Kerala PSC » Kerala PSC Study Materials » Ancient and Medieval Period » Landmark Legislation And Policies

Landmark Legislation And Policies

Landmark legislation refers to a historical structure that has been given legal protection from destruction.

Legislation And Policies

Landmark legislation is something that gives legal protection to any building, structure that has significant values of historical, architectural, or cultural meaning. These rules and regulations vary from city to city, state to state, and country to country. But there is the same agenda towards the landmark legislation which includes keeping landmarks as close to their original condition as possible.

There are several laws, policies, programs, and schemes that are enforced to protect our social and public properties. Some laws and rules are quite effective while being implemented in that case. 

Objectives Of Landmark Legislation

There are a few mottos for this landmark legislation. Those are:

  1. Explaining the constitutional provisions on social protection.
  2. Discussion on various laws and policies for the protection.
  3. Analysis of government efforts in securing the social property.
  4. Illustrating the importance of landmark legislation rules, schemes, and policies.
  5. Discussion of various judgmental issues on social protection .
  6. Discussion of the beneficial values of landmark legislation to make social protection in real-time.

Definition of Legislation And Policy- Difference Of Legislations And Policies

In general, the legislation symbolizes laws and rules made by the government to protect the society though it can also depict the procedure of the law-making system. Before passing the legislation as a law, we call it a bill. Also, legislation has a lot of purposes. Those are:

  1. To authorize
  2. To regulate
  3. To outlaw
  4. To sanction
  5. To grant
  6. To declare 
  7. To restrict

The power of formulating new legislation is the complete responsibility of parliament, they are also responsible for reviewing and amendment of this legislation. Legislation can be considered as a higher form of law because it has the power to overrule or rescind most other laws. 

The legislation also can overrule court-made law, previous legislation, or regulations passed by subordinate authorities. The representative who is chosen by the public’s interest is the one who can create this legislation, so legislation is also the most democratic source of law.

On other hand, a policy is a set of principles that are adopted and proposed by any trustworthy organization or any individual. This also helps to achieve rational goals. The policy also can be said the statement of intent. 

The policy can be held by governments, public sector organizations, private companies as well as individuals. There are several kinds of policies like:

  1. Country’s foreign and domestic policy
  2. Privacy policies
  3. Company policy
  4. HR policy
  5. Insurance policy

There are a few features of the policies. Those are:

  1. It involves matters of principle.
  2. It is an authoritative statement that is made by a person or an authorized body with the power to do so.
  3. It focuses on action, it describes that what we need to do and who should we do.

Difference Between Legislation And Policies

  1. A policy is basically a set of principles that is proposed or adopted by an individual or a governing body whereas legislation is the laws and rule that is made by the government and legislation should be followed by the public.
  2. The policy can guide one towards any action that can be followed to get an intended outcome whereas legislation can restrict and prohibit any behavior or action.
  3. Legislation can be unchanged for a long time period whereas policies can be evolved and adapted with time under any circumstances.
  4. Policies can involve government, any authorized body or any individual person buy legislation always involves only the government.

Basic Structure Doctrine

Basic structure doctrine is a legal doctrine that can not be erased by the legislature of any sovereign state. Now, we must mention that this doctrine is mainly followed and recognized in India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Pakistan, Kenya, and Uganda. In the year the 1960s and 1970s, this doctrine was developed by the Supreme Court of India for Kesavananda Bharati v. the State of Kerala.

Bangladesh is the one and only country that adopted the basic doctrine structure which is in an expressed, written, and rigid constitutional manner. 

Shankari Prasad Case

In the year 1957, the Shankari Prasad case came into the limelight when the land reforms were being implemented. People were affected by these reforms and they turned towards the High court to get justice. There are some High courts that are in favor of this land reform and some of the high courts declined to say it was unconstitutional.

This serious confusion turned them to the Supreme court and then the case was running based on Article 13. This article mentioned that any state can’t make any law that takes away the rights of the people. 

Effects Of The Shankari Prasad Case

  1. Wholesome power of amendment was given to the parliament by the Indian judiciary.
  2. It was decided that the parliament has the right to amend the constitution.
  3. The principle of harmonic construction was applied by the honorable Supreme Court.

Sajjan Singh Case

  • In the bench
    1. Chief Justice J.R. Mudholkar
    2. Justice P.B. Gajendragadkar
    3. Justice K.N. Wanchoo
    4. Justice M. Hidayatullah
    5. Justice Raghubar Dayal

In the constitution, there are some basic parts and features that can not be amended. Though there is a valid reason as these are the most crucial part of the construction. It was explained by Justice Khanna that Fundamental Rights are the pillars of rules and regulations which have been applied to all the citizens of the Country. 

Facts on Sajjan Singh Case

  1. Issues of the Shankari Prasad had been raised again.
  2. The ninth Schedule is packed with certain statutes relating to the property and the feature of the Ninth schedule was that it is not subjected to judicial review that’s why the right to judicial review was taken away but it is one of the very basic features of the constitution.

Honourable Supreme Court held, “When article 368 confers on Parliament the right to amend the Constitution, the power in question can be exercised over all the provisions of the Constitution. It would be unreasonable to hold that the word “Law” in article 13 (2) takes in Constitution Amendment Acts passed under article 368.”

Chief Justice Gajendragadkar mentioned that if the Constitution-makers intended to exclude the fundamental rights from the scope of the amending power they would have made a clear provision on that behalf.