BLS LLB 5 Years Sem 7 Administrative Law 2022-23 Question Paper with Solutions

K.C. Davis: "Administrative law is the law concerning the powers and procedures of administrative agencies, including especially the law governing judicial review of administrative action."

He defined an administrative agency as a governmental authority, other than a court and other than a legislature, which affects the rights of private parties either by adjudication or by rule-making.

Mandamus, "we command", is a writ issued by the Supreme Court under Article 32 or a High Court under Article 226 commanding a public authority to perform a public duty which it has failed or refused to perform.

Its conditions are: the applicant must have a legal right; there must be a public duty, statutory or otherwise; there must have been a demand and a refusal; and there must be no other equally efficacious remedy.

The rule of law means that the State and all its officers are subject to law, that power may be exercised only under and according to law, and that no person is above the law.

Dicey gave it three meanings: supremacy of law and the absence of arbitrary power; equality before the law, all persons being subject to the ordinary law administered by the ordinary courts; and the constitution as the product of the ordinary law, rights in England being the result of judicial decisions.

Two functions are:

1. to advise the political executive on policy, by supplying the Minister with facts, precedents, expert opinion and the likely consequences of each course, so that policy is made on information rather than impulse; and
2. to implement and administer the law and the policies decided by the Government: collecting revenue, maintaining order, running services, disbursing welfare and enforcing regulation.

Further functions are delegated legislation, since most rules are drafted in the departments; quasi-judicial adjudication, as in assessment, licensing and departmental appeals; and providing continuity and institutional memory across changes of government.

Legitimate expectation is the doctrine that where a public authority has made an express promise, or has followed a regular and settled practice, a person affected may reasonably expect that it will continue, and that expectation cannot be defeated without fairness, which at the least means a hearing.

It is not an enforceable substantive right; it is a ground of judicial review, and in India it is treated as an aspect of the non-arbitrariness required by Article 14.

4. Wide powers of investigation, including access to files and the power to summon officials;
5. Recommendatory conclusions, enforced by report and publicity rather than by decree; and
6. Reports to the legislature, which are his real sanction.

4. In India. The Administrative Reforms Commission of 1966, chaired by Morarji Desai, recommended a two-tier machinery, the Lokpal at the Centre and the Lokayukta in the States.

1. Maharashtra was the first State to act, by the Maharashtra Lokayukta and Upa-Lokayuktas Act, 1971;
2. at the Centre, after eight failed Bills between 1968 and 2011 and the Anna Hazare movement, the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013 was enacted. It creates a Lokpal of a chairperson and up to eight members, half of them judicial; requires every State to establish a Lokayukta within one year; brings the Prime Minister within its jurisdiction with exclusions for international relations, security, public order, atomic energy and space; and provides an Inquiry Wing under Section 11 and a Prosecution Wing under Section 12. A complaint must be within seven years of the offence under Section 53.

1. Object. The Act sets out a practical regime of right to information for citizens, to secure access to information under the control of public authorities, in order to promote transparency and accountability in the working of every public authority, and to contain corruption. Its constitutional root is Article 19(1)(a), the right to information having been held part of the freedom of speech and expression in State of Uttar Pradesh v. Raj Narain (1975).

2. Salient features.

1. Wide definition of information, Section 2(f): records, documents, memos, e-mails, opinions, advices, press releases, circulars, orders, logbooks, contracts, reports, papers, samples, models and data in any electronic form, and information relating to a private body which can be accessed by a public authority under any other law.
2. The right itself, Section 2(j): the right to inspect work, documents and records; to take notes, extracts and certified copies; to take certified samples of material; and to obtain information in electronic form.

6. Exemptions, Section 8: sovereignty and integrity of India, security, strategic, scientific or economic interests, foreign relations; information forbidden by a court; breach of parliamentary privilege; commercial confidence, trade secrets or intellectual property; information held in a fiduciary relationship; information received in confidence from a foreign government; information endangering life or physical safety or identifying a confidential source; information impeding investigation or prosecution; cabinet papers, subject to disclosure after the decision is taken; and personal information with no relation to public activity. Section 9 allows refusal where disclosure would infringe copyright of a person other than the State.
7. The public interest override, Section 8(2): information exempt under Section 8 or under the Official Secrets Act, 1923 may still be disclosed if the public interest in disclosure outweighs the harm to the protected interest.
8. Partial access, Section 10: severable non-exempt parts must be given.
9. Appeals, Sections 19 and 18: a first appeal to a senior officer within 30 days, a second appeal to the Central or State Information Commission within 90 days, and a complaint to the Commission under Section 18.

