Salient Features of the Constitution: Borrowed, Lengthy and Quasi-Federal

The Constitution of India is the country's supreme law: every other law, executive order and judicial ruling must conform to it. What makes it distinctive as a piece of constitutional engineering, its length, where its provisions came from, whether it is federal or unitary, how it can be amended, is its own dedicated chapter in Laxmikanth precisely because these features cut across every other topic in Polity. Ten real past-year questions map to this chapter, and understanding it properly makes several others (Fundamental Rights, the Preamble, Centre-State relations) click into place faster.

This chapter's material overlaps with NCERT Class 11, Indian Constitution at Work, Chapter 1 (Constitution: Why and How?). This note goes further than that chapter's coverage.

The Constitution's vital statistics

The Constituent Assembly adopted the Constitution on 26 November 1949; it came into force on 26 January 1950, a date chosen to mark the anniversary of the 1930 Purna Swaraj declaration, and is celebrated as Republic Day. (The Assembly's own formation, sessions and key figures are covered in the Preamble and Making of the Constitution note; this note picks up from the finished document.)

When Dr B.R. Ambedkar moved the Draft Constitution for consideration on 4 November 1948, he told the Assembly it "contains 315 Articles and 8 Schedules." Over the following year of debate the Assembly added further provisions, and the Constitution as finally adopted on 26 November 1949 ran to 395 Articles, organised into 22 Parts, with 8 Schedules. Ambedkar himself anticipated the criticism this size would draw: "It must be admitted that the Constitution of no country could be found to be so bulky as the Draft Constitution."

That size has only grown. As of the Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act, 2023, the officially printed text still runs, in its numbering, from Article 1 to Article 395, but numerous amendments have inserted whole clusters of new provisions under lettered sub-numbers rather than renumbering the document, Article 21A (Right to Education), Articles 31A to 31D, the entire Part IX and IXA (Panchayats and Municipalities, Articles 243A to 243ZT), Articles 371A to 371J (state-specific provisions), and more. Counting these insertions and netting out a handful of repeals, legal commentary commonly puts the Constitution's real article count at around 448 today. Parts have grown from 22 to 25: Part VII (States in Part B of the First Schedule) was omitted by the Seventh Amendment, 1956, while Parts IVA (Fundamental Duties) and XIVA (Tribunals) were added by the 42nd Amendment, 1976, and Parts IXA (Municipalities) and IXB (Co-operative Societies) by the 74th (1992) and 97th (2011) Amendments respectively. Schedules have grown from 8 to 12: the Ninth Schedule was added by the very First Amendment in 1951 (to shield land-reform laws from judicial review), the Tenth by the 52nd Amendment, 1985 (anti-defection), and the Eleventh and Twelfth by the 73rd and 74th Amendments, 1992 (Panchayats and Municipalities).

Why it is called the lengthiest written constitution in the world

No other country has attempted a single written constitutional document of this scale, and the reasons are specific:

• The vastness and diversity of the country. A Constitution governing a continent-sized, linguistically and socially diverse population needed far more detail than a smaller, more homogeneous nation-state.
• A single constitution for both the Centre and the states. Unlike the United States, where each state has its own separate constitution alongside the federal one, India's Constitution (barring the now-abrogated special provisions for Jammu and Kashmir) governs the states directly, so provisions that would otherwise sit in fifty separate state documents are all folded into one text.
• Drafting by lawyers, for precision. Many members of the Drafting Committee, led by Ambedkar himself, were trained lawyers who wrote provisions in exhaustive legal language to leave as little as possible to future interpretation or ordinary legislation.
• Incorporation of the Government of India Act, 1935. As the next section covers, large portions of that Act's administrative machinery were carried over wholesale rather than left to statute.
• Elaborate safeguards for minorities, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and detailed provisions on services, emergencies and Centre-state relations that a shorter, more principle-based constitution (like that of the USA) leaves to convention or later legislation.

A blend borrowed from many constitutions

This is the most heavily tested angle in this chapter: UPSC statement-based questions often ask which country a specific feature was "borrowed" from, and the trap is usually a plausible-sounding wrong pairing. The standard account, grounded in what Ambedkar told the Constituent Assembly, looks like this:

