The Constitution of India is a most comprehensive document. It is unique in many ways. It cannot be fitted in any particular mould or model.

It is a blend of the rigid and the flexible, federal and unitary and presidential and parliamentary. It attempts a balance between the Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles of State Policy. Also, it presents a via media between the principles of parliamentary sovereignty and judicial supremacy.

Over the past 63 years, Indian Constitution has successfully faced many crises and survived, many constitutions of nations framed after the Second World War have floundered and gone in to oblivion.

On the eve of completion of fifty years of working of the Constitution, the Central Government appointed a Constitutional Review panel to study the working of the Constitution and to suggest measures to improve it. The function of the panel was to “review the working of the constitution and not to rewrite it”.

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Mr. M.N. Venkatachelliah, retired Chief Justice, headed the Commission. Mr. Subash Kashyap was the member Secretary of the Commission.

The Commission has identified ten areas of immediate concern. They are

(1) Strengthening of the Institutions of Parliamentary democracy

(2) Electoral Reforms

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(3) Pace of socio-economic change and development

(4) Measures for promotion of literacy

(5) Union-State relations

(6) Decentralisation and devolution of power

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(7) Enlargement of fundamental rights

(8) Effectuation of fundamental duties

(9) Enforcement of directive principles and

(10) Legal control of fiscal and monetary policies.