BLS LLB 5 Years Sem 5 Legal Language 2024-25 Question Paper with Solutions

The sentence cannot be turned into the passive voice. The verb "rises" is intransitive: it takes no object, and only a transitive verb has a passive form. There is nothing to promote to the position of subject, so no passive exists.

Write that, and give the reason. A candidate who invents a passive, "The east is risen from by the sun", produces something that is not English and shows that the rule has not been understood.

The sentence as printed contains no comparison, and the degrees of comparison exist only where two or more things are compared. Say that first, then supply the missing term:

My friend, Sara, looks happier than she used to.

(Equally acceptable, if the comparison is with other people: My friend, Sara, looks happier than most of my friends.)

A statute has retrospective effect when it operates on transactions, rights or events already past, that is, when it takes away or impairs a vested right acquired under the existing law, or creates a new obligation, imposes a new duty or attaches a new disability in respect of something already done.

The general rule is a presumption against retrospective operation, expressed in the maxim nova constitutio futuris formam imponere debet, non praeteritis, "a new law ought to regulate what is to follow, not the past". A statute is therefore construed as prospective unless it says otherwise expressly or by necessary implication.

An "offence" is any act or omission made punishable by law for the time being in force. That is the definition in Section 3(38) of the General Clauses Act, 1897, and it is echoed in the criminal procedure code. An offence is a public wrong: it is prosecuted by the State, and the consequence is punishment.

A "wrong" is the wider term: any violation of a legal right, or breach of a legal duty. It includes civil wrongs, such as a tort or a breach of contract, for which the remedy is compensation or specific relief at the suit of the injured person, and criminal wrongs, which are offences.

Every offence is a wrong; not every wrong is an offence.

4. Preamble. A recital beginning "WHEREAS ...", giving the reasons for the legislation. It is a key to the mind of the legislature and may resolve an ambiguity, but cannot cut down clear enacting words. Most modern Indian Acts have none; the outstanding example that does is the Preamble to the Constitution, held part of it in Kesavananda Bharati (1973).
5. Enacting formula. "BE it enacted by Parliament in the ... Year of the Republic of India as follows". It declares the authority by which the law is made; no role in construing sections.
6. Marginal notes. The short headings against each section. The old English rule excluded them as not being part of the Act; Indian courts will look at a marginal note as an aid where the section is ambiguous, but it can never prevail over the plain words.
7. Headings and chapter titles. May be referred to in construing the sections grouped under them, as a preamble to that group, but cannot restrict a section's plain meaning.

14. Punctuation. Little weight; it may be looked at but cannot control the plain meaning.
15. Non obstante clause. "Notwithstanding anything contained in ...", which gives the provision overriding effect over whatever it names.
16. The repeal and savings section, usually the last, read with Section 6 of the General Clauses Act, 1897.

1. The rule against a casus omissus. A court cannot supply an omission in a statute; if the legislature has left a gap, the gap must be filled by the legislature.
2. Every word must be given effect, and none treated as superfluous, on the presumption that the legislature does not use words in vain. A construction which renders a provision otiose is to be avoided.
3. Words are given their meaning at the date of the enactment, unless the statute is one intended to move with the times.
4. Technical words take their technical meaning, and ordinary words their ordinary popular meaning; in a taxing or commercial statute, words are understood in the sense in which the trade understands them.

Illustration. In Motipur Zamindary Co. v. State of Bihar, the question was whether sugarcane was a "green vegetable" for the purpose of a sales tax exemption. The court applied the ordinary popular meaning: a vegetable is what is grown in a kitchen garden and used for the table, and sugarcane is not, so no exemption. The botanical meaning was irrelevant, because the legislature was addressing traders and not botanists.

This is a question about legal research method: how the search is conducted, and what it yields.

Step 1. State the problem as a legal issue and fix the search terms. The issue is: is an agreement made by a person below the age of majority void ab initio, or merely voidable at his option? Search under minor, minority, majority, competency to contract, void ab initio, voidable, necessaries, estoppel, ratification.

Step 2. Go to the statute first, because it fixes the vocabulary. Section 10 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872, requires the parties to be competent to contract; Section 11 provides that a person is competent if he is of the age of majority according to the law to which he is subject, of sound mind and not disqualified; the Indian Majority Act, 1875, fixes majority at eighteen years. Notice the gap: the sections say who is competent and are silent on what happens when an incompetent person contracts. That gap is why case law was needed.