How solid is this table? The Government of India Act, 1935 borrowing is confirmed directly by Ambedkar's own words: responding to critics who said "about half" of the Draft Constitution "has been copied" from the 1935 Act, he replied, "I make no apologies... What I am sorry about is that the provisions taken from the Government of India Act, 1935, relate mostly to the details of administration." The Directive Principles are equally well documented in the same speech: "the only other constitution framed for Parliamentary Democracy which embodies such principles is that of the Irish Free State", a direct acknowledgment of the Irish model. The Concurrent List is confirmed the same way, Ambedkar told the Assembly the Draft Constitution followed "the Australian plan on a far more extensive scale" to ease the rigidity that federal constitutions usually suffer from. The "procedure established by law" phrase in Article 21 has a well-documented history: B.N. Rau, the Constitutional Adviser, travelled to the USA, UK, Canada and Ireland in 1947 to consult constitutional experts, and after discussions with US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter (who cautioned against an American-style "due process" clause), the Assembly adopted the narrower phrase used in Japan's 1946 Constitution instead. The amendment procedure's link to South Africa is the standard textbook attribution, though it is worth noting Ambedkar's own defence of it to the Assembly compared it favourably against the more rigid American and Australian procedures rather than naming South Africa specifically.

Federal in form: how power is divided

A federal constitution divides sovereign power between two levels of government, each supreme within its own sphere. India's Constitution carries the classic markers of this:

• Dual polity: a Union at the Centre and States at the periphery, each with its own government.
• Division of powers: the Seventh Schedule's Union, State and Concurrent Lists.
• Supremacy of the Constitution: laws inconsistent with it are void.
• Written Constitution: the single most detailed one in the world, as above.
• Rigidity for federal provisions: matters like the distribution of legislative powers, representation of states in Parliament, and the powers of courts can only be amended with ratification by at least half the state legislatures.
• Independent judiciary: to adjudicate disputes between the Centre and the states, or between states.
• Bicameralism: a Rajya Sabha at the Centre representing the states, alongside the Lok Sabha.

Unitary in spirit: why the Centre has the upper hand

Alongside those federal markers sit an unusually large set of unitary features, which is why this Constitution is routinely described as quasi-federal:

• A single Constitution for the Centre and the states. Indian states, unlike American ones, cannot frame their own separate constitutions.
• Single citizenship. Ambedkar was explicit: "The proposed Indian Constitution is a dual polity with a single citizenship. There is only one citizenship for the whole of India."
• Flexibility for most provisions. The bulk of the Constitution can be amended by Parliament alone, by a special majority, with no state ratification required.
• Emergency provisions that let the Centre override state autonomy entirely.
• A single, integrated judiciary. Again in Ambedkar's own words: "The Indian Federation though a Dual Polity has no Dual Judiciary at all. The High Courts and the Supreme Court form one single integrated Judiciary."
• All-India Services (IAS, IPS, IFoS), recruited centrally but serving in the states, a deliberate departure from a "pure" federation's separate state civil services.
• Governors appointed by the Centre, not elected by the states.
• Parliament's power to reshape the states themselves, forming new states or altering boundaries and names by ordinary legislation, without needing the affected state's consent.

The British political scientist K.C. Wheare, in his classic study Federal Government, described the Indian Constitution as "quasi-federal" precisely because of this mixture, a federation with a strong unitary bias. The Supreme Court itself endorsed this reading of Wheare in S.R. Bommai v. Union of India (1994), while also holding that federalism forms part of the Constitution's basic structure. Ambedkar's own description, given directly to the Constituent Assembly, anticipated exactly this duality: "the Draft Constitution can be both unitary as well as federal according to the requirements of time and circumstances. In normal times, it is framed to work as a federal system. But in times of war it is so designed as to make it work as though it was a unitary system."

A parliamentary, not presidential, system

The Constitution adopts the British parliamentary model over the American presidential one, a choice Ambedkar defended on the ground that daily accountability to Parliament makes an executive more responsible than the American Congress's periodic, once-in-two-years check on the President. In brief: the President is the nominal (constitutional) executive while the Council of Ministers, headed by the Prime Minister, is the real executive; the government must command a majority in the Lok Sabha and is collectively responsible to it; and the Lok Sabha can be dissolved before its term ends. This system has its own dedicated chapter; here it matters only as one feature among several.

Neither too rigid nor too flexible: amending the Constitution

Article 368 lays down the formal amendment procedure, and the Constitution deliberately avoids the extremes of the American Constitution (very rigid) and the British constitution (entirely flexible, since Britain has no single written document). Three distinct routes exist:

1. By a simple majority of Parliament, like an ordinary law, for matters such as the admission or creation of new states, changes to state boundaries or names, and citizenship, these are technically outside Article 368 altogether.
2. By a special majority: a majority of the total membership of each House, and a two-thirds majority of members present and voting, for the bulk of the Constitution's provisions, including Fundamental Rights.
3. By a special majority plus ratification by at least half the state legislatures, reserved for the provisions that touch the federal structure itself: the election of the President, the extent of the Union's and states' executive power, the Supreme Court and High Courts, the distribution of legislative powers, and Article 368 itself.

