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The Constitution is suprema lex, the paramount law of the land and there is no authority, no department or branch of the State which is above or beyond the Constitution or has powers unfettered and unrestricted by the Constitution. The Constitution has devised a structure of power relationship which checks and balances and limits are placed on the powers of every authority of instrumentality under the Constitution. Every organ of the State, be it the Executive or the Legislature or the Judiciary, derives its authority from the Constitution and it has to act within the limits of such authority. Parliament too is a creature of the Constitution and it can only have such powers as are given to it under the Constitution. It has no inherent power of amendment of the Constitution and being an authority created by the Constitution, it cannot have such inherent power but the power of amendment is conferred upon it by the Constitution and it is a limited power which is so conferred. Parliament cannot in exercise of this power so amend the Constitution as to alter its basic structure or to change its identity.Now, if by constitutional amendment, Parliament was granted unlimited power of amendment, it would cease to be an authority under the Constitution, but would become supreme over it because it would have power to alter the entire Constitution including its basic structure and even to put an end to it by totally changing its identity. Therefore, the limited amending power of Parliament is itself an essential feature of the Constitution, a part of its basic structure, for if the limited power of amendment was enlarged into an unlimited power the entire character of the Constitution would be changed. It must follow as a necessary corollary that any amendment of the Constitution which seeks, directly or indirectly, to enlarge the amending power of Parliament by freeing it from the limitation of unamendability of the basic structure would be violative of the basic structure and, hence, outside the amendatory power of Parliament.It is not correct to say that when Article 31A was upheld on the ground of state decisis, what was upheld was a constitutional device by which a class of subject-oriented laws was considered to be valid. The simple ground on which Article 31A was upheld,apart from the ground of contemporaneous practical exposition, was that its validity was accepted and recognised over the years and, therefore, it was not permissible to challenge its constitutionality. The principle of stare decisis does not imply the approval of the device. Or mechanism which is employed for the purpose of framing a legal or constitutional provision. [262G-H, 263A-B](18) Under clauses (2) to (6) of Article 19, restrictions can be imposed only if they are reasonable and then again, they can be imposed in the interest of a stated class of subjects only. It is for the courts to decide whether restrictions are reasonable and whether they are in the interest of the particular subject.Apart from other basic dissimilarities, Article 31C takes away the power of judicial review to an extent which destroys even the semblance of a comparison between its provisions and those of clauses (2) to (6) of Article 19. Human ingenuity, limitless though it may be, has yet not devised a system by which the liberty of the people can be protected except through the intervention of courts of law. [263B-D]