• a minor may enforce a contract made for his benefit; the disability is a shield and not a sword;
• his estate is liable for necessaries supplied to him suited to his condition in life, under Section 68 of the Contract Act, which is a quasi-contractual and not a contractual liability;
• there is no estoppel against a minor who misrepresents his age, though a court may apply the equitable doctrine of restitution and order him to restore property still traceable;
• a minor may act as an agent, and may be admitted to the benefits of a partnership under Section 30 of the Indian Partnership Act, 1932.

Step 7. Verify that the authority still stands, and record the citation with the court, because the court fixes the authority: a Privy Council decision of 1903 continues to bind Indian courts unless overruled by the Supreme Court.

The doctrine of territorial nexus. A State law is not invalid merely because it touches something outside the State, provided there is a sufficient connection between the State and the subject matter, and the liability imposed is pertinent to that connection. The two conditions are that the connection must be real and not illusory, and that the liability must be relevant to it. The leading cases are State of Bombay v. R. M. D. Chamarbaugwala (1957), where a Bombay tax on prize competitions was upheld against a newspaper printed and published outside the State but with the competition conducted and the entries collected within it, and Tata Iron and Steel Co. v. State of Bihar (1958).

The limit on Parliament's extra-territorial power. In GVK Industries Ltd v. Income Tax Officer (2011) a Constitution Bench held that Parliament's power to legislate with extra-territorial effect is not unlimited: it may do so only where the law has a nexus with or an impact on India, and it may not legislate for a territory with which India has no connection at all.

Illustrations of extra-territorial operation in Indian law:

In a civil suit, where the defendant does not appear though duly served, the court may proceed ex parte under Order IX Rule 6 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, and the decree that follows is an ex parte decree. The defendant has three remedies: an application under Order IX Rule 13 to set the decree aside, on showing that the summons was not duly served or that he was prevented by sufficient cause from appearing; an appeal; and a review.

In a complaint under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881, the position is different in an important respect, and a complete answer says so. Section 138 creates a criminal offence, punishable with imprisonment up to two years or a fine up to twice the amount of the cheque, or both, and it is tried as a summons case by a magistrate. A criminal court does not pass an "ex parte decree". Where the accused absconds or fails to appear, the court issues summons, then a warrant, and may declare him a proclaimed offender and proceed to attach his property; trial in the absence of the accused is permitted only in the narrow circumstances the criminal procedure code allows. Since the amendments of 2018, the court may also direct interim compensation of up to twenty per cent of the cheque amount pending trial.

(ii) The construction to be given to penal legislation.

5. Article 20(1) of the Constitution forbids conviction except under a law in force at the time of the act, and forbids a penalty greater than the law then provided.
6. Strict construction yields to plain language. Where the words are clear they must be given effect even against the accused, and a penal statute enacted to suppress a grave social evil is not to be read so narrowly as to defeat its object.

Section 138 is a good illustration of both halves of that last point. The section is penal, so its ingredients are construed strictly: the cheque must have been drawn on an account maintained by the drawer, for the discharge of a legally enforceable debt or other liability; it must be presented within its validity; the payee must give notice within thirty days of the information of dishonour; and the drawer must fail to pay within fifteen days of the notice. Each of those is a condition and each has generated litigation. But the object of the provision is to sustain the credibility of the cheque as an instrument of commerce, and the courts have not permitted a technical reading that would defeat it.

To remain relevant, cinema is increasingly exploring innovative avenues to capture and retain viewer interest, including the simultaneous release of films on digital platforms and substantial investments in high-quality, immersive digital content that can match or surpass the streaming experience. Answer the following questions based on the extract given above:

(i) Give an appropriate title, and state the main idea or theme of the passage.

Title: "Cinema in the Age of Streaming."

(Equally acceptable: "The Film Industry's OTT Challenge" or "Competing with the Living Room".)

The main idea is that the cinema is losing its audience to television and to Over-the-Top streaming platforms, which are more accessible, more convenient and cheaper, and that the film industry is responding by innovating rather than by resisting, through simultaneous release on digital platforms and by investing in high-quality, immersive content that streaming cannot match. The theme, in a sentence, is the adaptation of an established industry to a technology that has taken away its advantage of exclusivity.

(ii) Why is the film industry facing a challenge?

In light of the maxim "Nemo tenetur seipsum accusare:" i. Can Amar be compelled to confess or provide information that could be used against him?

ii. Ziva on her own accord decides to narrate the facts about the robbery in front of the magistrate.

Can Amar prevent Ziva from making incriminating statements about him, on the basis of the maxim?

The maxim. Nemo tenetur seipsum accusare means "no one is bound to accuse himself." It is the privilege against self-incrimination, and in India it is a fundamental right.

