Four Standing Forums Put India's States at One Table With the Centre, From the Zonal Councils of 1956 to a GST Council That Held Its 57th Meeting on 8 October 2026

On 11 June 2026 the Prime Minister chaired the 11th meeting of NITI Aayog’s Governing Council at the Rashtrapati Bhavan Cultural Centre in New Delhi. According to the Press Information Bureau, the government’s press office, Chief Ministers, Lieutenant Governors and Administrators from 28 States and 5 Union Territories attended, and it was the first time the Chief Ministers of all 28 States had taken part.

That council is one of four standing forums where the Centre and the states sit at one table, and each has a different legal base. The Inter-State Council comes from Article 263 of the Constitution and a Presidential order, the five Zonal Councils from the States Reorganisation Act of 1956, NITI Aayog from a Cabinet resolution of 1 January 2015 and the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council from Article 279A. Who may legislate on what is settled in the Seventh Schedule’s three lists. The four forums below deal with the cooperation the lists do not provide for.

What Article 263 lets the President set up

Article 263, in force since 26 January 1950, says that if it appears to the President that the public interest would be served, the President may by order set up a council with three possible duties. It may inquire into and advise on disputes between States, investigate and discuss subjects of common interest to States or to the Union and States, and recommend better coordination of policy and action. In the Constituent Assembly it was draft Article 246, adopted on 13 June 1949, and the Constitution of India archive records no debate on it.

Article 263 allows a Council without requiring one. In 2010 the Punchhi Commission on Centre-State Relations wrote that the Article was “invoked only in 1990 after the Sarkaria Commission recommended the same”. The Union of States piece covers both commissions. A Presidential notification dated 28 May 1990 created the Council with the Prime Minister as chair. According to a Home Ministry reply in the Rajya Sabha on 27 February 2013, its other members are the Chief Ministers of States, the Chief Ministers or Administrators of Union Territories and six Union ministers of Cabinet rank. Its mandate under the order covers clauses (b) and (c) of the Article only, which leaves out disputes between States.

Beyond that, the Punchhi report says the Chairman may refer other matters of general interest to the States, that meetings are held in camera (behind closed doors), and that questions are decided by consensus, with the Chairman’s decision on what counts as consensus final. Legal disputes between governments go elsewhere. Article 131 gives the Supreme Court exclusive original jurisdiction over a dispute between the Government of India and a State, or between States, where a legal right is at stake. Article 262 lets Parliament provide for adjudication of inter-State river water disputes.

At its second meeting, on 15 October 1996, the Council set up a Standing Committee chaired by the Home Minister to process business between full meetings, the Press Information Bureau records. It met again on 16 July 2016 under the Prime Minister, after a gap the Bureau puts at 10 years, and the Bureau called it the first to cover a wide range of topics. Earlier meetings had focused on one or two sectors. Items on the agenda included Aadhaar as an identifier for direct benefit transfers, the quality of school education and internal security. Many Chief Ministers asked for such meetings to be held more often, the Bureau says. All 273 of the Punchhi Commission’s recommendations were referred first to the Standing Committee, which finished deliberating on them on 25 May 2018. They would then go to the Council for decision, the Bureau said.

Five Zonal Councils created by an Act in 1956

Jawaharlal Nehru proposed zones during the 1956 debate on the States Reorganisation Commission’s report. He suggested grouping the reorganised states into four or five zones, each with an advisory council “to develop the habit of cooperative working”, the Home Ministry’s citizen’s charter records. Assent to the States Reorganisation Act came on 31 August 1956, and its Part III, sections 15 to 22, created Northern, Central, Eastern, Western and Southern Zonal Councils from the appointed day, 1 November 1956. In the Act, the Western Zone was Bombay and Mysore.

Under section 16 each council has a Union minister nominated by the President as Chairman, a post the Union Home Minister holds in all five, the charter says. Every state in the zone sends its Chief Minister and two other ministers nominated by its Governor, whose office is described in our piece on Governors. Chief Ministers take turns as Vice-Chairman, each for one year, and the Chief Secretaries are advisers. Under section 17 each council meets in its member states by rotation unless it decides otherwise, and settles questions by majority of members present, with the Chairman holding a casting vote. Section 21 calls each council “an advisory body”. It may discuss any matter of common interest, in particular economic and social planning, border disputes, linguistic minorities, inter-State transport and matters left over from reorganisation. Joint meetings are allowed under section 22 when states in two zones share a matter.

A single Zonal Councils Secretariat has worked from New Delhi since 1963, the Home Ministry’s charter adds, and each council has a Standing Committee of Chief Secretaries to settle what it can before the ministers meet. Eight north-eastern states belong to no Zonal Council. A North Eastern Council set up under a separate Act serves them.

The meeting record falls into two phases. Written for 2010-11, the charter counted 106 Zonal Council meetings since 1957 and dated each council’s last meeting between May 2005 and February 2007. At the 25th meeting of the Central Zonal Council in Varanasi on 24 June 2025, the Union Home Minister said 11 Zonal Council meetings and 14 Standing Committee meetings were held from 2004 to 2014, against 28 and 33 from 2014 to 2025. He put the issues resolved in them at 1,287, according to the Bureau. The Varanasi meeting took up 19 issues, among them fast-track special courts for rape cases against women and children, bank branches within a set distance of every village and the ERSS-112 emergency number. At the Western Zonal Council in Pune on 22 February 2025 the Minister said the aim of a bank branch or postal banking facility within 5 km of every village had been almost reached, and set 3 km as the new target. Those figures are the government’s own.

