Reasons for the Growth of Administrative Law in India: From Police State to Welfare State and Regulatory State

Administrative law is often described as the most outstanding legal development of the twentieth century. Its growth was not the product of any single statute or decision. It followed from a fundamental change in what the State does. Once the State took on the tasks of educating, housing, employing, insuring, regulating and protecting its people, the volume of power held by the executive grew enormously, and much of that power took forms that the legislature and the ordinary courts were not designed to exercise. Administrative law grew in two directions at once: as the legal framework through which this expanded administration operates, and as the body of controls that keeps it within the law.

1. The Two Faces of Growth

It is useful at the outset to separate two developments that are often run together.

• The growth of the administrative process. The transfer of legislative, adjudicatory and regulatory functions to the executive and to specialised bodies. This is a matter of political and economic necessity.
• The growth of administrative law. The development of legal rules governing how those functions are exercised, and of remedies against their misuse. This is the legal response to the first development.

The reasons discussed below explain why the administrative process expanded. Each expansion in turn created a need for new legal controls, and it is that need which drove the growth of administrative law as a subject.

2. Change in the Philosophy of the State: From Police State to Welfare State

In the nineteenth century, under the influence of the doctrine of laissez faire, the State was expected to perform only a limited range of functions: defence against external aggression, maintenance of internal order, administration of justice and collection of taxes. Such a State is often described as a police State or a negative State. Economic and social life was left largely to private initiative, and the law required little by way of administrative machinery.

Industrialisation, economic depression, war and the rise of democratic politics changed this conception. The State came to be regarded as responsible for the social and economic welfare of its people. The welfare State undertakes functions of an entirely different character and scale. Wolfgang Friedmann described the modern State as acting in five capacities: as protector, provider of social services, entrepreneur, economic controller and arbiter. Each of these roles requires an administrative apparatus with wide powers, and each generates disputes between the State and individuals.

2.1 The welfare State in the Indian Constitution

The Indian Constitution adopted the welfare State as a constitutional objective. The Preamble promises justice, social, economic and political, and the word 'socialist' was added by the Forty-second Amendment in 1976. Part IV directs the State to secure an adequate means of livelihood, equitable distribution of material resources, just and humane conditions of work, public assistance in cases of unemployment, old age and sickness, improvement of public health and protection of the environment (Articles 39, 41, 42, 47 and 48A).

To give effect to these objectives, Parliament and the State Legislatures enacted a large body of social and economic legislation, including the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, the Minimum Wages Act, 1948, the Factories Act, 1948 and the Employees' State Insurance Act, 1948. Most of these central labour laws have now been consolidated into the four Labour Codes (the Code on Wages, 2019, the Industrial Relations Code, 2020, the Code on Social Security, 2020 and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020), which came into force on 21 November 2025. Every such statute creates authorities, confers powers on them and depends on administrative implementation.

3. Inadequacy of the Legislative Process

The welfare State requires a volume and variety of law that no legislature can produce by itself. Parliament and the State Legislatures therefore lay down policy in the parent statute and delegate to the executive the power to make rules, regulations, bye-laws and schemes. The growth of delegated legislation is one of the most important causes of the growth of administrative law. The reasons for delegation are well recognised:

1. Pressure on legislative time. The legislature meets for limited periods and must deal with a vast range of subjects. It cannot settle every detail of every statute.
2. Technicality of subject matter. Many matters, such as standards for drugs, emissions, food safety, electricity tariffs or telecommunications, require technical knowledge that legislators do not ordinarily possess.
3. Need for flexibility. Rules made by the executive can be amended quickly as circumstances change, whereas amending a statute requires the full legislative process.
4. Unforeseen contingencies. The legislature cannot anticipate every situation that may arise in the working of a statute, and delegation allows the gaps to be filled.
5. Emergencies. In war, epidemics and disasters, the executive must be able to act immediately, and the legislature may not be in session.
6. Local and experimental needs. Conditions differ across regions, and delegation allows rules to be adapted to local circumstances or tried experimentally before being generalised.

In Avinder Singh v. State of Punjab, (1979) 1 SCC 137, the Supreme Court recognised that the complexity of modern administration makes delegation inevitable, while insisting that the legislature cannot efface itself. The constitutional limits on delegation were laid down in the first major decision of the Supreme Court on the subject.

The growth of delegated legislation in turn required rules on its validity (the doctrine of ultra vires, excessive delegation and unreasonableness), on its publication and on its scrutiny by the legislature through Committees on Subordinate Legislation. These rules are a substantial part of modern administrative law.

4. Inadequacy of the Traditional Judicial System

The ordinary courts are designed to resolve disputes between parties according to fixed rules of procedure and evidence. That design has great virtues, but it proved unsuitable for many of the disputes generated by the welfare State. The ordinary judicial process has been criticised as slow, costly, technical and formalistic. Courts are generalist bodies and may lack expertise in specialised fields. Their procedure is adversarial and backward-looking, concerned with deciding a past dispute rather than with the continuing management of a sector or a relationship. The volume of litigation also imposes heavy pressure on the courts.

Industrial disputes are a classic illustration. A strike or lockout calls for a quick, flexible and expert resolution that takes account of the needs of the industry and the interests of the workforce, rather than a strict determination of contractual rights. Legislatures therefore entrusted many categories of disputes to tribunals and quasi-judicial authorities, such as industrial tribunals and labour courts, the Income-tax Appellate Tribunal, the Central Administrative Tribunal, the National Company Law Tribunal, the National Green Tribunal, consumer commissions, the Securities Appellate Tribunal and the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal.

