Governing without Statehood: The National Capital Territory of Delhi and the Constitutional Limits of Asymmetric Federalism in India

Abstract The National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi in India is an example of “governance without statehood”. It poses a critical challenge to the applicability of asymmetric federalism within the country's quasi-federal constitutional structure. The legislative assembly of Delhi, created by Article 239AA of the Constitution[1], has powers over almost all subjects in the State List but remains subject to the Lieutenant Governor (LG) and the central government with respect to land, police, public order, and services, thereby creating a situation of chronic governance failure. This paper will conduct a doctrinal analysis of the constitutional provisions and Supreme Court decisions, emphasizing the decisions of 2018 and 2023 on the powers of the LG and control over services, and also present case studies of the instances of executive-legislative deadlock (including the AAP government’s tussles with the Union government since 2015). The thesis argues that the ambiguous demarcation of the executive's powers under Article 239AA undermines cooperative federalism by placing greater emphasis on the center's override than on democratic accountability, thereby impairing policy efficacy for Delhi's 20 million people. The argument proceeds along a historical continuum from the 69th Amendment in 1991 to the current inefficiencies, juxtaposed with other models such as Washington, D.C., and Puducherry. The reformist theses put forward are constitutional changes to remove ambiguities in power-sharing, the creation of joint councils on the lines of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) model, or the application of the principle of limited statehood as a way of harmonizing the demands of the national capital with the demands of local autonomy.