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Law and Social Transformation of India
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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 2023 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 that reaches almost every question. The Indian Penal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Indian Evidence Act were replaced on 1 July 2024 by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, so where a question asks about a section of the old Code by number, the answer gives that section and its successor. Section 89 of the Code of Civil Procedure was substituted by the Mediation Act, 2023. The reservation of one third of the seats in the Lok Sabha and the State assemblies for women was notified into force on 16 April 2026 and operates after the next census and delimitation. And on 1 August 2024 seven judges held that a State may sub-classify within the Scheduled Castes.
Contents
The questions below are the paper as the University of Mumbai set it at the 2023 examination, in the order it was set.
MarksPage
The Paper as Set
The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the 2023 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 · 10 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
any four of seven · 100 Marks
1.Discuss in detail law as an instrument of social change in the light of Social Engineering theory.[25]
Answer
For full marks, cover: Pound's theory in detail, his classification of interests, the jural postulates and his method; the contrary view; how the Indian Constitution adopts the engineering model; Indian illustrations organised by interest, which is what makes this an answer on social engineering rather than a general essay; the conditions of success; the criticisms; and a conclusion.
1. Pound and sociological jurisprudence
Roscoe Pound (1870 to 1964), Dean of Harvard Law School, is the central figure of sociological jurisprudence, which studies law as a social institution and judges it by its effects. He wrote against the mechanical jurisprudence of his own tradition, in which rules were applied deductively without regard to consequence, and set out the theory in Interpretations of Legal History (1923), Social Control Through Law (1942) and the five volumes of Jurisprudence (1959).
The engineering metaphor. Law is social engineering: the task is to build a structure of society which secures the satisfaction of the maximum of human wants with the minimum of friction and waste. Law is instrumental, judged by what it produces, and is one instrument of social control alongside religion, morality and education, becoming the primary one in a modern differentiated society where the others no longer hold universally.
2. The classification of interests
An interest is a claim, demand or desire that human beings assert in fact, which the legal order must recognise, define, secure and limit.
Individual interests: interests of personality (physical integrity, freedom of will, freedom from coercion and deception, honour and reputation, privacy, belief and opinion); interests in domestic relations (parent, child, husband, wife); and interests of substance (property, freedom of contract and of industry, association, continuity of employment, inherited and expected advantages).
Public interests: the interests of the State as a juristic person, in its personality and substance, and of the State as guardian of social interests, which is how it intervenes for the environment, for minors and for the incapable.
Social interests, the most important class: general security (peace and order, general safety, general health, security of acquisitions and of transactions); security of social institutions (domestic, religious, political, economic); general morals; conservation of social resources, natural and human; general progress, economic, political and cultural; and the individual life, the claim of each human being to live a human life according to the standards of the society.
The jural postulates supply the scale: the assumptions a civilisation takes for granted, in Pound's own list that others will commit no intentional aggression, that a person may control what he has created or acquired, that others will act in good faith and make good the reasonable expectations their promises create, that others will act with due care, and that those who maintain dangerous things will restrain them.
The method: interests must be evaluated on the same plane, so an individual claim is restated in terms of the corresponding social interest before it is weighed, otherwise the label decides the outcome.
3. The contrary view, and India's choice
Savigny held that law expresses the Volksgeist and cannot be manufactured; Sumner that stateways cannot change folkways. The Indian Constitution rejected that position in practice. It did not describe the society of 1950 but prescribed the one to be built: the Preamble's justice, liberty, equality and fraternity is a statement of interests to be secured, Part III makes several of them enforceable, and Part IV states the programme while Article 37 makes it fundamental in governance and unenforceable in court. That structure is social engineering written into a founding document, and Dr Ambedkar's closing speech of 25 November 1949, on the contradiction between political equality and social and economic inequality, states the engineering problem exactly.
4. Indian illustrations, organised by interest
The individual life as a social interest. Article 21 as expanded from Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India (1978) 1 SCC 248, where an impounded passport with no reasons produced the holding that procedure must be right, just and fair, through Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corporation (1985) 3 SCC 545, where the livelihood of pavement dwellers was held part of the right to life, Hussainara Khatoon (1980) on speedy trial and legal aid, and K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017) 10 SCC 1 on privacy.
The security of social institutions, and its reform. The Hindu Code Bills of 1955 and 1956 rewrote the domestic institution; Shayara Bano v. Union of India (2017) 9 SCC 1 set aside instantaneous triple talaq; Article 25(2)(b) permits reform of the religious institution from inside the guarantee of religious freedom, as Sri Venkataramana Devaru v. State of Mysore AIR 1958 SC 255 demonstrated by harmonising temple entry with denominational autonomy.
The conservation of social resources. M.C. Mehta v. Union of India (1987) 1 SCC 395 created absolute liability for hazardous enterprise, with compensation correlated to the capacity of the enterprise; Vellore Citizens Welfare Forum v. Union of India (1996) 5 SCC 647 adopted sustainable development, the precautionary principle and polluter pays; M.K. Ranjitsinh v. Union of India (2024) recognised a right against the adverse effects of climate change.
General progress weighed against individual interests. Reservation under Articles 15(4) and 16(4), analysed in Indra Sawhney v. Union of India 1992 Supp (3) SCC 217 and recalibrated in State of Punjab v. Davinder Singh (2024) INSC 562, which permitted sub-classification within the Scheduled Castes.
Balancing on the same plane, in Pound's own sense. Vishaka v. State of Rajasthan (1997) 6 SCC 241 weighed the employer's freedom of contract, an individual interest of substance, against the social interest in the individual life of the woman worker, and gave the second precedence; the Court's method was Pound's whether or not it named him.
5. The conditions under which engineering works
Indian experience yields a working rule that belongs in the answer. Law changes behaviour where the rule is precise, where the beneficiary can enforce it herself, where a funded institution the citizen actually meets is charged with delivery, and where no strong contrary norm inside the family or community protects the prohibited conduct. It fails where enforcement depends on an official with no incentive to act, as with bonded labour, manual scavenging and land ceiling, and where both parties to the forbidden transaction want it, as with dowry and child marriage. Vilhelm Aubert's studies of legislated change reach the same conclusion.
6. Criticism of the theory
Pound's inventory is descriptive rather than normative: it directs the jurist to balance without supplying a scale, so the jural postulates can smuggle in the values of the dominant class, which is the Marxist and realist objection. Julius Stone called it a valuable inventory rather than a philosophy of values. The engineering metaphor assumes fixed materials, whereas wants change in response to the law itself. Balancing presupposes a consensus about the ends of society that a plural democracy may not possess. And in India the criticism has an institutional edge: the engineer has most often been the unelected court, which raises the separation of powers objection to judicial activism.
