Case Comment by Akinchan Aggarwal, Advocate — B.A. (Hons.) Gold Medalist, LL.B. (University Rank 2), LL.M. (Dispute Resolution), UGC–NET, Ph.D. (Pursuing)
In September 2023 the Allahabad High Court dismissed a writ petition that had been pending before it since 1999, and told the petitioner it was free to go to the Supreme Court under Article 131 instead.
The petitioner could not go to the Supreme Court under Article 131. Not on those facts, not on any facts, not ever. The liberty granted was liberty to do something the law did not permit it to do.
On 21 August 2026 the Supreme Court set that order aside. The reasoning takes barely a page, and it turns on a distinction that every law student learns and a surprising number of courts forget: the word "State" does not mean the same thing everywhere in the Constitution.
The case at a glance
Lucknow Development Authority v. Union of India & Ors.
Civil Appeal No. 11201 of 2026 (arising out of SLP (C) No. 29619 of 2026)
2026 INSC 923 | 2026 LiveLaw (SC) 864
Bench: Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice Sheel Nagu
Decided: 21 August 2026 | Reportable
Result: Impugned order set aside; writ petition remitted to the High Court for fresh decision, expeditiously.
The Facts
The Lucknow Development Authority had developed a colony and allotted plots and flats in it. Officers of the Union of India and of the defence establishments were, on the LDA's case, interfering with the physical possession of those allottees, claiming the land belonged to them.
In 1999 the LDA filed a writ petition — Writ C No. 3639 of 1999 — before the Allahabad High Court, Lucknow Bench. The respondents were the Union of India through the Secretary, Ministry of Defence; the GOC-in-C, Central Command; and the Station Commander, Sub-Area, Cantonment, Lucknow. Later, Swarg Ashram Shakari Awas Samiti Limited and the State of Uttar Pradesh, through the Principal Secretary, Revenue, were impleaded as respondents.
The High Court, as its order records, made every effort to have the officers of the LDA, the State and the Union resolve the matter between themselves. Those efforts failed. On 19 September 2023 it dismissed the writ petition, holding that a dispute between the State of Uttar Pradesh and the Union of India could not be decided by it, and granting the parties liberty to proceed under Article 131.
By then the petition had been pending for twenty-four years. It has now been remitted, unheard on merits, into its twenty-eighth.
The First Error: Recasting Who the Parties Were
The Supreme Court's first observation is the one that does most of the work, and it is disarmingly simple.
The High Court had treated the dispute as one between the State of Uttar Pradesh and the Union of India. But the State of Uttar Pradesh had not invoked the writ jurisdiction at all. It had been impleaded as a respondent, and belatedly at that. The writ petitioner was the LDA.
A court determines its jurisdiction on the array of parties and the reliefs actually before it. It cannot reimagine the litigation as a contest between two entities that are not the contesting parties, and then decline jurisdiction over the reimagined version. In the Supreme Court's words, the High Court "committed a gross error in visualising the dispute as one between the SoUP and the UoI."
And the reason the LDA is not the State is a proposition of company-law simplicity: it is a separate juristic person. It is constituted under the Uttar Pradesh Urban Planning and Development Act, 1973, for planned development of its development area. It owes its existence to Section 4 of that Act, which makes it a body corporate. Being a body corporate is precisely the condition of having a legal personality distinct from whoever created you. The Court put it flatly: the appellant "cannot be equated with the SoUP."
The Holding: Article 12 Is Not Article 131
Then comes the ratio. This is the passage to memorise:
"The expression 'States' in Article 131 refers to the constituent States of the Union enlisted in the First Schedule of the Constitution, as distinct from a 'State' defined in Article 12. While the appellant may fall within Article 12 as an instrumentality of the State, it is not a State for the purposes of Article 131. The jurisdiction under clauses (a), (b) and (c) of Article 131 can be invoked only by the States specified in the First Schedule, and not by any authority or instrumentality covered by Article 12."
The Additional Solicitor General, Mr. K.M. Nataraj, appearing for the Union, did not dispute the position. The Court recorded that it "does not admit of any doubt."
Why That Is Right, on the Text Alone
Students tend to learn this as a rule to be remembered. It is better understood as something you can read off the page, and the key is the opening five words of Article 12.
Article 12 begins: "In this Part, unless the context otherwise requires..." — and then defines "the State" to include the Government and Parliament of India, the Government and Legislature of each State, and all local or other authorities within the territory of India or under the control of the Government of India.
