BLS LLB 5 Years Sem 7 Administrative Law 2021-22 Question Paper with Solutions

The two principal sources are the Constitution and statutes, that is, the legislation which creates administrative authorities and confers their powers.

Beyond those two, administrative law also draws on delegated legislation (rules, regulations and bye-laws), judicial decisions and precedent, and administrative directions, circulars and departmental practice.

The three organs are:

1. the legislature, which makes the law (Parliament under Articles 79 to 122, and the State legislatures under Articles 168 to 212);
2. the executive, which enforces and administers it (the President, the Council of Ministers and the civil services, under Articles 52 to 78 and 153 to 167); and
3. the judiciary, which interprets it and adjudicates disputes (the Supreme Court under Articles 124 to 147, and the High Courts under Articles 214 to 231).

Two reasons are:

1. to combine public ownership and accountability with commercial autonomy, so that an enterprise owned by the State can be run with the flexibility of a business and without day-to-day departmental and political interference; and
2. to give a public undertaking a separate legal personality, so that it can hold property, contract, sue and be sued in its own name, employ its own staff on its own terms, and keep its finances separate from the Consolidated Fund.

Further reasons are the need for expert management of technical undertakings, the securing of a national monopoly in a strategic field such as insurance or atomic energy, and the promotion of planned development.

1. Duty to decide objectively. A quasi-judicial function involves a lis, a dispute between two parties or a proposal opposed by the person affected, which the authority must decide objectively on evidence. An administrative function involves no lis; the authority acts on policy and expediency, and may act on its own subjective satisfaction.
2. Duty to give reasons and to follow a judicial procedure. A quasi-judicial authority must hear the parties, act on material placed before it, and pass a speaking order. An administrative authority historically owed no such duty, though it must now act fairly.

A third distinction is that certiorari and prohibition classically lay only against quasi-judicial action, while administrative action was controlled by mandamus, injunction or declaration.

Prohibition is a writ issued by a superior court to an inferior court or tribunal commanding it to stop proceedings which are in excess of its jurisdiction or in violation of the principles of natural justice.

It is preventive: it is issued while the proceeding is still pending, before the inferior body has made its order.

3. The consequence of non-compliance. The requirements are mandatory. A contract not made in the prescribed form is void and unenforceable, and cannot be ratified. Bihar Eastern Gangetic Fishermen Co-operative Society v. Sipahi Singh (1977) and Mulamchand v. State of Madhya Pradesh (1968) are the standard authorities.

4. The relief that survives: Section 70 of the Indian Contract Act. Where the Government has actually enjoyed the benefit of work done or goods supplied under an invalid contract, the supplier is not without remedy. State of West Bengal v. B.K. Mondal and Sons (AIR 1962 SC 779) held that Section 70 gives a claim on quantum meruit independent of contract: where a person lawfully does something for another not intending to do so gratuitously, and the other enjoys the benefit, he must compensate. The claim is for the value of the benefit, not for the contract price or for lost profits.

5. Substantial compliance. Chatturbhuj Vithaldas Jasani v. Moreshwar Parashram (1954) held that where the contract is in substance made by an authorised officer on behalf of the Government, a defect of form does not always defeat it, though later decisions have applied Article 299 strictly.

Administrative adjudication is the determination of disputes by administrative agencies and tribunals instead of by the ordinary courts. Its advantages are:

1. Speed. A tribunal disposes of a matter in weeks or months where a civil suit and its appeals may take years. It is free of the elaborate procedure of the Code of Civil Procedure and of the crowded cause list of the ordinary courts.
2. Cheapness. Court fees are low or absent, appearance in person is often permitted, and the parties are spared the cost of a long trial. That matters most to the class of litigant, the workman, the tenant, the consumer, the pensioner, for whom these tribunals exist.
3. Expertise. A tribunal deciding a tax, industrial, environmental or telecom dispute contains a member who understands the field. A judge trained only in law must be taught the subject in every case.
4. Flexibility. A tribunal is not bound by rigid rules of procedure or evidence, or by its own precedents in the way a court is, so it can adapt its practice to the case and change its approach as policy changes.