1. Meaning. Sub-delegation is the delegation by a delegate of the power delegated to him by the parent statute. The legislature delegates to authority A; A delegates further to B. Where the parent Act itself provides for it, it is spoken of as sub-delegated or second-stage legislation.

2. The rule. Delegatus non potest delegare, "a delegate cannot further delegate". Sub-delegation is therefore invalid unless the parent Act authorises it, expressly or by necessary implication.

The reason is that the legislature selected a particular authority because it trusted that authority's judgment and its accountability. To permit it to hand the power on would be to substitute a judgment the legislature never chose.

5. Limits and safeguards. Even where sub-delegation is authorised, the sub-delegate cannot exceed the delegate's own power; the rule made must be consistent with the parent Act and with the rules under which it is made; and the sub-delegated legislation must be published, since Harla v. State of Rajasthan (1951) holds that an unpublished law cannot be enforced against a person who had no means of knowing it.

6. Criticism. Sub-delegation carries the law-making power one stage further from the elected legislature; the rules made at the third and fourth tier are rarely laid before the House or examined by the Committee on Subordinate Legislation; and they are often poorly published, so that the citizen may be punished under a rule he could not have found.

3. Kinds. Statutory corporations (Life Insurance Corporation of India, Reserve Bank of India, Food Corporation of India, Damodar Valley Corporation, State Road Transport Corporations); Government companies under Section 2(45) of the Companies Act, 2013, with not less than 51 per cent Government holding (Steel Authority of India, Bharat Heavy Electricals, Coal India); and chartered corporations, now of historical interest only. By function they are commercial, developmental, financial, promotional or regulatory.

4. Reasons for their creation. To combine public ownership with commercial flexibility; to secure expert management; to take a strategic industry into public hands; to insulate an undertaking from political interference in its daily working while keeping it answerable for results; and to keep its finances outside the Consolidated Fund.

5. Control.

1. Parliamentary: annual report and audited accounts laid before the House, questions and discussions, the Committee on Public Undertakings (1964), the Public Accounts Committee, and audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General;

6. When is a corporation "the State"? Rajasthan State Electricity Board v. Mohan Lal (1967) held a statutory corporation to be "other authorities" under Article 12. Sukhdev Singh v. Bhagatram (1975) applied this to ONGC, LIC and the Industrial Finance Corporation. Ramana Dayaram Shetty v. International Airport Authority (1979) and Ajay Hasia v. Khalid Mujib Sehravardi (1981) laid down the six tests: the entire share capital held by the Government, financial assistance meeting almost the whole expenditure, a monopoly conferred or protected by the State, deep and pervasive State control, functions of public importance closely related to governmental functions, and the transfer of a Government department to the corporation. Pradeep Kumar Biswas v. Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (2002) restated the test as functional, financial and administrative domination by the Government.

These are the facts of Gullapalli Nageswara Rao v. Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation, AIR 1959 SC 308, the first Gullapalli case.

(a) Can Mr. X file a writ petition and which is the appropriate writ that can be issued? Give the grounds on which such writ can be issued.

Yes. He may file a writ petition under Article 226, and the appropriate writ is certiorari to quash the approved scheme.

4. No speaking order, if the approval records no reasons for rejecting the objections.
5. Violation of Article 19(1)(g) of the operators whose permits the scheme extinguishes, and of Article 14, if the scheme is arbitrary.

(b) Cite the relevant judicial decision and the explain the principle laid down in the said decision.

Gullapalli Nageswara Rao v. Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (1959).

Facts. Under Chapter IVA of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1939, the State Transport Undertaking published a scheme for the nationalisation of road transport. Objections were invited. They were heard by the Secretary of the Transport Department, and the scheme was approved by the Chief Minister.

Held. The approval was quashed. The Supreme Court laid down two principles:

1. "He who decides must hear." The divorce of the hearing from the decision is a violation of natural justice, because personal hearing enables the authority deciding to watch the demeanour of the witnesses and to clear up his own doubts; a summary of the case prepared by another is not the same thing.

These are the facts of Hind Construction and Engineering Co. Ltd. v. Their Workmen, AIR 1965 SC 917.

(a) Is the action taking by the employer justifiable. Give reason to the answer and also cite the relevant judicial decision?

No. The dismissal is not justifiable. It is a punishment grossly disproportionate to the misconduct, and it is liable to be set aside with reinstatement.

