'Does amendment denude States from making laws on cooperative societies'

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday commenced hearing to examine whether 97th constitutional amendment denuded states of their exclusive power to enact laws to deal with management of cooperative societies, saying slightest in-road will render the power of States as non-exclusive .

The 97th constitutional amendment, which dealt with issues related to effective management of the co-operative societies in the country was passed by Parliament in December 2011 and had come into effect from February 15, 2012.

The change in the constitution has amended Article 19(1)(c) to give protection to the cooperatives and inserted Article 43 B and Part IX B, relating to them.

A bench of Justices R F Nariman, K M Joseph and B R Gavai is hearing appeals filed by Centre and other parties against the Gujarat High Court order of April 22, 2013 by which it had quashed certain provisions of the constitutional amendment.

During the hearing, the bench told Attorney General K K Venugopal that it wanted to examine if the amendment interfered with the exclusive power of the

State under Article 246 (3) with regard to enacting law relating to cooperatives as it is the state subject.

Venugopal said the amendment was enacted to bring in uniformity in the management of cooperative societies and it does not take away the powers of the State to enact laws with regard to them.

The bench said if the Centre wanted to achieve uniformity then the only way available was to take the recourse under Article 252 of the Constitution which deals with power of Parliament to legislate for two or more States by consent.

You cannot short circuit this provision , the bench said, adding that in effect what the government has done is that the power of States to enact laws with respect to cooperative society is no longer exclusive.

It said, Slightest in-road will render the power of States as non-exclusive .

Venugopal said that entry 44 of List I (union list) deals with multi-state cooperatives and there are several judgments dealing with the issue.

Justice Joseph told Venugopal that entry 44 of List I does not have the word cooperative societies' while entry 32 of List II (State list) has the word cooperative societies'.