KASARAGOD: Kesavananda Bharati Sripadagalvaru, the pontiff of Edneer Mutt in Kasaragod, died in the early hours of Sunday. He was 79 years old.
The petition of the Kesavananda Bharati order challenging the constitutionality of the Kerala government’s Agrarian Reform Law in the Supreme Court led to the adoption of the historical law study program ‘Basic Structure Doctrine’. In other words, the supreme court ruled that Parliament cannot alter the fundamental structure of the Constitution.
The case was heard for 68 days, the longest in the history of the Supreme Court, before a tribunal of 13 judges at a time when there were only 13 justices on the Supreme Court. No case was heard by a 13-judge tribunal before or after that.
In 1970, Keshavananda Bharati, when he was 21 years old, directly filed a mobilization before the Supreme Court against Kerala’s land acquisition law, which exempted the ownership of temples and stray dogs but imposed restrictions on private individual property.
He also challenged constitutional amendments 24, 26 and 29 introduced by the Indira Gandhi government, as those amendments got in the way of his original petition.
The 24th Amendment diluted fundamental rights; 26º abolished the private portfolios and the recognition granted to the rulers of the Indian states; and the 29th Amendment included the Kerala Land Reform (Amendment) Act, 1969, and the Kerala Land Reform (Amendment) Act, 1971 in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution to protect the laws provided for in Article 31B.
The hearing in the case began on October 31, 1972 and ended on March 23, 1973. The Supreme Court in a 7-6 majority ruling ruled that the fundamental basic structure cannot be altered. The basic structure of the Constitution is interpreted to include secularism, the independence of the judiciary, federalism, and the holding of free and fair elections, among others.
The seer, however, lost his case. The court confirmed the constitutionality of the Agrarian Reform Law. In 1968, at the age of 19, Sri Keshavananda Bharati Sripadangalavaru succeeded Sri Ishwarananda Bharati Swami as director of the Edneer Mutt.
The family pooch belongs to the lineage of Sri Thotakacharya, one of the first four disciples of Adi Shankaracharya.
After the trial, the family lost large tracts of land. In an interview with Bar and Bench in 2012, Keshavanada Bharat said that although Kerala was run by a ‘communist government’, the law exempted temple and mestizo properties from government acquisition, so “we have at least some properties now. “
He said that after losing land, the stray dog did not generate enough income and was being run on donations. “Eventually I will hand it over to the successor,” he had said. In 2018, Kesavananda Bharati received the Justice VR Krishna Iyer award from the then governor, former CJI P Sathasivam.
.