Article 20(3) of the Constitution: "No person accused of any offence shall be compelled to be a witness against himself." It has three ingredients, and all three must be present:

3. A confession to a police officer is inadmissible in any event, under the confession provisions of the law of evidence, now contained in the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, and a confession made under inducement, threat or promise is irrelevant. The police telling Amar that "it will make things easier if he just admits to the crime" is exactly the kind of inducement that would make any confession so obtained inadmissible.
4. Compelling him is itself an offence. Causing hurt to extort a confession or information is a distinct and serious offence in Indian penal law.
5. Selvi v. State of Karnataka (2010) holds that narco-analysis, polygraph examination and brain electrical activation profiling conducted without consent violate Article 20(3) and Article 21.

What Article 20(3) does not cover, and it should be stated: State of Bombay v. Kathi Kalu Oghad (1961) held that "to be a witness" means imparting personal knowledge, and that giving thumb impressions, specimen signatures, handwriting samples, fingerprints or blood samples is not being a witness against oneself, because these are identifying features and not communications of knowledge. Amar may therefore be required to give a specimen; he may not be required to speak.

• If Ziva is tendered a pardon and becomes an approver, she becomes a competent witness, but she is an accomplice, and the settled rule of prudence is that an accomplice's evidence requires corroboration in material particulars implicating the accused. Amar's remedy is cross-examination and the corroboration rule.
• If her statement is recorded by a magistrate under the provision for recording statements and confessions, the magistrate must first satisfy himself that it is voluntary and must warn her that she is not bound to make it and that it may be used against her; and such a statement is not substantive evidence against a co-accused unless she is examined as a witness.

What they are. External aids to construction are materials outside the four corners of the statute to which a court may look in order to ascertain the meaning of its words. They are contrasted with internal aids, the title, preamble, marginal notes, definitions, provisos, explanations, schedules and illustrations, which are found within the Act itself.

The governing rule of priority. A court turns to external aids only where the statute is ambiguous, and it turns to them after exhausting the internal aids. Where the words are plain, no external material may be used to give them a different meaning.

The external aids.

1. Dictionaries. Where a word is not defined, the court may consult a dictionary to find its ordinary meaning. Two cautions apply. A dictionary gives all the meanings a word can bear and the court must choose the one the context requires; and a technical or commercial word takes the meaning the trade gives it, not the dictionary's, which is why sugarcane was held not to be a "green vegetable" in Motipur Zamindary Co. v. State of Bihar although a botanist might say otherwise.

• Parliamentary debates. Long excluded altogether in England, and admitted in India with caution. The modern position is that debates may be referred to, and the speech of the mover of the Bill carries the most weight because it explains the object; but debates cannot control the plain words, since what the legislature enacted is the text, not the speeches about it.
• Constituent Assembly Debates, which the Supreme Court has used freely in construing the Constitution.

5. Historical facts and surrounding circumstances. The court may consider the state of things at the time the Act was passed, the mischief it was intended to remedy, and the previous state of the law. This is the material the mischief rule in Heydon's Case (1584) directs the court to consider.

6. Contemporanea expositio est optima et fortissima in lege, "contemporaneous exposition is the best and strongest in law". The meaning given to a statute by those who administered it from the beginning, and long usage under it, is a good guide to its meaning. The rule applies to old statutes and not to recent ones, and it yields where the language is clear.

The proposition. Urbanisation is the movement of population from the countryside into towns and cities and the growth of those cities. India's urban population has grown from about seventeen per cent at Independence to roughly a third today, and the absolute numbers are among the largest in the world. Pollution is not an accidental by-product of that process; it is what happens when the growth of a city outruns the infrastructure that is supposed to serve it.

How urbanisation produces pollution.

1. Density. The same activity, cooking, driving, burning, disposing, produces a far greater concentration of pollutants when a million people do it in fifty square kilometres than when they do it across a district.
2. Vehicles. Urban transport is the largest single source of air pollution in Indian cities, and the number of registered vehicles has multiplied faster than road capacity or public transport.
3. Industry, historically sited at the edge of cities and now surrounded by them, which is exactly how the population came to be living within three kilometres of the plant in the Oleum Gas Leak case.

The kinds of pollution and their effects. Air: respiratory and cardiovascular disease, reduced life expectancy, and harm to children's lung development. Water: waterborne disease, contamination of groundwater, destruction of aquatic life. Noise: hearing loss, sleep disturbance, hypertension. Soil: contamination from landfill leachate and industrial effluent. The burden falls unequally: the people living beside a landfill, a nala or a factory are the people who could not afford to live anywhere else.

The legal framework.

