60 SOCIAL SCIENTIST parliament. Article 368 of the constitution, as originally enacted, provided for a stricter procedure for amending any provision than required for ordinary legislation. In all bills for such amendment, a majority of two-thirds of the members of each house of parliament present and voting and a majority of the total membership of that house was an indispensable condition. In certain specified bills, for example those seeking to amend articles 54, 55, 73, 163 or 241, the amendment was to be ratified by the legislatures of not less than half of the states. Golak Nath Case This was rigid enough. But a tension was created by the majority judgment of the supreme court in Golak Nath v. State of Punjab.9 It was a tenuous majority of one, because five of the learned judges for whom Chief Justice Subba Rao spoke held that a law amending the constitution was 'law5 within the meaning of article 13 and, therefore, if such amendment contravened or purported to abridge any of the fundamental rights in part III of the constitution, it would be ultra vires. It wa declared by the judges that ^the parliament will have no power from the date of this decision to amend any of the provisions of part III of the constitution so as to take away or abridge the fundamental rights •enshrined therein." They invoked the doctrine of prospective overruling and, therefore, did not disturb the earlier j udgments of the court which had upheld the first, fourth and seventeenth amendments. It was a bench of 11 judges and, although five judges held to the contrary, the petition was dismissed. The scale was tilted by Justice Hidayatullah who held.with Chief Justice Subba Rao^that the fundamental rights are outside the amendatory process if the amendment seeks to abridge or take away any of the rights" and that ^this court having now laid down that fundamental rights cannot be abridged or taken away by the exercise of amendatory process in article 368, any further inroad into these rights as they exist today will be illegal and unconstitutional unless it complies "with part III in general and article 13 (2) in particular." The reason for the majority decision was that the amending power regulated under article 368 is an ordinary legislative process and the result of the exercise of such power would therefore be nothing more than ordinary ^law' within the meaning of article 13 (9) and consequently be -within its prohibition if it wanted to take away or abridge any of the rights in part III. On the other hand, the grounds for the dissenting judges were that the power conferred under article 368 is a constituent power to change the constitution, distinct and different from the ordinary legislative power conferred on parliament; and therefore there are no limitations whatsoever, express or implied, on the amending power; and any provision of the constitution be it in part III or any other part, can be amended under article 368. It is obvious that the supreme court did not hold that parliament