Fundamental Rights, Duties and Directive Principles

The Preamble resolves to secure to all citizens justice, social, economic and political, so economic justice is named there in terms. It is then given content in Part IV: Article 38 directs the State to secure a social order in which justice, social, economic and political, shall inform all the institutions of national life and to minimise inequalities in income, status, facilities and opportunities; Article 39 directs that the ownership and control of the material resources of the community be so distributed as best to subserve the common good and that the operation of the economic system not result in the concentration of wealth; and Articles 39A, 41, 42 and 43 carry the same idea into legal aid, work, living wage and a decent standard of life.

• Option (b) states this and is correct. The Fundamental Rights are not the vehicle for economic justice, which is why options (a) and (c) fail. Part III is framed as a set of restraints on the State securing civil and political liberty, and its equality provisions in Articles 14 to 18 secure equality before the law and equality of opportunity rather than any distribution of economic resources. The distinction is the classical one on which the Indian scheme is built, justiciable civil and political rights in Part III against non justiciable but fundamental social and economic goals in Part IV, and the question is testing exactly that division.
• Option (d) fails once (b) is established. The elimination route is the Preamble alone: since it plainly names economic justice, option (c), which omits the Preamble, can be discarded without adjudicating anything else.

The question is testing a phrase rather than a concept, and the phrase is in Article 37: the provisions contained in Part IV shall not be enforceable by any court, but the principles therein laid down are nevertheless fundamental in the governance of the country, and it shall be the duty of the State to apply these principles in making laws. The words fundamental for the governance of the country belong to the Directive Principles alone, so option (c) is correct.

• Option (a) is incorrect because the Fundamental Rights are described in Part III as rights enforceable against the State by the constitutional remedy in Article 32, which Ambedkar called the heart and soul of the Constitution; they are fundamental as rights, not as a directive for governance.
• Option (b) is incorrect: the Fundamental Duties were inserted as Article 51A by the Constitution (Forty second Amendment) Act, 1976 on the recommendation of the Swaran Singh Committee, are addressed to citizens rather than to the State, and are non justiciable in themselves.
• Option (d) is incorrect for the same two reasons combined. The trap is the word fundamental, which invites the candidate towards Part III by association; the discipline the question rewards is reading the whole phrase, since fundamental rights and fundamental in the governance of the country are two different expressions attached to two different Parts.

• Option (b) is correct. Article 51, in Part IV, directs the State to endeavour to promote international peace and security, to maintain just and honourable relations between nations, to foster respect for international law and treaty obligations in the dealings of organised peoples with one another, and to encourage settlement of international disputes by arbitration. It is the sole Directive Principle concerned with external relations and was drawn from the Irish Constitution and the Declaration of Havana.
• Option (a) is incorrect: the Preamble speaks of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity and of the sovereign socialist secular democratic republic, but says nothing of international peace.
• Option (c) is incorrect: the Fundamental Duties in Article 51A, inserted by the Forty-second Amendment, include promoting harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood among all the people of India, which is domestic and is the intended confusion, the numbering of the two articles making the trap sharper.
• Option (d) is incorrect: the Ninth Schedule is a list of statutes given protection from challenge on Fundamental Rights grounds by Article 31B, and has nothing to do with foreign policy.

• Statement 1 is correct. The Directive Principles in Part IV set out the social and economic goals of the State, and both Ambedkar and later commentators describe them as establishing economic and social democracy to complete the political democracy secured by Part III.
• Statement 2 is correct and is textual: Article 37 provides that the provisions of Part IV shall not be enforceable by any court, while declaring them nevertheless fundamental in the governance of the country and imposing a duty on the State to apply them in making laws. The official answer (c) follows.
• Options (a), (b) and (d) each require one of the two statements to be false, and neither is. The distinction the question rests on, and which the same paper tests elsewhere, is that non-enforceability by a court is not the same as absence of constitutional obligation.

