Schedules of the Constitution: All Twelve, One at a Time

A Schedule is where the Constitution's main text sends you for detail it does not want cluttering an Article. Article 246 simply says Parliament and State Legislatures divide law-making power; the Seventh Schedule actually lists what falls where. Article 344 says there shall be official languages; the Eighth Schedule names them. The Constitution of 1950 began with eight Schedules; four more followed: the Ninth in 1951, the Tenth in 1985, the Eleventh and Twelfth together in 1992. Twelve is the number today, and the single biggest trap here is confusing which Schedule does which job, since several sound alike under exam pressure (the Ninth shields laws from judicial review, the Tenth disqualifies defecting legislators, easy to swap). This note goes through all twelve in order, with the real current numbers verified against the Constitution's own text rather than repeated from memory.

The twelve, at a glance

The Fifth and Sixth already have a full study-grade note on this site, Scheduled and Tribal Areas, covering the Tribes Advisory Council, the Governor's paragraph 5 powers, PESA and the Sixth Schedule's District and Regional Councils. This note cross-references them briefly rather than repeating that ground.

First Schedule: the States and Union Territories

Article 1 declares India "a Union of States"; the First Schedule is where those states are actually named, alongside the Union Territories, each with its territorial extent defined by reference to the reorganisation Act that created or last altered its boundary (the States Reorganisation Act, 1956 for most of the list, then later Acts including the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014 and the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019). The list is not static: whenever Parliament creates, splits, renames or transfers territory under Article 3, this is what actually gets amended, by ordinary law, not the special Article 368 procedure. Today it lists 28 States (Telangana, 2014, is the most recent) and 8 Union Territories: Delhi, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu (merged 2019), Puducherry, Chandigarh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh (the last two carved from the former state in 2019).

Second Schedule: salaries and privileges of high offices

The Second Schedule is where Articles mentioning "such emoluments as Parliament may determine" point for the default figures and privileges of the President, Governors, the Speaker/Deputy Speaker of the Lok Sabha, the Chairman/Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, the Speaker/Deputy Speaker of a State Assembly, the Chairman/Deputy Chairman of a State Legislative Council, judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts, and the CAG. As last revised (effective 1 January 2016): the President draws Rs 5 lakh a month, a Governor Rs 3.5 lakh; the Chief Justice of India Rs 2.8 lakh, other Supreme Court judges Rs 2.5 lakh; a High Court Chief Justice Rs 2.5 lakh, other High Court judges Rs 2.25 lakh. The CAG's salary is not separately fixed here; under the CAG (Duties, Powers and Conditions of Service) Act, 1971, it is pegged to equal a Supreme Court judge's. The Schedule also carries leave, pension and residence entitlements for judges and the CAG, but not the ordinary salary of MPs, MLAs, or other Ministers, which run under separate legislation.

Third Schedule: eight distinct forms of oath

Article 60's presidential oath is spelled out in the main text; everyone else's is a distinct form in the Third Schedule, grouped under eight heads (I to VIII), and matching the right form to the right office is exactly what a statement-based question tests: a Union Minister's oath of office and, separately, of secrecy; a candidate for Parliament (short form, faith to the Constitution and India's sovereignty, nothing more, not yet a member) and, separately, an elected or nominated member (longer, adding "faithfully discharge the duty upon which I am about to enter"); a Judge of the Supreme Court and the CAG, who share identical Form IV rather than each having a separate oath, worth remembering precisely because it is counter-intuitive; a State Minister's oath of office and secrecy; a candidate for, and separately a member of, a State Legislature (same split as Parliament); and a High Court Judge. Every form since the Sixteenth Amendment, 1963 adds "that I will uphold the sovereignty and integrity of India."

Fourth Schedule: seats in the Rajya Sabha

Under Articles 4(1) and 80(2), the Fourth Schedule is a state-by-state and Union-Territory table allocating Rajya Sabha seats, updated by ordinary law each time a state is reorganised. Uttar Pradesh gets the most, 31; several small states and UTs get just 1. The table's own total is 233 elected seats, covering every state plus Delhi, Puducherry and Jammu and Kashmir. Article 80(1) adds up to 12 more members nominated by the President for special knowledge in literature, science, art or social service, so the Rajya Sabha's actual strength today is 245 (233 plus 12), against a constitutional ceiling of 250.

Fifth and Sixth Schedules: Scheduled and tribal areas

Article 244(1) sends the Fifth Schedule to Scheduled Areas and Scheduled Tribes in every state except Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram; Article 244(2) sends the Sixth Schedule specifically to those four states' tribal areas. Between them, these cover the Governor's powers over Scheduled Areas, the Tribes Advisory Council, PESA's Gram Sabha provisions, and the Sixth Schedule's elected District and Regional Councils with their own legislative and (capped) judicial powers. This site's Scheduled and Tribal Areas note covers both in full; treat this paragraph as the map reference.

