Ninth Schedule
Laws (mostly land reform) originally shielded from judicial review — though the Supreme Court has since limited that protection. · Article 31B
A list of specific laws — added by Parliament over time, starting with the First Amendment in 1951 — given a special constitutional shield: they can't be challenged in court as violating Fundamental Rights, under Article 31B. The list began with 13 land-reform laws and has grown to roughly 284 over the decades, covering a much wider range of subjects than just land reform.
- The Supreme Court's landmark ruling in I.R. Coelho v. State of Tamil Nadu (2007) significantly limited this shield: any law placed in the Ninth Schedule after 24 April 1973 (the date of the Kesavananda Bharati "basic structure" ruling) can still be tested against the Constitution's basic structure — meaning the Ninth Schedule is no longer the near-absolute immunity it was originally designed to be.
Scope note: The Ninth Schedule now lists roughly 284 individual Acts — far too many to responsibly enumerate here without real risk of listing errors or omissions. This page explains the Schedule's mechanism and its most important limiting case rather than attempting a full Act-by-Act list — check legislative.gov.in for the current complete list.
Originally created to protect land-reform laws from being struck down by courts (a real concern in the 1950s, as courts were then striking down zamindari-abolition laws) — but its later use to shield a much wider range of laws from scrutiny became controversial, which is what led to the Supreme Court reining it back in via I.R. Coelho.
How courts have applied this
Adhikar is an independent citizen-awareness platform, not a Government of India website. This is a plain-English explanation for general information, not legal advice — always check the bare Constitution text (legislative.gov.in) or a qualified advocate before relying on this for an actual legal situation.