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Judicial Process
Previous Year Question Paper with Solution
LLM · Foundation Course
2024-25 Examination
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LLM Foundation Course Judicial Process 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. Four changes matter here. The National Judicial Appointments Commission and the Ninety ninth Amendment were struck down on 16 October 2015, so the collegium governs appointments and the Memorandum of Procedure remains unsettled. ADM Jabalpur was expressly overruled in Puttaswamy in 2017. On precedent, a Bench of seven judges overruled E.V. Chinnaiah on 1 August 2024 and a Bench of nine narrowed the reading of Article 39(b) on 5 November 2024, and both are more recent than any textbook on this subject. And on 19 November 2025 the core of the Tribunals Reforms Act, 2021 was struck down. Where a question turns on a position since changed, the answer gives it as it then stood and the present position, 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.
1)Evaluate the role of the judicial process in promoting social order and justice in India. Illustrate how the Supreme Court of India reconciles the balance between individual freedoms and collective welfare through landmark judgments.[25]
Answer
For full marks, cover: the role, evaluated and not merely described; and then the balancing question, which is a distinct topic with its own doctrine and its own cases, and which carries at least half the marks.
The role in promoting social order and justice
The judicial process orders Indian society because the Constitution gave the courts three things: a declaration that binds every court at once under Article 141, a remedy that is itself a fundamental right under Article 32 and, after S.P. Gupta v. Union of India, 1981 Supp SCC 87, is open to a bona fide stranger acting for those who cannot come, and a text general enough in Article 21 to receive rights the framers never named.
The evaluation is that the role has been decisive at the level of principle and indirect at the level of delivery. The content of Article 21 is judicial almost throughout: dignity in Francis Coralie Mullin v. Administrator, Union Territory of Delhi, (1981) 1 SCC 608, livelihood in Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corporation, (1985) 3 SCC 545, education in Unni Krishnan v. State of Andhra Pradesh, (1993) 1 SCC 645, privacy in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1. But a right declared is not a right delivered: Unni Krishnan became effective only when Parliament enacted Article 21A by the Eighty sixth Amendment in 2002 and the Act of 2009 followed, and Vishaka v. State of Rajasthan, (1997) 6 SCC 241, became a working regime only through the Act of 2013.
Reconciling individual freedom with collective welfare
This is the central problem of Indian constitutional law and the Constitution states it as a structure before the courts ever address it. Part III protects the individual; Part IV states the collective programme; Article 37 makes Part IV fundamental in governance while withholding enforcement. The reconciliation is therefore not a judicial invention but a judicial task assigned by the text.
Four doctrines carry the reconciliation.
First, the doctrine of reasonable restriction. Article 19 itself contemplates the balance, permitting restrictions in the interests of the matters specified in clauses (2) to (6), provided they are reasonable. The test is not whether the restriction serves the public good but whether it goes further than that good requires.
Second, the harmony of Parts III and IV. State of Madras v. Champakam Dorairajan, AIR 1951 SC 226, subordinated Part IV; Minerva Mills v. Union of India, (1980) 3 SCC 625, held that the harmony and balance between the two is itself a basic feature and that to give absolute primacy to either is to disturb it. That is the doctrinal statement of the balance the question asks about.
Third, structured proportionality. K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1, required a legitimate aim, a rational connection, necessity in the sense that no less restrictive measure would serve, and a fair balance between the interference and the aim. Its importance is that it stops the balancing being a bare assertion of which interest weighs more.
Fourth, the identification of a core that cannot be balanced away. Some claims are placed beyond aggregate calculation altogether, which is what an entrenched Part III means and what Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala, (1973) 4 SCC 225, protects even against amendment.
The landmark judgments illustrate the balance being struck both ways, and an evaluative answer should show both.
