For decades it was assumed that because Parliament had occupied the field through the MMDR Act, 1957 and its royalty regime, States could not separately tax mineral rights. In Mineral Area Development Authority v. Steel Authority of India, decided on 25 July 2024, a nine-judge Constitution Bench held otherwise by an 8:1 majority: royalty is a contractual liability arising from the mining lease, not a tax, so it does not exhaust the State legislatures' own power to tax mineral rights and mineral-bearing land under Entries 49 and 50 of the State List. On 14 August 2024 the Court dealt with the consequences. The ruling would apply retrospectively — but no demand could reach transactions made before 1 April 2005, and payment was to be staggered in instalments over twelve years beginning 1 April 2026. That left mining companies facing large, long-accrued and unpredictable State demands beginning in the very financial year the Amendment Act was notified. The Amendment Act, 2026 responds on both fronts. Prospectively it restricts State levies on mineral rights and mineral-bearing lands except as the Centre prescribes, restoring a single national fiscal regime. Retrospectively it invalidates levies that had accrued but not been paid or recovered, while leaving amounts already paid where they are. It therefore does not overrule the judgment on the constitutional question — a statute cannot — but removes the fiscal consequences by legislating in the field the Court left to Parliament. That is why the reform is described in terms of predictability and uniformity, and why it also sits squarely inside the debate on fiscal federalism: what the Court restored to the States, Parliament has now conditioned.