Judicial Review is a fundamental concept and process in the Indian constitutional scheme, empowering the judiciary to examine the constitutionality of legislative enactments and executive orders. It was implicitly embedded in the Constitution of India, which came into effect in 1950, to ensure the supremacy of the Constitution and protect individual rights. The core problem it solves is preventing the Union or State governments from making laws that take away or abridge the Fundamental Rights of citizens.
The mechanism is primarily rooted in several constitutional provisions. Article 13 declares that any law inconsistent with or in derogation of the Fundamental Rights shall be void. The power to enforce these rights is vested in the Supreme Court under Article 32 and the High Courts under Article 226, allowing them to issue writs.
Judicial Review is intrinsically connected to the Basic Structure Doctrine, a concept established by the Supreme Court in the landmark judgment of Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala in 1973. The ratio of this judgment is that Parliament's power to amend the Constitution under Article 368 is limited, and it cannot alter the Constitution's "basic structure," of which Judicial Review itself is an integral part.
The scope of Judicial Review has been recently reaffirmed and expanded. In I.R. Coelho v. State of Tamil Nadu (2007), the Supreme Court ruled that laws placed in the Ninth Schedule after April 24, 1973, are subject to judicial review if they violate the Basic Structure. Furthermore, the Supreme Court struck down the 99th Amendment and the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) Act in 2015, a significant exercise of judicial review over a constitutional amendment.