India Divides Lawmaking Between the Centre and the States Through Three Lists of 98, 59 and 52 Subjects in the Seventh Schedule, and Anything Left Off All Three Belongs to Parliament

The Seventh Schedule of the Constitution sorts the subjects a law can cover into three lists. Railways (entry 22) are on the Union List, police (entry 2) on the State List and education (entry 25) on the Concurrent List, and the list a subject sits on decides whether Parliament, a state legislature or both may make laws on it.

Our count of the entries in force, taken from the Legislative Department’s edition as on May 2022 (current to the 105th Amendment), is 98 on the Union List, 59 on the State List and 52 on the Concurrent List. The figures 97, 66 and 47 also circulate, because they are the highest entry numbers on each list. They differ from the live counts because entries have been added under letters, such as 2A and 11A, and others omitted. The 106th Amendment of 2023, the latest, does not touch the Seventh Schedule. Our guide to all twelve Schedules gives the short version, and this piece shows how the lists work.

What sits on each list

Parliament alone legislates on the Union List, which holds defence of India (entry 1), foreign affairs (10), citizenship (17), railways (22), currency and foreign exchange (36), the Reserve Bank (38), banking (45), atomic energy (6), the census (69) and elections to Parliament and the state legislatures (72). The large taxes are there too: income tax other than on agricultural income (82), customs duties (83) and corporation tax (85).

On the State List, which belongs to the states subject to the Union’s priority, sit public order (1), police (2), prisons (4), local government (5), public health and hospitals (6), liquor (8), agriculture (14), water supply and irrigation (17) and land (18). Land revenue (45), taxes on agricultural income (46) and state excise duty on alcoholic liquor made in the state (51) are there too.

Shared subjects fill the Concurrent List. Criminal law (1) and criminal procedure (2), marriage and divorce (5), economic and social planning (20), trade unions and labour disputes (22), education (25), price control (34), electricity (38), newspapers, books and printing presses (39) and forests (17A) all sit there.

Petrol shows how one product can be split across lists. Entry 84 of the Union List gives Parliament the excise duty on petroleum crude, high speed diesel, petrol, natural gas, aviation turbine fuel and tobacco products made in India. Entry 54 of the State List lets states tax the sale of the first five, and of alcoholic liquor for human consumption, except in inter-state or international trade.

Which law wins when a subject touches two lists

Article 246 sets the order. Parliament has exclusive power over the Union List “Notwithstanding anything in clauses (2) and (3)”, says clause (1). Both Parliament and, subject to clause (1), the state legislatures can legislate on the Concurrent List. Each state legislature has exclusive power over the State List, subject to the first two clauses. For territory outside a state, which covers the Union territories, Parliament may legislate on any matter, State List subjects included (clause 4).

A nine-judge bench restated the working rules in July 2024 in Mineral Area Development Authority v. Steel Authority of India, drawing on Hoechst Pharmaceuticals v. State of Bihar (1983). When a Union List entry and a State List entry cannot be reconciled, Parliament’s prevails. On the Concurrent List, the central law prevails in a conflict. The entries, the Court added, are “legislative heads and not the source of legislative powers”, which come from Articles 245 and 246.

Where one law touches two entries, courts first try to read the entries together. If that fails, they ask what the law is mainly about, a test called pith and substance. A law whose main subject is on its own legislature’s list stands, even if it brushes against another list.

Article 254 handles clashes on the Concurrent List. If a state law is repugnant, meaning it conflicts, with a central law Parliament could enact, the central law prevails whether it came before or after, and the state law is void to the extent of the conflict. An exception sits in clause (2): a state law on a Concurrent subject that conflicts with an earlier central law prevails in that state if it was reserved for the President’s consideration and received the President’s assent. Parliament can still pass a later law on the same matter that amends or repeals the state law. The 2024 judgment adds that repugnancy arises only when both legislatures are competent to act, so two laws on separate subjects never clash in this sense.

Criminal law shows the Concurrent List at work. Parliament’s Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam were notified on 25 December 2023, and the Press Information Bureau says they came into force on 1 July 2024, with one exception, section 106(2) of the Nyaya Sanhita. According to the Bureau they replaced the Indian Penal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Indian Evidence Act, and our explainer on the three laws covers what changed.

Four ways Parliament can step onto a state subject

Anything on neither the Concurrent nor the State List belongs to Parliament alone, including any tax not mentioned there, under Article 248 and entry 97 of the Union List. Since 2016 the article opens with the words “Subject to article 246A”, the goods and services tax provision. Beyond residuary matters, four routes let Parliament legislate on a State List subject.

Article 249 needs a resolution of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house (see our explainer on the House), backed by two-thirds of the members present and voting, declaring it necessary in the national interest. Such a resolution lasts up to a year and can be renewed a year at a time, and a law made under it lapses six months after the resolution ends. The Secretariat’s publication Rajya Sabha at Work records the uses. The Provisional Parliament passed the first resolution on 12 August 1950, on trade in goods within a state, to deal with black-marketing, and the Rajya Sabha renewed it on 22 July 1952. On 13 August 1986 the Rajya Sabha adopted another, covering public order, police, prisons and related entries for a year from 12 August 1986, and Parliament passed no law under it. Reviewing the power, the Sarkaria Commission wrote that it had been “exercised with due restraint”.

