The Administrative Process: What the Administration Actually Does
Chapter Two
Syllabus topic 1, "Concepts and Agencies"
Pages 5 to 7 of 430
In one line
The administrative process is everything the administration actually does with the powers a statute gives it, and there are only four kinds of it.
In the wording a student can write in an exam: the administrative process is the totality of the methods by which administrative authorities carry out the tasks entrusted to them, comprising rule-making, adjudication, the exercise of discretion and ministerial action. Judicial control, which is the other half of MU's paper title, operates on each of the four differently.
Why this chapter comes before any control
MU's paper is called Administrative Process and Judicial Control, in that order, and the order is not accidental. A student who learns the grounds of review without ever seeing what is being reviewed produces answers in which certiorari, mandamus and natural justice float free of any administration. The four kinds of action below decide, in almost every real case, which ground is available and which writ lies.
The four kinds of administrative action
1. Rule-making, or administrative legislation. The authority lays down a general rule for the future, binding on everybody in a class. The Reserve Bank fixes a rate; a ministry makes rules under an Act; a municipal body makes a bye-law. This is delegated legislation and it is Module IV of the syllabus.
2. Adjudication, or administrative adjudication. The authority decides a dispute or determines a right in a particular case, on evidence, after hearing the parties. A rent controller fixes a standard rent; a tribunal decides a service dispute; a customs officer confiscates goods. This is what older writers called the quasi-judicial function.
3. Discretionary action. The authority chooses between courses that are all lawful, on grounds the statute leaves largely to it. A licence is granted or refused; a permit is renewed; an officer is transferred; a scheme is approved. Discretion is Module II of the syllabus, because almost every ground of review is a control on it.
4. Ministerial action. The authority has no choice at all: the statute tells it what to do and it does it. Issuing a certificate on production of the prescribed documents; entering a name in a register; paying a pension that has been sanctioned. Nothing is decided, so nothing needs a hearing, but a refusal can be met with mandamus.
A single decision often passes through several of these. A scheme of road nationalisation is rule-making in substance, the hearing of objections to it is adjudication, and the choice of which routes to take over is discretion.
Why the classification matters, in four consequences
It decides whether a hearing is owed. Legislative action attracts no hearing, which is why a price fixation order can be made without hearing the producers: Shri Sitaram Sugar Co. Ltd. v. Union of India, AIR 1990 SC 1277.
The Administrative Process: What the Administration Actually Does
Facts. Notifications under section 3(3C) of the Essential Commodities Act 1955 fixed the price of levy sugar zone by zone rather than factory by factory. Producers said the Government had not applied the statutory factors and that the prices were unfair to them.
Held. Price fixation under such a provision is legislative in character, so the rules of natural justice do not apply to it and the court will not sit in judgment on the wisdom of the price. Review is confined to asking whether the Government acted within the four corners of the Act, took into account the matters the Act required, and did not act so arbitrarily that no reasonable authority could have reached that figure.
Why it matters here. It is the cleanest illustration that the classification is not academic: change the label from legislative to adjudicatory and a hearing becomes compulsory.
It decides which writ lies. Certiorari and prohibition were historically confined to judicial and quasi-judicial acts, which is why the classification mattered so much in the older cases, and why Province of Bombay v. Kusaldas S. Advani, AIR 1950 SC 222, turned on it entirely. That confinement has since gone, and the chapter [A.K. Kraipak and the Fading Line Between Quasi-Judicial and Administrative Action] explains how.
It decides the intensity of review. A court will look hard at an adjudication and lightly at a policy choice.
It decides whether reasons are owed. A quasi-judicial order must ordinarily carry reasons; a legislative act need not.
A worked example
The Maharashtra Government, under a statute regulating private coaching classes, does four things in one week. It makes rules prescribing the minimum floor area per student. It orders that a particular class in Dadar be de-registered after an inspection. It refuses a fresh registration to another class in Thane because it thinks the area already has enough. And it issues a registration certificate to a third class which has filed every prescribed document.
The first is rule-making: no hearing to individual classes, challengeable in Module IV terms if it goes beyond the Act. The second is adjudication: notice, disclosure of the inspection report and a hearing are compulsory, and reasons must be recorded. The third is discretion: reviewable for irrelevant considerations, improper purpose and unreasonableness, and probably requiring a hearing because it affects an applicant individually. The fourth is ministerial: no hearing, no discretion, and if the officer sits on it the remedy is a mandamus.
Distinctions a beginner confuses
| Legislative act | Quasi-judicial act | |
|---|---|---|
| Whom it binds | A class, generally and for the future | Named parties, on their own facts |
| Basis | Policy | Evidence and law applied to facts |
| Hearing | Not required | Required |
| Reasons | Not required | Ordinarily required |
| Test on review | Within the Act, and not manifestly arbitrary | Legality, fairness and jurisdiction |
The Administrative Process: What the Administration Actually Does
| Quasi-judicial act | Administrative act | |
|---|---|---|
| Older view | A lis, evidence, a duty to act judicially | Policy or expediency, no duty to act judicially |
| Consequence under the older view | Natural justice applied, certiorari lay | Neither |
| Position after Kraipak | The distinction has largely disappeared; the duty to act fairly attaches to both wherever civil consequences follow |
What this does NOT mean
It does not mean the labels are self-applying. A statute rarely says which of the four it is creating. The court decides by looking at what the power does, not at what it is called.
It does not mean a purely ministerial act is beyond control. It is beyond a hearing, not beyond mandamus.
It does not mean legislative action is unreviewable. Module IV is nothing but the review of legislative action by the administration; what is excluded is a hearing, not review.
Quick revision
Four kinds: rule-making, adjudication, discretion and ministerial action. Rule-making is Module IV; discretion is Module II; adjudication is Module III. The classification decides whether a hearing is owed, which writ lies, how intensely the court reviews and whether reasons are required. Sitaram Sugar is the authority that legislative price fixation attracts no hearing. Kusaldas Advani shows the older law in which everything turned on the label, and Kraipak shows what replaced it.
Test yourself
1. Name the four kinds of administrative action and give an example of each. Rule-making, a ministry framing rules under an Act; adjudication, a rent controller fixing a standard rent; discretion, a licensing authority refusing a permit; ministerial action, an officer issuing a certificate on the prescribed documents.
2. Why does the classification still matter after Kraipak? Because Kraipak removed it as the gateway to natural justice, not as a description of what the administration does. It still decides whether a hearing is owed at all, since legislative action attracts none, and it still governs the intensity of review.
3. A State fixes the retail price of a drug by notification. A manufacturer says it was not heard. Answer him. Price fixation is legislative in character, so no hearing is required: Sitaram Sugar. His remedies are that the notification is outside the Act, that it ignored the factors the Act names, or that it is so arbitrary that no reasonable authority could have fixed that price.
The rest of this subject
These notes are cut from the University's printed syllabus. Open the syllabus itself, or the past papers, for the same subject.