Indian Constitution

The Constituent Assembly of India was elected to write the Constitution of India. The Constituent Assembly was set up while India was still under British rule, following negotiations between Indian leaders and members of the 1946 Cabinet Mission to India from the United Kingdom.

A Draft Constitution was prepared by the committee and submitted to the Assembly on 4 November 1947. Draft constitution was debated and over 2000 amendments were moved over a period of two years. Finally on 26 November, 1949, the process was completed and Constituent assembly adopted the constitution. 284 members signed the document and the process of constitution making was complete.

Part I of the Constitution of India describes the nation that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States. It also mentions that the states and the territories shall be specified in the First Schedule.

Constitutional government is defined by the existence of a constitution—which may be a legal instrument or merely a set of fixed norms or principles generally accepted as the fundamental law of the polity—that effectively controls the exercise of political power. Persons do not call the shots or frame rules in such governments. Everything that is to be governed is dictated by set of rules enshrined in the constitution.

The concept of Parliamentary sovereignty holds that the legislative body may change or repeal any previous legislation, and so that it is not bound by written law (in some cases, even a constitution) or by precedent.

Details

Though the basic features of Indian Constitution are based on the Government of India Act, 1935, it has many features which were borrowed from many foreign constitutions.

The preamble to our constitution provided that India is a sovereign, socialist, secular and democratic republic.

On 29 August, 1947, the Drafting Committee was appointed, with Dr B. R. Ambedkar as the Chairman along with six other members assisted by a constitutional advisor.

Details

The Constitution was enacted/adopted by the Constituent Assembly on 26 November 1949, and came into effect on 26 January 1950. The date 26 January was chosen to commemorate the Purna Swaraj declaration of independence of 1930. With its adoption, the Union of India officially became the modern and contemporary Republic of India and it replaced the Government of India Act 1935 as the country’s fundamental governing document.

Dr. Rajendra Prasad was elected the President of Constituent Assembly on 11 December, 1946. On January 26, 1950, the Constitution of independent India was ratified and Dr. Rajendra Prasad was elected the nation’s first President. He served as the President of constituent assembly.

The 44th Amendment of 1978 removed the right to property from the list of fundamental rights. A new provision, Article 300-A, was added to the constitution, which provided that "no person shall be deprived of his property save by authority of law".

It is the longest written constitution of any sovereign country in the world, containing 448 articles in 22 parts, 12 schedules and 100 amendments. Although the last article of the Constitution is Article 395, the total number, as of March 2012 is 448.

India is governed in terms of the Constitution of India which was adopted by the Constituent Assembly on 26th November 1949 and came into force on 26th January 1950.