1. The theory. Stated by Montesquieu in L'Esprit des Lois (1748), and anticipated by Aristotle and Locke: the three functions of government should be vested in three separate organs; no organ should exercise the functions of another; and no person should be a member of more than one organ. Montesquieu's purpose was the protection of liberty: "there can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person".

2. In the United States the doctrine is applied strictly: the President is not a member of Congress, his Secretaries are not legislators, and the Supreme Court's power of judicial review is the check. Even there it operates as checks and balances rather than as watertight separation.

3. In England it has never been applied. The Cabinet sits in Parliament, and until 2009 the House of Lords was the final court of appeal.

4. In India the position is functional separation without rigidity:

1. Article 50 directs the State to separate the judiciary from the executive in the public services, but it is a Directive Principle and not enforceable;

1. Meaning. Quo warranto means "by what authority". It is a writ by which the court calls upon the holder of a public office to show by what authority he holds it, and ousts him if the answer is that he holds it unlawfully.

2. Object. To prevent a person from usurping a public office to which he is not entitled, and so to protect the public from the exercise of authority by an unqualified person. It is not a remedy for a private wrong.

3. Conditions for its issue (University of Mysore v. C.D. Govinda Rao, 1965; Jamalpur Arya Samaj Sabha v. Dr. D. Ram, 1954):

1. the office must be public, created by the Constitution or a statute, and not a private employment or an office under a contract;
2. it must be of a substantive character, that is, permanent and independent, not held at the will of another;
3. the respondent must be in actual possession of the office;
4. the appointment must be contrary to law, or the holder must lack the qualification the law prescribes.

1. The principle. Transparency means that the working of the administration should be open to public knowledge, so that the citizen can know how decisions affecting him are made. Secrecy is the natural condition of bureaucracy and the enemy of accountability, and the right to information is the legal instrument that reverses it.

2. Constitutional foundation. The right to information is a facet of the freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a), because a citizen cannot form or express an opinion on public affairs he knows nothing about. State of Uttar Pradesh v. Raj Narain (1975): "the people of this country have a right to know every public act, everything that is done in a public way by their public functionaries". S.P. Gupta v. Union of India (1981) and Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting v. Cricket Association of Bengal (1995) carried the principle further.

3. The Right to Information Act, 2005. Its main features:

6. Section 8(2) allows disclosure even of exempt information where the public interest in disclosure outweighs the harm;
7. Sections 12 and 15: the Central and State Information Commissions, with the appellate machinery in Sections 18 to 19; and
8. Section 20: a penalty of Rs. 250 a day up to Rs. 25,000 on a Public Information Officer who refuses without reasonable cause.

3. Procedural impropriety: breach of natural justice, or of a mandatory statutory procedure;
4. and, where fundamental rights are affected, proportionality.

5. Its limits. Review is of the decision-making process, not the merits. The court will not act as a court of appeal, will not substitute its own opinion on policy or on expert questions, and will refuse relief where there is an adequate alternative remedy, where there is laches, where the facts are seriously disputed, or where the question is academic.

These are, almost word for word, the facts of State of Rajasthan v. Mst. Vidyawati, AIR 1962 SC 933.

(a) Which liability is applicable in this case? Explain the liability.

The liability is the tortious liability of the State, on the principle of vicarious liability for the negligence of its servant in the discharge of a non-sovereign function. The State is liable.

4. The holding in Vidyawati. The Supreme Court held the State of Rajasthan liable, and held that the employment of a driver to drive a car for the use of a civil servant is "in no sense" a sovereign function, and that a State carrying on many activities like an ordinary citizen cannot claim the immunity of a feudal monarch.
5. The claim. The widow sues under the Fatal Accidents Act, 1855, or today under the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, in which case liability is on the owner and the insurer, and the compensation is assessed on the multiplier method.

