Supreme Court of India

THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS.versusM/S TIRUMALA CONSTRUCTIONS

Citation: 2023 INSC 942
Decided: 20 October 2023
Disposal: Disposed off
Bench: S RAVINDRA BHAT

Holding

Section 19 and Article 246A are transitional provisions without substantive limitation, but after 1 July 2017 the states lost competence to amend VAT laws outside Entry 54, making the post‑GST amendments in Telangana, Gujarat and Maharashtra void.

Summary

The Supreme Court examined a batch of appeals arising from the Telangana, Gujarat and Maharashtra High Courts concerning the Constitution (101st Amendment) Act, 2016 which introduced GST and created Article 246A. The Court held that Section 19 of the Amendment is a transitional provision allowing states and Parliament to amend or repeal pre‑existing tax laws, but it imposes no substantive limitation on the power to amend. However, once the GST regime commenced on 1 July 2017, the states lost legislative competence over VAT matters not covered by the new Entry 54 of the State List, rendering any post‑July 2017 amendments to the Telangana VAT Act, Gujarat VAT Act (Section 84A) and Maharashtra VAT Act (pre‑deposit requirement) unconstitutional. Consequently, the Telangana and Gujarat High Court decisions striking down those amendments were affirmed, while the Bombay High Court judgment upholding the Maharashtra amendment was set aside. The appeals filed by the states were dismissed and the assessees’ appeals were allowed.

Issues considered

The scope and limitation, if any, of Section 19 of the Constitution (101st Amendment) Act, 2016 on the power of states to amend or repeal pre‑existing tax statutes.
Whether the Telangana amendment to its VAT Act, effected through an ordinance and later enacted, is constitutionally valid after the GST commencement.
The constitutional validity of Gujarat's retrospective Section 84A amendment to the VAT Act.
The validity of Maharashtra's amendment imposing a mandatory pre‑deposit on disputed tax liabilities.
The interpretation of Article 246A and its impact on state taxing competence post‑GST.
Whether an ordinance that was not laid before the legislature can have lasting legal effect.

Legislation cited

Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017
Constitution (101st Amendment) Act, 2016s. 19, s. 20
Gujarat Value Added Tax (Amendment) Act, 2018s. 84A
Integrated Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017
Maharashtra VAT Act, 2002 (as amended)s. 6A, s. 6B, s. 6C
Telangana State GST Act, 2017

Subjects

GSTConstitution (101st Amendment) ActSection 19Article 246AState VATLegislative competenceRetrospective amendmentOrdinanceIndirect taxationGST Council

Judgment

[2023] 15 S.C.R. 141 : 2023 INSC 942

CASE DETAILS
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS.
v.
M/S TIRUMALA CONSTRUCTIONS
(Civil Appeal No(s). 1628 of 2023)
OCTOBER 20, 2023
[S. RAVINDRA BHAT AND ARAVIND KUMAR, JJ.]

HEADNOTES

Issue for consideration: The Constitution (101st Amendment) Act,
2016, introduces a fundamental re-ordering of the constitutional premise of
taxation by the Union and State Governments in India. It is the framework to
enable the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST). These batch
of appeals arise from judgments delivered by the Telangana, Gujarat and
Bombay High Court. The concerned States (Telangana and Gujarat) have
appealed aggrieved by the judgments. The assessee petitioners are appellants,
and are aggrieved by the judgments of Bombay High Court.
Constitution of India – Constitution (101st Amendment) Act,
2016 – Eﬀect of:
Held: The coming into force of the GST regime, and the passage of
the amendment demonstrates a rare unanimity, a resolve across the political
spectrum, to ensure that there is a single indirect taxation regime – The
eﬀect of the Amendment is to subsume all state and union taxes, on goods
and services – Both the Union and the States will ostensibly have the power
to tax the supply of goods and services – The 101st Amendment Act takes
away neither the Union’s nor the States’ taxing power but instead gives
them the power to impose taxes on supply of goods and supply of services
respectively – Through Article 246-A the Amendment creates: (a) a new
legislative ﬁeld, conferring; (b) legislative authority outside the three Lists
of the Seventh Schedule; (c) concurrent powers to both Parliament and the
State Legislatures to enact legislations on the same subject-matter and at
the same time. [Para 8]

141
142 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

Constitution of India – Constitution (101st Amendment) Act, 2016
– s.19 – Interpretation of:
Held: S.19 seeks to achieve three aims – The ﬁrst is to preserve
the existing status quo with regard to the state and central indirect tax
regime, for a period of one year from the date of commencement of the
Amendment or till a new law is enacted whichever is earlier – The second
is authorizing the competent legislatures i.e. the State Legislatures and
Parliament to amend existing laws which were in force in states and other
parts of the country (both Central and State laws) – The third was the
repeal of such laws – S.19 was meant to be transitional – In its absence,
the several hundreds of state enactments and central laws which were in
force, would have been jeopardized – Other than s.19 there is no saving
provision which is part of the Amendment – So, s.19 of the Constitution
(101st Amendment) Act, 2016 and Article 246A enacted in exercise of
constituent power, formed part of the transitional arrangement for the
limited duration of its operation, and had the eﬀect of continuing the
operation of inconsistent laws for the period(s) speciﬁed by it and, by
virtue of its operation, allowed state legislatures and Parliament to amend
or repeal such existing laws. [Paras 73, 116]
Constitution of India – Ordinary law and Constitutional law:
Held: An ordinary law such as an Act of Parliament, is a product of a
legislative exercise – The source of that power is traced to the Constitution
in some speciﬁc provisions or through ﬁelds of legislation enumerated
in one or the other lists – Constitutional law on the other hand is that it
arises out of the Constitution and creates diﬀerent organs of the State,
deﬁnes their power and imposes limitations on the functioning of the
Executive and legislative wings through the fundamental rights and other
limitations – An ordinary law can be made or changed by the same body,
the legislating body in exercising legislative power – Since constitutional
amendments relates to the fundamental law of the land which is a source
of authority for other laws, it can be achieved only through fulﬁlling the
special procedure. [Para 77]
Constitution of India – Constitution (101st Amendment) Act,
2016 – s.19 – Whether the power of amendment or repeal is subject to
limitations u/s. 19:
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 143
CONSTRUCTIONS

Held: There were no limitations u/s. 19 (read together with Art.
246A), of the Amendment – That provision constituted the expression
of the sovereign legislative power, available to both Parliament and state
legislatures, to make necessary changes through amendment to the existing
laws – As held in Rama Krishna Ramanath case the transitional power
(in that case, Section 143 (3)) “the provision by its implication confers
a limited legislative power to desire or not to desire the continuance of
the levy” – This limited legislative power was not constricted or limited,
in the manner alleged by the states; it is circumscribed by the time limit,
indicated (i.e. one year, or till the new GST law was enacted) – It could,
therefore, enact provisions other than those bringing the existing provisions
in conformity with the amended Constitution – Since other provisions of the
said Amendment Act, had the eﬀect of deleting heads of legislation, from
List I and List II (of the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution of India), both
s.19 and Art.246A reﬂected the constituent expression that existing laws
would continue and could be amended – The source or ﬁelds of legislation,
to the extent they were deleted from the two lists, for a brief while, were
contained in s.19 – As a result, there were no limitations on the power to
amend. [Paras 97 and 116]
Constitution of India – Constitution (101st Amendment) Act, 2016
– Validity of Telangana Act tested from the touch stone of its originating
as an ordinance:
Held: The Telangana ordinance was promulgated on 17.6.2016 –
The Telangana State GST Act was enacted and received the assent of the
Governor on 25.05.2017; it was brought into force on 01.07.2017 – The
state GST Act contained a savings and repeal law, which sought to save acts
done, privileges and rights accrued under the repealed enactment, i.e. the
State VAT Act – It was sought to be argued that once the State Legislature
approved the ordinance and enacted the amendment, in conformity with it,
the provisions of the Ordinance became part of the act – The question of
legislative competence would not arise, because the mere conﬁrmation of an
ordinance is within the competence of the State legislature – Since the law
was introduced through a diﬀerent procedure, i.e. ordinance, the eﬀect of
that law, empowering the VAT oﬃcials to reopen or complete assessments,
was no diﬀerent – The state of Telangana had argued to the contrary, and
144 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

explained that when the ordinance was issued, there was no doubt about the
state possessing legislative competence – As of that date (17.06.2017) the
power to amend existing laws, was permissible u/s. 19 of the Amendment
– However, that argument is not tenable, because the ordinance’s validity
and eﬀect might not have been suspect on the date of its promulgation; yet,
the issue is that on the date when it was in fact, approved and given shape
as an amendment, the State legislature had ceased to possess the power – By
that time, the State GST and the Central GST Acts had come into force (on
01.07.2017) – Therefore, Section 19 ceased to be eﬀective – The original
entry (Entry 54 of the State List) ceased to exist – In the circumstances,
the state legislature had no legislative competence to enact the amendment,
which approved the ordinance, which consequently was rendered void.
[Paras 102, 105]
Constitution of India – Constitution (101st Amendment) Act,
2016 – Gujarat Act:
Held: In the Gujarat batch of cases, s.84A was introduced in the Gujarat
Value Added Tax Act, 2003 by the Gujarat Value Added Tax (Amendment)
Act, 2018, gazetted on 06.04.2018 but with retrospective eﬀect from
1.4.2006 – It inter-alia provided that if for a particular issue in “some
other proceedings” a lower forum, gave a decision which is prejudicial to
the interest of the revenue and an appeal against such decision is pending
before the higher forum then the period spent in such litigation will be
excluded while computing period of limitation for revision – By giving
such provision retrospective eﬀect the State legislature thus sought to enable
reopening of assessments which had already attained ﬁnality – The Gujarat
High Court struck down the amendment on the ground of lack of legislative
competence, on the part of the legislature, after 01.07.2017, and also that it
was manifestly arbitrary – In the instant case, the retrospective eﬀect, given
to the amendment, which was brought into force, with eﬀect from 2006,
cannot in any way save it, after the coming into force of the GST laws,
on 01.07.2017 – Nor can there can be any argument that the amendment
made in February, 2018, is traceable to Article 246A – The amendments
in question, made to the Gujarat VAT Act after 01.07.2017 were correctly
held void, for want of legislative competence, by the High Court of Gujarat.
[Paras 16,113,116]
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 145
CONSTRUCTIONS

Constitution of India – Constitution (101st Amendment) Act, 2016
– Maharashtra Act:
Held: As far as the Maharashtra appeals are concerned, the assessees’
grievance is that the retrospective amendments, made to the Maharashtra
VAT Act, were void – There is no quarrel with the proposition that a
legislative body is competent to enact a curative legislation with retrospective
eﬀect – Yet, the same vice that attaches itself to the Gujarat amendment, i.e.
lack of competence on the date the amendment was enacted i.e. in this case,
09.07.2019, the Maharashtra legislature ceased to have any authority over
the subject matter, because the original entry 54 had undergone a substantial
change, and the power to change the VAT Act, ceased, on 01.07.2017, when
the GST regime came into eﬀect – Therefore, for the same reasons, as in the
other cases, the amendments to the Maharashtra VAT Act cannot survive.
[Paras 15, 115]
LIST OF CITATIONS AND OTHER REFERENCES
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Kesavananda Bharati v State of Kerala [1973] Supp 1 SCR 1; Krishna
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Synthetics and Chemicals Ltd. and Ors. v. State of U.P. & Ors [1989]
Supp (1) SCR 623; Vipulbhai M Chaudhary v Gujarat Milk Mktg Federation
Ltd. [2015] (3) SCR 997; Bondu Ramaswamy v. Bangalore Development
Authority [2010] 6 SCR 29; Bimolangshu Roy (Dead) through L.Rs. v. State
of Assam & Ors [2017] 13 SCR 301; A. Hajee Abdul Shakoor & Co v. State
of Madras [1964] 8 SCR 217; Jaya Thakur v Union of India & Ors 2023
SCC OnLine SC 813; Kerala State Electricity Board v. Indian Aluminium
Co. Ltd [1976] 1 SCR 552; Union of India v Mohit Mineral Pvt. Ltd [2018]
13 SCR 139 – relied on.
T.N. Kalyana Mandapam Assn. v. Union of India [2004] Supp 1
SCR 169; Godfrey Phillips India Ltd. v. State of U.P. [2005] 1 SCR 732;
A.K. Roy v. UOI [1982] 2 SCR 272; R.K. Garg v. Union of India [1982]
1 SCR 947; Fuerst Day Lawson Ltd v Jindal Exports Ltd [2001] 3 SCR
479; UOI & Anr. v. Mohit Minerals Private Limited [2022] 9 SCR 300;
Anant Mills Company Limited v. State of Maharashtra [1975] 3 SCR 220;
146 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

Vijay Prakash D. Mehta v. Collector of Customs (Preventive), Bombay
[1988] Supp (2) SCR 434; State of Haryana v. Maruti Udyog Limited &
Ors. [2000] Supp 3 SCR 185; Thirumali Chemicals Limited v. Union of
India [2011] 4 SCR 739; Neena Aneja & Anr. v. Jai Prakash Associated
Limited [2021] 15 SCR 96; M/s West Ramnad Electric Distribution Co.
Ltd. v. State of Madras [1963] 2 SCR 747; State of Rajasthan v. Mangilal
Pindwal [1996] Supp (3) SCR 98; Mafatlal Industries Ltd. v. Union of India
[1996] Suppl. (10) SCR 585; State of Gujarat v. Reliance Industries Ltd
[2017] 13 SCR 25; Sundergarh Zilla Adivasi Advocates Association and
Ors. v State of Odisha and Ors [2013] 6 SCR 420; Union of India v. VKC
Footsteps India (P)Ltd [2021] 15 SCR 169; R. Abdul Quader v. Sales Tax
Oﬃcer [1964] 6 SCR 867; State of Madhya Pradesh v. M.V. Narasimhan
[1976] 1 SCR 6; R.K. Garg Etc. Etc v. Union Of India & Ors. [1982] 1
SCR 947; State of Gujarat v. Reliance Industries Ltd [2017] 16 SCC 28;
Shri Prithvi Cotton Mills Ltd. v. Broach Borough Municipality [1970] 1
SCR 388; Government of Andhra Pradesh v. Hindustan Machine Tools
Ltd [1975] Supp (1) SCR 394; Ujagar Prints v. Union of India [1988]
Supp 3 SCR 770; Anshul Impex Private Ltd. v. State of Maharashtra
STA No. 2/2018; United Projects v State of Maharashtra (Writ Petition
(ST.) No. 11589 of 2021, and Writ Petition No. 13754 of 2018; State of
Gujarat v. Welspun Gujarat Stahl Rohren Ltd. [2014] 71 VST 550 (Guj);
Reliance Industries Ltd. v. State of Gujarat [2018] 58 GSTR 366 (Guj);
Sree Rayalaseema Alkalies and Allied Chemicals Limited v. State of Andhra
Pradesh and Ors. 2007 SCC OnLine AP 1158 – referred to.
Constitutional Law of India 4th Edition Volume 3 page 3119; P.
Ramanatha Aiyar’s Advance Law Lexicon Volume I at Page 271 – referred
to.
OTHER CASE DETAILS INCLUDING IMPUGNED
ORDER AND APPEARANCES
CIVIL APPELLATE JURISDICTION: Civil Appeal No. 1628 of 2023.
From the Judgment and Order dated 03.08.2022 of the High Court for
the State of Telangana at Hyderabad in WP No.5010 of 2021.
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 147
CONSTRUCTIONS

With
C.A. Nos. 2502-2513, 2644-2686, 2732, 2733, 1654, 1683, 1662, 1663,
1629, 1658, 1630, 1653, 1655, 1657, 1672, 1676, 1656, 1661, 1664, 1660,
1682, 1665, 1666, 1667, 1668, 1669, 1659, 2690, 1670, 1673, 1671, 1674,
1675, 1677, 2687, 2688, 2689 of 2023 SLP(C) Nos. 7776, 13543-13545,
13529-13530, 13523-13526, 13547-13559, 13562-13574, 13561, 13539-
13540, 13527-13528, 13560, 13534-13537 of 2023, C.A. Nos. 2433, 2436,
2437-2443, 2730, 2731, 1645, 1649, 1643, 1636, 1652, 1679, 1637, 1632,
1651, 1633, 1648, 1634, 1647, 1644, 1638, 1678, 1631, 1681, 1641, 1640,
1680, 1639, 1646, 1635, 1642 and 1650 of 2023.
Appearances:
Vikram Nankani, Arvind P. Datar, Sr. Advs., B.S. Prasad A.G./Sr.
Adv., Ms. Kavita Jha, Arnab Roy, Prithwiraj Choudhuri, Ms. Archana
Pathak Dave, Kumar Prashant, Ms. Deepanwita Priyanka, Ms. Manju Jetley,
Varun Mishra, Ankur Jain, Prablin Singh Abrol, Sanchit Jain, Aniruddha
Singh, Rajavat, Ajay Sharma, Awadhesh Kumar, Manju Jetley, Digant
Mishra, Somanadri Goud Katam, Rahul Unnikrishnan, Sirajuddin, Advs.
for the Appellants.
Balbir Singh, A.S.G., S. Dwarakanath, Saurabh Soparkar, Kapil Sibbal,
S. Ganesh, Jay Savla, Dama Seshadari Naidu, Sr. Advs., Sameer Jain, Ms.
Anu Sura, Soayib Qureshi, K. K. Mani, Ms. T. Archana, Rajeev Gupta, Vinay
Rajput, K. R. Sasiprabhu, Uchit Sheth, Santosh Krishnan, Vishnu Sharma
A S, Prakhar Agarwal, Robin Ratnakar David, R Jawaharlal, Siddharth
Bawa, Anuj Garg, Mohit Sharma, Mayank Kshirsagar, Sridhar Potaraju,
Ms. Aditi Anil Dani, Rajat Srivastava, Aayush, Ms. Simran Gupta, Ashutosh
Jha, Dr. M. V. K. Moorthy, M. V. J. K. Kumar, M. Kumar, Hitendra Nath
Rath, Mohan Raj A, Hariharan, Ms. Charulata Chaudhary, Ravinder Kumar
Yadav, D. Srinivas, A.V.S. Raju, R. Ravi, Sadam Satyanarayana Raja Yadav,
Srinivas Rao Ambaji, Somanatha Padhan, Sujit Ghosh, Mridul Gupta, Shubh
Dixit, Ms. Mannat Waraich, Aniruddha Joshi, Shrirang B. Varma, Siddharth
Dharmadhikari, Naman Tandon, Samarvir Singh, Prasanjeet Mohpatra,
Aditya Rathore, Aaditya Aniruddha Pande, Bharat Bagla, Sourav Singh,
Aditya Krishna, Ranjeet Singh, Mrs. Bela Maheshwari, V Seshagiri, Bikram
Bhattacharya, R. Krishnan, Rupesh Kumar, Ms. Pankhuri Shrivastava, Ms.
Neelam Sharma, Rajeev Sharma, Kumar Visalaksh, Udit Jain, Arihant Tater,
148 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