Conclusion. Social engineering is the most useful single theory for this subject because it states what the Indian Constitution assumes: that law is an instrument, that it works upon competing claims, and that it is judged by what it delivers. Measured by that test Indian law has been an effective engineer of the legal structure, since no hierarchy in India now enjoys legal support, and a much weaker engineer of social fact, because delivery depends on institutions that law can command but cannot staff. Pound would have regarded that as the expected result: engineering reduces friction and waste in the ordering of conflicting interests; it does not abolish the conflict, and the work is never finished.
2.Explain the provisions related to freedom of religion under the Constitution of India.[25]
Answer
For full marks, cover: the scheme; Articles 25 to 28 clause by clause with the exact limitations; the essential religious practices doctrine traced through the cases with facts and holdings; the reform power and what has been done under it; Articles 29 and 30 briefly; the current controversies; and a critical conclusion.
1. The scheme, and secularism as its foundation
Freedom of religion is guaranteed by Articles 25 to 28, supported by Article 15(1) and 16(2) (no discrimination on the ground of religion), Articles 29 and 30 (minority rights) and Article 44 (uniform civil code). Secularism is a basic feature: S.R. Bommai v. Union of India (1994) 3 SCC 1, nine judges, holding that while a citizen is free to profess a religion, the State has no religion of its own and must treat all religions equally, and that a State government acting against secularism may be dismissed under Article 356. The word "secular" entered the Preamble by the Forty-second Amendment, 1976; the Court has held it was always there in substance.
2. Article 25
Article 25(1): subject to public order, morality and health and to the other provisions of this Part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion.
Three points must be made. The right belongs to all persons, not only citizens. The right to propagate means to transmit or spread one's tenets and does not include a right to convert another person, so anti-conversion statutes were upheld in Rev. Stainislaus v. State of Madhya Pradesh (1977) 1 SCC 677, on the reasoning that a right to convert would impinge on the freedom of conscience of the person converted. And the words "the other provisions of this Part" subordinate religious practice to Articles 14, 15, 17 and 21, which is where the balance is struck.
Article 25(2): nothing affects the operation of any existing law or prevents the State from making a law (a) regulating or restricting any economic, financial, political or other secular activity associated with religious practice, or (b) providing for social welfare and reform or the throwing open of Hindu religious institutions of a public character to all classes and sections of Hindus. Explanation I treats the wearing and carrying of kirpans as included in the profession of Sikhism; Explanation II extends the reference to Hindus to Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists.
3. Article 26
Subject to public order, morality and health, every religious denomination or section of it has the right (a) to establish and maintain institutions for religious and charitable purposes; (b) to manage its own affairs in matters of religion; (c) to own and acquire movable and immovable property; and (d) to administer such property in accordance with law.
The distinction between (b) and (d) is the examinable core: matters of religion are protected against State interference, while the administration of property is subject to regulation. The tests of a denomination were laid down in S.P. Mittal v. Union of India (1983) 1 SCC 51: a collection of individuals with a common faith, a common organisation and a distinctive name.
4. Articles 27 and 28
Article 27: no person shall be compelled to pay any tax the proceeds of which are specifically appropriated for the promotion or maintenance of any particular religion or denomination. A fee levied to meet the cost of regulating secular administration is not such a tax: Commissioner, Hindu Religious Endowments v. Lakshmindra (1954) and Jagannath Ramanuj Das v. State of Orissa AIR 1954 SC 400.
Article 28: clause (1), no religious instruction in an institution wholly maintained out of State funds; clause (2), an exception for an institution administered by the State but established under an endowment or trust requiring religious instruction; clause (3), in a recognised or aided institution, no person to be required to take part in religious instruction or worship without consent, or the guardian's consent if a minor. Aruna Roy v. Union of India (2002) 7 SCC 368 held that study about religions, as distinct from religious instruction, does not offend Article 28.
5. The essential religious practices doctrine
The Commissioner, Hindu Religious Endowments, Madras v. Sri Lakshmindra Thirtha Swamiar of Sri Shirur Mutt AIR 1954 SC 282 is the foundation. The Madras Act had placed the Mutt under a scheme of administration. The Court held that religion is not confined to belief but extends to rituals, observances, ceremonies and modes of worship; that what is essential to a religion is to be decided with reference to the doctrines of that religion itself; and that a law taking away the right of administration altogether is void.
The results have been uneven, and that unevenness is the standing criticism:
Mohd. Hanif Quareshi v. State of Bihar AIR 1958 SC 731: sacrifice of a cow on Bakr-Id held not essential, since a Muslim may sacrifice a goat or a camel.
Sardar Syedna Taher Saifuddin v. State of Bombay AIR 1962 SC 853: the Bombay Prevention of Excommunication Act was struck down, the power of the Dai-al-Mutlaq to excommunicate being part of the management of the denomination's own affairs in matters of religion.
Sri Venkataramana Devaru v. State of Mysore AIR 1958 SC 255: the classic harmonisation. Article 25(2)(b) prevails over Article 26(b), but the denomination may exclude the general public on specified ceremonial occasions.
Bijoe Emmanuel v. State of Kerala (1986) 3 SCC 615: three children of Jehovah's Witnesses who stood respectfully but did not sing the national anthem were expelled; the Court held the expulsion violated Articles 19(1)(a) and 25, since no law compels singing.
Church of God (Full Gospel) in India v. K.K.R. Majestic Colony Welfare Association (2000) 7 SCC 282: amplified prayer at night was subordinated to the right of residents under Article 21, no religion prescribing that prayer must disturb others.
Indian Young Lawyers Association v. State of Kerala (2018) 11 SCC 1: the exclusion of women aged ten to fifty from Sabarimala was struck down 4:1; the majority held the devotees were not a separate denomination and the practice not essential, and Chandrachud J treated exclusion founded on notions of menstrual impurity as a form of untouchability under Article 17, while criticising the essential practices test and preferring constitutional morality. A nine-judge reference arising from the review is pending, so the case must be presented as unsettled.
6. Reform under Article 25(2)(b)
Temple-entry legislation in every southern State; Article 17 with the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955; the codification of Hindu law between 1955 and 1956, abolishing polygamy for Hindus, permitting divorce and giving the widow and daughter rights of inheritance; the Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act, 1987; the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006; and the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019 following Shayara Bano. John Vallamattom v. Union of India (2003) 6 SCC 611 struck down Section 118 of the Indian Succession Act, which restricted bequests for religious or charitable purposes by Christians, as violating Article 14.
7. Current controversies
The Sabarimala reference; the hijab dispute after the split verdict in Aishat Shifa v. State of Karnataka (2022); anti-conversion statutes, several now extending to conversion for marriage, which sit uneasily with the right to propagate and with the choice of a partner protected in Shafin Jahan v. Asokan K.M. (2018) 16 SCC 368; the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991, whose Section 4 freezes the religious character of a place as it stood on 15 August 1947 and which is itself under challenge although its constitutional significance was affirmed in M. Siddiq v. Mahant Suresh Das (2020) 1 SCC 1; and the Uniform Civil Code of Uttarakhand Act, 2024, in force from 27 January 2025.
