Abstract

Constitutions are generally considered as power maps. They create, maintain, facilitate and constrain powers. Indian Constitution, since its inception in 1950, tries to organise powers between two tiers of government – namely the union and the state (now after 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment three-tier – panchayat and municipality). One of the important features of the federal polity is distribution of powers between central authority and various constituent units of Government. Other features include Supremacy of the Constitution, written Constitution, rigidity while amending the constitution and Supremacy of Courts. Though India has these features it cannot be said that India is completely federal. There are many provisions in the constitution that shows that India is more unitary than federal. Some provisions include Appointment of Governor by the Union Government as Constitutional head of the state, Parliament’s (Rajya Sabha’s) power under Article 249 to legislate on state’s subjects in the national interest, Parliament’s power to form new states and alter boundaries of existing states under Article 3 and Emergency provisions under Article 352, 356 and 360. Also, after 1950 many Constitutional amendments namely, the 42nd Constitutional Amendment, the 101st Constitutional Amendment (GST), and the transfer of subjects from state list to concurrent list has further made India less federal and more unitary. Thus, today India is Quasi-federal with strong unitary bias. This paper adopts a doctrinal and comparative analytical approach. The aims of the research are to study the centralizing drift in the Indian Constitution since 1950 especially the political and institutional drivers of centralisation, to analyse the various provisions in Indian Constitution, amendments, existing laws, policies, the judicial pronouncements and the commission reports which affects the union – state relations and to undertake a comparative analysis with other federal countries like USA, Germany and Canada. Thus the study analysis how creeping centralisation has weakened the state’s autonomy and the need of cooperative federalism to preserve India’s diversity and democracy.

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