• Option (d) is correct. The words quoted are Article 51A(c), which makes it the duty of every citizen of India to uphold and protect the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India. The Fundamental Duties were inserted by the Forty second Amendment of 1976 on the recommendation of the Swaran Singh Committee, and a matter of drafting worth noting is that the duties are addressed to the citizen, whereas Directive Principles are addressed to the State, which by itself resolves the item once the language of duty is recognised.
• Option (a) is the intended trap and is a near miss rather than a wild distractor: the Preamble, as amended in 1976, does speak of assuring the unity and integrity of the Nation, and describes India as a sovereign republic, but it nowhere uses the operative words uphold and protect, and it imposes no obligation on anyone.
• Option (b) is wrong: the closest Directive Principles are Articles 51 and 38, neither of which uses this formula.
• Option (c) is wrong: Part III confers rights against the State, and imposes no duty of this kind on citizens. The governing principle is that the grammar of the provision, a duty to do something, locates it in Part IVA.

• Option (b) is correct. The welfare state ideal is carried by Part IV, and specifically by Article 38, which directs the State to secure a social order in which justice, social, economic and political, shall inform all the institutions of national life and to minimise inequalities in income, status, facilities and opportunities, and by Article 39, which lays down the principles of adequate means of livelihood, distribution of material resources to subserve the common good, prevention of concentration of wealth, equal pay for equal work and protection of children and workers. Articles 41 to 47 add work, education, public assistance, living wages, nutrition and public health.
• Option (a) is a plausible near miss: the Preamble speaks of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity and, after 1976, of a socialist republic, but it is a declaration of purpose and creates no directive to the State.
• Option (c) is wrong: Fundamental Rights are principally restraints on State action and are negative in structure, though the Supreme Court has read welfare content into Article 21 through the right to livelihood, health and shelter, which is the qualification worth teaching alongside this item.
• Option (d) is wrong: the Seventh Schedule distributes legislative subjects. The governing distinction is between a statement of aspiration in the Preamble and an enforceable direction of policy in Part IV.

• Option (b) is correct. The 42nd Amendment Act, 1976 inserted Article 43A, which directs the State to take steps to secure the participation of workers in the management of undertakings and establishments engaged in any industry. The other three options are all genuine Directive Principles but all belong to the original 1950 text, which is what makes them plausible distractors.
• Option (a) is Article 39(d), equal pay for equal work for both men and women, original.
• Option (c) is Article 41, right to work, to education and to public assistance in certain cases, original.
• Option (d) is Article 43, living wage and conditions of work ensuring a decent standard of life, original. Elimination route: the 42nd Amendment made three insertions into Part IV, Article 39A on equal justice and free legal aid, Article 43A on workers' participation, and Article 48A on protection of the environment and forests and wildlife. Only one option matches that list. Governing principle: distinguish the original Part IV from what was added in 1976, and note that Articles 39A, 43A and 48A carry the letter suffix that marks a later insertion.

• Statement 1 is incorrect. Article 51A, inserted by the 42nd Amendment on the recommendation of the Swaran Singh Committee, lists the Fundamental Duties but provides no machinery whatever for their enforcement. The Committee had in fact proposed a provision for penalties for non compliance, and Parliament declined to adopt it. Certain duties are separately reinforced by ordinary legislation, notably the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971 and the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955, but that is ordinary legislative activity directed at particular subject matter, not a constitutional process provided to enforce Part IVA as such. The word 'provided' is what makes the statement false.
• Statement 2 is incorrect. The Fundamental Duties are moral and civic obligations addressed to the conscience of the citizen and are non justiciable; they are not correlative to legal duties, a legal duty being one whose breach carries a legal sanction and gives rise to a corresponding right in another person. Correlativity in the strict sense holds between a right and a duty in the same legal relation, which is precisely what Part IVA lacks. Both statements failing, the official answer (d) follows. The item has no elimination route and both limbs must be judged independently. Governing principle: Part IVA is exhortatory, and in this it resembles Part IV, with the distinction that the Directive Principles address the State while the Fundamental Duties address the citizen.

The Right against Exploitation comprises Articles 23 and 24 and nothing else, and the item is decided by knowing that boundary.

