Mumbai University Solved Question Papers
Judicial Process
Previous Year Question Paper with Solution
LLM · Foundation Course
2015 Examination
munotes.in
Mumbai
LLM Foundation Course Judicial Process 2015 Question Paper with Solutions
MU LLM student group
Free to join
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.
Passages from this volume may be quoted, in print, online or by an AI system, with credit: name munotes.in and link to this volume's page. The volume may not be reproduced as a whole. Full terms at munotes.in/content-license.
munotes.in is an independent study resource for students of the University of Mumbai. It is not affiliated with the University of Mumbai, and is not endorsed by it.
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 2015 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 2015 examination, in the order it was set.
MarksPage
The Paper as Set
The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the 2015 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.
Q.1Explain in detail on "Public Interest Litigation work" as a judicial arm creating new dimensions for achieving justice, thereby forming a significant part of Judicial Process.[25]
Answer
For full marks, cover: what public interest litigation is and how it broke from the private law model; the relaxation of locus standi with the authorities that did it; the procedural innovations, each with the case that produced it; the new remedies, each with its facts; and the controls the Court has since imposed on its own creation.
Introduction
Public interest litigation is not a separate jurisdiction and there is no statute governing it. It is the writ jurisdiction under Articles 32 and 226 exercised at the instance of a person other than the one injured, for the benefit of persons who cannot approach the court themselves. Everything that is novel about it lies in three departures from the ordinary adversarial model: who may sue, how the proceeding is conducted, and what the court may order at the end of it.
The reason it belongs in a paper on the judicial process, rather than in a course on remedies, is that each of those departures was made by judges, none of them by Parliament, and together they changed what a court in India is able to do. Cardozo's proposition that the judicial process at its highest reaches is not discovery but creation has no better Indian illustration.
The first departure: standing
The classical rule was that only the person whose own legal right was injured could sue. The rule has an obvious justification, that it keeps courts out of disputes nobody has actually brought to them, and an equally obvious consequence, that it closes the courtroom to precisely those the Constitution was most concerned with. A bonded labourer, an undertrial and a pavement dweller each have rights under Part III and none of them has a lawyer.
Mumbai Kamgar Sabha v. Abdulbhai Faizullabhai, (1976) 3 SCC 832, is where the relaxation begins. A workers' union raised a claim about bonus on behalf of its members, and an objection was taken that the union itself had suffered no injury. Krishna Iyer J. allowed the proceeding, observing that procedural prescriptions are the handmaid and not the mistress of justice and that where a public body or a class is concerned the court should not be astute to find technical objections. The case is small; the principle in it is not.
S.P. Gupta v. Union of India, 1981 Supp SCC 87, is the doctrinal foundation and must be given with its facts, because the facts are what make the holding remarkable. A circular of the Union Law Minister had asked Chief Ministers to obtain consent from additional judges to be transferred outside their States, and a number of practising advocates challenged it, along with the non-appointment of two additional judges. The Union objected that advocates had no personal right in the matter. Bhagwati J. held that where a legal wrong or a legal injury is caused to a person or to a determinate class of persons who, by reason of poverty, helplessness, disability or a socially or economically disadvantaged position, are unable to approach the court for relief, any member of the public acting bona fide and having sufficient interest may move the High Court under Article 226 and the Supreme Court under Article 32.
Two limits inside that holding are usually missed and are worth stating, because they are the answer to the charge that standing was abolished. The applicant must act bona fide, and the persons on whose behalf he acts must be unable to come themselves. A busybody with a private grudge satisfies neither.
The second departure: procedure
Having admitted a petitioner who is not the injured party, the Court then had to deal with the fact that such a petitioner cannot prove the case in the ordinary way.
Bandhua Mukti Morcha v. Union of India, (1984) 3 SCC 161. An organisation wrote to the Supreme Court alleging that a large number of labourers in stone quarries in the Faridabad district of Haryana were working in inhuman conditions and in bondage. The State denied it. The Court held that Article 32 does not prescribe any particular form of proceeding, that the power to issue directions or writs is coupled with a duty to protect fundamental rights, and that it was open to the Court to appoint commissioners to inquire into the facts and report. The reasoning is the important part: a bonded labourer cannot file affidavits, cannot instruct counsel and cannot lead evidence, so a court which insists on ordinary proof is refusing relief while appearing to apply a neutral rule.
