LLM Group 1 Constitutional and Administrative Law Public Authorities and Power Holders 2019 Question Paper with Solutions

For full marks, cover: the meaning and its basis in collective responsibility; then the second limb carefully, because it asks about importance and necessity in the functioning of law making bodies, which is a question about what the control does for the legislature itself and not a request for a list; then the instruments with their provisions, since necessity cannot be shown in the abstract; then the cases, of which Krishna Kumar Singh is the most important; then what has weakened the control and what that costs the legislature; and a conclusion.

Second, the necessity grows with delegation, and delegation is unavoidable. A modern legislature cannot enact the detail regulation requires, so it confers rule-making power, and every such conferment hands part of the legislative function to the executive. The control of delegated legislation is therefore not peripheral: it is the means by which the legislature keeps what it has given away. Without laying requirements, a scrutiny committee and the rule against delegating the essential legislative function, a legislature would legislate itself out of existence by instalments.

Third, control is what distinguishes a legislature from a registry. Where the executive commands a majority the passage of its Bills is assured. What is not assured, and what a Government cannot vote away, is the obligation to answer a question, to submit a demand for grant, to face a committee and to lay an ordinance. In a system of party discipline those obligations are the House's real work.

By interrogation. Starred questions, answered orally, expose the Minister to supplementaries, where the real testing happens; unstarred questions yield written answers and are the standard means of extracting official data; short notice questions are allowed on urgent matters; a half-an-hour discussion may follow an important question; and zero hour allows matters without notice, an Indian practice absent from the Rules.

Over the purse. No tax except by authority of law, Article 265; no withdrawal from the Consolidated Fund except under appropriation made by law, Article 114(3); the annual financial statement before both Houses, Article 112; demands for grants voted by the House of the People, Article 113; money Bills only in the House of the People, Articles 109 and 110; supplementary, additional and excess grants under Article 115. The instruments during the budget are the cut motions: the disapproval of policy cut reducing a demand to one rupee, the economy cut and the token cut of one hundred rupees.

Through committees, which is where detailed control now lives: the Public Accounts Committee under Rule 308 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in Lok Sabha, examining the audit reports laid under Article 151, with the Estimates Committee and the Committee on Public Undertakings; and the twenty-four Departmentally Related Standing Committees, in their present form since 1993.

The cases

Krishna Kumar Singh v. State of Bihar, (2017) 3 SCC 1, decided on 2 January 2017 by seven judges, goes directly to necessity. Between 1989 and 1992 the State of Bihar took over some four hundred and twenty-nine Sanskrit schools by ordinance and re-promulgated the ordinance at least seven times without once placing it before the Legislature; teachers claimed to have become government servants. The Court held that re-promulgation without placing the ordinance before the legislature is a fraud on the Constitution and a subversion of the democratic legislative process; that the satisfaction of the President or Governor is open to judicial review; and that a lapsed ordinance creates no enduring rights except where irreversible consequences require relief. The requirement of laying is mandatory because it is how the legislature recovers its monopoly of law-making. The case is the clearest judicial statement that legislative control is a constitutional condition and not a courtesy, and that a Government which evades it acts unconstitutionally.

And the money Bill line shows control evaded by classification. In Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Aadhaar) v. Union of India, (2019) 1 SCC 1, the majority upheld the enactment of the Aadhaar Act as a money Bill, Chandrachud J. dissenting on the ground that the Speaker's certificate was a fraud on the Constitution; in Rojer Mathew v. South Indian Bank Ltd., (2020) 6 SCC 1, a Constitution Bench doubted that reasoning and referred the money Bill question to a larger Bench, where it remains, so the position is open. Since Article 110(3) makes the certificate final, a Bill so certified escapes the Council of States, and one House loses its share of the control without any change in the law.

What has weakened it, and what that costs the legislature

The powers are intact and their use has thinned. Sitting days have fallen well below the averages of the early decades; a substantial proportion of Bills is passed without reference to a standing committee and some after very short debate; the guillotine disposes of most demands for grants without discussion, so the strongest control in law is the weakest in practice; question hour is frequently lost to disorder; and the Tenth Schedule puts a member who votes against the whip at risk of disqualification, which limits the House's capacity to divide against its own Government.

Conclusion. Legislative control is the whole set of means by which a legislature holds the executive to the authority it has given and calls it to account: motions that can end a Government, questions that compel answers on the record, the constitutional control of the purse under Articles 265, 266 and 114(3) with the cut motions, the committees, the laying of delegated legislation with the Committee on Subordinate Legislation, and the six week life of an ordinance under Article 123. Its importance to the functioning of a law making body is that it is the only way the legislature learns what became of its statutes, the only way it retains what it delegates, the only obligation a majority cannot vote away, the condition on which the executive's own powers were granted, and a discipline on administration even when unused.

In re Delhi Laws Act and Hamdard Dawakhana stop a legislature from abdicating, and Krishna Kumar Singh holds that evading the duty to lay an ordinance is a fraud on the Constitution. The necessity is proved by what happens without it: where Parliament has not controlled, the courts have, and a legislature that leaves its own work to others has surrendered not merely a power but its reason for sitting.

The two senses of "responsible"

In the first sense the ombudsman is the institution through which other public authorities are made answerable: it receives the citizen's complaint, examines what officials did and reports. In the second it is itself a public authority and must be accountable for its appointment, its procedure and its output. An answer that takes only the first describes the office; the marks lie in the second, and the two are connected in a way the rest of this answer sets out.

The classical model, and why credibility is its only capital

The office is Swedish, created by the Instrument of Government of 1809 as the Justitieombudsman, an officer of the Riksdag to supervise the observance of the law by officials. Finland followed in 1919, Denmark in 1955, Norway and New Zealand in 1962, and the United Kingdom created the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration in 1967 on the recommendation of the Whyatt Report of 1961.

What kind of authority India created

Composition, section 3 of the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013. A Chairperson, being or having been a Chief Justice of India or a Judge of the Supreme Court, or an eminent person of impeccable integrity with at least twenty-five years' special knowledge in anti-corruption policy, public administration, vigilance, finance, law and management; and not more than eight Members, of whom not less than half must be judicial and not less than half must be from the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, minorities and women.

Jurisdiction, section 14. Offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, by a serving or former Prime Minister, Ministers, Members of Parliament, all Groups of central government servants, officers of bodies established by Acts of Parliament, government financed companies and societies, and bodies receiving foreign contribution above ten lakh rupees. The Prime Minister is included subject to three safeguards: exclusion of international relations, external and internal security, public order, atomic energy and space; inquiry only by a Full Bench of not less than two thirds of the Members; and in camera proceedings with the record unpublished if the complaint is dismissed.

Its own accountability

Appointment, section 4. By the President on the recommendation of a Selection Committee of the Prime Minister, the Speaker of the House of the People, the Leader of the Opposition in that House, the Chief Justice of India or a Judge nominated by him, and one eminent jurist, with a Search Committee of at least eight persons to prepare the panel. Section 4(2) allows the Committee to act notwithstanding a vacancy in its own membership.

The doctrine governing such appointments is Indian. In Centre for Public Interest Litigation v. Union of India, (2011) 4 SCC 1, the appointment of P.J. Thomas as Central Vigilance Commissioner in September 2010 was quashed as non est because a charge sheet in the Palmolein import case had been pending against him since 1999 and the Leader of the Opposition had dissented. The Court held that the selecting committee must consider the integrity of the institution and not merely the personal integrity of the candidate, because an incumbent facing a corruption charge cannot credibly supervise corruption investigations. For a body whose only weapon is credibility that reasoning applies with even greater force.

An early dilution. Section 44, requiring public servants to declare their assets and those of their spouses and dependent children, was substantially relaxed by the Lokpal and Lokayuktas (Amendment) Act, 2016, within two years of commencement.

Uneven compliance by the States, though where a State institution has been allowed to work it has proved the model: the Karnataka Lokayukta, Justice N. Santosh Hegde, reported in July 2011 on illegal iron ore mining, naming serving ministers and officials, and the report was followed by the resignation of the Chief Minister; Maharashtra's Lokayukta, under the Maharashtra Lokayukta and Upa-Lokayuktas Act, 1971, is the oldest in the country, Odisha having legislated first in 1970 but brought its Act into force only in 1983.

Where the classical function is actually performed in India

Because the Lokpal handles corruption and not grievances, the ombudsman's classical work is done elsewhere. The Central and State Information Commissions under the Right to Information Act, 2005, adjudicate on the denial of information informally and free and function in practice as grievance authorities; the Act's reach turns on the meaning of "public authority" in section 2(h), settled in Thalappalam Ser. Coop. Bank Ltd. v. State of Kerala, (2013) 16 SCC 82, where co-operative societies were held not to be public authorities merely by reason of registration and regulation, control having to be deep and pervasive and financing substantial.

The Reserve Bank of India's Integrated Ombudsman Scheme, 2021, consolidated the earlier banking, non-banking finance company and digital transaction schemes into a single scheme with one complaint point and no fee; the Insurance Ombudsman does the same for policyholders; and there are analogous authorities in telecommunications, electricity and taxation. These are much closer to the classical model than the Lokpal.

It takes the second seriously in design, through a broadly based Selection Committee, removal only on a reference to and a finding by the Supreme Court, annual reporting and punishment for false complaints, with Centre for Public Interest Litigation requiring that such appointments protect the integrity of the institution. Against that design the record is thin, and the question of its jurisdiction over High Court judges is stayed and undecided. The deepest criticism is that the authority is answerable for the wrong subject: it prosecutes corruption while the maladministration for which the institution was proposed in 1966 is left to the Information Commissions and the sectoral schemes.

The constitutional scheme of financial control, and where he sits in it

Financial control under the Constitution operates at three times. Authorisation before expenditure: no tax except by authority of law under Article 265; the Consolidated Fund and the rule against appropriation otherwise than by law under Article 266; the Contingency Fund under Article 267; the annual financial statement under Article 112; charged expenditure not voted and other estimates put as demands for grants under Article 113; and the governing rule in Article 114(3), that no money shall be withdrawn from the Consolidated Fund except under appropriation made by law, with supplementary, additional and excess grants under Article 115 and money Bills reserved to the House of the People by Articles 109 and 110.

Administrative control during expenditure, exercised by the Ministry of Finance, the financial advisers, the delegation of financial powers and the General Financial Rules. And audit after expenditure, which is the Comptroller and Auditor General's stage and the only one in which an independent judgment is brought to the record.

The reason the Constitution places him outside the executive is that the first stage authorises in advance and the second is the executive examining itself. Without an independent third stage, appropriation is a formality.

Article 149 and the Act of 1971

Article 149 leaves his duties and powers to be prescribed by Parliament, which enacted the Comptroller and Auditor General's (Duties, Powers and Conditions of Service) Act, 1971. Section 13 requires audit of all expenditure from the Consolidated Fund of India and of each State and Union territory with a Legislative Assembly, and examination of whether the moneys were legally available for and applied to the purpose to which they were applied, whether the expenditure conformed to the governing authority and whether re-appropriations were regular. Sections 14 and 15 extend audit to bodies substantially financed by grants or loans and to grants for specific purposes. Section 16 requires audit of receipts and satisfaction that the rules for assessment, collection and allocation of revenue are duly observed.

Section 17 covers stores and stock; section 19 Government companies and corporations, read with sections 139(5) and 143(5) to (7) of the Companies Act, 2013, under which he appoints the company's auditor, may direct the manner of audit and may conduct a supplementary or test audit; section 20 other bodies on entrustment or request in the public interest; and sections 23 and 24 give him power to make regulations and to require the production of documents.

The kinds of audit

Regularity or compliance audit asks whether expenditure was within appropriation, sanctioned by competent authority and applied to the purpose voted. Propriety audit asks whether it was wise, faithful and economical, on the canons that expenditure should not prima facie exceed the occasion, that no authority should sanction expenditure benefiting itself, and that public money should not be spent for the benefit of a particular person or section except on a recognised policy, for a small amount or to satisfy an enforceable claim. Performance audit examines economy, efficiency and effectiveness, and it is the form of nearly every consequential report of the last two decades.

Examples and cases

Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India v. Union of India, (2014) 6 SCC 110, is the leading case on the reach of the control. Private telecom licensees resisted audit of their accounts, contending that they were private companies, that their revenue was their own, and that neither Article 149 nor the Act of 1971 reached them. The Supreme Court rejected the contention: because the licences required a share of the licensees' gross revenue to be paid to the Union, the correctness of the revenue declared went directly to the receipts of the Union; section 16 of the Act of 1971 read with Article 149 obliges him to audit those receipts and to satisfy himself that the rules for assessment and collection are observed; and that duty cannot be performed without examining the records of the private party through which the revenue arises.

The audit is therefore of the Union's receipts and not of a private company's affairs. In an economy of revenue sharing and concessions this holding is what keeps constitutional financial control effective, and it also marks the limit, since the audit follows the public rupee only.

The coal block example shows a firmer outcome. After the audit report of 2012, in Manohar Lal Sharma v. Principal Secretary, (2014) 9 SCC 516, the Court on 25 August 2014 held every allocation through the screening committee route between 1993 and 2010 illegal and arbitrary and by order of 24 September 2014 cancelled two hundred and fourteen allocations; Parliament then enacted the Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Act, 2015.

The Commonwealth Games report of 2011 examined cost escalation, delay and single-tender awards in the 2010 Games and was followed by inquiry and prosecution.

One negative illustration belongs to the first stage. In most years the guillotine is applied at the end of the days allotted to the demands for grants and all outstanding demands are voted together without discussion, so the control that is strongest in law is weakest in practice, which is exactly why the audit stage carries the weight.

Conclusion. Constitutional financial control is a three stage scheme, authorisation by law under Articles 265, 266 and 114(3), administrative control within the executive, and independent audit reported to the legislature, and the Comptroller and Auditor General is the third stage.

Article 148 secures him by appointment under warrant, removal only as a Judge of the Supreme Court, a salary Parliament fixes and cannot reduce, ineligibility for further office and an establishment charged on the Consolidated Fund; Article 149 and the Act of 1971 give him the audit of expenditure, substantially financed bodies, receipts, stores, Government companies and entrusted bodies; Article 150 lets him shape the accounts; Article 151 lays his reports before the legislature, where the Public Accounts Committee turns them into a demand for an answer and examines excess expenditure before it is regularised; and Article 279 makes his certificate of net proceeds final.

For full marks, cover: the distinction between corruption, which is an offence, and maladministration, which usually is not, because it fixes the boundary of the role; the agency's origin and the anomaly that no statute bears its name; the four routes by which work reaches it and the consent problem; the kinds of inquiry it conducts; the recent examples and cases handled, with what became of each; the decisions that govern its position; the record; and a conclusion. The proposition that this agency is the controlling authority to curb corruption is put separately as the second paper's question 5, and is tested there.

Origin, and the missing statute

The agency was created by a resolution of the Ministry of Home Affairs dated 1 April 1963, which reorganised the Delhi Special Police Establishment, a body set up in 1941 to investigate bribery in war-time supplies and given a statutory footing by the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, 1946. No Act bears the agency's name, and its officers are in law police officers of the Union territory of Delhi whose powers have been extended. The Gauhati High Court held in 2013 that it was not validly constituted for want of a statute; the Supreme Court stayed that judgment and the appeal remains pending, so the position is unsettled and a parliamentary committee examining the agency has recommended that it be given its own law.

Its Director is appointed under section 4A of the Act of 1946, as substituted by the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013, on the recommendation of a committee of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Chief Justice of India or his nominee Judge, with a minimum tenure of two years under section 4B. Its anti-corruption work is under the superintendence of the Central Vigilance Commission under section 8(1)(a) and (b) of the Act of 2003.

The third route has narrowed sharply. Section 6 provides that the extension of the agency's powers to a State under section 5 has no effect without that State's consent. By 2024 ten States had withdrawn general consent, namely Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Kerala, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Punjab, Rajasthan, Telangana, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka withdrew in September 2024. The agency's reach in the States now varies with the politics of each State.

The kinds of inquiry

The preliminary enquiry, registered where information is insufficient for a case, which is not an investigation under the Code and carries no coercive power, and either ripens into a regular case or is closed. The regular case, registered by first information report on material disclosing a cognisable offence, carrying full powers of search, seizure and arrest and ending in a charge sheet or a closure report. The trap case, where a demand for a bribe is verified and acceptance caught with marked currency, easiest to prove and overwhelmingly against junior officers. The disproportionate assets case, comparing assets with known sources of income over a check period, which needs no complainant, reaches senior officers and depends on documentary reconstruction.

The fodder scam, investigated from 1996 under the supervision of the Patna High Court, concerned fraudulent withdrawals from the treasuries of Bihar on false claims for animal fodder, and ran through a series of trials over more than two decades to the conviction and imprisonment of a former Chief Minister and many officials. Its features explain the outcome: a documentary trail, judicial supervision, and trials segregated by treasury.

The Commonwealth Games investigations, following the audit report of 2011 on cost escalation, delay and single-tender awards, produced prosecutions of organising committee officials.

Bank frauds referred by public sector banks form the largest part of the economic offences work and show the agency's dependence on others, since the fraud is usually detected long after the event and recovery depends on proceedings under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016, and the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002.

Transferred State matters. The Vyapam examination and recruitment matter in Madhya Pradesh, transferred by the Supreme Court in 2015, and the Saradha and Rose Valley chit fund matters, transferred in 2014, show the agency being used where a State's own machinery is compromised.

Subramanian Swamy v. Director, CBI, (2014) 8 SCC 682, decided on 6 May 2014, struck down section 6A of the Act of 1946, which had required the Central Government's previous approval to inquire into officers of the rank of Joint Secretary and above, as violating Article 14: the classification bore no rational relation to the object of detecting corruption, the same officer could be investigated by the State police without approval, and a provision impeding the prosecution of high-level corruption offends the rule of law, itself part of Article 14. In CBI v. Dr. R.R. Kishore, decided on 11 September 2023, a Constitution Bench held that the invalidity operates from the insertion of section 6A in 2003, not merely from 2014.

Its constitutional validity is now unresolved, and this is the most current point in the subject. In Centre for Public Interest Litigation v. Union of India, 2026 INSC 55, decided on 13 January 2026, a Bench of two judges divided. Viswanathan J. upheld section 17A as a protection for honest officers against vexatious complaints that would otherwise paralyse administration, while observing that the power to approve ought to rest with the Lokpal or a Lokayukta rather than with the Government. Nagarathna J. held it unconstitutional under Article 14, on the reasoning of Subramanian Swamy, as an impermissible classification shielding officers engaged in decision making while leaving others unprotected. The matter has been referred to the Chief Justice of India for a larger Bench, so the correct statement is that the approval requirement stands and its constitutionality is undecided.

Common Cause v. Union of India, (2019) 3 SCC 1, set aside the orders of the night of 23 and 24 October 2018 divesting the Director of his functions, holding that section 4B(2) forbids his transfer without the previous consent of the selection committee and that an order stripping him of every function is in substance a transfer.

Conclusion. The role of the Central Bureau of Investigation in this field is to investigate corruption as an offence under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, and it reaches maladministration only where the abuse of power was for an undue advantage or amounts to criminal misconduct. Work comes to it on its own information, on reference from the Central Vigilance Commission or a ministry, at a State's request under section 6 of an Act of 1946 subject to a consent eleven States have withdrawn, and on the direction of a constitutional court, which is now the most important route and the one that supplies its independence. It works through preliminary enquiries, regular cases, traps, disproportionate assets cases and large conspiracy investigations under continuing mandamus.

Its casework, from spectrum and coal to the fodder scam, the Commonwealth Games, bank frauds, Vyapam and the chit fund matters, shows an agency that can investigate anything and finishes very little quickly, and whose successes share documentary evidence and judicial supervision. The courts have removed the executive's power to prevent an investigation, in Vineet Narain, Subramanian Swamy and R.R. Kishore, and protected the Director's tenure in Common Cause, while State of West Bengal has left open whether the agency may act at all in the States that have withdrawn consent.

a) Commission of Inquiry

A Commission of Inquiry is a body appointed by the appropriate Government under section 3 of the Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952, to inquire into a definite matter of public importance and to report. Its character governs everything: it is an executive fact-finding body, not a court. It tries nobody, determines no rights and imposes no liability.

The machinery, in outline. Section 3 empowers the appropriate Government to appoint the Commission by notification, and obliges it to do so if the House of the People or the Legislative Assembly passes a resolution; the terms of reference in the notification bound the inquiry, which can neither travel outside them nor enlarge them. Section 4 gives the powers of a civil court to summon and enforce the attendance of any person and examine him on oath, require the discovery and production of documents, receive evidence on affidavits, requisition public records from any court or office and issue commissions for the examination of witnesses. Section 5, where the notification so declares, adds powers to require information and to enter, search and seize.

Ram Krishna Dalmia v. Justice S.R. Tendolkar, AIR 1958 SC 538, decided on 28 March 1958, is the case. The Government of India appointed a Commission under Justice S.R. Tendolkar to inquire into the affairs of a group of companies associated with Ram Krishna Dalmia and whether they had been conducted in a manner prejudicial to shareholders or the public. Dalmia petitioned under Article 32, contending that the Act allowed the executive to single out individuals contrary to Article 14, that being compelled to depose violated Article 20(3), and that the Act conferred judicial power on a body that was not a court.

The Supreme Court upheld the Act: a Commission of Inquiry is a fact-finding body, it adjudicates nothing, and its findings and recommendations are not enforceable proprio vigore, so it exercises no judicial power and does not attract Article 20(3) as a criminal trial would; the selection of definite matters of public importance for inquiry is reasonable, though one clause of the notification was struck down as too vague to disclose a definite matter. In State of Karnataka v. Union of India, (1978) 2 SCC 246, decided on 8 November 1977, the same reasoning allowed the Union to appoint a Commission to inquire into the conduct of the Chief Minister and ministers of a State.

b) Maladministration and corruption by Public Authorities

"Public authority" has two distinct legal meanings in India, and the difference decides who can be held to account. For the fundamental rights the expression is "the State" in Article 12, which includes the Government and Parliament of India, the Government and Legislature of each State, all local authorities and other authorities, the last construed to reach instrumentalities and agencies of the State, which is the gateway to Articles 14, 19 and 21 and to judicial review of arbitrariness. For the right to information the expression is "public authority" in section 2(h) of the Right to Information Act, 2005, covering bodies established by or under the Constitution or by law, and bodies owned, controlled or substantially financed by government.

In Thalappalam Ser. Coop. Bank Ltd. v. State of Kerala, (2013) 16 SCC 82, the Supreme Court held that co-operative societies registered under a State Act are not public authorities merely because they are registered and regulated: control must be deep and pervasive and financing must be substantial.

The conditions that produce both are structural: wide and unstructured discretion, so that an official may lawfully decide either way; monopoly, so that the citizen has nowhere else to go; information asymmetry, so that he cannot judge whether the decision was proper; a low probability of detection, because supervision is internal; and transaction cost, so that paying is cheaper than complaining.

The controls are of four kinds. Judicial: Article 14 forbids arbitrariness, Articles 32 and 226 make review available, and the grounds of review, illegality, irrationality, procedural impropriety and proportionality, are directed at maladministration. Legislative: the question, the demand for grants and the committees, particularly the Public Accounts Committee examining the audit reports laid under Article 151 and the Committee on Subordinate Legislation. Specialised: the Central Vigilance Commission under the Act of 2003 with its Chief Vigilance Officers, the Central Bureau of Investigation under the Act of 1946, the Comptroller and Auditor General under Articles 148 to 151, the Lokpal and Lokayuktas under the Act of 2013 and Commissions of Inquiry under the Act of 1952.

Conclusion. The two notes describe the same problem from two ends. A Commission of Inquiry under the Act of 1952 is well equipped to establish what a public authority did, with the powers of a civil court, protection for its witnesses and a duty of fair hearing, and Ram Krishna Dalmia holds that its findings bind nobody, which is why the Act is constitutional and why nothing follows from them by itself. Maladministration and corruption are the failures such a body is asked to examine: the first the improper exercise of power, generally not criminal, the second the sale of power, punishable under the Act of 1988, both produced by discretion, monopoly, information asymmetry and weak detection, and both controlled by judicial review, legislative scrutiny, the specialised institutions and, most effectively, transparency. The Indian machinery is strongest where the failure is criminal and weakest where it is merely bad, which is where most citizens meet it.

Its statutory existence was directed by a court. In Vineet Narain v. Union of India, (1998) 1 SCC 226, decided on 18 December 1997, the Supreme Court considered the inaction of the investigating agencies on the Jain hawala diaries, which recorded payments to politicians and civil servants. Finding the failure structural, it directed statutory status for the Commission, selection of the Central Vigilance Commissioner by a committee of the Prime Minister, the Home Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, superintendence over the Central Bureau of Investigation in anti-corruption work, and a minimum tenure for that agency's Director, and it struck down the single directive.

Four provisions guarantee the independence on which the functioning depends: appointment by the President on the recommendation of the committee containing the Leader of the Opposition under section 4; a term of four years or age sixty-five, non-renewable, with ineligibility for further government employment under section 5; salary at the level of the Chairperson or a Member of the Union Public Service Commission; and removal only for proved misbehaviour or incapacity after a reference to and a finding by the Supreme Court under section 6.

The Chief Vigilance Officer network

Every ministry, department, public sector undertaking and public sector bank has a Chief Vigilance Officer appointed with the prior concurrence of the Commission, and this is how a headquarters of a few hundred officers supervises the vigilance administration of the whole central government. His work is preventive, examining systems, procedures and delegations for the scope they leave for corruption; punitive, scrutinising complaints, arranging preliminary inquiries and processing disciplinary proceedings; and one of surveillance, maintaining the list of officers of doubtful integrity and the agreed list and watching sensitive posts.

He reports to the head of his organisation on administration and to the Commission on vigilance. That dual line makes the design workable and is its structural weakness, because his career lies in the organisation he polices.

Review of sanction for prosecution. Under section 8(1)(f) the Commission reviews the progress of applications pending with competent authorities for sanction to prosecute under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. Sanction under section 19 of that Act must come from the authority competent to remove the officer, that is his own department, and delay there is the standard way of ending a prosecution without a decision. The Commission may review and press; it cannot grant sanction, as the Lokpal can under section 23 of the Act of 2013.

Neither stage of advice binds. Where a disciplinary authority proposes to depart from it the case must be reported, and the annual report records the non-acceptances; publication is the only sanction.

Its limit was fixed in Common Cause v. Union of India, (2019) 3 SCC 1. On the night of 23 and 24 October 2018 the Commission, and the Government acting on its recommendation, divested the Director of the agency, Alok Kumar Verma, of all his functions and appointed an interim Director, in the course of a public quarrel between the Director and the Special Director. The Supreme Court set the orders aside: section 4B(2) of the Act of 1946 forbids the transfer of the Director without the previous consent of the high powered committee that recommends his appointment, and an order stripping him of every function while leaving him nominally in office is in substance a transfer, the two year tenure existing precisely to insulate the office from the executive. Superintendence over investigations is not control of the investigator.

Preventive vigilance

The Commission's own doctrine divides vigilance into punitive and preventive, and the preventive half is where it has achieved most. The Integrity Pact, for large procurement, is a standardised agreement between the procuring organisation and every bidder by which both undertake not to offer or accept bribes and submit to a dispute mechanism, compliance being watched by Independent External Monitors appointed with the Commission's approval, who have access to all project documents and may examine complaints. This inserts an outside eye into procurement before the contract is signed, which is where corruption in public works occurs. Systemic improvement examines recurring failures and recommends changes in procedure, delegation and documentation, on the principle that most corruption is made possible by unnecessary discretion in a single hand.

Transparency and technology, that is electronic tendering, publication of tender awards, electronic payments and the reduction of face-to-face interaction, have done more against ordinary corruption than prosecution, because they remove the discretion rather than punishing its abuse. And education, through Vigilance Awareness Week and the requirement that organisations publish vigilance policies.

And at the top, because the Act secures independence through a fixed non-renewable term and the office has repeatedly been discharged in an acting capacity: by an order under section 10(1), A.S. Rajeev, a Vigilance Commissioner, was authorised to act as Central Vigilance Commissioner in the vacancy arising on 3 August 2026 on the completion of the tenure of Praveen Kumar Srivastava, until a Commissioner is appointed.

Conclusion. The functioning of the Central Vigilance Commission is a cycle. Work reaches it from citizens, from whistleblowers under the Act of 2014, from departments, from its own Chief Vigilance Officers and from its superintendence over the Central Bureau of Investigation. It operates through a Chief Vigilance Officer in every central organisation, appointed with its concurrence and answering to it on vigilance while serving the organisation on everything else. It intervenes at three points: first stage advice choosing between the disciplinary and the criminal route, second stage advice on the penalty, and review of the sanctions pending for prosecution. It exercises superintendence over the anti-corruption work of the Central Bureau of Investigation by regular review, bounded by Common Cause, which held that superintendence cannot reach the Director's statutory tenure.

Four features define the concept, and they are the reference the question requires. Appointment by and reporting to the legislature. Jurisdiction over maladministration: bias, neglect, inattention, delay, incompetence, ineptitude, perversity and arbitrariness, none of which need amount to an offence. Informal, inquisitorial and free procedure, needing no lawyer, no fee and no pleading. And power limited to recommendation with publicity, so that the office lives on its credibility.

The Indian design, and why it is two tier

The First Administrative Reforms Commission, in its interim report on Problems of Redress of Citizens' Grievances of October 1966, recommended two institutions: a Lokpal at the Centre, for complaints against ministers and secretaries, and a Lokayukta in each State and for the lower levels of the Union administration. The reason for two tiers was practical: a single officer could not receive the complaints of a country of this size, and the greater number of citizens' grievances arise against State administration, which is where they must be dealt with. The name Lokpal was suggested by the jurist L.M. Singhvi. Ten Bills failed between 1968 and 2008.

Jurisdiction, section 14. Complaints of offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, against a serving or former Prime Minister, Ministers, Members of Parliament, all Groups of central government servants, officers of bodies established by Acts of Parliament, government financed companies and societies, and bodies receiving foreign contribution above ten lakh rupees. The Prime Minister is included subject to three safeguards: exclusion of international relations, external and internal security, public order, atomic energy and space; inquiry only by a Full Bench of not less than two thirds of the Members; and in camera proceedings, with the record unpublished if the complaint is dismissed.

A Member of Parliament is not answerable for anything said or voted in the House, the effect of Article 105(2), though after Sita Soren v. Union of India, decided on 4 March 2024, in which a seven-judge Bench unanimously overruled P.V. Narasimha Rao v. State (CBI/SPE), (1998) 4 SCC 626, that immunity does not cover the acceptance of a bribe.

Section 20(1) allows a reference to the Central Vigilance Commission of complaints against officials of Groups B, C and D. Section 44 required declarations of assets, and section 63 obliges every State to establish a Lokayukta within one year.

The powers and functions of the Lokayuktas

A Lokayukta is the creature of a State Act, so there is no single set of powers, and that is itself a finding. The common pattern is a Lokayukta, often with one or more Upa-Lokayuktas for the lower ranks, appointed by the Governor ordinarily in consultation with the Chief Justice of the High Court and the Leader of the Opposition, with a fixed term and removal on the footing of a judge, empowered to inquire into allegations against ministers, legislators and public servants of the State, with the powers of a civil court, and reporting to the Governor, the report being laid before the Legislature.

The important variations should be stated. Some State Acts cover grievances as well as allegations of corruption, which brings them closer to the classical concept than the Union Act; some include the Chief Minister and some exclude him; the reach over the lower bureaucracy and local bodies varies; and, in the States that have given their Lokayukta a police wing, it can investigate as well as inquire.

The subject matter, and this is the largest divergence. The classical office deals with maladministration. Section 14 of the Union Act gives the Lokpal offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act, so delay, bias and arbitrariness are wholly outside it. Several State Acts, including Maharashtra's, do cover grievances, which means that the two tiers of the Indian institution are not two levels of one design but two different institutions: the Lokayuktas are closer to the concept, and the Lokpal is not.

The procedure. The concept is informal and free; the Lokpal requires a complaint in the prescribed form, conducts a preliminary inquiry under section 20 and prosecutes in a Special Court, and a false or frivolous complaint is punishable.

The powers, where India goes far beyond the concept. No Scandinavian ombudsman has an inquiry wing, a prosecution wing, the power to sanction prosecution, the power to attach and confiscate the proceeds of corruption, or superintendence over an investigating agency.

The head of government. The Danish model included ministers; the Indian Act includes the Prime Minister, subject to three safeguards, which is a wider formal jurisdiction than most comparable systems and a narrower practical one.

The record

The Lokpal took five years to constitute. The Act came into force on 16 January 2014; Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose was appointed the first Lokpal on 19 March 2019 and held office until 27 May 2022; Justice A.M. Khanwilkar has been Chairperson since 10 March 2024. A parliamentary committee recorded that about sixty-eight per cent of complaints over four years were disposed of without any action, only three having been fully investigated, with prosecutions sanctioned in single figures. Section 44 was diluted by the amending Act of 2016 within two years. Compliance with section 63 by the States has been uneven, and several legislated only after litigation.

That is a prosecutor, not an ombudsman: its subject is corruption and not maladministration, its procedure is formal, and its powers exceed anything the Scandinavian model contemplates. The Lokayuktas, being creatures of State Acts, are closer to the concept, several of them including Maharashtra's covering citizens' grievances as well as allegations of corruption, and Karnataka's report on illegal mining in 2011 is the best Indian proof that recommendation with publicity can work. The two tier design of 1966 was meant to give the citizen a cheap and informal remedy against bad administration at both levels; what Parliament finally built at the Union level answers a different question, and the gap is why the concept is still only half realised in India.

A comptroller controls the issue of public money. In the United Kingdom, from which the title is borrowed, the Comptroller and Auditor General must authorise the release of money from the Exchequer, so nothing leaves the national account without his sanction. That is a control exercised before payment, and it is a veto.

An auditor examines what has already been paid. In India, since the separation of accounts from audit in the mid-1970s, the Comptroller and Auditor General neither keeps the Union's accounts nor authorises any withdrawal from the Consolidated Fund. He is an auditor with a comptroller's title, and every limitation discussed at the end of this answer follows from that. So the paper's "Controller" is the wrong word for the right reason: it describes an office India does not have.

Article 150 provides that the accounts of the Union and the States shall be kept in such form as the President prescribes on his advice, so his role begins before audit, in the design of the record. Article 151 requires his reports on Union accounts to be laid before each House of Parliament through the President and his reports on State accounts before the Legislature through the Governor, which is what makes him an instrument of legislative control rather than an internal check. Article 279 makes his certificate of the net proceeds of a tax or duty final for the distribution of revenues between the Union and the States, and it is the only power he has that binds.

The functions: Article 149 and the Act of 1971

Article 149 leaves his duties and powers to Parliament, which enacted the Comptroller and Auditor General's (Duties, Powers and Conditions of Service) Act, 1971.

Section 13, the audit of all expenditure from the Consolidated Fund of India and of each State and Union territory having a Legislative Assembly, to ascertain whether the moneys were legally available for and applicable to the service or purpose to which they were applied, whether the expenditure conformed to the authority governing it, and whether re-appropriations were made in accordance with the rules.

The kinds of audit, and the parliamentary loop

Regularity or compliance audit asks whether expenditure was within the appropriation, sanctioned by competent authority and applied to the purpose voted. Propriety audit asks whether it was wise, faithful and economical, on the canons that expenditure should not prima facie exceed the occasion, that no authority should sanction expenditure benefiting itself, and that public money should not be spent for the benefit of a particular person or section except on a recognised policy, for a small sum or to satisfy an enforceable claim. Performance audit examines economy, efficiency and effectiveness.

The example, worked

The telecom licensing audit is the relevant example, and it should be given with what followed and what did not. The performance audit report presented in 2010 examined the issue in 2008 of telecom licences with spectrum, at prices fixed in 2001, on a first come, first served basis. It set out several estimates of the revenue forgone, of which the highest, a presumptive loss of about one lakh seventy-six thousand crore rupees, is the figure that entered public memory. The word presumptive matters: it was an estimate of what might have been realised on stated assumptions, not a finding that money had been stolen, and both the assumptions and the arithmetic were contested, including before the Public Accounts Committee, which itself divided.

A second example confirms both points. The audit report of 2012 on coal block allocations examined allocations made through the screening committee route without competitive bidding. In Manohar Lal Sharma v. Principal Secretary, (2014) 9 SCC 516, the Court on 25 August 2014 held every such allocation between 1993 and 2010 illegal and arbitrary and by order of 24 September 2014 cancelled two hundred and fourteen of them, after which Parliament enacted the Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Act, 2015. Here the criminal cases did produce convictions of officials and company officers, and the difference from the spectrum matter is that the evidence was documentary.

And one case defines how far the function reaches. In Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India v. Union of India, (2014) 6 SCC 110, private telecom licensees resisted audit of their accounts on the ground that they were private companies whose revenue was their own. The Supreme Court rejected the contention: because the licences required a share of the licensees' gross revenue to be paid to the Union, the correctness of the revenue declared went to the receipts of the Union, and section 16 of the Act of 1971 read with Article 149 obliges him to audit those receipts, which cannot be done without examining the records of the private party through which they arise. Audit follows the public rupee into private hands, and stops there.

And he is not, as this paper's heading has it, a Controller. He authorises no issue of money and keeps no accounts, so his whole control is retrospective and persuasive.

Conclusion. The role of the Comptroller and Auditor General is to be the independent auditor of the Union and the States, reporting to their legislatures. Article 148 secures the role by appointment under warrant, removal only as a Judge of the Supreme Court, a salary Parliament fixes and cannot reduce, ineligibility for further office and an establishment charged on the Consolidated Fund; Article 150 lets him advise on the form of the accounts, Article 151 lays his reports before the legislature and Article 279 makes his certificate of net proceeds final.

For full marks, cover: the exact phrase, powers and functions, so organise the answer as the statutory anatomy of the Central Vigilance Commission Act, 2003, provision by provision, distinguishing the functions in section 8 from the powers in sections 11 and 12 and from the functions conferred by other statutes, which most answers omit; state the status and constitution first because they determine whose functions these are; give the negative catalogue, that is what the Commission cannot do, because that is where the marks divide; work out the two cases; and conclude with an assessment. Its functioning is asked as the first paper's question 6 and is answered there as the working cycle.

