Residuary powers under Article 248 give Parliament exclusive authority over subjects outside the Union, State, and Concurrent Lists, and the power to tax them.
At a glance
Parliament's exclusive power under Article 248 to legislate on any subject outside the State and Concurrent Lists, and to tax it.
Article 248(1)-(2), subject to Article 246A (GST)
Marks India's Union-leaning federal design, following Canada rather than the USA on where residuary power sits.
Residuary powers are the exclusive legislative authority that Article 248 of the Constitution vests in Parliament over any subject that does not fall within the Union List, the State List, or the Concurrent List of the Seventh Schedule. This includes the power to impose a tax on any matter not mentioned in those two Lists that States and Parliament otherwise share. In effect, whatever the framers did not think to enumerate belongs to the Centre, not the States.
The Scheme Behind Article 248
The Seventh Schedule distributes law-making power between the Union and the States through three lists — the Union List, the State List, and the Concurrent List. No enumeration of subjects can ever be fully exhaustive, so the Constitution needed a rule for whatever was left out or could not have been anticipated in 1950. Article 248 supplies that rule by handing the leftover, or "residuary," field entirely to Parliament, subject now to Article 246A's special arrangement for goods and services tax.
Article 248 reads: "Subject to article 246A, Parliament has exclusive power to make any law with respect to any matter not enumerated in the Concurrent List or State List. Such power shall include the power of making any law imposing a tax not mentioned in either of those Lists."
Two things follow from this wording. First, the power is exclusive — no State legislature can touch a genuinely residuary subject, however locally significant it may seem. Second, the residuary power extends beyond ordinary legislation to fiscal legislation: Parliament may invent an entirely new tax head as long as it is not already assigned to the States or shared under the Concurrent List.
Why Courts, Not Lists, Have the Final Word
Because the three Lists were drafted to be as comprehensive as possible, disputes rarely arise from an obvious gap. They arise when a new subject — a new technology, a new kind of transaction, a new social problem — does not map cleanly onto any existing entry. When that happens, it is the courts, not the legislature itself, that make the final determination on whether a matter genuinely falls within the residuary field or whether it can be traced back to an existing List entry. This judicial gatekeeping matters because Parliament cannot simply declare a subject residuary to sidestep the ordinary distribution of powers; the classification has to withstand scrutiny.
India's Choice: the Canadian Model, Not the American One
A useful way to place Article 248 in context is to compare it with older federations. In the United States, powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states — residuary power sits with the constituent units. India inverts this. Following the precedent of the Canadian Constitution, residuary power in India vests in the Union, not the States.
| Federation | Where residuary power vests |
|---|---|
| United States | With the States (Tenth Amendment) |
| Canada | With the Union/Dominion Parliament |
| India | With the Union Parliament (Article 248) |
This choice is one of several design features — along with the Centre's residuary power over taxation, its control over State reorganisation, and its emergency powers — that give the Indian Constitution a distinctly Union-leaning or "quasi-federal" tilt. On its own, however, the placement of residuary power with the Centre is not treated as evidence that India ceases to be a federation; it is simply one method, among several available to constitution-makers, of distributing powers within a federal scheme.
UPSC Relevance
Prelims
- Article 248 is a direct fact-recall item: which List holds residuary power, and does that power include taxation.
- Frequently tested by contrasting India's position with the American and Canadian models.
- Watch for the qualifier "Subject to article 246A" — inserted after the GST amendment, it clarifies that GST itself is governed by the special Article 246A arrangement, not residuary power.
Mains
- Useful in answers on the federal versus unitary character of the Indian Constitution (GS2), where residuary power is cited as one of several Centre-favouring features.
- Can be used to discuss the judiciary's role in maintaining the balance of the federal scheme when classifying subjects as residuary.
FAQ
Q1. Which article of the Constitution deals with residuary powers? Article 248, which vests residuary legislative power exclusively in Parliament.
Q2. Does residuary power include the power to tax? Yes. Article 248(2) explicitly extends the residuary power to imposing a tax on any matter not mentioned in the Concurrent or State Lists.
Q3. Who decides whether a subject is genuinely "residuary"? The courts make the final determination on whether a particular matter falls within the residuary field, since the classification can be disputed.
Q4. Why does India follow the Canadian model instead of the American one on this point? The framers preferred a stronger Centre; unlike the US, where undelegated powers rest with the states, India assigns undelegated (residuary) power to the Union, mirroring the Canadian Constitution.
Q5. Does vesting residuary power in the Centre make India a unitary state? No. It is one of several features that lean the Constitution toward the Union, but by itself it does not negate India's federal character.
Quick Revision
- Article 248 — residuary legislative power vests exclusively in Parliament.
- Covers any matter not in the State List or Concurrent List; now expressly "subject to Article 246A" (GST).
- Includes power to impose new taxes not mentioned in the State or Concurrent Lists.
- Courts finally determine whether a matter is truly residuary.
- India follows the Canadian model (residuary power with the Union); the US follows the opposite, reserving it to the states.
Sources
- The Constitution of India — Ministry of Law and Justice, legislative.gov.in
- India Code — Constitution of India
Further Reference
For deeper reading on this topic and the wider polity syllabus, these standard works are recommended:
- M. Laxmikanth, Indian Polity (McGraw Hill) — the standard UPSC handbook.
- D.D. Basu, Introduction to the Constitution of India (LexisNexis) — authoritative constitutional-law treatment.
- The Constitution of India — Bare Act — the official text.
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Constitutional provisions
Vests residuary power to legislate, and to tax, in Parliament exclusively.
Distributes legislative power via the Union, State, and Concurrent Lists in the Seventh Schedule.
Special provision for GST that Article 248 is now expressly made subject to.