Published Paper Details:

Indian constitution has all the features of federal constitution, the centre and states are independent to make laws in the respective field assigned by the constitution. However, the centre has supremacy in certain situations that is also mentioned in the Constitution itself. If either government tries to transgress the limits an independent judiciary plays an important role as the apex court is considered the protector and guarantor of the Constitution. The concept of federalism in India keeps changing since the commencement of the Constitution. The Indian model of federalism may be one of the most interesting types in the world, characterised by the fact that it begins with a paradox: "centralised federalism". This paper involves the temporal framework in the discourse on Indian federalism by tracing the history of the country's federal structure in four different time periods, from the birth of the India as a republic to these contemporary times. This shows how the political factors are prevailing in each of these four different phases served to strengthen the Indian federal discourse, despite the centralised constitutional set-up of Indian polity. This paper tries to achieve the aim of highlighting the different patterns of Indian federal response shaped by the various political factors over the time and provides the recommendations for strengthening India's federal structure.