Punjab Counters Centre's Farm Laws With Its Own Bills, But Does It Have Ground as Per Constitution?

The Punjab government on Tuesday passed a resolution rejecting the Centre’s three agricultural laws, and presented its own bills to negate them. In its first part, Article 254 lays down that if a state government enacts a law inconsistent or repugnant to the central law which Parliament is competent to enact, or even if an existing law is contrary to a law that Parliament passes at a later stage on matters enumerated in the concurrent list, the central law will prevail. Then, the text of Article 254 reads: “Where a law made by the Legislature of a State with respect to one of the matters enumerated in the concurrent List contains any provision repugnant to the provisions of an earlier law made by Parliament or an existing law with respect to that matter, then, the law so made by the Legislature of such State shall, if it has been reserved for the consideration of the President and has received his assent, prevail in that State.” In simple terms, Article 254 states that if the central government opts to frame a law on a subject which is within the competence of a state legislature, the state law can prevail in that state provided it gets an approval of the President of India. In the concurrent list, ‘agriculture’ is mentioned three times out of which two entries again leave the agricultural land out of the common pool of lawmaking and only one subject that deals with the evacuee property gives right to the Centre to make a law even if it includes the agricultural land. The constitutional court will also be called upon to examine if ‘agriculture’, ‘taxes on agricultural income’ and ‘markets and fairs’ are under the state list and within the legislative assembly’s competence, can Parliament pass a law directly on these subjects, especially when either the union list or the concurrent list has no entry relatable to agricultural market?