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Indian Constitutional Law New Challenges
Previous Year Question Paper with Solution
LLM · Foundation Course
2022 Examination
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LLM Foundation Course Indian Constitutional Law New Challenges 2022 Question Paper with Solutions
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First published on munotes.in on 12 August 2026.
Published by munotes.in, Mumbai.
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 2022 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 2022 examination, in the order it was set.
MarksPage
MarksPage
The Paper as Set
The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the 2022 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.
27 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
Long Questions
1.Success of India as a federal country depends not just on the harmonious relationship between centre and the states but also between states. Explain in details.
Answer
For full marks, cover: the two axes of federal relations, vertical and horizontal; the vertical machinery in outline; then the horizontal machinery in detail, which is what the question is about, being Articles 131, 261, 262, 263 and 301 to 307; the recurring inter-State disputes; and why the horizontal machinery works badly.
The proposition and why it is right. Most writing on Indian federalism is about the vertical axis, the Union against the States, because that is where Articles 3, 249, 256, 356 and 368 operate. But a federation is also a set of horizontal relations between units that share rivers, borders, labour, markets and language groups, and the Constitution deals with those separately and much more thinly. A federation can survive an assertive centre; it cannot survive States that will not trade with, share water with, or recognise the judgments of one another.
The vertical machinery, in one paragraph. Distribution of legislative power by Article 246 and the Seventh Schedule, with pith and substance, colourability and repugnancy under Article 254; administrative relations under Articles 256 to 261; financial relations under Articles 268 to 281 with the Finance Commission under Article 280 and the GST Council under Article 279A; and the emergency provisions in Articles 352 to 360. S.R. Bommai v. Union of India (1994) 3 SCC 1 made federalism part of the basic structure and Article 356 justiciable.
Now the horizontal machinery, which is the answer.
Article 131 gives the Supreme Court exclusive original jurisdiction in a dispute between two or more States, if and in so far as it involves a question on which the existence or extent of a legal right depends. It is not a general political forum: State of Bihar v. Union of India (1970) 1 SCC 67, and the scope of the jurisdiction was referred to a larger bench in State of Jharkhand v. State of Bihar (2015) 2 SCC 396. The Maharashtra and Karnataka boundary dispute over Belgaum has been pending on the original side since 2004, which is the measure of how slowly this route works.
Article 261 requires full faith and credit throughout India to the public acts, records and judicial proceedings of the Union and of every State, with clause (3) making a final judgment of a civil court in any part of India executable anywhere. It is the constitutional glue that makes one legal space out of twenty-eight jurisdictions, and it is almost never litigated, which is a sign that it works.
Article 262 takes inter-State water disputes out of the courts altogether: Parliament may provide for adjudication by law and may bar the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and every other court. It did both in the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956, whose section 11 contains the bar, and tribunals have been constituted for the Krishna, Godavari, Narmada, Ravi and Beas, Cauvery, Vansadhara and Mahadayi. The bar is not absolute: State of Karnataka v. State of Tamil Nadu (2018) 4 SCC 1 held that an appeal under Article 136 lies notwithstanding section 11.
Article 263 permits the President to establish an Inter-State Council to enquire into and advise upon disputes between States, to investigate subjects of common interest and to make recommendations for better coordination. Recommended by the Sarkaria Commission in 1988, it was constituted only in 1990, and the Punchhi Commission recommended in 2010 that it meet at least three times a year, which it does not. The Zonal Councils, five of them, are statutory bodies under the States Reorganisation Act, 1956.
Articles 301 to 307 guarantee freedom of trade, commerce and intercourse throughout India, subject to Parliament's power under Article 302 and the requirement of the President's previous sanction for a State Bill under the proviso to Article 304(b). This prevents States from erecting internal barriers against each other, and it was re-read by a nine-judge bench in Jindal Stainless Ltd. v. State of Haryana (2017) 12 SCC 1, which abandoned the compensatory tax doctrine of Automobile Transport (Rajasthan) Ltd. v. State of Rajasthan (AIR 1962 SC 1406). Article 307 permits Parliament to appoint an authority for those purposes, and none has ever been appointed.
The recurring inter-State disputes. Water: Cauvery between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, Krishna between Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, Ravi and Beas between Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan, Mahadayi between Goa, Karnataka and Maharashtra. Boundaries: Maharashtra and Karnataka over Belgaum, and Assam with Mizoram, Nagaland, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh, the Assam and Mizoram border seeing fatal violence in July 2021, months before this paper was set. Domicile and employment, where the constitutional question is Article 16(2)'s prohibition of discrimination on the ground of residence, subject only to Article 16(3), under which Parliament alone may prescribe a residence requirement. Language and migration, which Articles 29 and 350A address only obliquely.
Why the horizontal machinery works badly, and this is where marks are. One, Article 263 is permissive, not mandatory, and the body it authorises can only advise. Two, Article 262 substitutes tribunals with no binding timetable, so awards take decades and are delayed further at the notification stage under section 6. Three, Article 131 requires a legal right, so a dispute about equitable sharing or about a politically negotiated boundary often falls outside it. Four, an inter-State dispute has no natural arbiter with an interest in settlement: the Union is itself a political actor and the Court is slow and has no fact-finding machinery of its own.
Conclusion. The proposition in the question is correct, and the Constitution's own drafting proves it: the framers wrote a detailed vertical scheme and a thin horizontal one, giving inter-State relations Articles 131, 261, 262, 263 and 301 to 307 and no standing institution with power to decide. The self-executing parts work almost invisibly, and Article 261 is the best example, having produced almost no litigation in seventy-five years. The parts that depend on political willingness, a Council that may be convened and rarely is, tribunals with no deadline, and an Article 307 authority never appointed, have failed, and the cost is measured in disputes such as Cauvery and Belgaum that have outlasted the governments that began them. India's success as a federation therefore depends, as the question says, on the axis the Constitution equipped least.
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