Abhishek Vikas, Ms. Tatini Basu, Ms. Nitipriya Kar, Kumar Shashank,
Byrapaneni Suyodhan, Krishan Kumar, Mrs. Neetu Sharma, Nitin Pal,
Shivam Pandey, Yelamanchili Shiva Santosh Kumar, Rudrajit Ghosh,
Tushar Arora, Tarun Gupta, Ishaan George, Ms. Shiwani Tushir, M/s. Shree
Chakra Chambers, Venkatram Reddy Mantur, G.N. Reddy, Ravi Shankar,
Vedrumudi Vishnoo C. Kashyap, Uchit Seth, Malak Manish Bhatt, Jasdeep
Singh Dhillon, Prabhat Kumar Chaurasia, Yugantar Singh Chauhan, Ms.
Pinky Behera, Rizwan Ahmad, Shakeel Ahmed, Amir Kaleem, Paras Nath
Singh, Jatin Anand Diwedi, Soumik Ghosal, Ramesh Allanki, Ms. Aruna
Gupta, Syed Ahmad Naqvi, B Krishna Reddy, K. Aroah, K. K. Tyagi, Iftekhar
Ahmad, Ms. Garima Tyagi, Sarvam Ritam Khare, Vikash Chandra Shukla, V.
C. Shukla, Sidharth Relan, Naga Deepak, Aishvary Vikram, Ajay Awasthi,
Anantha Narayana M. G., Siddhartha Relan, Prakash Gautam, Puspraj Singh
Parihar, Pushpraj Singh Parihar, Akshya Kumar Panda, Prabhsimar Singh,
Amritesh Raj, Nitesh Ranjan, Tarun Gulia, Manish Dutt Sharma, Piyush
Singh, Anshuman Sinha, Vijay Kumar Pandey, Vinay Prakash, Ajay Vikram
Singh, Mrs. Pragya Sharma, Udayan Sinha, Karan Talwar, Krishna Sumanth,
Siddhant Buxy, Sumanth Nookala, Advs. for the Respondents.
JUDGMENT / ORDER OF THE SUPREME COURT

JUDGMENT

S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.
Table of Contents
I. Background and relevant provisions ......................................2
II. Facts .........................................................................................9
III. Arguments of the appellant-states......................................... 11
IV. Arguments of the respondent-assessees ................................20
V. Analysis and reasoning .........................................................33
A. Interpretation of Section 19 ..................................................35
B. Whether the power of amendment or repeal is subject
to limitations under Section 19 .............................................40
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 149
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

C. Validity of Telangana Act tested from the touch stone of
its originating as an ordinance .............................................50
D. Gujarat and Maharashtra Acts .............................................57
VI. Conclusions ............................................................................63
1. This batch of appeals arise from judgments delivered by the
Telangana, Gujarat and Bombay High Court. The concerned states
(Telangana and Gujarat) have appealed aggrieved by the judgments. The
assessee petitioners are appellants, and are aggrieved by the judgments of
Bombay High Court.
I. Background and relevant provisions
2. The Constitution (101st Amendment) Act, 2016, (hereafter referred
to as “the Amendment”) introduces a fundamental re-ordering of the
constitutional premise of taxation by the Union and State Governments
in India. It is the framework to enable the introduction of the Goods and
Services Tax (GST). It confers new powers upon the Union Parliament
and State Legislative Assemblies, and also creates institutions that have a
signiﬁcant bearing on the federal character of the Constitution.
3. The pre-Amendment constitutional scheme had a vision of taxation
of goods and services supplied within India. Excise and customs duty and
excise on manufacture were within the scope of the legislative powers of
the Union Parliament1, under the Seventh Schedule. No separate entry
for Service Tax existed in the Constitution at the time it was enacted. In
T.N.Kalyana Mandapam Assn. v. Union of India2, this court held that
service tax as a subject matter was within the “residuary power” of the
Union; nevertheless, Entry 92C was introduced into the Union List by the
Constitution (88th Amendment) Act, 2004 clarifying that the Union had
exclusive authority to impose a service tax. Taxation of sale and movement
of goods was within the exclusive purview of the States,by Entries 52 and
54 of the State List (List II of the VIIth Schedule to the Constitution). The
delineation of Union and State taxation powers through the Union and State
Lists of the Seventh Schedule was precise and clear, leaving little room for

1 Entries 83 and 84, List I, Seventh Schedule of the Constitution of India.
2 2004 Supp (1) SCR 169; (2004) 5 SCC 632
150 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

any overlap in the kind of taxes that the Union could impose and those that
a State could levy. The “Concurrent List” (or List III of the VII th Schedule)
contained no taxing entries, signifying that the constitutional scheme for
taxation was to apportion two distinct, exclusive spheres of taxation for the
Union and the States.
4. The initial move to introduce GST was through the Fiscal
Responsibility and Budget Management Report and the first official
announcement for a transition to GST, was made by the Government of
India in 2006-07 by the Budget Speech of the then Finance Minister; this
was reiterated in the Budget Speech of 2008-09 and followed up in 2009-10
when certain policy changes were announced in the Budget for that year.
The “First Discussion Paper on Goods and Services Tax in India” released
by the Empowered Committee in November 2009 was the ﬁrst oﬃcial
document publicly delineating the contours of the proposed reform and
nuances of the GST Model.
5. The First Discussion Paper, in fact, explained the rationale for a
constitutional amendment to introduce GST. It noted that while the Centre is
empowered to tax services and goods up to the production stage, the States
have the power to tax the sale of goods. The States do not have the power
to levy a tax on the supply of services while the Centre does not have the
power to levy a tax on the sale. It suggested for a constitutional amendment
that would contain a mechanism for a harmonious structure of GST that
would not aﬀect the federal fabric.
6. Then, with the deliberations between the Centre and States, aided by
the Empowered Committee, the constitutional amendment process to usher
in GST began. It resulted in the “Constitution (One Hundred and Fifteenth
Amendment) Bill, 2011” After that failed attempt, the 2014 Amendment
Bill was adopted and passed on 8 September 2016. The Bill became “the
Constitution (One Hundred and First Amendment) Act, 2016”.
7. The GST Council was constituted in September 2016. It is a
constitutional institution comprising as its members the Finance Ministers
of the Union and the States including Union Territories with members of
the legislatures. It has the authority
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 151
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

“to recommend to the Union and the States on various facets of GST,
including Model GST laws, principles to determine the place of supply,
levy of the tax, design of GST, dispute settlement, special provisions
for a special category of States, and so forth”.
GST Council’s recommendations led Parliament to enacted legislation.3
8. The coming into force of the GST regime, and the passage of the
amendment demonstrates a rare unanimity, a resolve across the political
spectrum, to ensure that there is a single indirect taxation regime. The
eﬀect of the Amendment is to subsume all state and union taxes, on goods
and services. Both the Union and the States will ostensibly have the power
to tax the supply of goods and services. The 101 st Amendment Act takes
away neither the Union's nor the States' taxing power but instead gives
them the power to impose taxes on supply of goods and supply of services
respectively.Through Article 246-A the Amendment creates:
a. a new legislative ﬁeld, conferring
b. legislative authority outside the three Lists of the Seventh
Schedule;
c. concurrent powers to both Parliament and the State Legislatures
to enact legislations on the same subject-matter and at the same
time.
9. There consequently is a fundamental change to the scheme of
legislative relations between the Union and the States by departing from
the underlying theory of exclusivity of legislative ﬁelds between Parliament
and the State legislatures,in terms of the distribution of legislative powers
carried out by Chapter I of Part XI of the Constitution4.
10. To exemplify this:whilst Article 246-A changes the legislative
distribution of powers, however, it does not upset the balance between

3 The Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017: it levies a tax on intra-State
supplies of goods and services in all supplies within a State; the Integrated
Goods and Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017: it levies a tax on inter-State
supplies of goods and services; and (3) the Union Territory Goods and Services
Tax Act, 2017: it levies a tax on intra-State supplies of goods and service.
4 Godfrey Phillips India Ltd. v. State of U.P. (2005) 1 SCR732,
152 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

the Union and the States. Instead, it carries out the function of cross-
empowerment. On the one hand, it enables the Union to legislative and
collect taxes on certain subjects which were hitherto within the exclusive
fold of the States (such as the taxes on sale and purchase of goods, luxury
taxes, advertisement taxes, etc.), while retaining the legislative rights it
hitherto possessed (such as taxes on manufacture, taxes on services, etc.)
except that these taxes are subsumed in a larger legislative ﬁeld - i.e., GST
- and would be levied thereunder. On the other hand, Article 246-A also
expands the legislative reach of the States to bring within their fold the
subjects which were hitherto beyond their competence-such as tax on the
supply of services, etc. As in the case of the Union, the States also continue
to enact and impose taxes on the legislative ﬁelds they hitherto possessed
(such as taxes on sale and purchase, taxes on betting and gambling, and
taxes on advertisements), albeit as a partof GST which subsumes these
legislative ﬁelds.
11. Article 279-A provides for the Goods and Services Tax Council
(hereafter “GST Council”). This provision also changes the underlying
constitutional philosophy to a certain extent. Sub-clause (1) of Article 279-
A creates a new constitutional institution; (2) confers upon it the power
to make recommendations to the Union and the States; (3) provides that
certain functions of other constitutional institutions shall be carried out on
the basis of the recommendations of the GST Council5; (4) has overarching
jurisdiction and carries extensive functions in relation to the design and
structure of the goods and services tax; (5) has substantial role in resolution
of disputes amongst the executive governments relating to GST, etc.6 In fact,
the GST Council is empowered to even recommend on the model legislations
and rates of tax on supply of goods and services.
12. The relevant parts of the Amending Act, read as follows:
In terms of Section 2 of the aforesaid Constitution Amendment Act,
after Article 246, a new Article 246-A came to be inserted which reads as
under:

5 For illustration, see Art. 246-A Explanation, Art. 269-A(1), Constitution of India.
6 Article 279-A, infra, for a detailed discussion.
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 153
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

“246A. Special Provision with respect to goods and services tax---
(1) Notwithstanding anything contained in articles 246 and 254,
Parliament, and, subject to clause (2), the Legislature of every State,
have power to make laws with respect to goods and services tax
imposed by the Union or by such State.
(2) Parliament has exclusive power to make laws with respect to goods
and services tax where the supply of goods, or of services, or both takes
place in the course of inter-State trade or commerce.
Explanation.---The provisions of this article, in respect of goods and
services tax referred to in clause (5) of the article 279A, take eﬀect
from the date recommended by the Goods and Services Tax Council.”
By Section 7, Article 268-A was omitted. After Article 269, Article
269-A has been inserted, which reads as under:
“269A. Levy and collection of goods and services tax in course of
inter-state trade or commerce---
(1) Goods and Services tax on supplies in the course of inter-State
trade or commerce shall be levied and collected by the Government
of India and such tax shall be apportioned between the Union and the
States in the manner as may be provided by Parliament by law on the
recommendations of the Goods and Services Tax Council.
Explanation---For the purposes of this clause, supply of goods, or
of services, or both in the course of import into the territory of India
shall be deemed to be supply of goods, or of services, or both in the
course of inter-State trade or commerce.
(2) The amount apportioned to a State under clause (1) shall not form
part of the Consolidated Fund of India.
(3) Where an amount collected as tax levied under clause (1) has been
used for payment of the tax levied by a State under article 246A, such
amount shall not form part of the Consolidated Fund of India.
(4) Where an amount collected as tax levied by a State under article
246A has been used for payment of the tax levied under clause (1),
such amount shall not form part of the Consolidated Fund of the State.
154 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

(5) Parliament may, by law, formulate the principles for determining
the place of supply, and when a supply of goods, or of services, or both
takes place in the course of inter-State trade or commerce.”
Section 12 of the Amendment inserted Article 279-A, which reads as
follows:
“279A. Goods and Services Tax Council ---
(1) The President shall, within sixty days from the date of commencement
of the Constitution (One Hundred and First Amendment) Act, 2016,
by order, constitute a Council to be called the Goods and Services
Tax Council.
(2) The Goods and Services Tax Council shall consist of the following
members, namely:-
(a) the Union Finance Minister.......Chairperson;
(b) the Union Minister of State in charge of Revenue or Finance......
Member;
(c) The Minister in charge of Finance or Taxation or any other Minister
nominated by each State Government .....Members.
(3) The Members of the Goods and Services Tax Council referred to
in sub-clause (c) of the clause (2) shall, as soon as may be, choose
one amongst themselves to be the Vice-Chairperson of the Council for
such period as they may decide.
(4) The Goods and Services Tax Council shall make recommendations
to the Union and the State on---
(a) the taxes, cesses and surcharges levied by the Union, the States and
the local bodies which may be subsumed in the goods and services tax;
(b) the goods and services that may be subjected to, or exempted from
the goods and services tax;
(c) model Goods and Services Tax Laws, principles of levy,
apportionment of Goods and Services Tax levied on supplies in the
course of inter-state trade or commerce under article 269-A and the
principles that govern the place of supply;
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 155
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

(d) the threshold limit of turnover below which goods and services
may be exempted from goods and services tax;
(e) the rates including ﬂoor rates with bands of goods and services tax;
(f) any special rate or rates for a speciﬁed period, to raise additional
resources during any natural calamity or disaster;
(g) special provision with respect to the States of Arunachal Pradesh,
Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram,
Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand; and
(h) any other matter relating to the goods and services tax, as the
Council may decide.
(5) The Goods and Services Tax Council shall recommend the date on
which the goods and services tax be levied on petroleum crude, high
speed diesel, motor spirit (commonly known as petrol), natural gas
and aviation turbine fuel.
(6) While discharging the functions conferred by this article, the Goods
and Services Tax Council shall be guided by the need for a harmonized
structure of goods and services tax and for the development of a
harmonised national market for goods and services.
(7) One-half of the total number of Members of the Goods and Services
Tax Council shall constitute the quorum at its meetings.
(8) The Goods and Services Tax Council shall determine the procedure
in the performance of its functions.
(9) Every decision of the Goods and Services Tax Council shall be
taken at a meeting, by a majority of not less than three-fourths of the
weighted votes of the members present and voting, in accordance with
the following principles, namely:---
(a) the vote of the Central Government shall be a weightage of one-
third of the total votes cast, and
(b) the votes of all the State Governments taken together shall have a
weightage of two-thirds of the total votes cast, in that meeting.
156 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

(10) No act or proceedings of the Goods and Services Tax Council
shall be invalid merely by reason of---
(a) any vacancy in, or any defect in, the constitution of the Council; or
(b) any defect in the appointment of a person as a Member of the
Council; or
(c) any procedural irregularity of the Council not aﬀecting the merits
of the case.
(11) The Goods and Services Tax Council shall establish a mechanism
to adjudicate any dispute---
(a) between the Government of India and one or more States; or
(b) between the Government of India and any State or States on one
side and one or more other States on the other side; or
(c) between two or more States,
arising out of the recommendations of the Council or implementation
thereof.”
13. Section 14 (of the Amendment)had the eﬀect of introducing
Article 366 (12A), (26-A) and (26-B). A crucial amendment was in the
VIIth Schedule to the Constitution. In List I (Union List) for Entry 84, the
following entry was substituted:
“84. Duties of excise on the following goods manufactured or produced
in India, namely:---
(a) Petroleum crude;
(b) High speed diesel;
(c) Motor spirit (commonly known as petrol);
(d) Natural gas;
(e) Aviation turbine fuel; and
(f) Tobacco and tobacco products.”;
Entries 92 and 92 C (Union List)were omitted. Similarly, Entry 52 was
omitted and Entry 54 was substituted. The new Entry 54, reads as follows:
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 157
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