4. The added factors here. A genuine and honest belief that the day was a holiday negatives the element of wilful disobedience; the practice of the establishment is relevant to whether that belief was reasonable; and dismissing a body of workmen together suggests victimisation rather than discipline.
5. The remedy. The workmen may raise an industrial dispute under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, and the Labour Court or Tribunal may under Section 11A set aside the order of dismissal and direct reinstatement, or award lesser punishment, on the material on record.

(b) Explain the doctrine of proportionality?

1. Meaning. Proportionality requires that the measure adopted by an authority must be no more than is necessary to achieve the object, and that the burden imposed must bear a reasonable relation to the benefit sought. In the words often used, "you must not use a steam hammer to crack a nut if a nutcracker would do".

2. Its two applications in administrative law.

1. to restrictions on rights, where the court asks whether the restriction is proportionate to the object; and
2. to punishment, where the court asks whether the penalty is disproportionate to the misconduct.

(a) Does the removal amount to violation of right under Article 311? Explain briefly.

The answer turns on one question: does Mr. Saket hold a civil post under the Union or a State? On the facts as stated he is an employee of a municipal corporation, so Article 311 does not apply to him in terms. But he is not without a remedy, and the substance of the protection reaches him by another route.

1. What Article 311(1) says. No person who is a member of a civil service of the Union or of an All India Service or of a civil service of a State, or who 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.

4. The protection that does apply. First, the corporation's own service regulations, which almost invariably contain the same rule, that the removing authority must not be subordinate to the appointing authority; a removal contrary to a binding regulation is void. Second, Articles 14 and 16, because a municipal corporation is "the State" within Article 12, so its action in the matter of employment must not be arbitrary. Third, the principles of natural justice, which require notice of the charge, an inquiry and a hearing before removal.
5. Conclusion to write. The removal is bad, but the ground is the corporation's own regulations read with Articles 14 and 16 and natural justice, and not Article 311 as such. He may move the High Court under Article 226 for certiorari and reinstatement.

(b) Explain the doctrine of pleasure.

1. Meaning. The doctrine of pleasure, durante bene placito, is the rule that a servant of the Crown holds office during the pleasure of the Crown and may be dismissed at will, without notice and without cause.

3. Articles 14 and 16 forbid arbitrary or discriminatory exercise of the pleasure;
4. the pleasure can be exercised only by the President or the Governor or by an officer authorised, and not by anyone else; and
5. Article 310(2) itself allows a contract of fixed tenure for a person with special qualifications, with compensation if the post is abolished or he is removed for reasons unconnected with misconduct.

2. The holding in Nergesh Meerza. Regulation 46 of the Air India Employees Service Regulations provided that an air hostess would retire on attaining 35 years of age, or on marriage if it took place within four years of service, or on first pregnancy, whichever occurred earlier. The Supreme Court:
3. upheld the bar on marriage within the first four years, as a reasonable condition in the interests of the service and of family planning;
4. struck down the termination on first pregnancy as "most unreasonable and arbitrary", the Court observing that the provision amounted to compelling a woman not to have children and so to interfere with the ordinary course of human nature, and that having permitted marriage the employer could not then make motherhood a ground of dismissal;
5. struck down the provision empowering the Managing Director to extend the age of retirement "at his option", as an excessive delegation with no guidelines, opening the door to arbitrariness.

Note the direct link to part (a): Regulation 46 of Air India is itself a piece of delegated legislation, made under Section 45 of the Air Corporations Act, 1953, and it was struck down partly on a ground peculiar to delegated legislation, that a discretion had been conferred without guidelines.

2. Reasons for its growth. Pressure on parliamentary time; technicality of subject matter; the need for flexibility and rapid amendment; emergency; the value of experiment; local and expert knowledge; and the sheer volume of regulation a welfare State requires.

3. The constitutional limit. In re Delhi Laws Act, 1912 (1951): the legislature may not delegate its essential legislative function, being the laying down of policy, but may delegate the working out of details; and the power to repeal or modify an Act in its essentials cannot be delegated. Hamdard Dawakhana v. Union of India (1960) struck down a delegation made without any standard.

4. Flexibility of procedure, and freedom from the technical rules of evidence.
5. Ability to apply policy and to have regard to the object of the statute and the public interest.
6. Relief of the ordinary courts, which are already overburdened.
7. Preventive and continuing supervision: a regulator can license, inspect and set standards before harm occurs, which a court acting on a suit cannot.

