Federalism and Centre State Relations

Article 253 provides that notwithstanding anything in the preceding provisions of the chapter on legislative relations, Parliament has power to make any law for the whole or any part of the territory of India for implementing any treaty, agreement or convention with any other country or any decision made at an international conference, association or other body. The non obstante clause is the whole point: it overrides the distribution of legislative power in Article 246 and the Seventh Schedule, so Parliament may legislate on a State List subject to give effect to an international obligation, and no State consent is required at any stage.

• Option (d) is therefore correct, and options (a), (b) and (c) are all incorrect because each imports a consent requirement that Article 253 exists precisely to dispense with. The provision has been used to enact the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 following the Stockholm Conference, and the Anti Hijacking and civil aviation legislation following the relevant conventions. The contrast that fixes the principle is Article 252, where Parliament legislates on a State subject at the request of two or more States and consent is the basis of the power; under Article 253 the source of power is the international obligation itself, so consent is irrelevant.
• Option (c) is the strongest distractor because it echoes Article 252, but the two articles work on opposite premises.

• Statement 2 is correct and states the sole statutory purpose. Section 9B, inserted by the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2015, requires the State Government to establish a District Mineral Foundation as a trust in every district affected by mining, for the interest and benefit of persons and areas affected by mining-related operations. It is funded by contributions from lease holders, a proportion of royalty fixed by the Central Government, and its funds are deployed through the Pradhan Mantri Khanij Kshetra Kalyan Yojana on drinking water, sanitation, health, education, environment and livelihoods in the affected areas.
• Statement 1 is incorrect and is the decisive statement: exploration is promoted through a wholly separate instrument, the National Mineral Exploration Trust created by section 9C of the same amendment, and the two trusts must not be confused.
• Statement 3 is incorrect: the power of State Governments to grant mineral concessions derives from the MMDR Act itself and, after 2015, operates through auction; a district-level trust cannot authorise a State Government to do anything, the proposition inverting the administrative hierarchy. Hence (b). The elimination route is that statement 3 is structurally absurd, which removes (c) and (d), leaving the item to turn on the distinction between the two trusts created by the same amendment.

Article 249 provides that if the Council of States declares by resolution supported by not less than two-thirds of the members present and voting that it is necessary or expedient in the national interest that Parliament should make laws with respect to a matter in the State List specified in the resolution, Parliament may do so while the resolution remains in force, which is one year at a time, extendable, with the law ceasing to have effect six months after the resolution expires. Hence (d).

• Options (a) and (b) are wrong because the power is vested in the Rajya Sabha, not the Lok Sabha, and the reason is structural: the Rajya Sabha represents the States in the federal scheme, so it is the House whose consent legitimises a Union incursion into the State field.
• Option (c) is wrong on the majority, requiring only a simple majority of total membership rather than two-thirds of those present and voting. The two limbs to hold precisely are the House, which follows from the federal logic, and the formula, two-thirds of members present and voting rather than of total membership, this being a special majority of the kind used in Articles 249 and 312 and distinct from the amending majority under Article 368.

• Option (d) is correct as the feature that is not present. The Indian Union was not formed by agreement among pre existing sovereign units. It was created by the Constituent Assembly by a process of devolution from a unitary colonial State, and Article 1 declares India to be a Union of States, a formulation Ambedkar explained by saying that the Union is not the result of an agreement and that the States have no right to secede from it. Article 3 confirms the point: Parliament may by ordinary law form new States and alter the areas, boundaries and names of existing ones, on the President's recommendation and after merely obtaining the views of the affected legislature, which need not be favourable. The federating units are therefore alterable at the will of the Union, the classic description being an indestructible Union of destructible States, which is the exact inverse of the American compact.
• Option (a) is wrong as an answer because an independent judiciary, and specifically a court competent to umpire the distribution of powers, is a genuine feature of Indian federalism, the Supreme Court exercising original jurisdiction in Centre State disputes under Article 131.
• Option (b) is likewise a genuine feature, the Seventh Schedule dividing subjects into the Union, State and Concurrent Lists with residuary power in Parliament.
• Option (c) is also genuine: representation in the Rajya Sabha is allocated by population under the Fourth Schedule rather than equally, which distinguishes Indian federalism from the American Senate and is a real feature of it, and a candidate may wrongly reject it for being un federal. Governing principle: the item tests the difference between a federation formed by aggregation and one formed by devolution.

• Statement 1 is incorrect and it is the decisive statement. The Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2015 replaced the discretionary first come first served regime with compulsory auction, and it vested the conduct of those auctions for major minerals other than coal, lignite and atomic minerals in the State Governments, the Centre retaining only the power to prescribe the terms and the auction rules. State Governments therefore do have the power to auction non coal mines, and coal is the exception rather than the rule.
• Statement 2 is incorrect. Both States carry gold occurrences: Andhra Pradesh has the Ramagiri gold field in Anantapur district, and Jharkhand has gold in the Subarnarekha placer deposits and in the Singhbhum belt.
• Statement 3 is correct. Rajasthan has iron ore, notably at Morija Banol in Jaipur district and Nathra ki Pal and Dalli in the Udaipur region, though these are minor deposits beside the Odisha and Chhattisgarh reserves. Elimination sequence matters. Accepting statement 3 removes options (a) and (b); rejecting statement 2 removes the same two options and nothing further. Only rejecting statement 1 separates the two survivors, (c) and (d), so a candidate must know the 2015 auction reform in addition to one of the two mineral facts.

Hence (d).