“54. Taxes on the sale of petroleum crude, high speed diesel, motor
spirit (commonly known as petrol), natural gas, aviation turbine fuel
and alcoholic liquor for human consumption, but not including sale
in the course of inter-State trade or commerce or sale in the course
of international trade or commerce of such goods.”
Section 19 read as follows:
“19. Notwithstanding anything in this Act, any provision of any law
relating to tax on goods or services or on both in force in any State
immediately before the commencement of this Act, which is inconsistent
with the provisions of the Constitution as amended by this Act shall
continue to be in force until amended or repealed by a competent
Legislature or other competent authority or until expiration of one
year from such commencement, whichever is earlier.”
Section 20 read as follows:
“20. (1) If any diﬃculty arises in giving eﬀect to the provisions of the
Constitution as amended by this Act (including any diﬃculty in relation
to the transition from the provisions of the Constitution as they stood
immediately before the date of assent of the President to this Act to the
provisions of the Constitution as amended by this Act), the President
may, by order, make such provisions, including any adaptation or
modiﬁcation of any provision of the Constitution as amended by this
Act or law, as appear to the President to be necessary or expedient
for the purpose of removing the diﬃculty:
Provided that no such order shall be made after the expiry of three
years from the date of such assent.
(2) Every order made under sub-section (1) shall, as soon as may be
after it is made, be laid before each House of Parliament.”
II. Facts
14. There are three batches of appeals, arising from separate special
leave petitions ﬁled in this case. One batch relates to the State of Telangana.
The facts in relation to that State are that the local VAT Act was amended –
after the Amendment was introduced. The VAT amendment was through an
Ordinance, and was brought into force on 17.06.2017, i.e. 13 days before
158 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

the time granted by the 101st Amendment Act, i.e. one year. The Amendment
came into force on 16.09.2016. The ordinance sought to extend the period
of limitation, and permitted to re-open assessments. This ordinance,
continued till the State Legislature enacted it. The Governor then assented
to the law, and it came into force on 02.12.2017. Feeling aggrieved many
traders and VAT payers approached the Telangana High Court, challenging
the amendments to the local VAT Act. By the impugned judgment, the
High Court accepted the challenge and struck it down, on various counts,
including that the State had limited scope to amend its VAT Act, which in
terms of Section 19 of the Amendment could have done it only to bring it
in conformity with the amended Constitution. Other reasons included that
the ordinance, could not have been conﬁrmed, as the state was denuded of
legislative competence after 01.07.2017.
15. In the batch of appeals arising from the judgment of the Bombay
High Court, the parties were aggrieved by the fact that the Maharashtra VAT
Amendment Act, which was initially made on 15.04.2017, was read down
by a Division Bench judgment, of the Bombay High Court. That position
was sought to be reversed, through an amendment which was brought into
force, on 15.04.2017 and later in an eﬀort to reverse the eﬀect of a judgment,
given retrospective eﬀect. The writ petitions ﬁled by such aggrieved parties,
were dismissed. Consequently, they are in appeal.
16. In the Gujarat batch of cases, Section 84A was introduced in
the Gujarat Value Added Tax Act, 2003 (hereinafter referred to as “the
Gujarat VAT Act”) by the Gujarat Value Added Tax (Amendment) Act,
2018, gazetted on 06.04.2018 but with retrospective eﬀect from 1.4.2006. It
inter-alia provided that if for a particular issue in “some other proceedings”
a lower forum, gave a decision which is prejudicial to the interest of the
revenue and an appeal against such decision is pending before the higher
forum then the period spent in such litigation will be excluded while
computing period of limitation for revision. By giving such provision
retrospective eﬀect the State legislature thus sought to enable reopening
of assessments which had already attained ﬁnality. The Gujarat High
Court struck down the amendment on the ground of lack of legislative
competence, on the part of the legislature, after 01.07.2017, and also that
it was manifestly arbitrary.
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 159
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

III. Arguments of the appellant-states
17. It was argued on behalf of the State of Telangana, by Mr. Arvind
Datar, Senior Advocate, Mr. Balbir Singh, learned Additional Solicitor
General (ASG), on behalf of Maharashtra, that the Constitutional Amendment
was introduced on 16.09.2016. It was highlighted that by its provisions
various entries in the State and Union list were amended drastically to limit
the powers of the two legislatures. The object of the amendment was to re-
organize the powers of indirect taxation that the original Constitution makers
had envisioned. Indirect taxes: more speciﬁcally, sales tax, service tax,
central excise and value added tax were the subject matter of this amendment.
The original intent of the Constitution and powers in relation to levy of
customs duty were retained as it were. For the ﬁrst time, the amendments
denuded the States and Parliament of exclusive ﬁelds of legislation and
introduced the concept of shared or pooled sovereign powers in relation
to value added tax, central excise and service tax. These were brought into
one compendious term “goods and services tax”, ensuring that all aspects in
this ﬁeld of taxation were covered. For the ﬁrst time, the power of taxation
could be traced to a substantive provision of the Constitution, introduced
by the Amendment. Furthermore, the issue of evolving principles division
of pooled ﬁeld of taxation was left to a new entity, the Goods and Service
Tax Council (hereafter “GST Council”), created as a constitutional entity.
This design was to ensure that the federal balance of power was retained
and in fact furthered.
18. Learned counsel relied upon the provisions of the Amendment to
emphasize that the GST Council is comprised of Finance Ministers of all
States and that the Union has only 1/3rd weightage in its decision making.
The balance is with the States collectively. Furthermore, any decision in
the council becomes eﬀective when it is voted for by a 3/4 ths majority.
19. It was contended, that the almost the revolutionary change brought
about by redistribution of indirect taxation power and the giving eﬀect to it
through the Amendment meant that both Parliamentary and state legislative
powers were denuded in respect of ﬁelds of taxation as far as they covered
central excise, service tax, sales tax and other taxes which the states could
hitherto levy and collect. As an eﬀect of the Amendment, the ﬁelds of
taxation in Entries 84 of the Union List (List I) of the Seventh Schedule to
160 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

the Constitution of India and Entries 54 and 62 of the State List, too were
amended. The revamping of these ﬁelds of taxation resulted in such powers
getting pooled or collected as a sovereign taxation power, shared by the
state and the centre. This became the subject matter of a separate entry,
i.e. Article 246A. Article 246A is expressed in overriding terms and begins
with a non-obstante clause and overrides Article 246 which deals with the
distribution of legislative powers vis-à-vis the Union and the States in terms
of Lists 1 and 2, and of Article 254 which deals with the subject matter of
Concurrent List, i.e. List III and the resolution of any conﬂict (in terms of
repugnancy) between laws enacted by the States and the Parliament.
20. The eﬀect of Article 246A is that both the Parliament and the State
legislatures have the power to enact laws with respect to goods and service
imposed by the Union or such State. Article 246A (2) states that Parliament
has the overriding power to enact laws with respect to goods and services
taxes qua supply of goods and services and both of them in the course of
inter-state trade and commerce. Another substantial provision is Article
269A which authorizes the Union to collect GST on supplies in the course
of inter-State trade or commerce which “shall be apportioned between the
Union and the States in the manner as may be provided by the Parliament
on the recommendations of the GST Council”. The other provisions of
Article 269A clarify the nature of the collections which are not to form the
Consolidated Fund of India. Article 279A provides for the GST Council
and elaborately deals with its structure to ensure balanced decision making,
ensure democratic participation of the Union and the States.
21. It was also submitted that consequent to these amendments, Article
366 [12(A)]was introduced, which deﬁned GST, astax on supply of goods
and Services or both, excluding alcoholic liquor for human consumption
It was urged on behalf of the States that with the coming into force of the
amendment, Parliament and the states realized that any changes in the law
or the practical application of the existing law would become impossible.
As a consequence, to cater to these eventualities, certain constitutional
provisions were made, i.e. Section 19 which provided ﬁrstly that laws
relating to tax on goods or services or both “in force in any state immediately
before the commencement of the amendment Act shall continue to be
in force until amended or repealed by a competent legislature or other
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 161
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

competent authority.” The other eventuality was that with or without such
amendments such laws were to be in force only for a period of one year from
the commencement of the amendment. Section 20 authorized the President
to, by order, make provisions, including modiﬁcation and adoption of “any
provision of the Constitution as amended by the amendment Act in case of
any defect, including defect in relation to transition from the provisions
of the State as they stood immediately before the commencement of the
amendment Act, for a period of three years.”
22. In view of Section 19 of the Amendment, the Telangana legislature
amended the existing state statute – Value Added Tax Act (hereafter “the
Telangana VAT Act”)7. The amended provisions empowered the Assessing
Oﬃcer to reassess the returns which had been assessed previously –
additionally for a period of two years. In other words, originally the power
to reassess was limited to four years. The lengthening of the period by two
more years meant that dealers whose assessments had either escaped notice
and who had mis-declared or withheld information could now be exposed
to the possibility of reassessment for a further period of two years.
23. It was submitted that this amendment was made through an
ordinance issued by the Governor of Telangana on 17.06.2017. The
State VAT Act was to cease to have any eﬀect, on 30.06.2017. However,
before that, its provisions were amended through the ordinance which
was later transformed into law through an Act of the State legislature and
brought into force on 02.12.2017. The Telangana GST Act was enacted
and came into force before 30.06.2017. It repealed the existing law, i.e.
the State VAT Act, but by virtue of Section 174, the existing provisions
of the State VAT Act were continued and all pending proceedings so far
as they related to ongoing assessment proceedings and matters which
had not become ﬁnal.
24. The learned counsel submitted that the impugned judgments of
the Telangana and Gujarat High Courts are erroneous. It was submitted
that the Telangana High Court’s interpretation that the expression “amend”
had limited import is without basis. Learned counsel highlighted that the

7 Sections 20(4), 21(3), 21(4), 21(6), 21(7), 21(8), 31(1), 32(3), 32(6), 32(7) and 57(5).
162 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

ordinance in terms of the several judgments of this Court, especially A.K.
Roy v. UOI8 (hereafter, “AK Roy”) and the seven judge decision in Krishna
Kumar Singh v. State of Bihar9 (hereafter, “Krishna Kumar Singh”) have
declared that there is no diﬀerence between the eﬀect of an ordinance and
that of a law enacted by the State legislature. Being in the nature of special
power to cater to unforeseen eventualities, the executive was empowered to
enact laws for a limited duration as far as the conditions spelt out in Article
213. The Union executive in a like manner was authorized by Article 123
to promulgate ordinances.
25. Learned counsel also relied upon the decision of this Court in
Ramkrishna Ramanath v. Janpad Sabha10 (hereafter, “Rama Krishna
Ramanath”) and relied upon the principle that so long as the power to
amend existed, both the Parliament and the State legislatures could not be
limited in the exercise of that power which was plenary and sovereign. The
interpretation placed by the Telangana and the Gujarat high Courts that the
expression amend only conferred a constricted power which is to bring the
existing enactments in line with the amendments of the Constitution, was
erroneous. In fact, it amounted to unduly restricting – without any warning
– the purport and amplitude of the saving and Presidential power expressed
through Section 19.
26. Learned counsel submitted that if one takes into account the fact
that the eﬀect of an ordinance and the eﬀect of law are identical which is
that they bind the space or subject matter to the extent they provide for it,
the diﬀerence lies only in the manner of their creation. Learned counsel
emphasized that the distinction lies in the procedure adopted rather than
the content or the eﬀect of the law. Whereas the origin of an ordinance
is through a diﬀerent entity which is the executive (clothed with limited
legislative power), the Act, on the other hand, is an expression of a State
legislative or Parliament. This distinction cannot obliterate the eﬀect of the
law which is the same and would continue to bind the parties for which
express provision is made.

8 (1982) 2 SCR 272
9 (2017) 5 SCR160
10 1962 Suppl. (3) SCR 70
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 163
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

27. In support of the proposition that there is no diﬀerence between
the legislative power of the State and that of the executive, learned counsel
relied upon the decision of the Constitution Bench of this Court in R.K.
Garg v. Union of India11. It was argued further that the provision requiring
placing or tabling the ordinance before the house, either the State legislature
or the Parliament was entirely diﬀerent from the exercise of tabling an
enacted legislation. The former amounted to a part of the legislative activity
itself. In the event the legislature, i.e. the State legislature or the Parliament
approves the ordinance in its own terms, it becomes a parliamentary or State
enactment. Learned counsel stressed upon the issue or point that a separate
embodiment of the terms of the ordinance is not essentially a requirement
under the Constitution. A mere approval of the ordinance results in its
enactment and acceptance by the State legislature which in turn assimilates
the terms of the ordinance through the body of law enacted by it. In other
words, if the State legislature or the Parliament disapproves the ordinance
or does not approve any part of the ordinance and embodies the ordinance
in the form of an enactment, that enactment would then be decisive from
the date the ordinance itself was brought into force. However, in the case
of disapproval, in terms of the disapproval, the limited life of the ordinance
would cease. It was thus argued that upon the State legislature approving
the terms of the ordinance in Telangana and embodying it in terms of the
second amendment which was brought into force on 02.12.2017, its terms
related back. Therefore, the State power to legislate has to be viewed in
continuum or as continuing from the date it was brought into force which
is 17.06.2017 and formed from the State enactment. Consequentially, even
the power to enact the law on the part of the state was preserved. Learned
counsel also relied upon the decision of this Court in Fuerst Day Lawson
Ltd v Jindal Exports Ltd12 in support of the submission. In the case of
Maharashtra VAT Act, it was highlighted that the amendment Act was
brought into force on 15.04.2017. The Central Goods and Services Tax
Act (hereafter “CGST Act”) came into force on 01.07.2017. In terms of
the amendment to the State VAT Act, the pre-deposit of 10% became the
condition for hearing the appeal.

11 (1982) 1 SCR947
12 2001 (3) SCR 479
164 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

28. It was argued on behalf of the State of Maharashtra that what
is material is the existence of a power to legislate and not the manner of
exercise of that power. Therefore, the existence of a power to legislate was
preserved by Section 19; its purpose was to preserve both the portion of
existing laws and also to permit the State legislature and the Parliament to
amend or repeal the existing law. Being a constitutional amendment, no
expression or term ought to be interpreted in a limited manner. The reasoning
of the Telangana and Gujarat High Courts that the power of amendment
was limited to bringing the existing enactments, i.e. State VAT Acts in
conformity with the express terms of the 101st amendment, was erroneous.
It was submitted that till the date speciﬁed in the 101st amendment, i.e. the
expiration of one year which was eﬀectively 30th June, 2017, the power of
the competent legislatures, i.e. the State and the Union was untrammeled.
Learned counsel also pointed to amendments made to the Central Excise
Act, much in the same terms as in the case of the Telangana and Gujarat
amendments which enlarged the period of limitation in certain respects. It
is fallacious to contend that the State legislatures were denuded the power
to legislate. The power was traceable to the amended provisions of the
Constitution notwithstanding that relevant entries in the State List 54 and
62 had been altered. It was submitted that such a view was taken notice of
and discussed in UOI & Anr. v. Mohit Minerals Private Limited13.
29. It is urged that the power to amend the Constitution is a constituent
power of the Parliament in accordance with Article 368. Under Article
368(2), the amendment to the Constitution is initiated by introduction of
a bill and after assent to the bill by the President, the Constitution stands
amended in accordance with the terms of the Bill. In other words, every
single provision in the Constitutional Amendment Bill becomes a part of
the amended Constitution.
30. It is further submitted that absence of speciﬁcally inserting
Section 19 in the Constitution makes no diﬀerence. It is still a part of the
Constitution as amended. The reference in this regard is made to the seventh
constitutional amendment which conferred power upon the President to
frame regulations for administering Part D States. After the said Amendment,

13 2022 (9) SCR300
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 165
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

the Regulations were continued for a limited period. The constitutional
amendment completely became part of the Constitution. This Court in the
matter of A.K. Roy (supra) has considered the issue.
31. It was urged, on behalf of the Maharashtra state that the amendment
to Section 26 of Maharashtra Value Added Tax Act, 2002 (hereafter as “MVAT
Act”) requiring a pre-deposit is not inconsistent with the Amendment. It is
procedural in nature and no vested right of the assessee was taken away. It
is also not in dispute that the same is in respect of past levies prior to the
introduction of GST w.e.f. 1st July, 2017 and therefore, even otherwise are
saved by Section 174 of the Maharashtra GST Act.
32. It is submitted that the plain language of Section 26(6A) and
26(6B) of the MVAT Act clariﬁes that it applies in all cases where the order
is passed after 15th April, 2017 and an appeal is preferred. That provision
only requires a pre-deposit of 10% and takes away the discretion of the
Appellate Authority/Tribunal. It does not take away the statutory right
of appeal and only regulates the same by removing the discretion of the
Tribunal. The condition of pre-deposit is also not even an onerous condition
to make it arbitrary. The only question, therefore, is whether there is any
vested right of ﬁling an appeal without a pre-deposit. The plain language
of the amendment has taken away the discretion of the Appellate Authority
and not the right of appeal in case where the order is passed by the original
authority after 15th April, 2017. The state relies on the decisions, to say that
the right to appeal remains unaltered, only its conditions are controlled, or
regulated, with pre-deposit requirements, at the appellate stage, i.e. Anant
Mills Company Limited v. State of Maharashtra 14; Vijay Prakash D. Mehta
v. Collector of Customs (Preventive), Bombay15 State of Haryana v. Maruti
Udyog Limited &Ors16Thirumali Chemicals Limited v. Union of India17;
Neena Aneja & Anr. v. Jai Prakash Associated Limited18.
33. The State of Gujarat urges that the High Court fell into error in
not recognizing that in somewhat similar situations, this court in A. Hajee

14 (1975) 3 SCR220
15 (1988) Supp (2) SCR 434
16 (2000) Supp 3 SCR 185
17 (2011) 4 SCR739
18 (2021) 15 SCR96
166 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

Abdul Shakoor& Co v. State of Madras19 (hereafter, “Hajee Abdul Shukoor”)
recognized the power of states to even retrospectively validate assessments
under the Act of 1939 even though the earlier Act had failed for want of
Presidential assent. It was also pointed out that this court in M/s West
Ramnad Electric Distribution Co. Ltd. v. State of Madras20 validated the
power of states to retrospectively validate actions taken under notiﬁcations of
enactments which had been declared unconstitutional and non-est. Reliance
is also placed on this court’s decision in State of Rajasthan v. Mangilal
Pindwal21 upheld the power of the legislature to amend repealed provisions
for a period when these provisions were in operation till the date of repeal.
The repealing of Section 166 of the Gujarat GST Act clearly shows that
the VAT Act has not been repealed at all and hence, the consequences of
repeal cannot follow.
34. It is submitted that Section 84 A is neither arbitrary nor
unreasonable but aims at equity and restitution by allowing the tax authorities
to collect the tax from those dealers who have passed on the burden of tax
on the ultimate consumer but not paid it into the government treasury thus
avoiding unjust enrichment of money as held by a special larger Constitution
bench in Mafatlal Industries Ltd. v. Union of India22 (hereafter, “Mafatlal
Industries”). It is urged that restitution and prevention of unjust enrichment
is a principle of equity applicable irrespective of any statutory provisions.
Further, it is argued that Section 84 A does not impose new tax or liability,
but merely facilitates the collection of tax whose burden was passed on to
the ultimate consumer and that collected tax, being public money and its
incidence and burden is always presumed in indirect taxes, it will be most
inequitable and improper to allow some dealers to retain the beneﬁt of tax
which has been passed on.
35. It was next urged that Section 84 A is a validating Act which
increases the time limit thereby enabling the collection of public funds
in the hands of the dealers of tax. The revision notices were sent after the
judgment delivered by this court in the State of Gujarat v. Reliance Industries

