State Amendments under Article 254(2): Gujarat, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Others

When the central dilution died in 2015, the exemption agenda took the Constitution's other road: State amendment Acts in the concurrent field, reserved for and receiving Presidential assent under Article 254(2), prevailing in their States over the 2013 text. A wave followed, Gujarat, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Karnataka, with Tamil Nadu's earlier, different device and Haryana's targeted changes beside them. This note maps the wave, its common template, and the live questions around it.

1. The Wave and Its Template

The template is the lapsed central Bill relocated: process trimmed, money untouched. No State has dared cut the First Schedule computation or the Second and Third Schedule floors, and several pay above them under their own policies; what the amendments remove, for the favoured categories, is the SIA with its appraisal, the food-security bar and the consent referendum, with Sections 101, 87 and 24 adjusted at the margins in several States.

2. The Constitutional Mechanics

• The route: acquisition is concurrent (Entry 42, List III), so a State law repugnant to the 2013 Act is void under Article 254(1) unless reserved for and assented to by the President under Article 254(2), whereupon it prevails in that State; every Act in the table travelled this road, which is why Presidential assent dates matter to their validity.
• The proviso's shadow: Article 254(2)'s proviso lets Parliament subsequently legislate to override an assented State law; Parliament has not done so, so the State carve-outs stand, a standing invitation for any future Parliament minded to restore uniformity.
• The challenge landscape: petitions against the State amendments, pressed principally on the argument that wholesale exemption from the central Act's core guts a beneficial legislation through the back door, have been filed and the questions remain substantially open in the Supreme Court; the amendments operate meanwhile, and practice in the amended States runs on them.
• The practitioner's rule: the series' refrain made absolute: in any acquisition question, the State's amended text is the first document, for the exemption categories, the Section 46 limits, the Section 101 period, the Section 87 sanction gate and the local Rules together.

3. Assessment

The State-amendment era restates Indian federalism's oldest trade. In the amendments' defence: land markets, industrial strategies and administrative capacities differ; Article 254(2) exists precisely so States can adapt concurrent-field statutes; and the amendments preserved the 2013 settlement's compensation half intact. Against them: the 2013 Act's process protections were its point, consent and social scrutiny are what distinguish it from the 1894 model paying better, and a family's rights now depend on which side of a State border its field lies, the non-uniformity that a national floor was meant to end. The honest doctrinal statement: the 2013 Act remains India's default acquisition law; in the amended States it operates as varied, chiefly for government-sponsored categories; and the contest over whether Article 254(2) can carry variation this deep is the subject's great undecided question.

4. Related Topics and Provisions

• The constitutional frame (Topic 8): Article 254(2)'s machinery
• Tamil Nadu's saga (Topic 97): the 105A device litigated
• The 2015 Bill (Topic 95): the template's origin
• Beneficial State laws (Topic 91): the upward federal road beside this one