From the Planning Commission to NITI Aayog

A Cabinet resolution of 15 March 1950 set up the Planning Commission. The National Development Council brought the Prime Minister and the Chief Ministers together on planning. NITI Aayog’s annual report records its 57th meeting on 27 December 2012, chaired by the Prime Minister and attended by all Chief Ministers and Union Territory Administrators, on the approach to the Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012 to 2017).

Cabinet Secretariat Resolution No. 511/2/1/2015-Cab, published in the Gazette of India Extraordinary, created NITI Aayog, the National Institution for Transforming India, on 1 January 2015. Paragraph 15 supersedes the 1950 resolution from that date. Its text says “The States of the Union do not want to be mere appendages of the Centre”, and quotes Dr Ambedkar on the unreasonableness of centralising powers where central control is not clearly essential. It describes the change as replacing the Centre-to-state one-way flow of policy with “a genuine and continuing partnership with the states”.

Paragraph 13 sets the structure. Its Chairperson is the Prime Minister. A Governing Council consists of the Chief Ministers of all States and the Lieutenant Governors of Union Territories, and NITI Aayog’s own record says the Chief Ministers of Union Territories with legislatures sit on it too. Regional Councils may be formed for a fixed tenure to deal with issues that cut across states, convened by the Prime Minister. There is a Vice-Chairperson, full-time members, up to two part-time members, up to four ex officio Union ministers and a Chief Executive Officer. Its thirteen objectives (a to m) include a shared vision of national priorities with the states, cooperative federalism and plans built up from village level. None gives it a power to allocate money. Tax shares between the Union and the states go through the Finance Commission, which Article 280 requires the President to constitute every fifth year or earlier. Like the Planning Commission before it, NITI Aayog was created by Cabinet resolution and not by the Constitution or an Act. Our guide to the Union executive shows where it sits among the offices beside the ministries.

What the Governing Council has done since 2015

NITI Aayog’s own record lists 11 Governing Council meetings, from 8 February 2015 to 11 June 2026. At the first, the Council decided that NITI Aayog would form three subgroups of Chief Ministers, on rationalising centrally sponsored schemes, skill development and Swachh Bharat, and two task forces, on agriculture development and poverty elimination, to be set up with the states under its lead. A second meeting, on 15 July 2015, consulted the states on the land acquisition Act. Video conferencing carried the meeting of 20 February 2021, and 7 August 2022 was the first in person since the pandemic. Chief Ministers and Lieutenant Governors from 24 States and 7 Union Territories attended the tenth, on 24 May 2025 at Bharat Mandapam, on the theme Viksit Rajya for Viksit Bharat@2047. The eleventh took up Inclusive Human Development for Viksit Bharat@2047 around four pillars, from skills and employment to health and nutrition and equity, and followed the 5th National Conference of Chief Secretaries in December 2025.

The GST Council, where states hold two-thirds of the vote

Assent to the 101st Amendment Act came on 8 September 2016, and it inserted Article 279A, which carries the most detailed voting rule of the four forums. Its members are the Union Finance Minister as Chairperson, the Union Minister of State in charge of Revenue or Finance, and each State’s minister in charge of finance or taxation or another nominee. Union Territories with legislatures count as States for this purpose. It makes recommendations to the Union and the States on rates, exemptions, the turnover threshold, model laws and the sharing of inter-State tax. Half the members make a quorum, and a decision needs three-fourths of the weighted votes of members present and voting. In that weighting the Centre’s vote carries one-third and all the States together two-thirds. Since two-thirds is less than three-fourths, the States cannot carry a decision without the Centre. Article 279A also requires the Council to set up a mechanism to adjudicate disputes between the Union and States, or among States, arising from its recommendations. The Seventh Schedule piece covers the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling on whether the recommendations bind.

Chaired by the Union Finance Minister, the 57th meeting on 8 October 2026 in New Delhi counted eight Chief Ministers and two Deputy Chief Ministers among those present, the Bureau lists, alongside state finance ministers. It recommended removing arrest provisions from GST, raising the prosecution threshold from Rs 1 crore to Rs 5 crore (10 million to 50 million rupees) and cutting the general penalty from Rs 25,000 to Rs 10,000. According to the release, the 56th meeting in 2025 had dealt with rates.

Where the arguments are

Submissions to the Punchhi Commission, quoted in its report, asked that Inter-State Council decisions bind the Union through a constitutional amendment and that meetings be compulsory twice a year. On binding decisions the Commission disagreed. “Any other conclusion would involve a serious distortion of the constitutional scheme”, it wrote, because the final decision on any matter must stay with the government that holds the power. It called the Council “an extremely useful mechanism for consensus-building and voluntary settlement of disputes, but not for the binding of governments”.

It still asked for more. Elsewhere the report asks for the Council to meet at least twice a year in one chapter and at least three times in another, and for the Zonal Councils to meet at least twice. It also asks that the Council take up the dispute function in clause (a). It floats constitutional status or a statute for it, and an independent chair of national stature in place of the Prime Minister.

Official releases record two later steps. In May 2018 the Standing Committee finished its review of the 273 recommendations, and at the Western Zonal Council on 22 February 2025 the Union Home Minister said digital infrastructure and cybercrime would be brought under the Inter-State Council’s purview in the coming days.