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Administrative Process Nature and Scope
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LLM · Group 1 Constitutional and Administrative Law
2018 Examination
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LLM Group 1 Constitutional and Administrative Law Administrative Process Nature and Scope 2018 Question Paper with Solutions
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First published on munotes.in on 12 August 2026.
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The University does not publish an official answer key for this paper. The answers in this volume are model answers, written to show how a full-mark answer is built. They are a study aid, not an authority on what an examiner marked.
The question paper reproduced here is the paper as set by the University of Mumbai at the 2018 examination.
The answers in this volume state the law as it stands today, not as it stood when the paper was set, and four changes alter answers here. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 28 June 2024, overruled Chevron, so United States courts now decide for themselves what a statute means instead of deferring to the agency, which affects the comparative question set in seven of the eight papers in this folder. Kolkata Municipal Corporation v. Bimal Kumar Shah, 16 May 2024, read seven procedural sub-rights into Article 300A. Mineral Area Development Authority v. Steel Authority of India, 25 July 2024, held by nine judges that royalty on minerals is not a tax and overruled India Cement. And Madras Bar Association v. Union of India, 19 November 2025, struck down the appointment and tenure provisions of the Tribunals Reforms Act, 2021 and directed a National Tribunals Commission. Where an answer relies on any of these it gives the date.
Contents
The questions below are the paper as the University of Mumbai set it at the 2018 examination, in the order it was set.
MarksPage
The Paper as Set
The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the 2018 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.
SECTION I
Q.P. Code 22643. Attempt any four questions, all questions carry equal marks
any four of seven · 100 Marks
1.Explain concept of 'Rule of Law' with the context of current scenario.[25]
Answer
For full marks, cover: the classical concept in two compact sections, because the question's weight is on the second half; then the current scenario organised by theme with the constitutional standard stated for each, not as a list of news items; then an honest assessment of where Indian practice matches the doctrine and where it does not. The themes that carry the answer now are the appointment of independent constitutional authorities, the criminal law overhaul of July 2024, transparency and its narrowing in November 2025, property and process, the independence of tribunals, the assent controversy, and delay.
The concept
Dicey's three meanings, from the Law of the Constitution (1885), are the supremacy of regular law as against arbitrary power, equality before the law with officials subject to the ordinary courts, and a constitution that is the consequence of judicial decisions rather than their source. Each has been substantially qualified: a welfare State cannot function without discretion, officials everywhere including England are subject to special tribunals, and a written bill of rights protects liberty at least as well as case law can.
The modern formulations replace propositions with qualities. Raz requires prospective, open, clear and relatively stable laws, an independent judiciary, natural justice, and accessible courts with review powers. Lord Bingham's eight sub-rules add the protection of fundamental rights, dispute resolution without prohibitive cost, and compliance by the State with its international obligations. The Delhi Declaration of the International Commission of Jurists, 1959, which Indian courts have preferred, adds the social and economic conditions in which a person may live in dignity.
In India the concept has three settled consequences. It is part of the basic structure, so it survives amendment: Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala, (1973) 4 SCC 225 and Indira Nehru Gandhi v. Raj Narain, 1975 Supp SCC 1, where Article 329A(4), which validated the Prime Minister's election and ousted every court, was struck down because Parliament had decided a case rather than made a law. It is enforceable through Article 14 as a prohibition of arbitrariness: E.P. Royappa v. State of Tamil Nadu, (1974) 4 SCC 3 and Shayara Bano v. Union of India, (2017) 9 SCC 1. And it is not suspended by an emergency, a proposition established by Khanna J.'s lone dissent in A.D.M. Jabalpur v. Shivkant Shukla, (1976) 2 SCC 521, written into the Constitution by the Forty-fourth Amendment in 1978, and finally settled when nine judges expressly overruled the majority in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1.
The operative Indian sentence is older than all of these. S.G. Jaisinghani v. Union of India, AIR 1967 SC 1427: the absence of arbitrary power is the first essential of the rule of law, discretion conferred on executive authorities must be confined within clearly defined limits, and the citizen should be able to know where he stands.
The current scenario, theme by theme
Independent constitutional authorities. Anoop Baranwal v. Union of India, (2023) 6 SCC 161 held that appointing the Chief Election Commissioner and Election Commissioners by executive choice alone was inconsistent with the rule of law and with free and fair elections, and directed appointment by the President on the advice of a committee of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Chief Justice of India until Parliament legislated. Parliament legislated within the year, and the resulting Act of 2023 replaced the Chief Justice on that committee with a Union Cabinet Minister. The validity of that substitution is under challenge and has not been decided; the honest statement is that the question is open. It is the clearest current illustration of the structural problem: a court can prescribe a process, a legislature can replace it, and what remains is the basic structure argument.
The criminal law overhaul. On 1 July 2024 the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 replaced the Indian Penal Code, 1860, the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 and the Indian Evidence Act, 1872. Two rule of law consequences follow, and they point in opposite directions. Accessibility, which Raz and Bingham both treat as central, suffers for a period of years while two codes run side by side according to the date of the offence. Against that, the new Sanhita's provision for releasing a first-time offender who has served one third of the maximum sentence, with the duty to apply placed on the jail superintendent, addresses the largest single failure of the Indian legal system: Prison Statistics India for 2023 recorded occupancy at about 120.8 per cent and undertrials at about 73.5 per cent of all prisoners.
Transparency and its narrowing. The Right to Information Act, 2005 was the most effective rule of law reform since the Constitution, because it made accountability a right exercisable without showing standing and changed behaviour upstream. On 13 November 2025 the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025 were notified, bringing Section 44(3) of the 2023 Act into force and amending Section 8(1)(j) of the Right to Information Act so that personal information is generally exempt, with the larger public interest override removed and only the residual balancing power in Section 8(2) surviving. Both sides must be stated: privacy is a fundamental right after Puttaswamy, and accountability that depends on knowing who decided what is the older claim.
