India celebrated its 72nd Republic day this year. Generally, we all know about the Indian Constitution from where the different concepts are adopted, members involved in the Constitution-making, total numbers of Articles in the Constitution of India, etc.
But there are many unheard facts we don’t know about that.

There are three original copies of the Indian Constitution and all those copies have been stored in the Central Library of Parliament. The original copy of the Constitution is 22 inches long and 16 inches wide. It has written on parchment sheets and, its manuscript consists of 251 pages which took nearly three years.

Keeping the original copy of the Constitution of India needs a lot of effort and utmost care. To save the Constitutional copies from spoiling, these are kept in a box filled with helium gas. The copies are stored in the helium case because helium gases are inert and nonreactive and do not support any organic or inorganic reactions and, that’s why it keeps the document of the Indian Constitution safe and unharmed.

Before keeping the original copy, it was signed by 284 members of the Constituent Assembly on January 24, 1950, with the first signs of then Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, not by the first President Rajendra Prasad.

Before 1994, the original copies were first wrapped in flannel cloth and kept with naphthalene balls. In 1994, India decided to keep the original copies of the Indian Constitution in a gas chamber like America, prepared by scientific method in the library of Parliament House.

As the Constitution of India is written in black ink and this ink oxidizes quickly, to preserve it, the humidity required is to be kept around 50 grams per cubic meter. So, that’s why the Airtight Chamber was created for the Constitution of India.

Monitors were installed to maintain humidity in the gas chamber and, every year, it emptied to maintain humidity. This chamber is also checked every two months and constantly monitored by CCTV.

The Indian Constitution is the lengthiest in the world, consisting of 117,369 words in the English version; it includes:- the Preamble, 22 parts, 395 Articles, 8 schedules, 5 Appendices. But now, there are 25 parts, 448 Articles, 12 schedules, 104 Amendments.
The Indian Constitution was not typed or printed but is handwritten in both English and Hindi versions.

Prem Behari Narain Raizada had written the Indian Constitution with beautiful calligraphy flowing in italic style. The Indian Constitution was published in the Dehradun and was photolithography by the Survey of India.

Beohar Rammanohar Sinha and Nandalal Bose, artists from Shantiniketan, decorated each page of the Indian Constitution. The illustrations represent style from the different civilizations of the subcontinent, ranging from the prehistoric Mohenjodaro to the Indus valley.

The Indian Constitution, the precursor of the new Indian renaissance, became effective on January 26, 1950. Before the advent of the Indian Constitution, India was governed under the Government of India Act, 1935, which became effective in 1937.

India is very dynamic creation of our lawmakers. As we all know that, the Constitution of India is a supreme law of the country and, every citizen of our country is abide by the Indian Constitution.

The Constitution of India has some outstanding features which distinguish it from other constitutions. The framers of our Constitution studied other countries Constitutions, selected their valuable features, and put them with necessary modifications in our Constitution. They succeeded in doing this. The fact is that the Indian Constitution has been working satisfactorily is a testimony to its quality and utility for the last 66 years.

Salient features of the Indian Constitution includes:-

• Written Constitution
• Lengthiest Constitution of the World
• Preamble
• Fundamental Rights
• Directive Principles of State policy
• Fundamental Duties
• Election Commission
• Universal Adult Franchise
• Independent Judiciary
• Judicial review
• Quasi-federal Constitution
• Rigidity and Flexibility
• Parliamentary form of government
• Single Citizenship