Abstract

Amendments to the constitution and the jurisprudence surrounding the constituent power of Parliament have traditionally dominated the field of Indian constitutional law and constitutionalism. Most debates in this field have been restricted to issues like the source of the amending power of Parliament, express, and implied limits on the power to amend, and so on. In an attempt to revert to the core principles of constituent power, this paper attempts to answer more basic but extremely compelling constitutional questions: to qualify as an amendment to the constitution, how exactly must an amendment affect the text of the constitution? If an amendment does not change the bare text of the constitution in any way, but merely affects the overall constitutional scheme, can it still be accorded the status of a constitutional amendment? Locating this issue in the extension of the compensation period under the GST regime in India, this paper seeks to provide an answer to these questions by using a practical setting. First, the source of parliamentary competence to bring about such an amendment is traced. By the use of constitutional theory and principles of statutory interpretation, is then demonstrated that such ‘non-amending’ provisions are undoubtedly an inherent part of the constitutional regime. Lastly, this paper proposes a model that covers both legislative powers of Parliament, that is, constituent power and ordinary law-making power. In the nature of a walk-through, this model explains the legislative process to be followed to bring about an extension of the compensation period.

中文翻译：

---

宪法修正案中的“非修正”条款：根据第101条宪法修正案（2016年）对“过渡期”的实际适用

摘要

传统上，围绕宪法和议会组成权的宪法和法学修正案一直主导着印度宪法和宪政领域。在该领域中，大多数辩论仅限于诸如议会修改权的出处，明示和暗示的修改权限制之类的问题。为了恢复组成制权力的核心原则，本文试图回答更基本但极为引人注目的宪法问题：要想成为宪法的修正案，修正案究竟会对宪法文本产生怎样的影响？如果一项修正案不以任何方式改变宪法的裸文本，而仅影响整体宪法方案，还能获得宪法修正案的地位吗？本文将这个问题定位为印度商品及服务税（GST）体制下的补偿期延长问题，力求通过实际应用为这些问题提供答案。首先，追溯议会进行这种修正的权限来源。通过使用宪法理论和法定解释原则，可以证明这种“不修改”规定无疑是宪法制度的固有组成部分。最后，本文提出了一个既涵盖议会的立法权，又包括组成权和普通立法权的模型。本质上，本模型解释了延长补偿期限应遵循的立法程序。