Where the individual prevailed. Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India, (1978) 1 SCC 248: an impounded passport, and the Court held that procedure under Article 21 must be right, just and fair. Olga Tellis: the public interest in clearing pavements was real, and the Court nevertheless held livelihood to be part of the right to life and required that those affected be heard. Puttaswamy: a large administrative benefit was claimed for the collection of biometric data, and privacy was held intrinsic to Article 21, with the proportionality test governing any intrusion. Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India, (2018) 10 SCC 1: majority morality was held not to be a permissible ground for criminalising consensual conduct.
Where the collective prevailed. M.C. Mehta v. Union of India, (1987) 1 SCC 395: absolute liability was imposed on hazardous enterprise, overriding the settled exceptions that protected the individual defendant, because the community bore the risk. Vellore Citizens Welfare Forum v. Union of India, (1996) 5 SCC 647: the polluter pays and precautionary principles were absorbed, subordinating commercial freedom to environmental protection. Indra Sawhney v. Union of India, 1992 Supp (3) SCC 217: reservation was upheld as an application of equality rather than an exception to it, with a ceiling and a creamy layer exclusion so that the collective claim did not become unlimited. M.K. Ranjitsinh v. Union of India, decided on 21 March 2024, recognised a right against the adverse effects of climate change while reconciling it with the need for renewable energy infrastructure.
The most instructive recent case is one where the Court moved the balance back. In Property Owners Association v. State of Maharashtra, decided on 5 November 2024, a Bench of nine judges held that not every privately owned resource is a material resource of the community under Article 39(b), departing from the wide view taken by Krishna Iyer J. in State of Karnataka v. Ranganatha Reddy, (1977) 4 SCC 471, and followed in Sanjeev Coke Manufacturing Co. v. Bharat Coking Coal, (1983) 1 SCC 147, with Nagarathna J. partly dissenting and Dhulia J. dissenting. The decision is squarely about the balance the question names: a directive principle expressing collective welfare had been read so widely that it could absorb private property altogether, and the Court restored a limit.
The balancing cases, with their facts
Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corporation, (1985) 3 SCC 545. Pavement and slum dwellers in Bombay were sought to be evicted under the Bombay Municipal Corporation Act and deported to their places of origin. The municipal interest in clearing obstructed footpaths was genuine and the Court accepted it. It nevertheless held that the right to livelihood is an integral facet of the right to life, because no person can live without the means of living, and that the procedure adopted must be fair, requiring that those affected be heard. It did not stop the eviction, which is the point: the Court moved the balance without displacing the policy.
M.C. Mehta v. Union of India, (1987) 1 SCC 395. After oleum gas escaped from Shriram Foods in Delhi in December 1985, the Court declined the exceptions to Rylands v. Fletcher and laid down absolute liability, with compensation correlated to the magnitude and capacity of the enterprise. Here the collective prevailed over an individual defendant's settled common law protections, and the reason given was that the community bears the risk of hazardous industry.
Indra Sawhney v. Union of India, 1992 Supp (3) SCC 217. Reservation for the Other Backward Classes was upheld as an application of equality rather than an exception to it, with a fifty per cent ceiling in the ordinary case and the exclusion of the creamy layer, so that a collective claim was recognised and simultaneously bounded.
K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1. Nine judges held privacy intrinsic to Article 21 and adopted a structured proportionality test for any intrusion: a legitimate aim, a rational connection, necessity in the sense that no less restrictive measure would serve, and a fair balance. That test is the Court's answer to the charge that balancing is only assertion, because it obliges the Court to show its working.
Conclusion. The judicial process has promoted social order and justice in India by converting general constitutional commitments into enforceable rules, and its record is strongest where a guarantee existed and those entitled to it could not enforce it. On the balance between individual freedom and collective welfare, the Supreme Court has not adopted a fixed preference and has not been consistent in outcome, which is the correct evaluation and not a criticism: Olga Tellis and Puttaswamy favour the individual, M.C. Mehta and Indra Sawhney favour the collective, and Property Owners Association corrects an earlier tilt. What has developed is not an answer but a method, and structured proportionality after Puttaswamy is that method, because it obliges the Court to state which interest it preferred, on what evidence, and why a lesser interference would not do.
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