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Indian Constitutional Law New Challenges
Previous Year Question Paper with Solution
LLM · Foundation Course
2024-25 Examination
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LLM Foundation Course Indian Constitutional Law New Challenges 2024-25 Question Paper with Solutions
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First published on munotes.in on 12 August 2026.
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The University does not publish an official answer key for this paper. The answers in this volume are model answers, written to show how a full-mark answer is built. They are a study aid, not an authority on what an examiner marked.
The question paper reproduced here is the paper as set by the University of Mumbai at the 2024-25 examination.
The answers in this volume state the law as it stands today, not as it stood when the paper was set, and in this subject the difference is large. Five changes alter answers here. Aligarh Muslim University v. Naresh Agarwal, 8 November 2024, overruled Azeez Basha on the minority status of an institution incorporated by statute. State of Punjab v. Davinder Singh, 1 August 2024, permitted sub-classification within the Scheduled Castes. The Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners Act, 2023 replaced the appointment committee directed in Anoop Baranwal. The Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act, 2023 came into force on 16 April 2026 and is not yet operative. And the advisory opinion of 20 November 2025 held that no timeline may be set for assent to a Bill. Where a provision has since been replaced, the answer gives the position then and now, and says which is which.
Contents
The questions below are the paper as the University of Mumbai set it at the 2024-25 examination, in the order it was set.
MarksPage
The Paper as Set
The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the 2024-25 examination, reproduced as the University of Mumbai set them, in the order it set them. Nothing has been reworded, added or left out. Only the answers are ours. See the original question paper.
Duration 3 hours · Total marks 100 · 7 questions answered
How to use this volume
Solve the paper first, under exam conditions and against the clock. Then read the answers here and mark your own. Reading a solution before attempting the question feels productive and teaches very little, because recognising an answer is not the same as being able to write one.
SECTION I
Attempt ANY FOUR questions, all questions carry equal marks, cite relevant case laws wherever required
any four of seven · 100 Marks
1)Discuss the interpretation of 'State' under Article 12 of the Indian Constitution. How has the judiciary shaped its scope through critical judgments?[25]
Answer
For full marks, cover: the text and why it is inclusive; then, since the question asks how the judiciary shaped the scope, take the judgments in order and say what each one added, rather than listing them; and close on the two doctrines that now do the work the definition cannot, public function under Article 226 and horizontality after Kaushal Kishor.
The text first. Article 12 provides that in Part III, unless the context otherwise requires, "the State" includes the Government and Parliament of India, the Government and the Legislature of each of the States, all local authorities, and other authorities within the territory of India or under the control of the Government of India. Two features of the drafting decide everything that follows. It says "includes", not "means", so it is a floor and not a ceiling. And it is a definition for Part III only, and for Article 36 in Part IV by express extension, so a body may be State for the purpose of a fundamental right and not for any other purpose.
Why the interpretation mattered. Article 13 declares void any law inconsistent with Part III and Article 32 gives the remedy. Whether a body is State therefore decides whether a citizen has any constitutional remedy against it at all. As the State moved into industry, insurance, banking and transport through corporations rather than departments, the question became the most litigated definitional issue in Indian constitutional law.
Now the judgments, each with what it added.
1. University of Madras v. Shantha Bai (AIR 1954 Mad 67) added the wrong answer, and is worth stating for that reason. The Madras High Court applied ejusdem generis to "other authorities", confining the phrase to bodies exercising governmental or sovereign functions, so a university was outside Article 12. The reasoning was rejected in Ujjam Bai v. State of Uttar Pradesh (AIR 1962 SC 1621).
2. Rajasthan State Electricity Board v. Mohan Lal (AIR 1967 SC 1857) added the statutory test. "Other authorities" includes all authorities created by the Constitution or by statute on whom powers are conferred by law, and it is immaterial that the body also carries on trade or business. The rule of ejusdem generis has no application because the preceding words have no common genus.
3. Sukhdev Singh v. Bhagatram (1975) 1 SCC 421 added the idea of instrumentality. ONGC, LIC and the Industrial Finance Corporation were held to be State because their regulations had statutory force. Mathew J., concurring, supplied the theory: a public corporation is an agency or instrumentality of the State, and the State cannot escape its constitutional obligations by choosing a corporate form.
