Mumbai University Solved Question Papers
Indian Constitutional Law New Challenges
Previous Year Question Paper with Solution
LLM · Foundation Course
2018 Examination
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LLM Foundation Course Indian Constitutional Law New Challenges 2018 Question Paper with Solutions
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First published on munotes.in on 12 August 2026.
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Model answers written and edited by the munotes.in editorial desk.
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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 2018 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 2018 examination, in the order it was set.
MarksPage
MarksPage
The Paper as Set
The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the 2018 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 · 14 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
Q.P. Code 33855. Attempt any four questions, all questions carry equal marks
any four of seven · 100 Marks
1.Explain provision regarding appointment of judges of higher judiciary under the Constitution with the help of leading case laws.[25]
Answer
For full marks, cover: the constitutional text and its three silences; the four Judges Cases with the holding of each; the National Judicial Appointments Commission and why it fell; how the collegium works in practice; and the criticisms with the reform that would answer them.
The text, and what it does not say. Article 124(2): every Judge of the Supreme Court is appointed by the President by warrant under his hand and seal after consultation with such Judges of the Supreme Court and of the High Courts as the President may deem necessary, and for an appointment other than that of the Chief Justice, the Chief Justice of India shall always be consulted. Article 124(3) fixes the qualifications: five years as a High Court Judge, or ten years as an advocate of a High Court, or a distinguished jurist in the President's opinion. Article 217(1) provides for High Court Judges, appointed after consultation with the Chief Justice of India, the Governor, and for a puisne Judge the Chief Justice of that High Court. Article 222 provides for transfer, Article 224 for additional and acting Judges.
The Constitution is silent on who initiates a name, on the criteria, and on what happens if the consultees disagree. Every controversy since 1981 has been about those three silences.
First Judges Case, S.P. Gupta v. Union of India 1981 Supp SCC 87. Consultation does not mean concurrence; the Chief Justice's opinion has no primacy; the last word is with the executive.
Second Judges Case, Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association v. Union of India (1993) 4 SCC 441. Nine judges overruled S.P. Gupta: the opinion of the Chief Justice of India, formed after consultation with his senior colleagues, has primacy; the process is integrated, participatory and consultative; and a unanimous reiteration after the executive's objections have been considered should be acted on. The collegium was created here, on the reasoning that independence of the judiciary is basic structure.
Third Judges Case, Special Reference No. 1 of 1998 (1998) 7 SCC 739. The collegium is the Chief Justice with the four senior-most Judges for Supreme Court appointments and the two senior-most for High Court appointments and transfers; opinions must be in writing; a recommendation without such consultation does not bind the government.
Fourth Judges Case, Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association v. Union of India (2016) 5 SCC 1, decided 16 October 2015. The Ninety-ninth Amendment and the National Judicial Appointments Commission Act, 2014 were struck down 4:1. The Commission would have comprised the Chief Justice, the two next senior Judges, the Union Law Minister and two eminent persons, with any two members able to veto a name; the majority held that this destroyed judicial primacy in appointments, which is part of the basic structure. Chelameswar J. dissented, and his criticism of the collegium's opacity is quoted in every subsequent discussion.
How it works now, and the two practical facts an examiner will look for. The Supreme Court collegium is the Chief Justice and four senior-most Judges; a High Court recommendation passes from that Court's collegium of three to a Supreme Court collegium of three; the government may return a name once with objections, and a unanimous reiteration binds in principle. But no time limit binds the government, and the practice of neither notifying nor formally rejecting a reiterated name has become the effective instrument of executive influence. And the Memorandum of Procedure, directed to be revised in the remedial hearing after the NJAC judgment, remains unsettled a decade later, so the criteria and timelines that judgment contemplated do not exist.
Criticism and reform. Against the collegium: opacity, since resolutions have been published since 2017 but reasons are not; no stated criteria; no lay element; delay; and the risk of self-selection. Against any executive-led alternative: the NJAC holding itself. The proposals in circulation are a permanent secretariat for the collegium with published criteria, a statutory commission with a judicial majority, and mandatory reasons; none has been enacted. The Law Commission's 214th Report (2008) recommended reconsidering the Second and Third Judges Cases.
Conclusion. The Constitution provides only for appointment by the President after consultation, and the entire system now in force, primacy, the collegium, the composition of the collegium and the effect of reiteration, was built by the Court between 1993 and 1998 out of the word "consultation". In 2015 the Court held that Parliament may not replace that system with one giving the executive a veto, because judicial primacy in appointments is part of the basic structure. That position is coherent and uncomfortable at once: the arrangement defended as essential to independence is itself unwritten, unreasoned and slow. The reform that would answer the criticism without surrendering primacy is a Memorandum of Procedure carrying published criteria and time limits, and its absence a decade after it was directed is the sharpest thing that can be said about the present state of the law.
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