Context:

The Rajasthan Assembly passed three bills to counter the applicability of the Centre’s agriculture laws in the State. The move comes after the Punjab Assembly adopted a resolution against the farm laws and unanimously passed four bills to counter the Centre’s contentious legislation.

Effect on Federalism

• Agriculture being a state subject under the Constitution, any central legislation seeking to remove barriers to trade and creating a unified national market for farm produce could weaken federalism.
• The main subjects of the three acts are ‘agriculture’ and ‘market’ that are essentially state subjects as per the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution.
  • The Seventh Schedule (Article 246) places “agriculture” in entry 14 and “market and fairs” in entry 28 of the State List.

Can the states refuse to implement the central laws

• State assemblies can pass resolutions on any subject, to express the collective opinion of their members.
• Disputes between Centre-State falls under the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court under Article 131, where SC checks whether the state’s legal rights are not breached.
• However, if it’s upheld by the court that implementation of centre’s legislation is constitutional then states have no other option other that will tantamount to failure of constitutional machinery under Article 356 or Article 365 in the state and the President’s Rule will be imposed dismissing the current dispensation in the state.