The Constitution of India[1] originally provided for the Right to property under Articles 19 and 31. Article 19[2] guaranteed to all citizens the right to acquire, hold and dispose of property. Article 31[3] provided that “no person shall be deprived of his property save by authority of law.” It also provided that compensation would be paid to a person whose property has been taken for public purposes. These provisions changed a number of times. The 44th Amendment of 1978[4] removed the right to property from the list of fundamental rights. A new provision, Article 300-A,[5] was added to the constitution, which provided that “no person shall be deprived of his property save by authority of law”. Thus, if a legislator makes a law depriving a person of his property, there would be no obligation on the part of the state to pay anything as compensation. The aggrieved person shall have no right to move the court under Article 32[6]. Thus, the right to property is no longer a fundamental right, though it is still a constitutional right. If the government appears to have acted unfairly, the action can be challenged in a court of law by aggrieved citizens.[7]The fundamental right to property was abolished because of its incompatibility with the goals of justice, social, economic and political and equality of status and of opportunity and with the establishment of a social democratic republic, as contemplated by the Constitution.[8] The right to property under Art. 300A is not a basic feature or structure of the Constitution. It is only a Constitutional right.
DEFINITION OF PROPERTY
Defining the property as a legal concept, the Supreme Court in Guru Dutt Sharma v. State of Bihar[9], observed that it is a bundle of rights, and in the case of tangible property, it would include the right of possession, the right to enjoy, the right to retain, the right to alienate and the right to destroy. The Supreme Court in Commissioner, Hindu Religious Endowment V. K. Lakshmindra[10], said that there is no reason why the word ‘property’ as used in Article 19(1)(f) [11]of the constitution should not be given a liberal and wide connotation and should not be extended to those well recognized types of interests which have the insignia or characteristic of proprietary rights.It was due to the reason of giving such a wide meaning to ‘property’ that in Shantabai v. State of Bombay[12] it was held that a bare contractual right unattended with any interest in property is property.