The Constitution 

The Constitution of India, the guiding principle for all legislations in the country, became effective in 1950. Being the longest national constitution in the world, its ambit is expansive and covers a lot of ground, from laws regarding marriage to inheritance, taxes, fundamental rights and local self governance.

 All legislations in the country, including those created by state governments, must align with the framework presented by the Constitution. 

Constitutional Amendments 

For the Constitution to guide the country, it must be reflective of the contemporary realities of the time. In the 70 years since the Constitution came into being, the country has gone through vast socio-economic changes that have necessitated amendments in the Constitution. These amendments are necessary to keep the Constitution in tandem with the present demands. 

Amendments are literally defined as ‘the process of altering or amending a law or document (such as a constitution) by parliamentary or constitutional procedure’ or ‘an alteration proposed or effected by this process’. Hence, amendments are both the process of changing parts of a legislation and the changes themselves.

The Constitution thus can be thought of as a document that is forever in the process of being changed while still maintaining the basic principles as mentioned in the preamble. In the Indian context, the Constitution itself allows provisions for amending it through Article 368. Article 368 lays down the process for introducing changes in the constitution as highlighted in the adjoining image.

In case of amendments to some parts of the Constitution, approval of at least half of the state legislations is needed before the Bill is presented to the President. The Union, State and Concurrent Lists of the Seventh Schedule is also one such part

What is the 74th CAA?

Through the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act (CAA), 1992 the Parliament added Part IXA to the Constitution. It was enacted in 1993 to constitutionally recognise municipal governments. It made municipal governments a formal part of the three-tier governing system, along with the Union Government and the State Governments. While this Act mandated the setting up of municipal governments in urban areas, it left the details of their constitution to the state governments through their respective Municipal Acts. According to the 74th CAA, urban areas would be governed by one of the three mentioned types of urban local governments namely the Nagar Panchayat, Municipal Council and Municipal Corporation based on the size of the area. Nagar Panchayats were to administer areas in transition from rural to urban areas, municipal councils to administer small urban areas and municipal corporations for larger urban areas.

The Act mentioned that the areas to be defined as ‘transitional’, ‘smaller urban areas’, and ‘larger urban areas’ were to be specified by the State Governors by looking at the following criteria: 

“...the population of the area, the density of the population therein, the revenue generated for local administration, the percentage of employment in non-agricultural activities, the economic importance or such other factors…”

This piece is part of the Governance Series of the Nagrikal. Nagrikal is a platform for citizens from small cities to share their experiences so that they be channeled into policies.