(b) Whether the principle of "King can do no wrong" will be applicable in this case? Explain.

No. The maxim has no application.

1. Rex non potest peccare, "the King can do no wrong", was a feudal English doctrine by which the Crown could not be sued in its own courts, because the courts were the King's own and no lord could be sued in his own court.
2. It was abolished in England by the Crown Proceedings Act, 1947, which made the Crown liable in tort like a private person.

(a) What is Doctrine of Pleasure?

The doctrine of pleasure is the rule that a civil servant holds office during the pleasure of the sovereign, so that his service may be terminated at will and without cause.

1. Its origin is English: the Crown's servants held office durante bene placito, at pleasure, and the rule was justified on grounds of public policy, that the State must be able to dispense with the services of an official whose retention is not in the public interest.

(b) Does the dismissal of Mr. X by the Deputy Commissioner of Police violate any right of Mr. X? Explain.

Yes. The dismissal is bad under Article 311(1) and is liable to be quashed.

1. Article 311(1) provides that no person who is a member of a civil service of the Union or of a State or holds a civil post under the Union or a State shall be dismissed or removed by an authority subordinate to that by which he was appointed.
2. Mr. X was appointed by the Commissioner of Police. He was dismissed by the Deputy Commissioner of Police, who is subordinate in rank to the Commissioner. The constitutional bar is therefore attracted on the face of the facts and the dismissal is void.
3. The guarantee is one of rank, not identity. It is not necessary that the very officer who appointed him should dismiss him; State of Madhya Pradesh v. Shardul Singh (1970), which concerned a police Sub-Inspector, holds that Article 311(1) is satisfied if the dismissing authority is of a rank equal to or higher than the appointing authority, and that the Article does not require the inquiry itself to be conducted by that authority. Here the dismissing authority is lower, so the Article is breached.

The petitioner filed a writ petition under Article 226, challenging the Lokayukta's action.

(a) Whether the Lokayukta has jurisdiction to review the appointment? Explain.

No, not in the manner attempted. The Lokayukta had no power to grant an interim stay of the appointment, and the writ petition should succeed.

4. Whether he could investigate at all is a separate question from whether he could stay. The complaint was made by a rival candidate, and a disappointed candidate's dispute about a selection is in substance a service dispute, for which the remedy is the ordinary one. Where the complaint does disclose an allegation of corruption or improper motive against the public servants who made the selection, the Lokayukta may investigate and report, but even then his conclusion binds nobody.
5. The petitioner's grounds under Article 226 are therefore: the order is without jurisdiction and ultra vires the Act; it was passed without hearing the petitioner, whose appointment it destroyed, in breach of natural justice; and it is a non-speaking order. The writs to ask for are certiorari to quash the stay and prohibition to restrain further proceedings if the investigation itself is beyond jurisdiction.

(b) What are the basic objects for the appointment of Lokayukta in the state of Maharashtra?

Maharashtra was the first State in India to create the office, by the Maharashtra Lokayukta and Upa-Lokayuktas Act, 1971, following the recommendation of the Administrative Reforms Commission of 1966 chaired by Morarji Desai. The objects are:

3. Sir William Wade: "the law relating to the control of governmental power", which he calls the first approximation and the best short definition.
4. The Indian Law Institute adds two elements the others omit: the procedure by which relief is obtained, and the control exercised by the legislature over the administration.

2. Nature. Administrative law is:

1. a branch of public law, governing the relation between the individual and the State, and not between individual and individual;
2. essentially judge-made and uncodified in India: there is no Administrative Procedure Act as in the United States, and the whole of natural justice, ultra vires and abuse of discretion is the creation of decided cases;
3. functional rather than conceptual: it studies what administrative agencies actually do, and how the law responds;
4. dynamic and growing, since it expands with every new function the State takes on; and
5. concerned with power and its control, which is its organising idea.

