Mock paper 7 — The Delhi Paper

Both are true, and R is exactly why A holds. The Graded Response Action Plan is administered by the Commission for Air Quality Management in the National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas, a statutory body created by the Act of Parliament of 2021 that replaced an ordinance of October 2020. Its jurisdiction is defined by the airshed, not by a political boundary: when the Commission invokes a stage of the Plan, the measures for that stage take effect across the National Capital Region as one unit — Delhi and the adjoining districts of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, Ghaziabad among them. That is why schools on both sides of the Delhi border go hybrid on the same day, under orders issued by two different State education departments but traceable to one direction. The Directorate of Education's circular is the instrument of delivery, not the decision — and that is where (c) attracts. A candidate who reads the newspapers rather than the Act believes each government closes its own schools on its own reading of the air quality index; on that view R is false, and the simultaneity in A becomes a coincidence of two governments reacting to the same weather. (d) is for the candidate who knows the Commission exists but takes it for an advisory or expert body under the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, leaving the operative decision with each State inside its own territory — if that were so, A would fail, because the days would not match. (b) is for the candidate who accepts both propositions but does not see that the second is the reason for the first. The practical consequence for a head of school is the one the item is built on. The trigger is regional and statutory, so it cannot be anticipated, varied or waived locally; a Principal's duty is to have the hybrid arrangement ready in advance, because the order will arrive already made. No air quality index threshold is used as a key here — the stage-wise thresholds have been revised more than once and should be read off the Commission's own schedule. Trap: ch09 — identify the authority before you identify the department. In the National Capital Region the Commission for Air Quality Management directs and the State governments implement, which is why its orders cross State borders in a way a State government's could not.

Statements 1 and 3 are correct, and both come straight from the text of the Article. Clause (5) provides that the Chief Minister shall be appointed by the President, the other Ministers by the President on the Chief Minister's advice, and that the Ministers hold office during the pleasure of the President — so Delhi's Chief Minister is not appointed by the Lieutenant Governor in the way a State's Chief Minister is appointed by the Governor. The proviso to clause (4) provides that on a difference of opinion between the Lieutenant Governor and his Ministers on any matter, the Lieutenant Governor shall refer it to the President for decision and act according to the decision given, retaining meanwhile a power to take immediate action in a matter he considers so urgent as to require it. Statement 2 is the planted error, and it is the one a candidate who has memorised "Delhi has 70 seats" is most likely to accept. Clause (2)(b) says the opposite: the total number of seats, the number reserved for the Scheduled Castes, the division of the Territory into territorial constituencies and all other matters relating to the functioning of the Assembly "shall be regulated by law made by Parliament". The figure of 70 comes from section 3(1) of the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi Act, 1991, not from the Constitution — which is precisely why it could be altered by an ordinary Act of Parliament and would need no constitutional amendment. A candidate who accepts 2 and rejects 3, on the view that the Lieutenant Governor has the last word in Delhi, lands on (a); one who accepts everything lands on (d). This item stops at the text of Article 239AA by design. The control of "services", the National Capital Civil Services Authority and the amending legislation of 2023 are a separate question that is still moving, and nothing here turns on it. Trap: ch09 — in Delhi it is the President who appoints the Chief Minister and who settles a difference between the Lieutenant Governor and his Ministers; the size of the Assembly is Parliament's to fix, not the Constitution's.

Both are correct, and the second is precisely why the first is true. The prohibition a candidate reaches for — no employee of a recognised private school shall be dismissed, removed or reduced in rank, nor his service otherwise terminated, except with the prior approval of the Director — is Section 8(2), which sits inside Chapter IV. Section 12 as enacted lifted the whole of Chapter IV off an unaided minority school. In Frank Anthony Public School Employees' Association v. Union of India (1986) the Supreme Court held that sweeping exclusion discriminatory and void so far as it withheld Sections 8(1), 8(3), 8(4), 8(5), 9, 10 and 11 from such schools — but it expressly saved the exclusion of Section 8(2), because requiring the Director's prior approval before a minority school could dismiss its own teacher would trench on Article 30(1). The one part of Section 12 that still stands is therefore exactly the part that answers Statement-I.

The governing rule has to be selected before it can be applied. A candidate who applies Section 8(2) to every recognised private school reads Statement-I as incorrect and chooses (d). A candidate who reaches the right result by the wrong route — the gross-misconduct exception in Section 8(4), which permits immediate suspension but lapses after fifteen days without the Director's approval — treats Statement-II as unrelated and chooses (b); but Section 8(4) is one of the sub-sections Frank Anthony restored to these schools, so that route is not the source of the answer either. (c) is for the candidate who knows Frank Anthony but not which fragment of Section 12 survived it.

Trap: ch06 — the teacher is not left unprotected. After Frank Anthony an unaided minority school is bound by the Code of Conduct (Section 9), by salary parity (Section 10) and by the employee's appeal to the Delhi School Tribunal (Sections 8(3) and 11). Only the Director's prior approval under Section 8(2) is lifted, and Chapter V's written contract of service under Section 15 sits alongside those protections, not in place of them.