15 Oct 2026GS4Topic
Case studies: administrative dilemmas
Original questions
3 for today1 · First Principles IAS original20 marks250 words
Vikram Sethi is Superintendent of Police of a district. On 3 September, a twenty-three-year-old man named Deepak, arrested two days earlier in a motorcycle theft case, dies in the lock-up of Rampur police station. The arrest memo records him as healthy. The post-mortem, conducted at the district hospital, records cardiac arrest and notes no external injuries. Two constables come to Vikram separately and privately. Both say Deepak was beaten during interrogation on the night of 2 September by Sub-Inspector Naveen Kumar, who was attempting to recover a stolen consignment. Neither will give a written statement. Naveen Kumar has the highest detection rate in the district, was decorated last year for recovering a kidnapped child, and is regarded by the force as their best investigator. Deepak belonged to a marginalised community. His family has approached a civil liberties organisation and has not yet claimed the body. A local political leader tells Vikram that the family would accept a compensation settlement and that the district does not need an agitation before the festival season. Vikram's Inspector General observes that a case against Naveen Kumar would demoralise a force already thirty per cent below sanctioned strength, and that the medical evidence supports no such case. Vikram can order a magisterial enquiry, seek a second post-mortem by a board before cremation, place Naveen Kumar under suspension, or accept the medical finding. The body has been in the mortuary for thirty hours. (a) Identify the ethical issues involved. (b) What options are available to Vikram? Evaluate each critically. (c) Which would you adopt and why? (d) What systemic measures would reduce custodial violence without demoralising an investigating force?
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A death in custody tests a Superintendent most when the pressure to look away comes from his own force, his superior and local politics together.
(a) Ethical issues
Life against morale: A detainee's right to life under Article 21 is set against the morale of an understaffed force.
Truth against convenience: Two credible accounts contradict a clean post mortem, while the leader and the Inspector General offer reasons to look away.
Justice for the marginalised: Compensation offered as a settlement would buy silence from a family least able to resist.
(b) Options
Accept the medical finding: Quick, but a clean surface does not rule out internal injury, and it ignores the constables.
Second post mortem by a board: Preserves evidence before cremation, and is fair to Naveen Kumar too.
Magisterial enquiry: Required by law in a custodial death, so it is not truly optional.
Suspension: Not a punishment, but it stops him influencing witnesses.
(c) What I would adopt
All three steps together, today: a video recorded post mortem by a medical board, a judicial enquiry, and Naveen Kumar's suspension. I would inform the National Human Rights Commission within twenty four hours and protect the two constables so they can testify. Interim relief may go to the family, but never as a settlement.
(d) Systemic measures
Watch and equip: Working cameras with audio in every station, as Paramvir Singh Saini (2020) directed, and forensic support so confession is not needed.
Reward lawful detection: Fill vacancies, separate investigation from law and order, and honour cases solved by evidence.
A force is demoralised not by accountability, but by the belief that results excuse anything.
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Decode
Four parts in 250 words, so each gets roughly sixty words and a heading of its own.
Implicit demand
The thirty hours in the mortuary is the clock. The examiner wants the student to see that evidence is perishable, so the steps must be taken today, together.
Architecture
A one line framing of the pressure, three issues, four options with their flaws, the chosen combination in a short paragraph, two systemic measures, then a verdict on what really demoralises a force.
Articulation
The options are treated as complementary rather than competing, which is the insight the case rewards. Money line: a force is demoralised not by accountability, but by the belief that results excuse anything.
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Law and guidelines
Judicial enquiry into custodial death, mandatory under Section 176(1A) of the old Criminal Procedure Code and carried into the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023.
National Human Rights Commission guidelines requiring intimation of a custodial death within twenty four hours and a video recorded post mortem.
D K Basu v State of West Bengal (1997), on safeguards at arrest and detention.
Paramvir Singh Saini v Baljit Singh (2020), on cameras with audio recording in police stations.
Reform measures
Prakash Singh v Union of India (2006), on separating investigation from law and order and setting up Police Complaints Authorities.
Scientific interrogation training and wider forensic capacity.
Recognition and promotion criteria that weigh lawful conduct along with detection rates.
2 · First Principles IAS original20 marks250 words
Ravi Deshmukh is District Magistrate of a Himalayan district. On 2 April, a national scientific institution submits a report on a glacial lake above the Chandan valley. The lake has expanded from 0.4 to 1.1 square kilometres since 2011 and is classified as potentially dangerous. The report recommends restricting new construction below the valley and preparing an evacuation plan. It states explicitly that no outburst can be predicted, and that the lake may remain stable for decades. The valley below holds eleven hotels, a 24 MW hydropower structure, and about four hundred households. The tourist season opens on 25 April and accounts for roughly seventy per cent of annual local income. Bookings for the season are already made. Hotel owners meet Ravi. They point out that a similar report on a neighbouring valley in 2019 led to an advisory, cancelled bookings, and no event has occurred since. They ask why livelihoods should be destroyed on a possibility. The state tourism department has promoted the district heavily this year and its secretary telephones to ask that nothing be issued before the season. An early warning system has been sanctioned and is eighteen months from installation. Ravi's predecessor received a comparable report in 2023 and filed it. There is no record of any action. (a) What are the options available to Ravi? (b) What ethical dilemmas is he facing? (c) Critically evaluate each option and state which you would adopt. (d) How should an administrator communicate a low-probability, high-consequence risk to a population whose livelihood depends on the risk being ignored?
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Ravi holds a report that says the lake might burst but cannot say when. He must act on that uncertainty without ignoring it or exaggerating it.
(a) Options
File the report: As his predecessor did.
Issue a public advisory: Warn tourists away and let the season absorb the cost.
Act on the report's actual recommendations: Restrict new construction, prepare an evacuation plan and set up interim monitoring, without closing the valley.
(b) Ethical dilemmas
Safety against livelihood: Four hundred households face a small risk of catastrophe and a certain loss of income.
Precaution against proportion: Acting on uncertainty can be prudent or can destroy trust, as the 2019 advisory did.
Duty against pressure: The tourism secretary's call asks him to stay silent about a known hazard.
(c) Evaluation and choice
Filing the report repeats a failure and makes him complicit if the lake bursts, as Sikkim's South Lhonak lake did in 2023. A blanket advisory goes beyond what the science says. I would adopt the third option: stop new construction, and prepare and rehearse an evacuation plan. Until the warning system arrives I would post a manual watch with sirens, press to fast track it, and record every step on file.
(d) Communicating the risk
Say what is known and not known: The lake is growing, an outburst cannot be predicted, and it may never happen.
Give people something to do: Routes, signals and drills turn fear into readiness.
Plan with those affected: Hotel owners who help design the plan will defend it.
An administrator owes people the truth and a plan, not silence and not panic.
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Decode
Four parts, ordered unusually with options before dilemmas, and the last asks a general question about communicating risk.
Implicit demand
The report itself does not ask for closure. The examiner rewards the student who reads it closely and acts on exactly what it recommends.
Architecture
A framing line on uncertainty, three options, three dilemmas, evaluation leading to the third option with concrete steps, three rules of communication, then a verdict.
Articulation
South Lhonak gives the cost of inaction a real face, and the communication rules are practical. Money line: an administrator owes people the truth and a plan, not silence and not panic.
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Facts to cite
The South Lhonak lake outburst in Sikkim in October 2023 destroyed the Teesta III dam at Chungthang.
The Kedarnath disaster of 2013, linked to the Chorabari lake, showed the cost of unprepared valleys.
The National Disaster Management Authority issued guidelines on managing glacial lake outburst floods in 2020.
Concepts to use
The precautionary principle, acting to prevent serious harm even without full scientific certainty.
Proportionality, keeping the response matched to the evidence.
Risk communication, telling people both the size of a risk and the action they can take.
3 · First Principles IAS original20 marks250 words
You are Chairperson of a state recruitment board that has conducted an examination for 12,400 posts. Nineteen lakh candidates appeared across two shifts on 7 December. On 9 December, credible evidence emerges that the second-shift paper leaked approximately five hours before the examination, circulating in three districts. Investigation so far identifies about 400 candidates who may have had access. The full extent is unknown, and your investigating agency estimates six to eight weeks to establish it. Cancelling the whole examination means nineteen lakh candidates appear again. Many travelled 300 kilometres or more; a substantial number are in their final year of eligibility by age. Re-examination would delay recruitment by at least a year in a state where these are among the few secure jobs available. Cancelling only the second shift leaves candidates assessed on different papers, and normalisation across shifts has been challenged in court before. Proceeding means some compromised candidates will be selected, and the fact of the leak is already public. Aspirant groups have been sitting outside your office for two days. Two candidates have attempted suicide in the state this week, reported in the press. The government wants results before the assembly session begins on 5 January. (a) Identify the ethical issues involved. (b) What options are available to you? Critically evaluate each. (c) Which would you adopt and why? (d) What is owed to a candidate whose examination is cancelled through no fault of her own?
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A leaked paper puts the board's credibility and nineteen lakh futures at stake together. The response must protect merit without making the innocent pay for the guilty.
(a) Ethical issues
Fairness and merit: Honest candidates must not lose posts to those who cheated.
Proportionality: Nineteen lakh innocent candidates should not bear the full cost of a leak in one shift.
Care and pressure: Distress demands compassion, while the political deadline must not decide the outcome.
(b) Options
Cancel the whole examination: Clean, but it punishes the first shift without evidence and costs a year.
Proceed and debar the 400: Fast, but the full extent is unknown, so compromised candidates may be selected.
Wait eight weeks, then decide: Better informed, but prolongs uncertainty.
Cancel and repeat the second shift: Targeted and proportionate, though it requires normalisation across papers.
(c) What I would adopt
Cancel and repeat only the second shift within weeks, with a fresh paper and a published, expert vetted normalisation method. The Supreme Court took the same proportionate view on NEET in 2024, refusing a full retest where the breach was not systemic. Prosecution should continue under the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024. I would tell the government that results will follow fairness, not the assembly calendar.
(d) What she is owed
Honesty and speed: A clear explanation, an apology and an early fresh date.
No added cost: Fee waiver, travel support and age relaxation so no one loses eligibility.
Care: Counselling help, given the distress already visible.
A cancelled examination is a debt the State owes, and it should be repaid in fairness, speed and care.
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Decode
Four parts, and the second shift leak is confined, so proportionality is the key test for every option.
Implicit demand
The examiner wants a choice that protects merit without punishing the innocent, and a refusal to let the political deadline drive the decision.
Architecture
A framing line on what is at stake, three issues, four options each weighed in a line, the chosen option supported by the NEET precedent, what the candidate is owed, then a verdict.
Articulation
Part (d) speaks directly to the candidate's position, which matches the question's own phrasing. Money line: a cancelled examination is a debt the State owes.
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Law and precedent
The Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024, for central examinations, with several states passing their own laws.
The Supreme Court's NEET UG judgment of 2024, which declined a full retest as the leak was not shown to be systemic.
Percentile based normalisation, used by recruitment bodies to compare candidates across shifts.
Concepts to use
Proportionality, keeping the remedy matched to the extent of the wrong.
Procedural fairness in public recruitment as part of equality of opportunity under Article 16.
Duty of care toward candidates under acute stress.