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More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

From Nehru to Modi, Parliament has often rewritten what the Supreme Court decided

The 2026 law reversing CAPF officers' Supreme Court victory fits into a long constitutional tradition stretching from the First Amendment and Shah Bano to Vodafone and Delhi's services dispute.

The 18,000 officers of the Central Armed Police Forces lead nearly one million jawans. Among them, the Border Security Force is deployed along India’s sensitive borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh; the Indo-Tibetan Border Police guards the border with Tibet (China); and the Sashastra Seema Bal is deployed along the borders with Nepal and Bhutan. The Central Reserve Police Force is engaged in critical counter-insurgency operations, while the Central Industrial Security Force secures airports, Parliament, and other critical central government establishments.

All of them feel aggrieved by the passage of the CAPF Act, 2026, which nullified the Supreme Court’s ruling on their career progression in Sanjay Prakash vs Union of India (2025). However, this is not the first time that a ruling party has used the juggernaut of its overwhelming parliamentary majority to override a judicial mandate. In fact, India has a long history of legislatures enacting laws to overturn court judgments.

Across parties, states, decades, and a wide range of issues, the ruling dispensation has often pressed amendments and legislation to nullify judicial directions. The practice began with the First Constitutional Amendment, introduced by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru even before India’s first general election. In Sixteen Stormy Days: The Story of the First Amendment to the Constitution of India, Tripurdaman Singh describes the intense debates in Parliament during May and June 1951, when Nehru introduced the amendment to add “reasonable restrictions” to Article 19(2), thereby permitting the State to limit freedom of speech in the interests of public order, friendly relations with foreign states, and incitement to an offence. The amendment effectively diluted the strict interpretation that courts had given to permissible restrictions on free speech.

Similarly, Article 31A was introduced to specifically protect laws relating to zamindari abolition and the........

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