FTZs and West Bengal

power. She and her party are not reconciled to the Kesavananda Bharati judgment delivered by the Supreme Court in 1973, They are not the only ones not satisfied with it, Opinions concerning the judgment show a wide divergence, and even cut across the ideological divides. Such opinions also get entangled with the issue whether there is or is not a 'basic structure' of the Constitution, whether the fundamental rights detailed in Part IV belong to it, and whether Parliament is or is not entitled to alter this 'basic structure'. Were the particular sentence, which is the issue of contention, removed from the text and relegated to a footnote, it could perhaps be inferred that the 1973 view of the Supreme Court, namely that Parliament had no right to alter the 'basic structure' of the Constitution, is to prevail. By keeping the sentence in the text, even though in italics for the present, the Union Minister of Law, Justice and Company Affairs is obviously intending to transmit a particular message: irrespective of the 1973 decision of the Supreme Court, the issue remains open; either Parliament will have a chance to offer a final say in the matter, or the Supreme Court itself is being invited to review its earlier decision.