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New Delhi : President of India Ram Nath Kovind on November 26, 2017, inaugurated here the Constitution Day celebrations organised by the Supreme Court to mark the anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution on November 26, 1949.
Speaking on the occasion, the President said that our Constitution is not static but is a living document. The Constituent Assembly was conscious that the Constitution would need to be interwoven with new threads. In a dynamic world, this would be the best way to serve the people and the nation as a whole. As such, over the years, many amendments have been carried out to the Constitution by Parliament.
The President said that the Constitution is not just an abstract ideal. It has to be made meaningful to the lives of ordinary people in every street, every village and every mohalla of our country. The President said that at the heart of the constitutional project was trust – trust in each other, trust between institutions, trust in the goodness of fellow citizens, and trust in the wisdom of future generations. This sense of trust is inherent in constitutional governance. When the Government trusts citizens to attest their documents themselves, it is in keeping with the spirit of the Constitution. When the Union government trusts state governments by devolving financial powers to them, and taking ahead the mission of cooperative federalism, then too we are working in the spirit of the Constitution.
The President said that our Constitution framers realised that a Constitution, no matter how well written and how detailed, would have little meaning without the right people to implement it and to live by its values. And in this, they placed their faith in generations that would follow. The Constitution empowers the people as much as the people empower the Constitution. When individuals and institutions ask what the Constitution has done for them and how it has built their capacities – they must also consider what they have done to uphold the Constitution. The Constitution is ‘We, the People’ as much as ‘We, the People’ are the Constitution, he said.
The President said that our Constitution builds a superstructure of political, economic and social democracy. This superstructure rests on three principles or pillars: liberty, equality and fraternity. It is critical to keep this intricate and delicate balance in mind when exploring the relationship between the three branches of the state – that is, the judiciary, the legislature and the executive. They are all equal, he said. The President received the first copies of books – ‘The Constitution at 67’ and ‘Indian Judiciary: Annual Report 2016-17’ from the Chief Justice of India Justice Dipak Misra.