Conclusion. The Indian guarantee of religious freedom is generous in what it protects and explicit about what overrides it. It protects belief, practice and propagation, gives denominations control over their own religious affairs, and forbids religious taxation and compelled instruction; and it then subjects all of this to public order, morality, health and the rest of Part III, while expressly authorising the State to reform religious practice and to open religious institutions. That combination is the whole difference between Indian secularism and the American wall of separation. The open question, and the right note on which to end, is whether the courts will continue to decide what a religion essentially requires or will move to the constitutional morality standard that the pending nine-judge reference will settle.
3.Elaborate, 'Language as a divisive factor' and the constitutional guarantees provided to linguistic minorities in India.[25]
Answer
For full marks, cover: the four mechanisms by which language divides; the historical episodes with dates; the three devices that contained the division; the guarantees article by article; the machinery; the cases with facts and holdings; the live disputes; and a conclusion.
1. Why language divides in India
India records more than a hundred languages spoken by ten thousand people or more, and twenty-two in the Eighth Schedule. Language becomes divisive through four distinct mechanisms, and naming them is what separates a good answer from a narrative one.
Territory. A demand for a State on linguistic lines is a demand for control of a territory, its administration, its revenues and its jobs. Language is the vehicle; power is the object.
Employment and education. The language of instruction and the language of recruitment decide who can compete. A candidate educated in the regional language is disadvantaged where recruitment is in English or Hindi, and the reverse is true where a State insists on its own language.
Status. Elevating one language to official use is read by speakers of others as a statement about their standing, which is what turned the question of Hindi into a national dispute rather than an administrative one.
Nativism. Movements demanding preference for local speakers in private employment convert linguistic identity into an economic claim, and run directly into Articles 15, 16 and 19(1)(e).
2. The historical episodes
The Dhar Commission (1948) and the JVP Committee (1949), of Nehru, Patel and Pattabhi Sitaramayya, opposed linguistic reorganisation, fearing fragmentation so soon after Partition. The death of Potti Sriramulu after a fifty-eight day fast in December 1952 forced the creation of Andhra in 1953. The Fazl Ali States Reorganisation Commission (1953 to 1955) accepted language as an important but not exclusive criterion, expressly rejecting one language one State, and its report produced the States Reorganisation Act, 1956. Bombay was divided into Maharashtra and Gujarat in 1960 after the Samyukta Maharashtra agitation, and Punjab into Punjab and Haryana in 1966. The anti-Hindi agitation in Tamil Nadu in 1965, on the expiry of the fifteen-year period in Article 343(2), cost lives and forced the amendment of the Official Languages Act in 1967. Border disputes with a linguistic character, such as Belgaum between Maharashtra and Karnataka, remain live.
3. The three devices that contained the division
Concession of territory. The Union conceded linguistic States rather than resisting them, so the demand was absorbed into federal structure instead of being left as a grievance. Sixty years on, linguistic reorganisation is generally regarded as having strengthened the union.
The statutory veto. Section 3 of the Official Languages Act, 1963, as amended in 1967, provides that English shall continue until the legislature of every State that has not adopted Hindi and both Houses of Parliament resolve otherwise. That is an effective veto in the hands of the non-Hindi States and is the single most important instrument of linguistic peace in India.
Internal safeguards. Every linguistic State was made to carry protections, Articles 29, 30, 350A and 350B, for the minorities its own creation produced.
4. The constitutional guarantees
Article 29(1): the right of any section of citizens with a distinct language, script or culture to conserve it. Article 29(2): no denial of admission to a State-maintained or State-aided institution on the ground of language.
Article 30(1): the right of religious and linguistic minorities to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice, with 30(1A) on compulsory acquisition of their property and 30(2) forbidding discrimination in aid.
Article 343 to 344: Hindi in Devanagari as the official language of the Union, with the international form of Indian numerals, English continuing under Article 343(3) as Parliament provides, and the Commission and Committee on Official Language. Article 345: a State may adopt any language in use in it. Article 346: the language of inter-State and Union-State communication. Article 347: Presidential recognition of a language on the demand of a substantial proportion of the population. Article 348: English as the language of the Supreme Court and the High Courts and of legislation, with a Governor empowered, with the President's previous consent, to authorise another language in High Court proceedings but not for judgments unless Parliament so provides.
Article 350: representations for redress of grievance in any language used in the Union or the State. Article 350A: facilities for mother-tongue instruction at the primary stage for children of linguistic minority groups. Article 350B: a Special Officer for Linguistic Minorities. Both were inserted by the Seventh Amendment, 1956 on the recommendation of the States Reorganisation Commission. Article 351: the duty of the Union to promote the spread of Hindi, drawing primarily on Sanskrit.
5. Machinery and cases
The Commissioner for Linguistic Minorities has functioned since 1957 and can only report; the National Commission for Minorities and the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions complete the structure, and none of them can enforce.
D.A.V. College v. State of Punjab (1971) 2 SCC 269: compulsory affiliation to Punjabi University and instruction in Punjabi violated Articles 29(1) and 30(1); the State is the unit for minority status. State of Bombay v. Bombay Education Society AIR 1954 SC 561: a circular restricting English-medium admission by mother tongue violated Article 29(2). In re Kerala Education Bill, 1957 AIR 1958 SC 956: regulation for standards is permissible, destruction of the minority character is not. T.M.A. Pai Foundation v. State of Karnataka (2002) 8 SCC 481, eleven judges: the right to administer is not a right to maladminister. Usha Mehta v. State of Maharashtra (2004) 6 SCC 264: the regional language may be compelled as a subject. State of Karnataka v. Associated Management of Primary and Secondary Schools (2014) 9 SCC 485: the State cannot compel mother-tongue medium at the primary stage, the choice of medium being protected by Articles 19(1)(a), 19(1)(g), 26 and 30, while Article 350A obliges the State only to provide facilities.
6. The live disputes
The medium of instruction has become a class question rather than an identity one, since parents increasingly want English and the State can no longer compel the mother tongue. Official language friction recurs over Hindi in central recruitment examinations, in signage and in the three-language formula of the National Education Policy, 2020. And minorities inside minorities remain inadequately served, the Commissioner's reports recording the same failures year after year.
7. The comparative point worth making
India's answer to linguistic diversity is unusual and successful, and it is worth saying why. Sri Lanka made Sinhala the sole official language in 1956 and the decision is generally regarded as one of the causes of a civil war. Pakistan imposed Urdu on a Bengali-speaking majority in its eastern wing, and language was among the grievances that produced the separation of 1971. Belgium and Canada have managed linguistic division through federal restructuring comparable to India's.
India did three things those examples suggest are decisive: it declined to declare a national language; it conceded territory to linguistic demands through Article 3 and the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, which is a power Parliament can exercise by ordinary law without the consent of the State concerned; and it guaranteed English on terms the non-Hindi States control. The absence of a language war in India since 1965 is a consequence of that design rather than of good fortune.
