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| AMENDMENTS SECTION OF:1-4 |
THE CONSTITUTION (EIGHTH AMENDMENT) ACT, 1959
SECTION OF:1-4
FOURTH AMENDMENT
Statement of Objects and Reasons appended to THE CONSTITUTION (Fourth Amendment) Bill, 1954 which was enacted as the Constitution (Fourth Amendment) Act, 1954
STATEMENT OF OBJECTS AND REASON
This Bill seeks to amend articles 31, 31A, and 305 of, and the Ninth Schedule to, the Constitution.
2. Recent decisions of the Supreme Court have given a very wide meaning to clauses (1) and (2) of Article 31. Despite the difference in the wording of the two clauses, they are regarded as dealing with the same subject. The deprivation of property referred to in clause (1) is to be construed in the widest sense as including any curtailment of a property right. Even where it is caused by a purely regulatory provision of law and is not accompanied by an acquisition or taking possession of that or any other property right by the State, the law, to be valid according to these decisions, has to provide for compensation under clause (2) of the article. It is considered necessary, therefore, to re-state more precisely the State's power of compulsory acquisition and requisitioning of private property and distinguish it from cases where the operation of regulatory or prohibitory laws of the State results in "deprivation of property". This is sought to be done in clause 2 of the Bill.
