From Sovereignty To Privilege: A Critical Legal Analysis Of Royal Property Regimes In Jodhpur
Chirali Hundia, LLB (Hons.), O.P. Jindal Global University, Jindal Global Law School (JGLS), Sonipat, Haryana, India.
ABSTRACT
In order to make the case that India's shift from princely sovereignty to constitutional democracy reconfigured rather than destroyed monarchical property arrangements, this study investigates the continuous legal existence of royal property in Jodhpur after independence. It describes how the White Paper on Indian States (1950) and constitutional clauses like Articles 291, 362, and 363, which protected princely property settlements from redistribution and judicial review, reclassified the pre-independence system, in which land rights originated from sovereign authority rather than private title, after 1947. The underlying proprietary base palaces, urban estates, and related assets remained legally intact even after the Twenty-Sixth Amendment eliminated the privy purse and formal acknowledgement of monarchs in 1971. Along with the use of charitable trust structures and residential classification to obtain ongoing tax concessions for properties like Mehrangarh Fort and Umaid Bhawan Palace, the paper also examines the judicial treatment of royal property in cases like Raghunathrao Ganpatrao v. Union of India, Maharaja Gaj Singh v. State of Rajasthan, and Commissioner of Gift Tax v. H.H. Maharaja Gaj Singh ji. It argues that the Constitution's commitment to substantive equality is incompatible with this pattern of legal accommodation rather than analysis of historical privilege and urges a more thorough judicial investigation of the provenance and categorisation of former princely property.
