Division of Power in the Indian Constitution: Union, State, and Concurrent Lists

When India became a republic in 1950, its framers faced a practical question: in a country this vast and diverse, who should make which laws? Should the central government in Delhi decide everything, or should states handle their own affairs? The answer they settled on was a careful division of legislative power, written into the Constitution through three lists of subjects. This system decides whether a law on defence, police, or marriage comes from Parliament, a state legislature, or both. Understanding it is the key to making sense of almost every Centre-State dispute you read about today.

Where the three lists come from 🔗

The idea of splitting law-making subjects into separate lists did not originate in 1950. It was borrowed and adapted from the Government of India Act of 1935, the colonial-era law that first introduced a three-fold division of legislative subjects in British India. When the Constituent Assembly drafted the Constitution, it took this familiar structure and reshaped it to fit independent India’s needs, balancing the demand for national unity with respect for regional diversity.

The framers had a fresh memory of Partition. National integration was an urgent priority, and they believed only a strong Centre could hold the country together against external threats and internal fragmentation. At the same time, they did not want to crush the states. The solution was a written, predictable division of powers that gave each level of government a clearly marked domain.

This division lives in the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution, read together with the articles in Part XI that govern legislative relations between the Union and the states. The Seventh Schedule sets out three lists: the Union List (List I), the State List (List II), and the Concurrent List (List III).

The constitutional machinery: Articles 245 and 246 🔗

Two articles do the heavy lifting. Article 245 deals with the territorial reach of laws. It states that Parliament may make laws for the whole or any part of India, while a state legislature may make laws only for its own territory. It also clarifies that a law passed by Parliament cannot be struck down merely because it has effect outside India.

Article 246 then handles the subject-matter of laws, and this is where the three lists come into play. The article works through a clear hierarchy:

Clause (1): Parliament has exclusive power to legislate on Union List subjects.
Clause (2): Both Parliament and state legislatures can legislate on Concurrent List subjects.
Clause (3): State legislatures have exclusive power over State List subjects.
Clause (4): Parliament can legislate even on State List matters for Union Territories.

The opening words of Article 246 – “notwithstanding anything in clauses (2) and (3)” – establish what courts call the predominance of the Union List. If two entries appear to overlap, the Union List prevails over the Concurrent List, and the Concurrent List prevails over the State List.

The Union List: national matters 🔗

The Union List covers subjects of national importance where uniform laws across the whole country make sense. Only Parliament can legislate on these. Typical examples include defence, foreign affairs, atomic energy, railways, banking, currency, and Union-level taxes such as income tax and customs.

The blog outline and many textbooks describe the Union List as containing 97 subjects, which was indeed the original number when the Constitution came into force. Through later amendments, this count has grown to around 100 entries today. The list is internally divided into a general part and a taxation part, which is why so many of India’s major taxes trace back to it.

The State List: local and regional matters 🔗

The State List contains subjects of local or regional interest, reserved for state legislatures. Classic examples are police, public order, public health, agriculture, irrigation, land, and local government. The logic is straightforward: those closest to a problem are often best placed to legislate on it.

The outline lists 66 subjects for the State List, again the original figure. The number today is lower – around 61 entries – because some subjects were shifted out of state control over the decades. We will return shortly to why this shrinkage matters.

The Concurrent List: shared territory 🔗

The Concurrent List is the one feature you will not find in most older federal constitutions, such as that of the United States. Here, both Parliament and state legislatures can make laws on the same subject. Examples include criminal law, marriage and divorce, bankruptcy and insolvency, education, forests, and labour welfare.

The framers added this list as a deliberate device to avoid excessive rigidity in the two-fold division. As the Sarkaria Commission later observed, concurrent subjects occupy a constitutional grey area – neither purely national nor purely local – so allowing both levels to legislate gives the system useful flexibility. The outline gives the original figure of 47 subjects; the current count is around 52.

What happens when laws conflict 🔗

Allowing two governments to legislate on the same subject creates an obvious risk of contradiction. The Constitution settles this through the doctrine of repugnancy in Article 254. The general rule is simple: if a state law on a concurrent subject conflicts with a Union law, the Union law prevails, and the state law becomes void to the extent of the conflict. This holds whether the Union law was passed before or after the state law.