19 1964 (8) SCR 217; AIR 1964 SC 1729
20 1963 (2) SCR 747
21 (1996) Supp (3) SCR 98
22 1996 Suppl.(10) SCR 585
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 167
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

Ltd23. Counsel submitted that the time limit prescribed under Section 84 A
is not too long if Articles 61(b), 62, 63(b), 64, 65, 66, 67, 92, 94, 96, 106,
107, 108, 109, 110 and 136 of the Limitation Act, 1963 are viewed which
provide for time limits of 12 or even 30 years from the occurrence of any
event which may also take many years to occur.
IV. Arguments of the respondent-assessees
36. It was argued on behalf of the assessee-respondents by Mr. Kapil
Sibal, Mr. S. Ganesh, Mr Nankani and Mr Soparkar, learned Senior counsel
and Mr. Sujit Ghosh, Advocate (hereafter “the assesses”) that continuance
of inconsistent existing law is solely for the purposes of making them
consistent (through amendments) with the amended architecture of the
Constitution. It was submitted that to elucidate the ambit of powers under
Section 19 of the Amendment, an inference can be drawn from Article
243ZF of the Constitution, which has been couched in a manner identical
to Section 19. There are however, two distinctive features inter se between
them, ﬁrst, being, that unlike Section 19 Article 243ZF was incorporated
into the body of the Constitution, and the second is while Article 243ZF
has a non-obstante clause seeking to override all Articles contained in
Part IXA of the Constitution, Section 19 of the Constitutional Amendment
Act, 2017 (“CAA”) only overrides the provision of the Amendment and
not the Constitution of India. In other words, ex facie Article 243ZF of
the Constitution can be said to be at a pedestal higher than that of CAA.
It is argued that this court had interpreted Article 243ZF in Sundergarh
Zilla Adivasi Advocates Association and Ors v State of Odisha and Ors 24
(hereafter, Sundergarh Zilla”)., wherein this court, at para held as follows:
“....Clearly, the purpose of continuing an existing law (even
though it may be inconsistent with Part IX-A) was to enable necessary
amendments to be made to the existing law to make it in consonance
with Part IX-A.”
37. It is submitted that considering that the language of Article 243ZF
of the Constitution and Section 19 are near pari materia, placing reliance on

23 (2017) 13 SCR25.
24 (2013) 6 SCR420
168 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

Sundergarh Zilla (supra), it is clear that the amending power under Section
19 is limited to making the existing inconsistent legislations consistent with
the Amendment. In other words, the purpose is to cure the inconsistencies
and iron out the creases. Further, in view of the fact that, unlike Article
243ZF which is a part of the Constitution and also overrides part IXA of the
Constitution, Section 19 is not part of the Constitution and also not overriding
any provision of the Constitution, the power to amend under Section 19
of the CAA would be even narrower as compared to the power to amend
available under Article 243ZF as interpreted in Sundergarh Zilla (Supra).
38. Counsel urged that a similar transitional provision was introduced
in the form of Section 143(2) of the Government of India Act 1935, with the
introduction of Part III introducing the concept of ‘provisional legislation’
in Rama Krishna Ramanath (supra).
39. It is submitted that even where express power to continue the
levy was granted through incorporation into the Government of India Act,
1935, the Constitution Bench of this Court proceeded to hold that even in
such cases, the power of the Provincial Legislature is extremely limited
and certainly cannot be used to ‘alter the incidence’. In the present case,
such powers to continue the levy are wholly absent and accordingly powers
under Section 19 of the CAA would be construed in an extremely narrow
framework, i.e. limited to bring the legislation in consonance with the
Constitution.
40. It was submitted that the term ‘amend’ ought not to be interpreted
textually, instead contextual interpretation ought to be adopted. By
applying contextual interpretation, it would appear that Section 19 of the
Amendment Act is couched in a manner which contemplates ultimate repeal
and obliteration from the statute books. This suggests that the legislature
contemplated a diminishing life of the legislation concerned and the state
could not have used the power to amend to breathe any more life into the
statute concerned. Further, the usage of the word ‘inconsistent’ followed later
with the word ‘until amended’, clearly suggests that the intention was to let
the inconsistent provisions survive for a limited time, until it is amended
to make it consistent. Had the intention been to confer plenary power to
amend, then section 19 would have been couched in a manner such that
it provided for ‘subject to amendment’, which would have then suggested
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 169
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

that the existing inconsistent law ‘as is’ or ‘as amended’, could continue to
be in force until the lapse of one year or its repeal, whichever was earlier.
However, such is not the case for the nonce.
41. Further, by applying purposive construction, Section 19 of the CAA
admits to the exercise of ‘curative legislative action’. This is so because with
the advent of GST, as per Article 279-A(6) of the Constitution, the need for
a harmonized structure of goods and services tax and for the development
of a harmonized national market for goods and services was speciﬁcally
provided within the Constitution. This harmony has been interpreted by
the Supreme Court in Union of India v. VKC Footsteps India (P)Ltd25, to
mean legislative harmony between the State and the Centre with a view
to achieve co-operative federalism. Therefore, this avowed purpose of
harmony between the Centre and the State or inter se between the States
cannot be achieved if using the power of amendment under Section 19 of the
Amendment, a given State enlarges the operation and sweep of an existing
tax law even after the introduction of
42. It is argued that to interpret Section 19 as conferring legislative
power which is non- curative and breathing more life into it than what existed
earlier, would be in the teeth of constitutional morality and contrary to the
principle of the ‘Pure Theory of Law’ propounded by Kelsen. This is so
because plenary legislation stands at a pedestal lower than the Constitution
of India and can never clash with the Grundnorm. Accordingly, whatever
legislative power may be couched in Section 19 of the Amendment, will
have to be subservient to Articles 245 and 246 of the Constitution. If under
the latter two Articles, there is no power available with the State to legislate
on a subject which has been deleted or truncated from List II of the Seventh
Schedule, then Section 19 of the Amendment cannot be pressed into services
to override such a Constitutional restriction. Counsel urges that the entire
Amendment was enacted by following the procedure under Article368 of
the Constitution. While the said Article confers constituent power to the
Parliament to amend the Constitution, stricto senso the enactment of Section
19 of the Amendment not being made a part of the Constitution may be
viewed as not having been enacted in exercise of powers under Article 368

25 2021 (15) SCR 169
170 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

of the Constitution. However, considering that along with the remaining
provisions of the Amendment, Section 19 of the Amendment also went
through the entire drill prescribed under the Amendment, a possible view
emerges that Section 19 of the Amendment is perhaps an adjunct to exercise
the powers under Article 368 of the Constitution which have been enacted
using the ‘incidental and ancillary’ powers available to the Legislature.
It is well known and well settled that incidental and ancillary powers are
exercised in aid of the main Legislation (Reliance is placed on the decision of
this court in R. Abdul Quader v. Sales Tax Oﬃcer26). Therefore, to interpret
the word “amend” in Section 19 of the Amendment to mean conferment of a
parallel power wider than making curative legislation, which runs contrary
to the revised Constitutional architecture of simultaneous levy through
the introduction of GST, cannot be said to be in aid of the main subject of
Amendment.
43. It is alternatively argued that assuming arguendo, Section 19 has
been legislated by the Parliament in exercise of power under Entry 97 of List
I of the Seventh Schedule (being a residuary entry for matters not enumerated
in List II or List III including any tax not mentioned in List II or III), even
then in such cases, such power can only be exercised by the Parliament and
can in no manner be said to be transferred to the State Legislatures thereby
enabling them to amend the plenary legislations. Neither Article 258 nor
Article 258A of the Constitution admits of any transfer of legislative power
by the Parliament to the State Legislatures. It cannot, therefore, be said that
Parliament entrusted the legislative functions to the State Legislature.
44. Counsel argued that the amendment to the VAT legislation cannot
also ﬁnd its source of power in Article 246A. This is for two reasons, ﬁrstly,
under Article 246A, there must be a simultaneous levy by the state as well as
by the centre, the scope of which does not arise in the present case. Secondly,
Article 246A contemplates, the power to legislate on Goods and Service
Tax, which is a deﬁned term, entirely diﬀerent as also wider than a tax on
sales. GST cannot be equated with tax on sales by any stretch.
45. It is argued that Section 19 contemplates that ‘any provision of
any law relating to tax on goods or services or both in force in any State

26 (1964) 6 SCR 867
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 171
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

immediately before the commencement of this Act’ shall continue to be in
force until amended or repealed or until the expiration of one year which is
earlier. Hence, the ediﬁce of Section 19 is based on the law being in force
before the Commencement of the Amendment i.e. on 15.09.2016.
46. In one of the cases, pursuant to the order dated 31.12.2007 of
the AP High Court in Sree Rayalaseema Alkalies and Allied Chemicals
Limited v. State of Andhra Pradesh and Ors27., the levy of entry tax under
AP Tax on Entry of Goods into Local Areas Act of 2001, was declared
unconstitutional. The said decision of the A.P High Court was set aside by
this court on 29.03.2017 by Order dated 29.03.2017 which is much after the
Amendment which came into eﬀect on 16.09.2016. In the meanwhile, the
AP Tax on Entry of Goods into Local Areas Act, 2001whichwasdeclared
unconstitutional, was also adopted by the State of Telangana vide G.0.M
No.45 dated 01.06.2016.
47. It is submitted that where the law was declared as unconstitutional
and thereby obliterated from the statute book, such law cannot be treated as
‘a law in force’ as contemplated under the Amendment. Accordingly, where
the AP Tax on Entry of Goods into Local Area Act of 2001 was not in force
on the date immediately before the commencement of the Amendment,
such legislation in any case, cannot continue to be in force in the manner
as contemplated under the Amendment.
48. It is further submitted that even the adoption of the AP Tax on
Entry of Goods into Local Area Act, 2001 by the State of Telangana was
also unconstitutional in as much as the AP Tax on Entry of Goods into Local
Area Act, 2001 was already declared as unconstitutional as on 31.12.2007.
Accordingly, being a dead law, the same could not have been adopted by
the State of Telangana on 01.06.2016. Further, the subsequent decision of
this court which set aside the order of the Hon’ble AP High Court cannot
breathe life and validate the adoption as it was well settled that the validity
of a statute is to be tested at the time of enactment by the legislature. An
After-acquired power cannot ex proprio vigore validate a statute void when
enacted.

27 2007 SCC OnLine AP 1158 : (2008) 13 VST 15
172 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

49. Section 6 of the Telangana Tax on Entry of Goods into Local Area
Act, 2001 incorporates the provisions of the Telangana VAT Act in relation
to assessment, returns etc. Accordingly, the present is a case of ‘legislation
by incorporation’.On this basis, it is submitted that the amendments in the
Telangana VAT Act will have no impact and bearing on the Telangana Tax
on Entry of Goods into Local Area Act, 2001 and as such the extension in
the period of limitation from 4 to 6 years would not be applicable to the
assessment made in respect of entry tax. This is based on a well settled
principle of law as laid down by this Court in the case of State of Madhya
Pradesh v. M.V. Narasimhan (hereafter, “M.V. Narasimhan”) 28, which held
that where a subsequent enactment incorporates the provisions of a previous
act, then the borrowed provisions become an integral and independent part
of the subsequent act and are totally unaﬀected by any repeal or amendment
in the previous act. The exception to this principle is:
(i) Where the subsequent Act and previous Act are supplemental to
each other;
(ii) Where the two Acts are pari materia;
(iii)Where the amendment in the previous Act if not imported into
the subsequent Act also, would render the subsequent Act wholly
unworkable and ineﬀectual;
(iv)Where the amendment of the previous Act, either expressly or by
necessary intendment applies the said provisions to the subsequent Act.
50. In the present case, since none of the exceptions as laid down by
this court in M.V. Narasimhan (supra)stand satisﬁed, the amendment in the
Telangana VAT Act would not be applicable to the Telangana Tax on Entry
of Goods into Local Area Act, 2001 and as such the entire demand is in any
case barred by limitation.
51. The intention behind Section 19 was to stipulate a time frame for
subsuming of erstwhile indirect taxes and for States to amend or repeal to
pave the way for imposition of SGST. It was not for permitting States to
freely amend their legislation till GST laws were enforced. Post 16.09.2016

28 (1976) 1 SCR6
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 173
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

the States had no competence to freely legislate on goods other than those
mentioned in Entry 54List II of Constitution as amended by the 101st CAA.
Section 19 was intended only to allow the States to bring their laws into
compliance with the Constitution as amended by the 101stCAA. Section19
is pari materia with Article 243ZT. In Vipulbhai M Chaudhary v Gujarat
Milk Mktg Federation Ltdṅ29 (hereafter, “Vipulbhai”), it was observed, in
the context of Article 243ZT, which required laws relating to co-operative
societies in force in States prior to the Amendment Act to be in tune with and
in terms of the constitutional concept and set up of cooperative societies and
provided a period of one year, it was held that “the Constitution enables the
competent legislature or authority to suitably amend the existing provisions
in their laws in tune with the constitutional mandate.”
52. The Telangana Amendment Act to the extent it seeks to
legislate on the basis of erstwhile Entry 54 of List Il of the 7th Schedule is
bereft of legislative competence.Section19 contemplates amendment by
a “competent legislature”. Post amendment the competence has to be
determined with reference to post amendment provisions. It is submitted
that States had legislative competence only as an incidental power to amend
or repeal the provisions dealing with State indirect taxes so as to bring them
in line with the amended Constitution. An example of a valid amendment
would have been to amend the deﬁnition of “goods” in the Telangana VAT
Act. The same was however achieved by S.174(1)(i) of the Telangana Goods
and Services Tax Act, 2017 (“TGST Act”) by conﬁning the repeal of the
Telangana VAT Act to all goods except those covered by Entry 54 of List
II of the 7th Schedule. Section 19 of the101stAmendment is pari materia
with Clause 20 of the Constitution 122nd Amendment Bill, 2014. The said
Bill was considered by the Select Committee of Rajya Sabha in its report
dated 22.07.2015.
53. The assessees also argue that the extension of limitation is done
so with a view to secure revenue of the state by enlarging the duration. It
is submitted that this argument is not tenable and cannot be sustained. The
further argument that provisions of limitation on assessments etc., are only
procedural and aspects of levy and assessment are not substantial, is also
untenable.

29 2015 (3) SCR997
174 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

54. It was argued that the Telangana Ordinance was issued with eﬀect
from 17.6.2017. However, Section 7 of the Telangana Amendment Act
clearly repealed the Ordinance without any savings clause. Further, under
Section 1(2) the Telangana Amendment Act was deemed to retrospectively
come into eﬀect from 17.6.2017. Thus, the Telangana Amendment clearly
intended to obliterate the Ordinance altogether and not merely continue the
law. Thus, all submissions to the eﬀect that the issuance of the Ordinance
and its incorporation into an enactment constitutes a single law making
power being exercised akin to a principal ratifying an agent’s actions are
belied by the very provisions of the State Amendment.
55. Thus, the lack of legislative competence is immediate. That is
not the subject matter of Section 19. Instead, what is kept in suspension
under Section 19, is the eﬀect of such incompetence on enactments that
had already been passed prior to the Amendment, i.e., enactments in
force. Section 19 is pari materia to Article 243 ZF and must be given the
above interpretation in accordance with Bondu Ramaswamy v. Bangalore
Development Authority30 (hereafter, “Bondu Ramaswamy”) Further, the
words “shall come into force” in Section 1(2) will have no meaning if
Section 19 is interpreted to mean that the operation of the Amendment
itself is to be stayed for a period of one year.
56. Counsel stated that a transitional provision cannot be used for
oblique purposes. The scope of a power to ‘amend’ a statute is co-terminus
with the scope of legislative competence and cannot travel beyond such
Competence as on the date of such amendment. With eﬀect from 16.09.2016,
and therefore, as on o 17.06.2017, the competence of the State Legislature
to make law with respect to Article 246(3) read with unamended Entry 54
did not exist. The word ‘amend’ in Section 9 therefore cannot be read to be
wider than the competence of the State Legislature on 17.06.2017. Instead,
the word ‘amend’ is limited to the power to make law only with respect to
the new contours of Entry 54.The term ‘until’ indicates that the lifetime of
an inconsistent law is immediately decided by Section 19. An inconsistent
law continues to be in force until:

30 (2010) 6 SCR29
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 175
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

a. The State legislature amends the inconsistent law to bring
it in conformity with the Constitution as amended by the
101stAmendment OR
b. The State Legislature repeals the inconsistent law OR
c. The period of one year from the commencement of the Act expires
i.e., 15.09.2017.
57. The purpose of using the word ‘amend’ is to allow the State
Legislature to bring existing laws in conformity with the 101st Constitution
Amendment so that they can continue to operate. If the legislatures chooses
to take such a route, the inconsistent provisions of the Act cease to exist
upon amendment. In the language of Section 19 - until it was amended.
Therefore, the State Legislature did not possess any legislative competence
with respect to goods other than those included in the new and limited Entry
54 either on the date of the Ordinance i.e., 17.06.2017, or on the date of the
Amendment Act, i.e., 02.12.2017.
58. The Telangana VAT Act 2005, was eﬀectively repealed from
01.07.2017 by Section 174(1)(i) of the TGST Act 2017 except in respect of
goods included in Entry 54 of List II. Section 174(1) operates as an express
acknowledgment and acceptance of the 101st Amendment. Therefore, the
TVAT Amendment of 02.12.2017 applicable to all goods cannot be made
after such repeal.
59. Article 246A embodies the principle of simultaneous levy by both
Parliament and the State Legislature and is distinct from the principle of
concurrence. Article 246A creates both the power and the subject matter of
legislation. This makes it distinct from a concurrent power of legislation
u/a 246(2) which requires one to travel to List III, Schedule VIl to ﬁnd the
subject matters with respect to which the power may be exercised. When
concurrence as a principle already exists in such a manner, the decision of
the Parliament to house both the power and the subject matter in a single
article of the Constitution, i.e., Article 246A, leads to the conclusion that
such power is to be exercised simultaneously by the Parliament and the State
and cannot be exercised independently as they do under the provisions of
Article 246(3).
176 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

