The Indian Constitution Opened With 395 Articles, 22 Parts and 8 Schedules in 1950 and Now Runs to 25 Parts and 12 Schedules After 106 Amendment Acts

The Constitution of India had 395 articles, 22 Parts and 8 Schedules when it came into force on 26 January 1950, according to a Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs backgrounder, which calls it the lengthiest constitution in the world. The text the Legislative Department prints today has 25 Parts and 12 Schedules. The Constitution of India archive, run by the Centre for Law and Policy Research, summarises the current document as 395 articles in 25 Parts and 12 Schedules.

The 395 is the highest article number, not a head count. Amendments add articles by attaching letters (21A, 51A, 243ZT, 371J) so that existing numbers stay fixed, and 25 of the numbers from 1 to 395 are now empty, marked omitted. Tuput counted the contents pages of the Legislative Department’s May 2022 edition, which includes every amendment up to the 105th, and found 467 article numbers still printed, 370 plain and 97 lettered. Three of them, 124A to 124C, were inserted in April 2015 and struck down by the Supreme Court that October. The printed text still carries them, with a note saying so. This is a tuput count, not an official total.

How the 25 Parts are laid out

The Preamble comes first and gives 26 November 1949 as the day the Constituent Assembly adopted the document. Its text carries one set of changes. The 42nd Amendment, in force from 3 January 1977, put “socialist” and “secular” into the phrase “sovereign democratic republic” and changed “unity of the Nation” to “unity and integrity of the Nation”.

Part I, Articles 1 to 4, opens with the sentence “India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States” and lets Parliament form new states by law. Part II covers citizenship at the start. Part III, Articles 12 to 35, is the Fundamental Rights, in six groups: equality, freedom, protection against exploitation, freedom of religion, cultural and educational rights, and constitutional remedies. Article 32 lets a person go straight to the Supreme Court to enforce them.

Part IV, Articles 36 to 51, holds the Directive Principles of State Policy. Article 37 says no court can enforce them, but that they are “fundamental in the governance of the country”. Part IVA is one article, 51A, listing eleven Fundamental Duties. The 42nd Amendment added it from 3 January 1977, and the eleventh duty, a parent’s or guardian’s duty to provide schooling to a child aged six to fourteen, came with effect from 1 April 2010.

The machinery follows. Part V (Articles 52 to 151) covers the Union: the President, Parliament, the Union government and the Supreme Court. Part VI (152 to 237) covers the states, and Part VIII the Union territories. Parts IX, IXA and IXB cover panchayats, municipalities and co-operative societies. Part XI sets Union and state relations, and Part XII covers finance and property. Article 324, in Part XV, vests the running of elections in the Election Commission. Part XVII is about language: Article 343 names Hindi in Devanagari script as the Union’s official language and kept English in use for fifteen years from commencement, with Parliament free to extend that by law.

Part XVIII covers emergencies and Part XX is Article 368 alone. Part XXI holds temporary and special provisions, including Article 370 and Articles 371 to 371J, which give separate arrangements to particular states from Nagaland (371A) to Karnataka (371J). Part VII is now empty, marked omitted. That leaves 25 live Parts: the 22 original numbers minus VII, plus four lettered Parts (IVA, IXA, IXB, XIVA).

The twelve Schedules hold the detail

The First Schedule lists the states and Union territories. The Second covers the President, the Governors, the presiding officers of the legislatures, judges and the Comptroller and Auditor-General, the Third the oaths, and the Fourth the Rajya Sabha seats for each state. The Fifth and Sixth govern Scheduled Areas and tribal areas.

The Eighth Schedule lists 22 languages, from Assamese to Urdu. Sindhi came in on 10 April 1967. Konkani, Manipuri and Nepali followed from 31 August 1992, and Bodo, Dogri, Maithili and Santhali from 7 January 2004, which took the list from 14 to 22. The 96th Amendment changed “Oriya” to “Odia” from 23 September 2011.

The last four are amendment-era additions. The Ninth Schedule came from the First Amendment of 1951 and began with land reform laws, starting with the Bihar Land Reforms Act, 1950. The Tenth, from the 52nd Amendment in force on 1 March 1985, deals with disqualification for defection. The Eleventh, 29 subjects for panchayats, came with the 73rd Amendment on 24 April 1993. The Twelfth, 18 subjects for municipalities, came with the 74th on 1 June 1993.

The Seventh Schedule decides who makes which law

Article 246 divides lawmaking among three lists in the Seventh Schedule. Parliament alone legislates on the Union List, state legislatures alone on the State List, and both on the Concurrent List. The entries in the May 2022 text are numbered up to 97 on the Union List, 66 on the State List and 47 on the Concurrent List, with some numbers omitted.

Defence is entry 1 of the Union List. Public order and police are entries 1 and 2 of the State List. The Concurrent List covers marriage and divorce (entry 5), economic and social planning (20) and education (25). The 42nd Amendment rewrote entry 25 to cover technical and medical education and universities, and added forests as entry 17A, both from 3 January 1977. Union List entry 97 gives Parliament anything not named in the other two lists.

