Priniciples of administrative law.

It is a matter of pleasure for me to present the Second Edition of the book Principles of Administrative Law. It has provided me an opportunity to revise the book and make it up-to-date. In this edition the whole text has been thoroughly revised. Some of the chapters have been re-written so as to make the book more useful to the readers.

Since the last edition, several decisions of the Supreme Court and High Courts have been reported. In Dipti Banerjee v. Satyendra Nath Bose National Centre for Basic Science (AIR 1999 SC 983) the Supreme Court has held that in case of termination of the service of probationer the issue as to whether or not allegations are punitive or simpliciter depends on whether allegation form foundation or motive of the order. If the findings are arrived at in inquiry as to misconduct behind the back of the officer or without a regular departmental inquiry, the simple order of termination is to be treated as founded on the allegations and will be bad, no findings are arrived at and employer was not inclined to conduct an inquiry but at the same time does not want to continue the employee against whom these are complaints, it will not be a case of motive and order would not be bad.

In Madan Mohan Choudhary v. State of Bihar (AIR 1999 SC 1018). the Supreme Court has held that mere circumstances that uncommunicated adverse remarks have been taken into consideration in passing the order of compulsory retirement would not vitiate the order if such remarks have been recorded in normal course but if the remark for three years are recorded at one time and that too after the committee formed opinion to retire the officer, it cannot be said that the remarks have been recorded in normal course. Consequently, the order of compulsory retirement based on such remarks would be bad and liable to be set aside.

In State of Tamil Nadu v. K. Sabanayagam (AIR 1999 SC 344), in a case notable on the difference between delegated legislation and conditional legislation. The Supreme Court has held that in case of conditional legislation no legislative power is delegated while in latter there is delegation of the legislative power. The Court has said further that in the case of conditional legislation, the legislation is complete in itself but its operation is made to depend on the fulfilment of the certain conditions and what is delegated to an outside authority is the power to determine according to its own judgment whether or not those conditions are fulfilled. In case of the delegated legislation proper, some portion of the legislative power of the legislature in delegated to the outside authority in that the legislature, though competent to perform both the essential and ancillary legislative functions, performs only the former and parts with the latter, i.e., the ancillary functions of laying down details in favour of another for executing the policy of the statute enacted. The conditional legislation contains no element of delegation of legislative power and not open to attack on the ground of excessive delegation but delegated legislation does confer some legislative power on some outside authority and is, therefore, open to attack on the ground of excessive delegation. In this case the Supreme Court has classified the conditional legislation into three categories.