Ending the Privy Purse: The 26th Constitutional Amendment, 1971

When princely states acceded to India, their rulers were promised a “privy purse.” It was a fixed annual payment, guaranteed at the time of accession. Ending that promise took a failed vote, a struck-down executive order, and finally a constitutional amendment.

1.What was the privy purse, and how did the 1970 vote fail?

When princely states joined India, their rulers were promised a privy purse. This was a fixed annual payment, plus personal titles and privileges, guaranteed under the original Instruments of Accession.

Total payments were about Rs 6 crore a year in 1947. That fell to roughly Rs 4 crore a year by 1971. More than 500 former rulers received payments, ranging from about Rs 5,000 to over Rs 25 lakh a year.

In 1970, the government first tried to end privy purses through a constitutional amendment bill. It passed the Lok Sabha easily. In the Rajya Sabha, the vote was 149 for and 75 against — just short of the two-thirds majority a constitutional amendment required.

2.Why was the president’s 1970 executive order struck down?

After that defeat, President V.V. Giri tried a shortcut. On 6 September 1970, he issued an executive order under Article 366(22), withdrawing recognition of the princes as rulers.

Former rulers challenged that order in the Supreme Court. They were led by Madhavrao Scindia of Gwalior. An unusually large bench of 11 judges, headed by Chief Justice M. Hidayatullah, heard the case.

The bench struck the order down on 15 December 1970. A constitutional guarantee, they ruled, could not be withdrawn by executive order alone.

3.How did Indira Gandhi turn defeat into a 1971 campaign weapon?

Indira Gandhi turned her Supreme Court defeat into a political opportunity. She made the privy purse issue central to her 1971 election campaign, framing it as a fight against old feudal privilege.

Her opponents campaigned with the slogan “Indira Hatao” (“Remove Indira”). She answered with her own slogan instead: “Garibi Hatao” (“Remove Poverty”).

Congress won a landslide in the 1971 election. The setback that had blocked her a year earlier became a big part of why she won.

• The new Congress majority was large enough to clear the two-thirds threshold this time.
• Her economic-left turn continued into the same period as bank nationalisation.

4.How did the 26th Amendment finally end the privy purse?

The 26th Constitutional Amendment, 1971, added Article 363A. It ended recognition of princely rulers and abolished all their remaining privileges, privy purse included.

The amendment’s own text called continued rulership “incompatible with an egalitarian social order.” Parliament passed it on 28 December 1971, right after the election that had given Congress its two-thirds majority.

This removed one of the last formal legal distinctions between former princely rulers and other Indian citizens.

• Some former princely families kept informal social and political influence, even after losing these formal legal privileges.
• Madhavrao Scindia himself later became a Union Minister, entering the democratic politics his family had just lost special status in.

5.Exam Angle: the usual traps here

• Trap 1: keep the 1970 sequence straight. The Rajya Sabha vote came first, then the president’s executive order, then the Supreme Court struck that order down. All three happened within a few months of each other.
• Trap 2: don’t confuse the Supreme Court’s decision date with the amendment’s date. The court ruled in December 1970. The 26th Amendment that actually ended privy purses came a full year later, in December 1971.
• Trap 3: this case is a classic “executive order versus constitutional amendment” example. Some things can only be changed by amending the Constitution itself, a principle that shows up in other basic-structure and executive-power questions.