"In this Part." Part III. That definition was drafted for one job: identifying who a fundamental right can be enforced against. It is expressly self-limiting. It reaches Part IV only because Article 36 separately borrows it. It has never travelled anywhere else, and it certainly does not travel into Part V, Chapter IV, where Article 131 sits.
The expansive Article 12 idea of the State — the one built up through the instrumentality-and-agency cases, sweeping in corporations, boards, universities and authorities — exists so that a citizen whose fundamental rights are violated by a body that is government in substance cannot be defeated by the form in which government chose to organise itself. That is a rights-protective doctrine. It expands liability. It does not expand a body's own standing to invoke the Supreme Court's exclusive original jurisdiction against the Union.
And Article 131 Does the Rest of the Work Itself
Article 131 confers original jurisdiction, to the exclusion of any other court, in disputes:
- (a) between the Government of India and one or more States;
- (b) between the Government of India and any State or States on one side and one or more other States on the other; or
- (c) between two or more States,
— and only if and in so far as the dispute involves any question (whether of law or fact) on which the existence or extent of a legal right depends. A proviso excludes disputes arising out of any treaty, agreement, covenant, engagement, sanad or similar instrument entered into before the Constitution commenced and continuing in operation, or which itself provides that this jurisdiction shall not extend to such a dispute.
Every one of the three clauses names its parties. The jurisdiction is not defined by subject matter; it is defined by who is on each side. There is no residual clause, no "or any other authority", no room for construction. A body that is not a First Schedule State simply does not appear anywhere in the provision.
This Is Not New Law — and That Matters
The headlines report this as a holding. It is more accurately a reiteration, and the point has been settled for over half a century.
In State of Bihar v. Union of India, (1970) 1 SCC 67, the State of Bihar filed suits under Article 131 over alleged short deliveries of iron and steel for the Gandak Project, impleading not only the Union but also Hindustan Steel Ltd and the Indian Iron and Steel Company. The Supreme Court held the suits not maintainable. The specification of parties in Article 131 is not of the inclusive kind; a claim involving a party outside the named entities cannot be entertained; and — squarely on the present point — the extended definition of "State" in Article 12 does not carry over to Article 131.
So when the Supreme Court says in 2026 that the position "does not admit of any doubt", that is not judicial understatement. It is a statement that a High Court dismissed a twenty-four-year-old writ petition by reference to a jurisdiction that a 1969 decision had already put beyond the petitioner's reach.
Who Can and Cannot Invoke Article 131
| Entity | Article 12 "State"? | Can invoke Article 131? |
|---|---|---|
| Government of India | Yes | Yes |
| A State in the First Schedule | Yes | Yes |
| Development authority (LDA, DDA, APCRDA) | Yes, as an instrumentality | No |
| Municipal corporation, panchayat | Yes, as a local authority | No |
| Public sector undertaking, statutory board | Ordinarily yes | No |
| Central or State university | Ordinarily yes | No |
| Private person or company | No | No — State of Bihar (1970) |
A corollary worth noticing. The Court did not say "States" — it said "the constituent States of the Union enlisted in the First Schedule". The First Schedule has two parts: The States and The Union territories. On that reasoning, a Union territory is not a "State" for Article 131 purposes either, notwithstanding that it appears in the same Schedule. This point did not arise for decision in the LDA case and is offered as a reading of the language used, not as something the Court held.
The Second Requirement People Forget: A "Legal Right"
Even where the parties are right, Article 131 has a further gate. The dispute must involve a question on which the existence or extent of a legal right depends. The Supreme Court has consistently read that as requiring a right bearing on the constitutional relationship between the Union and the States — not merely any justiciable claim that a State happens to have.
The area remains genuinely unsettled at one edge. In State of M.P. v. Union of India, (2011) 12 SCC 268, the Court observed that since central laws can be challenged before High Courts under Article 226 and before the Supreme Court under Article 32, ordinarily no recourse should be permitted to challenge the validity of a central law under Article 131. In State of Jharkhand v. State of Bihar, (2015) 2 SCC 431, a Bench was unable to agree with that view and referred the question to a larger Bench. Candidates should know that the reference exists.
