Central Idea

The article revolves around the issue of a political party filing a complaint against a politician of foreign origin with the Election Commission of India (ECI).
She had allegedly been advocating the secession of Karnataka from India in her election speeches.

Definition of sovereignty

Sovereignty is the idea of having supreme authority over a defined territory.
In Western philosophy, the concept is used to describe the supremacy of the state over the people being governed.
The state has a legitimate claim to sovereignty in exchange for providing protection to its citizens, keeping society cohesive and at peace, and controlling law and order.

The word sovereignty appears in the beginning of the Preamble to the Constitution of India as the first attribute of the independent republic of India.
Its placement as the first among the core principles of the republic underlines its importance in the Constitution.
Sovereignty is invoked in the Indian Constitution to “declare the ultimate sovereignty of the people of India and that the Constitution rests on their authority.”
It is mentioned in the Constitution under Fundamental Duties, and citizens have a duty to uphold and protect the sovereignty, unity, and integrity of India.

The Indian political system is described as “quasi-federal.”
India is a Union of States, and the component units have no freedom to secede or break away from it.
The Indian setup is more unitary in nature than the federal one, and the central government has more powers than the states.
The choice of a unitary bias that the Constitution makers made was possibly rooted in the difficulty of getting around 600 princely states to accede to India.

The States in India need not be consulted in the matter of amendment to the bulk of the Constitution.
Governors in states are appointed “during the pleasure” of the President and are seen as representatives of the Union in the States.
The Sixteenth Amendment of 1963 laid down that even the advocacy of succession under Article 19 (1) will not be protected under law in the name of Freedom of Speech as directed under Article 19 (2).
The right to alter the boundaries of states and to create new states lies with Parliament alone.
The Constitution offers no guarantee to the States against their territorial integrity without their consent since it was not a result of an ‘agreement’ between the States.

These provisions demonstrate the superior position of the Centre in the Indian political system.