3. Disadvantages.

1. Absence of legal training in some members, leading to erratic application of the law.
2. Departmental bias: the State is very often the other party, and the tribunal's members are appointed by it.
3. Threat to independence through executive control of appointment, tenure, reappointment, salary and infrastructure.
4. No uniform procedure: each tribunal has its own, so the citizen cannot know what to expect.
5. Reasons not always given, and no consistent system of precedent, so like cases may be decided unlike.

2. Article 323B empowers Parliament or a State legislature to provide for tribunals for the matters listed in clause (2): taxation, foreign exchange and import and export, industrial and labour disputes, land reforms, ceiling on urban property, elections to Parliament and the State legislatures, production and supply of essential goods, and offences and ancillary matters in respect of those subjects. Clause (3)(d) contained a similar exclusion clause.
3. Parliament made the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985 under Article 323A, creating the Central Administrative Tribunal and State Administrative Tribunals.

5. The constitutionality: the case law.

1. S.P. Sampath Kumar v. Union of India (1987). The Administrative Tribunals Act was challenged as excluding the High Court's jurisdiction under Article 226 and so destroying the basic structure. The Supreme Court upheld the Act, but only after the Government agreed to amendments strengthening the tribunal's independence. The principle laid down was that judicial review is a basic feature, but Parliament may substitute another effective institutional mechanism for the High Court, provided the substitute is as effective as the institution it replaces.

Note carefully: L. Chandra Kumar did not strike down Articles 323A and 323B themselves. It struck down only the exclusion clauses within them, and it modified Sampath Kumar to the extent that the tribunal is a supplement to, and not a substitute for, the High Court.

1. Union of India v. R. Gandhi, President, Madras Bar Association (2010) laid down standards for the composition of tribunals replacing courts, and the Madras Bar Association line of cases has applied them since. Most recently, on 19 November 2025, in Madras Bar Association v. Union of India, the Supreme Court struck down the core provisions of the Tribunals Reforms Act, 2021 governing appointment, tenure and conditions of service, as giving excessive executive control and violating judicial independence and the separation of powers, and directed the Union to establish a National Tribunal Commission.

6. Conclusion. Articles 323A and 323B are constitutionally valid, and tribunals are a permanent and necessary part of Indian adjudication. What the courts have refused to permit is the exclusion of the High Court's supervision and the executive capture of the tribunals' personnel. The pattern of the case law is that the more nearly a tribunal replaces a court, the more nearly it must resemble one in independence, tenure and qualification.

2. In the United States it is applied strictly by the text of the Constitution, tempered by checks and balances: the presidential veto, the Senate's power over appointments and treaties, impeachment, and judicial review.

3. In England it has never been accepted: the Cabinet sits in Parliament, and the House of Lords was the highest court until the Constitutional Reform Act, 2005 created the Supreme Court in 2009.

4. In India: the provisions that reflect it.

1. Article 50, a Directive Principle, directs the State to take steps to separate the judiciary from the executive in the public services;
2. Articles 53 and 154 vest the executive power of the Union and the States in the President and the Governors;
3. Articles 121 and 211 forbid discussion in the legislatures of the conduct of a Judge in the discharge of his duties;
4. Articles 122 and 212 bar the courts from inquiring into the validity of proceedings in the legislature on the ground of irregularity of procedure;

5. the executive exercises judicial power through tribunals (Articles 323A and 323B) and departmental adjudication;
6. Parliament may confer delegated legislative power on the executive without limit save that of the essential legislative function.

6. The judicial decisions.

1. Ram Jawaya Kapur v. State of Punjab (1955). The State of Punjab took over the publication of school textbooks by executive action, without a statute. The Supreme Court upheld it and, on separation of powers, Mukherjea CJ said the Indian Constitution "has not indeed recognised the doctrine of separation of powers in its absolute rigidity, but the functions of the different parts or branches of the Government have been sufficiently differentiated", so that one organ cannot assume functions essentially belonging to another.

5. I.R. Coelho v. State of Tamil Nadu (2007) and State of Tamil Nadu v. State of Kerala (2014) reaffirmed that a legislature cannot directly overrule a judicial decision, though it may retrospectively remove the basis on which the decision rested.
6. Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association v. Union of India (2015), the NJAC case, struck down the 99th Amendment on the ground that the primacy of the judiciary in appointments is part of the independence of the judiciary and so of the basic structure.

7. The modern functional statement. The Indian doctrine is not a rule that each organ must confine itself to its own work; it is a rule that no organ may take over the essential function of another. Delegated legislation and tribunals are tolerated because the essential function remains where the Constitution placed it; a statute deciding a particular case, or a court framing general economic policy, is not.

