Schedules & special provisions (Art 370/371 etc.)
The twelve Schedules and Articles 370/371-series special provisions for Jammu & Kashmir and the North-East, including the 2019 abrogation and Supreme Court verdict.
The Twelve Schedules as the Constitution's Operating Annexes
The Schedules are tabular appendices that off-load detail from the main text so Articles stay readable. The original Constitution of 1950 carried eight; four were added by amendment. A UPSC candidate must retain each Schedule's subject and its anchoring Article.
- First Schedule — names of States and Union Territories and their territorial extent (linked to Articles 1 and 4).
- Second Schedule — emoluments, allowances and privileges of the President, Governors, Speakers, judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts, and the CAG.
- Third Schedule — forms of oath or affirmation (Article 75, 99, 124, 148, 164, 188, 219).
- Fourth Schedule — allocation of Rajya Sabha seats per State/UT (Article 4 and 80).
- Fifth Schedule — administration and control of Scheduled Areas and Scheduled Tribes outside the North-East (Article 244(1)).
- Sixth Schedule — administration of tribal areas in Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram through Autonomous District Councils (Article 244(2), 275(1)).
- Seventh Schedule — the Union, State and Concurrent Lists (Article 246).
- Eighth Schedule — recognised languages, now 22 after Sindhi (1967, 21st Amendment), Konkani/Manipuri/Nepali (1992, 71st Amendment) and Bodo/Dogri/Maithili/Santhali (2003, 92nd Amendment).
- Ninth Schedule — laws immune from judicial review on Fundamental-Rights grounds, inserted by the First Amendment (1951) to protect agrarian reform (Article 31B).
- Tenth Schedule — anti-defection provisions, added by the 52nd Amendment (1985) (Article 102(2), 191(2)).
- Eleventh Schedule — 29 subjects devolved to Panchayats, added by the 73rd Amendment (1992) (Article 243G).
- Twelfth Schedule — 18 subjects for Municipalities, added by the 74th Amendment (1992) (Article 243W).
The Ninth Schedule and Its Limits
The Ninth Schedule appears bullet-proof, but I.R. Coelho v. State of Tamil Nadu (2007) held that any law inserted after 24 April 1973 — the date of Kesavananda Bharati — can be tested against the basic structure. Immunity is therefore not absolute. Examiners frequently pair the Ninth Schedule with the basic-structure doctrine to test whether you grasp that judicial review itself is a basic feature.
Distinguishing the Fifth and Sixth Schedules
The Fifth Schedule operates through the Governor and the Tribes Advisory Council and covers Scheduled Areas in States such as Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh. The Sixth Schedule creates elected Autonomous District and Regional Councils with legislative, judicial and financial powers for the four named North-Eastern States. A standard Prelims trap is to swap the two: the Sixth Schedule, not the Fifth, empowers councils to make laws on land, forests and social custom.
