The Constitutional Framework: Entry 42 of the Concurrent List, Articles 31A, 31B, 254 and the Ninth Schedule

The 2013 Act sits inside a constitutional architecture that determines who may legislate on acquisition, which acquisition laws are immune from property challenges, and how States have lawfully diluted a Central statute they could not repeal. This note assembles that architecture: the legislative entry, the immunity articles, the Ninth Schedule and its modern review, and the Article 254(2) route that has made land acquisition a federal chessboard.

1. Legislative Competence: Entry 42, List III

As originally enacted, the Constitution split the field: acquisition for Union purposes sat in Entry 33 of List I, for State purposes in Entry 36 of List II, with Entry 42 of List III covering the principles on which compensation was to be determined. The Seventh Amendment (1956) deleted the two acquisition entries and recast Entry 42 as the single, concurrent field: "acquisition and requisitioning of property". The consequences run through the whole subject: both Parliament and the State legislatures are competent; the 1894 Act and the 2013 Act are Central laws operating nationwide (the 2013 Act extends to the whole of India); States have their own acquisition and ceiling statutes; and where a State law collides with the Central Act in the concurrent field, Article 254 decides the winner.

2. The Immunity Articles

• Article 31A (First Amendment, 1951): saves laws providing for the acquisition of estates and agrarian reform from challenge under Articles 14 and 19; its first proviso requires Presidential assent for State laws, and its second guarantees market value compensation where land under personal cultivation within the ceiling is acquired, a surviving constitutional compensation floor.
• Article 31B and the Ninth Schedule (First Amendment, 1951): validates the Acts listed in the Schedule notwithstanding any fundamental-rights inconsistency; the Schedule, intended for land-reform laws, swelled to 284 entries including much else. I.R. Coelho v. State of Tamil Nadu (2007) holds that post-24 April 1973 additions are reviewable on the basic structure touchstone, so the Schedule is a shield with a tested edge.
• Article 31C (Twenty-fifth Amendment, 1971): protects laws giving effect to Articles 39(b) and (c); its enlarged version fell in Minerva Mills, and its place in acquisition law is now marginal but examinable.

3. Article 254 and the State Amendments

Article 254(1) voids a State law repugnant to a Central law in the concurrent field, but Article 254(2) saves a State law that has received Presidential assent, which then prevails in that State notwithstanding the repugnancy. This is the provision on which the post-2015 history of the 2013 Act turns: when the Central amendment effort lapsed (Topic 95), States, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand, Karnataka and others, enacted amendments with Presidential assent exempting categories of projects from SIA and consent or easing procedures (Topic 96). The method is constitutionally orthodox and politically contested, and it means the Act the practitioner applies is the Act as amended in his State.

Two further constitutional threads complete the frame. Panchayats and Gram Sabhas: Part IX and the Act's own preamble make consultation with local self-government part of the process, and in Scheduled Areas the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 adds the Gram Sabha consultation that Sections 41 and 42 of the 2013 Act turn into consent requirements (Topic 53). Article 300A: the backdrop right (Topic 7), which binds State amendments too, so a State dilution that guts notice, hearing or compensation must still survive the Bimal Kumar Shah sub-rights.

4. The Frame in One Table

5. Related Topics and Provisions

• Right to property (Topic 7): Article 300A in depth
• State amendments (Topic 96): Article 254(2) in action
• Gram Sabha consent and PESA (Topic 53): the Scheduled Areas layer
• Evolution of the law (Topic 2): how the amendments got here