relations between the Union and the States, it deals with maters not normally considered constitutionally important like the salaries of high dignitaries the power of the Supreme Court to frame rules for regulating its practice and procedure, official language for communication between one State and another and last but not the least, elections to the Parliament and the State Legislatures. Those to whose wisdom and judgement the constituent power is confided will evoke scorn and derision if that power is used for granting or withdrawing building contracts passing or failing students or granting and denying divorces. But the electorate lives in the hope that a sacred power will not so flagrantly be abused and the moving finger of history warns of the consequences that inevitable flow when absolute power has corrupted absolutely. The fear of perversion is no test of power. 663. But the comparison is odious between the instances given by Shri Shanti Bhushan and the subject-matter of Article 329-A (4) of the Constitution. In the first place elections to legislatures were considered by Constitution-makers to be a matter of constitutional importance. Secondly, though the powers of the Prime Minister in a cabinet form of democracy are not as unrivalled as those of the President in the American system, it is undeniable that the Prime Minister occupies a unique position. The choice of the subject for constitutional amendment cannot, therefore, be characterized as trifling, frivolous or outside the frame-work of a copious Constitution. In America, the challenge to the 18th Amendment on the ground that ordinary legislation cannot be embodied in a constitutional amendment was brushed aside as unworthy of serious attention. Rottschaefer endorsed it as consistent with the ultimate political theory on which the American constitutional system is based. “The people, acting through the machinery provided by the existing Constitution, must be accorded the legal power to change their basic law by peaceable means.”* In fact, it is wrong to think that elections to the country's legislatures are a private affair of the contestants. They are matters of public interest and of national importance. Every citizen has a sake in legislative elections for his social and economic well-being depends upon the promises and performance of the legislators. Such elections, and more so the election of the Prime Minister who is at least primus inter pares, can legitimately form the subject-matter of a constitutional provision. The validity of what is brought into the Constitution has to be judged by different standards. 664. There was some discussion at the Bar as to which features of the Constitution form the basic structure of the Constitution according to the majority decision in the Fundamental Rights case. That, to me is an inquiry both fruitless and irrelevant. The ratio of the majority decision is not that some named features of the Constitution are a part of its basic structure but that the power of amendment cannot be exercised so as to damage or destroy the essential elements or the basic structure of the Constitution, whatever these expressions may comprehend. Sikri, C.J., mentions supremacy of the Constitution. Republican and Democratic form of the Government, secular