Sunil Batra v. Delhi Administration (No. 2), (1980) 3 SCC 488, produced what is called epistolary jurisdiction. Sunil Batra, a convict in Tihar jail, wrote a letter to a judge of the Supreme Court complaining that a warder had inflicted torture on another prisoner, Prem Chand, to extract money from his relatives. The Court treated the letter as a petition, converted the proceeding into one for habeas corpus, appointed two advocates as amici curiae with liberty to visit the prison and interview prisoners, and on their report issued directions on prison discipline, grievance mechanisms and visits by judicial officers. Krishna Iyer J.'s reasoning was that the rule of law does not stop at the prison gate and that a convict retains all fundamental rights except those necessarily lost by the fact of incarceration.
Hussainara Khatoon v. State of Bihar, (1980) 1 SCC 81, shows the two departures working together. A series of newspaper articles disclosed that thousands of undertrial prisoners in Bihar had been in custody for periods longer than the maximum sentence that could have been imposed had they been convicted, many for petty offences, some for years awaiting the framing of a charge. A petition was moved on their behalf. The Court held that a speedy trial is an essential ingredient of the reasonable, fair and just procedure required by Article 21, that the State could not plead financial or administrative incapacity, and it ordered the release of undertrials whose detention had exceeded the maximum sentence. It also held that free legal services to an accused unable to engage a lawyer are part of that fair procedure, reading Article 39A into Article 21.
The third departure: remedy
Compensation in public law. Rudul Sah v. State of Bihar, (1983) 4 SCC 141, is the origin. Rudul Sah was acquitted of his wife's murder by a Sessions Court in 1968 and was kept in jail until 1982, fourteen years after his acquittal, the State's explanation being that he was of unsound mind. He moved the Supreme Court for habeas corpus, and by the time the petition was heard he had been released, so the writ had nothing to operate on. The Court held that if it could only order release and nothing more, Article 32 would be reduced to a formality, and awarded compensation in the writ proceeding itself, describing it as a palliative and leaving the ordinary civil suit open.
The doctrine was rationalised in Nilabati Behera v. State of Orissa, (1993) 2 SCC 746. Suman Behera, aged twenty two, was taken into police custody in Orissa; his body was found the next morning on railway tracks with multiple injuries. His mother's letter was treated as a petition. The Court held that an award of compensation under Article 32 or Article 226 is a remedy in public law, based on the strict liability of the State for contravention of fundamental rights, to which the defence of sovereign immunity is not available, and that it is distinct from and additional to a private law action in tort. It expressly relied on Article 9(5) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which gives an enforceable right to compensation to a victim of unlawful arrest or detention.
Substantive law. M.C. Mehta v. Union of India, (1987) 1 SCC 395, arose from the escape of oleum gas from a plant of Shriram Foods and Fertiliser Industries in a densely populated part of Delhi in December 1985, weeks after the Bhopal disaster. The Court was invited to apply the rule in Rylands v. Fletcher, which carries the exceptions of act of God, act of a stranger, statutory authority and consent. It declined. It held that an enterprise engaged in a hazardous or inherently dangerous activity owes an absolute and non-delegable duty to the community, that liability is absolute and subject to no exception, and that the measure of compensation must be correlated to the magnitude and capacity of the enterprise so that it has a deterrent effect. It also held that Article 32 is not merely injunctive but empowers the Court to forge new remedies for the enforcement of fundamental rights. The reasoning given for departing from an 1868 English rule is the clearest statement of Cardozo's method of sociology in the Indian reports: a rule evolved in a different society at a different stage of industrial development cannot govern this one.
Rules where Parliament has made none. Vishaka v. State of Rajasthan, (1997) 6 SCC 241, followed the gang rape of Bhanwari Devi, a social worker employed in a State programme in Rajasthan, in retaliation for her attempt to prevent a child marriage. A petition was brought by social activists and organisations seeking enforcement of the fundamental rights of working women. There was no statute on sexual harassment at the workplace. The Court held that in the absence of enacted law, international conventions and norms may be read into the fundamental rights where there is no inconsistency, relied on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and laid down guidelines declared binding under Article 141 until suitable legislation is enacted. They governed every workplace in India for sixteen years, until the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013.