2. delegated legislation: the limits of the power to delegate, and the parliamentary, procedural and judicial controls over rules made under it;
3. administrative adjudication and tribunals under Articles 323A and 323B, their procedure and their control;
4. the principles of natural justice and the duty to act fairly;
5. administrative discretion: the grounds on which its exercise, or non-exercise, may be reviewed;
6. judicial review and the writs under Articles 32 and 226, together with the ordinary remedies of suit, injunction, declaration and damages;
7. the liability of the State in tort under Article 300 and in contract under Article 299, and the doctrines of promissory estoppel and legitimate expectation;
8. statutory and non-statutory public undertakings and their accountability;
9. the civil services under Articles 308 to 323, and the doctrine of pleasure and its exceptions;
10. institutional controls: the Lokpal and Lokayuktas, the Central Vigilance Commission, the Comptroller and Auditor General, the Central Bureau of Investigation, and the Right to Information Act, 2005.

For full marks, cover: the meaning and rationale; the six or seven components of the rule; the landmark cases English and Indian; the exceptions; and the effect of a breach.

1. Meaning. Audi alteram partem means "hear the other side", or that no man shall be condemned unheard. It is the second and larger rule of natural justice, and it requires that a person who is to be affected by a decision must be given notice of the case against him and a fair opportunity to answer it.

2. Rationale. Three reasons are usually given. It improves the quality of the decision, because the authority hears facts it would otherwise never learn. It is required by fairness to the individual, whose livelihood, liberty or reputation is in issue. And it produces acceptance: a man who has been heard is more likely to accept an adverse decision than one who has not.

3. The components of the rule.

6. He who decides must hear. Gullapalli Nageswara Rao v. Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (1959): objections to a nationalisation scheme were heard by the Secretary of the Transport Department and the scheme was approved by the Chief Minister. The Supreme Court quashed it: the divorce of the hearing from the decision is a denial of a personal hearing.
7. Reasoned decision. The order must speak: Siemens Engineering v. Union of India (1976), S.N. Mukherjee v. Union of India (1990).

4. The landmark judgments.

1. Cooper v. Wandsworth Board of Works (1863). The Board demolished a house built without the required notice. Although the statute said nothing about a hearing, the Court held the demolition unlawful. Byles J.: "although there are no positive words in a statute requiring that the party shall be heard, yet the justice of the common law will supply the omission of the legislature."
2. Ridge v. Baldwin (1964). A Chief Constable was dismissed without notice or hearing. The House of Lords held the dismissal void, and rejected the doctrine that a duty to hear arises only where there is a "superadded duty to act judicially". This case revived natural justice in the common law.

7. Union of India v. Tulsiram Patel (1985). The Constitution Bench held that the second proviso to Article 311(2) excludes the inquiry, and that where it is validly invoked the requirement of a hearing is excluded, but the recorded satisfaction remains open to judicial review.
8. Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corporation (1985). Pavement dwellers threatened with eviction were held entitled to be heard, the Court holding that the procedure under Section 314 of the Bombay Municipal Corporation Act must be read as not dispensing with a hearing in every case.

5. Exceptions. The rule is excluded or modified where there is express or implied statutory exclusion; in an emergency requiring immediate action; where a hearing is impracticable, as in Bihar School Examination Board v. Subhas Chandra Sinha (1970), where the results of an entire examination centre were cancelled for mass copying; in legislative action; where confidentiality or the security of the State is involved; where a hearing would be a useless formality; in purely administrative or contractual matters not affecting rights; and in interim preventive measures such as suspension pending inquiry.

The question asks specifically for the doctrine in the light of the Indian Constitution, so the weight of the answer should be on the Indian provisions and cases, with Dicey stated briefly as the starting point.

For full marks, cover: Dicey's three propositions in short; the constitutional provisions that embody the rule of law in India; the departures and qualifications; six landmark Indian judgments; and the modern content of the doctrine.

