State of Meghalaya vs. Union of India & Ors. (Original Suit No. 1 of 2021)
Background
The State of Meghalaya filed an original suit directly in the Supreme Court under Article 131 of the Constitution (which lets the Supreme Court alone decide disputes between the Centre and States), challenging Sections 5 to 9 of the Lotteries (Regulation) Act, 1998 and a related rule as unconstitutional. Meghalaya runs a lottery business and argued these provisions unfairly let other States and the Union restrict sale of its lottery tickets and threaten penal action. The Union of India and several other States (including Kerala, Bihar and Assam) objected that the suit itself was not "maintainable": i.e., that a State cannot use this special Article 131 route just to challenge the validity of a Central law, and pointed out that similar questions were already pending before a Larger Bench in other cases.
Decision Breakdown
The Court examined a long line of precedent on Article 131 and held that this suit could not be thrown out at the threshold as not maintainable, distinguishing it from cases where the challenge was purely to a law's constitutionality: here, Meghalaya was also asserting its own right to conduct lottery business under Article 298(b), which is a genuine dispute over a legal right between States/Union under Article 131. The Court further held that even if a final ruling on the maintainability question must eventually await a larger-bench decision on a related legal issue, that did not prevent it from now dealing with interim matters, such as directions on injunction, drawing an analogy with Section 10 of the Civil Procedure Code (which pauses full "trial" of a case pending a related earlier suit, but does not stop interim orders). It allowed the opposing States/Union four weeks to file their replies on the interim relief sought and listed the matter for further hearing after the summer vacation.
Lesson Learnt
A State government is not automatically barred from bringing a dispute straight to the Supreme Court under Article 131 merely because it also touches on the validity of a Central law. If the State is genuinely asserting its own legal right (here, to run a lottery business) rather than only attacking the law's constitutionality in the abstract, the suit can proceed, including interim relief, even while a related legal question awaits a larger bench.