The Forty-Second Amendment 1976

In one line

One amendment, in force on 3 January 1977, made three separate changes: it inserted Article 48A, it inserted Article 51A(g), and it moved forests and wildlife from the State List to the Concurrent List.

Almost every student writes about the first two. Almost nobody writes about the third, and the third is the one that made the Forest (Conservation) Act 1980 possible. A question on the constitutional provisions relating to environment protection is answered better by a student who knows there were three changes than by one who writes a longer essay on two.

What Stockholm had to do with it

The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment met at Stockholm in June 1972. India took part, and its Prime Minister addressed it. The Forty-second Amendment came four years later.

The connection is real and it is documented in India's own statutes, not merely asserted. The preamble to the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1981 recites that decisions were taken at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in June 1972 in which India participated, and that it is considered necessary to implement the decisions in so far as they relate to the preservation of the quality of air and control of air pollution. The Environment (Protection) Act 1986 rests on the same recital. The amendment of 1976 belongs to that sequence.

Be careful how you put it. The Forty-second Amendment did not say it was giving effect to Stockholm, and it was a very large amendment about a great many other things. What can properly be said is that the amendment came four years after Stockholm, that its environmental provisions use the vocabulary of the Stockholm Declaration, and that India's own later statutes expressly attribute themselves to Stockholm. What should not be said is that the amendment was passed to implement Stockholm.

The three changes

One: Article 48A, a new Directive Principle

Section 10 of the amending Act inserted, in Part IV:

"48A. Protection and improvement of environment and safeguarding of forests and wild life. The State shall endeavour to protect and improve the environment and to safeguard the forests and wild life of the country."

That is the whole Article. It is the first appearance of the word environment in the Constitution.

Two: Article 51A(g), a new Fundamental Duty

Section 11 inserted the whole of Part IVA, Article 51A, being the Fundamental Duties, of which clause (g) is:

"(g) to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wild life, and to have compassion for living creatures".

Note that Part IVA did not exist before this. The Fundamental Duties as a category are a creation of the Forty-second Amendment, and the environmental duty is one of the ten it introduced. An eleventh, clause (k) on the education of one's child, was added in 2002.