Status and constitution: whose powers these are

The Commission was created by an executive resolution of the Government of India dated 11 February 1964, on the recommendation of the Committee on Prevention of Corruption chaired by K. Santhanam, and it had no statutory power of any kind for thirty-nine years.

Constitution and independence, sections 3 to 7. The Commission consists of a Central Vigilance Commissioner as Chairperson and not more than two Vigilance Commissioners. They are appointed by the President on the recommendation of a committee of the Prime Minister, the Minister of Home Affairs and the Leader of the Opposition in the House of the People. The term is four years or age sixty-five, whichever is earlier, non-renewable, with no eligibility for further employment under the Central or a State Government, and the salary is that of the Chairperson or a Member of the Union Public Service Commission.

Removal is only by the President on the ground of proved misbehaviour or incapacity after a reference to and a finding by the Supreme Court, with separate provision for the objective grounds of insolvency, conviction for an offence involving moral turpitude, paid outside employment, infirmity and a conflicting financial interest. Section 15 provides that no proceeding is invalidated merely by a vacancy.

The functions: section 8

Section 8(1) is the core, and it should be given by category rather than recited as a list.

Review functions. To review the progress of investigations conducted by that establishment into offences under that Act, and to review the progress of applications pending with competent authorities for sanction of prosecution under it. The second is more important than it sounds: sanction under section 19 of the Act of 1988 must be given by the authority competent to remove the officer, that is by his own department, and delay there ends prosecutions without a decision, so this is the Commission's only lever against the commonest means of defeating a corruption case.

Supervisory and advisory functions. To exercise superintendence over the vigilance administration of the ministries of the Central Government and of corporations, companies, societies and local authorities owned or controlled by it; and to tender advice to the Central Government and those authorities on matters referred to it.

Section 8(2) obliges the Central Government and every authority to render the Commission such assistance as it may require.

Sections 13 and 14 create the duty of account. The Commission presents annually to the President a report on its work, and the President causes it to be laid before each House of Parliament together with a memorandum explaining the action taken or proposed on the Commission's recommendations and the reasons for not accepting any of them. That memorandum is the Act's only sanction for advice that is refused.

Functions conferred by other statutes, which are commonly omitted

Under the Public Interest Disclosure and Protection of Informers Resolution, 2004, the Commission is the designated agency to receive public interest disclosures relating to most central public servants, with a duty to conceal the identity of the complainant. The Whistle Blowers Protection Act, 2014, which would have replaced that resolution with a statute, has never been brought into force. It is therefore India's principal protected disclosure channel.

The negative catalogue: what the Commission cannot do

It cannot compel a disciplinary authority. Outside the field of superintendence over the Delhi Special Police Establishment its advice is advice; the Act requires that a departure be reported and recorded, and nothing more.

It cannot prosecute, and it cannot sanction prosecution. It has no prosecution wing of the kind section 12 of the Act of 2013 gave the Lokpal, and no power corresponding to section 23 of that Act.

It cannot register a first information report or investigate as a police agency; it must cause an inquiry or refer the matter.

Its jurisdiction stops at the Union. It does not reach State governments and State services, the private sector, or maladministration that is not an offence, so a citizen aggrieved by delay or arbitrariness has no remedy before it.

Superintendence over investigations is not control over the investigator, and that is the outer boundary of the Commission's only commanding power. That protection has since been altered by Parliament: the Delhi Special Police Establishment (Amendment) Act, 2021 allows the two year tenure to be extended by one year at a time, up to five years in all, on the recommendation of the same committee, and in Dr. Jaya Thakur v. Union of India, decided on 11 July 2023, the Supreme Court upheld that Act and the parallel Central Vigilance Commission (Amendment) Act, 2021, while quashing the particular extensions granted to the incumbent Director of Enforcement. An extendable tenure is a weaker guarantee than a fixed one, because it leaves the holder looking to the authority that grants the extension.

The same point has a current illustration. The Act secures independence through a fixed, non-renewable, judicially protected term, and the office has repeatedly been discharged in an acting capacity: by an order under section 10(1), A.S. Rajeev, a Vigilance Commissioner, was authorised to act as Central Vigilance Commissioner in the vacancy arising on 3 August 2026 on the completion of the tenure of Praveen Kumar Srivastava, until a Commissioner is appointed.

Conclusion. The powers and functions of the Central Vigilance Commission divide into four groups. Its functions under section 8 are to inquire into offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, by specified public servants and into complaints of the improper or corrupt exercise of power; to exercise superintendence and give directions to the Delhi Special Police Establishment in such investigations; to review those investigations and the sanctions pending for prosecution; and to supervise departmental vigilance administration and tender advice.

Against those, the negative catalogue is decisive: the Commission cannot compel a disciplinary authority, cannot prosecute or sanction prosecution, cannot investigate as a police force, does not reach the States, the private sector or maladministration that is not an offence, and cannot touch the tenure of the Director it supervises, as Common Cause held. Centre for Public Interest Litigation shows that the guarantees around its composition will be enforced. The Act gave the Commission a wide field, real independence and, in almost all of it, the power to advise rather than to decide.

The character of the body, which limits every power

A Commission of Inquiry is an executive fact-finding body. It is appointed by the Government, inquires into a matter the Government defines, determines no rights, tries nobody and produces a report. It is not a court and not an adjudicating tribunal. Every power below is a power to find out, never a power to decide, and the commonest error in answering this question is to describe the powers as though they were judicial.

The power of appointment: section 3

Section 3(1) provides that the appropriate Government may, by notification in the Official Gazette, appoint a Commission of Inquiry for the purpose of making an inquiry into any definite matter of public importance, and shall do so if a resolution to that effect is passed by the House of the People or, as the case may be, the Legislative Assembly of the State.

The powers of a civil court: section 4

Section 4 gives the Commission, while making an inquiry, the powers of a civil court trying a suit under the Code of Civil Procedure in respect of five matters: summoning and enforcing the attendance of any person from any part of India and examining him on oath; requiring the discovery and production of any document; receiving evidence on affidavits; requisitioning any public record or a copy of it from any court or office; and issuing commissions for the examination of witnesses or documents.

The fourth is the one that matters most in practice. The material relevant to an inquiry into the conduct of government is in the possession of government, and without a power to requisition public records the Commission would be confined to what it was given.

Section 5A empowers the Commission, for the purpose of conducting an inquiry, to utilise the services of any officer or investigation agency of the Central Government or of a State Government, with that Government's concurrence, and to direct such officer or agency to make a preliminary inquiry and report. This is the Commission's only investigative capacity: it has no standing staff, and the officers it borrows belong to the administration under inquiry.

The protective and procedural provisions

Section 6 protects the witness. No statement made by a person in the course of giving evidence before the Commission shall subject him to, or be used against him in, any civil or criminal proceeding, except a prosecution for giving false evidence, provided the statement was made in reply to a question the Commission required him to answer. This is what makes candour possible, and it is also why the Commission's record cannot be used to convict anyone afterwards.

Section 8 allows the Commission to regulate its own procedure, to fix its sittings, to sit in public or in private, and to act on material that would not be admissible as evidence in a court. Section 8A provides that an inquiry is not interrupted by a vacancy in, or a change in the constitution of, the Commission.

What the Commission cannot do is equally part of the answer. It cannot convict or punish, save that giving false evidence before it is perjury by virtue of section 10. It cannot order recovery, dismiss an officer or direct a prosecution. It cannot enforce anything it finds. And it cannot compel the Government to accept its findings, because section 3(4) requires a memorandum of the action taken, not agreement and not even reasons.

The two cases

Ram Krishna Dalmia v. Justice S.R. Tendolkar, AIR 1958 SC 538, decided on 28 March 1958, fixes the character of the body. The Government of India appointed a Commission consisting of Justice S.R. Tendolkar and two others to inquire into the nature and extent of the control exercised over a group of companies associated with Ram Krishna Dalmia and into whether their affairs had been conducted in a manner prejudicial to the interests of shareholders or the public. Dalmia petitioned under Article 32, contending that the Act enabled the executive to single out particular persons for inquiry in violation of Article 14, that being compelled to give evidence violated the protection against self-incrimination in Article 20(3), and that the Act conferred judicial power on a body that was not a court.

State of Karnataka v. Union of India, (1978) 2 SCC 246, decided on 8 November 1977, fixes the reach of section 3. The Union Home Minister wrote to the Chief Minister of Karnataka about allegations of nepotism, favouritism and maladministration, and the Union appointed a Commission headed by Justice A.N. Grover to inquire into the conduct of the Chief Minister and certain ministers. The State sued the Union under Article 131, contending that only the State was the appropriate Government in relation to its own ministers and that the inquiry invaded the State's field.

The Court dismissed the suit by majority: "public importance" is not confined to matters within the Union's legislative competence, the Union may appoint a Commission to inquire into the conduct of the ministers of a State, and such an inquiry does not interfere with the State's administration because the Commission has no executive or judicial power and can only report.

Conclusion. Under the Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952, the powers of a Commission are: to be appointed under section 3 to inquire into a definite matter of public importance, at the Government's discretion or compulsorily on a resolution of the House, within terms of reference it cannot exceed; the powers of a civil court under section 4 to summon and examine witnesses on oath, compel documents, receive affidavit evidence, requisition public records and issue commissions; the additional powers under section 5, available only where the notification so declares, to require information and to enter, search and seize; and the power under section 5A to use government officers and investigating agencies.

For full marks, cover: that this is a proposition to be tested and not a description to be reproduced, and say so at the outset, because the proposition is inaccurate in two separate ways: the agency is not a controlling authority but an investigating one, and it is not the only or even the principal body in the field; then what the agency actually is and does; then the two errors worked out with the law; then the sense in which the proposition is defensible, because a good answer does not simply contradict the paper; then the agency's own controllers and the decisions that define them; and a conclusion that restates the proposition accurately.

Its work divides into three divisions: the Anti-Corruption Division, investigating offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, by central government servants and employees of central public sector undertakings and banks; the Economic Offences Division, investigating large financial and bank fraud, for which the agency is also India's National Central Bureau for Interpol; and the Special Crimes Division, investigating serious conventional crime on the request of a State or the direction of a court.

The first error: it is an investigating authority, not a controlling one

Investigation is one link in a chain of control, and the agency holds only that link. In a corruption case the agency registers a preliminary enquiry, which is not an investigation under the Code and carries no coercive power; it may then register a regular case by first information report; it investigates, searches, seizes and arrests; and it files a report either as a charge sheet or as a closure report. There it stops.

Everything that follows belongs to somebody else. Prosecution requires sanction under section 19 of the Act of 1988 from the authority competent to remove the officer, that is from his own department, and the agency cannot grant it. Conviction and sentence belong to the Special Judge. Departmental penalty belongs to the disciplinary authority, advised by the Central Vigilance Commission under section 8 of the Act of 2003. Recovery of the proceeds belongs to proceedings under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, and, in bank fraud, under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016.

By subject and by service. Its anti-corruption jurisdiction is over central government servants and employees of central public sector bodies. The overwhelming majority of corruption that citizens encounter is in State administration, police, land records, licensing, local bodies and public distribution, and that is the field of the State anti-corruption bureaux and vigilance departments and of the State Lokayuktas. The Karnataka Lokayukta's report of July 2011 on illegal iron ore mining, by Justice N. Santosh Hegde, which was followed by the resignation of a Chief Minister, was the work of a State institution at a time when the Union had no Lokpal at all.

And it shares the field with several other Union bodies. The Lokpal under the Act of 2013 has its own Inquiry Wing and Prosecution Wing, may itself grant sanction for prosecution under section 23, may attach the proceeds of corruption under section 29, and, under section 25, exercises superintendence over the investigating agency in cases it refers, so in those cases the Lokpal is the controlling authority and the agency is the instrument. The Enforcement Directorate handles the money laundering that follows corruption. The Comptroller and Auditor General under Articles 148 to 151 detects it in the accounts. Parliament examines it through the Public Accounts Committee. And the High Courts and the Supreme Court under Articles 226 and 32 have in practice been the most effective controllers of all.

What is true in the proposition

Three things, and they should be conceded plainly.

Within its own jurisdiction it is decisive. For offences under the Act of 1988 by central public servants there is no other investigator, and its findings determine whether a prosecution happens at all.

The qualification on all three is the record. Its conviction rate under the Act of 1988, measured against pending trials and the years they take, does not match its reputation, and the largest cases have produced the weakest results: the spectrum prosecution ended in the acquittal of all the accused in December 2017, with appeals before the Delhi High Court since. Its successes share two features, documentary evidence and judicial supervision.

The agency's own controllers

Far from controlling, the agency has been the object of a long line of decisions about who controls it.

Vineet Narain v. Union of India, (1998) 1 SCC 226, decided on 18 December 1997, found its inaction on the Jain hawala diaries to be structural, struck down the single directive requiring prior sanction before senior officers could even be inquired into, directed a two year minimum tenure and a transparent appointment for the Director, and placed its anti-corruption work under a statutory Central Vigilance Commission, supervising compliance by continuing mandamus.

Its constitutional validity is now unresolved, and this is the most current point in the subject. In Centre for Public Interest Litigation v. Union of India, 2026 INSC 55, decided on 13 January 2026, a Bench of two judges divided. Viswanathan J. upheld section 17A as a protection for honest officers against vexatious complaints that would otherwise paralyse administration, while observing that the power to approve ought to rest with the Lokpal or a Lokayukta rather than with the Government. Nagarathna J. held it unconstitutional under Article 14, on the reasoning of Subramanian Swamy, as an impermissible classification shielding officers engaged in decision making while leaving others unprotected. The matter has been referred to the Chief Justice of India for a larger Bench, so the correct statement is that the approval requirement stands and its constitutionality is undecided.

Common Cause v. Union of India, (2019) 3 SCC 1, set aside the orders of the night of 23 and 24 October 2018 divesting the Director of his functions, holding that section 4B(2) forbids his transfer without the previous consent of the selection committee and that stripping him of every function is in substance a transfer. That case is decisive against the proposition in this question: the agency's own head had to be protected by a court against the Government and against the Commission that superintends him.

Nor is it the principal body in the field, because its jurisdiction is confined to central public servants, most corruption is in State administration and belongs to the State bureaux and Lokayuktas, and its very presence in eleven States that have withdrawn consent under section 6 is being litigated in State of West Bengal. What is true is narrower and still substantial: within its own jurisdiction it is the only investigator, it is the investigator of last resort when a State's machinery fails and a court transfers a case to it, and its investigations have carried the largest corruption matters in Indian history.

Accurately restated, the proposition should read that the Central Bureau of Investigation is the Union's principal investigating agency for corruption, one link in a chain of control that it does not command and, as Vineet Narain, Subramanian Swamy and Common Cause show, a body whose own independence has had to be secured for it by the courts.

The source of both the functions and the procedure

Two constitutional provisions govern. Article 105, and Article 194 for the States, declares the powers, privileges and immunities of each House, its members and of its committees, and Article 105(3) provides that those privileges shall be such as Parliament may by law define and, until then, those obtaining immediately before the coming into force of section 15 of the Constitution (Forty-fourth Amendment) Act, 1978, which continued the earlier position under which they were the privileges of the House of Commons at the commencement of the Constitution. Parliament has never enacted that defining law, so the coercive procedure of these committees rests on uncodified privilege. The privilege that matters is the power to send for persons, papers and records, enforced by the House's power to punish for contempt.