60. Therefore, the State Legislature can only exercise its taxing powers
with respect to goods and services either under Article 246A, which is to be
exercised along with the Parliament, or under Article 246(3) r/w amended
Entry 54 only with respect to the six items mentioned therein.
61. It is argued on behalf of the assesses of Maharashtra that the High
Court proceeded erroneously to uphold the state’s power to legislate with
respect to its extant sales tax laws, in this case,the Maharashtra VAT Act,
2002. The High Court failed to appreciate that Article 246-A has no relation
whatsoever to the earlier sales tax laws as it speciﬁcally deals with GST,
which was speciﬁcally deﬁned under the Constitution to mean a tax on
the “supply of goods and services”. Applying the pith and substance test,
the phrase “goods and services tax” referred to in Article246-A is totally
diﬀerent and distinct from the earlier tax levied on the sale of goods by the
State Legislature.
62. Further, it is submitted that GST is a tax on “supply”. Supply is the
new taxable event, as opposed to as opposed to the taxable events existing
prior to the 101stConstitution Amendment Act. The mere fact that the word
“supply” has been deﬁned under the GST Acts to cover the manufacture,
service and sale, for the purpose of levy and assessment of GST, does not
mean that the legislative competence of the State Legislature should also
be construed widely relying on the deﬁnitions meant for the purposes of
the GST Acts and not the Constitution of India.
63. Further, the High Court failed to appreciate that Article 367 of the
Constitution of India incorporates the provision of the General Clauses Act,
1897 and makes them applicable to the Constitution. It is in this context, that
the eﬀect of the General Clauses Act, needs to be examined at two levels.
One with reference to the101st Constitutional Amendment Act, 2016 and
the other with reference to amendment to MVAT Act. As regards to 101st
Constitutional Amendment, the power under the old Article 246 has been
abridged by simultaneously a mending the ﬁelds of legislation in Entry-54 of
List-II, which is referred to therein. In this case, there is no question of any
power to legislate in respect of rest of the goods, other than the 6 presently
covered by Entry-54, which survives post-amendment, even by applying
the provisions of the General Clauses Act, 1897.
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 177
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

64. It is submitted that Section 19 of CAA does not confer
unabridged or wide powers on the state legislatures/ Parliament to make
any and every amendment in the laws existing in force at the time of
enacting the Amendment Act. The power referred to in Section 19 is a
limited power granted to the State Legislature for a limited period to
make such amendments as may be necessary to remove inconsistencies, if
any, and bring the existing laws in consonance with the GST legislations.
Accordingly, it is submitted that only the power to enact the aligning act
enacted in Maharashtra to align its existing laws with the GST provisions,
will be saved interms of Section 19. Consequently,the State of Maharashtra
lacked the power to make the impugned amendments which were enacted
not for removing any inconsistency but as a regular amendment under the
Maharashtra Act.
65. Counsel appearing in the Gujarat batch of appeals argued that
the impugned Section 84A was introduced in the Gujarat Value Added Tax
Act, 2003 (hereinafter referred to as “the Gujarat VAT Act”) by the Gujarat
Value Added Tax (Amendment) Act, 2018 gazetted on 06.04.2018 but with
retrospective eﬀect from 1.4.2006 whereby it is inter-alia provided that
if for a particular issue in “some other proceedings” a lower forum, has
given a decision which is prejudicial to the interest of revenue and appeal
against such decision is pending before higher forum then the period spent
in such litigation will be excluded while computing period of limitation for
revision. By giving such provision retrospective eﬀect the State legislature
thus sought to enable reopening of assessments which had already attained
ﬁnality before such amendment was brought into force.
66. Section 19 cannot be applied to save the impugned Section 84A of
the Gujarat VAT Act since Section 19 of the CAA had a limited shelf life for
1 year from 16.9.2016 or till the date of implementation or the GST regime
i.e. 1.7.2017 whichever is earlier and the impugned Section 84A of the
Gujarat Act was enacted on 06.04.2018 i.e. much after expiry of Section 19.
67. It was argued that in any case section 84A of the Gujarat VAT Act is
manifestly arbitrary and violates Article 14 and 19(1) (g) of the Constitution
of India. When assessment for a particular year attains ﬁnality the same
creates a vested right in favour of the dealer. The dealer arranges his aﬀairs
considering the fact that his liability has crystalized for periods where
178 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

assessments have attained ﬁnality. Alteration of such position without any
deﬁnite time limit only on the ground that judgement in favour of the revenue
has been pronounced by a Court in another case is manifestly arbitrary
and illegal. Moreover, the impugned provision has been retrospectively
introduced w.e.f. 1.4.2006. Therefore High Court has rightly struck it down
as being manifestly arbitrary and illegal.
68. It is argued that if an unlimited time period is available to the
revenue for assessment/reassessment/revision in any case based on decisions
in the case of other dealers will lead to unimaginable chaos and therefore it is
rightly struck down as being manifestly arbitrary and illegal. The Respondent
is supported on all fours by the judgement of Hon. 9 judge bench of this Court
in the case of Mafatlal Industries (supra).In that case, this court was faced
with a situation converse to the present case in as much as assesses used to
claim a refund after number of years on the basis of judgements rendered in
the case of other assesses. This court observed that allowing refund claims
beyond the stipulated period of limitation based on decisions rendered in
other cases would do violence to several well-accepted principles of law. It
was further observed that one of the important principles of law, based upon
public policy, is the sanctity attaching to the ﬁnality of any proceeding, be it
a suit or any other proceeding.” Denouncing the legality of the practice of
claiming a refund after a number of years based on subsequent decisions it
was observed that an order or decree of a court does not become ineﬀective
or unenforceable simply because at a later point of time, a diﬀerent view
of law is taken and that if this theory is applied universally. It will lead to
unimaginable chaos.
69. Section 64 of the Gujarat VAT Act requires the dealer to preserve
books of accounts only for a period of 6 years from the end of the relevant
accounting year. The proviso thereto requires further preservation of books
of accounts only to the extent a matter is pending in appeal or revision.
However, the impugned provision exposes the dealer to assessment/
reassessment/revision for an indeﬁnite period which is excessive and
disproportionate. In fact, retrospective operation of the provision w.e.f.
1.4.2006 allows the reopening of assessments of years in respect of which
a dealer was not required to preserve books of accounts and therefore
retrospective operation is all the more onerous and manifestly arbitrary.
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 179
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

V. Analysis and reasoning
70. In the Telangana batch of cases, the facts are that the amendment
to the State VAT Act was conﬁned to two provisions which are Sections
21 and 32. Their eﬀect was to prolong or extend the period of limitation to
issue notice of reassessment and reopen cases as well as extend the period
of limitation for deciding pending revisions and proceedings. These were
subjected to a time limit of four years in the existing law. By virtue of the
amendment, these were enlarged by a further period of two years (i.e., to
six years). This became the subject matter of challenge before the Telangana
High Court which culminated in the impugned judgment.
71. So far as the Gujarat set of cases is concerned, the facts are that
the Gujarat VAT Act came into force on 01.07.2017. After that date, the
Gujarat legislature repealed the State VAT Act. The High Court had set aside
an assessment, based on an interpretation of the existing VAT Act, much
before 16.9.2016. The Gujarat Legislature amended the VAT Act (after its
repeal) by introducing a new provision, Section 84A, which was given
retrospective eﬀect. The eﬀect of this amendment was to exclude the period
spent during the pendency of any appeal or revision before the appellate
authority or High Court, for the purpose of revision or reopening which
in the interest of the revenue, was necessary to reopen. These became the
subject matter of challenge on diverse grounds before the High Court. The
High Court, by its elaborate and reasoned judgment, held the amendment to
be unconstitutional on the ground that the legislature lacked competence to
enact the provision having regard to Section 19 of the 101st amendment and
furthermore that the amended provision was manifestly arbitrary.
In the Maharashtra batch of matters, subject matter of the proceedings
was MVAT and amendments made to it. MVAT came into force on
01.03.2005 to consolidate laws regarding the collection of tax in sales and
purchase of goods. 101st CAA came into eﬀect in 16.09.2016 and by the
CAA, the power of the state government to levy tax on sales and purchase of
goods under Entry 54 of List II was sought to be restricted only with respect
to the 6 goods mentioned therein. The state government amended Section
26 of the MVAT Act and inserted sections 6A, 6B and 6C requiring assessee
to deposit 10% of the disputed tax amount, failing which the appeal of the
concerned assessee will be dismissed. HC upheld the amendment made to
180 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

the MVAT Act requiring assessee’s to deposit 10% of the disputed amount
before ﬁling the appeal
A. Interpretation of Section 19
72. The petitioners contended that the language of Section 19 of the
Amendment Act does not attach itself to the body of the Constitution unlike
the other provisions. The further argument was that the power to amend is to
be seen in the context. The other provisions of the amendment inserted new
provisions of the Constitution itself. They also altered substantially entries of
taxation particularly Entry 54 of the State List beyond recognition, denuding
states of power to levy VAT on most items. Those provisions become
eﬀective immediately upon the bringing into force of the Amendment i.e.
16.09.2016. A contextual interpretation of Section 19 therefore would mean
that it preserved the operation of existing laws till they were repealed or
such laws were brought in line with the other provisions of the amendment
which became part of the Constitution. It was submitted in this context, that
Section 19 cannot be considered as a part of the Constitution, but merely as
an incidental provision with limited operation.
73. Section 19 seeks to achieve three aims. The ﬁrst is to preserve the
existing status quo with regard to the state and central indirect tax regime, for
a period of one year from the date of commencement of the Amendment or
till a new law is enacted whichever is earlier. The second is authorizing the
competent legislatures i.e. the State Legislatures and Parliament to amend
existing laws which were in force in states and other parts of the country
(obviously both Central and State laws. The third was the repeal of such laws.
Now, that Section 19 was meant to be transitional cannot be doubted. In its
absence, the several hundreds of state enactments and central laws which
were in force, would have been jeopardized. Other than Section 19 there
is no saving provision which is part of the Amendment. It is questionable
whether Section 6 of the General Clauses Act, 1897, would have applied
on its own force. Consequently, Parliament, acting in a constituent capacity,
amended the substantive parts of the Constitution, and also, at the same time
ensured through Section 19 that limited operation of existing laws continued
till the legal regime was changed in accordance with the amended parts of
the Constitution. Keeping in mind that the Amendment, denuded the States
– and even Parliament of legislative authority in regard to the pre-existing
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 181
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

(i.e. pre-amendment) powers and ﬁelds of taxation, the absence of such a
transitional provision might have been catastrophic. It was in this context
that Section 19 also clariﬁed that not only were the laws to be continued, in
force but also that the States – and Parliament, could amend, or repeal them.
74. The petitioners have relied upon the Judgments of this court in
Bondu Ramaswamy (supra) and Vipulbhai (supra).In the present case, there
is no dispute with respect to the fact that Section 19 also seeks to achieve
the same objects i.e. the preservation of existing ﬁscal and taxation laws
prevailing in various statutes and in other parts of the country for a limited
duration of one year or till they were amended or repealed. The distinction
pointed out by the petitioners is that transitional provisions as they were
involved in those cases become the part of the Constitution, as they continued
and still continue in force long after the amendment. Whereas in the present
case, Section 19 has a limited life and would not ever become part of the
Constitution.
75. The question is – Is that really so? It is undisputed that the
amendment was enacted pursuant to what is now recognized as constituent
power, which is sourced from Article 368. The present frame of Article
368 underwent a change after the Constitutional 25 th Amendment Act of
1971. Before that amendment, the title of the provision was “procedure
for amendment of the Constitution”. By virtue of the amendment, Article
368 is described as “power of Parliament to amend the Constitution and
the procedure therefor”. Article 368 (2) outlines the manner of initiation
of the amendment i.e. through a Bill and thereafter outlines the procedure
of that as such majority of not less than two thirds of the members present
and voting in both the Houses of Parliament. After the passage of the
Bill, it is to be presented to the President for assent. Unlike in the case of
recommendations of the cabinet, or when any other bill is presented, the
President has no choice, but “shall” assent to the Amendment. The proviso
to Article 368 requires that wherever enumerated provisions or parts of the
Constitution are sought to be amended in addition there is a category of
amendments which have to be ratiﬁed by the legislature of not less than one
half of the States by the resolutions of their state legislatures.
76. It is unnecessary to recount the well documented path that led to the
amendment of Article 368 and the subsequent amendments or the fate they
182 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

met with. What needs to be underlined is that unlike ordinary legislation,
which is traced to the power of Parliament or any other legislative body,
the amendment power is distinct inasmuch as it is expressly a constituent
power. In Kesavananda Bharati v State of Kerala31 case, the largest bench
formed, this court ever sat in (13 Judges) declared that the power under
Article 368 though constituent and though seemingly unbounded and does
not expressly constrict, yet has impliedly limited by the “essential features”
or“basic structure” doctrine.
77. An ordinary law such as an Act of Parliament, is a product of a
legislative exercise. The source of that power is traced to the Constitution
in some speciﬁc provisions or through ﬁelds of legislation enumerated in
one or the other lists. Constitutional law on the other hand is that it arises
out of the Constitution and creates diﬀerent organs of the State, deﬁnes
their power and imposes limitations on the functioning of the Executive
and legislative wings through the fundamental rights and other limitations.
An ordinary law can be made or changed by the same body, the legislating
body in exercising legislative power. Since constitutional amendments
relates to the fundamental law of the land which is a source of authority for
other laws, it can be achieved only through fulﬁlling the special procedure.
78. The distinction between constituent power and legislative power
was commented upon by the late H.M. Seervai in the Constitutional Law
of India32 :
“the constituent power therefore a juristic entity or category separate
from legislative power. In the case of India there are three diﬀerent
modes of amending the Constitution – the ﬁrst is the easiest or the
simplest where states reorganization or names of States are sought to
be changed, in that event a Parliamentary enactment would suﬃce.
In other cases, an amendment to the Constitution requires the special
procedure of two thirds majority in both houses by members sitting
and voting and assent by the President. In the special category carved
out is proviso to Article 368, not only the special procedure to be
resorted to but also super added to it is the requirement of amendment

31 1973 Supp 1 SCR 1
32 4th Edition Volume 3 page 3119
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 183
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

having to secure the ratiﬁcation and the proviso of one half of the State
Legislature by the Resolutions. Thus the nature of the amendment
and structure of Article 368 distinctly brings home the point that it
encapsulates both the power and also contains the procedure for
amendment.”
79. This Court had in the judgment reported as AK Roy (supra) dealt
with some aspects of this issue. The challenge there essentially, was to
provisions of the then National Security Act. One of the grounds of challenge
is that it violated Article 22. Since Article 22 was amended by the 44th
Amendment to the Constitution and provisions of those amendments were
not brought into force, Section 1(2) of that Constitution Amendment was
challenged. This Court, held as follows:
“It is well settled that the power conferred upon the Parliament by
Article 245 to make laws is plenary within the ﬁeld of legislation
upon which that power can operate. That power, by the terms of
Article 245, is subject only to the provisions of the Constitution. The
constituent power, subject to the limitation aforesaid, cannot be any
the less plenary that the legislative power, especially when the power
to amend the Constitution and the power to legislate are conferred
on one and the same organ of the State, namely, the Parliament. The
Parliament may have to follow a diﬀerent procedure while exercising
its constituent power under Article 368 than the procedure which it
has to follow while exercising its legislative power under Article 245.
But the obligation to follow diﬀerent procedures while exercising the
two diﬀerent kinds of power cannot make any diﬀerence to the width
of the power. In either event, it is plenary, subject in one case to the
constraints of the basic structure of the Constitution and in the other,
to the provisions of the Constitution.
***
It is true that the constituent power, that is to say, the power to amend
any provision of the Constitution by way of an addition, variation
or repeal must be exercised by the Parliament itself and cannot be
delegated to an outside agency. That is clear from Article 368 (1) which
deﬁnes at once the scope of the constituent power of the Parliament and
limits that power to the Parliament. The power to issue a notiﬁcation
184 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

for bringing into force the provisions of a Constitutional amendment
is not a constituent power because, it does not carry with it the power
to amend the Constitution in any manner. It is, therefore, permissible
to the Parliament to vest in an outside agency the power to bring a
Constitutional amendment into force. In the instant case, that power
is conferred by the Parliament on another organ of the State, namely,
the executive, which is responsible to the Parliament for all its actions.
The Parliament does not irretrievably lose its power to bring the
Amendment into force by reason of the empowerment in favour of the
Central Government to bring it into force. If the Central Government
fails to do what, according to the Parliament, it ought to have done,
it would be open to the Parliament to delete Section (2) of the 44th
Amendment Act by following the due procedure and to bring into force
that Act or any of its provisions.”
80. In the opinion of this Court, the mere circumstance that Section
19 does not get added to the Constitution, would not make any diﬀerence.
If one looks closely at Articles 243 ZF which this Court interpreted in
Bondu Ramaswamy (supra) and Article 243 ZT which was interpreted in
Vipulbhai (supra) the eﬀects of those provisions are the same as Section
19. Although those provisions continued to be part of the Constitution, they
have no meaning and were merely historical. The reason is that they were
operative, for a limited duration – like Section 19. However, the fact remains
that those provisions as well as Section 19 were enacted in exercise of the
constituent power. Section 19 is not, in this court’s opinion comparable to
a mere Parliamentary enactment. There cannot be any gain in saying that
Section 19 is not a mere legislative device. It was adopted as part of the
101st Constitutional Amendment Act. Undoubtedly, it was not inserted into
the Constitution. Whatever reasons impelled Parliament to keep it outside
the body of the Constitution, the fact remains that it was introduced as part
of the same Amendment Act which entirely revamped the Constitution.
81. Furthermore, it is clear that apart from Section 19 there is another
proviso to Section 20 (which is also part of the 101st Amendment Act) that
proviso reads as follows:
“20. (1) If any diﬃculty arises in giving eﬀect to the provisions of the
Constitution as amended by this Act (including any diﬃculty in relation
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 185
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