Conclusion. Language has been the most persistent divisive factor in independent India and also the one the constitutional order has handled best, because the response was accommodation rather than assertion: territory conceded to language, English guaranteed on terms the non-Hindi States control, and internal safeguards for the minorities each State created. The guarantees themselves divide into two classes and the distinction decides their worth: Articles 29 and 30 are rights and have been enforced through litigation, while Article 350A is an endeavour and Article 350B a reporting officer, so protection in practice has come from the courts rather than from the machinery designed for it.
4.Describe causes of Naxalite movement in India and also suggest preventive measures to curb this menace.[25]
Answer
For full marks, cover: origin and phases; the causes grouped and each tied to the statute that failed; the measures already taken and the judicial limits on them; then, because the question asks for them, preventive measures set out as a programme with the legal instrument for each; the present position; and a conclusion.
1. Origin and phases
From the peasant uprising at Naxalbari, Darjeeling district, West Bengal, in May 1967, over the eviction of a sharecropper, led by Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal. The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) was formed on 22 April 1969; the movement spread to Srikakulam and Kolkata and was suppressed by 1972. It revived through the People's War Group in Andhra Pradesh (1980) and the Maoist Communist Centre in Bihar, which merged on 21 September 2004 into the Communist Party of India (Maoist), proscribed under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, with a military wing and a parallel administration in its base areas.
2. The causes
Land. Abolition of intermediaries succeeded; tenancy reform and ceiling laws failed, defeated by benami transfers, anticipatory partition and exemptions, so the landless remained dependent on the same landholders who controlled the local administration.
Alienation of tribal land, despite a prohibitory regulation in every Scheduled Area State, through mortgage, benami holdings, marriage and encroachment; and the near-total non-use of paragraph 5 of the Fifth Schedule, which empowers the Governor to make and enforce such regulations and to disapply legislation.
Criminalisation of forest livelihood by the Indian Forest Act, 1927 and the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, conceded by Parliament in the preamble to the Forest Rights Act, 2006, whose implementation has been poor, with high rejection rates for individual claims and very limited recognition of community forest resource rights under Section 3(1)(i).
Displacement by mining, dams and industry with cash compensation and rarely completed resettlement, addressed late by the 2013 Act and still bypassed through the thirteen exempted enactments in its Fourth Schedule.
Non-implementation of PESA, 1996, which gives the Gram Sabha consultation before acquisition, ownership of minor forest produce and a mandatory recommendation for minor mineral leases.
Usury, unpaid minimum wages and bonded labour, and the absence of the ordinary State, the school, the health centre and the revenue officer, all documented by the Planning Commission's Expert Group, Development Challenges in Extremist Affected Areas (2008).
And organisation. These conditions exist in districts with no insurgency; what converts grievance into an armed movement is a cadre offering protection, arbitration and status.
3. Measures taken, and the judicial limits
Security forces including specialised State units, road and mobile connectivity, the Security Related Expenditure Scheme, the Aspirational Districts Programme, surrender-and-rehabilitation packages, and proscription under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
Nandini Sundar v. State of Chhattisgarh (2011) 7 SCC 547 held the arming of tribal youth as Special Police Officers, the Salwa Judum, unconstitutional under Articles 14 and 21, and directed disarming, disbanding and investigation of the offences committed. People's Union for Civil Liberties v. State of Maharashtra (2014) 10 SCC 635 laid down sixteen requirements for investigating encounter deaths. Samatha v. State of Andhra Pradesh (1997) 8 SCC 191 held a mining lease to a private company in a Scheduled Area void. Orissa Mining Corporation v. Ministry of Environment and Forests (2013) 6 SCC 476 referred the Niyamgiri project to the Gram Sabhas, which rejected it.
4. Preventive measures, with the instrument for each
Settle the forest rights claims. Dispose of pending individual claims with reasons and recognise community forest resource rights under Section 3(1)(i) of the 2006 Act, which is the provision that gives a village a stake in the forest instead of a grievance against it.
Use the Fifth Schedule. Activate paragraph 5 to disapply or modify laws that harm tribal interests, make and enforce land transfer regulations, and revive the Tribes Advisory Councils.
Restore alienated land under the State regulations, applying Samatha where the transferee is the State or its lessee.
Implement PESA in substance, with Gram Sabha consultation before acquisition and control of minor forest produce and minor minerals.
Acquire land only under the full 2013 procedure, including the Section 41 consent of the Gram Sabha in Scheduled Areas, social impact assessment and payment of Second Schedule entitlements before possession.
Deliver the ordinary State: schools, primary health centres, banking, minimum wage enforcement and the public distribution system, since their absence is what makes the alternative attractive.
Continue surrender and rehabilitation, with financial assistance, housing, vocational training and, decisively, acceptance back into the village.
Police lawfully. Recruit locally, comply with D.K. Basu v. State of West Bengal (1997) 1 SCC 416 and the encounter guidelines, and prosecute excesses, because every unlawful killing is a recruitment argument for the other side.
5. The present position
Government data show affected districts falling from 126 in 2014 to about 18 by 2024 and roughly 11 by 2025, the most affected being a small group in Chhattisgarh, with 31 March 2026 set as the target for eliminating the movement and surrenders rising sharply.
6. Three points the examiner expects and most answers miss
The Fifth Schedule contrast with the Sixth. The Sixth Schedule councils in Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram legislate on land, forest other than reserved forest, shifting cultivation and inheritance, and raise their own revenue. The Fifth Schedule gives the Governor a protective power and the tribal population only an advisory council, so protection depends on the discretion of an office that has rarely exercised it. The Bhuria Committee, whose report produced PESA, recommended moving the Fifth Schedule toward the Sixth Schedule model, and that is the structural reform this subject points to.
Who owns the minerals. In Thressiamma Jacob v. Geologist, Department of Mining and Geology (2013) 9 SCC 725 the Court held there is no presumption that minerals vest in the State: a land owner's title carries the sub-soil unless a statute or the grant provides otherwise. Read with Samatha, that matters in Scheduled Areas, because the tribal owner is not a mere occupant of State land. The Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2015 created the District Mineral Foundation, funded by a levy on lease-holders for the benefit of persons affected by mining, and whether those funds reach the affected villages is now a substantial part of the question.
The security response has its own cost. Wide use of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act against activists, lawyers and journalists in these districts raises questions under Articles 19 and 21 and, where it is perceived as arbitrary, supplies the movement with its own argument. A preventive strategy that ignores this is incomplete.
Conclusion. The Naxalite movement is a security problem with a development cause, and the two must be addressed together and in that order of priority. The security campaign has been effective and its results are on record, but the eviction of an armed organisation from a district does not settle a forest claim, restore alienated land or pay a rehabilitation entitlement. India already has every law that would remove the grievance: the Fifth Schedule, PESA, the Forest Rights Act and the 2013 acquisition Act. Implementing them in the districts now being declared free of extremism is the only preventive measure that would make the gain permanent.
