Article 1, Constitution

57 Landmark Constitutional Cases: Complete Notes

About this topic ▶ Watch this part of the lecture (0:00) These notes cover the 57 most important cases of Indian Constitutional Law . They are the cases that keep coming up in LL.B. examinations, in judiciary examinations and in every serious discussion of constitutional law. Every case is studied…

411 min read 16 Oct 2026

First, let us understand the basic meaning. Article 245 of the Constitution deals with how far laws made by Parliament and State legislatures can extend. GVK Industries Ltd. vs. Income Tax Officer (2011) answers a precise question: can Parliament make laws about things that happen outside the terri…

A five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court held that Parliament can make laws on matters outside India (extra-territorial aspects or causes) only if they have a real, not imaginary or fanciful, nexus with India, meaning some impact on or connection with India or the interest, welfare or security of its people. Parliament cannot make a law only for a foreign territory that has nothing to do with India. Such a law would be ultra vires and void. The case matters because it explains the limits of Parliament's power under Article 245 and stresses that the Indian Parliament is not an unlimited sovereign.

In this 1960 advisory opinion on a Presidential reference under Article 143(1), the Supreme Court held that dividing Berubari Union and exchanging enclaves under the Nehru-Noon Agreement was a cession of Indian territory. Such a cession cannot be done by an executive agreement or by an ordinary law under Article 3. It needs a constitutional amendment under Article 368 that amends Article 1 and the First Schedule by special majority. The case matters because it fixed the constitutional route for giving away territory, which was later followed in the Ninth Amendment (1960) and the Hundredth Amendment (2015).