to the transition from the provisions of the Constitution as they stood
immediately before the date of assent of the President to this Act to the
provisions of the Constitution as amended by this Act), the President
may, by order, make such provisions, including any adaptation or
modiﬁcation of any provision of the Constitution as amended by this
Act or law, as appear to the President to be necessary or expedient
for the purpose of removing the diﬃculty:
Provided that no such order shall be made after the expiry of three
years from the date of such assent.
(2) Every order made under sub-section (1) shall, as soon as may be
after it is made, be laid before each House of Parliament.”
82. It cannot be in dispute that Section 20 existed for a period of
two years and enabled the President to issue orders for the removal of
diﬃculties experienced in the course of implementing the amendments to
the Constitution. If indeed those parts of the amendments were not enacted
in the exercise of constituent power but mere legislative power, there would
be no legitimacy of the power conferred upon the President under Section 20.
83. On an overall interpretation of the provisions of the Amendment, it
is held that Sections 19 and 20 constitute incidental and transitory provisions
which have limited life, so to speak. Whether they became part of the
Constitution or not is really academic. What really matters is the eﬀect of
those provisions.
B. Whether the power of amendment or repeal is subject to limitations
under Section 19
84. In this context, Section 143(2) of the Government of India Act,
1935 was considered by a Constitution Bench of this court in Rama Krishna
Ramanath (supra). That provision reads as follows:
“143(2) Any taxes duties, cesses or fees which, immediately before the
commencement of Part III of this Act, were being lawfully levied by
any Provincial Government, municipality or other local authority or
body for the purposes of the Province, municipality, district or other
local area under a law in force on the ﬁrst day of January, nineteen
hundred and thirty-ﬁve, may, notwithstanding that those taxes, duties,
186 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

cesses or fees are mentioned in the Federal Legislative List, continue
to be levied and to be applied to the same purposes until provision to
the contrary is made by the Federal Legislature.”
85. In Rama Krishna Ramanath (supra) it was held that considering
the use of the phrase “continue to be levied” found in Section 143(2) of
the Government of India Act, until provisions to the contrary are made by
the Federal Legislature, the provision posits a limited legislative power in
the province to indicate or express a desire to continue or not to continue
the levy, which would include the power to repeal the statute in its entirety.
Such limited legislative power would also include reducing the rate of tax,
though continuing the levy. Having said so, this court observed how this
limited legislative authority could be exercised:
“the eﬀect of the provision of the Constitution would be to enable
the continuance of the power to levy the taxbut this does not alter the
fact that the provision by its implication confers a limited legislative
power to desire or not to desire the continuance of the levy subject
to the overriding power of the Central Legislature to put an end to
its continuance and it is on the basis of the existence of this limited
legislative power that the right of the Provincial Legislature to repeal
the taxation provision under the Act of 1920 could be rested. Suppose
for instance, a Provincial Legislature desires the continuance of the
tax by considers the rate too High and wishes it to be reduced and
passes an enactment for that purpose, it cannot be that the legislation
is incompetent and that the State Government must permit the local
authority to levy tax at the same rate as prevailed on April 1, 1937 if
the latter desired the continuance of the tax. If such a legislation were
enacted to achieve a reduction of the rate of the duty, its legislative
competence must obviously be traceable to the power contained in
words “may continue to be levied” in s. 143(2) of the Government of
India Act. If we are right so far it would follow that in the exercise of this
limited legislative power the Provincial Legislature would also have a
right to legislate for the continuance of the tax provided, if of course,
the other conditions of s. 143(2) are satisﬁed, viz., (1) that the tax was
one which was lawfully levied by a local authority for the purposes
of a local area at the commencement of Part III of the Government
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 187
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

of India Act., (2) that the identity of the body that collects the tax, the
area for whose beneﬁt the tax is to be utilised and the purposes for
which the utilisation is to take place continue to be the same and (3)
the rate of the tax is not enhanced nor its incidence in any manner
altered, so that it continues to be same tax. If as we have held earlier
there is a limited legislative power in the Province to enact a law with
reference to the tax levy so as to continue it, the validity of the Act of
1949 which manifested the legislative intent of Continue the tax without
any break, the legal continuity being established by the retrospective
operation of the provision, has to be upheld.”
86. It would be worthwhile to recollect that in Synthetics and Chemicals
Ltd. and Ors. v. State of U.P. & Ors.33 this court observed that:
“[..] The power to legislate is given by Article 246 and other Articles
of the Constitution. The three lists of the Seventh Schedule to the
Constitution are legislative heads or ﬁelds of legislation. These
demarcate the area over which the appropriate legislatures can
operate. It is well settled that widest amplitude should be given to
the language of the entries in three Lists but some of these entries
in diﬀerent lists or in the same list may override and sometimes may
appear to be in direct conﬂict with each other, then and then only
comes the duty of the court to ﬁnd the true intent and purpose and
to examine the particular legislation in question. Each general word
should be held to extend to all ancillary or subsidiary matters which
can fairly and reasonably be comprehended in it. ...”
87. Recently, Bimolangshu Roy (Dead) through L.Rs. v. State of Assam
& Ors34 this court had held that:
“23. Article 246 is one of the sources of authority to legislate under the
Constitution of India. It declares that Parliament and the legislatures
of the various states have the “power to make laws with respect to any
of the matters enumerated” in each of the three lists contained in the
Seventh Schedule. It also makes clear that the power of the Parliament

33 1989 Supp (1)SCR 623
34 [2017] 13 SCR301
188 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

is exclusive with respect to List I and that of the State Legislature with
respect to List II. List III indicates various ﬁelds over which both the
Parliament as well as the State legislatures would have authority to
legislate concurrently subject of course to the discipline of Article 254.
24. Apart from declaration contained in Article 246, there are various
other Articles of the Constitution which confer authority to legislate
either on the Parliament or on a State legislature, as the case may
be in various circumstances. For example, Article 3 authorises the
Parliament to make a law either creating a new State or extinguishing
an existing State. Such a power is exclusively conferred on the
Parliament.
25. Article 326 while declaring a right of every citizen who is not less
than 18 years of age to register as a voter at any election to the House
of the People or to the legislative assembly of a State, authorises the
appropriate legislature to disqualify any such citizen to be a voter on
any one of the grounds speciﬁed Under Article 326 by making a law.
The authority to make such a law obviously ﬂows directly from the text
of Article 326 but not from Article 246. See also Articles 2, 3, 11, 15(5),
22(7), 32(3), 33, 34, 59(3), 70, 71(3), 98(2). The Articles mentioned
above are only illustrative but not exhaustive of the category.
26. It must be remembered that this Court repeatedly held that the
entries in the various lists of the Seventh Schedule are not sources of
the legislative power but are only indicative of the ﬁelds w.r.t. which
the appropriate legislature is competent to legislate.
27. The task of this Court in identifying the scope of an entry in the
Lists contained in the Seventh Schedule is not easy. While examining
the scope of the entries this Court must necessarily keep in mind the
scheme of the Constitution relevant in the context of the Entry in
question.
28. A broad pattern can be identiﬁed from the scheme of the three lists,
the salient features of which are (i) Fields of legislation perceived to be
of importance for sustaining the federation, are exclusively assigned to
the Parliament, (ii) State legislatures are assigned only speciﬁed ﬁelds
of legislation unlike the US Constitution, (iii) Residuary legislative
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 189
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

power is conferred in the Parliament; (iv) taxing entries are distinct
from the general entries24, and (v) List III does not contain a taxing
entry,
29. At the same time, it can also be noticed that there is no logical
uniformity in the scheme of the three lists contained in the Seventh
Schedule.”
88. In Bondu Ramaswamy (supra) the provision in question was
Article 243 ZE. This was inserted, by way of amendment, in the 73rd and
74th amendments of the Constitution of India which came into force on
24.04.1993 and 01.06.1993. The object of the amendments - as indeed their
enacted provisions was to strengthen the democratic political government
and grass root level in urban and semi-urban areas by providing constitutional
status to municipalities and panchayats. Article 243ZF’s wording is identical
to Section 19 in the present case. This court discussed the eﬀect of Article
243ZF and stated as follows:
“40. Any statute or provision thereof which is inconsistent with
any constitutional provision will be struck down by the courts.
Consequently, if the BDA Act or any provision of the BDA Act is found
to be inconsistent with any provision of Part IX-A of the Constitution,
it will be struck down by the courts as violative of the Constitution. In
regard to any provision of any law relating to municipalities, Article
243-ZF suspends such invalidity or postpones the invalidity for a
period of one year from 1-6-1993 to enable the competent legislature to
remove the inconsistency by amending or repealing such law relating
to municipalities to bring it in consonance with the provisions of Part
IX-A of the Constitution.
41. Article 243-ZF is a provision enabling continuance of any provision
of a law relating to municipalities in spite of such provision being
inconsistent with the provisions of Part IX-A of the Constitution
for a speciﬁed period of one year. It does not extend the beneﬁt of
continuance to any law other than laws relating to municipalities;
it also does not provide for continuance of a law for one year, if
the violation is in respect of any constitutional provision other than
Part IX-A; and it does not declare any provision of a statute to be
inconsistent with it nor declare any statute to be invalid. The invalidity
190 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

of a statute is declared by a court when it ﬁnds a statute or its provision
to be inconsistent with a constitutional provision.
42. The beneﬁt of Article 243-ZF is available only in regard to laws
relating to “municipalities”. The term “municipality” has a speciﬁc
meaning assigned to it under Part IX-A. Article 243-P(e) deﬁnes
the word as meaning an institution of self-government constituted
under Article 243-Q. Article 243-Q refers speciﬁcally to three types
of municipalities, that is, a Nagar Panchayat for a transitional area,
a Municipal Council for a smaller urban area and a Municipal
Corporation for a larger urban area. Thus, neither any city
improvement trust nor any Development Authority is a municipality,
referred to in Article 243-ZF. Thus Article 243-ZF has no relevance to
test the validity of the BDA Act or any provision thereof. If the BDA Act
or any provision thereof is found to be inconsistent with the provisions
of Part IX-A, such inconsistent provision will be invalid even from 1-6-
1993, and the beneﬁt of continuance for a period of one year permitted
under Article 243-ZF will not be available to such a provision of law,
as the BDA Act is not a law relating to municipalities.
45. Part IX-A seeks to strengthen the democratic political governance
at grass root level in urban areas by providing constitutional status to
municipalities, and by laying down minimum uniform norms and by
ensuring regular and fair conduct of elections. When Part IX-A came
into force, the provisions of the existing laws relating to municipalities
which were inconsistent with or contrary to the provisions of Part
IX-A would have ceased to apply. To provide continuity for some time
and an opportunity to the State Governments concerned to bring the
respective enactments relating to municipalities in consonance with the
provisions of Part IX-A in the meanwhile, Article 243-ZF was inserted.
The object was not to invalidate any law relating to city improvement
trusts or Development Authorities which operate with reference to
speciﬁc and specialised ﬁeld of planned development of cities by
forming layouts and making available plots/houses/apartments to the
members of the public.”
89. The eﬀect of the 97th amendment to the Constitution which came
into force on 12.01.2012 was to introduce provisions, to strengthen the
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 191
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

functioning of the cooperative societies in a democratic, autonomous and
economically sound manner. Various new provisions granted constitutional
status to cooperative societies and inserted Part IX-B in the Constitution
which speciﬁed several conditions for state laws relating to cooperative
societies. Article 243 ZT which is worded similarly to Section 19 of the
present case sought to continue in force existing laws, for a limited duration
until amended or repealed or until the expiration of one year from the
commencement of the amendment act. This court held in Vipulbhai (supra)
on an interpretation of 243 ZT that the competent legislature could suitably
amend the existing provisions in their laws in tune with the constitutional
mandate.
90. Once it is conceded that Section 19 was enacted as part of the
constituent power and has the same force as the rest of the constitutional
amendment and is not a mere Parliamentary enactment, one has to consider
the consequence of this sequitur to such a ﬁnding. The previous rulings in
Bondu Ramaswamy (supra) and Vipulbhai (supra), indicate that even in
the case of transitional provisions of the kind that they dealt with – which
were enacted as part of the Constitution – the states’ power to amend is
limited to bring the existing law inconformity with the new provisions
of the Constitution brought into force by the concerned amendment. In
those cases, the court was not confronted with the complex situation of
the nature that one has to deal with today. The 101st amendment as noted
earlier uniquely transformed the indirect taxation regime and revamped
the constitutional compact itself in one sense. Gone were the traditional
delineations of distribution of legislative power including taxation ﬁelds
which traced their origins to Articles 245 and 246 and also the rules for
handling repugnancy which Article 254 had enacted. Instead,what was
brought in was an entirely new concept of sourcing common or concurrent
power of both the state legislatures and the Union through the newly added
provision Article 246A.
91. As held earlier, the change was dramatic and revolutionary and
wisely the constitutional amending body which is the Parliament and
the ratifying States felt it expedient to ensure that during the transitional
period of one year or till the new GST regime was ushered through an
enactment, there ought to be ﬂexibility with the States and Parliament to
192 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

make such changes as the times demanded. In the previous two judgments,
Bondu Ramaswamy (supra) and Vipulbhai (supra), however, there was no
question of denuding the powers, the State or conferring new powers on the
Parliament and the State but rather creation of new bodies as in the case of
Panchayats and Zila Parishads in Bondu Ramaswamy(supra) and imposing
new standards in Vipulbhai (supra), in relation to cooperative societies.
Then, the existing legal regime was preserved for a limited duration. Yet
the court felt that the amendments should not have a lasting impact going
beyond the period provided by the savings or transitional provisions as that
would have inevitably met with challenges as not being inconformity with
the new regime.
92. In the present case, however, Section 19 is seen as a plenary
constituent power, subject to other limitations in the Constitution, and
also given that by the amendment the legislative entries in the ﬁelds
which are Entry 54 of the State List and Entry 84 of the Central List were
substantially changed, this court has to take into account the reality that
State’s powers or even Parliament’s power had to be sourced directly
from the amendment.
93. There is merit in the argument that although Article 246A in a sense
itself comprehends the power to impose tax on goods and services, yet its
operationalization could take place only through the recommendations of the
GST council. The GST council appears to have been formed in the wake of
the 101st amendment, nevertheless, the process of making recommendations
had only begun. Therefore, the power to make laws could not have been
sourced only to Article 246A. The power to make laws in the opinion of this
court (which is to amend or repeal existing laws), could then by sourced to
some other provision as well. In the present case, Section 19 itself is held
to be the source which enables Parliament and the State Legislatures (along
with Article 246A) to amend the existing laws. The analogy of Entry 97 of
the Union List, would be tempting. In the case of Parliament, it could be
said that once the power to enact laws relating to service tax stood deleted,
Entry 92C also stood in a sense, devoid of its essence. Entry 97 could still
arguendo, be a source of power to amend the existing Central laws. That
interpretation is not feasible, because the expression used in Section 19 is
the competent legislature, and not Parliament; the latter alone can enact in
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 193
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

the exercise of the power conferred by Entry 97 of the Union List. However,
that conclusion would not be consistent with the coming into force of the
Amendment on 16.09.2016. The only harmonious manner of sourcing the
power to amend or repeal could be to Section 19 and Article 246Awhich are
to be seen as both the power enabling the existing state of aﬀairs to continue
and also enabling both the centre and the states to make necessary changes
in the existing laws through amendment or repeal.
94. There is no doubt that the authority to legislate ﬂows from
the Constitution. In the context of our Constitution, this authority has
been traditionally located primarily in Articles 245 and 246. The courts
have consistently recognized that the Lists in the Seventh Schedule
to the Constitution merely delineates the ﬁelds of legislation; they are
not considered as sources of power. The authority or the power stems
from Articles 245 and 246. The reorganization of those legislative ﬁelds
particularly Entry 84 of the First List and Entry 54 of the Second List
and the conformant of larger powers, upon both the legislative entities
i.e. Parliament and the State Legislatures meant that both authorities to
legislate upon all subject matters which are comprehended within the
description of “goods and services” for the purpose of indirect taxation
under Article 246 A. Yet the operationalization of this provision required
the formulation of the principles by the GST Council which occurred
later. The hiatus between the coming into force of the constitutional
amendment and the enactment of a comprehensive legislation, [based
upon the recommendations of the GST Council] provided for by Section
19. As held in the previous segment of this judgment Section 19 is to be
construed as part of the Constitution for the limited duration it operated
and was eﬀective.
95. Such being the case the sequitur would have to be that the
authority to legislate is expressed through Section 19, read with Article
246A. In other words, in the absence of principles formulated by the GST
Council, the authority so to say reserved by Section 19 and Article 246A
to amend or repeal the law the subject matter as originally understood
itself stood obliterated from the Constitution. This would have resulted in
a conundrum. Therefore, Section 19 and Article 246Aareto be understood
as expressing a ﬁeld of legislation available to both the Parliament and the
194 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