1. Dicey's formulation, in short. In Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (1885) Dicey gave three meanings: supremacy of law and the absence of arbitrary power; equality before the law, all persons being subject to the ordinary law and the ordinary courts; and the constitution as the result of the ordinary law, rights in England being the product of judicial decisions and not of a written charter.

7. Article 22, the safeguards on arrest and preventive detention;
8. Article 265, no tax except by authority of law, and Article 300A, no deprivation of property save by authority of law;
9. Articles 32 and 226, which make the remedy for a breach a right in itself;
10. Article 300, under which the State may be sued, so that the government is not above the ordinary law;
11. Articles 50, 124 to 147 and 214 to 231, securing an independent judiciary, without which the rule of law is a form of words; and
12. Article 311, the protection of civil servants, and Article 361, which is the one significant departure, since it exempts the President and the Governors from the jurisdiction of the courts in respect of the exercise of their powers.

3. The landmark judgments.

1. Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala (1973): the rule of law is part of the basic structure, so it cannot be destroyed even by an amendment of the Constitution.

6. Som Raj v. State of Haryana (1990): the absence of arbitrary power is the first postulate of the rule of law upon which the whole constitutional edifice is dependent.
7. Secretary, State of Karnataka v. Umadevi (2006) and A.K. Kaul v. Union of India (1995) applied the doctrine to appointments and to the reviewability of executive satisfaction.

4. The departures and qualifications. The rule of law in India is not absolute:

1. Article 361 gives immunity to the President and Governors;
2. Articles 105 and 194 give immunity to members of Parliament and the legislatures for anything said or any vote given in the House;
3. Preventive detention under Article 22 permits detention without trial;
4. the Emergency provisions, Articles 352 to 360, permit the suspension of the enforcement of rights, though Article 359(1) after the 44th Amendment no longer permits the suspension of Articles 20 and 21;

For full marks, cover: the meaning; the constitutional basis; eight to ten characteristics; the distinction from a court and from an ordinary executive body; the reasons for their growth; the criticism; and the case law on their control.

1. Meaning. An administrative tribunal is a statutory body outside the ordinary hierarchy of courts which decides disputes between the citizen and the administration, or in a specialised field, by a procedure that is judicial in substance but simpler and more flexible than that of the courts.

2. Constitutional basis. Article 323A empowers Parliament to provide by law for the adjudication by administrative tribunals of disputes relating to recruitment and conditions of service of persons appointed to public services of the Union or of a State. Article 323B empowers Parliament or a State legislature to provide for tribunals in respect of taxation, foreign exchange, industrial and labour disputes, land reforms, ceiling on urban property, elections, essential commodities and rent. Both were inserted by the 42nd Amendment, 1976. The Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985, was made under Article 323A.

7. Appointment and tenure by the executive, which is the point at which independence is threatened; the tenure and qualification provisions of the Tribunals Reforms Act, 2021 were struck down in Madras Bar Association v. Union of India on 19 November 2025 for giving excessive executive control.
8. Prerogative writs lie against it: certiorari and prohibition, and it is under the superintendence of the High Court under Article 227.
9. Its decisions are generally not binding precedents in the way a court's are, and it may depart from its earlier view.
10. It may apply policy, and is entitled to have regard to the object of the statute and to public interest in a way an ordinary civil court could not.

4. Distinction from a court.

7. Criticism. Members may lack legal training; the tribunal may sit in the department's own cause; there is a risk of executive influence through appointments, tenure and the provision of infrastructure; procedure varies from tribunal to tribunal so that the citizen cannot know what to expect; reasons are not always given; and the multiplication of tribunals has fragmented the law.

8. Judicial control. S.P. Sampath Kumar v. Union of India (1987) upheld the Administrative Tribunals Act on the footing that the tribunal was an effective substitute for the High Court. L. Chandra Kumar v. Union of India (1997), a seven-judge Bench, held that the power of judicial review vested in the High Courts under Articles 226 and 227 and in the Supreme Court under Article 32 is part of the basic structure and cannot be excluded, that the clauses in Articles 323A(2)(d) and 323B(3)(d) excluding it are unconstitutional, and that all decisions of tribunals are subject to scrutiny before a Division Bench of the High Court within whose jurisdiction the tribunal falls. Union of India v. R. Gandhi (2010) and the Madras Bar Association line of cases have since laid down the standards for the composition and independence of tribunals.

