Forum for People's Collective Efforts (FPCE) v. The State of West Bengal
Background
Homebuyers' associations challenged the West Bengal Housing Industry Regulation Act, 2017 (WB-HIRA), arguing it was effectively a copy of the central Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 (RERA) but with weaker buyer protections, and that it had never received the President's assent required when a state law conflicts with a central law on a subject both can legislate on. The dispute required the Court to examine whether housing and real-estate regulation fell within the Concurrent List of the Constitution, where both Parliament and state legislatures can make laws, but a state law that conflicts with a central one needs presidential approval to survive.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that WB-HIRA dealt with the same subject matter as RERA and was substantially repugnant to it: in some places merely replicating RERA's provisions and in others directly conflicting with buyer-protective features like extent of registration, penalties, and grievance redressal. Since WB-HIRA had not received Presidential assent under Article 254(2), it could not prevail over the central law and was declared unconstitutional and struck down in its entirety. The Court used its special constitutional powers (Article 142) to protect past registrations, approvals, and permissions already granted under WB-HIRA so that ongoing projects and buyers would not be thrown into chaos by the ruling.
Lesson Learnt
A state cannot pass its own law on a subject already regulated by Parliament if the state law conflicts with or merely duplicates the central law, unless the state law has received the President's specific assent: this protects uniform buyer protections like RERA across the country.