The Right to Property is a constitutional legal right in India, currently enshrined in Article 300A of the Constitution, which is a provision under Part XII. It is a concept that protects individuals from being arbitrarily deprived of their property by the state.
The right's history is marked by a significant change in its status: it was originally a Fundamental Right under Article 19(1)(f) and Article 31 of the Constitution, enacted in 1950. This fundamental status created frequent conflicts with the government's socialist agenda, particularly land reforms and redistribution, leading to numerous legal challenges. To resolve this tension and give primacy to socio-economic policies, the Forty-Fourth Amendment Act, 1978, removed the right from the list of Fundamental Rights.
The amendment deleted Article 19(1)(f) and Article 31 from Part III and inserted the new Article 300A. The key provision of Article 300A states: "No person shall be deprived of his property save by authority of law". This mechanism ensures that the state can only acquire property through a validly enacted law, not by a mere executive order or fiat, and must follow due process.
The change meant the right was downgraded from a Fundamental Right to a constitutional legal right. The most significant consequence is that a person can no longer directly approach the Supreme Court under Article 32 for its enforcement. Instead, a challenge for the violation of Article 300A must be raised before a High Court under Article 226. The right is connected to earlier amendments like the First Amendment Act, 1951, which introduced Articles 31A and 31B to protect land reform laws from judicial review, and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment Act, 1971, which replaced the word "compensation" with "amount" in Article 31. What stayed the same is the protection against arbitrary state action, but what was replaced was the absolute guarantee and the direct access to the Supreme Court for its enforcement.