Highlight any five constitutional provisions that restrain the powers of the executive, and evaluate their effectiveness in current times.

• Article 75(3) — collective responsibility to the Lok Sabha. The Council of Ministers holds office only while it commands confidence. Effectiveness: real but blunt. With a stable majority the confidence motion is unusable, and party discipline plus the anti-defection law under the Tenth Schedule make individual MPs unable to dissent without losing their seats.

• Article 74(1) — the President acts on aid and advice, but may require reconsideration once. Effectiveness: limited to a delaying and signalling power. Its live use today is by Governors sitting on State Bills, which the Supreme Court has repeatedly held cannot be done indefinitely.

• Articles 13, 32 and 226 — judicial review. Executive action is void if it violates fundamental rights, and the writ jurisdiction is itself part of the basic structure. Effectiveness: the strongest restraint on paper and often in fact, but weakened by delay, by deference in national-security matters, and by the practical difficulty of enforcing orders against the state.

• Article 148 with Article 151 — the Comptroller and Auditor General. Independent audit reported to the legislature, examined by the Public Accounts Committee. Effectiveness: powerful in exposure, weak in consequence; reports arrive years late and PAC recommendations are not binding.

• Article 123 — the ordinance power, limited to when Parliament is not in session and requiring approval within six weeks of reassembly. Effectiveness: the restraint was hollow while re-promulgation was practised, until Krishna Kumar Singh v. State of Bihar (2017) held re-promulgation a fraud on the Constitution.

Overall judgment. The restraints that depend on the legislature have weakened as the legislature has weakened; those exercised by independent institutions have held better. The binding constraint on the Indian executive today is judicial and federal, not parliamentary.