Overview

• RSS general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale has urged a national debate on whether the words ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’, added by the 42nd Amendment during the Emergency, should remain in the Preamble.
• Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar described those terms as a “festering wound” and “sacrilege to the spirit of Sanatan” even as he affirmed the Preamble’s sacrosanct status and backed the review call.
• Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and Union ministers Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Jitendra Singh have supported removing ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’ to restore what they say is India’s original civilizational ethos.
• Opposition parties including Congress, CPI(M) and RJD have denounced the proposal as a deliberate assault on the Constitution and demanded safeguards for the Preamble’s existing wording.
• Landmark Supreme Court rulings such as Kesavananda Bharati, Minerva Mills and S.R. Bommai uphold socialism and secularism as inviolable components of the Constitution’s basic structure.