As India is celebrating its 77th birthdayth Republic Day Monday (January 26, 2026) saw 106 amendments to its founding document – the Constitution. Indira Gandhi’s 16-year tenure as Prime Minister saw the most amendments (29), while Chandra Shekhar’s seven-month tenure saw the least (1). Under current Prime Minister Narendra Modi, there have been eight amendments to the Constitution of India, only one of which has been struck down by the Supreme Court.
In Mr Modi’s eleven-year tenure, Parliament passed five constitutional amendments in his first term (2014-2019) and three in his second term (2019-2024). 99th The amendment – the Modi government’s first attempt to amend the Constitution – allowed for the formation of the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) for recruitment, appointment, transfer of judicial officers, including judges, thereby replacing the collegium. The Supreme Court immediately rejected it, terming it ‘unconstitutional’.
The initial amendments relate to judicial appointments, India’s foreign policy with Bangladesh and comprehensive reforms in India’s taxation. However, the remaining amendments have changed the social fabric of India by amending laws for communities – Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST), Other Backward Classes (OBC), Economically Weaker Section (EWS) and women.
Here’s a look at the amendments implemented in Mr Modi’s first term, their impacts and criticism:
NJAC Act (2014)
The concept of a National Judicial Commission was first proposed as a constitutional amendment by the VP Singh government in 1990, but it failed to pass the parliamentary hurdle. In 2003, the Vajpayee government proposed a five-member panel comprising the Chief Justice of India, two Supreme Court judges, the Union Law Minister and an eminent citizen nominated by the President to decide on Supreme Court appointments and the transfer and appointment of high court judges. The panel would also include the chief justice of a state high court and the chief minister. However, this proposal also soon ended.
Parliament passed in 2014 99th constitutional amendment The National Judicial Appointments Commission Act, 2014 paved the way for the establishment of the NJAC instead of the collegium system. This six-member commission, comprising the CJI, two senior judges of the Supreme Court, the Union Law Minister and two eminent citizens, was empowered to make appointments to the Supreme Court and various High Courts. Out of the two nominated members, one should belong to SC/ST/OBC/minority category or be a woman. Both were to be nominated by a committee comprising the CJI, the PM and the Leader of the Opposition (Lok Sabha). The judges on the panel had veto power over any proposed appointment.
After the passage of the bills, sixteen state legislatures ratified them and the President gave his assent on 31 December 2014. By April 2015, both bills came into force.
However, the Supreme Court struck down both Acts as unconstitutional while upholding the collegium system – a forum of the CJI and the four senior-most Supreme Court judges that recommends appointments and transfers of judges to the higher judiciary. Although not mentioned in the Constitution, the legal basis of this system lies in three decisions of the Supreme Court. In the 4:1 decision, in which Justice J. Chelameswar was the only dissenter, with the Supreme Court saying that ‘the judiciary cannot afford to fall into the trap of indebtedness to the government.’
Retired Supreme Court judge Abhay Oka said, “The primacy of the judiciary and the appointment of high court and Supreme Court judges and transfer of high court judges are part of the basic structure of the Constitution.”
Saying that the collegium system is justified by several judgments of the Supreme Court, Mr Oka said, “There are many cases where the performance of the collegium has not been good, but that does not make the system bad. For a recommendation for a High Court judge, by the time it reaches the Supreme Court Collegium, it has the High Court Collegium’s file, the Chief Minister’s and Governor’s comments (on the candidature) and an investigation report by the Intelligence Bureau (IB), which is completely controlled.” Is the center.
“Once the Supreme Court makes the recommendation, the government can send it back for reconsideration after giving reasons. Once reconsidered and resubmitted (by the SC collegium), the government has no option but to sign the recommendation. But in the recent 10-15 years, it has been seen that once the collegium recommends a name, the government keeps it pending for nine months, sometimes up to a year,” Mr Oka said.
He claimed that this delay discourages good candidates from accepting judgeships because once agreed, they must stop private practice. While admitting that some ineligible candidates have been promoted by the collegium, he affirmed that delay on the part of the government remains the main issue, and not on the part of the system.
“Before the Collegium system, the Indira Gandhi government had removed three senior Supreme Court judges merely because they were part of the majority in the Kesavananda Bharati judgment,” Mr Oka said, adding that the government had been proactive in some cases. Pointing to the selective approach adopted by the Centre, he said, “When Justice BR Gavai was the Chief Justice, fourteen names were recommended and the government cleared all within three months. This never happened before.”