The 101st Amendment shows how the lists get rewritten. In force from 16 September 2016, it added Article 246A, which lets both Parliament and the state legislatures make laws on goods and services tax, and Article 279A, which creates the GST Council. The Council’s members are the Union Finance Minister as chair and a minister from each state government.

How an amendment passes

Article 368 sets out the steps. A bill goes in either House of Parliament. It must pass each House by a majority of that House’s total membership and by at least two-thirds of the members present and voting. Then the President must give assent, a word added by the 24th Amendment in 1971.

Changes to a short list need more. The list includes the election of the President, the Seventh Schedule lists, the representation of states in Parliament, the chapters on the Supreme Court and High Courts, Union and state legislative relations, and Article 368 itself. Those also need resolutions from the legislatures of at least half the states.

Amendment Bills carry their own numbering. The women’s reservation measure was introduced as the 128th Amendment Bill and became the 106th Act, according to All India Radio and The Tribune. The Rajya Sabha passed it on 21 September 2023 by 214 votes to none. The Act reserves one third of seats in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies for women, and Article 334A starts that only after a delimitation that follows the first census after the Act, as Verdictum’s report of the Supreme Court’s January 2025 order describes it.

The special majority is a real hurdle. PRS Legislative Research lists the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026, which would have raised the ceiling on Lok Sabha seats from 550 to 850, as introduced on 16 April and negatived on 17 April. SCC Online reports a vote of 298 to 230 and says the Speaker declared that the bill lacked the required special majority. Article 81 sets the present ceiling at 550, made up of up to 530 members from states and up to 20 from Union territories.

What the amendments changed

The First Amendment, in force from 18 June 1951, added Articles 31A and 31B and the Ninth Schedule. The Seventh, from 1 November 1956, omitted Part VII, which had dealt with the States in Part B of the First Schedule, and removed the Part A and Part B references elsewhere in the text. The 36th removed Article 2A when Sikkim became a state on 26 April 1975, a story told in our account of Sikkim joining India.

The 44th Amendment, from 20 June 1979, took the right to property out of Part III and put it in Article 300A, which says no person shall be deprived of property except by authority of law. The 86th Amendment inserted Article 21A, free and compulsory education for children aged six to fourteen, with effect from 1 April 2010. The 97th Amendment added Part IXB from 8 February 2012. The 100th Amendment Act, dated 28 May 2015, gave effect to the territories India acquired from Bangladesh and transferred to it.

Where the courts draw the line

Whether Parliament can amend anything at all was settled by the Supreme Court in stages. The Coelho judgment of 11 January 2007 recounts them. In Golak Nath, decided on 27 February 1967 by six judges to five, the Court held that an amendment is “law” under Article 13 and cannot take away fundamental rights. Parliament answered with the 24th Amendment in 1971, which said Article 13 does not apply to amendments.

On 24 April 1973 a bench of thirteen judges decided Kesavananda Bharati, by seven to six. The majority held that Article 368 does not let Parliament alter the basic structure or framework of the Constitution. In 1976 the 42nd Amendment added clauses to Article 368 saying there is “no limitation whatever on the constituent power of Parliament”. The Government’s own printed edition notes that the Supreme Court declared that section invalid in Minerva Mills in 1980.

The Ninth Schedule shows the effect. Article 31B says laws listed there cannot be void for clashing with fundamental rights. A nine-judge bench in Coelho ruled that laws placed there after 24 April 1973 can still be tested against the basic structure, with Article 21 read with Articles 14 and 19. The bench said the protection they get is “not blanket protection”.

The Court has also set aside an amendment on that basis. The 99th Amendment, in force from 13 April 2015, created a National Judicial Appointments Commission under Article 124A. On 16 October 2015 the Supreme Court, in Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association v. Union of India, struck it down.

The handwritten original

The Constituent Assembly passed the Constitution on 26 November 1949, and President Rajendra Prasad authenticated it that day. Article 394 brought Articles 5 to 9, 60, 324, 366, 367, 379, 380, 388, 391, 392 and 393 into force at once and the rest on 26 January 1950. The drafting is told in our piece on Ambedkar and the writing of the Constitution and the Assembly’s sittings in our account of the Constituent Assembly at work.

The signing took place on 24 January 1950 in Constitution Hall in New Delhi. The debates record three copies: a handwritten and illuminated English copy, a printed English copy and a handwritten Hindi copy. Jawaharlal Nehru signed first because he had public duty that day, members followed in their seating order, and the President signed after the members. New India Samachar, a Press Information Bureau publication, counts 284 members who signed. The same sitting elected Rajendra Prasad unopposed as President.

The English text was handwritten by Prem Behari Narain Raizada in a flowing italic style, and Vasant Krishna Vaidya prepared the Hindi copy, according to New India Samachar. Nandalal Bose and his team from Kala Bhavana in Santiniketan illustrated both. The Leaflet reports that Nehru asked Raizada to write the text, that he charged nothing and asked only to sign each page, and that each of the 22 Parts opens with an illustration. The Leaflet and the Heritage Lab both place an Indus Valley seal showing a bull at the head of Part I, and both place Krishna and Arjuna before the battle of Kurukshetra at the head of Part IV. The Leaflet adds Rama, Sita and Lakshmana returning to Ayodhya at Part III and Akbar in his court at Part XIV.