4. Ramana Dayaram Shetty v. International Airport Authority of India (1979) 3 SCC 489 added workable tests. Bhagwati J. listed the indicia of instrumentality: entire share capital held by government; deep and pervasive State control; financial assistance meeting almost the whole expenditure; a State-conferred or State-protected monopoly; functions of public importance closely related to governmental functions; and a department of government transferred to the body. The case also gave the parallel rule that the State cannot act arbitrarily in awarding contracts, which is the administrative law half of its significance.
5. Ajay Hasia v. Khalid Mujib Sehravardi (1981) 1 SCC 722 added form-neutrality. The tests apply whether the body is created by statute or under a statute; a society registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860 running a regional engineering college was State. The question is not how the juristic person is born but why it has been brought into existence.
6. Pradeep Kumar Biswas v. Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (2002) 5 SCC 111 added the settled composite test, and did so by a bench of seven, overruling Sabhajit Tewary v. Union of India (1975) 1 SCC 485. The body must be financially, functionally and administratively dominated by or under the control of the Government; that control must be particular to the body and pervasive; and control which is merely regulatory, whether under statute or otherwise, will not make a body State. The Ajay Hasia indicia survive only as illustrations of this test.
7. Zee Telefilms Ltd. v. Union of India (2005) 4 SCC 649 added the boundary. The Board of Control for Cricket in India, though it enjoys a monopoly in fact and selects the national team, is not State: not created by statute, no share capital held by government, no financial assistance, no monopoly conferred by the State, no pervasive control. But the majority preserved the citizen's remedy by holding that where the Board discharges public duties a writ under Article 226 lies. Federal Bank Ltd. v. Sagar Thomas (2003) 10 SCC 733 is to the same effect for a private bank subject to Reserve Bank regulation.
8. Kaushal Kishor v. State of Uttar Pradesh (2023) 4 SCC 1 added a way round the definition altogether. By 4:1 the Court held that the rights under Articles 19 and 21 can be enforced against non-State actors, alongside Articles 15(2), 17, 20(2), 23, 24 and 29(2), which are horizontal on their own terms, and that the State has a positive duty to protect a person's Article 21 rights even against private threats. If that holding is developed, the question whether a body is State ceases to be decisive for two of the most important rights in Part III.
On the judiciary itself, the position is settled and often asked as a rider. In its rule-making and administrative capacity a court is State. In its judicial capacity, Naresh Shridhar Mirajkar v. State of Maharashtra (AIR 1967 SC 1) and Rupa Ashok Hurra v. Ashok Hurra (2002) 4 SCC 388 hold that a judicial order of a superior court is not amenable to Article 32, the remedy being appeal, review or a curative petition.
Assess the shaping, because the question asks about it. The direction of travel until 2002 was one way: each judgment brought within Article 12 a class of body the previous one had left out, moving the test from sovereign function to statutory creation to instrumentality to pervasive control. Zee Telefilms stopped it, and correctly, because a definition that catches every powerful private body would be no definition. The result is a settled but static rule at a time when the State's own footprint is shrinking through disinvestment, so that the field to which Article 12 applies narrows even as the definition stands still. BALCO Employees' Union v. Union of India (2002) 2 SCC 333, which upheld disinvestment as a policy decision not ordinarily justiciable, is the honest illustration: employees with constitutional protection on one day had none the next. The judiciary's answer has not been to stretch Article 12 further but to build two alternatives beside it, the public duty jurisdiction of Andi Mukta Sadguru Trust v. V.R. Rudani (1989) 2 SCC 691 and the horizontality of Kaushal Kishor.
Conclusion. The interpretation of "State" has been shaped by roughly seven decisions in fifty years, and the shape they have given it is a test of control, not of function or of legal form: after Pradeep Kumar Biswas, a body is State if the government dominates it financially, functionally and administratively, and not merely if it is powerful, monopolistic or important. That is a coherent and defensible line, but it was drawn for an economy in which the State owned the commanding heights. The critical judgments of the next phase are unlikely to be about Article 12 at all; they will be about whether a private body performing a public function can be held to Part III standards under Article 226, and how far the horizontal reading in Kaushal Kishor actually reaches.
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