Multiple choice

By exercising which power can the continuation of democracy in India be ensured?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

The most remarkable achievement in post-constitution India is the exercise of the power of the judicial review by the superior courts. So long as this power is wielded by the courts effectively and fearlessly, democracy will remain ensured in India and, with all its shortcomings, the Constitution will survive. The numerous applications for the constitutional writs before the High Courts and the Supreme Court and their results testify to the establishment in India of ‘limited government’, or, ‘the government of laws, not of men’, as they call it in the United States of America. The Supreme Court has well performed its task of protecting the rights of the individual against the executive, against oppressive legislations and even against the Legislature itself, when it becomes overzealous in asserting its privileges not only against the individual citizens but even against the judges.
At the same time, it should be observed that neither the guarantee of the Fundamental Rights nor its adjunct, — Judicial Review, — could have full play during the first quarter of a century of the working of our Constitution owning to their erosion by Proclamations of Emergency over a substantial period of time. It is true that the Emergency provisions are as much a part of the Constitution of India as any other, and that history has proved the need for such powers to meet extraordinary situations, but, broadly speaking, if the application of the Emergency provisions overshadows the other features of the Constitution, the balance between the ‘normal’ and ‘emergency’ provisions is palpably destroyed. Even, apart from Emergency, there has been an astounding erosion of Fundamental Rights owning to multiple amendments of the Constitution.
The means to prevent any such conflict between competing interests is to process all proposals for constitutional amendments through an expert and objective machinery, which would ensure the progressive adaptation of the Constitution to the Copernican changes in the social, economic and political background.

  1. Power to check erosion of the Constitution

  2. Power to protect the rights of individual citizens

  3. Power to keep executive under check

  4. Power of judicial review by superior courts

  5. Power to check multiple amendments of the Constitution.
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D Correct answer
Explanation

It is by effectively and fearlessly exercising the power of judicial review the superior courts can ensure survival of democracy and of the Constitution of India. This is exactly what the author has averred. This is the correct answer.

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