How to Answer This Paper

The paper

Three hours, one hundred marks, seven or eight questions, answer any four, all carrying equal marks. The rubric says "Cite case laws wherever necessary", and from 2019 "Cite relevant case laws". From 2022 the paper is printed bilingually, in English with a Marathi translation. The last question is always short notes, any two.

Four answers in three hours is forty-five minutes each, and each is worth twenty-five marks. That is a long answer, and the commonest failure in this paper is not ignorance but thinness: three paragraphs where fifteen minutes of material was expected.

The short notes question is the exception. Two notes inside one forty-five-minute slot, so roughly twenty minutes and twelve and a half marks each. A note is not a shortened essay; it is a complete small answer with a definition, a source, a case and a line of assessment.

What MU actually asks

Across the eleven printed papers, four themes appear in every single one.

• Ancient and medieval writings, traditions and practices on the environment. Eleven of eleven.
• Sustainable development. Eleven of eleven.
• Population and the environment. Eleven of eleven.
• The constitutional provisions. Eleven of eleven.

The next tier appears in most.

• The role of government, conservation strategy and policy. Eight of eleven.
• Forests and forest policy. Eight of eleven.
• The idea or concept of environment, conventional and modern. Seven of eleven.
• Water policy. Seven of eleven.

And then the recurring specifics.

• Stockholm, six of eleven. Absolute liability, five. The public trust doctrine, five. Rio, five. Public interest litigation and judicial activism, four. The right to a clean environment, four. Emerging issues, including climate change, four. The right to development, three. Five-Year Plans, the precautionary principle, polluter pays and flora and fauna, two each.

What this tells a candidate. Four questions must be answered and four themes appear on every paper. If those four are prepared to full depth, the paper is passed before the specifics are reached. Everything else is the margin between a pass and a good result.

The eight questions to prepare

Written as MU writes them, so that the wording is familiar in the hall.

One. The ancient and medieval writings, traditions and practices. Always present, usually question one. Needs the texts, the practices, the institutions and, because MU asks for it twice, an assessment of their efficacy.

Two. Sustainable development. Define it, give its features, place it at the national and the international level, and know that Vellore Citizens Welfare Forum v. Union of India, AIR 1996 SC 2715, held it part of customary international law with the precautionary principle and polluter pays as its essential features, while N.D. Jayal v. Union of India, AIR 2004 SC 867, held it an integral part of life under Article 21.