The constitution of India provides for reasonable restrictions on Fundamental Rights but reasonableness must keep in mind that :
1) The interest of the general public is safeguarded
2) Prevailing soci

Question

The constitution of India provides for reasonable restrictions on Fundamental Rights but reasonableness must keep in mind that :
1) The interest of the general public is safeguarded
2) Prevailing social value and also social needs are not bar
3) Directive principles can be bypassed
4) Collective good is not greater
Out of these :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — A, 1 and 2 are correct. Reasonableness under Article 19 is not a free-floating sentiment; it is a judicially structured test, and statements 1 and 2 name two of its settled ingredients. Statement 1 is written into the constitutional text itself. Article 19(5), which governs restrictions on the freedom of movement and of residence, and Article 19(6), which governs the freedom to practise any profession or carry on any occupation, trade or business, both permit reasonable restrictions "in the interests of the general public" — that phrase is the operative ground in those two clauses, exactly as "sovereignty and integrity of India, security of the State, public order, decency or morality" and the rest are the operative grounds in Article 19(2) for speech. Statement 2 comes from the case law. In State of Madras v. V. G. Row (AIR 1952 SC 196) Patanjali Sastri CJ held that the test of reasonableness must be applied to each impugned statute separately and that no abstract standard or general pattern of reasonableness can be laid down: "the nature of the right alleged to have been infringed, the underlying purpose of the restrictions imposed, the extent and urgency of the evil sought to be remedied thereby, the disproportion of the imposition, the prevailing conditions at the time, should all enter into the judicial verdict." Prevailing social values and social needs are therefore no bar to a restriction being upheld — they are an element of the very test that decides it, which is what statement 2's awkward double negative is saying. The Commission made exactly this point when it disposed of objections on 31 October 2025, citing Articles 19(2) to 19(6) and naming V. G. Row as the key judgment. Statements 3 and 4 invert the doctrine. Article 37 makes the Directive Principles non-justiciable but "fundamental in the governance of the country", and it is the duty of the State to apply them in making laws, so they cannot be bypassed. And the collective good is not discounted but weighed: a court balances the harm done to the individual against the benefit conferred on the community. Note the Commission's own history on this item — the provisional key marked (d), Only 1 is correct, and the final revised key moved it to (a).

Why the other options are wrong — (b) Half right and therefore dangerous. Statement 2 is sound, so a candidate who has read V. G. Row is drawn straight to this option — and then has to swallow statement 3. Courts do not treat the Directive Principles as something a restriction may set aside. Article 37 declares them fundamental in the governance of the country and a duty of the State in law-making; Parts III and IV are read harmoniously, and Minerva Mills (1980) went further and called that harmony and balance part of the basic structure. Far from being bypassed, a Directive Principle strengthens a restriction: the Minimum Wages Act was upheld in 1955 against a challenge under Article 19(1)(g) precisely because it gave effect to the living-wage principle of Article 43.  (c) Statement 4 says the collective good is not greater, which reverses the actual approach and, taken alone, would leave the reasonableness test with nothing to weigh a restriction against. The settled method is a balance: the court measures the harm caused to the citizen against the benefit conferred on the community, and requires a direct and proximate nexus between the restriction and the object it claims to serve. A restriction that serves a substantial community interest is more likely to be upheld, not less. Marking (c) also means discarding statement 1, which is quoted almost verbatim from the text of Articles 19(5) and 19(6).  (d) This was the Commission's own provisional answer, and it is the option a careful candidate most plausibly marked in the hall, because statement 1 is undeniable and statement 2 is written in a clumsy double negative that is easy to misread as a denial. On the correct reading — prevailing social values and needs are not an obstacle to a restriction being held reasonable — statement 2 is true, and it is true on the highest authority, since V. G. Row lists "the prevailing conditions at the time" among the factors that must enter the judicial verdict. BPSC accepted that argument and revised the key from (d) to (a) on 31 October 2025; the old (d) is still circulating in coaching material.

Concept: No freedom in Article 19 is absolute, and the Constitution says so clause by clause. Article 19(1) guarantees six freedoms to citizens — (a) speech and expression, (b) assembly peaceably and without arms, (c) association or union, and co-operative societies since the Ninety-seventh Amendment, 2011, (d) free movement throughout the territory of India, (e) residence and settlement, and (g) practice of any profession or the carrying on of any occupation, trade or business. The seventh, 19(1)(f) on property, was deleted by the Forty-fourth Amendment, 1978 and re-enacted as the ordinary legal right in Article 300A. Clauses (2) to (6) then attach a distinct set of permitted grounds to each freedom, and the mapping is what examiners test. Article 19(2) allows restrictions on speech in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence. Article 19(3) allows restrictions on assembly in the interests of sovereignty and integrity or public order; 19(4) adds morality for associations. Articles 19(5) and 19(6) alone use the phrase "in the interests of the general public" — 19(5) for movement and residence, with an additional ground of protecting the interests of any Scheduled Tribe, and 19(6) for profession and trade, which further saves laws prescribing professional or technical qualifications and laws creating a State monopoly. The word "reasonable" itself was inserted into Article 19(2) by the Constitution (First Amendment) Act, 1951, along with public order and friendly relations with foreign States; sovereignty and integrity of India came in through the Sixteenth Amendment, 1963. Crucially, whether a restriction is reasonable is decided by the courts, statute by statute, never by the legislature's own declaration.

State PCS 2025 Q63 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q63 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer