Which Constitutional Amendment added the part of fundamental duties to the…

Concept

Fundamental Duties form Part IVA of the Constitution (Article 51-A) — a list of moral obligations every citizen owes to the nation. Unlike Fundamental Rights in Part III, which are enforceable in court, Fundamental Duties are non-justiciable. They were introduced on the recommendation of the Swaran Singh Committee (1976), which was set up to review the working of the Constitution during the Emergency.

Application

The Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976 inserted Part IVA containing Article 51-A, listing ten Fundamental Duties (an eleventh duty was added later by the Eighty-sixth Amendment, 2002). This same amendment also revised the Preamble and made several other far-reaching changes, which is why it is often called the "Mini-Constitution".

Cross-check

The other amendments listed among the options deal with entirely different subjects — extending reservation of seats, or adding state land-reform laws to the Ninth Schedule — none of them touch Part IVA or Article 51-A, confirming that the Forty-second Amendment is the one that added Fundamental Duties.

• 62nd Amendment (1989): extended the reservation of seats for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and the nomination of Anglo-Indians in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies by a further ten years.

• 78th Amendment (1995): added a further set of state land-reform laws to the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution.

• 34th Amendment (1974): added around twenty state land-reform and land-ceiling Acts to the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution.