Mumbai University Solved Question Papers
National Security Public Order and Rule of Law
Previous Year Question Paper with Solution
LLM · Group 1 Constitutional and Administrative Law
2025-26 Examination
munotes.in
Mumbai
LLM Group 1 Constitutional and Administrative Law National Security Public Order and Rule of Law 2025-26 Question Paper with Solutions
Get access to whole semester resourcesSemester Pass
MU LLM student group
Free to join
First published on munotes.in on 12 August 2026.
Published by munotes.in, Mumbai.
Model answers written and edited by the munotes.in editorial desk.
Passages from this volume may be quoted, in print, online or by an AI system, with credit: name munotes.in and link to this volume's page. The volume may not be reproduced as a whole. Full terms at munotes.in/content-license.
munotes.in is an independent study resource for students of the University of Mumbai. It is not affiliated with the University of Mumbai, and is not endorsed by it.
The University does not publish an official answer key for this paper. The answers in this volume are model answers, written to show how a full-mark answer is built. They are a study aid, not an authority on what an examiner marked.
The question paper reproduced here is the paper as set by the University of Mumbai at the 2025-26 examination.
Contents
The questions below are the paper as the University of Mumbai set it at the 2025-26 examination, in the order it was set.
MarksPage
The Paper as Set
The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the 2025-26 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
Form 05061. Answer any four questions, all questions carry equal marks
any four of seven · 100 Marks
1.Explain Article 22 of the Indian Constitution. Discuss the safeguards provided under this article against preventive detention.[25]
Answer
For full marks, cover: the split personality of Article 22, which is one article containing two opposite codes; clauses (1) and (2) and why a preventive detenu is denied them; the four safeguards in clauses (4) to (7) taken one at a time; the Advisory Board and what A.K. Roy did and did not decide; the safeguards the courts have added on top of the text; the one safeguard the Constitution promises and the executive has never delivered; and an honest assessment of whether the article protects anybody.
Article 22 is two codes in one article, and they point in opposite directions
Article 22 is placed in Part III among the rights to freedom, but it is the only fundamental right in the Constitution that expressly authorises the State to imprison a person who has committed no offence. Clauses (1) and (2) confer rights on a person arrested under the ordinary criminal law. Clauses (4) to (7) confer a much weaker set of protections on a person held in preventive detention, and clause (3) exists solely to switch the first set off for that person. Reading the article as a single scheme of protection is the commonest mistake in this paper. It is a scheme of protection for the ordinary arrestee and a scheme of authorisation, with limits, for the preventive detenu.
The punitive limb, clauses (1) and (2). A person arrested must be informed as soon as may be of the grounds of arrest; he has the right to consult and to be defended by a legal practitioner of his choice; he must be produced before the nearest magistrate within twenty four hours excluding the time of the journey; and he may not be detained beyond that period without the authority of a magistrate. These are the protections that make an arrest reviewable by a judicial officer almost immediately.
Clause (3) takes all of that away. It provides that nothing in clauses (1) and (2) applies to an enemy alien, or to any person arrested or detained under any law providing for preventive detention. So the preventive detenu has no right to counsel of his choice, no right to be produced before a magistrate, and no twenty four hour rule. What he has instead is clauses (4) to (7).
The four textual safeguards, taken one at a time
One, the three month rule and the Advisory Board, clause (4). No law of preventive detention may authorise detention for longer than three months unless an Advisory Board consisting of persons who are or have been or are qualified to be appointed as High Court judges has reported before the expiry of three months that there is in its opinion sufficient cause for the detention. This is the only structural check in the article: an outside body must look at the case before the third month ends.
Two, communication of grounds, clause (5), first half. When a person is detained under a preventive detention law, the authority making the order must communicate to him, as soon as may be, the grounds on which the order has been made. "As soon as may be" has been read to mean ordinarily within five days, and the statutes now fix that period expressly.
Three, the earliest opportunity of making a representation, clause (5), second half. The detenu must be afforded the earliest opportunity of making a representation against the order. This is the safeguard that does the most work in practice, because almost every successful habeas corpus petition in this field is decided on it, as shown below.
Four, the withholding of facts against the public interest, clause (6). The authority need not disclose facts which it considers to be against the public interest to disclose. This is a limitation on the third safeguard and not a safeguard at all, and a good answer says so.
Clause (7) then permits Parliament to prescribe the circumstances in which a person may be detained for longer than three months without an Advisory Board opinion at all, the maximum period of detention, and the Board's procedure.
The safeguard that was promised and never delivered
The Constitution (Forty fourth Amendment) Act, 1978 was passed to undo the excesses of the 1975 Emergency. Section 3 of that Act amends Article 22 to reduce the three month period to two months and to require the Advisory Board to be constituted in accordance with the recommendation of the Chief Justice of the appropriate High Court, which would take the composition of the Board out of executive hands.
That section has never been brought into force, because the notification required to commence it has never been issued by any government of any party since 1978. The result is that the safeguard a student reads about in the amendment is not law, and the original three month rule with an executively constituted Board continues to operate. Say this in the exam. It is the single most telling fact about how seriously the Indian State takes the safeguards in Article 22, and most candidates do not know it.
What the courts have added to the text
The procedural safeguards are mandatory, and breach means release. In Ram Krishan Bhardwaj v. State of Delhi, AIR 1953 SC 318, one of the grounds supplied to the detenu was vague. The State argued that the other grounds were specific and sufficient. The Court rejected that: where a detention rests on several grounds and one is bad, the detention is bad as a whole, because the Court cannot know how much weight the detaining authority gave to the defective ground and the detenu's right to make an effective representation has been impaired. This rule of the bad ground vitiating the whole order has been the most productive single principle in this branch of law for seventy years, and it is now given statutory recognition in the severability provisions of COFEPOSA and the National Security Act.
Delay in considering the representation is itself a violation. In Jayanarayan Sukul v. State of West Bengal, (1970) 1 SCC 219, the Court laid down four propositions: the authority must consider the representation itself; consideration must be independent of any opinion of the Advisory Board; it must be done as expeditiously as possible; and there must be no delay of the kind that suggests the representation was treated as an empty formality. The reasoning is that the right in clause (5) is a right to have the representation considered, not merely a right to submit paper, and a right considered after the detention has run its course is no right at all. On this principle detentions have been quashed for delays of a fortnight where the delay was unexplained.
The grounds must be supplied in a language and form the detenu can use. In Harikisan v. State of Maharashtra, AIR 1962 SC 911, grounds were served in English on a detenu who did not know English, and an oral explanation was given. The Court held the detention bad: communication of grounds means communication in a language the detenu understands, because clause (5) links the grounds to the making of a representation, and grounds he cannot read cannot found a representation. The same logic requires supply of the documents relied on, not merely a narrative of them, and non supply of relied upon material is today the most frequently successful ground of challenge.
The order must be the detaining authority's own satisfaction, and it must be alive. Where the detaining authority acts on the dictation of a superior, or reproduces a police proposal without applying its mind, the order fails for want of subjective satisfaction. Where there is a long unexplained gap between the last prejudicial act and the order, the "live and proximate link" between the two is broken and the order is quashed as punitive in substance. Both doctrines are judicial constructions, not text.
Public order is not law and order. The line that keeps preventive detention within bounds was drawn in Ram Manohar Lohia v. State of Bihar, AIR 1966 SC 740, where Hidayatullah J. described three concentric circles: law and order is the widest, public order is narrower and inside it, and security of the State is the narrowest and innermost. Every public order problem is a law and order problem, but not every law and order problem reaches public order. A detention order that recites facts amounting only to an ordinary crime is therefore made under the wrong head, and the courts have quashed detentions on this ground repeatedly, most recently in cases where a detenu had merely been involved in individual offences however serious.
Bail is not an answer to preventive detention, but it is not irrelevant either. The Supreme Court has held that a detaining authority must be told, and must consider, that the detenu is already in custody or has been granted bail on conditions, because a satisfaction reached in ignorance of that fact is no satisfaction at all. In a decision of March 2025 the Court set aside a preventive detention order precisely because the authority had not considered the bail conditions imposed by the magistrate for the same offence.
The Advisory Board, and the limits of A.K. Roy
In A.K. Roy v. Union of India, (1982) 1 SCC 271, a Constitution Bench upheld the National Security Act, 1980. The Court held that a detenu has no right to be represented by a lawyer before the Advisory Board, because Article 22(3) removes clause (1) and the statute expressly excludes legal representation; but it added the important qualification that if the detaining authority appears before the Board through counsel or a legal adviser, the detenu must be allowed the same facility, because equality of arms cannot be denied once the State has taken the advantage.
The Court also refused to strike down the vagueness of expressions such as "security of the State" and "public order", holding them to be terms of settled judicial content. And it held that section 3 of the 44th Amendment, being unnotified, could not be enforced by mandamus, since bringing a law into force is a matter for the executive. That last holding is why the two month safeguard is still dead.
The limits of the Advisory Board as a safeguard are structural and should be stated. Its proceedings are not open. The detenu has no counsel unless the State takes one. There is no cross examination. The Board's report is confidential except for its opinion. And the Board is advisory in name: if it reports sufficient cause, the detention continues; if it reports otherwise, the Government must release, so the safeguard operates in only one direction. It is best described as an internal review conducted by judicially qualified persons, not as an adjudication.
An honest assessment
| Safeguard | What the text promises | What it delivers in practice |
|---|---|---|
| Advisory Board within three months | Independent scrutiny before the third month | Closed, no counsel, no evidence tested, executively constituted |
| Communication of grounds | Knowledge of the case against you | Real, and enforced strictly by the courts |
| Earliest opportunity to represent | A meaningful chance to answer | Real, and the most productive ground of challenge |
| Non disclosure in the public interest | A narrow exception | An open ended power in the detaining authority's own opinion |
| Two month rule, 44th Amendment | A shorter leash and a judicially chosen Board | Never notified, therefore not law |
The pattern is clear. The safeguards that work are the two that are procedural and verifiable on the record: was the ground supplied, and was the representation considered promptly. The safeguards that are substantive, which is to say those that would test whether the person should be detained at all, do not work, because subjective satisfaction is not reviewable on merits and the Advisory Board does not test evidence. This is why the standard criticism of Indian preventive detention law is that it is strong on form and empty on substance, and why the National Human Rights Commission and successive Law Commission reports have pressed for the notification of section 3 of the 44th Amendment.
Conclusion. Article 22 is not a guarantee against preventive detention; it is the constitutional permission for it, hedged with procedure. Clauses (1) and (2) are switched off by clause (3) for exactly the class of person who most needs them, and what remains is a three month leash policed by a closed Advisory Board, a right to be told the grounds, and a right to be heard on paper.
Within that narrow compass the Supreme Court has done substantial work, holding that one vague ground destroys the whole order, that unexplained delay in considering a representation is itself unconstitutional, that grounds must be supplied in a language and with the documents the detenu can use, and that a detention founded on law and order rather than public order is made under the wrong power. But the deepest safeguard the Constitution promises, the two month period and a Board constituted on the Chief Justice's recommendation, has sat unnotified for almost fifty years, and until that notification is issued any claim that Article 22 balances liberty against security should be treated as a claim about the text and not about the law as it operates.
The rest of the answers
The first answer is free. The rest come with the LL.M. Constitutional and Administrative Law Semester 1 solved papers.
You have read the question paper and its first answer in full. Buy the solved papers once and you can read every answer of every solved paper in this semester.
Notes + Solved papers: ₹798 Already bought it? Sign in
Or solved papers only: ₹499
Or notes only: ₹499
The question paper itself stays free, and so does the syllabus.
Found an error in this volume? Report it and we will check it against the paper.