Article 13 (2)

Article 13 (2) of the Constitution of India declares that any law “insofar as it is inconsistent with the provisions of Part III” – the chapter on Fundamental Rights – shall be void to the extent of such inconsistency. Enshrined at the moment of the Constitution’s adoption on 26 January 1950, the clause gives the judiciary a concrete tool for enforcing constitutional supremacy and for striking down statutes that transgress the rights to equality, liberty, and dignity. Its operative phrase “void to the extent of the inconsistency” creates a partial nullity, allowing courts to excise offending provisions while preserving the remainder of a statute. By anchoring the doctrine of judicial review in the text itself, Article 13 (2) distinguishes India’s constitutional architecture from many post‑colonial systems that rely on implied powers. The provision has been invoked in more than three hundred Supreme Court decisions, shaping the nation’s legal landscape from the 1960s to the present day. ## Historical Background The framers of the Constitution drew inspiration from the United States Bill of Rights and the British Human Rights Act 1919, embedding a “negative” guarantee of rights that could not be abridged by ordinary legislation. Debates recorded in the Constituent Assembly’s proceedings on 28 December 1949 reveal that Dr B.R. Ambedkar advocated for a “safeguard clause” to prevent future majorities from eroding civil liberties. Article 13 (2) emerged as a compromise between the original draft, which allowed Parliament to amend any part of the Constitution, and the demand for a permanent barrier against retrogressive laws. The provision entered force on 26 January 1950, alongside the rest of the Constitution, and has since been the cornerstone of India’s constitutional review mechanism. ## Text and Mechanism Article 13 (2) reads: “The State shall not make any law which takes away or abridges any of the rights conferred by Part III, and any law made in contravention of this clause shall, to the extent of the contravention, be void.” The clause operates in tandem with Article 13 (1), which defines “law” to include statutes, ordinances, and regulations, but excludes rules made under a law that are themselves consistent with the Constitution. When a litigant challenges a statute, the Supreme Court first examines whether the impugned provision falls within the ambit of Part III. If a conflict is found, the offending portion is rendered null, while the remaining sections continue to operate unless they are inseparably linked. This “partial invalidity” doctrine was articulated in State of Madhya Pradesh v. Baldeo Sharma (1975 SCR 1), where the Court preserved the operative parts of a law after excising a discriminatory clause. ## Landmark Judgments The first major use of Article 13 (2) occurred in Golaknath v. State of Punjab (1967 SCR 744), where the Supreme Court held that Parliament could not amend fundamental rights, invoking the void‑to‑the‑extent‑of‑inconsistency rule. Ten years later, the seminal Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala (1973 AIR 1461) expanded the doctrine, declaring that while Parliament may amend the Constitution, it cannot alter its “basic structure,” a principle anchored in Article 13 (2)’s protective intent. In 1995, the Supreme Court struck down the Karnataka Prevention of Cow Slaughter Act on the ground that it violated equality before law under Article 14, applying the void‑to‑the‑extent‑of‑inconsistency test articulated in Article 13 (2). More recently, Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2018 AIR 2459) invalidated sections of the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Services) Act because the biometric data regime infringed the privacy right recognized under Article 21, demonstrating the clause’s continued relevance. ## Contemporary Application Since the 2010s, Article 13 (2) has been central to challenges against the 2020 Farm Laws, where petitioners argued that the statutes diluted the right to livelihood protected by Article 21. Although the Supreme Court stayed the implementation of the laws in December 2020, it reiterated that any legislative provision “must survive the test of consistency with Part III,” echoing the language of Article 13 (2). In 2022, the Court employed the provision to invalidate a provision of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2019 that failed to guarantee equal access to public facilities, citing the “void to the extent of inconsistency” rule. These recent interventions illustrate