• Statement 1 is correct: Article 23 prohibits traffic in human beings, begar and other similar forms of forced labour, and makes contravention an offence, the article having been the constitutional foundation for the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976 and for the expansive reading in Asiad Workers that payment below the minimum wage amounts to forced labour.
• Statement 4 is correct: Article 24 prohibits the employment of children below fourteen years in any factory or mine or in any other hazardous employment.
• Statement 2 is incorrect: abolition of untouchability is Article 17, which falls under the Right to Equality in Articles 14 to 18, not under the Right against Exploitation.
• Statement 3 is incorrect: protection of the interests of minorities is Article 29, with Article 30 on minority educational institutions, and both fall under Cultural and Educational Rights. Rejecting either statement 2 or statement 3 eliminates (a), (b) and (d) in a single step, so the item collapses at once for any candidate who has the six heads of Part III in order. Governing principle: carry the classification of Fundamental Rights as a list, Right to Equality in Articles 14 to 18, Right to Freedom in 19 to 22, Right against Exploitation in 23 and 24, Right to Freedom of Religion in 25 to 28, Cultural and Educational Rights in 29 and 30, and the Right to Constitutional Remedies in 32. A large proportion of Part III items are built simply by moving an article across two heads.

• Option (c) is correct and the stem itself supplies the route. Right to Life and Personal Liberty is the heading of Article 21, so the article named in the correct option must be Article 21, and only option (c) names it. In Justice K. S. Puttaswamy against Union of India, decided unanimously by nine judges in August 2017, the Court held that privacy is intrinsic to the life and personal liberty guaranteed by Article 21 and is also part of the freedoms guaranteed in Part III, overruling the contrary holdings in M. P. Sharma of 1954 and Kharak Singh of 1962. The second limb of the option matters: the Court did not locate privacy in Article 21 alone but found it distributed across Part III, arising from the freedoms of speech, movement and association in Article 19 and from the equality guarantee in Article 14 as well, which is why the phrase the freedoms guaranteed in Part III is the appropriate completion.
• Option (a) is wrong on both limbs, since Article 14 is equality before the law and the Forty second Amendment is remembered for inserting the words socialist and secular in the Preamble and for curtailing judicial review during the Emergency.
• Option (b) is wrong because Article 17 abolishes untouchability and the Directive Principles are expressly non justiciable, so they could not by themselves sustain an enforceable right.
• Option (d) is wrong because Article 24 prohibits the employment of children in hazardous work, and the Forty fourth Amendment is remembered for removing the right to property from Part III and for undoing several Emergency era changes.

Hence (c).

The right to marry a person of one's choice has been located by the Supreme Court within Article 21, as an element of the right to life and personal liberty read to include personal autonomy, dignity and the freedom to make intimate choices, so (b) is correct. The 2018 decisions in Shakti Vahini, dealing with khap panchayats and honour crimes, and Shafin Jahan, setting aside the annulment of an adult woman's marriage, both said so expressly, and Navtej Singh Johar in the same year extended the reasoning.

• Option (a) is wrong; Article 19 protects speech, assembly, association, movement, residence and profession, and marriage is not among the enumerated freedoms, though it is the most plausible distractor because association is superficially close.
• Option (c) is wrong because Article 25 protects freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion, which is adjacent in inter faith marriage disputes but is not the source of the right.
• Option (d) is wrong because Article 29 protects the cultural and educational rights of minorities to conserve a distinct language, script or culture. The governing principle is that Article 21 has become the residual reservoir of unenumerated personal rights, so a right of personal autonomy not expressly listed elsewhere will almost always be found there.

Article 17 abolishes untouchability and forbids its practice in any form. It sits within Articles 14 to 18, which together constitute the Right to Equality, so (d) is correct.

• Option (a) is wrong because the Right against Exploitation covers Articles 23 and 24, dealing with traffic in human beings, forced labour and child labour in hazardous employment.
• Option (b) is wrong because the Right to Freedom covers Articles 19 to 22, dealing with the six freedoms, protection in respect of conviction, life and personal liberty and preventive detention.
• Option (c) is wrong because the Right to Constitutional Remedies is Article 32, the enforcement mechanism rather than a substantive protection against discrimination.

