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I would like to quote directly from a chapter on the judiciary from Pitfalls of Indian Democracy, a marvellous book by author-editor Hart Jaisingh which has contemporary relevance. He wrote: On August 1975 (during Mrs Gandhi’'s Emergency] Parliament passed the 39th Amendment. One of its provisions was to place 27 enactments in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution...immune from any challenge that it violated one of more fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution...All these devices, however, failed to deter the detenus from challenging the lawless laws under which they had been jailed, or the High Courts from striving to defend the fundamental rights of citizens within the four comers of the new limitations imposed by the government under the guise of the Emergency.

The Delhi High Court'’s judgment on Kuldeep Nayar’'s Habeas Corpus petition declared the journalists'’ detention invalid on the ground that the government had failed to give any reasons for the action. The judge commented that the right to life and liberty had not sprung from the Constitution, but were basic natural rights, given due protection by the Constitution, and that suspension of rights did not remove them entirely.

After the proclamation of the Emergency a large number of detenus filed petitions in the Supreme Court...Behind their back and without hearing them, a bench of the Supreme Court presided over by the chief justice ordered that all such petitions be ordered as withdrawn en bloc...A large number of Habeas Corpus petitions were pending in various High Courts...In view of the suspension of the right to enforce Article 21 of the Constitution, no person was entitled to approach any court on the ground that his detention was mala fide...

One after another, seven High Courts, however, held that the suspension of the right to enforce Article 21 could not have the effect of suspending the rule of law and it was therefore open to a detenu to file a habeas corpus petition...

It needs to be noted with gratification that during the worst political crisis that Independent India ever faced, the country’'s High Courts rose to the occasion and proved true and courageous champions of citizens’ democratic rights. Ironically, it was the Supreme Court that seemed to be hamstrung by the Emergency and sided with a retrograde regime that was bent upon taking the Indian people away from the democratic life they had chosen for themselves.

Why Mrs Gandhi wanted to put 27 enactments in the Ninth Schedule?

A) To simplify the provisions

B) To safeguard the constitution

C) To make them immune from the challenge of violation of fundamental lights

D) To add more to the chapter on fundamental rights