The Supreme Court of India enunciated the Doctrine of Basic Structure of the…

Under Article 368, Parliament has wide power to amend the Constitution, but the Supreme Court has held that this power is not unlimited: Parliament cannot amend the Constitution in a way that damages or destroys its "basic structure" -- essential features such as democracy, the rule of law, judicial review, and secularism. This is called the Basic Structure Doctrine.

The Supreme Court first laid down this doctrine in the Kesavananda Bharati Case (1973), decided by a 13-judge bench, the largest ever assembled in India. Overruling its earlier, stricter position in the Golaknath Case, the Court held that Parliament CAN amend Fundamental Rights, but cannot alter the Constitution's basic structure. So the doctrine was propounded in the Kesavananda Bharati Case.

• Shankari Prasad Case (1951): upheld Parliament's power to amend any part of the Constitution, including Fundamental Rights, without recognising any basic-structure limitation -- this predates the doctrine.

• Sajjan Singh Case (1965): reaffirmed the Shankari Prasad position that the amending power under Article 368 extends to Fundamental Rights -- this also predates the doctrine.

• Golaknath Case (1967): swung to the opposite extreme, holding that Parliament CANNOT amend Fundamental Rights at all -- an absolute bar, not the nuanced basic-structure limit later evolved in the Kesavananda Bharati Case.

So it is only in the Kesavananda Bharati Case (1973) that the Court articulated the Basic Structure Doctrine as it stands today, later reaffirmed in Indira Nehru Gandhi v. Raj Narain (1975) and Minerva Mills (1980).