Examined on Constitution of India, Political theory — no governing enactment. Arts. 1 and 3 on the Union and its territory; Art. 13 and Art. 32; Art. 50 on separation of the judiciary from the executive; Arts. 121, 124 to 146, 214, 215, 226, 227, 233 and 235 on the courts; Arts. 243D and 243T on reservation in local bodies; Arts. 246 to 256 on the distribution of powers; and Arts. 324 to 335 on elections and reservation, including Arts. 330A, 332A and 334A inserted by the 106th Amendment. Note that Art. 124(2)’s collegium position rests on the striking down of the NJAC amendment in 2015, so the printed clause must be read with that decision.
This page is the map of the paper: every syllabus unit, the leading cases with full summaries, and the exam questions the paper actually sets.
Units
- Unit 1 · State and Sovereignty in Political Theory — Module I — the five definitions of political science and the turn from institutions to power; the State — its definitions from Aristotle to Philimore and its four constituent elements; State distinguished from government; sovereignty — its juristic character, internal and external aspects, the development of the concept through Bodin, Grotius, Hobbes and Bentham, its six characteristics and the federal objection, and the five kinds (titular and real, legal, political, popular, de jure and de facto); Austin’s monistic theory, its six propositions and the criticisms of Maine, Laski and the pluralists; and the origin of the State, with the evolutionary theory and its five factors
- Unit 2 · Government as a Concept in Political Theory — Module II — Plato’s ideal State, the philosopher-king and the normative approach; Machiavelli on statecraft; Aristotle’s classification of governments by number and by interest, the three normal and three perverted forms, and the mixed constitution; C. F. Strong’s five criteria of classification; unitary and federal government — definitions, Strong’s two qualities, the four features of a federation, merits and demerits; parliamentary, presidential and collegiate executives compared; and India tested against the four federal features and the five unitary provisions of Arts. 1, 3, 248, 249, 256 and 356
- Unit 3 · Organisation of Government — Separation of Powers, the Judiciary and Parliamentary Sovereignty — Module III — Montesquieu’s theory and his four cases of fusion; the liberal interpretation as mutual restraint; the doctrine applied in the USA under checks and balances, its absence in England, and its functional form in India from Art. 50 through Ram Jawaya to Kesavananda; the judiciary as an organ — its five functions and the constitutional devices securing its independence; Dicey’s three limbs of the rule of law and their Indian equivalents; judicial review from Marbury to Art. 13, with severability; the Art. 368 cases — Shankari Prasad, Sajjan Singh, Golaknath, the 24th Amendment, Kesavananda Bharati and Minerva Mills; and parliamentary sovereignty with the five limitations on the Indian Parliament
- Unit 4 · Representation — Module IV — the concept of representation and the role of the representative; universal adult suffrage under Art. 326 and the equality of the roll under Art. 325; women’s enfranchisement and the reservation of seats under Arts. 330A, 332A and 334A compared with Arts. 243D and 243T; the four possible bases of representation — territorial, functional, minority and proportional — and India’s rejection of separate electorates in favour of reserved seats under Arts. 330 to 334; and the electoral system — the Election Commission under Art. 324, its composition and autonomy, Parliament’s power under Art. 327 and the bar on judicial interference under Art. 329