Seventh Schedule: the real, current subject counts

Article 246 hands legislative power to three Lists: the Union List (List I, Parliament's exclusive domain), the State List (List II, State Legislatures' domain, subject to exceptions like Article 249's national-interest override), and the Concurrent List (List III, both can legislate; under Article 254 a Union law prevails over a conflicting State one). The commonly repeated figures, 97, 66 and 47, are the original 1950 counts, and repeating them today is a genuine trap: entries have since been both omitted and inserted, unevenly. Counting the Constitution's current text entry by entry, including every entry it marks as omitted:

• Union List: 98 live entries. The original 97 lost entry 33 (omitted 1956) and entry 92 (omitted by the 101st, GST, Amendment, 2016, since it taxed newspaper advertisements now folded into GST), and gained entry 2A (armed forces in aid of civil power, 42nd Amendment), 92A (inter-State sale tax, 6th Amendment) and 92B (inter-State consignment tax, 46th Amendment). A fourth addition, 92C (tax on services, 88th Amendment, 2003) never came into force and was itself omitted by the 101st Amendment, netting to nothing. 97 minus 2 plus 3 is 98.
• State List: 59 live entries, down from 66. Seven entries were omitted, none added: entry 11 (administration of justice) and entries 19, 20 (forests; wild animals and birds), moved to the Concurrent List by the 42nd Amendment, 1976; entry 29 (education), moved the same way; entry 36 (weights and measures), folded into a new Concurrent entry the same year; and entries 52 (octroi) and 55 (advertisement tax other than newspapers), both omitted by the 101st Amendment as GST absorbed them.
• Concurrent List: 52 live entries, up from 47. Five new entries were inserted by the 42nd Amendment, 1976: 11A (administration of justice), 17A (forests), 17B (wild animals and birds), 20A (population control and family planning, genuinely new, not moved from the State List), and 33A (weights and measures, excluding standards, which stays Union). Entry 25 (education) was substituted the same year to bring it in from the State List. No entry has been omitted here.

Examples: Union covers defence (1), foreign affairs (10), banking (45), currency (36); State covers public order (1), police (2), public health (6), agriculture (14); Concurrent covers criminal law (1), marriage and divorce (5), forests (17A), education (25).

Residuary power belongs to Parliament under Article 248: subject to Article 246A (the GST carve-out), Parliament has exclusive power over any matter, including a tax, not enumerated in the Concurrent or State Lists. This is the borrowed-from-Canada design (most federations, the US and Australia included, vest residuary power in the states instead); the site's Salient Features of the Constitution note carries the full borrowed-features table. A frequent trap treats Union List entry 97, "any other matter not enumerated in List II or List III," as a second, separate residuary power: it is not, merely the Schedule's own echo of Article 248.

Eighth Schedule: 22 languages, verified

Article 344(1) uses the Eighth Schedule to define which languages the President's periodic Official Language Commission must consider; Article 351 separately directs the Union to promote Hindi, drawing primarily on Sanskrit and only secondarily on the Eighth Schedule's other languages, a distinction worth holding against a statement that inverts it. The Eighth Schedule began in 1950 with 14 languages. Sindhi was added by the 21st Amendment, 1967 (15). The 71st Amendment, 1992 added Konkani, Manipuri and Nepali (18). The 92nd Amendment, 2003 (in force 7 January 2004) added Bodo, Dogri, Maithili and Santhali, taking the count to its current total of 22. (Odia's spelling was later corrected from "Oriya" by the 96th Amendment, 2011, a renaming, not a new language.) A frequent trap mixes up which amendment added which language: the 71st's three versus the 92nd's four.

Ninth Schedule: judicial-review immunity, and its real limit

The Ninth Schedule, added by the First Amendment, 1951 (inserting Article 31B, in force 18 June 1951), does one thing: it declares that none of the Acts and Regulations it lists shall be treated as void, or ever to have become void, for being inconsistent with any Fundamental Right in Part III, "notwithstanding any judgment...of any court to the contrary." It began with 13 Acts, mostly state land-reform and Zamindari abolition laws being struck down for violating the right to property; Parliament has since added many more, mostly land-reform and reservation-related, taking the list to 284 Acts in the Constitution's current official text.

The protection is real but not absolute. In I.R. Coelho (Dead) by LRs vs State of Tamil Nadu, decided by a nine-judge bench on 11 January 2007 (Chief Justice Y.K. Sabharwal writing the main judgment), the Supreme Court held that a law inserted into the Ninth Schedule through a constitutional amendment made on or after 24 April 1973, the date of the Kesavananda Bharati judgment that laid down the basic structure doctrine, does not enjoy blanket immunity: it remains open to challenge, and can be struck down, if it violates the basic structure, tested against Articles 14, 19 and 21. Laws that entered before that date keep the fuller immunity Article 31B was written to give. This is the precise fact tested when a statement claims "no court can examine a Ninth Schedule law under any circumstances whatsoever": false, and the 24 April 1973 cutoff plus the basic structure test is exactly why.