2. Characteristics. It is created by statute or charter; it is a body corporate with perpetual succession and a common seal, and may hold property, contract, sue and be sued in its own name; it is owned by the State; its capital comes from public funds; it is financially autonomous, keeping its own accounts and not depending on annual appropriation; its employees are not civil servants and are governed by its own regulations; and it is free from day-to-day departmental control while remaining answerable for results.

3. Kinds. Statutory corporations created by a special Act (Life Insurance Corporation, Reserve Bank of India, Food Corporation of India, Damodar Valley Corporation); Government companies registered under the Companies Act with not less than 51 per cent Government shareholding (Steel Authority of India, Bharat Heavy Electricals); and chartered corporations, of historical interest only in India. Functionally they are commercial, developmental, financial, promotional or regulatory.

4. Control.

A. Parliamentary control.

1. Questions, discussions and motions in the House on the working of the corporation, subject to the convention that day-to-day management is not questioned;

5. inspection, inquiry and the calling for returns; and
6. supersession of the board in cases of default.

C. Judicial control.

1. Ultra vires. A statutory corporation can do only what its Act permits, and its acts and regulations may be struck down as beyond its powers.

D. Public control. Consumer and user consultative councils, the Right to Information Act, 2005, which applies to public authorities including corporations substantially financed by the Government, the press, the Lokpal and Lokayuktas, the Central Vigilance Commission, and, where a regulator exists, the sectoral regulator.

5. Conclusion. The design problem of the public corporation is that the two things asked of it pull in opposite directions. Autonomy is the reason for creating it; accountability is the reason it exists at all. Too much control and it becomes a department with a different name; too little and public money is spent without answer. The Indian solution has been to leave management free and to control policy, appointments, finance and legality.

2. Classification.

1. By the authority that makes it: rules made by the Government, regulations by a statutory corporation, bye-laws by a local authority;
2. By its nature: normal delegation, where the limits are clearly stated, and exceptional delegation, which includes the power to modify an Act, to give the rule the force of an Act, or to remove difficulties;
3. Conditional or contingent legislation, where the law is complete and only its application is left to the executive;
4. Sub-delegation, where the delegate delegates further.

3. The reasons for its growth.

1. Pressure on parliamentary time. The legislature sits for a limited number of days and must debate policy, finance and grievance. It cannot also settle the technical detail of every scheme. Parliament passes a few dozen Acts a year and the executive makes thousands of rules under them.
2. Technicality of subject matter. Drug schedules, food standards, pollution limits, telecommunication tariffs, aircraft safety and banking prudential norms require expert knowledge that legislators do not have and cannot acquire in debate.

4. The constitutional limit. The power to delegate is not unlimited. In re Delhi Laws Act, 1912 (1951) held that the legislature may not delegate its essential legislative function, that is, the laying down of the policy of the law, but having laid it down may leave the working out of details to the executive; and that the power to repeal or modify an existing law goes beyond the permissible limit. Hamdard Dawakhana v. Union of India (1960) struck down a delegation to add "any other disease" to a statutory list because the Act supplied no standard. Ajoy Kumar Banerjee v. Union of India (1984) restated the rule that the essential legislative function cannot be delegated.

5. The dangers. Delegated legislation is criticised because it transfers law-making from an elected and debating body to officials; because the volume defeats scrutiny; because rules are often made without consultation of those affected; because Henry VIII clauses allow the executive to amend the parent Act itself; because publication is sometimes inadequate, though Harla v. State of Rajasthan (1951) holds that a law that has not been published cannot be enforced; and because sub-delegation moves the power still further from the legislature.