Parliament Just Legislated Around a Nine-Judge Bench

When Parliament Answers a Supreme Court Verdict With a Statute Entry 50 of the State

List gives states the power to tax mineral rights - but only "subject to any limitations imposed by Parliament by law relating to mineral development." That qualifying clause is the entire story here. In July 2024, a nine-judge Constitution Bench in *Mineral Area Development Authority v.

Steel Authority of India Ltd* ruled 8:1 that royalty is not a tax and that states retain genuine taxing power over minerals and mineral-bearing land under Entries 49 and 50. Section 9D of the 2026 MMDR Amendment Bill now uses precisely the qualifying clause Entry 50 always contained - Parliament's power to impose "limitations"

• to restrict what the same judgment just affirmed.

The Text Says States Can Tax; the Amendment Says Only If Parliament Allows It This is not a

case of Parliament defying the Supreme Court's ruling - it cannot, since the Court interpreted the Constitution's existing text. What Parliament has done instead is exercise a power the Constitution itself handed it: Entry 50's own language subjects state taxation to "limitations imposed by Parliament." Section 9D restricts state levies "except within parameters prescribed by the Centre"

• using that limitation clause to functionally re-centralise a power the 2024 verdict had just confirmed belonged to states. The rule as interpreted by the Court and the rule as now legislated by Parliament are both constitutionally valid readings of the same Entry - which is exactly why this is genuinely contested, not a simple case of one side being wrong.

Why Kerala's Objection Is About More Than Kerala

Satheesan's letter frames this as a Kerala-specific fiscal concern, but the structural stakes are wider. Any mineral-rich state - Odisha, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan - now faces the same limitation: mineral revenue authority the courts affirmed can be narrowed by ordinary parliamentary legislation, without a constitutional amendment.

If this pattern holds, MADA's 8:1 verdict becomes less a settlement of the federalism question and more the opening move in a longer institutional contest - where judicial interpretation defines the floor of a state's power and subsequent central legislation defines how much of that floor Parliament chooses to leave usable.

The Real Constitutional Question This Raises

The genuinely unsettled issue is not whether Parliament can impose "limitations" under Entry 50 - it plainly can, by the Entry's own text. It is where the line sits between a legitimate "limitation" (say, a cap ensuring uniform national mineral pricing) and a limitation so restrictive it hollows out the taxing power altogether, turning an affirmed state right into a power that exists on paper but not in practice.

That line has not been tested in court yet and Section 9D - invalidating certain past state levies outright - is likely to be the case that tests it. For an aspirant, the exam-relevant insight is this: a Supreme Court victory for federalism can be legislatively narrowed without ever being formally overturned, because the Constitution's own text often grants Parliament the tool to do exactly that.