LLM Group 1 Constitutional and Administrative Law Administrative Process Nature and Scope 2015 Question Paper with Solutions

For full marks, cover: all three notes are set out below although the paper asks for any two, because the two a candidate picks differ. Each note needs the same three things at this level: the constitutional or statutory foundation, the working reality with authority, and a critical assessment. A note here is worth 12.5 marks, which is more than a whole question on most undergraduate papers, so a list of bullet points will not do.

Union of India v. Tulsiram Patel, (1985) 3 SCC 398 is the case that maps the boundary. A Constitution Bench held that the three provisos to Article 311(2), which dispense with the inquiry where the servant is convicted on a criminal charge, where the disciplinary authority records in writing that it is not reasonably practicable to hold an inquiry, and where the President or Governor is satisfied that an inquiry is not expedient in the interest of the security of the State, are a complete code; but the satisfaction must rest on relevant material, the reasons must be recorded, and the order remains open to judicial review. The doctrine of pleasure survives in India only as much as Article 311 allows.

Article 312 creates the All India Services, on a resolution of the Council of States supported by two thirds of members present and voting, and this is the structural device that holds the Union and the States together administratively: an officer of the Indian Administrative Service or the Indian Police Service is recruited by the Union, allotted to a State cadre, and serves both. Articles 315 to 323 create the Union and State Public Service Commissions, secure their independence by a fixed term, removal only on the grounds and in the manner prescribed for a judge of the Supreme Court, and expenses charged on the Consolidated Fund, and require that they be consulted on recruitment, promotions and disciplinary matters.

The three classical attributes are neutrality, anonymity and permanence, and all three are under strain. T.S.R. Subramanian v. Union of India, (2013) 15 SCC 732 is the leading modern authority, and its directions were issued precisely because the attributes had ceased to hold. The Court directed that a Civil Services Board be constituted in the Union and in every State to advise on postings and transfers; that officers be given a minimum tenure so that transfer ceases to be an instrument of punishment; and, most important in practice, that officers should not act on oral instructions and that where oral instructions are unavoidable they must be reduced to writing. The last direction is a rule of administrative law in miniature: a decision whose real author cannot be identified cannot be reviewed by anybody.

Assessment. The constitutional design protects the individual officer well and the institution badly. Article 311 is a strong personal guarantee, and it has been criticised, notably by the Second Administrative Reforms Commission, for making dismissal for non-performance practically impossible while doing nothing to protect an honest officer from an inconvenient transfer, which is the sanction actually used. The reform effort has therefore moved to tenure security, board-based postings, recorded instructions, performance management and capacity building under Mission Karmayogi, launched in 2020, and to lateral entry at the joint secretary level, which broadens expertise while raising a genuine question about the neutrality that a career service is supposed to guarantee.

The New Industrial Policy of 24 July 1991 abolished industrial licensing for all but a short reserved list, removed the MRTP requirement of prior approval for expansion, and opened most sectors to foreign direct investment. What followed was not the withdrawal of the State but its change of technique: from ownership and permission to rules and supervision, exercised by specialised statutory regulators at arm's length from the ministry. The Securities and Exchange Board of India became statutory in 1992, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India was created in 1997, the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission in 1998, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority in 1999, the Competition Commission of India under the Competition Act, 2002, the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board in 2006, and the real estate and insolvency regulators in 2016. FERA gave way to the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999, and the MRTP Act to the Competition Act.

The current phase is deregulation of a different kind: not fewer regulators, but fewer criminal offences and fewer compliances. The Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2023 decriminalised 183 provisions across 42 Central Acts, converting minor offences into civil penalties on the reasoning that the threat of imprisonment for a paperwork default deters enterprise without protecting anyone. The programme has continued: a Jan Vishwas Bill of 2025 covering seventeen laws, and the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2026, which proposes to amend eighty Central Acts. The Union Budget for 2025-26 announced a High Level Committee for Regulatory Reforms to review non-financial sector regulations, licences and permissions, and a Deregulation Commission was announced on 16 February 2025 to reduce State intervention. Alongside these sit the National Single Window System, the Goods and Services Tax of 2017 replacing a patchwork of indirect taxes, and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 replacing a discretionary rehabilitation regime with a time-bound creditor-driven process.

Assessment. The strength of the Indian shift is that it replaced the least reviewable form of State power, individual prior permission, with the most reviewable, published rules applied by a body that must give reasons. Its weaknesses are three: regulators multiplied without a common law of regulatory procedure, so appointment, tenure, procedure and appeal differ from statute to statute; capacity has not matched mandate, and a regulator without inspectors regulates on paper; and decriminalisation, useful as it is, addresses the penalty rather than the compliance, so the number of filings a small enterprise must make has not fallen as fast as the number of offences it can be jailed for.

(c) Role of Tribunals in adjudication

A tribunal is a statutory body outside the regular court hierarchy that decides disputes judicially. The case for it is practical: specialised subject matter decided by members who understand it, faster and cheaper procedure freed from the Evidence Act and the Civil Procedure Code, and relief of the docket of the ordinary courts. The case against it is constitutional: it removes a class of disputes from courts staffed by an independent judiciary and gives them to bodies whose members are appointed, paid and reappointed by the executive that is usually the opposing party.

Union of India v. R. Gandhi, President, Madras Bar Association, (2010) 11 SCC 1 upheld the transfer of company jurisdiction to the National Company Law Tribunal but struck down the provisions on qualifications and selection, holding that when jurisdiction is shifted from courts to a tribunal, the tribunal must inherit the standards of independence and competence of the court it replaces. Madras Bar Association v. Union of India, (2014) 10 SCC 1 struck down the National Tax Tribunal Act, 2005 outright: adjudication of substantial questions of law, previously with the High Courts, could not be transferred to a body whose members included technical members and whose independence was not secured. Rojer Mathew v. South Indian Bank Ltd., (2019) 6 SCC 1 struck down the rules framed under Section 184 of the Finance Act, 2017 for excessive executive control over appointments, tenure and removal across nineteen tribunals.

Conclusion. The three notes describe one movement seen from three positions. The civil service is the State acting through permanent officials, and its problem is insulating them from political direction without insulating them from accountability. Regulation and deregulation describe the State changing its technique, from owning and permitting to rule making and supervision, and the constitutional standard that survives the change is Article 14. Tribunals are the State adjudicating through its own specialised bodies, and the constitutional standard that survives there is judicial review under Articles 226 and 32, which L. Chandra Kumar placed beyond the reach of amendment. In each case the modern Indian answer has been the same: the growth of administrative power is accepted as necessary, and the law's response is procedural, insisting on published standards, recorded reasons, secured tenure and an unremovable judicial check.