3 Amendment of the Constitution and Basic Structure Doctrine (Article 274)

1. The procedure (Article 274): amendment bill introduced by ⅓ of the existing membersof either House (the private-member threshold); publication 30 days beforeintroduction; passage by ⅔ of the existing members of both Houses (separately); the special-consent rules: provincial unanimity (the unanimous consent of the provinces) for changes to provincial boundaries or Schedule-6 powers; the excepted provisions (the India- style asymmetric entrenchment);2. The unamendable core (274's final clause):no amendment of the principles ofsovereignty-and-self-rule (swayatta ra swatantra), territorial integrity, nationalunity, popular sovereignty, and the referendum-and-constitutional-monarchquestions' closure — the express eternity clauses (Nepal's distinctive move: writing the basic structure INTO the text rather than leaving it to judicial implication);3. The Basic Structure Doctrine: the judicial doctrine that a formal amendment violating the constitution's fundamental identity is void — the pedigree: Germany's post-war eternity clause; India's Kesavananda Bharati (1973) — amendment power as "constituent" not "ordinary" legislative power; Minerva Mills and the doctrine's consolidation (names only); the comparative spread (Bangladesh's Fifteenth-Amendment case; Kenya's; Pakistan's doctrine-and-exception);4. Nepal's position — the layered answer: (i) the express eternity clauses (274's final clause) — the doctrine legislated; (ii) the procedural entrenchment (⅔ + provincial consent) as structural basic-features protection; (iii) the judicial shadow: the Supreme Court's Article-133(1) voidness power extends on its face to "any law" — whether "law" includes a constitutional amendment act is the reserved question…