FEDERAL FORM WITHOUT FEDERAL SUBSTANCE: ANALYZING THE GST COUNCIL AS A CONSTITUTIONAL INSTITUTION OF COOPERATIVE FEDERALISM IN INDIA
AUTHOR – HRADYESH CHATURVEDI, RESEARCH SCHOLAR AT SCHOOL OF LAW, JIWAJI UNIVERSITY, GWALIOR
BEST CITATION – HRADYESH CHATURVEDI, FEDERAL FORM WITHOUT FEDERAL SUBSTANCE: ANALYZING THE GST COUNCIL AS A CONSTITUTIONAL INSTITUTION OF COOPERATIVE FEDERALISM IN INDIA, INDIAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL REVIEW (IJLR), 6 (8) OF 2026, PG. 842-847, APIS – 3920 – 0001 & ISSN – 2583-2344.
ABSTRACT
Can an institution be constitutionally federal in its design, Yet functionally unitary in its operation? This cushion arises at the. Part of any serious scholarly engagement in the GST Council, the body that was introduced to India in 2016 as the institution embodiment of cooperative federalism and has since then become the primary structure within which the relationship between the Union and its constituent states is negotiated, contested and ultimately determined. The 101st Constitution Amendment inserted Article 279A into the Constitution which created the GST Council as a joint deliberative forum for the Centre and the states. In doing this, it appeared to inaugurate a new era of structural federal partnership in fiscal governance, where appearances, however, can be constitutionally deceptive.
This paper argues that the GST council despite its federal vocabulary and constitutional pedigree operates in an as an institution that systematically privileges the Centre dominance over genuine state participation and efficiency of the states. Its voting architecture, institutional dependencies, agenda setting mechanisms, and decision-making culture collectively produces several outcomes which reflect central preferences far more faithfully than they reflect the federal bargain the Council was actually created to honour. Drawing upon such constitutional law, political economy and judicial pronouncements, this paper examines the GST councils as an institution and exposes the widening gap which exist between its federal form and its unitary substance.
In pursuing this argument, this paper engages with four specific research questions. First, Does the constitutional design of the GST Council genuinely reflect the principle? Of cooperative federalism or does it merely simulate them? Second, how does the voting architecture of the Council entrench central dominance and reduce states to peripheral participants in fiscal decision-making? 3rd What does the political economy of central state bargaining within the GST Council reveal about the real distribution of powers in Indias fiscal federal framework? 4th and last have judicial interventions, particularly the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling and Union of India versus Mohit Minerals Pvt. Ltd. (2022), Meaningfully corrected the federal imbalances within the GST Council, or merely have acknowledged them?