5.Explain in detail empowerment of women with the help of the Constitutional provisions and judicial decisions in India.[25]
Answer
For full marks, cover: the constitutional provisions, since the question names them first; then the judicial decisions grouped by technique, each with facts and holding, because that is the second half of the question; the statutory scaffolding briefly; the political reservation position; and a critical conclusion.
1. The constitutional provisions
Article 14 (equality before the law and equal protection); Article 15(1) (no discrimination on the ground of sex) with Article 15(3), the enabling clause for protective legislation; Article 16(1) and (2) (equality of opportunity in public employment); Article 23 (prohibition of traffic in human beings); Article 39(a) (adequate means of livelihood for men and women equally), 39(d) (equal pay for equal work) and 39(e) (health and strength of workers not abused); Article 39A (equal justice and free legal aid); Article 42 (just and humane conditions of work and maternity relief); Article 44 (uniform civil code); Article 51A(e) (duty to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women); and Articles 243D and 243T (one third of seats in local bodies).
2. Judicial technique one: creating law where Parliament had not
Vishaka v. State of Rajasthan (1997) 6 SCC 241. Bhanwari Devi, a saathin in a Rajasthan State programme, was gang-raped in September 1992 in reprisal for attempting to prevent a child marriage; the trial ended in acquittal. Petitioned under Article 32, the Court found no statute in the field, held that international conventions consistent with fundamental rights may be read into Articles 14, 15, 19(1)(g) and 21, relied on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and laid down binding guidelines under Article 141: a definition of sexual harassment, a duty of prevention on the employer, and a complaints committee headed by a woman with a third-party member. They governed for sixteen years. Apparel Export Promotion Council v. A.K. Chopra (1999) 1 SCC 759 held that physical contact is not essential, and Medha Kotwal Lele v. Union of India (2013) 1 SCC 297 enforced compliance.
Laxmi v. Union of India (2014) 4 SCC 427 regulated the over-the-counter sale of acid and fixed compensation of at least three lakh rupees for acid attack victims, again in the absence of statutory provision.
3. Technique two: striking down discriminatory rules
C.B. Muthamma v. Union of India (1979) 4 SCC 260 (Foreign Service rule requiring a woman officer to seek permission to marry); Air India v. Nergesh Meerza (1981) 4 SCC 335 (termination of an air hostess on first pregnancy, held "callous and cruel" and arbitrary); Anuj Garg v. Hotel Association of India (2008) 3 SCC 1 (Section 30 of the Punjab Excise Act barring employment of women where liquor is consumed, struck down with the holding that protective legislation which excludes must satisfy strict scrutiny); Charu Khurana v. Union of India (2015) 1 SCC 192 (union rule barring women make-up artists); Joseph Shine v. Union of India (2018) 2 SCC 189 (adultery, struck down because it treated the wife as the property of the husband and denied her agency).
4. Technique three: reforming personal law
Mohd. Ahmed Khan v. Shah Bano Begum (1985) 2 SCC 556 and, after the legislative response, Danial Latifi v. Union of India (2001) 7 SCC 740, which upheld the 1986 Act by reading it to require a reasonable and fair provision extending for the wife's whole life; Mary Roy v. State of Kerala (1986) 2 SCC 209 (equal succession for Syrian Christian women); Githa Hariharan v. Reserve Bank of India (1999) 2 SCC 228 (the mother as natural guardian); Shayara Bano v. Union of India (2017) 9 SCC 1 (instantaneous triple talaq set aside 3:2); Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma (2020) 9 SCC 1 (the daughter's coparcenary right arises by birth, so it does not matter whether the father was alive on 9 September 2005).
5. Technique four: substantive equality and the rejection of stereotype
Secretary, Ministry of Defence v. Babita Puniya (2020) 7 SCC 469 and Union of India v. Lt Cdr Annie Nagaraja (2020) 13 SCC 1 granted permanent commissions to women officers, holding that submissions founded on physiology, maternity and the dynamics of all-male units are stereotype and are themselves discriminatory; Nitisha v. Union of India (2021) struck down the evaluation criteria used to implement that judgment as indirect discrimination; X v. Principal Secretary, Health and Family Welfare (2022) extended abortion up to twenty-four weeks to unmarried women and, for the purposes of that Act, treated non-consensual intercourse within marriage as rape; Aparna Bhat v. State of Madhya Pradesh (2021) set aside a rakhi bail condition and directed gender sensitisation, producing the Supreme Court's Handbook on Combating Gender Stereotypes (2023).
6. The statutory scaffolding
The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005; the Criminal Law (Amendment) Acts of 2013 (on the Justice J.S. Verma Committee report, creating the offences of acid attack, sexual harassment, disrobing, voyeurism and stalking, widening the definition of rape and punishing police inaction under Section 166A) and 2018, now carried into the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023; the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, 2013; the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017; the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005; the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019; and the Code on Wages, 2019.
7. Political empowerment
Articles 243D and 243T have produced more than a million elected women representatives since 1993. The Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act, 2023 reserves one third of the seats in the Lok Sabha and the State assemblies, including within the seats reserved for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and was notified into force on 16 April 2026, its operation linked to the next census and the delimitation that follows.
8. The critical part: what the law and the courts have not delivered
Marital rape. Exception 2 to Section 375, carried into the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, remains. The Delhi High Court split in RIT Foundation v. Union of India (2022) and the appeal is pending. Independent Thought v. Union of India (2017) 10 SCC 800 went only as far as wives aged fifteen to eighteen and expressly left the adult question open.
Personal law and Article 13. State of Bombay v. Narasu Appa Mali AIR 1952 Bom 84 held uncodified personal law not to be "law in force" under Article 13, insulating it from Part III. It has been doubted in Shayara Bano and in Sabarimala and not overruled, and it is the doctrinal reason unequal personal law has survived so long.
Restitution of conjugal rights. Saroj Rani v. Sudarshan Kumar Chadha (1984) 4 SCC 90 upheld Section 9 of the Hindu Marriage Act over the contrary reasoning in T. Sareetha; its correctness after Puttaswamy is under challenge.
No right to matrimonial property. No Indian statute gives a wife a share in property acquired during the marriage; her contribution as a homemaker is compensated, if at all, through maintenance.
Delivery. The Local Committee under Section 6 of the 2013 Act, the only forum for the unorganised sector, is frequently not constituted, as the Court recorded in Aureliano Fernandes v. State of Goa (2023); conviction rates in crimes against women remain low; and the sarpanch pati phenomenon shows that a reserved seat is not the same as exercised power.
Conclusion. The empowerment of women in India has been achieved principally by two instruments: an enabling constitutional clause in Article 15(3), and a court willing to use Articles 14, 15 and 21 against inherited practice. Between them they have delivered property rights, maintenance beyond iddat, workplace protection, reproductive autonomy and permanent commissions in the armed forces. What they have not delivered is enforcement, because a judgment can declare a right and cannot constitute a committee, investigate a complaint or finish a trial; and the two unfinished legal items, the marital rape exception and the operation of the 106th Amendment, are the tests by which the next stage will be measured.