• Statement 1 is correct. Section 3(e) of the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957 defines minor minerals to include building stones, gravel, ordinary clay, ordinary sand other than sand used for prescribed purposes, and limestone used for lime burning, along with any other mineral the Central Government may by notification declare a minor mineral.
• Statement 2 is incorrect, and it is the statement the question is built on. Section 15 of the same Act empowers State Governments, not the Central Government, to make rules for regulating the grant of quarry leases, mining leases and other mineral concessions in respect of minor minerals and for purposes connected therewith. The Centre's rule making power under section 13 covers major minerals. Both the grant of leases and the framing of rules for minor minerals therefore rest with the States, so the statement is right on its first half and wrong on its second.
• Statement 3 is correct and follows from section 23C, which expressly empowers State Governments to frame rules for preventing illegal mining, transportation and storage of minerals. Since statements 1 and 3 hold, the official answer (a) follows. The governing principle is the scheme of the Act, under which major minerals are a central subject and minor minerals are devolved wholesale to the States.

The Sarkaria Commission, appointed in 1983 to examine Centre State relations and reporting in 1988, laid down the qualifications now conventionally cited for the office of Governor: an eminent person in some walk of life, a person from outside the State, a detached figure without intense political links or at least one who has not taken part in politics in the recent past, and a person who has not been too intimately connected with the local politics of the State.

• Option (c) is therefore correct.
• Option (a) is wrong; the First Administrative Reforms Commission of 1966 dealt with administrative machinery, personnel administration and the machinery for planning, and its Centre State work did not produce this formulation.
• Option (b) is wrong; the Rajamannar Committee was appointed by the Tamil Nadu government and recommended far more radical measures, including abolition of the Inter State Council in its then form, deletion of Articles 356, 357 and 365 and the transfer of residuary powers to the States, and it is remembered as a State autonomy document rather than as a Governor's qualifications document.
• Option (d) is wrong; the Venkatachaliah Commission of 2000 endorsed and elaborated the Sarkaria criteria and recommended a committee based selection process, but it followed rather than originated them. The governing anchor is that Sarkaria is the reference point for the Governor's office and Punchhi for the later refinements.

The official key gives (a). The reasoning is that in a federation the division of powers between two levels of government requires an impartial umpire to adjudicate disputes about that division, and an independent judiciary with the power of judicial review is therefore an essential and defining federal feature rather than merely a desirable one.

• Option (c) is plainly wrong, being a matter of political practice rather than constitutional structure.
• Option (d) is wrong because enforceable fundamental rights are a feature of liberal constitutionalism found equally in unitary systems.
• Option (b) is the genuinely competing answer and was the choice of many commentators, since a second chamber representing the constituent units is the classic federal device and the Rajya Sabha performs that function, so this item should be treated as contested rather than settled.

Hence (a) per the key, with the reservation recorded.

• Statement I is correct. Prisons, reformatories and allied institutions are Entry 4 of the State List, so States frame their own prison manuals and rules and run day to day administration, with the Union confined to advisory work such as the Model Prison Manual and the Model Prisons and Correctional Services Act.
• Statement II is correct. The Prisons Act of 1894 is the governing colonial statute still substantially in force, and it placed prison administration under provincial governments, an allocation carried forward by the Government of India Acts of 1919 and 1935 and then by the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution.
• Statement II also explains Statement I, because the present State control of prisons is the direct inheritance of that statutory arrangement, so the answer is (a) rather than (b).
• Options (c) and (d) require one of the two statements to be false, and neither is.

The 2002 amendment to the North Eastern Council Act restructured the Council so that it comprises the Governors and Chief Ministers of the constituent states along with three members nominated by the President, and it also converted the Council into a regional planning body for the North East.

• Items 1, 2 and 3 therefore all belong, giving (a).
• Item 4 is incorrect as a statement about the composition fixed by the 2002 amendment. The Union Home Minister was not made a member by that amendment.
• Options (b) and (c) each drop a genuine category while admitting the Home Minister, and (d) admits all four.

• Option (c) is correct. Entry 81 of the Union List covers inter State migration and inter State quarantine, placing both squarely with the Union. The logic is that any subject whose effects cross State boundaries cannot be regulated by a single State, which is the organising principle behind the whole set.
• Option (a) is wrong because trade and commerce with foreign countries and among States is Union List entry 42, while entry 26 of the State List covers trade and commerce within the State only.
• Option (b) is wrong for the same reason as (c) is right, since inter State migration is part of Union List entry 81.
• Option (d) is wrong because taxes on the income of companies, that is corporation tax, fall under Union List entry 85 and form one of the largest components of central tax revenue. The prefix inter State is the single reliable signal that the entry belongs to the Union List.

The Mines and Minerals Development and Regulation Act, 1957 divides authority over minor minerals in a way that Statement I gets exactly backwards. Section 15 empowers State Governments to make rules for regulating the grant of quarry leases, mining leases and other mineral concessions in respect of minor minerals, and for purposes connected with them, including the fixing of royalty rates within prescribed ceilings. Minor mineral administration is therefore substantially a State subject in practice, which is why sand mining regulation, and the disputes it generates, operate at the State level.

• Statement I is accordingly incorrect.
• Statement II is correct. Section 3(e) defines minor minerals as building stones, gravel, ordinary clay, ordinary sand other than sand used for prescribed purposes, and limestone used for kiln burning, together with any other mineral that the Central Government may by notification declare to be a minor mineral. The power to expand the category thus rests with the Centre while the power to regulate concessions within it rests with the States. Since I fails and II holds, the answer is (d).
• Options (a) and (b) require Statement I to be correct.
• Option (c) inverts the position entirely.