Article 118, and Article 208 for the States, empowers each House to make rules for regulating its procedure and the conduct of its business, and it is under those Rules, and in a few cases under Directions of the Speaker, that the committees exist and their procedure is prescribed.

The Departmentally Related Standing Committees, twenty-four in their present form since 1993, each of thirty-one members, twenty-one from the House of the People and ten from the Council of States, examine the demands for grants of their ministries and report before they are voted, consider Bills referred to them, examine annual reports and consider national long term policy documents. They may not move cut motions.

The scrutiny committees. The Committee on Subordinate Legislation examines whether rules made under delegated power are within the authority conferred, conform to the general object of the Act, involve unexpected expenditure or operate retrospectively. The Committee on Government Assurances checks whether promises made on the floor were kept. The Committee on Petitions examines petitions from citizens.

The conduct committees. The Committee of Privileges examines questions of privilege and contempt, and the Ethics Committee the conduct of members.

The ad hoc committees. Select Committees examine particular Bills, and Joint Parliamentary Committees particular matters, of which the committees on the securities and banking irregularities of 1992 and on stock market transactions in 2001 are the standard examples.

Oral evidence. The committee examines the Secretary of the ministry and other officials, on the record, on oath where required, with power to recall them. Evidence is taken in camera, and the proceedings and evidence are confidential until the report is presented, which is what allows officials to be candid and members to work across party lines. The committee may also examine non-official witnesses, experts, associations and members of the public, and may undertake study visits.

Deliberation. The secretariat prepares a draft report, on which the members move amendments that are put to the vote within the committee. A member who disagrees may record a minute of dissent, which is appended to the report.

Presentation. The report is presented to the House by the Chairman or a member authorised by him, and laid on the Table of the other House. The report is confidential until presentation, and premature publication is a breach of privilege.

Follow-up. For the financial committees the ministry must furnish an Action Taken Note on each recommendation, and the committee examines the replies and may report again, sometimes on the inadequacy of the reply itself.

Gunupati Keshavram Reddy v. Nafisul Hasan, AIR 1954 SC 636, is the same point on the plainest facts: the editor of a Bombay weekly, arrested under a Speaker's warrant for contempt and held without production before a magistrate within twenty-four hours, was released because Article 22(2) had been violated.

Raja Ram Pal v. Hon'ble Speaker, Lok Sabha, (2007) 3 SCC 184, is the leading authority on committee procedure. After a television investigation in December 2005 showed eleven Members of Parliament accepting money to ask questions, an inquiry committee of the Lok Sabha and the Ethics Committee of the Council of States examined the matter and the members were expelled on their reports. The Court held that the power to expel is among the privileges continued by Article 105(3); that Article 122(1) excludes judicial review only for irregularity of procedure and not for illegality or unconstitutionality; and, having examined the committees' procedure and satisfied itself that the members had notice and an opportunity to be heard, upheld the expulsions. The case therefore imports natural justice into committee procedure and makes compliance reviewable, which is the single most important proposition about procedure in this subject.

The weaknesses of the procedure

Recommendations only, and Action Taken Notes frequently overdue or never furnished. Documents withheld on grounds of confidentiality, Cabinet privilege or security, with no arbiter. Reports rarely debated, so the House seldom adopts what its own committees find. Membership churn, since a one year term and frequent reconstitution work against the accumulation of expertise the system depends on. Attendance, which the committees' own reports record as uneven. And the fact that the whole structure rests on rules rather than statute, which leaves the extent of the power over a recalcitrant witness untested.

Conclusion. The functions of legislative committees are allocated by subject: the Public Accounts Committee under Rule 308 examines the audit reports laid under Article 151, the appropriation and finance accounts and excess expenditure before its regularisation; the Estimates Committee examines the estimates before expenditure; the Committee on Public Undertakings examines the undertakings; the twenty-four Departmentally Related Standing Committees examine demands for grants, Bills referred and annual reports; and the scrutiny and conduct committees examine delegated legislation, assurances, petitions, privilege and ethics.

For full marks, cover: both notes, since the paper offers a choice of any two and lists exactly two, so both must be written, each worth about twelve and a half marks. Write each as a compressed essay with a definition, the legal basis, one case worked out, named examples and a short assessment. For the second note, which is set here without the word corruption, take it as a question about the citizen's position: what maladministration is and what remedies actually exist against it. A fuller note pairing maladministration with corruption is set under the first paper's question 5, at (b).

1) Judicial Inquiries

A judicial inquiry is an inquiry into a definite matter of public importance conducted by a sitting or retired judge, ordinarily as a Commission of Inquiry appointed under section 3 of the Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952. The adjective describes the person and the method, not the nature of the proceeding: this is an executive fact-finding exercise, which tries nobody, determines no rights and imposes no liability.

Why a judge is chosen. The subject is usually the conduct of the Government or the police and the appointing authority is the Government, so a judge supplies visible independence, long practice in testing evidence, familiarity with the fair hearing section 8B requires, and a standing that makes the report hard to dismiss without reasons. He supplies no extra legal power: nothing in the Act requires a Commission to be a judge.

Ram Krishna Dalmia v. Justice S.R. Tendolkar, AIR 1958 SC 538, decided on 28 March 1958, is the case. A Commission under Justice Tendolkar was appointed to inquire into the affairs of companies in the Dalmia group and whether they had been conducted in a manner prejudicial to shareholders or the public. Dalmia challenged the Act under Articles 14 and 20(3) and as conferring judicial power on a non-court. The Supreme Court upheld it: a Commission of Inquiry is a fact-finding body, it adjudicates nothing, and its findings and recommendations are not enforceable proprio vigore, so it exercises no judicial power and does not attract Article 20(3) as a criminal trial would; one clause of the notification was struck down as too vague to disclose a definite matter. In State of Karnataka v. Union of India, (1978) 2 SCC 246, decided on 8 November 1977, the same reasoning permitted the Union to inquire into the conduct of a State's Chief Minister and ministers.

2) Maladministration by public authorities

Maladministration is the improper exercise, or the failure to exercise, public power, and it need not involve dishonesty. The catalogue usually given is bias, neglect, inattention, delay, incompetence, ineptitude, perversity, turpitude and arbitrariness, to which Indian experience adds the refusal to give reasons, the failure to hear the person affected, and the mechanical or dictated exercise of discretion. It is distinct from corruption, which is the sale of public power and is criminal under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988.

Judicial review, under Articles 226 and 32. Arbitrariness is the antithesis of Article 14; a decision may be challenged for illegality, for irrationality, for procedural impropriety, including the failure to hear or to give reasons, and increasingly for disproportionality. This is the strongest remedy and also the slowest and dearest, and it was never intended to be the ordinary answer to administrative discourtesy.

The Right to Information Act, 2005. Section 4 requires proactive disclosure; the statutory time limits make delay itself an actionable default; and the Information Commissions, which decide appeals informally and without fee, function in practice as the closest thing India has to a grievance ombudsman.

The departmental hierarchy and the vigilance machinery. A complaint to the appellate authority or the Chief Vigilance Officer, and, where the conduct amounts to an offence under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, a complaint to the Central Vigilance Commission under clause (d) of section 8(1) of the Act of 2003. Where the conduct is merely arbitrary or dilatory and not an offence, that Commission has no jurisdiction at all.

Assessment. Maladministration is the commonest failure of public authority and the least provided for. It is produced by structural conditions, wide and unstructured discretion, monopoly, information asymmetry and a low probability of detection, and the measures that have worked against it are the ones that removed the discretion rather than punished its abuse: electronic tendering, publication of decisions, direct benefit transfer and mandatory disclosure. India's specialised institutions are built for corruption, and the citizen's remedy for bad administration is still a writ petition or a request for information.