Articles 249, 250, 252 and 253 Give Parliament Four Routes Onto the State List, and Article 254 Decides Whose Law Wins When a State Legislates on the Concurrent List

Parliament can make laws on a subject the Constitution has reserved for the states in four situations, and each has its own article, its own trigger and its own time limit. A resolution of the Rajya Sabha opens the way under Article 249. A Proclamation of Emergency does it under Article 250, resolutions of state legislatures under Article 252, and an international treaty or conference decision under Article 253. All four sit in Chapter I of Part XI and have been in force since 26 January 1950 (Article 394). They are exceptions to Article 246(3), which gives each state legislature exclusive power over the State List, List II of the Seventh Schedule.

Our guide to the Seventh Schedule lays out the lists. What follows takes each exception in turn, then Article 254, which settles what happens when a state and Parliament both legislate on a Concurrent List subject.

Article 249: a two-thirds vote in the Rajya Sabha

Under Article 249, the Rajya Sabha (the Council of States, the upper house) can declare by a resolution backed by at least two-thirds of the members present and voting that it is “necessary or expedient in the national interest” for Parliament to legislate on a named State List matter. Parliament may then do so, for the whole or any part of India, while the resolution remains in force. The resolution lasts up to one year and can be renewed a year at a time. A law made under it stops having effect six months after the resolution ends, except for things already done.

The Constituent Assembly debated the draft, then numbered Article 226, on 13 June 1949. B. R. Ambedkar, who chaired the Drafting Committee, moved the amendment that added the one-year limit. T. T. Krishnamachari backed it, saying the original wording would have let a Council of States resolution place a subject “permanently, forever” in the Concurrent List. H. V. Pataskar said he did not think Article 226 was “at all necessary”, and O. V. Alagesan saw “great mischief” in it.

Rajya Sabha at Work, the House Secretariat’s handbook, records the uses. On 12 August 1950 the Provisional Parliament, which sat before the first general election, took power over trade and commerce within a state and over the production, supply and distribution of goods, to check black-marketing. That body passed the Essential Supplies (Temporary Powers) Amendment Act and the Supply and Prices of Goods Act that year. The resolution was continued on 7 June 1951 and, by the Rajya Sabha, on 22 July 1952. A separate resolution from 15 June 1951 covered rights in land and money-lending, to manage evacuee property and resettle displaced persons from Pakistan, and produced the Evacuee Interest (Separation) Act, 1951. About 35 years later, on 13 August 1986, the Rajya Sabha passed one on public order, police and prisons, and Parliament made no law under it. For the House that casts the vote, see our Rajya Sabha explainer.

The Sarkaria Commission, appointed in 1983 to review Centre-state relations, considered deleting the article and declined. It named three safeguards, the two-thirds vote, the duty to specify the matter and the one-year limit. “It is true that these safeguards are not fool-proof,” it wrote. According to the Punchhi Commission’s 2010 report, Sarkaria also saw a risk that a few large states could carry a resolution over the objection of many small ones, and recommended a Rajya Sabha committee reflecting the whole House so that a resolution would pass only on consensus.

Article 250 and Article 251: emergencies, and what happens to a state’s own law

Article 250 gives Parliament power to make laws on any State List matter, for the whole or part of India, while a Proclamation of Emergency is in operation. The President issues that proclamation under Article 352 when the security of India or any part of it is threatened by war, external aggression or armed rebellion, and those last words replaced “internal disturbance” from 20 June 1979. The approval procedure is in our explainer on the emergency provisions. A law made under Article 250 stops having effect six months after the proclamation ceases to operate, except for things already done.

Article 251 protects the state’s own law in both cases. Nothing in Articles 249 and 250 restricts a state legislature’s power to make laws. If a state provision conflicts with a law Parliament made under either article, the parliamentary law prevails, whether passed before or after, and the state provision is “inoperative” to the extent of the conflict “so long only as the law made by Parliament continues to have effect”. The state law is suspended rather than struck down, and the suspension ends with the central law.

The Punchhi Commission lists a fifth case, President’s Rule under Article 356, covered in our explainer on the Bommai judgment. Once a proclamation is in place, Article 357 lets Parliament confer the state legislature’s powers on the President.

Article 252: when states hand a subject to Parliament

Article 252 works from below. If the legislatures of two or more states consider that a matter Parliament cannot otherwise legislate on for them should be regulated by Parliament, and all the Houses of those legislatures pass resolutions to that effect, Parliament may pass an Act. The Act applies to those states and to any other state that adopts it later by resolution. Under clause (2), only Parliament, acting or adopted in the same way, can amend or repeal the Act, and a state legislature cannot do so for any state it covers.

The Urban Land (Ceiling and Regulation) Act, 1976 is a documented case. The Karnataka Legislature passed a resolution under Article 252 in 1972 asking Parliament to regulate the ceiling on urban immovable property, and the Act applied to Karnataka by virtue of it. In Krishna Bhimrao Deshpande v. Land Tribunal, Dharwad, decided on 3 November 1992, the Supreme Court said such resolutions are “a condition precedent for vesting the Parliament with such power”. The Court also held that a resolution moves only the slice it names. Land is Entry 18 of the State List, and this resolution transferred “a part of the area falling under Entry 18” to Parliament. The rest stayed with the state, so Karnataka’s land reforms law, which gave tenants occupancy rights, was not displaced.