Article 50, a Directive Principle, directs the State to take steps to separate the judiciary from the executive in the public services of the State. Hence (b).

• Option (a) is wrong because the Preamble declares objectives such as justice, liberty, equality and fraternity but says nothing about the separation of the two branches.
• Option (c) is wrong because the Seventh Schedule distributes legislative subjects between the Union and the States and is a federal instrument, not a separation of powers instrument.
• Option (d) is wrong because the mandate is textual, not conventional, even though its implementation was carried out progressively through the Criminal Procedure Code of 1973.

Article 38 directs the State to secure a social order for the promotion of the welfare of the people, and Articles 39 to 47 spell out the substantive content of that welfare obligation. The Directive Principles are therefore the declaration of the welfare state ideal, giving (a).

• Option (b) is wrong because Fundamental Rights are essentially negative restraints on state power, protecting the individual against the State rather than obliging it to provide.
• Option (c) is wrong because the Preamble declares socialism and justice as objectives but does not spell out a welfare programme, and the question asks for the part that declares the ideal in operative terms.
• Option (d) is wrong because the Seventh Schedule is a distribution of legislative competence.

Article 37 states in terms that the provisions of Part IV shall not be enforceable by any court, but that the principles are nevertheless fundamental in the governance of the country and it shall be the duty of the State to apply them in making laws.

• Statement 1 is therefore incorrect and statement 2 correct, and statement 3 is correct as a direct restatement of the second half of Article 37. The answer is 2 and 3, giving (d).
• Options (a) and (c) fail because they assert enforceability, which is the exact opposite of the constitutional text, and (b) is incomplete because it drops the positive obligation on the State that Article 37 also creates.

In Justice K. S. Puttaswamy versus Union of India in 2017, a nine judge bench held unanimously that the right to privacy is a fundamental right intrinsic to the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21, and also traceable to other freedoms in Part III, overruling the contrary holdings in M. P. Sharma and Kharak Singh.

• Option (c) is therefore correct.
• Option (a) concerns prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth.
• Option (b) concerns the six freedoms, and while informational privacy has a relationship with free expression, the seat of the right is Article 21.
• Option (d) concerns protection of the interests of minorities in language, script and culture. Hence (c). Article 21 is the most expansively interpreted provision of the Constitution, and privacy sits alongside the rights to livelihood, health, clean environment and speedy trial as judicially derived from it.

Article 14 guarantees equality before the law and equal protection of the laws, and the doctrine developed from E. P. Royappa and Maneka Gandhi treats arbitrariness as the antithesis of equality. A statute conferring unguided discretion enables like cases to be treated unalike at official whim, which is arbitrariness in its clearest form and therefore offends Article 14.

• Option (a) is correct.
• Option (b) concerns freedom from religious instruction in State funded educational institutions and is irrelevant.
• Option (c) is the right to constitutional remedies, which is the means of challenging such a law rather than the provision it violates, and this is the trap in the question.
• Option (d) is the directive on a uniform civil code, unenforceable by courts under Article 37. Hence (a). The distinction between the right infringed and the remedy invoked is the point being tested.

Article 39(c), a Directive Principle, requires the State to direct its policy towards ensuring that the operation of the economic system does not result in the concentration of wealth and means of production to the common detriment, so option (b) is correct and the answer is found in the express text.

• Option (a) is wrong because the Right to Equality under Articles 14 to 18 addresses equality before the law and prohibits discrimination, untouchability and titles, and does not speak to economic concentration.
• Option (c) is wrong because the Right to Freedom under Article 19 concerns speech, assembly, association, movement, residence and profession.
• Option (d) is wrong because a concept of welfare is not a constitutional provision that can be violated. Hence (b). Article 39(b) and (c) together carry particular significance as the provisions protected by Article 31C, and they are among the most frequently examined Directive Principles.