6.Discuss the reservation policy provided under the Constitution of India.[25]
Answer
For full marks, cover: the justification; the provisions by field with the amendment that inserted each; the monitoring bodies; the case law in chronological order with facts and holdings; the present position after Janhit Abhiyan and Davinder Singh; the criticisms with answers; and a conclusion.
1. The justification
Reservation in India is a remedy for an inherited disability of status, not a poverty programme. The caste order fixed occupation, residence and ritual rank by birth and enforced them socially and religiously, and untouchability added physical exclusion, so the disadvantage was collective and legally supported. Article 17 abolishing untouchability and Article 15(4) enabling special provision are two halves of one idea, and the Poona Pact of 1932, which replaced separate electorates with reserved seats, is the direct ancestor of Articles 330 and 332.
2. Reservation in education
Article 15(4), inserted by the First Amendment, 1951, after State of Madras v. Champakam Dorairajan AIR 1951 SC 226 struck down a communal government order for want of an enabling clause. Article 15(5), inserted by the Ninety-third Amendment, 2005, extending reservation to private unaided institutions after P.A. Inamdar v. State of Maharashtra (2005) 6 SCC 537, upheld in Ashoka Kumar Thakur v. Union of India (2008) 6 SCC 1 and Pramati Educational and Cultural Trust v. Union of India (2014) 8 SCC 1, with minority institutions excluded. Article 15(6), inserted by the One Hundred and Third Amendment, 2019, for economically weaker sections.
3. Reservation in employment
Article 16(4) (backward classes not adequately represented); 16(4A) (Seventy-seventh Amendment, 1995, promotion, with consequential seniority added by the Eighty-fifth in 2001); 16(4B) (Eighty-first Amendment, 2000, backlog vacancies outside the ceiling of the year); 16(6) (2019); and Article 335, requiring the claims of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes to be considered consistently with efficiency of administration, with the Eighty-second Amendment's proviso permitting relaxation of qualifying marks.
4. Reservation in legislatures and local bodies
Articles 330 and 332, extended in duration most recently by the One Hundred and Fourth Amendment, 2019 to 2030, which also discontinued the nomination of Anglo-Indians; Articles 243D and 243T for panchayats and municipalities with one third for women; and the One Hundred and Sixth Amendment, 2023 for women in the Lok Sabha and State assemblies, notified into force on 16 April 2026 and operative after the next census and delimitation.
5. The monitoring bodies and the lists
Articles 338, 338A and 338B create the National Commissions for the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and the Backward Classes, each with the powers of a civil court and a duty to report to the President. Articles 341 and 342 provide for the Presidential lists, alterable only by Parliament, so a court cannot add a caste: State of Maharashtra v. Milind (2001) 1 SCC 4. The One Hundred and Fifth Amendment, 2021 restored to the States the power to identify their own socially and educationally backward classes.
6. The case law, in order
Champakam Dorairajan (1951) and the First Amendment. M.R. Balaji v. State of Mysore AIR 1963 SC 649: 68 per cent struck down; caste alone cannot determine backwardness; 50 per cent indicated as the limit. State of Kerala v. N.M. Thomas (1976) 2 SCC 310: Article 16(4) is a facet of Article 16(1), which is the doctrinal foundation of substantive equality in India.
Indra Sawhney v. Union of India 1992 Supp (3) SCC 217, nine judges on the Mandal report: caste may be the starting point for identifying a backward class; the ceiling is ordinarily 50 per cent; the creamy layer must be excluded from the Other Backward Classes; no reservation in promotions; and none in certain posts and services.
M. Nagaraj v. Union of India (2006) 8 SCC 212: the promotion amendments are valid subject to quantifiable data on backwardness and inadequacy of representation and to administrative efficiency. Jarnail Singh v. Lachhmi Narain Gupta (2018) 10 SCC 396: the requirement of data on backwardness of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes was contrary to Indra Sawhney and was removed; the creamy layer applies to them in promotions.
Dr Jaishri Laxmanrao Patil v. Chief Minister (2021) 8 SCC 1: the Maratha reservation struck down for breaching the ceiling with no extraordinary circumstance.
Janhit Abhiyan v. Union of India (2022): the economically weaker sections quota upheld 3:2; economic criteria alone may found a reservation and the 50 per cent ceiling is not inflexible.
State of Punjab v. Davinder Singh (2024) INSC 562, seven judges 6:1 on 1 August 2024: a State may sub-classify within the Scheduled Castes on quantifiable data, overruling E.V. Chinnaiah (2005); four judges observed that the creamy layer should apply to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes with criteria that may differ from those for the Other Backward Classes.
B.K. Pavitra v. Union of India (II) (2019) 16 SCC 129: merit must be understood in its social context, since a score achieved after generations of advantage is not a neutral measure of ability.
7. Criticisms and answers
It perpetuates caste consciousness: the disability is defined by caste, so the remedy must see it. It sacrifices merit: Article 335 already qualifies the guarantee and B.K. Pavitra (II) answers the point. It benefits those who need it least: that is precisely what the creamy layer rule and Davinder Singh address. It is permanent: political reservation is renewed periodically while employment reservation has no sunset clause and no statutory review with data, which is a genuine defect. The data is obsolete: identification rests substantially on the enumeration of 1931, which is why caste enumeration in the census bears directly on the policy after Nagaraj and Davinder Singh.
8. Effectiveness, measured
Where it has worked. Representation of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in central government service has moved from near-absence in 1950 to broadly proportionate at most levels; literacy gaps have narrowed sharply; political reservation has been continuous since 1952; and reservation in local bodies has produced a very large body of elected Dalit, Adivasi and women representatives. A professional and political class exists that did not exist at independence.
Where it has not. Reservation operates on the organised sector and on public institutions, which employ a small fraction of the workforce, and it does not reach land, private employment or capital. Atrocity figures have not fallen with representation, and conviction rates under the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 remain far below the average for cognizable offences, which shows that occupational mobility has not produced social equality.
Where the benefit has concentrated. Within each beneficiary group the gain has gone disproportionately to particular sub-castes and to families already in the second generation of advantage, which is exactly what the creamy layer rule addresses for the Other Backward Classes and what Davinder Singh now permits States to address within the Scheduled Castes.
Conclusion. The reservation policy of the Constitution is a structured scheme rather than a single command: an enabling clause for each field, a ceiling, a creamy layer, a duty to consider efficiency, monitoring commissions and periodic legislative renewal for political reservation. The direction of the recent case law, from a single homogeneous beneficiary class toward a graded one, shows a system capable of correcting itself. Its unresolved questions are the two that Janhit Abhiyan and Davinder Singh opened: whether the 50 per cent ceiling survives, and whether the creamy layer will formally extend to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
7.
