Question

Under the scheme of distribution of legislative powers in the Constitution of India, a subject which is not enumerated in either the State List or the Concurrent List falls within the residuary field of legislation. Such residuary power is vested in:

• A. The Supreme Court of India
• B. The Parliament
• C. The State Legislatures
• D. The President of India

Hint:

Remember Article 248 along with Entry 97 of the Union List. Both together establish Parliament's exclusive residuary legislative power.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is B

The Seventh Schedule tries to list every subject of legislation in advance, but new subjects keep emerging that the framers could not have anticipated, such as internet law or space activity.

1. The Supreme Court of India: courts decide cases, they do not make statutes, so handing them residuary power would blur the line between adjudication and legislation, which the Constitution keeps separate.
2. The Parliament: since India is described as a union with a strong centre, the framers chose to give the benefit of the doubt for any unforeseen subject to the national legislature rather than to the individual states, which is why Parliament holds this power under Article 248.
3. The State Legislatures: giving residuary power to the states would mean many different bodies could each claim the same new subject differently, producing an inconsistent patchwork of laws across the country, which defeats the point of having a uniform rule for the whole nation.
4. The President of India: the President functions on the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers and does not independently legislate; whatever legislative role the President plays is tied to Parliament's own processes, not a separate residuary field.

Centralising this power in Parliament keeps the treatment of new and unforeseen subjects uniform across the country.

The correct answer is the Parliament.

Answer 2

A useful way to check this is to look at how each organ of government is structured under the Constitution and ask whether that structure is built to make laws at all, since only a law-making body can hold residuary legislative power.

1. The Supreme Court of India: structurally, the Supreme Court is designed to hear and decide cases brought before it, drawing on existing law; it has no chamber, no voting members representing constituencies, and no procedure for enacting a bill, so it structurally cannot hold legislative power of any kind.
2. The Parliament: Parliament is structurally the Union's law-making body, composed of elected and nominated members who debate and pass bills, and Article 248 attaches the residuary field to this very body because it is the one institution built to legislate for the country as a whole.
3. The State Legislatures: each State Legislature is structurally built to legislate only for its own state and only within the subjects assigned to it; it has no mechanism or mandate to claim a subject that falls outside the State and Concurrent Lists.
4. The President of India: the President's office is structurally executive, exercising powers on ministerial advice, and any ordinance-making capability is an emergency substitute for Parliament rather than an independent, permanent legislative power over unlisted subjects.

Only Parliament is structurally the body suited to and constitutionally assigned the task of legislating on subjects outside the three lists.

Therefore, the correct answer is the Parliament.