when the representative of the minority parties allege a misuse of constitutional powers by a deviation from a constitutionally laid down purpose such a legal question of fact and law should be capable of trial and decision by an independent authority on such exclusively legal grounds as may be open. That is the simple principle on which learned Counsel for the election petitioner rests his case irrespective of the rights and wrongs or the merits of his client's case ........... and, I have found it impossible to decide it as I have decided it against the election petitioner without going into facts

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