Under Article 250, Parliament can legislate on any State List matter while a Proclamation of Emergency is in operation, and such laws lapse six months after it ends. Article 252 works by consent. If the legislatures of two or more states pass resolutions asking Parliament to regulate a subject, it may do so, other states may adopt the law later, and only Parliament can then amend or repeal it. The Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974, dated 23 March 1974, recites resolutions passed by all the Houses of the legislatures of twelve states, among them Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala and West Bengal. Finally, Article 253 lets Parliament make any law needed to implement a treaty, agreement or convention with another country.

How the lists themselves have been rewritten

Changing a list takes a constitutional amendment, and the proviso to Article 368(2) adds a condition: at least half the state legislatures must ratify it before the President assents. Our amendment explainer sets out the procedure.

The 42nd Amendment Act received assent on 18 December 1976, and its section 57, which rewrote the lists, came into force on 3 January 1977. Section 57 struck State List entries 11, 19, 20 and 29, which in the 1950 text were education including universities, forests, protection of wild animals and birds, and weights and measures except the establishment of standards. Entry 3 lost its words on administration of justice. In their place the Concurrent List took education (entry 25 recast), forests (17A), wild animals and birds (17B), weights and measures (33A) and administration of justice (11A), and added population control and family planning (20A). Union List entry 2A, also new, covers deploying central armed forces in a state in aid of the civil power.

Assent to the 101st Amendment Act came on 8 September 2016. Article 246A, which it inserted, lets Parliament and every state legislature make laws on the goods and services tax (GST) “notwithstanding anything contained in articles 246 and 254”, with Parliament alone for supplies between states. Footnotes in the Legislative Department’s edition record the omission of Union List entry 92 and State List entries 52 and 55 from 16 September 2016. Article 279A created the GST Council, chaired by the Union Finance Minister with a minister from each state. Decisions need three-fourths of the weighted votes, the Centre holding one-third of the weight and the states together two-thirds. GST took effect on 1 July 2017, the Press Information Bureau announced.

On 19 May 2022 a three-judge bench ruled in Union of India v. Mohit Minerals, a case about tax on ocean freight in imports, that the Council’s recommendations are not binding on the Union and the states. The bench reasoned that Article 279A has no overriding clause, that Article 246A is not made subject to it, and that treating recommendations as binding edicts would disrupt fiscal federalism. Indian federalism, it wrote, is “a dialogue between cooperative and uncooperative federalism”. The Union had argued the opposite, that without binding recommendations central and state laws could end up guiding the same field.

Where the lines are still being tested

On 23 October 2024, in State of U.P. v. Lalta Prasad Vaish and Sons, the Court held that Entry 8 of the State List, intoxicating liquor, covers regulation from raw materials to consumption, industrial alcohol included. Parliament, it said, cannot take over the whole industry merely by a declaration under Entry 52 of the Union List. The Supreme Court Observer reports the vote as 8 to 1, with Justice B. V. Nagarathna dissenting on the ground that intoxicating liquor means drinkable liquor.

On 25 July 2024, in the Mineral Area Development Authority case, the majority held 8 to 1 that royalty on mining is a contractual payment and not a tax. States can tax mineral rights under Entry 50 and mineral-bearing land under Entry 49 of the State List, it held. Parliament can limit the Entry 50 power by a law on mineral development, the majority said, but the Mines and Minerals Act as it stood had imposed no limit. Justice Nagarathna held that royalty is a tax, that the Act’s sections 9, 9A and 25 already limit Entry 50, and that mineral-bearing land is not “land” under Entry 49.

Parliament then took up the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026, which PRS Legislative Research records as introduced on 10 August and passed by the Lok Sabha on 12 August and the Rajya Sabha on 13 August. The Act received the President’s assent on 17 August 2026 and comes into force on a date the Central Government notifies. Its new section 9D bars a state from taxing mineral rights or mineral-bearing land “except in accordance with such conditions or restrictions as may be prescribed by the Central Government”. Unpaid levies from before commencement are deemed invalid, with no refund of sums already paid. PRS says the Bill’s Statement of Objects and Reasons cites uneven state levies that raise mining costs. PRS also notes that land is a state subject (entry 18) and that the 2024 judgment indicates the Entry 50 limit does not reach the Entry 49 tax on land, and it questions the retrospective invalidation.

What the Sarkaria and Punchhi commissions advised

Our piece on Article 1 introduces the two commissions that reviewed Centre-State relations. The Punchhi Commission’s 2010 report records what the first, the Sarkaria Commission of 1988, found on the lists. States had complained that the Union had enriched its powers at their cost. Sarkaria found some merit and recommended changes “not so much in the scheme but in the way the power is exercised”. Consultation between the Union and the states on concurrent subjects should become a convention, and the Union should occupy only as much of a concurrent field as uniformity demands. Before a Bill on a Concurrent List subject is introduced, it said, the states should be consulted, with a summary of their views and the Inter-State Council’s comments accompanying the Bill. It also recommended moving residuary powers other than taxation to the Concurrent List. Article 248 still gives all residuary powers to Parliament.

Punchhi supported those findings and noted that the Venkatachaliah Commission of 2002 had found the scheme of division justified. It suggested no shift of entries between lists, wrote that the Union should be “extremely restrained in asserting Parliamentary supremacy in matters assigned to the States”, and proposed that a joint review test whether each subject moved to the Concurrent List had met its aims, with restoration to the State List considered if not. On a fourth list for Panchayats, it wrote that it was “too early to consider such a proposal”.