The Forty fourth Amendment of 1978 removed the right to property from Part III by deleting Article 19(1)(f) and Article 31, and relocated it as Article 300A, which provides that no person shall be deprived of his property save by authority of law. Two consequences follow, and the question tests both. First, it is now a constitutional legal right rather than a fundamental right, so it cannot be enforced by direct petition to the Supreme Court under Article 32. Second, Article 300A uses the word person rather than citizen, so the protection extends to non citizens and to companies as well.

• Option (b) captures both, and is correct.
• Option (a) fails on the second point, option (c) on the first, and option (d) on both. Hence (b). The person versus citizen distinction runs throughout Part III and is worth teaching as a single consolidated list.

Read the stem carefully, since it asks which statements are not correct.

• Statement 1 is not correct: Article 18(1) abolishes titles, and the Supreme Court in Balaji Raghavan versus Union of India in 1995 upheld the civilian awards precisely on the footing that they are decorations recognising exceptional service and not titles within the meaning of Article 18, so recipients may not use them as prefixes or suffixes to their names.
• Statement 2 is not correct: the Padma awards were suspended twice, briefly in 1978 and again between 1993 and 1997, not once.
• Statement 3 is not correct: the convention limits Bharat Ratna to a maximum of three in a year, not five. Since all three are incorrect, the answer is (d). Note the interaction between the stem and the options: recognising any two errors already forces (d), because no option pairs those two alone without a third.

Due process of law is the American doctrine under which a court examines not merely whether a law was validly enacted and followed but whether the law itself, and the procedure it lays down, is just, fair and reasonable. In substance that is the principle of natural justice, embracing the right to a hearing, the rule against bias and the requirement of reasoned decision making, which is the basis of the official answer (a).

• Option (b), procedure established by law, is the contrasting Indian doctrine drawn from the Japanese Constitution and adopted in Article 21, under which a court asks only whether the prescribed procedure was followed, though Maneka Gandhi read fairness into it and narrowed the gap.
• Option (d), equality before law, belongs to Article 14 and is a distinct guarantee.
• Option (c), fair application of law, is the closest competitor to the key, but application concerns how an existing law is enforced, whereas due process reaches the content and fairness of the law itself.

• Statement I is correct. From Indra Sawhney onward, and again in Nagaraj and Jarnail Singh, the Supreme Court has read Article 335 as a limiting consideration on reservation under Article 16(4), holding that claims of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes must be taken into consideration consistently with the maintenance of efficiency of administration.
• Statement II is incorrect. Article 335 uses the expression but supplies no definition of it, which is precisely why the content of efficiency of administration has been contested and judicially elaborated, most notably in Jarnail Singh where the Court rejected a narrow merit based reading.
• Statement I correct and Statement II false gives (c).
• Options (a) and (b) require Article 335 to contain a definition it does not contain, and (d) denies a settled line of authority.

• Statement 1 is correct. Article 355 places on the Union the duty to protect every State against external aggression and internal disturbance and to ensure that State government is carried on in accordance with the Constitution.
• Statement 2 is correct. Article 22(1) guarantees the right to consult and be defended by a legal practitioner of choice, but Article 22(3)(b) expressly excludes persons detained under preventive detention law from the protections of clauses (1) and (2), so the constitutional entitlement to counsel does not extend to them.
• Statement 3 is incorrect and is the decisive error. Section 32 of the Prevention of Terrorism Act of 2002 made a confession recorded before a police officer of the rank of Superintendent or above admissible in evidence, a departure from Sections 25 and 26 of the Evidence Act, and this was among the most criticised features of the law before its repeal in 2004. Two statements stand, giving (b).

In Justice K.S. Puttaswamy versus Union of India in 2017, a nine judge bench unanimously held the right to privacy to be a fundamental right intrinsic to the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21, and also traceable across Part III. The judgment overruled the contrary holdings in M.P. Sharma and Kharak Singh.

• Option (a) is wrong because Article 15 prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth.
• Option (b) is wrong because Article 16 concerns equality of opportunity in public employment.
• Option (c) is wrong because Article 19 guarantees the six freedoms including speech and movement, and while informational privacy has an Article 19 dimension, the Court anchored the right principally in Article 21. The reasoning is that privacy is a necessary condition for a life of dignity, which Article 21 protects.