Write Short Notes on the following
any two of four · 25 Marks
a.Industrialization v. Environment Protection
Answer
The conflict. Industry produces employment, revenue and the means of removing poverty, and consumes land, water, forest and clean air. In India the conflict is sharpened because the cost is usually borne by populations that receive none of the benefit: forest dwellers, fishing communities and the urban poor living beside industrial areas.
The constitutional and statutory framework. Article 48A directs the State to protect and improve the environment and to safeguard forests and wildlife; Article 51A(g) makes it a fundamental duty; and Article 21 has been read to include a right to a wholesome environment in Subhash Kumar v. State of Bihar (1991) 1 SCC 598. The statutes are the Water Act, 1974, the Air Act, 1981, the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 enacted after Bhopal, the Public Liability Insurance Act, 1991, the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, the National Green Tribunal Act, 2010 and the Environmental Impact Assessment Notification, 2006.
The doctrines, with the cases that created them. M.C. Mehta v. Union of India (1987) 1 SCC 395, the Oleum gas leak: the Court refused to apply Rylands v. Fletcher with its exceptions and laid down absolute liability, an absolute and non-delegable duty on an enterprise engaged in a hazardous activity, with compensation correlated to the magnitude and capacity of the enterprise. Vellore Citizens Welfare Forum v. Union of India (1996) 5 SCC 647, on tanneries discharging untreated effluent into the Palar river: sustainable development is part of Indian law, and with it the precautionary principle, which places the burden on the developer and does not require scientific certainty, and the polluter pays principle, which covers both compensation and the cost of restoring the environment. Indian Council for Enviro-Legal Action v. Union of India (1996) 3 SCC 212 applied polluter pays to remediation at Bichhri, and M.C. Mehta v. Kamal Nath (1997) 1 SCC 388 adopted the public trust doctrine.
Both sides of the balance. The courts have stopped industry: the tanneries in Vellore; the industries around the Taj Mahal ordered to switch to natural gas or relocate in the Taj Trapezium case, M.C. Mehta v. Union of India (1997) 2 SCC 353; and the conversion of Delhi's public transport to compressed natural gas. They have also permitted development on terms: Narmada Bachao Andolan v. Union of India (2000) 10 SCC 664 allowed the Sardar Sarovar dam height to be raised as rehabilitation kept pace, over a strong dissent; and in Orissa Mining Corporation v. Ministry of Environment and Forests (2013) 6 SCC 476 the decision was handed to the affected Gram Sabhas, which refused the project.
The reconciling principle. Sustainable development, as adopted in Vellore, is development that meets present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs, and in Indian practice it operates through four procedural requirements: environmental impact assessment with a public hearing; enforceable clearance conditions; the polluter paying for restoration; and, in Scheduled Areas, the consent of the Gram Sabha under the Forest Rights Act, 2006 and PESA, 1996. M.K. Ranjitsinh v. Union of India (2024), recognising a right against the adverse effects of climate change under Articles 14 and 21 while balancing the great Indian bustard against solar power, is the newest expression of the same balancing.
Conclusion. Industrialisation and environmental protection are not opposed in principle, and the Indian courts have refused to treat them as alternatives. They come into conflict when the procedure is skipped, that is when a project is cleared without a real assessment, without hearing those who will bear the loss and without providing for restoration. Enforcing the procedure is therefore the substance of environmental protection in India.
b.Adoption of child : Issues and Solutions
Answer
The two routes. Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs adopt under the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, 1956, which creates a complete parent-child relationship with rights of inheritance. Muslim, Christian, Parsi and Jewish personal laws do not recognise adoption in that sense, so the historical route was guardianship under the Guardians and Wards Act, 1890, which ends at majority and confers no succession rights. The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, Sections 56 to 73, provides a religion-neutral route through the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) and the Adoption Regulations, 2022, and Shabnam Hashmi v. Union of India (2014) 4 SCC 1 held that anyone may adopt under it irrespective of personal law.
Key rules of the Hindu Act. Consent of the wife; the child to be unmarried and under fifteen unless custom permits; the bar on adopting a son where a Hindu son, grandson or great-grandson is living, and the corresponding bar for a daughter; an age gap of at least twenty-one years where the adopter and the child are of opposite sexes; and Section 15, making a valid adoption irrevocable. The Personal Laws (Amendment) Act, 2010 allowed a married woman to adopt with her husband's consent, where she previously could not adopt at all, and gave both parents an equal right to give in adoption.
Key rules of the statutory route. A child must be declared legally free for adoption by the Child Welfare Committee; registration and home study through the CARINGS portal; matching in order of seniority; Section 63 giving the adopted child the rights of a biological child; Sections 80 and 81 punishing adoption in contravention of the Act and the sale of children; and, since the 2021 amendment in force from 1 September 2022, adoption orders passed by the District Magistrate with appeal to the Divisional Commissioner. Inter-country adoption follows Laxmi Kant Pandey v. Union of India (1984) 2 SCC 244 and the Hague Convention of 1993, ratified in 2003.
The issues, and the solution to each.
A waiting period of years, caused by a legal step rather than by scarcity. Tens of thousands of registered parents face a few thousand children declared legally free each year. Solution: staff and supervise Child Welfare Committees and set a published time standard for the declaration, which is the single largest gain available in this field.
Preference distortion, with demand concentrated on young healthy female infants. Solution: publicise the separate immediate-placement list for older children, sibling groups and children with special needs, with post-adoption support and, where appropriate, financial assistance.
Illegal placement and trafficking through hospitals and unregistered institutions. Solution: enforce mandatory registration and social audit of every child care institution, as directed in Exploitation of Children in Orphanages in the State of Tamil Nadu v. Union of India (2017) 7 SCC 578, and prosecute under Sections 80 and 81.
Institutionalisation as the default, although Section 3 of the Act makes it a measure of last resort. Solution: fund and use foster care and sponsorship under Sections 44 and 45, which are provided for and barely used.
Succession uncertainty, since a child adopted under the Juvenile Justice Act by a non-Hindu parent may still succeed under that parent's personal law. Solution: a uniform statute on adoption and guardianship, which is the least contested item on the Article 44 agenda.
Eligibility restrictions: a single man may not adopt a girl; a couple must have two years of stable marital relationship; and Supriyo v. Union of India (2023) left the position of same-sex couples to Parliament. Solution: a legislative review of the Regulations against Articles 14 and 21.
Conclusion. Adoption law in India has moved from a religious institution for continuing a male line to a supervised, child-centred and internationally regulated process. Its problems are administrative and converge at one point, the declaration that a child is legally free for adoption, and until that step is quick and accountable, long waiting lists will continue to coexist with full institutions, which is precisely the condition in which illegal adoption flourishes.
c.Prison reforms
Answer
The framework and its age. Prisons are Entry 4 of the State List, so competence lies with the States and the Union can only circulate models. The governing statute in most States is still the Prisons Act, 1894, which followed the Macaulay Committee on Prison Discipline (1835) and its express rejection of reformation, together with the Prisoners Act, 1900. The Indian Jails Committee (1919 to 1920) first declared reformation to be the primary object of prison administration. The Union has circulated the Model Prison Manual, 2016 and the Model Prisons and Correctional Services Act, 2023, which provides for classification, parole, furlough, remission, separate accommodation for women and transgender prisoners, protection from torture, technology, vocational training and after-care.
