BHASKAR BHATTACHARYA, C.J. By this Public Interest Litigation, the writ petitioner has prayed for quashing of the Constitution (97th Amendment) Act, 2011 introducing Part IXB, as ultra vires the Constitution of India.

2. The case made out by the writ petitioner is that the Constitution (97th Amendment) Act, 2011 was passed by the Lok Sabha on 22nd December, 2011 and the same was passed by the Rajya Sabha on 28th December, 2011. The President of India bestowed assent to that amendment on 12th January, 2012 and the said notification was published in the Gazette of India of 13th January, 2012 and the amendment came into force on 15th February, 2012.

2.1. According to the petitioner, the power under Art. 368 of the Constitution of India itself is the basic structure of the Constitution of India and the fact that by the impugned constitutional amendment, the procedure prescribed in the Art. 368(2) of the Constitution, which recognizes the federal structure of the Constitution as one of the basic structures, has not been followed, is violative of the Constitution. The petitioner contends that the subject-matter co-operative societies does not fall in the 7th Schedule, Entry 45 of List I of the Constitution and those are specifically excluded from Entry No. 43 of List 1. Therefore, according to the petitioner, the State legislature is the only competent authority in law to enact the laws for the co-operative societies and on that ground, the proposed amendment should be set aside as violative of the Constitution of India as the consent of the majority of the State Legislatures was not received before presenting the Bill proposing the amendment to the President of India.

2.2. According to the petitioner, it is settled law that a constitutional authority cannot do something indirectly which it is not permitted to do directly and if there is a constitutional provision inhibiting the constitutional authority from doing an act, such provision cannot be allowed to be defeated by adopting a subterfuge. By the impugned constitutional amendment, according to the petitioner, the Parliament, a creature of the Constitution, and not vice-a-versa, has violated the basic structure of the Constitution by not complying with the requirements of Art. 368 (2) of the Constitution.

3. This Court issued notices upon the parties including the learned Attorney General of India, and in response to the notice, Mr. Champaneri, the learned Assistant Solicitor General of India, has appeared. The submissions of the Union of India may be summarized thus :

(A) The only limitation on the Parliament in exercise of the constituent power to amend the Constitution in the matters enumerated in clauses (a), (b), (c), (d), and (e) of the proviso to sub-Art. (2) of Art. 368 is that, such amendment shall also require to be ratified by the Legislatures of not less than one-half of the States by the resolution to that effect passed by those Legislatures before the bill making provision for such amendment is presented to the President for his assent.

(B) Sub-Article (1) of Art. 368 has been inserted by the Constitution (24th Amendment) Act, 1971 and the original Art. 368 has been renumbered as clause (2) of Art. 368 whereas the words specified in Parts A and B of the First Schedule from the proviso were omitted by the Constitution (97th Amendment) Act, 1956.

(C) Sub-Article (3) provides that nothing in Art. 13 shall apply to any amendment made under this Article. This clause is inserted by the Constitution (24th Amendment) Act, 1971. Sub-Article (4) and sub-Art. (5) of Art. 368 which had been inserted by the Constitution (42nd Amendment) Act, 1976 have been declared to be invalid by the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court of India in the case of Minerva Mills v. Union of India, reported in AIR 1980 SC 1789 on the ground that these clauses which remove all limitation upon the power of the Parliament to amend the Constitution and precluded a judicial review of the Constitutio