Which one among the following pairs of Subjects and Lists under the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution of India is not correctly matched ?

Correct — D, Census : Concurrent List. Census is Entry 69 of the Union List, so pairing it with the Concurrent List is the one mismatch in the set. Only Parliament can legislate on the census, which is why it is conducted by the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India under a central Act rather than by the States, and why a decennial count can be planned as one nationwide operation. The other three pairs are sound. Forests sat in the State List until 1976, when the Forty-second Amendment moved them, along with the protection of wild animals and birds, into the Concurrent List as Entries 17A and 17B — the same section of that amendment omitted the corresponding State List entries, which is the cleanest proof that the shift happened. Taxes on lands and buildings is Entry 49 of the State List, and there is a general rule hiding behind it worth carrying: the Concurrent List has no ordinary head of taxation at all, so an entry beginning 'Taxes on' is essentially never Concurrent. Insurance is Entry 47 of the Union List, and has been from the start. One small oddity in the printing: the paper writes 'Taxes on land and building' in the singular where the Constitution reads 'Taxes on lands and buildings'. Nothing turns on it.

• (a)Forest : Concurrent List — Correctly matched. Forests were shifted from the State List to the Concurrent List as Entry 17A by the Forty-second Amendment in 1976.
• (b)Taxes on land and building : State List — Correctly matched. 'Taxes on lands and buildings' is Entry 49 of the State List — one of the few significant taxes left wholly with the States.
• (c)Insurance : Union List — Correctly matched. 'Insurance' is Entry 47 of the Union List, which is why insurance regulation is central.

The Seventh Schedule divides legislative subjects into three lists: the Union List, on which only Parliament may legislate; the State List, reserved to the State Legislatures; and the Concurrent List, on which both may legislate, with the Union law prevailing in case of repugnancy under Article 254. The lists have not stayed fixed. The Forty-second Amendment of 1976 moved education, forests, weights and measures, the protection of wild animals and birds, and the administration of justice from the State List into the Concurrent List, and the One Hundred and First Amendment of 2016 rewrote several tax entries to make room for the goods and services tax.

A not-correctly-matched item is quickest to solve by finding the one entry you are certain about rather than by checking all four. Two reliable anchors help here. The first is the Forty-second Amendment's list of transfers, because forests appear on it and the pairing in option (a) is therefore right rather than wrong — the tempting error is to remember forests as a State subject from an older textbook. The second is the taxation heuristic: the Concurrent List carries no general power to tax, its only fiscal entries being the recovery of claims, stamp duties other than rates, and fees. So a pairing of any 'Taxes on ...' entry with the Concurrent List would be suspect at once, while option (b) puts a tax in the State List, exactly where it belongs. That leaves census and insurance, and both are Union subjects — Entries 69 and 47 — so the printed pair that names a list other than the Union is the mismatch.

• Census is Entry 69 of the Union List; it is conducted by the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India under a central law.
• Forests were moved from the State List into the Concurrent List as Entry 17A by the Forty-second Amendment in 1976, together with the protection of wild animals and birds as Entry 17B.
• 'Taxes on lands and buildings' is Entry 49 of the State List.
• 'Insurance' is Entry 47 of the Union List.
• The Concurrent List contains no general head of taxation — its only fiscal entries concern the recovery of claims, stamp duties other than rates, and fees — so a 'Taxes on ...' entry is practically never Concurrent.

• Remembering forests as a State subject. They have been Concurrent since 1976.
• Treating the census as a shared subject because it is executed through the State machinery; the legislative entry is Union List 69.
• Confusing a subject with the tax on that subject — 'Electricity' is Concurrent, while taxes on its consumption or sale are State List.

As a pair-matching item like this one, as a which-list-is-this-subject-in question, or as a statements item on what a particular amendment moved between the lists.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following subjects was transferred from the State List to the Concurrent List by the Forty-second Amendment to the Constitution of India?

  • (a)Public health and sanitation
  • (b)Forests
  • (c)Police
  • (d)Agriculture

  Answer(b) Forests — moved in 1976 and now Entry 17A of the Concurrent List. Public health, police and agriculture remain State subjects.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  'Census' appears in which one of the three Lists of the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution of India?

  • (a)Union List
  • (b)State List
  • (c)Concurrent List
  • (d)It appears in no List and is a residuary subject

  Answer(a) Union List — Entry 69, which is why the census is legislated for and conducted centrally.