Comment on Inter State Committees. (2009)
Daniel J. Elazar defined federalism as self-rule plus shared rule. Shared rule needs forums where governments meet as governments, and India’s “inter-state committees” are that machinery: councils under Article 263, statutory Zonal Councils, the North Eastern Council and, later, the GST Council. Their record shows a pattern. Bodies with a bounded mandate and a cost for deadlock work, while general forums wither.
The family of inter-state bodies
| Body | Basis | Composition | Record |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inter-State Council | Art. 263; Presidential Order, 28 May 1990, on Sarkaria Commission advice | PM (chair), all CMs, UT heads, six Union Cabinet ministers | Eleven meetings; none since 16 July 2016 |
| ISC Standing Committee | 1996 | Home Minister (chair), five Union ministers, nine CMs | Reviewed Punchhi Commission recommendations, 2017–18 |
| Five Zonal Councils | States Reorganisation Act 1956, ss. 15–22 | Home Minister (chair), CMs as rotating vice-chair | About 28 meetings recently against 11 in the preceding decade |
| North Eastern Council | NEC Act 1971; Sikkim added 2002 | Governors and CMs of eight states; Home Minister chair since 2018 | Regional planning and security forum |
| Sectoral councils | Art. 263 orders | Central Council of Health and Family Welfare (1952), Central Council of Local Government (1954) | Common norms where states execute |
| GST Council | Art. 279A (2016) | Union and state finance ministers | GST 2.0, 56th meeting, Sept 2025 |
What they achieve
- Coordination without hierarchy. Art. 263 allows three duties: (a) inquiring into inter-state disputes, (b) investigating subjects of common interest, and (c) recommending coordination of policy. This is the everyday side of Granville Austin‘s cooperative federalism.
- Absorbing reorganisation. Jawaharlal Nehru proposed Zonal Councils to build the habit of cooperative working among the new linguistic states. Since 2014 they have settled practical irritants: the Home Ministry reports about 1,580 issues taken up and roughly 83% resolved, such as the Bihar–Jharkhand asset division and the Masanjore dam.
- Regional voice. The Southern Zonal Council meeting of August 2026 carried Cauvery, Mullaperiyar and the demand for a delimitation freeze. Such forums give institutional form to W. H. Morris-Jones‘s bargaining federalism.
Where they fall short
- Advisory and Union-convened. No state can requisition a meeting, and the chair is always a Union minister, so horizontal bodies are presided over vertically.
- The Inter-State Council’s disuse. The 1990 Order conferred only clauses (b) and (c), leaving out dispute inquiry. A decade separated the tenth (2006) and eleventh (2016) meetings, and its secretariat was merged with the Zonal Council Secretariat in 2018. The Punchhi Commission’s proposal to route Concurrent List bills through it lies unimplemented.
- Irritants, not allocations. No Zonal Council has divided a river or moved a boundary. Hard cases go to tribunals and Article 131.
- Displacement. Functions have drifted to the NITI Aayog Governing Council and the GST Council, whose own dispute mechanism under Art. 279A(11) has never been set up. Union of India v. Mohit Minerals (2022) held its recommendations persuasive, not binding.
Conclusion
India’s inter-state committees are well designed but little used. The GST Council shows that coordination works when membership is compulsory, the subject is bounded and a voting rule makes deadlock costly. Giving the Inter-State Council a statutory footing and a fixed calendar would turn shared rule from Union goodwill into constitutional routine.