Tenth Schedule: anti-defection, and who actually decides

The Tenth Schedule, added by the 52nd Amendment, 1985 (governing Articles 102(2) and 191(2)), disqualifies a member of a House for defection on four grounds: voluntarily giving up membership of the party they belong to (courts read this as broader than formally resigning, conduct alone can qualify); voting or abstaining contrary to a party whip without prior permission, unless condoned within fifteen days; an independently elected member joining a party after election; and a nominated member joining a party after six months from taking their seat (before that window, one free switch is allowed).

Merger is a distinct, narrower exception: a member is not disqualified if their original party merges with another and at least two-thirds of that legislature party agree. This is the only escape route left today; the old "split" exception, which let a group as small as one-third break away without penalty, was removed by the 91st Amendment, 2003, closing that loophole.

Who decides is the Chairman or Speaker of the House the member belongs to (or, on their own case, a member the House elects for that purpose). Paragraph 7 of the original Tenth Schedule tried to bar courts entirely. In Kihoto Hollohan vs Zachillhu, decided 18 February 1992 by a five-judge Constitution Bench (Justice M.N. Venkatachaliah writing the majority opinion), the Supreme Court struck down paragraph 7 as unconstitutional, for want of the state ratification that Article 368(2) requires for an amendment touching the courts' powers, while upholding the rest of the Schedule. The Speaker or Chairman acts as a tribunal here, and the decision stays subject to judicial review under Articles 136, 226 and 227, though confined to jurisdictional error, mala fide action, breach of natural justice, or perversity, not a fresh appeal on the merits.

Eleventh Schedule: 29 subjects for Panchayats

Added by the 73rd Amendment, 1992 (Article 243G, in force 24 April 1993), the Eleventh Schedule lists 29 subjects a State Legislature may devolve to Panchayats: agriculture, land reform, minor irrigation, rural housing and drinking water, roads and electrification, poverty alleviation, primary education, health and family welfare, and welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, among others. Devolution is permissive ("may by law endow"), not automatic, which is why how much of this list a given state's Panchayats actually exercise varies widely.

Twelfth Schedule: 18 subjects for Municipalities

Added alongside it by the 74th Amendment, 1992 (Article 243W, in force 1 June 1993), the Twelfth Schedule lists 18 subjects for Municipalities: urban planning, land-use regulation, roads and bridges, water supply, public health and solid waste management, fire services, urban forestry, slum improvement, urban poverty alleviation, and regulation of slaughterhouses and tanneries, among others. Like the Eleventh Schedule, this is a menu the State Legislature draws from, not power transferred automatically.

The exam's real trap: matching the number, not the theme

Almost every hard question here is a matching exercise dressed up as a statement question, and the traps repeat in predictable shapes:

• Ninth versus Tenth: the Ninth shields laws from judicial review; the Tenth disqualifies legislators for defection. Describing one and labelling it the other is a fabricated hybrid, exactly the swap this chapter gets tested on most.
• Fifth versus Seventh versus Eighth on tribal land protection: that is a Fifth Schedule power (the Governor's paragraph 5), not the Seventh (legislative subjects) or Eighth (languages).
• The stale 97/66/47 figures, the 1950 originals. A source stating current Seventh Schedule counts without noting the 42nd and 101st Amendments' effect should be treated as unverified, the way this note's own 98/59/52 count was checked against the Constitution's text.
• Eleventh and Twelfth counts swapped: 29 for Panchayats, 18 for Municipalities, a classic pairing trap.
• Third Schedule's shared oath: assuming the CAG has a separate oath form from Supreme Court judges, when both use identical Form IV.

Quick revision points

• First: States and UTs with territorial extent; 28 States, 8 UTs today.
• Second: Emoluments and privileges of the President, Governors, presiding officers, SC/HC judges, the CAG.
• Third: Eight forms of oath; CAG shares the SC judges' Form IV, not a separate one.
• Fourth: Rajya Sabha seats; 233 elected plus 12 nominated, 245 total against a 250 ceiling.
• Fifth: Scheduled Areas (Article 244(1)); full note is Scheduled and Tribal Areas.
• Sixth: Tribal areas of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, Mizoram (Article 244(2)); same note.
• Seventh: Union 98, State 59, Concurrent 52 live entries today, not the 1950-original 97/66/47; residuary power is Article 248, Canadian model, not entry 97.
• Eighth: 22 languages; 92nd Amendment, 2003 added Bodo, Dogri, Maithili, Santhali.
• Ninth: 1st Amendment, 1951 (Article 31B); shields listed laws from Part III, except amendments after 24 April 1973, per I.R. Coelho (2007).
• Tenth: 52nd Amendment, 1985; four disqualification grounds, decided by the Speaker/Chairman subject to judicial review (Kihoto Hollohan, 1992); the split escape closed by the 91st Amendment, 2003.
• Eleventh: 29 subjects for Panchayats, 73rd Amendment, 1992.
• Twelfth: 18 subjects for Municipalities, 74th Amendment, 1992.

Twelve Schedules, twelve distinct jobs: once the number-to-content mapping above is solid, practise the statement-based questions built on swapping one Schedule's job for another's.