As India celebrates its 77th Republic Day on Monday (January 26, 2026), its founding document — the Constitution — has seen 106 amendments. Indira Gandhi’s 16-year tenure as Prime Minister saw the highest number of amendments (29), while Chandra Shekhar’s seven-month tenure saw the least (1). Under its current PM, Narendra Modi, India’s Constitution has seen eight amendments of which only one has been struck down by the Supreme Court.
In Mr. Modi’s eleven-year tenure, the Parliament passed five constitutional amendments in his first term (2014-2019) and three in his second term (2019-2024). The 99th Amendment — Modi government’s first attempt to amend the Constitution — allowed for the formation of National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) to recruit, appoint, transfer judicial officers including judges, thereby replacing the Collegium. It was immediately struck down by the Supreme Court as ‘unconstitutional’.
The initial amendments deal with judicial appointments, India’s foreign policy with Bangladesh and overhauling of India’s taxation. However, the remaining amendments have altered India’s social fabric amending laws for communities — Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST), Other Backward Classes (OBC), Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) and women.
Here’s a look at the amendments enacted in Mr. Modi’s first term, their effects and criticism:
NJAC Act (2014)
First envisaged by the V.P. Singh government in 1990, the National Judicial Commission was proposed as a constitutional amendment but failed to pass the Parliament hurdle then. In 2003, the Vajpayee government proposed a five-member panel comprising of Chief Justice of India, two Supreme Court judges, the Union Law Minister and an eminent citizen nominated by the President to decide on appointments of Supreme Court and for transfer and appointment of High Court judges, the panel would also include the State High Court’s Chief Justice and the Chief Minister. However, this proposal too soon died.
In 2014, Parliament passed the 99th Constitutional Amendment along with the National Judicial Appointments Commission Act, 2014 and paved way to establish the NJAC instead of the Collegium system. This six-member commission, comprising of the CJI, two senior Supreme Court judges, the Union Law Minister and two eminent citizens, was empowered to make appointments to the Supreme Court and various High Courts. Of the two nominated members, one had to belong to SC/ST/OBC/minorities classes or be a woman. Both were to be nominated by a Committee comprising the CJI, the PM and the Leader of Opposition (Lok Sabha). The Judges in the panel had veto power for any proposed appointments.
After the Bills’ passage, sixteen State Legislatures ratified it and the President gave his assent to it on December 31, 2014. By April 2015, both Bills came into force.
However, the Supreme Court struck down both Acts as unconstitutional, upholding the Collegium system — a forum of the CJI and four senior-most Supreme Court judges which recommends appointments to the higher judiciary and transfers of judges. Though not mentioned in the Constitution, this system has its legal basis in three Supreme Court judgments. In a 4:1 ruling, with Justice J. Chelameswar being the lone dissenter, the Supreme Court observed that the ‘judiciary cannot risk being caught in a web of indebtedness towards the government’.
“Primacy of the judiciary and appointment of High Court and Supreme Court judges and transfer of High Court judges is part of the basic structure of the Constitution,” opined retired Supreme Court Justice Abhay Oka, adding, “You can’t bring in a system which provides that the Chief Justice of India will not have primacy, which was why NJAC was struck down”.
Stating that the Collegium system is justified by several Supreme Court judgements, Mr. Oka added, “There are several cases where the Collegium’s performance has not been upto the mark, but that does not make the system itself bad. For the recommendation for a High Court judge, by them time it reaches the Supreme Court Collegium, it has the High Court Collegium’s file, Chief minister and Governor’s remarks [on the candidacy] and an inquiry report by the Intelligence Bureau (IB), which is wholly controlled by the Centre”.
“Once the Supreme Court recommends, the government can send it back for reconsideration after stating reasons. Once reconsidered and resubmitted [by SC collegium], the government has no choice but to sign on the recommendation. But in the recent 10-15 years, it is seen that once collegium recommends a name, the government keeps it pending for nine months, sometimes upto one year,” noted Mr. Oka.
He claimed that this delay discourages good candidates from accepting judgeship as once consented, they must stop private practice. Conceding that a few undeserving candidates have been elevated by the Collegium, he affirmed that delay from the government’s side remains the main issue and not the system itself.
“Prior to the Collegium system, the Indira Gandhi government superseded three senior judges of the Supreme Court only because they were part of the majority in the Kesavananda Bharti judgement,” noted Mr. Oka, adding that in some cases the government has been proactive. “When Justice B.R. Gavai was Chief Justice, fourteeen names were recommended and all were cleared within three months by the government. This has never happened before,” he said, pointing to the selective approach taken by the Centre.
However, there has been a visible thaw recent months. Current CJI Surya Kant has said that the Supreme Court would consider a plea seeking to revive the NJAC. “Some bench may feel NJAC may need reconsideration and it will go to a larger bench. While I don’t know if this is a possibility, if it happens, I will feel very bad,” Mr. Oka had opined.
Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) with Bangladesh (2015)
Border issues between India and Bangladesh have been tackled by several treaties between the two nations including the Nehru-Noon Agreement (1958), Swaran Singh-Ahmed Sheikh Agreement (1959), and Land Boundary Agreement (1974). However under the 1974 Agreement, three disputes remained — exchange of enclaves, settlement of 6.5 kms of non-demarcated land border, and adverse possessions of land. After eleven years of coordinated work by the Joint Boundary Working Group (JBWG), in August 2011, a protocol was signed agreeing to joint border maps and was immediately ratified by Bangladeshi Parliament. After initiating the constitutional amendment in 2013, the Manmohan Singh government, however, failed to pass it through Parliament.
On June 6, 2015, Mr. Modi signed the final pact with his then Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina, ratifying the 41-year-old deal to swap enclaves under the 1974 Land Boundary Agreement. With this,15,000 residents in 51 Bangladeshi enclaves inside West Bengal became Indians while residents of 111 Indian enclaves located deep inside Bangladesh became citizens of the neighbouring country. Parliament unanimously passed the Bill with bipartisan support and support of Chief Ministers of the five States bordering Bangladesh – West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram.
Goods and Services Tax (GST) (2017)
The concept of a uniform tax structure for Goods and Services (GST) was first envisaged in 2002 by the Vajpayee government but fructified only in 2017. Introduced in the Lok Sabha in 2014, the 101st Constitutional Amendment along with four Bills — the Central GST Bill, 2017; the Integrated GST Bill, 2017; the GST (Compensation to States) Bill, 2017; and the Union Territory GST Bill, 2017 allowed for a uniform indirect tax regime to be implemented across India.
The GST Council, comprising of Centre and States, recommended a four-tier tax structure — 5%, 12%, 18% and 28% for all goods except essential goods such as raw food items, select healthcare products, educational services, petrol, diesel and alcohol. After the passage of this constitutional amendment by Parliament in 2016, fifteen States first ratified it. While President Pranab Mukherjee gave his assent to the Bill on September 8, 2016 and the new regime came into force on July 1, 2017, the last State to ratify the Bill was West Bengal on August 8, 2017.
Through the years, States have complained of less devolution of its shares by the Centre and objected to inclusion of several items to the taxed list. In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that both Centre and State have “equal, simultaneous and unique powers” to make laws on Goods and Services Tax (GST) and the recommendations of the GST Council are not binding on them. It also upheld a Gujarat High Court verdict that the Centre cannot levy Integrated GST on ocean freight from Indian importers.
Subsequently in September 2025, Centre simplified the GST structure to two tiers – 5% and 18%, while ultra luxury items attract a 40% tax and tobacco and related products continue to be in the 28% plus Cess category.
EWS reservation (2019)
Three months prior to the Lok Sabha polls, on January 9, 2019, Parliament hurriedly passed the 103rd Constitutional Amendment, giving a separate 10% reservation for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) in education and employment. Existing reservation to SCs, STs, SEBCs and OBCs remained unchanged and the reservation became applicable to jobs in both Central and State governments. States became empowered to decide the economic criteria for identification of beneficiaries. Opposition MPs had sought to refer the Bill to Select Committee, questioning the timing of the Bill. However, the Act passed and promptly received the President’s assent within two days.
In November 2022, the Supreme Court upheld the Act in a 3:2 majority ruling, with then-CJI U.U. Lalit and Justice S. Ravindra Bhat in the minority. The court ruled that reservation was an “instrument of affirmative action by the state” and should include any ‘disadvantaged weaker section’. The majority held that it did not violate the Basic Structure of the Constitution or the 50% ceiling on reservations.
Disagreeing with the majority’s opinion, Mr. P.D.T. Achary, former Secretary General of Lok Sabha said, “Reservation itself is a reasonable exception provided to SC,ST and OBC because of what they have suffered through centuries or millennia- social degradation and disabilities. You cannot have equality between unequals. It does beg the question whether reservation of 10% for EWS is necessary or not, because EWS is exclusively meant for the upper caste people, economically weaker sections among them”.
Even the Supreme Court’s dissenting opinion noted that exclusion of SC/ST/OBC/SEBC communities from the EWS quota was ‘heaping injustice based on their past disability’ and that it destroyed the Equality Code of the Constitution. Breach of the 50% ceiling with this quota would become “a gateway for further infractions and result in compartmentalisation,” noted Justice Bhat.
The Constitutional Amendments enacted in PM Modi’s second term are explored in the second part of this article. The 2018 NCBC amendment is also explored there along with its accompanying 2021 amendment.