• Constitutional: Article 21, which includes the right to a healthy environment and to pollution-free water and air, Subhash Kumar v. State of Bihar (1991); Article 48A, the Directive Principle; Article 51A(g), the Fundamental Duty; and Articles 243W and the Twelfth Schedule, which place public health, sanitation, solid waste management and urban planning on the municipalities.

• Municipal Council, Ratlam v. Vardhichand (1980), holding that a municipality cannot plead lack of funds to escape its statutory duty to remove a public nuisance, and that the magistrate's power in the criminal procedure code is a real remedy against it.
• Almitra H. Patel v. Union of India (2000), on municipal solid waste, which led directly to the first national Municipal Solid Waste Rules.
• In Re: Noise Pollution (2005), laying down directions on loudspeakers and noise limits, including the prohibition on the use of loudspeakers at night.
• Vellore Citizens' Welfare Forum v. Union of India (1996), holding that sustainable development, the precautionary principle and the polluter pays principle are part of Indian law.

The tension the essay must face. Cities are also where the growth is. Urbanisation raises incomes, expands employment, delivers services more cheaply per head and, in the aggregate, has lifted more people out of poverty than any policy has. The problem is not that people move to cities; it is that Indian cities are governed and financed as though they were villages. A municipal corporation with obligatory duties under the Twelfth Schedule and no independent revenue to discharge them will do what the corporation in Ratlam did: plead lack of funds.

Conclusion. India's environmental law is among the most developed in the world and its urban air is among the worst. The gap between those two sentences is the subject of this essay. The problem is not a shortage of rights, of statutes or of judgments; it is that the institutions charged with enforcing them are under-funded, under-staffed and answerable to nobody in particular. Until that is addressed, each fresh judgment will restate a right that has already been declared.

Conditions for its application (there are five, and giving them is what earns the marks): the statute must contain an enumeration of specific words; those words must constitute a class or category; the class must not be exhausted by the enumeration; the general term must follow the enumeration; and there must be no indication of a different legislative intent.

2. Noscitur a sociis, "a word is known by the company it keeps". A word of doubtful meaning takes its colour from the words associated with it. It is the wider rule of which ejusdem generis is a particular application: noscitur a sociis looks at neighbouring words generally, while ejusdem generis applies specifically where general words follow specific ones.

3. Expressio unius est exclusio alterius, "the express mention of one thing excludes another". Where a statute expressly mentions certain things, the inference is that things not mentioned were intended to be excluded. This rule must be used with caution: an omission may be a matter of inadvertence or of abundant caution rather than of intention, and courts have repeatedly warned that the maxim is "a valuable servant but a dangerous master".

8. In pari materia. Statutes on the same subject are read together as one system, and a word in one may be construed by reference to its use in another.

RULES ATTACHED TO PARTICULAR KINDS OF STATUTE.

9. Strict construction of penal statutes. Nothing may be implied to create an offence or increase a punishment; where two constructions are reasonably possible, the one favourable to the accused is adopted; and mens rea is presumed unless excluded. Tolaram Relumal v. State of Bombay (1954).

10. Strict construction of taxing statutes. There is no equity about a tax. A subject is taxed only where he falls clearly within the letter of the charging provision, and if he does not, he escapes even though the spirit of the Act may seem to catch him. Conversely, an exemption is construed strictly against the person claiming it.

11. Beneficial or liberal construction of welfare legislation. Where a statute is passed for the benefit of a class, labour, women, consumers, tenants, it is construed liberally in favour of that class, and where two constructions are possible the one advancing the benefit is preferred: B. Shah v. Presiding Officer, Labour Court (1977), on the Maternity Benefit Act. The limit is that the language must admit of two meanings; beneficial construction does not permit words to be added.

Citation. D. K. Basu v. State of West Bengal, AIR 1997 SC 610, (1997) 1 SCC 416, decided by Justice Kuldip Singh and Justice A. S. Anand.

Facts. D. K. Basu, Executive Chairman of Legal Aid Services, West Bengal, a non-political organisation, wrote a letter to the Chief Justice of India in 1986, drawing attention to newspaper reports of deaths in police lock-ups and in custody, and asking that it be treated as a writ petition under the Court's epistolary jurisdiction. It was so treated. A second letter, from Ashok K. Johri about a custodial death at Aligarh, was heard with it. The Court issued notice to every State Government and to the Law Commission, and over the following decade received affidavits which showed that custodial deaths were continuing.

Issues.

