First Administrative Reforms Commission on Centre-State Relations

The First Administrative Reforms Commission (First ARC) was constituted by the Government of India through a resolution of the Ministry of Home Affairs dated 5 January 1966, with the mandate to examine the public administration system of the country and recommend reforms to make it a more effective instrument of national development. Originally chaired by Morarji Desai and, after his entry into the Union Cabinet in 1967, by K. Hanumanthaiah, the Commission operated through a series of specialised study teams and working groups. Among its constituted study teams was one tasked specifically with examining Centre-State relations, a subject of growing political salience as the Indian Union confronted the first non-Congress state governments after the 1967 general elections and the attendant frictions over jurisdiction, finance, and administrative coordination. The Commission's authority derived from executive resolution rather than statute, and its recommendations were advisory, requiring acceptance and implementation by the Union government and Parliament.

The Commission's working method followed a structured sequence. Each subject was assigned to a study team composed of officials, parliamentarians, and domain experts, which collected evidence through questionnaires circulated to state governments, oral testimony from administrators and political functionaries, and analysis of constitutional provisions and administrative practice. The study team would draft findings that were then deliberated upon by the full Commission, which issued formal reports to the Government of India. On Centre-State relations, the Commission examined the constitutional distribution of legislative and administrative powers under the Seventh Schedule's three Lists, the financial transfers governed by Articles 268 to 281, and the mechanisms of inter-governmental consultation. The reports were tabled before Parliament, after which the Union government issued Action Taken statements indicating acceptance, rejection, or modification of each recommendation.

A central procedural and institutional recommendation flowing from the Commission's work on federal relations was the proposal to establish an Inter-State Council as a standing forum for consultation between the Union and the states, drawing on the dormant enabling provision of Article 263 of the Constitution. The Commission also recommended the delegation of greater functions to the states, the rationalisation of centrally sponsored schemes, and the constitution of an expert body to advise on the devolution of resources. It addressed the role of the Governor, the use of the All India Services as instruments of national integration, and the need to reduce the friction generated by central direction under Articles 256 and 257. The Commission produced twenty reports in total between 1966 and 1970 across subjects ranging from machinery for planning to redressal of citizens' grievances, of which the federal-relations material formed a discrete strand.

The First ARC's recommendations entered a political environment shaped by the assertiveness of states such as Tamil Nadu, where the DMK government under C. N. Annadurai had in 1969 appointed the Rajamannar Committee to examine Centre-State relations from a states'-rights perspective. The Union government's response to the First ARC was uneven; the Inter-State Council recommendation lay unimplemented for two decades. It was the later Sarkaria Commission, appointed in 1983 under Justice R. S. Sarkaria, whose 1988 report decisively revived the Article 263 proposal, leading to the establishment of the Inter-State Council by presidential order in 1990. The First ARC thus seeded an institutional idea that matured through subsequent commissions and the Supreme Court's jurisprudence in S. R. Bommai v. Union of India (1994).

The First ARC is frequently conflated with adjacent bodies, and the working practitioner must distinguish them precisely. It is separate from the Sarkaria Commission (1983–88) and the Punchhi Commission (2007–10), both of which were dedicated wholly to Centre-State relations rather than to general administrative reform. It is equally distinct from the Second Administrative Reforms Commission (2005–09) chaired by Veerappa Moily, which produced fifteen reports on governance, including one on capacity building and one revisiting federal coordination. The First ARC's brief was the entire machinery of government, of which Centre-State relations was one component; the dedicated commissions, by contrast, treated federalism as their sole subject and engaged more deeply with revenue-sharing, the Governor's discretion under Article 356, and emergency provisions.

A recurring controversy concerns the gap between the First ARC's recommendations and their implementation. Of its numerous proposals, the Union government accepted many in principle but acted slowly, and scholars note that the federal-coordination machinery it envisaged was operationalised only after the centralising tendencies of the 1970s had hardened state grievances. The Commission's reliance on the All India Services as a unifying device remains contested, with states periodically arguing that cadre control by the Union encroaches on their administrative autonomy. The unimplemented status of the Inter-State Council for over two decades, and the body's subsequent infrequent meetings, illustrate the persistent difficulty of converting advisory recommendations into durable institutional practice within India's quasi-federal structure.

For the contemporary diplomat, policy researcher, or civil-service aspirant, the First ARC's treatment of Centre-State relations is significant as the foundational post-Independence administrative inquiry into Indian federalism and a recurring subject in the UPSC General Studies Paper II syllabus on polity and governance. It supplies the lineage that connects constitutional provisions on inter-governmental relations to the institutional machinery that exists today, and understanding its recommendations clarifies why bodies such as the Inter-State Council and the Finance Commission occupy the positions they do. Practitioners analysing centre-state friction, cooperative federalism, or the implementation deficit in Indian governance return to the First ARC as the originating reference point.