Clause (2) also shaped the Act’s ending. Parliament’s Urban Land (Ceiling and Regulation) Repeal Act, 1999 (Act 15 of 1999) applies in the first instance to Haryana, Punjab and all the Union territories, and to any other state that adopts it by resolution under Article 252(2). The Repeal Act is deemed in force in Haryana, Punjab and the Union territories from 11 January 1999, and elsewhere from the date of adoption. Set against Article 249, the Sarkaria Commission judged the Article 252 procedure “very cumbersome and time-consuming”, in the handbook’s quotation.

Article 253: treaties and conference decisions

Article 253 lets Parliament make any law for the whole or any part of India to give effect to a treaty, agreement or convention with another country or countries, or a decision made at an international conference, association or other body. The Union List backs it with Entry 13, participation in international conferences and implementing their decisions, and Entry 14, entering into treaties and agreements with foreign countries and implementing them.

The preamble of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 (Act 29 of 1986, dated 23 May 1986) recites decisions taken at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held at Stockholm in June 1972 and the need to implement them. In S. Jagannath v. Union of India, decided on 11 December 1996, the Supreme Court wrote that Parliament enacted it under Entry 13 of List I read with Article 253. A notification issued under it, the Court said, “shall have overriding effect and shall prevail over the law made by the legislatures of the States”. Where state coastal aquaculture laws were inconsistent with the notification, the central rule would win.

On treaty-making itself, the Punchhi Commission quotes Justice Shah’s reasoning in Maganbhai Ishwarbhai Patel v. Union of India. If a treaty deals with a subject within a state legislature’s competence, Parliament alone can make the law to implement it. The executive can still enter the treaty without a law, unless doing so restricts citizens’ rights or alters existing laws. The Commission added that India’s Constitution has no provision for Parliament to ratify treaties, and that no law on the subject had been passed. It recommended a law under Entry 14 to streamline the procedure and suggested exploring mandatory consultation with the states.

Article 254: when a state and Parliament both legislate on a Concurrent List subject

Under Article 254(1), if a provision of a state law is repugnant, meaning in conflict, with a law Parliament is competent to enact, or with an existing law on a Concurrent List matter, the central law prevails whether it came before or after, and the state law is void to the extent of the conflict. Clause (2) is the exception. A state law on a Concurrent List subject that conflicts with an earlier central law prevails in that state if it was reserved for the President’s consideration and received his assent. A proviso lets Parliament later pass a law on the same matter, including one that amends or repeals the state law. The Governor does the reserving under Article 200, which our guide to what a Governor does describes.

A five-judge Supreme Court bench applied both clauses on 18 May 2023 in Animal Welfare Board of India v. Union of India. The judgment recalls that on 7 May 2014 a two-judge bench in A. Nagaraja held the Tamil Nadu Regulation of Jallikattu Act, 2009 repugnant to the central Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, and void under Article 254(1). In 2017 Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Karnataka each amended the 1960 Act for their own state, to allow Jallikattu, bullock-cart races and Kambala, a buffalo race, and each amendment received Presidential assent.

Petitioners argued that full details had not been placed before the President and that Jallikattu does not fall under Entry 17 of the Concurrent List, prevention of cruelty to animals. “We have found no flaw in the process of obtaining Presidential assent,” the bench wrote. It held that the Tamil Nadu amendment relates, in pith and substance (its main subject), to Entry 17 of List III, and dismissed the petitions.

The 2020 farm laws as a test of the lists

Parliament passed three farm laws in September 2020, Acts 20, 21 and 22 of 2020. Act 21, the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, received assent on 24 September 2020 and was deemed in force from 5 June 2020. Its section 6 barred any state market fee, cess or levy on trade in scheduled farmers’ produce in a trade area, a term covering farm gates, factories and warehouses but not the market yards run under state agricultural produce market laws. Section 14 gave the Act effect over any inconsistent state law of that kind.

The legal question was which list the subject belongs to. Within the State List, Entry 14 is agriculture and Entry 28 is markets and fairs. Entries 26 and 27, on trade within the state and on production, supply and distribution of goods, are each “subject to the provisions of entry 33 of List III”, while Entry 28 carries no such qualification. Entry 33 of the Concurrent List, as substituted by the Constitution (Third Amendment) Act, 1954, covers trade and commerce in foodstuffs, cattle fodder and raw cotton and some other goods, and their production, supply and distribution.

PRS Legislative Research records that opponents argued Parliament lacked competence because agriculture is a State subject. It also records that the central government, replying to Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 3568 on 10 August 2021, said the laws were enacted under Entry 33 of List III. Senior Advocate Mahalakshmi Pavani wrote in Bar and Bench on 19 October 2020, giving her personal views, that the Act encroached on state markets and exceeded Parliament’s competence.

Three states answered with bills of their own, according to Tribune reports. Punjab’s Vidhan Sabha passed amendment bills on 20 October 2020, Chhattisgarh’s Assembly passed a Krishi Upaj Mandi (Amendment) Bill on 27 October, and Rajasthan’s passed three bills on 2 November. Rajasthan’s Parliamentary Affairs Minister argued that the central laws gave no guarantee of the minimum support price. PRS noted on 7 December 2020 that the Punjab and Rajasthan bills conflict with the central Acts and so needed the President’s assent, which is the Article 254(2) route, and it says the same of a Maharashtra bill of July 2021.

On 12 January 2021 a Supreme Court bench led by the Chief Justice stayed the implementation of the three laws and appointed a four-member committee. The Supreme Court Observer lists “Whether the Parliament has the legislative competence to pass the farm laws?” as the first question in the case. Parliament repealed all three Acts before the Court ruled on it, and the Farm Laws Repeal Act, 2021 (Act 40 of 2021) received the President’s assent on 30 November 2021.