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This article examines judicial challenges to central government power in the Supreme Court of India by analyzing activism and assertiveness in fundamental rights decisions from 1977 to 2007. Based on field research and contextual analysis of politically significant decisions, the article traces patterns of judicial assertiveness in politically significant fundamental rights decisions. During this era, the Court was selectively assertive in challenging the central government in fundamental rights cases. This article provides an explanatory account of the motives and factors that drove the Supreme Court of India‘s selective activism and assertiveness in politically significant fundamental rights decisions. It argues that …

cross the United States, voters in many states have enacted initiative constitutional amendments that abrogate protections for equality and fundamental rights. In most cases, state supreme courts have upheld the validity of these amendments, undermining protections for fundamental rights at the state level. This Article proposes a novel solution to this problem: it argues for the application of the basic structure doctrine in the review of constitutional amendments by state supreme courts. Under this doctrine, the Supreme Court of India (like constitutional courts in other nations) asserted the power to invalidate amendments that abrogate "basic features" of the Indian Constitution …