The committees. The Mulla Committee (1980 to 1983): a National Policy on Prisons, an all-India prison service, classification only by security and reform needs, complete separation of undertrials, alternatives to imprisonment for petty offenders, after-care, and no transfer of prisoners far from their families. The Justice Krishna Iyer Committee (1987) on women prisoners. The Justice Amitava Roy Committee (2018) on overcrowding, staff vacancies, legal aid and undertrials.
The constitutional jurisprudence. Sunil Batra v. Delhi Administration (1978) 4 SCC 494: a prisoner retains his fundamental rights; solitary confinement under Section 30 applies only to a prisoner under a final sentence of death, and bar fetters under Section 56 require recorded reasons and review. Sunil Batra (II) (1980) 3 SCC 488: a prisoner's letter alleging torture was treated as a habeas corpus petition, with visits by the Sessions Judge, grievance boxes and legal aid directed. Charles Sobraj v. Superintendent, Central Jail (1978) 4 SCC 104: imprisonment does not authorise degradation. Prem Shankar Shukla v. Delhi Administration (1980) 3 SCC 526: routine handcuffing is unconstitutional. Hussainara Khatoon (1980): release of undertrials held beyond the maximum sentence, with speedy trial and legal aid located in Article 21. Rudul Sah v. State of Bihar (1983) 4 SCC 141: compensation under Article 32 for a man held fourteen years after acquittal. Sheela Barse v. State of Maharashtra (1983) 2 SCC 96 and R.D. Upadhyay v. State of Andhra Pradesh (2006) 4 SCC 1 on women prisoners and their children. Rama Murthy v. State of Karnataka (1997) 2 SCC 642: nine identified problems and a model manual directed. Re-Inhuman Conditions in 1382 Prisons (2016) 3 SCC 700: Under Trial Review Committees, vacancies, video conferencing and open prisons.
The data. Prison Statistics India 2023: about 1,332 prisons, roughly 5.3 lakh inmates, occupancy 120.8 per cent against 131.4 per cent in 2022, Delhi above 200 per cent, and 73.5 per cent undertrials.
What is new. Section 479 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 re-enacts Section 436A and adds that a first-time offender shall be released on bond after serving one third of the maximum sentence, placing the duty to apply on the superintendent of the jail; the Supreme Court has held it applicable to those already in custody. Open prisons on the Rajasthan model, prison legal aid clinics under the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987 and video conferencing for remand complete the available measures.
Conclusion. The diagnosis of Indian prisons has not changed in a century and the governing statute has not changed since 1894. Since three of every four inmates are undertrials, prison reform in India is in substance bail reform, and Section 479 is the first provision in decades that makes release the duty of a named officer rather than the burden of a prisoner without a lawyer. Because prisons are a State subject, the measure of the next five years is how many States adopt the model Act of 2023.
d.Democratic Decentralization and Local Self Government
Answer
The idea. Democratic decentralisation is the transfer of decision-making, functions, functionaries and funds to elected bodies closest to the citizen. Its Indian justification is both Gandhian, the village republic and gram swaraj, and practical: a State of India's size cannot deliver local public goods from a distant capital.
History and the committees. Article 40 directs the State to organise village panchayats and endow them with powers enabling them to function as units of self-government, but it is a directive principle and unenforceable. The Balwantrai Mehta Committee (1957) recommended a three-tier structure, inaugurated at Nagaur in Rajasthan on 2 October 1959. The Ashok Mehta Committee (1978) recommended a two-tier structure with open participation by political parties. The G.V.K. Rao Committee (1985) and the L.M. Singhvi Committee (1986) recommended constitutional status. The Sixty-fourth Amendment Bill of 1989 failed in the Rajya Sabha; the Seventy-third and Seventy-fourth Amendments, 1992, in force from 24 April and 1 June 1993, succeeded.
Part IX, panchayats. Article 243B (three tiers, the intermediate tier optional below twenty lakh population); 243C (composition, direct election at all levels); 243D (reservation for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in proportion to population, and not less than one third of all seats and of chairperson offices for women); 243E (a fixed five-year term, elections before expiry and, if dissolved, within six months); 243F (disqualifications); 243G (powers and responsibilities, with the Eleventh Schedule of twenty-nine subjects); 243H (taxes, duties and the Consolidated Fund); 243-I (a State Finance Commission every five years); 243K (a State Election Commission); and 243-O (bar on judicial interference in electoral matters).
Part IXA, municipalities. Articles 243P to 243ZG, with three kinds of municipality, Article 243W and the Twelfth Schedule of eighteen subjects, ward committees under 243S, district planning committees under 243ZD and metropolitan planning committees under 243ZE.
PESA. The Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 extends Part IX to Fifth Schedule areas with modifications: the Gram Sabha is competent in matters of custom, community resources and dispute resolution; must be consulted before land acquisition and resettlement; owns minor forest produce; and must recommend prospecting licences and mining leases for minor minerals.
Achievements. Roughly three million elected representatives, of whom more than a million are women; regular elections conducted by independent State Election Commissions; a measurable effect of women's reservation on the provision of local public goods; and, in Kerala's People's Plan Campaign, a working model of participatory budgeting.
Weaknesses. Devolution of the three Fs, functions, funds and functionaries, is highly uneven, because Article 243G says the legislature of a State may endow panchayats with powers. Parallel bodies and centrally sponsored schemes bypass panchayats. State Finance Commissions are constituted late and their recommendations often ignored. The sarpanch pati phenomenon substitutes a male relative for the elected woman. Dominant-caste capture persists in some regions. And candidature restrictions upheld in Javed v. State of Haryana (2003) 8 SCC 369 (two-child norm) and Rajbala v. State of Haryana (2016) 1 SCC 463 (educational qualifications) exclude precisely the groups the amendments sought to include.
Conclusion. The Seventy-third and Seventy-fourth Amendments converted local self-government from a directive principle into a constitutional institution with guaranteed elections, reserved seats and a financial commission, and that structural achievement is real and irreversible. What the Constitution could not do is compel a State legislature to part with power, because the operative verb in Articles 243G and 243W is permissive. Democratic decentralisation in India is therefore complete in form and partial in substance, and the measure of progress is not the existence of panchayats but the share of the district's funds and functionaries they actually control.
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This volume prints the 2023 Law and Social Transformation of India paper set by the University of Mumbai for LLM Foundation Course, with a model answer to each of its 10 questions.
Written and edited by the munotes.in editorial desk. Published by munotes.in, Mumbai.
12 August 2026.
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