1. Pecuniary bias. Any financial interest, however small, disqualifies, and no further inquiry into its effect is made. Dr. Bonham's Case (1610): the College of Physicians fined Dr. Bonham and retained half the fine. Dimes v. Grand Junction Canal (1852): the Lord Chancellor held shares in the company and his decree was set aside.
2. Personal bias, arising from relationship, friendship, hostility, or a professional or business connection. A.K. Kraipak: a candidate for selection sat on the Selection Board that judged his rivals, and the selection was quashed even though he withdrew when his own name was considered. Mineral Development Ltd. v. State of Bihar (1960): the Minister who cancelled a mining licence had earlier prosecuted the licensee's proprietor.
3. Subject-matter or official bias. Gullapalli Nageswara Rao v. APSRTC (1959): the Secretary of the department that framed a nationalisation scheme heard the objections to it.
4. Departmental or institutional bias, and pre-judgment. A closed mind, or a policy so fixed that the hearing is a formality.

The landmark decisions are Cooper v. Wandsworth Board of Works (1863), where Byles J. said the justice of the common law will supply the omission of the legislature; Ridge v. Baldwin (1964), where the House of Lords held that the duty to hear does not depend on the decision being classified as judicial; Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India (1978), where the impounding of a passport without a hearing was held to violate Articles 14 and 21 and the rule was held excludable only by express words or necessary implication; and Swadeshi Cotton Mills v. Union of India (1981), where a post-decisional hearing was called a poor substitute for a pre-decisional one.

4. Third principle: the reasoned or speaking order. Siemens Engineering and Manufacturing Co. v. Union of India (1976) held that recording reasons is a basic principle of natural justice. S.N. Mukherjee v. Union of India (1990) held that reasons must be recorded unless expressly or by necessary implication dispensed with. Mohinder Singh Gill v. Chief Election Commissioner (1978) held that an order must be judged by the reasons it itself gives and cannot be supported by reasons supplied later in an affidavit.

For full marks, cover: why judicial control is the effective control; the two great heads, substantive and procedural ultra vires; the sub-heads under each with a case; the presumption of validity; and the effect of a rule being held ultra vires.

1. Why judicial control matters. Parliamentary control is weak: the volume of rules defeats scrutiny, the laying requirement is usually directory (Atlas Cycle Industries Ltd. v. State of Haryana, 1979), and the Committee on Subordinate Legislation can only report. Procedural control depends on the parent Act saying so. Judicial control is therefore where the real law is, and it operates through the doctrine of ultra vires, which has two branches.

2. Substantive ultra vires: the rule is beyond the power.

1. The parent Act is itself unconstitutional. If the Act is void for want of legislative competence or for breach of fundamental rights, everything made under it falls with it.

5. The rule violates the Constitution. Delegated legislation is "law" within Article 13(3)(a), so it may be struck down for breach of any fundamental right. Air India v. Nergesh Meerza (1981): a service regulation terminating an air hostess on first pregnancy was struck down under Article 14. Narendra Kumar v. Union of India (1960) is the older authority that rules must satisfy Article 19.
6. The rule is unreasonable or arbitrary. A bye-law of a local authority may be struck down for manifest unreasonableness (Kruse v. Johnson, 1898). In India, arbitrariness is itself a breach of Article 14, so the ground is constitutional rather than merely administrative. Indian Express Newspapers v. Union of India (1985) collected the grounds on which subordinate legislation may be questioned and confirmed that it may be challenged as arbitrary, though it may not be struck down merely because the court thinks another rule would be better.
7. Mala fides, though the courts are slow to find bad faith in rule-making and the burden is heavy.
8. Sub-delegation without authority. Agricultural Market Committee v. Shalimar Chemical Works (1997), applying delegatus non potest delegare.

3. Publication in the Official Gazette, which is generally treated as mandatory, because a law which the citizen has no means of knowing cannot be enforced against him: Harla v. State of Rajasthan (1951), where a resolution of the Council of Ministers of the former Jaipur State was held unenforceable for want of publication, and State of Maharashtra v. Mayer Hans George (1965) on the mode of publication.
4. Laying before the legislature, which Atlas Cycle holds to be directory unless the Act makes it a condition of validity.

4. The presumption of validity and the limits of review. Delegated legislation carries a presumption of validity, and the burden is on the person challenging it. The court will not strike a rule down merely because it thinks the rule unwise, inexpedient or capable of improvement; it is not the judge of policy. In Indian Express Newspapers the Court said that subordinate legislation does not carry the same degree of immunity as a statute, but that it may still be questioned only on the recognised grounds.