State Legislatures to in furtherance of the status quo, cater to unforeseen or
other eventualities in the administration of existing tax laws. An example
can be that a heavy ﬁnancial burden, being cast as a consequence of holding
that the machinery for collection of an existing levy, was defective, the High
Court invalidating a rule or statutory provision. In that event, were it to be
held, that the state lacked competence altogether to legislate, and cure the
defects through a validating enactment, during the period till 01.07.2017,
the results could have been catastrophic. The phrase “amend” or “repeal”
denotes a legislative activity. That it is spoken of in a provision, introduced
through a constituent process, means that it has to be given meaning, because
no words or provisions can be considered as surplusage.
96. The meaning of the term ‘amend’ is well-known it takes within
its sweep the idea of correcting something, adding something, deleting,
or substituting something or doing something to an existing document,
enactment, or rule to make it better. P. Ramanatha Aiyar’s Advance Law
Lexicon35, has this to say:
“Amendment/Repeal. Amendment is, in fact, a wider term and it
includes abrogation or deletion of a provision in an existing statute.
If the amendment of an existing law is small, the Act professes to
amend; if it is extensive, it repeals a law and re-enacts it. There is
no real distinction between repeal and an amendment. Bhagwat Ram
Sharma v UOI, AIR 1988 SC 740, 746.9
Amend. A word derived from the French word signifying ‘to make
better’; ‘to change for the better.’
To alter formally by some addition, omission or substitution [Preamble,
T.P. Act (4 of 1882)].
The power to ‘amend’ Constitution conferred by Article 368 of
the Constitution is wide enough to include the power to take away
fundamental rights. [Shankri Prasad Singh v. UOI, AIR 1951 SC 458]
The dictionary meaning of the word ‘amend’ is to correct a fault or
reform; but in the context of Article 368 reliance on the dictionary

35 P. Ramanatha Iyer, Advance Law Lexicon, Volume I at Page 271
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 195
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

meaning of the word is singularly inappropriate, because what Article
368 authorises to be done is the amendment of the provisions of the
Constitution. An amendment of a law may in a proper case include
the deletion of any one or more of the provisions of the law and
substitution in their place of new provisions. Similarly an amendment
of the Constitution which is the subject matter of the power conferred
by Article 368, may include modiﬁcation or change of the provisions
or even an amendment which makes the said provisions inapplicable
in certain cases. The power to amend in the context is a very wide
power and it cannot be controlled by the literal dictionary meaning
of the word ‘amend’. Sajjan Sing v State of Rajasthan Mad LJ: QD
(1961-1965) Vol II C 1204-1205: (1965) 1 SCJ 377 : (1965)1 Mad LJ
(SC) 57 : AIR 1965 SC 845
*************** **************
Amend; emend; Correct; Rectify; Reform. All these words convey
the idea of making a things into a more perfect state. We correct
when we conform things to some standard or rule; as to correct proof
sheets. We amend by removing faults or errors as to amend a decree
or a law. Emend is another form of amend and is mostly applied to
editions of books. To reform is to put into a new and better form, as
to reform one’s life. Rectify is to make right, as, to rectify a mistake,
to rectify an abuse.
The amendment of a law may in a proper case include the deletion of
any one or more of the provisions of the law and substitution in their
place of new provisions. An amendment of the constitution which is
the subject-matter of the power conferred by Article 368, may include
modiﬁcations or change of the provisions or even an amendment which
makes the said provisions inapplicable in certain cases. Sajjan Singh
v State of Rajasthan AIR 1965 SC 845, 854. [Constitution of India,
Article 368]
The term ‘amended in Section 1(2) of the Calcutta Trika Tenancy
Amendment Act must be construed in its natural meaning ‘as altered
by addition, substitutions and omissions’. Deorajin Debi v Satyadhyan,
AIR 1954 Cal 119.”
196 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

97. It is, therefore, held that there were no limitations under Section
19 (read together with Article 246A), of the Amendment. That provision
constituted the expression of the sovereign legislative power, available to
both Parliament and state legislatures, to make necessary changes through
amendment to the existing laws. As held in Rama Krishna Ramanath (supra)
the transitional power (in that case, Section 143 (3)) “the provision by its
implication confers a limited legislative power to desire or not to desire the
continuance of the levy.” This limited legislative power was not constricted
or limited, in the manner alleged by the states; it is circumscribed by the
time limit, indicated (i.e. one year, or till the new GST law was enacted).
It could, therefore, enact provisions other than those bringing the existing
provisions in conformity with the amended Constitution.
C. Validity of Telangana Act tested from the touch stone of its
originating as an ordinance
98. Telangana had argued that although with eﬀect from 1 st July 2017,
due to the enactment of the CGST Act, its state legislature could not per se
enact a new law on a subject matter contained within the original entry 54
of the State list, nevertheless, the approval of the ordinance which amended
the existing State -law on 02.07.2017 had the eﬀect of relating back to
the original date when in fact it was validly amended. This is sought to
be supported by the theory of the relating back of the law to a date when
the power to enact existed. The argument in support was that in terms of
its eﬀect there is no diﬀerence between an ordinance [which is merely a
product of a diﬀerent procedure i.e., or executive law making] as compared
to enactment of law by the legislature. An ordinance may have a limited
life but once conﬁrmed, or enacted,it acquires permanence. Even during
the time it is in force, it is as eﬀective and as binding on the subject matter
and the State as an enacted law. The eﬀect of an ordinance was explained
in A.K. Roy (supra), in the following terms:
“[..] the Constitution makes no distinction in principle between a law
made by the legislature and an ordinance issued by the President. Both,
equally, are products of the exercise of legislative power and, therefore,
both are equally subject to the limitations which the Constitution has
placed upon that power”.
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 197
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

99. In R.K. Garg Etc. Etc v. Union Of India & Ors36 this court held
similarly, that ordinance making power is “co-extensive with the power of
the Parliament to make laws, it is diﬃcult to see how any limitation can be
read into this legislative power of the President so as to make it ineﬀective
to alter or amend tax laws. If Parliament can by enacting legislation alter
or amend tax laws, equally can the President do so by issuing an Ordinance
under Article 123.”
100. This court is of the view that the submissions of the Telangana
State are not substantial. There can be no doubt that an ordinance
promulgated by the Government is as much a law as much as is any
binding law enacted by State legislature. The diﬀerence is that contrary
to the traditional role of the executive, law making does not fall within
its primary domain. Yet the Constitution clothes the executive with the
emergency power of promulgating ordinances which can operate for a
limited duration to be mandatorily raised before the House of the State
legislature for its approval or disapproval. In the event of approval, the
ordinance is given the shape that the legislature accrues it in. In India,
practice has been largely to enact the provisions or incorporate the provision
ordinance in the form of the Bill which is then approved by the House or
Houses of the State legislature and then it results in an Act. Although, the
State is correct in characterizing that law making in both cases only is
shaped or the products of two diﬀerent procedures, nevertheless, to stop
at that would be an oversimpliﬁcation.
101. This court had on previous occasions, dealt with the eﬀect of the
power of issuing ordinances and their eﬀect. There were few conﬂicting
judgments on the issue, especially on whether the eﬀect of anything done
during the time when the ordinance is in force can continue to bind and
be eﬀective even after it ceases to be or is inoperable, or in other words,
has lapsed. Since conﬂicting decisions existed, a larger seven judge bench
combination examined the matter in detail in Krishna Kumar Singh (supra).
A majority judgment of 5 Judges is of the opinion that the theory of lasting
eﬀect of an ordinance cannot be supported. Krishna Kumar Singh (supra)
ﬁrst explained the eﬀect of an ordinance:

36 1982 (1) SCR 947
198 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

“Is the requirement of laying an Ordinance before the state legislature
mandatory? There can be no manner of doubt that it is. The expression
“shall be laid” is a positive mandate which brooks no exceptions.
That the word ‘shall’ in Sub-clause (a) of Clause 2 of Article 213 is
mandatory, emerges from reading the provision in its entirety. As we
have noted earlier, an Ordinance can be promulgated only when the
legislature is not in session. Upon the completion of six weeks of the
reassembling of the legislature, an Ordinance “shall cease to operate”.
In other words, when the session of the legislature reconvenes, the
Ordinance promulgated has a shelf life which expires six weeks after
the legislature has assembled. Thereupon, it ceases to operate.”
The larger Bench then proceeded to examine the need to lay the
ordinance before the State Legislature:
“31. Laying of an Ordinance before the state legislature subserves
the purpose of legislative control over the Ordinance making power.
Legislation by Ordinances is not an ordinary source of law making but
is intended to meet extra-ordinary situations of an emergent nature,
during the recess of the legislature. The Governor while promulgating
an Ordinance does not constitute an independent legislature, but
acts on the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers Under Article
163. The Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to the
elected legislative body to whom the government is accountable. The
Constitution reposes the power of enacting law in Parliament and the
state legislatures under Articles 245 and 246, between whom ﬁelds
of legislation are distributed in the Seventh Schedule. Constitutional
control of Parliament and the state legislatures over the Ordinance
making power of the President (under Article 123) and the Governors
(under Article 213) is a necessary concomitant to the supremacy of a
democratically elected legislature. The reassembling of the legislature
deﬁnes the outer limit for the validity of the Ordinance promulgated
during its absence in session. Within that period, a legislature has
authority to disapprove the Ordinance. The requirement of laying an
Ordinance before the legislative body subserves the constitutional
purpose of ensuring that the provisions of the Ordinance are debated
upon and discussed in the legislature. The legislature has before it a
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 199
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

full panoply of legislative powers and as an incident of those powers,
the express constitutional authority to disapprove an Ordinance. If
an Ordinance has to continue beyond the tenure which is prescribed
by Article 213(2)(a), a law has to be enacted by the legislature
incorporating its provisions. Signiﬁcantly, our Constitution does
not provide that an Ordinance shall assume the character of a
law enacted by the state legislature merely upon the passing of a
resolution approving it. In order to assume the character of enacted
law beyond the tenure prescribed by Article 213(2)(a), a law has to
be enacted. The placement of an Ordinance before the legislature is a
constitutional necessity; the underlying object and rationale being to
enable the legislature to determine (i) the need for and expediency of
an ordinance; (ii) whether a law should be enacted; or (iii) whether
the Ordinance should be disapproved.
32. The failure to lay an Ordinance before the state legislature
constitutes a serious infraction of the constitutional obligation
imposed by Article 213(2). It is upon an Ordinance being laid before
the House that it is formally brought to the notice of the legislature.
Failure to lay the Ordinance is a serious infraction because it may
impact upon the ability of the legislature to deal with the Ordinance.
We are not for a moment suggesting that the legislature cannot deal
with a situation where the government of the day has breached its
constitutional obligation to lay the Ordinance before the legislature.
The legislature can undoubtedly even in that situation exercise its
powers Under Article 213(2)(a). However, the requirement of laying
an Ordinance before the state legislature is a mandatory obligation
and is not merely of a directory nature. We shall see how in the present
case a pattern was followed by the Governor of Bihar of promulgating
and re-promulgating Ordinances, none of which was laid before the
state legislature. Such a course of conduct would amount to a colorable
exercise of power and an abuse of constitutional authority. Now it is
in this background, and having thus far interpreted the provisions of
Article 213, that it becomes necessary to refer to the precedents on the
subject and to the nuances in the interpretation of the constitutional
provisions.”
200 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

This court then examined the legal eﬀects of an ordinance, in case, it
ceased to operate:
“58. What then is the eﬀect upon rights, privileges, obligations or
liabilities which arise under an ordinance which ceases to operate?
There are two critical expressions in Article 213(2) which bear a
close analysis. The ﬁrst is that an ordinance “shall have the same
force and eﬀect” as an act of the legislature while the second is
that it “shall cease to operate” on the period of six weeks of the
reassembling of the legislature or upon a resolution of disapproval.
The expression “shall have the same force and eﬀect” is prefaced
by the words “an ordinance promulgated under this article”. In
referring to an ordinance which is promulgated Under Article
213, the Constitution evidently conveys the meaning that in order
to have the same force and eﬀect as a legislative enactment, the
ordinance must satisfy the requirements of Article 213. Moreover
the expression “shall have the same force and eﬀect” is succeeded
by the expression “but every such ordinance..” shall be subject to
what is stated in sub-clauses(a) and (b). The pre-conditions for a
valid exercise of the power to promulgate as well as the conditions
subsequent to promulgation are both part of a composite scheme.
Both sets of conditions have to be fulﬁlled for an ordinance to
have the protection of the ‘same force and eﬀect’ clause. Once the
deeming ﬁction operates, its consequence is that during its tenure,
an ordinance shall operate in the same manner as an act of the
legislature. What is the consequence of an ordinance ceasing to
operate by virtue of the provisions of Article 213(2)(a)? There
are two competing constructions which fall for consideration. The
expression “shall cease to operate” can on the one hand to be
construed to mean that with eﬀect from the date on which six weeks
have expired after the reassembling of the legislature or upon the
disapproval of the ordinance, it would cease to operate from that
date. ‘Cease’ to operate in this sense would mean that with eﬀect
from that date, the ordinance would prospectively have no operation.
The ordinance is not void at its inception. The second meaning
which can be considered for interpretation is that the expression
“shall cease to operate” will mean that all legal consequences that
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 201
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

arose during the tenure of the ordinance would stand obliterated.
According to the second construction, which is wider than the ﬁrst,
the consequence of an ordinance having ceased to operate would
relate back to the validity of an ordinance.
59. Now, one of the considerations that must be borne in mind is
that Article 213 has not made a speciﬁc provision for the saving of
rights, privileges, obligations or liabilities that have arisen under an
ordinance which has since ceased to operate either upon the expiry
of its term or upon a resolution of disapproval. Signiﬁcantly, there are
other provisions of the Constitution where, when it so intended, the
Constitution has made express provisions for the saving of rights or
liabilities which arise under a law.”
The court then overruled previous judgments, which had relied on
and applied the “enduring rights” theory, to hold that rights and privileges,
acquired, or created, and obligations cast or assumed would continue, even
if the ordinance were to lapse, or become void. It was held that:
“68. [..] The enduring rights theory which was accepted in the
judgment in Bhupendra Kumar Bose was extrapolated from the
consequences emanating from the expiry of a temporary act. That
theory cannot be applied to the power to frame ordinances. Acceptance
of the doctrine of enduring rights in the context of an ordinance would
lead to a situation where the exercise of power by the Governor would
survive in terms of the creation of rights and privileges, obligations and
liabilities on the hypothesis that these are of an enduring character. The
legislature may not have had an opportunity to even discuss or debate
the ordinance (where, as in the present case, none of the ordinances was
laid before the legislature); an ordinance may have been speciﬁcally
disapproved or may have ceased to operate upon the expiry of the
prescribed period. The enduring rights theory attributes a degree of
permanence to the power to promulgate ordinances in derogation of
parliamentary control and supremacy. Any such assumption in regard
to the conferment of power would run contrary to the principles which
have been laid down in S.R. Bommai….
**************** *****************
202 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

The Constitution has not made a speciﬁc provision with regard to
a situation where an ordinance is not placed before a legislature at
all. Such an eventuality cannot be equated to a situation where an
ordinance lapses after the prescribed period or is disapproved. The
mandate that the ordinance will cease to operate applies to those two
situations. Not placing an ordinance at all before the legislature is an
abuse of constitutional process, a failure to comply with a constitutional
obligation. A government which has failed to comply with its
constitutional duty and overreached the legislature cannot legitimately
assert that the ordinance which it has failed to place at all is valid till
it ceases to operate. An ediﬁce of rights and obligations cannot be built
in a constitutional order on acts which amount to a fraud on power.
This will be destructive of the Rule of law. Once an ordinance has been
placed before the legislature, the constitutional ﬁction by which it has
the same force and eﬀect as a law enacted would come into being and
relate back to the promulgation of the ordinance. In the absence of
compliance with the mandatory constitutional requirement of laying
before the legislature, the constitutional ﬁction would not come into
existence. In the present case, none of the ordinances promulgated by
the Governor of Bihar were placed before the state legislature. This
constituted a fraud on the constitutional power. Constitutionally, none
of the ordinances had any force and eﬀect. The noticeable pattern was
to avoid the legislature and to obviate legislative control. This is a
serious abuse of the constitutional process. It will not give rise to any
legally binding consequences.”
102. In the present case, the Telangana ordinance was promulgated on
17.6.2016. The Telangana State GST Act was enacted and received the assent
of the Governor on 25.05.2017; it was brought into force on 01.07.2017.
The state GST Act contained a savings and repeal law, which sought to save
acts done, privileges and rights accrued under the repealed enactment, i.e.
the State VAT Act. It was sought to be argued that once the State Legislature
approved the ordinance and enacted the amendment, in conformity with
it, the provisions of the Ordinance became part of the act. The question of
legislative competence would not arise, because the mere conﬁrmation of
an ordinance is within the competence of the State legislature. Since the law
was introduced through a diﬀerent procedure, i.e. ordinance, the eﬀect of
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 203
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

that law, empowering the VAT oﬃcials to reopen or complete assessments,
was no diﬀerent.
103. This court held in Hajee Abdul Shukoor(supra) that:
“The State legislature is free to enact laws which would have
retrospective operation. Its competence to make law for a certain past
period, depends on its present legislative power and not on what it
possessed at the period of time when its enactment is to have operation.
We therefore do not agree with this contention.
The matter can be looked at in a diﬀerent way. The 1939 Act required no
assent of the President. The State Legislature was doing in 1963 what
the legislature enacting the 1939 Act was supposed to have enacted
and therefore its enactment was not governed by the Constitutional
requirement for an Act to be enacted during the period Act LII of 1952
was in force. Lastly, it has been urged for the petitioner that hides and
skins have been declared to be of special importance in inter-State
trade or commerce by s.14 of the Central Sales Tax of 1956. The tax
imposed by sub-section (1) of s. 2 of the Act is a tax on the sale of hides
and skins in the course of inter-State trade or commerce and therefore
fen within entry No. 92A of list 1 of Seventh Schedule and that therefore
the State legislature was not competent to impose it. It could impose
by virtue of entry No. 54 in List II of Seventh Schedule tax on the sale
or purchase of goods subject to the provisions of entry No. 92A of List
1. There is no force in this contention. The tax is imposed on the sale
which took place within the State. The State legis- lature is competent
to impose such a tax. The mere fact that the article sold in the State
had been brought from outside the State does not make the sale of that
article a sale in the course of inter-State trade or commerce. It is only
when A, in State X, purchased through a commission agent in a State
Y and receives the articles purchased through the commercial agency
that the sale comes within the expression ‘in the course of inter-State
trade’: See State of Travancore Cochin v Shanmugha Vilas Cashew
Nut Factory . (supra at p. 70).
It has been argued for the State that the Act is not aﬀected by the
provisions of Arts. 301 to 304 of the Constitution as they aﬀect the
legislative power with respect to Acts to operate in the future and not
204 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

the power to enact Acts which would operate in the past. We do not
consider the contention sound. The Act makes provision for a period
subsequent to the commencement of the Constitution and therefore is
to be subject to the provisions of the Constitution.
We therefore hold that sub-section (1) of S. 2 of the Act discriminates
against imported hides and skins which were sold up to the 1st of
August 1957 upto which date the tax on sale of raw hides and skins
was at the rate of 3 pies per rupee or 19/16th percent. This however
does not mean that the sub-section is valid with respect to the sales
which took place subsequent to August 1, 1957. The subsection being
void in its provisions with respect to a certain initial period, we
cannot change the provision with respect to the period as enacted to
the period for which it could be valid as that would be re-writing the
enactment. We have therefore to hold that sub-s.(1) of Section 2 void
accordingly hold so.”
104. It was held by this court, in Jaya Thakur v Union of India &
37
Ors that:
“the challenge to the legislative Act would be sustainable only if
it is established that the legislature concerned had no legislative
competence to enact on the subject it has enacted.”
105. The state of Telangana had argued to the contrary, and explained
that when the ordinance was issued, there was no doubt about the state
possessing legislative competence. As of that date (17.06.2017) the
power to amend existing laws, was permissible under Section 19 of
the Amendment. However, that argument is not tenable, because the
ordinance’s validity and eﬀect might not have been suspect on the date
of its promulgation; yet, the issue is that on the date when it was in fact,
approved and given shape as an amendment, the State legislature had
ceased to possess the power. By that time, the State GST and the Central
GST Acts had come into force (on 01.07.2017). Therefore, Section 19
ceased to be eﬀective. The original entry (Entry 54 of the State List)
ceased to exist. In the circumstances, the state legislature had no legislative