There is one important exception that is often misunderstood. Under Article 254(2), if a state law on a concurrent subject was reserved for the President’s consideration and received assent, that state law can prevail within that state – though Parliament retains the power to later override it.

Residuary powers: who gets the leftovers? 🔗

No list, however detailed, can anticipate every subject the future will throw up. The framers in 1950 could not have imagined space technology, cyber law, or data protection. So they built in a catch-all provision.

Article 248, read with Entry 97 of the Union List, vests these residuary powers in Parliament. Any matter not enumerated in the State or Concurrent Lists falls automatically to the Union, including the power to tax such matters. Service tax, for instance, was introduced in the 1990s using this very power, before being absorbed into the GST framework.

This choice is telling. Most federations – the United States and Australia among them – leave residuary powers with the states. India instead followed the Canadian model and gave them to the Centre. The Supreme Court in Union of India v. H.S. Dhillon confirmed that the proper test for central legislation is whether a subject falls under the State or Concurrent List; if it does not, Parliament is competent through its enumerated or residuary powers. This single design decision is one of the strongest reasons scholars call Indian federalism “quasi-federal” – federal in form but with a clear unitary tilt.

A living system: how the lists have changed 🔗

The three lists are not frozen. Parliament can amend the Seventh Schedule through a constitutional amendment under Article 368, and over the decades the balance has shifted noticeably towards the Centre.

The most significant change came through the 42nd Amendment of 1976, which moved five subjects from the State List to the Concurrent List: education, forests, weights and measures, protection of wild animals and birds, and the administration of justice. This is exactly why the State List shrank by five entries and the Concurrent List grew by five. Education being a State subject until 1976 surprises many students today.

More recently, the 101st Amendment of 2016 introduced the Goods and Services Tax. It inserted Article 246A, a special provision giving both Parliament and state legislatures concurrent power to tax goods and services, and it adjusted Article 248 accordingly. GST did not erase the Seventh Schedule’s tax architecture entirely – income tax, customs, and corporation tax stay with the Union, while state taxes on alcohol, petroleum, and stamp duty remain with the states.

The direction of travel is worth noting. Almost every amendment to the Schedule has moved subjects “upward” – from state control towards shared or central control. Critics argue this reveals a built-in centralising drift in Indian federalism, and the amendment history is their main piece of evidence.

Why this division matters in practice 🔗

This is not a dry exercise in classification. The three lists decide some of the most contested questions in Indian politics. Centre-State disputes over agriculture, the rollout of the National Education Policy, the working of the All India Services, and arguments over GST revenue all trace back to which list a subject sits on, and who therefore has the authority to act.

The division of powers does three things at once. It creates clear responsibilities, so each level of government knows its role and citizens know whom to hold accountable. It promotes harmony by reducing the scope for jurisdictional conflict. And it protects state autonomy, giving states a genuine, constitutionally guaranteed sphere of action even within a system that leans towards a strong Centre.

That balance has never been static. Commissions from Rajamannar in 1971 to the Venkatachaliah Commission in 2002 have called for a fresh look at how subjects are distributed, particularly as factor markets like land and labour evolve and as new technological subjects emerge. The Seventh Schedule, in other words, remains very much a live debate rather than a settled one.

What do you think? Given how often subjects have moved from the State List towards the Centre, has India’s federal balance tilted too far in favour of Delhi – or is a strong Centre still essential for a country this diverse? And if the Seventh Schedule were redrafted today, which modern subjects do you think deserve a place on the Concurrent List?

References

1. https://www.constitutionofindia.net/schedules/list-i-union-list/
2. https://www.mea.gov.in/images/pdf1/S7.pdf
3. https://www.gktoday.in/article-245/
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh_Schedule_to_the_Constitution_of_India
5. https://byjus.com/free-ias-prep/7th-schedule-indian-constitution/
6. https://www.drishtijudiciary.com/ttp-constitution-of-india/seventh-schedule
7. http://student.manupatra.com/Academic/Abk/Constitutional-Law-of-India/CHAPTER-25.htm
8. https://www.gktoday.in/article-248/
9. https://www.insightsonindia.com/polity/functions-and-responsibilities-of-the-union-and-the-states-issues-and-challenges-pertaining-to-the-federal-structure-devolution-of-powers-and-finances-up-to-local-levels-and-challenges-therein/functions-and-responsibilities-of-the-union-and-the-states/7th-schedule/