For the scope of "legal right" itself, the concurring opinions in State of Karnataka v. Union of India, (1977) 4 SCC 608 — where Karnataka challenged the Union's decision to appoint a commission of inquiry into allegations against its Chief Minister — remain the standard reference, alongside State of West Bengal v. Union of India (1963), the earliest of the major Article 131 decisions.
A historical footnote that examiners enjoy: Article 131A, which gave the Supreme Court exclusive jurisdiction over questions as to the constitutional validity of central laws, was inserted by the Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976 and omitted by the Forty-third Amendment in 1977. It is not part of the Constitution today.
What a Statutory Authority Should Actually Do
Strip away the constitutional vocabulary and this case is about a development authority that could not get a court to hear it for twenty-four years. The practical map is short:
- Article 226 is the remedy. A statutory authority aggrieved by the Union or its officers goes to the High Court. That the Union is the respondent does not oust the writ jurisdiction, and the fact that a State government is somewhere in the background does not convert the case into a Centre–State dispute.
- A civil suit lies where the claim is one of title or possession, subject to the ordinary bars and to the requirement of notice under Section 80 of the Code of Civil Procedure where the Union is a defendant.
- Article 131 is not available, and a High Court order granting "liberty" to invoke it confers nothing.
- If the State government genuinely is the aggrieved party, then the State — not its instrumentality — must itself be the plaintiff, and the dispute must engage a legal right of the kind Article 131 contemplates.
The point that gives this short order its weight.
A dismissal coupled with liberty ordinarily leaves the litigant somewhere to go. Here it did not. The LDA's writ petition was gone, and the only door it had been pointed towards was one it had no standing to open. Had the LDA not appealed, a claim first brought in 1999 would have ended without any court ever deciding whether the land belonged to it or to the defence establishment. That is why the Supreme Court called the order "wholly wrong" rather than merely erroneous — and why "it is indeed unfortunate" is doing a great deal of work in paragraph 5.
For the Exam
| Point |
|---|
| 1. "State" in Article 12 and "States" in Article 131 are different concepts. Article 12 is expressly confined to Part III by its own opening words, and reaches Part IV only through Article 36. |
| 2. Article 131 means the constituent States in the First Schedule. Instrumentalities, local authorities, boards, PSUs and universities are excluded however clearly they are Article 12 "State". |
| 3. The proposition dates to State of Bihar v. Union of India, (1970) 1 SCC 67, which also holds that a private party cannot be impleaded in an Article 131 proceeding. |
| 4. Article 131 requires a dispute involving a question on which the existence or extent of a legal right depends, bearing on the Union–State constitutional relationship. |
| 5. Whether a central law's validity can be challenged under Article 131 is pending before a larger Bench on the reference in State of Jharkhand v. State of Bihar (2015). |
| 6. The jurisdiction is exclusive ("to the exclusion of any other court") and subject to the proviso on pre-Constitution treaties, covenants and sanads. |
| 7. Article 131A was inserted by the 42nd Amendment (1976) and omitted by the 43rd (1977). |
| 8. A High Court cannot decline jurisdiction by recharacterising the parties before it. Jurisdiction is judged on the array as framed. |
The order runs to three pages and ten paragraphs. It decides nothing new. But it is worth reading closely for the reason that the best short orders usually are: it shows how much turns on reading two words in their own place, and what it costs a litigant when a court does not.
Related on Lawizard
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- AOR Exam 2027: Syllabus, Eligibility and Complete Guide — Article 131 is core syllabus for Leading Cases and Practice & Procedure.
Disclaimer: This is a case comment on the order of the Supreme Court of India in Lucknow Development Authority v. Union of India & Ors., Civil Appeal No. 11201 of 2026, reported as 2026 INSC 923 and 2026 LiveLaw (SC) 864, decided on 21 August 2026 by a Bench of Dipankar Datta and Sheel Nagu, JJ. It has been prepared from the text of the order itself and is written for the guidance of law students and candidates preparing for judicial services, the AOR examination, UGC-NET and university examinations. The single indented passage is a direct quotation from the order; all other analysis, including the reading of the opening words of Article 12 and the observation regarding Union territories, is the author's own commentary and is identified as such in the text. Case citations to State of Bihar v. Union of India, State of Karnataka v. Union of India, State of M.P. v. Union of India and State of Jharkhand v. State of Bihar are given for reference and readers should consult the reports in full. Judgments are summarised in outline only. This is general legal information and not legal advice; readers with an actual dispute should consult a lawyer. Please read our Disclaimer for more details.
