To mark 75 years since adoption of Constitution, govt plans mega event

The Indian government plans year-long celebrations from November 26 to mark 75 years of the Constitution, led by President Droupadi Murmu.

The Union government is planning year-long celebrations starting November 26 to commemorate 75 years of adoption of the Constitution of India, with President Droupadi Murmu leading the celebrations at the Central Hall of the old Parliament complex.

The Constitution of India. (shutterstock)

On November 26, 1949, the constituent assembly adopted the Constitution which came into effect on January 26, 1950. November 26, which was earlier celebrated as the Law Day, was declared the Constitution Day through a gazette notification in 2015.

“On the occasion of the 75 years of India’s Constitution, we are getting an opportunity to take part in the celebrations at Parliament (complex). Tomorrow (Tuesday), will be the address of the President. There will be a joint sitting of the members of both Houses. It will be a celebration of 75 years of the adoption of the Indian Constitution,” parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju said at a curtain-raiser event in New Delhi.

“We will sit in the very same chamber where the Constituent Assembly sittings happened and the Constitution was adopted,” the minister said, adding that many other events will be held in various parts of the country too.

While President Murmu will lead the celebration, vice president and Rajya Sabha chairperson Jagdeep Dhankhar, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will also take part.

“When the President addresses the joint House tomorrow, I hope there will be no politicking along party or ideological lines. As Indians, we should all celebrate the Constitution of India,” Rijiju said.

During the joint sitting, a commemorative coin and stamp will be released along with the copies of the Constitution in Sanskrit and Maithili languages.

In addition, the Centre has planned a mass reading of the Preamble to the Constitution on Tuesday.

The ministry of culture has created a website, constitution75.com, where people can upload a video of them reading the Preamble, and get a certificate.

Other activities for the year include Samvidhan Yatras, painting the preamble as wall art in panchayat offices, schools in the village, and at other prominent places. Besides seminars and workshops, the government also intends to start “Model Constituent Assembly” for students, along the lines of model United Nations (MUN) that are common in schools and colleges.

Between April 14 and April 28 next year, a special fortnight of events is planned, coinciding with the birth anniversary of the chairman of the Constitution drafting committee Dr BR Ambedkar on April 14.

Meanwhile, leaders of various INDIA bloc parties have written to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, urging him to allow leaders of the opposition in both Houses of Parliament to speak during Tuesday’s event.

“We are writing in the context of the function being held tomorrow (Tuesday) in the Central Hall of Samvidhan Sadan to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution of India. We understand that the function will be addressed by the president, vice president and the prime minister of India,” the letter signed by leaders of various opposition parties said.

“We believe that in the best traditions and interests of Parliamentary democracy, the Leaders of Opposition (LoPs) in both Houses should also be given an opportunity to speak on this historic occasion,” it added.

The signatories to the letter include TR Baalu, Tiruchi Siva, Kanimozhi, Supriya Sule, Raghav Chadha, P Sandosh Kumar, ET Mohammed Bashir, K Radhakrishnan, Ramji Lal Suman, and NK Premachandran.

Rijiju, however, said that the PM will not address the event and accused “some of the Opposition parties” of giving reactions without knowing the actual arrangement.

“We have made seating arrangements for the Leaders of Opposition of both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha on the dais. Without knowing anything, this kind of reaction on a very solemn occasion is condemnable,” Rijiju said.

The ministry of culture has created a new website, constitution75.com, where people can record and upload a video of them reading the Preamble, and get a certificate. These videos, according to the website’s privacy policy, will be retained for a year after which it will be deleted. These videos are visible to anyone who visits the website.

While the website has been created by a Union ministry, its domain is .com, instead of the prescribed .gov.in or .nic.in. An official in the ministry said that this has been done to “increase the acceptability of the website”. According to the government’s guidelines for Indian government websites and apps (GIGW) manual (version 3.0), “government organisations must obtain ‘gov.in’ or ‘nic.in’ domain exclusively allotted and restricted to government websites” because “use of gov.in or nic.in domain inspires trust in the visitor that the website being visited is authentic”.

The website also has an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, called Ask Baba Sahib (ABS), that can answer questions related to the “content and intent of the constitution”, according to culture minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat. He, however, refused to reveal the person/department that created the chatbot.

ABS asks users for name, gender and age to start the chat but those are easy to obfuscate, HT found while experimenting with it. It answered HT’s questions about reproducing the Preamble and who the father of Indian Constitution is but for a question related to the constituent assembly’s thoughts on reservation, it said, “I encountered an error. Please try again.”

Other activities for the year include Samvidhan Yatras, painting the preamble as wall art in panchayat offices, schools in the village, and at other prominent places. Apart from seminars and workshops, the government also intends to start ‘Model Constituent Assembly’ for students, along the lines of model United Nations (MUN) that are common in schools and colleges. Between April 14 and April 28, 2025, a special fortnight of events is planned. The father of the Indian Constitution, BR Ambedkar, was born on April 14, 1891.

The three ministers (which also included law minister Arjun Ram Meghwal) and officials from culture minister did not specify the budget of this year-long celebration. “All departments of the government of India will be doing these activities from their respective budgets. Similarly, at state and district levels, these activities are not very expensive. They are simple, very ordinary activities. What is important is the thought behind it, the emotion, the feelings,” culture secretary Arunish Chawla said.