Supervision over time. Vineet Narain v. Union of India, (1998) 1 SCC 226, arose out of the Jain hawala diaries, in which payments were allegedly recorded to a large number of politicians and officials, and the complaint was that the Central Bureau of Investigation had not pursued the matter because those implicated were in high office. Instead of disposing of the petition with a direction, the Court retained the case and issued directions from time to time until the investigation was complete, a technique now called continuing mandamus. It also issued directions on the independence of the CBI and the Central Vigilance Commission, including tenure for the Director.
The Court's control over its own creation
State of Uttaranchal v. Balwant Singh Chaufal, (2010) 3 SCC 402, decided on 18 January 2010, is the most important decision in this field since S.P. Gupta and is where a critical answer earns its marks. The petition itself concerned the appointment of the Advocate General of Uttaranchal. The Court used the occasion to trace the development of public interest litigation through three phases: the first directed at the fundamental rights of the poor and disadvantaged, the second at environmental protection, ecology and probity in public life, and the third, the present phase, in which the jurisdiction is increasingly invoked for extraneous reasons.
It then directed that the High Courts should frame rules for encouraging genuine petitions and discouraging those filed for oblique motives, rather than each judge devising his own procedure; that courts should prima facie verify the credentials of the petitioner before entertaining a petition; that they should satisfy themselves about the correctness of the contents; that they must be satisfied that substantial public interest is involved; and that petitions involving larger public interest, gravity and urgency should be given priority.
Earlier, in Ashok Kumar Pandey v. State of West Bengal, (2004) 3 SCC 349, the Court had warned in terms against publicity interest litigation, private interest litigation and politics interest litigation, and exemplary costs are now routinely imposed on frivolous petitions.
Critical assessment
The case for it is that every element of modern Indian rights jurisprudence came through this route, and that the classes it reached, prisoners, undertrials, bonded labourers and pavement dwellers, are exactly those the political process does not reach. There is also an institutional argument: after the majority in ADM Jabalpur v. Shivkant Shukla, (1976) 2 SCC 521, held that during an Emergency no person could move a High Court for habeas corpus even against an illegal detention, the Court's standing was at its lowest, and public interest litigation was the means by which it recovered. That decision was expressly overruled in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1.
The case against it must be stated as strongly. The Court takes jurisdiction on documents that are not petitions, at the instance of persons with no injury, on facts gathered by its own appointees and not tested by cross examination, and it issues directions to departments it does not run and cannot fund. A respondent condemned on a commissioner's report has lost something real. A jurisdiction with no rule of standing has no principled stopping point, which is the burden of Divisional Manager, Aravali Golf Club v. Chander Hass, (2008) 1 SCC 683. And every relaxed admission displaces an ordinary appeal on a docket that is already the reason delay is itself an Article 21 problem.
Conclusion. Public interest litigation is the clearest instance in Indian law of the judicial process creating new dimensions rather than applying existing ones: it produced a new rule of standing in S.P. Gupta, a new procedure in Bandhua Mukti Morcha and Sunil Batra, a new remedy in Rudul Sah and Nilabati Behera, new substantive law in M.C. Mehta, and binding rules in Vishaka where Parliament had enacted none. It converted Part III from a set of defences available to those who could afford a lawyer into a jurisdiction that reaches the undertrial and the bonded labourer. Its legitimacy is not unconditional, and the correct statement of the condition is the one the Court itself arrived at in Balwant Singh Chaufal: the jurisdiction is available where a constitutional guarantee is engaged and its holders cannot enforce it themselves, and a jurisdiction founded on the needs of those who cannot come to court loses its justification the moment it is used by those who have no business being there.
The rest of the answers
The first answer is free. The rest come with the solved papers for your group.
You have read the question paper and its first answer in full. Buy the solved papers once and you can read every answer of every solved paper in this semester. Choose your group on the next page.
Notes + Solved papers: ₹798 Already bought it? Sign in
Or solved papers only: ₹499
Or notes only: ₹499
The question paper itself stays free, as does the syllabus and module one of every subject.
Found an error in this volume? Report it and we will check it against the paper.