1. Whether custodial death, torture and lock-up violence infringe Articles 21 and 22(1) of the Constitution.

1. Police personnel carrying out the arrest and handling the interrogation must bear accurate, visible and clear identification and name tags with their designations, and the particulars of all such personnel must be recorded in a register.
2. The arresting officer shall prepare a memo of arrest at the time of arrest, attested by at least one witness, being a family member of the arrestee or a respectable person of the locality, and countersigned by the arrestee, bearing the date and time of arrest.
3. A person arrested or detained is entitled to have one friend, relative or other person known to him informed, as soon as practicable, of the arrest and of the place of detention.
4. Where that person lives outside the district, the time and place of arrest and the venue of custody must be notified through the Legal Aid Organisation of the district and the police station of the area, telegraphically, within 8 to 12 hours of the arrest.
5. The person arrested must be made aware of this right as soon as he is arrested or detained.
6. An entry must be made in the diary at the place of detention, recording the arrest, the name of the person informed, and the particulars of the police officials in whose custody the arrestee is.

Compensation. The Court held that monetary compensation is an appropriate and effective remedy in public law for an established infringement of Article 21; that this is distinct from a private law claim in tort; that it rests on strict liability, to which sovereign immunity is no defence; and that the State, having paid, may recover the amount from the officer responsible. This followed and confirmed Nilabati Behera v. State of Orissa (1993), and before it Rudul Sah v. State of Bihar (1983).

Aftermath. The guidelines were substantially enacted into the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, by the amendment of 2008, which inserted Section 41B (identification and memo of arrest), Section 41D (right to meet an advocate during interrogation), Section 50A (duty to inform a nominated person) and Section 55A (duty to take reasonable care of the health and safety of the accused). The Code has since been replaced by the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, which carries these safeguards forward. In 2015 the Court directed the installation of CCTV cameras in police stations, a direction taken further in Paramvir Singh Saini v. Baljit Singh (2020), which required cameras with night vision and audio in every police station with recordings preserved.

• Preliminary, Sections 1 and 2.
• General definitions, Section 3, a long list applying to all Central Acts and Regulations made after 1897: "affidavit", "document", "immovable property", "movable property", "month", "year", "person", "offence", "good faith", "Government", "local authority", "Magistrate", "writing" and many more, each governing "unless there is anything repugnant in the subject or context". Section 4 applies some of them to earlier enactments.
• General rules of construction, Sections 5 to 13: Section 5, commencement on the date of assent where the Act is silent; Section 6, the effect of repeal; Section 6A, repeal of an Act making a textual amendment; Section 7, revival of repealed enactments; Section 8, construction of references to a repealed and re-enacted enactment; Section 9, "from" excludes the first day and "to" includes the last; Section 10, where the last day for doing an act falls on a day the court or office is closed, it may be done on the next working day; Section 13, the masculine includes the feminine and the singular includes the plural.
• Powers and functionaries, Sections 14 to 19: Section 14, a power conferred may be exercised from time to time as occasion requires; Section 16, the power to appoint includes the power to suspend or dismiss.

4. to State Acts, which are governed by each State's own General Clauses Act; in Maharashtra, the Bombay General Clauses Act, 1904;
5. to enactments made before 1897, except so far as Section 4 applies particular definitions to them; and
6. to documents that are not enactments, such as contracts, deeds and wills.

THE EFFECT AND CONSEQUENCES OF REPEAL.

Repeal is the abrogation of a statute by another statute. It may be express, where the repealing Act says so, or implied, where a later Act is so inconsistent with an earlier one that the two cannot stand together, though implied repeal is not favoured and the presumption is against it.

The common law consequence of repeal was drastic: a repealed statute was treated as if it had never existed, except as to transactions past and closed, so that pending prosecutions fell, accrued rights vanished and pending proceedings abated. Section 6 of the General Clauses Act, 1897, was enacted to prevent that, and it is one of the most litigated provisions in Indian law.

Section 6 provides that where any Central Act repeals an enactment, then, unless a different intention appears, the repeal shall not:

Three related provisions complete the picture. Section 6A: where an Act repeals an enactment by which a textual amendment was made to an earlier Act, the repeal does not affect the amendment. Section 7: a repealed enactment is not revived unless the reviving Act expressly says so. Section 8: a reference in any enactment to a repealed and re-enacted provision is construed as a reference to the re-enacted provision. Section 24: subordinate legislation made under a repealed and re-enacted Act continues in force so far as it is consistent with the new Act, until superseded.

The "different intention" qualification is the heart of Section 6. The section applies unless a different intention appears in the repealing Act, and a saving clause in the repealing Act may be narrower or wider than Section 6; where the repealing Act contains its own savings, the court examines whether those savings were intended to be exhaustive, and if so Section 6 is displaced.