However, a clear melting has been observed recent months. Current CJI Surya Kant has said that the Supreme Court will consider the petition seeking to revive the NJAC. “Some benches will feel that the NJAC may need to be reconsidered and it will go to a larger bench. Although I don’t know whether that is a possibility or not, if that happens, I would feel very bad,” Mr Oka had said.
Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) with Bangladesh (2015)
border issues between India and Bangladesh The two countries have been dealt with by several treaties including the Nehru-Noon Pact (1958), the Swaran Singh-Ahmed Shaikh Pact (1959) and the Land Boundary Agreement (1974). However under the 1974 agreement, three disputes remained – exchange of enclaves, settlement of the 6.5 km undemarcated land boundary, and adverse possession of land. After eleven years of coordinated work by the Joint Border Working Group (JBWG), in August 2011, a protocol agreeing to the joint border maps was signed and immediately ratified by the Bangladeshi Parliament. After initiating the constitutional amendment in 2013, the Manmohan Singh government failed to get it passed by Parliament.
On June 6, 2015, Mr Modi signed the final agreement with his then Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina, ratifying the 41-year-old agreement to swap the enclaves under the 1974 Land Boundary Agreement. With this, 15,000 residents of 51 Bangladeshi enclaves inside West Bengal became Indians, while residents of 111 Indian enclaves inside Bangladesh became citizens of the neighboring country. Parliament passed the bill unanimously with bi-partisan support and the support of the chief ministers of 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 envisioned by the Vajpayee government in 2002, but came to fruition in 2017. Introduced in Lok Sabha in 2014, 101scheduled tribe Constitutional amendment with four bills – Central GST Bill, 2017; Integrated GST Bill, 2017; GST (Compensation to States) Bill, 2017; And the Union Territory GST Bill, 2017 allowed for the implementation of a uniform indirect tax regime across India.
GST Council, which consists of center and stateRecommended a four-tier tax structure – 5%, 12%, 18% and 28% for all goods except raw food items, select health care products, educational services, essential goods like petrol, diesel and liquor. After this constitutional amendment was passed by Parliament in 2016, fifteen states ratified it for the first time. While President Pranab Mukherjee gave his assent to the bill on September 8, 2016, and the new arrangement came into force on July 1, 2017, the last state to approve the bill was West Bengal on August 8, 2017.
Over the years, states have complained of low transfer of their shares by the Center and objected to the inclusion of many items in the tax list. In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that both the Center and the states have “equal, simultaneous and unique powers” to make laws on the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and the recommendations of the GST Council are not binding on them. It also retained one Gujarat High Court Ruling that the Center cannot impose integrated GST on sea freight from Indian importers.
Subsequently in September 2025, the Center simplified the GST structure to two tiers – 5% and 18%, while ultra luxury items are taxed at 40% and tobacco and related products remain in the 28% plus cess category.
EWS Reservation (2019)
On January 9, 2019, three months before the Lok Sabha elections, Parliament hurriedly passed 103 billsthird The constitutional amendment provides for a separate 10% reservation for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) in education and employment. The existing reservation for SC, ST, SEBC and OBC remained unchanged and the reservation became applicable to jobs in both the central and state governments. States were empowered to set economic criteria for identifying beneficiaries. Opposition MPs had raised questions on the timing of the bill and demanded that it be handed over to a select committee. However, the Act was passed and immediately received the assent of the President within two days.
In November 2022, the Supreme Court upheld the Act in a 3:2 majority judgment comprising then CJI UU Lalit and Justice S. Ravindra Bhat was in minority. The court ruled that reservation was an “instrument of affirmative action by the State” and should include any ‘disadvantaged weaker section’. The majority believed that it did not violate the basic structure of the Constitution or the 50% limit on reservation.
Disagreeing with the majority opinion, Shri PDT Acharya, former Secretary General of the Lok Sabha, said, “Reservation itself is a justifiable exception provided to SCs, STs and OBCs because they have suffered social degradation and disabilities for centuries or millennia. You cannot have equality among unequal people. The question arises whether 10% reservation is necessary for EWS or not, because EWS is particularly applicable to upper caste people, economically weaker sections among them. Have taken.”
Even the dissenting opinion of the Supreme Court said that the exclusion of SC/ST/OBC/SEBC communities from the EWS quota was ‘gross injustice on the basis of their previous disability’ and destroyed the equality code of the Constitution. Justice Bhat said, violation of the 50% limit with this quota “will become a gateway to further violations and result in partition.”
Constitutional amendments enacted in PM Modi’s second term are tracked Second part of this article. The 2018 NCBC revision as well as the 2021 revision are also detected there.
