Abolition of Titles
No title, not being a military or academic distinction, shall be conferred by the State.
[Article 18(1)]; No citizen of India shall accept any title from any foreign State. [Article 18(2)]; No person who is not a citizen of India shall, while he holds any office of profit or trust under the State, accept without the consent of the President any title from any foreign State. [Article 18(3)]; No person holding any office of profit or trust under the State shall, without the consent of the President, accept any present, emolument, or office of any kind from or under any foreign State. [Article 18(4)]. Except the military or academic distinction, Article 18(1) does not permit the conferment of any title by the State, nor does Article 18(2) allow any citizen to accept any title from any foreign State. Clause (3) and (4) prohibit people (holding profit of office in India) to accept any present, emolument, or office from any foreign State without the consent of the President. “The titles such as ‘Bharat Ratna’, ‘Padma Vibhushan’, ‘Padma Bhushan’, ‘Padma Shri’ and others like the national awards have not been considered violative of Article 18 by the Supreme Court (Balaji Raghavan v. Union of India’1996) and accordingly need not be used as suffixes or prefixes.Right to Freedom
All citizens shall have the right ‘
(a) to freedom of speech and expression;
(b) to assemble peaceably and without arms;
(c) to form associations or unions, or cooperative societies, (‘cooperative societies’ words, added by 97th amendment, 2012)
(d) to move freely throughout the territory of India;
(e) to reside and settle in any part of the territory of India; omitted by 44th amendment (1978) and
(f) to practice any profession or to carry on any occupation, trade, or business.
(Article 19(1))
“There are, thus, six freedoms which are, however, not absolute. “The State is empowered to impose by law reasonable restrictions (as laid down in clauses 2 to 6 of Article 19) such as the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency, or morality; or contempt of court, defamation, or incitement to an offence, in the interest of the general public or for the protection of the interests of any Scheduled tribe (clause 5 of Article 19) and the like. It may, however, be stated that these freedoms have been available to the citizens including shareholders of the companies/corporations though neither the companies nor the corporations are regarded as citizens (Bank Nationalisation (1970) and the Newspapers (1973) cases). Indeed, the freedoms as stated in Article 19 are to be exercised within the framework of reasonable restrictions’restrictions which help control, regulate and reconcile the desires of one with all the rest (A.K. Gopalan v. State of Madras, 1951). While making laws with regard to the reasonable restrictions in the exercise of freedoms under Article 19, for example, (i) that the restrictions on the AIDS suffering patients (Lucy v. State of Goa’1990) are always reasonable; (ii) that ban on slaughter of bulls below 16 years would amount to reasonable restrictions but total ban on slaughter of bulls is an unreasonable restricton (Hasmmattulah v. State of Madhya Pradesh’1996); (iii) that judiciary, and not the legislature, is to decide as to what amounts to be a reasonable restriction (Chintamani Rao v. State of Madhya Pradesh’1951).
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