pattern of all validation Acts by which the basis of judgments or orders of competent courts and Tribunals is changed and the judgments and orders are made ineffective. (ii) The effect of validation is to change the law so as to alter the basis of any judgment which might have been given on the basis of old law and thus to make the Judgment ineffective. (iii) A formal declaration that the judgment rendered under the old Act is void, is not necessary. If the matter is pending in appeal the appellate court has to give effect to the altered law and reverse the judgment. If the matter is not pending in appeal then the judgment ceases to be operative and binding as res judicata. (iv) The rendering of a judgment ineffective by changing its basis by legislative enactment is not an encroachment on judicial power but a legislation within the competence of the legislature rendering the basis of the judgment non-est (v) The constituent power has retrospectively changed the law in so far as it relates to election. The constituent authority could have left the application of the changed law either to Parliament or to any other body. But it has chosen to assume the duty of determination in this particular case for itself. (vi) The determination of election disputes and the validity of elections is not an exercise of judicial power. This function may be left either to courts, properly so-called or to Tribunals or to other bodies including the legislature itself. (vii) The rigid separation of powers as it obtains in the United States or in a lesser degree under the Australian Constitution does not apply to India. Many powers, which are strictly judicial, have been excluded from the purview of the courts. There is, therefore, no question of any separation of powers being involved in matters concerning elections and election petitions. (viii) There is no question of separation of powers when the constituent authority exercises either a power which is allocated to the Legislature or to the Executive or to the Judiciary under the Constitution. In the hands of the constituent authority there is no demarcation of powers. But the demarcation emerges only when it leaves the hands of the constituent authority through well-defined channels into demarcated pools. The constituent power is independent of the fetters of limitations imposed by separation of powers in the hands of the organs of the Government amongst whom the supreme authority of the State is allocated. (ix) The Constituent power springs as the fountainhead and partakes of sovereignty and is the power which creates the organs and distributes the powers. Therefore in a sense, the constituent power is all-embracing and is at once judicial executive and legislative. It is, in a sense a "super power". (x) Even if the preamble lays down as its objective the attainment of equality, the 39th Constitution Amendment does not violate the side concept of equality as the same is based on a rational classification and has a reasonable nexus with the object of the Amendment. (xi) The Preamble to the Constitution only refers to securing "equality of status and opportunity". Equality of status and opportunity has got many facets: some of these facets are guaranteed as fundamental rights under Articles 14 to 18 of the Constitution. These facets alone can be considered to be basic features of the Constitution assuming that equality was a basic feature of the Constitution. (xii) "Free and fair election" does not postulate that there must be a constitutional provision for determining election