Property and process. Kolkata Municipal Corporation v. Bimal Kumar Shah, decided 16 May 2024, held that Article 300A carries seven procedural sub-rights, of notice, hearing, a reasoned decision, demonstrable public purpose, fair compensation, an efficient and expeditious process, and final conclusion, and set aside a unilateral acquisition under Section 352 of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation Act, 1980. That is Jaisinghani applied to the State's most coercive ordinary power. Vidya Devi v. State of Himachal Pradesh, (2020) 2 SCC 569 is its companion: the State could not plead limitation or adverse possession against a widow whose land it had taken in 1967 without any acquisition at all.
Independence of adjudication. In Madras Bar Association v. Union of India, decided 19 November 2025, the Supreme Court struck down the core appointment and tenure provisions of the Tribunals Reforms Act, 2021, holding that Parliament had re-enacted provisions already declared unconstitutional in 2020 and 2021 without curing the defects, and directed a National Tribunals Commission within four months. Tribunals decide more disputes than the High Courts, and a member dependent on the executive for reappointment cannot deliver the equality before the law Dicey's second proposition demands.
Assent to Bills. The Presidential Reference decided on 20 November 2025 advised that no judicially prescribed timelines may be imposed on the Governor or the President under Articles 200 and 201, that deemed assent is alien to the Constitution, and that decisions under those Articles are not ordinarily justiciable, while a Governor may not sit on a Bill indefinitely. The rule of law point cuts both ways and should be put that way: an actor who can delay indefinitely without remedy is a rule of law problem, and a court that supplies the remedy by deeming assent has exercised a power given to someone else.
Publication in the digital State. Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India, (2020) 3 SCC 637 required orders suspending internet services to be published, reasoned, proportionate, temporary and periodically reviewed, applying to the digital administration the rule in Harla v. State of Rajasthan, AIR 1951 SC 467 that an unpublished law cannot bind.
Deregulation as a rule of law argument. The Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2023 decriminalised 183 provisions across 42 Central Acts, and a Bill of 2026 proposes to amend eighty more. The argument for it is Raz's: a system with thousands of minor offences that cannot possibly all be enforced hands officials exactly the selective discretion that perverts the law. The argument against is that decriminalisation without the capacity to impose the civil penalty that replaces it is not enforcement by another route but non-enforcement.
Assessment
Three observations, and they should be stated without either triumph or despair. First, the Indian rule of law is strongest as a doctrine of procedure: notice, hearing, reasons, publication and review are enforced with real consistency, and Bimal Kumar Shah is the newest instance. Second, it is weakest where the remedy depends on time; a right vindicated after twenty years satisfies no formulation on any list. Third, the pattern of the last three years is that the Court sets a standard and the political branches test it, in Election Commission appointments, in tribunals and in the assent reference. That contestation is what a working constitutional order looks like, and it becomes a failure only when the test consists of simply re-enacting what has already been held unconstitutional, which is what the Supreme Court refused to allow in November 2025.
Two further threads in the current scenario
Political finance. On 15 February 2024 a Constitution Bench struck down the electoral bonds scheme in Association for Democratic Reforms v. Union of India, together with the amendments made for it to the Representation of the People Act, 1951, the Companies Act, 2013 and the income tax legislation, holding that anonymous corporate funding of political parties violates the voter's right to information under Article 19(1)(a) and fails the proportionality test, and directing disclosure of the bonds already purchased and encashed. The reasoning is a rule of law reasoning in Bingham's sense rather than an electoral one: accountability is impossible where the law has deliberately concealed who paid whom, and the concealment was created by statute.
The horizontal reach of the guarantee. The rule of law was framed as a constraint on the State, and a great deal of the power that now affects people is exercised by private bodies, which is a direct consequence of liberalisation. In Kaushal Kishor v. State of Uttar Pradesh, (2023) 4 SCC 1 the Supreme Court held that the rights under Articles 19 and 21 are enforceable even against persons other than the State or its instrumentalities. The public function jurisdiction under Article 226 does related work, as Zee Telefilms Ltd. v. Union of India, (2005) 4 SCC 649 shows, where a body held not to be State under Article 12 was nonetheless amenable to a writ for the discharge of a public duty.
Both threads point the same way and should be stated together. The current scenario is not simply one of a State that must be restrained; it is one in which the two great sources of unaccountable power are the State's own opacity and the private exercise of public functions. Indian law has answered the first by requiring disclosure, in the Right to Information Act, 2005 and in the electoral bonds decision, and the second by extending the reach of the guarantees, in Kaushal Kishor and in the public function jurisdiction. The unresolved tension, and the reason the current position is genuinely contested rather than settled, is that the same period has seen the disclosure obligation narrowed by the amendment of Section 8(1)(j) in November 2025.
Conclusion. The rule of law today is better described by Jaisinghani than by Dicey: the absence of arbitrary power is the first essential, and discretion must be confined within defined limits so that the citizen knows where he stands. On that standard the current Indian scorecard is legible and mixed. Property law, tribunal independence and the bail provisions of the new criminal procedure have moved towards confining power in the last two years. Transparency has moved the other way with the amendment of Section 8(1)(j) in November 2025, and the appointment of Election Commissioners remains unsettled. The oldest failure, delay, is untouched by any of it. The rule of law is not a condition a country attains; it is the sum of what its institutions will enforce this year against the government of this year, which is why the answer to this question in 2026 is not the answer it had when the paper was set.
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