This graded difficulty is exactly what Ambedkar meant when he said the Draft Constitution's amending process was, if anything, simpler than the American or Australian ones: only a small, carefully chosen set of provisions needs state consent at all.

An independent judiciary with the power of judicial review

A single, integrated judiciary, topped by the Supreme Court, with the power of judicial review, the authority to strike down any law or executive action that violates the Constitution, is itself one of the features Laxmikanth lists as salient. Judicial review is drawn from the American model, but is exercised here within an integrated court hierarchy rather than a separate federal court system, one more instance of the federal-unitary blend running through this chapter. The appointment and removal of judges is developed fully elsewhere; it belongs on this list because an independent judiciary able to check both the legislature and the executive is a defining, not incidental, feature of the design.

Rights, directives and duties: three parts working together

Part III (Fundamental Rights), Part IV (Directive Principles of State Policy) and Part IVA (Fundamental Duties, added by the 42nd Amendment, 1976) are each named individually as salient features, and their combination is itself distinctive: justiciable civil-political rights, non-justiciable socio-economic goals for the state to pursue, and moral duties for the citizen, sit side by side and are read together by the courts rather than as competing hierarchies (the doctrine of harmonious construction, developed in cases like Minerva Mills, 1980). Each part has its own dedicated note on this site; this chapter's job is only to flag why the combination itself, not any one part alone, counts as a salient feature.

Secular, universally enfranchised, and independently audited

A handful of further features round out the list:

• A secular state: the Constitution establishes no state religion and treats all religions equally, a position reinforced by (though not created by) the word "secular" being added to the Preamble in 1976.
• Universal adult franchise: every citizen aged 18 and above (originally 21, lowered by the 61st Amendment, 1988) can vote, regardless of caste, religion, sex, or economic status, a radical commitment given the literacy and income levels of India in 1950.
• Independent constitutional bodies: the Election Commission, the Comptroller and Auditor-General, and the Union and State Public Service Commissions are all designed with security of tenure and insulation from ordinary political pressure, so that elections, public accounts and civil service recruitment stay outside day-to-day executive control.

The exam angle: the trap UPSC actually tests

Two failure modes account for most wrong answers on this chapter:

Borrowed-from-which-country confusion. UPSC statement-based questions like to swap a feature's true source for a plausible neighbour, DPSP is Irish, not British; the Concurrent List is Australian, not Canadian; judicial review is American, not British (Britain has no written constitution to review laws against). The safest anchor is the Government of India Act, 1935, since it is by far the largest single source and is the one Ambedkar defended most directly, and from there work outward to the country-specific borrowings above rather than guessing.

Federal-vs-unitary mislabelling. A second common trap lists a genuinely unitary feature (single citizenship, integrated judiciary, Centre-appointed Governors, flexible amendment for non-federal provisions) as a "federal" feature, or vice versa. The reliable test: does the feature protect state autonomy against the Centre (federal), or let the Centre override or standardise across states (unitary)? Ambedkar's own answer was that the Constitution is deliberately both, by design, so a question asking whether India is "purely federal" or "purely unitary" has neither as the correct answer; the exam-safe term is quasi-federal.

Quick revision points

• Adopted 26 November 1949; enforced 26 January 1950. Originally 395 Articles, 22 Parts, 8 Schedules; today, roughly 448 Articles, 25 Parts, 12 Schedules (numbering still nominally runs to Article 395, but with extensive lettered insertions like 21A, 31A-31D, 243A-243ZT).
• Single largest source of borrowing: the Government of India Act, 1935 (federal scheme, Governor's office, judiciary, public service commissions, emergency provisions, administrative detail). DPSP from Ireland; Concurrent List from Australia; judicial review and Fundamental Rights from the USA; parliamentary government from Britain.
• Federal features: dual polity, division of powers, written and supreme constitution, rigidity for federal provisions, independent judiciary, bicameralism.
• Unitary features: single constitution, single citizenship, flexible amendment for most provisions, emergency powers, integrated judiciary, All-India Services, Centre-appointed Governors.
• K.C. Wheare called it "quasi-federal"; Ambedkar called it federal in normal times, capable of working as unitary "in times of war."
• Article 368: three amendment routes, simple majority, special majority, special majority plus state ratification, reserved for genuinely federal provisions.
• Parliamentary system (nominal vs real executive), judicial review, and the Fundamental Rights-DPSP-Fundamental Duties combination are each independently listed as salient features, alongside secularism, universal adult franchise, and independent bodies like the Election Commission, CAG and UPSC.

Once the vital statistics and the borrowed-features table are solid, the fastest way to lock them in is to practise the exact statement-based questions UPSC tends to build around this chapter.