Annual Survey of State Laws (ASSL)

About the Annual Survey of State Laws in India

Legal scholarship in India has largely focused on Union-level lawmaking and insufficient attention has been paid to legislative outputs emerging from the States. Consequently, our understanding of the working of federalism is incomplete because the functioning of state assemblies has not been adequately studied. To address this gap, the ASSL was initiated as a project to understand the federalism in action in India through a pilot study analysing the legislative output of 15 states and 1 union territory in 2020.

The results of the pilot project reaffirmed the need to study state laws as States were progressively preferring executive lawmaking over legislative output. It also became evident that the project would have to cover all states and union territories to make a comprehensive assessment of the functioning of federalism.

Consequently, from 2023, the Annual Survey of State Laws (ASSL) systematically documents legislative developments across all of India’s States and Union Territories. It analyses statutes, ordinances, and delegated legislation by situating them within broader political and social contexts. It aims to build an evidence-based understanding of how lawmaking operates in practice in a federal system. In doing so, the Survey pays close attention not only to the content of laws but also to the processes through which they are made.

The project draws on a network of contributors from across the country and is conceived as an ongoing, collaborative effort to document and critically analyze developments across states. By mapping legislative activity annually, the ASSL seeks to contribute to informed public discourse on federalism, democracy, and the rule of law in India.