Say the ratio out loud before you open Reasoning — recalling it unprompted is exactly what the exam pays for.
Why it matters
It is the rejected test. Indian law on domicile of choice is defined as much by what Kedar Pandey refused as by what it accepted, and this is what it refused.
Facts
This course cites the case for the test it laid down and for its rejection in Kedar Pandey, and does not set out its facts.
Held
The older and heavier test: a change of domicile required a change of national allegiance. That test was rejected by the Supreme Court of India in Kedar Pandey.
Reasoning
Step one — see what the old test demanded. It asked the claimant to show that he had transferred not merely his home but his allegiance — in substance, that he had become one of the people of the new country.
Step two — see why that is too much. Domicile is a civil status, and citizenship a political one; the two represent different conceptions, as D.P. Joshi holds. A test of domicile that demands a change of allegiance confuses them, and would make domicile unattainable for most settled residents.
Step three — the replacement. Kedar Pandey settles the law at the proposition that the only intention required for proof of a change of domicile is an intention of permanent residence.
Exam use
It opens: State the test for acquiring a domicile of choice in India — state the accepted test, and then show what it displaced, which is what earns the mark.
Give the facts of Kedar Pandey to show the test working. Narain Raja was of Nepalese parentage, was educated in Calcutta, had resided at Ramnagar from 1938, had built a palace and a house there and had brought a partition suit there. He was held to have made India his domicile of choice and so to be qualified under Art. 173 to sit in the Bihar Legislative Assembly. Note the shape of the case: the domicile question arrives inside an election petition, which is Module 1's point that this subject may be sprung in an ordinary action, made concrete.
Keep the two statuses apart in every answer. D.P. Joshi quotes Udny for the proposition that the law ascribes to each individual at birth two distinct legal statuses, and then separates them: political status may depend on different laws in different countries, whereas civil status is governed universally by the single principle of domicile.
It does not decide anything that survives as Indian law; cite it only as the test that was displaced.