37 2023 SCC OnLine SC 813
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 205
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

competence to enact the amendment, which approved the ordinance, which
consequently was rendered void.
106. A subsidiary argument was that acts done in pursuance of the
ordinance cannot lapse, because they are saved, by virtue of the repeal and
savings clause (Section 17438) of the State GST Act, all action taken pursuant
to the ordinance, when it was in force, would be saved. In the opinion of this
court, there is no merit in that argument. The invalidity of the amendment by
the state legislature (which conformed to the ordinance, on 02.12.2017) went
to its root of the jurisdiction of those acting under the amended provisions of
the State GST, rendering them (as indeed, the substantive provisions) void
and unenforceable. Furthermore, even if for some reason, there were any
doubts regarding validity and continuance of any notice, or proceedings,
initiated pursuant to the provisions of the ordinance, their invalidity is such
that they cannot be sustained. Furthermore, as held in Krishna Kumar Singh
(supra) unless the consequences are “irreversible” there is ordinarily no
question of any action- taken under an ordinance that is rendered void, due
to operation of the provisions of the Constitution, being continued. Though
the observations of this court were in the context of ordinances lapsing due
to their not being presented before the House of the legislatures, the same
principle would, in this court’s considered view, apply to cases, where the
legislature ceases to have competence over the subject matter.
107. It is therefore, held that the provisions of the ordinance, as
approved by the later state act, which amended the local VAT Act’s, are valid.
D. Gujarat and Maharashtra Acts
108. In the case of the Gujarat VAT Act, the brief facts are that the
Deputy Commissioner of Commercial Tax, passed an assessment order on

38 The relevant part of Section 174 (2) inter alia, is as follows:
“(2) The repeal of the said Acts and the amendment of the Acts speciﬁed in section 173
(hereafter referred to as ―such amendmentǁ or ―amended Actǁ, as the case may be) to
the extent mentioned in sub-section (1) or section 173 shall not— (a) revive anything
not in force or existing at the time of such amendment or repeal; or (b) aﬀect the
previous operation of the amended Acts or repealed Acts and orders or anything duly
done or suﬀered thereunder; or (c) aﬀect any right, privilege, obligation, or liability
acquired, accrued or incurred under the amended Acts or repealed Acts or orders under
such repealed or amended Acts:”
206 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

December 23, 2009, for the ﬁnancial year 2006-07 against the assessee and
reversed the input tax credit to the extent of eight per cent., i.e., four per
cent, under each of the provisions of sections 11(3)(b)(ii) and 11(3)(b)(iii)
of the Gujarat VAT Act. The appellate authority dismissed the assessee. On
April 26, 2012, the Gujarat VAT Tribunal allowed the assesses second appeal
by quashing and setting aside both the orders of the sales tax authorities by
holding that reduction of the input tax credit to the extent of eight per cent, for
purchases was not applicable to consignment of branch transfer transactions.
The High Court, by judgment39 dated January 18, 2013, dismissed the State
Government’s appeal against the aforesaid order of the VAT Tribunal, while
holding, inter alia, that the reduction of input tax credit under section 11(3)
(b) would, in no case, exceed four per cent. It was held that the limitation
of availing of the tax credit as provided under section 11(3)((b) could be
applied only once irrespective of the fact as to whether particular commodity
purchased falls in more than one sub-clauses of section 11(3)(b) of the
VAT Act. An assessment order was made by the concerned oﬃcer, for
two separate issues. The judgment of the High Court was given eﬀect to
by tax authorities. In a decision of the VAT Tribunal, rendered in another
case wherein it was observed that tax paid by the assessee on purchases of
goods used in manufacture of taxable goods exported outside the country
was not to be included. In other words, according to the Tribunal, the said
incentive limit cannot be curtailed by the said tax paid by the assessee. These
ﬁndings were set aside by the High Court40. In view of that judgment, the
commissioner issued a revision notice, in March, 2018 under Section 75 of
the VAT Act, why the beneﬁt given to them should not be revised to give
eﬀect to the judgment of the High Court.
109. As noted earlier, provisions of the Constitution (One Hundred and
First Amendment) Act, 2016, were enacted. They came into force with eﬀect
from July 1, 2017.On September 20, 2016, the Additional Commissioner of
Commercial Tax passed an order and reduced the sales tax incentive, in case
of the petitioner-company, while considering the tax paid on the purchase of

39 State of Gujarat v. Reliance Industries Ltd. [2013] 58 VST 376 (Guj); 2013 SCC
OnLine Guj 8788
40 State of Gujarat v. Welspun Gujarat Stahl Rohren Ltd. [2014] 71 VST 550 (Guj); 2014
SCC OnLine Guj 15909
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 207
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

taxable goods used in the manufacture of taxable goods, exported outside
the country. On July 1, 2017, two legislations, i.e., the Gujarat Goods and
Services Tax Act, 2017 and the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017
came into force to levy tax on all the intra-State supplies of goods or services
or both. The Gujarat Value Added Tax Act, 2003 was substantially amended
by way of substitution and deletion of many provisions thereof by virtue of
the Gujarat Value Added Tax (Amendment) Act, 2017, which. came into
force with eﬀect from July 1, 2017.Meanwhile, the High Court passed an
order dated September 22, 2017 in an appeal ﬁled by the State, setting aside
the judgment41 dated January 18, 2013 in respect of the assessee who had
succeeded.
110. In view of the aforesaid judgment of this court, the Additional
Commissioner of Commercial Tax issued a revision notice dated November
3/6, 2017 in Form 503 under section 75 of the Act to revise the assessment
order for the ﬁnancial year 2008-09 made vide order dated March 30, 2013
(Sr. No. 5 above), for reducing the input tax credit to the extent of eight per
cent under the provisions of section 11(3)(b)(ii) and 11(3)(b)(iii) of the VAT
Act in the light of the judgment dated September 22, 2017, of this court.
The revision notice was quashed42 by the High Court.
111. By virtue of the VAT (Amendment) Act, 2018, section 84A was
added in the VAT Act to be operative retrospectively with eﬀect from April
1, 2006, inter alia, providing for the exclusion of the period spent between
the date of the decision of the Appellate Tribunal and that of the High Court
as well as the Supreme Court in computing the period of limitation, referred
to in section 75 of the Gujarat VAT Act. In the present case, the period
commencing from the date of the decision of high court dated January 18,
201343 rendered against the revenue up to the date of the decision of this
court, i.e., September 22, 201744. As a consequence, on September 1, 2018,
fresh notice for revision was issued by the Additional Commissioner of

41 State of Gujarat v. Reliance Industries Ltd [2017] 16 SCC 28.
42 In the judgment in Reliance Industries Ltd. v. State of Gujarat [2018] 58 GSTR 366
(Guj))
43 HC judgment dated 18.01.2013 in Tax Appeal No 934 & 935 of 2012
44 Order of this court in State of Gujarat v Reliance Industries. Civil Appeal No 13047-
13048 of 2017.
208 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

Commercial Tax to the assessee on the basis of the above referred newly
added section 84A, for revising the assessment for the ﬁnancial year 2008-
09 made by order dated March 30, 2013. The original period of limitation
as provided under Section 75 of the Gujarat VAT Act for issuing notice was
of three years from the date of the assessment order, i.e., March 30, 2013,
which had lapsed on March 30, 2016. However, by virtue of the newly
enacted section 84A, the period spent from the date of the decision of the
High Court up to the date of the decision of this court was to be excluded
in computing the aforesaid period of three years, referred to under Section
75 of the Gujarat VAT Act. This development resulted in a challenge to
the validity of the amendment. The state had sought to urge that being a
validating enactment, which sought to cure the defect found earlier, and
given that it operated retrospectively, there is no question of the amendment
being invalid.
112. There are undoubtedly several judgments of this court such as
Shri Prithvi Cotton Mills Ltd. v. Broach Borough Municipality45 Government
of Andhra Pradesh v. Hindustan Machine Tools Ltd 46; Ujagar Prints v.
Union of India47 and several others, which hold that a purely curative and
validating enactment, if made retrospective, is unexceptionable. However,
it has been held by this court, in Kerala State Electricity Board v. Indian
Aluminium Co. Ltd.48:
“... Both the 1910 Act as well as the 1948-Act are existing law as
contemplated under article 372 of the Constitution. An existing law
continues to be valid even though the legislative power with respect to
the subject-matter of the existing law might be in a diﬀerent list under
the Constitution from the list under which it would have fallen under
the Government of India Act, 1935. But after the Constitution came
into force an existing law could be amended or repealed only by the
Legislature which would be competent to enact that law if it were to
be newly enacted...”

45 1970 (1) SCR 388
46 [1975] Supp (1) SCR 394
47 [1988] Supp 3 SCR770
48 [ 1976 ] 1 SCR 552
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 209
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

As noted earlier, Ramakrishna Ram Nath (supra) held that the power
to repeal is co-extensive with the power to amend, or make a law. It was
also held that “(T)he power has to be seen at the time when the repealing
legislation is being enacted. […] However, the Legislature should have the
competence at the time when such a repealing law is being enacted.”
113. In the present case, the retrospective effect, given to the
amendment, which was brought into force, with eﬀect from 2006, cannot in
any way save it, after the coming into force of the GST laws, on 01.07.2017.
Nor can there can be any argument that the amendment made in February,
2018, is traceable to Article 246A. On this aspect, this court held in Union
of India v Mohit Mineral Pvt. Ltd49. that:
“ The expression used in article 246A is ‘power to make laws with
respect to goods and service tax’. The power to make law, thus, is not
general power related to a general entry rather it speciﬁcally relates
to goods and services tax. When express power is there to make law
regarding goods and services tax, we fail to comprehend that how such
power shall not include power to levy cess on goods and services tax.
True, that the Constitution (One Hundred and First Amendment) Act,
2016 was passed to subsume various taxes, surcharges and cesses
into one tax but the constitutional provision does not indicate that
henceforth no surcharge or cess shall be levied.”
114. As far as the Maharashtra appeals are concerned, the assessees’
grievance is that the retrospective amendments, made to the Maharashtra
VAT Act, were void. On 15.04.2017, the State published Maharashtra Tax
Laws (Levy, Amendment and Validation) Act 2017 in the Government
Gazette thereby amending various provisions of various Acts. In paragraph
No. 26 of the MVAT Act, 2002, Sections 6(A), 6(B) and 6(C) were
inserted. The eﬀect of these was to require a mandatory pre-deposit of
10% of the disputed tax liability. This was challenged, and the Nagpur
Bench of the Bombay High Court in Anshul Impex Private Ltd. v. State
of Maharashtra50 (hereinafter, “Anshul Impex Private Ltd”) held the
amendment inapplicable to a lis which had started in 2011. The state again

49 2018 (13) SCR 139
50 STA No. 2/2018 in a Judgment delivered on 28th September, 2018
210 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

amended the enactment, through ordinance i.e. Maharashtra Ordinance No.
VI of 2019, published in the Government Gazette on 6th March, 2019. By
the Ordinance the State of Maharashtra inserted an explanation w.e.f. 15th
April 2017. According to the state, the explanation was inserted for the
purpose of removal of doubts, in view of the Judgment of Nagpur Bench
of the court in Anshul Impex Private Ltd. (supra). On 9th July 2019, the
Maharashtra Tax Laws (Levy, Amendment and Validation) Act 2019 was
enacted. It was published in the Government Gazette on 9th July 2019.
The Ordinance was replaced by the enactment of the State Legislature
inserting various provisions including the said explanation to Section 26
(6C) of the MVAT Act, 2002. The explanation had the eﬀect of clarifying
that the pre-deposit requirements applied to pre-2017 appeals and revisions.
This was challenged. The High Court, by a Full Bench ruling51 upheld the
amendment. It was held that
“The State Government has legislative competence to remove the
substratum of foundation of a Judgment retrospectively. The State
Government is empowered to carry out amendment suitably to amend
the law by use of appropriate phraseology removing the defects pointed
out by the Court in any judgment and by amending the law inconsistent
with the law declared by the Court so that the defects which were
pointed out were never on the statute for eﬀective enforcement of law.
There is no judicial encroachment directly or indirectly by the State
Government by inserting amendment which are the subject matter of
these petitions as sought to be canvassed by the learned senior counsel
for the petitioner.
. In our view curing the defect pointed out by any Court through a
judgment or simplicitor removing such defects does not amount to
encroachment directly or indirectly or overruling the view taken by
the Court or overreaching the powers of the State Government by
nullifying the eﬀect of the law laid down by the Court.”
115. In the opinion of this court, there is no quarrel with the proposition
that a legislative body is competent to enact a curative legislation with

51 United Projects v State of Maharashtra (Writ Petition (ST.) No. 11589 of 2021, and
Writ Petition No. 13754 of 2018, decided on 12.07.2022
THE STATE OF TELANGANA & ORS. v. M/S TIRUMALA 211
CONSTRUCTIONS [S. RAVINDRA BHAT, J.]

retrospective eﬀect. Yet, the same vice that attaches itself to the Gujarat
amendment, i.e. lack of competence on the date the amendment was
enacted i.e. in this case, 09.07.2019, the Maharashtra legislature ceased to
have any authority over the subject matter, because the original entry 54
had undergone a substantial change, and the power to change the VAT Act,
ceased, on 01.07.2017, when the GST regime came into eﬀect. Therefore, for
the same reasons, as in the other cases, the amendments to the Maharashtra
VAT Act cannot survive.
VI. Conclusions
116. In view of the foregoing discussion and conclusions, the ﬁndings
of the court in these cases are:
(i) Section 19 of the Constitution (101st Amendment) Act, 2016 and
Article 246A enacted in exercise of constituent power, formed
part of the transitional arrangement for the limited duration of
its operation, and had the eﬀect of continuing the operation of
inconsistent laws for the period(s) speciﬁed by it and, by virtue of
its operation, allowed state legislatures and Parliament to amend
or repeal such existing laws.
(ii) Since other provisions of the said Amendment Act, had the eﬀect
of deleting heads of legislation, from List I and List II (of the
Seventh Schedule to the Constitution of India),both Section 19
and Article 246A reﬂected the constituent expression that existing
laws would continue and could be amended. The source or ﬁelds
of legislation, to the extent they were deleted from the two lists,
for a brief while, were contained in Section 19. As a result, there
were no limitations on the power to amend.
(iii) The above ﬁnding is in view of the vacuum created by the coming
into force of the 101st Amendment, which resulted in deletion of
the heads of legislation in the two lists aforesaid.
(iv) The amendments in question, made to the Telangana VAT Act,
and the Gujarat VAT Act, after 01.07.2017 were correctly held
void, for want of legislative competence, by the two High
Courts (Telangana and Gujarat High Court). The judgment of
212 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [2023] 15 S.C.R.

the Bombay High Court is, for the above reasons, held to be in
error; it is set aside; the amendment to the Maharashtra Act, to
the extent it required pre-deposit is held void.
117. The appeals (and any other special leave petitions) ﬁled by the
States of Telangana and Gujarat are hereby dismissed in the above terms;
the appeals of the assessees against the judgment of the Bombay High Court
(i.e., Civil Appeal No. 2730-2733/2023 & SLP (C) No. 7776/2023), succeed
and are allowed. There shall be no order on costs.

Headnotes prepared by: Appeals disposed of.
Ankit Gyan

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