State of West Bengal v Union of India

State of West Bengal filed a suit against the Union of India alleging that the Parliament is not
empowered to make the laws authorizing the union of India to acquire the land that is vested in the
State.
The prime issue at the hand of the Court was to decide
1. Whether the State of West Bengal was a sovereign authority?
2. Whether the Parliament has the legislative competence to enact laws for the compulsory
acquisition of the land in the State?
Arguments Advanced:
The Constitution having adopted the federal principle of government the States share the
sovereignty of the nation with the Union, and therefore power of the Parliament does not
extend to enacting legislation for depriving the States of property vested in them as sovereign
authorities.
Property vested in the States by virtue of Art. 294(1) cannot be diverted to Union purposes by
compulsion of Parliamentary legislation.
If power be exercised by the Union to acquire State property under Entry 42 of the
Concurrent List, similar power may also be exercised by the States in respect of Union
property and even to re-acquire the property from the Union by exercise of the State's
legislative power. The power under Entry 42 can therefore never be effectively exercised by
the Parliament.
The basis of all these arguments is the assumption that the States have all the attributes of full
sovereignty and the exercise of the Union authority whether legislative or executive that encroaches
their sovereignty is void.
Ratio of the Court

The legal theory on which the Constitution was based was the withdrawal or resumption of
all the powers of sovereignty into the people of this country and the distribution of these
powers save those withheld from both the Union and the States by reason of the provisions
of Part III - between the Union and the States. A truly federal form of Government
envisages a contract or agreement between independent and sovereign units to surrender
partially their authority in their common interest and vesting it in a Union and retaining
the residue of the authority in the constituent units. Our Constitution was not the result of
any such contract or agreement: Units constituting a unitary State which were non-sovereign
were transformed by abdication of power into a Union.
The Court held that not all the features requisite for the a constitution to be a federal
constitution were present and therefore the India was no federation but had a unitary form of
government.