CURRENT AFFAIRS | 18 JUNE 2026
Kerala’s CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) government has agreed to implement the Centre’s PM SHRI (PM Schools for Rising India) scheme — but only “with riders”, insisting that the state will retain control over the curriculum and over which schools are covered. The decision is a notable climbdown: Kerala had earlier refused to sign the memorandum of understanding, viewing PM SHRI as a vehicle to “saffronise” school education, and one LDF leader had once threatened to “throw the MoU into the Arabian Sea”. The Centre responded to the refusal by withholding Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan funds, squeezing the state’s education budget and ultimately forcing the reversal.
PM SHRI is a centrally sponsored scheme that aims to upgrade more than 14,500 existing schools across India into exemplar institutions that model the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 in full. NEP 2020 itself replaced the 1986 policy and introduced the 5+3+3+4 curricular structure, a strong emphasis on foundational literacy and numeracy, and instruction in the mother tongue or regional language at least up to Grade 5. Because it is a centrally sponsored scheme, PM SHRI is funded jointly by the Centre and the states, and the Centre’s ability to attach conditions to the money — and to withhold linked Samagra Shiksha funds — turns the scheme into a powerful instrument of fiscal federalism.
The constitutional crux is that education sits on the Concurrent List. It was moved there from the State List by the 42nd Constitutional Amendment of 1976, during the Emergency, meaning both Parliament and the state legislatures can now legislate on it, with central law generally prevailing in case of repugnancy under Article 254. This is precisely why Kerala can assert curricular autonomy while still being drawn into a centrally designed scheme: the state retains genuine legislative competence over education, but its dependence on central transfers gives New Delhi real leverage. The episode is a textbook illustration of “cooperative federalism” shading into “coercive” or “bargaining” federalism, where conditional grants become the language of Centre-state negotiation.
For the CLAT aspirant, the Kerala-PM SHRI standoff packs several high-yield themes into one story: the Seventh Schedule and its three lists, the significance of the 42nd Amendment, the architecture of centrally sponsored schemes, and the live tension between national policy uniformity and state diversity. It also connects to the Right to Education Act 2009, enacted under Article 21A, which made free and compulsory education for children aged 6 to 14 a fundamental right and gave teeth to the state’s educational obligations. Read together, these threads explain why a dispute about a school-upgradation scheme is, at bottom, a constitutional argument about the balance of power in a federal polity.
Education appears in the Concurrent List (Entry 25, Seventh Schedule), having been shifted there from the State List by the 42nd Constitutional Amendment 1976. Article 246 distributes legislative power across the Union, State and Concurrent Lists, and Article 254 resolves repugnancy in favour of central law. The Right to Education Act 2009, enacted under Article 21A (inserted by the 86th Amendment 2002), guarantees free and compulsory education for ages 6-14. NEP 2020 is a policy document, not a statute, and is implemented through schemes like PM SHRI and Samagra Shiksha.
Centre-state relations and the Seventh Schedule are perennial CLAT Polity favourites. Expect MCQs on which list education belongs to, which amendment moved it there (42nd, 1976), and the difference between centrally sponsored and central-sector schemes. Legal Reasoning passages may probe fiscal federalism — how conditional grants let the Centre influence subjects within state competence — using exactly this kind of fact pattern.
| Scheme | PM SHRI (PM Schools for Rising India) |
| Nature | Centrally sponsored scheme; ~14,500 exemplar schools |
| State in news | Kerala (LDF) signs MoU ‘with riders’ |
| Trigger | Centre withheld Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan funds |
| Education in Constitution | Concurrent List, Entry 25 (since 42nd Amendment 1976) |
| Policy modelled | National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 — 5+3+3+4 |
“PM SHRI = exemplar schools on NEP; Education = Concurrent since the 42nd (1976).” Lock the two facts: PM SHRI builds model schools on the NEP 2020 blueprint, and education jumped from State to Concurrent List via the 42nd Amendment in 1976.
Why This Matters for CLAT: This story braids together the Seventh Schedule, the 42nd Amendment, and fiscal federalism — three of the most heavily tested Polity nodes. By tracing how the Centre used withheld Samagra Shiksha funds to bring Kerala to the table, you learn to read a current-affairs dispute as a constitutional power-balance problem, the analytical move CLAT 2027 rewards in both Polity GK and Legal Reasoning passages.
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