The advantages claimed for such bodies are speed, low cost, informality, accessibility and specialised knowledge. Their growth, however, raised new questions of administrative law: whether they must follow natural justice, whether they must give reasons, how their members are to be appointed, how independent they are of the executive and how far their decisions are subject to judicial review.

5. Technical and Specialised Nature of Modern Problems

Many of the problems with which the modern State must deal are technical in character: the pricing of electricity, the allocation of spectrum, the regulation of securities markets, the safety of food and medicines, the control of pollution, the protection of personal data. Neither the legislature nor the ordinary courts can deal with such problems in detail. They require bodies with continuing responsibility, technical staff and the power to make rules, issue directions, investigate and adjudicate.

This need has produced a large family of regulatory authorities in India, including the Securities and Exchange Board of India (1992), the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (1997), the Central and State Electricity Regulatory Commissions, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority, the Competition Commission of India under the Competition Act, 2002, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, the Real Estate Regulatory Authorities under the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India, and the Data Protection Board of India provided for under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. Such bodies typically combine legislative, executive and adjudicatory functions, which makes their control a central concern of administrative law.

6. Flexibility and Scope for Experimentation

Administrative processes permit a degree of flexibility that the legislative and judicial processes do not. A rule made by the executive can be tried for a period, evaluated and modified without waiting for the next session of the legislature. Schemes can be introduced as pilots in selected areas and extended if they succeed. Administrative authorities can adapt their procedures to the needs of the subject matter and avoid the technicalities of court procedure.

The Supreme Court has recognised that economic regulation, in particular, calls for this latitude. In R.K. Garg v. Union of India, (1981) 4 SCC 675, the Court held that laws relating to economic activities should be viewed with greater latitude than laws touching civil rights such as freedom of speech, and that the legislature must be allowed room for trial and error in dealing with complex economic problems.

7. Preventive Action and Effective Enforcement

The ordinary courts act after harm has occurred: a suit is filed when a right has been infringed, and a prosecution follows the commission of an offence. Many modern problems require preventive action. Administrative authorities are able to prevent harm before it occurs through mechanisms such as licensing, registration, inspection, prior consent, standard-setting, product recall, seizure of unsafe goods and the suspension or cancellation of permits. The requirement of consent to establish and consent to operate under the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974 and the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981, and the licensing regimes for drugs and food, are examples.

Administrative enforcement is also often more effective than judicial enforcement. A regulator that can suspend a licence, impose a penalty or issue a binding direction has a more immediate influence on conduct than the prospect of distant litigation.

8. Industrialisation and Urbanisation

Industrialisation brought people into cities in large numbers and created problems of housing, sanitation, water supply, transport, public health, industrial safety and working conditions. These problems called for continuous administrative management through town planning authorities, development authorities, municipal corporations, factory inspectorates and public utilities. Planning permissions, building approvals, demolition orders, licences for trades and the regulation of markets all involve the exercise of administrative power over individuals.

The Constitution (Seventy-third Amendment) Act, 1992 and the Constitution (Seventy-fourth Amendment) Act, 1992, which inserted Parts IX and IXA, gave constitutional status to panchayats and municipalities and devolved significant functions to them. This extended the administrative process, and with it the need for administrative law, to the level of local government.

9. Growth of State Largesse, Contracts and Privatisation

The modern State is the largest dispenser of benefits in society. It grants licences, quotas, contracts, jobs, subsidies, allotments of land and natural resources, and welfare entitlements. Charles Reich described such benefits as the 'new property'. In India, the Supreme Court held in Ramana Dayaram Shetty v. International Airport Authority of India, (1979) 3 SCC 489 that the Government, in dealing with the public by way of contracts, licences and other forms of largesse, cannot act arbitrarily and must conform to Article 14. The distribution of State largesse has consequently become a major field of administrative law.

Economic liberalisation after 1991 moved the State away from direct ownership and control towards regulation, public-private partnerships, disinvestment and outsourcing. These changes did not reduce administrative law; they changed its focus. Tenders and government contracts came under close scrutiny (Tata Cellular v. Union of India, (1994) 6 SCC 651), and the courts had to consider how far private bodies performing public functions are subject to public law remedies (Zee Telefilms Ltd. v. Union of India, (2005) 4 SCC 649).

10. Emergencies, Security and Crisis Management

Wars, epidemics, natural disasters and threats to public order require the executive to act swiftly and on a large scale. The Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897 and the Disaster Management Act, 2005 confer wide powers on the executive in such situations. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the nationwide lockdown from March 2020 was imposed through orders issued under the Disaster Management Act, 2005, and a great part of national life was regulated for many months by executive orders and guidelines. In Gaurav Kumar Bansal v. Union of India (decided 30 June 2021), the Supreme Court held that the National Disaster Management Authority was under a statutory duty to recommend guidelines for minimum standards of relief, including ex gratia assistance to the families of those who died of COVID-19, and directed it to do so.

11. Technology and Digital Governance

Technology has created new administrative functions and new forms of administrative power. The State now maintains large databases, delivers benefits through digital identity systems, blocks online content, regulates data processing and increasingly uses automated tools in decision-making. In Shreya Singhal v. Union of India, (2015) 5 SCC 1, the Supreme Court upheld the power to block online content under section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 because it was hedged with procedural safeguards, including reasons in writing and review. In K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (Aadhaar), (2019) 1 SCC 1, the Court examined the Aadhaar scheme against the requirements of legality, necessity and proportionality. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 adds a further regulatory layer. Each of these developments extends the reach of administrative power and calls for corresponding legal safeguards.

12. The Need to Control Administrative Power

The factors described above explain why power flowed to the administration. The same factors made the growth of administrative law unavoidable, because concentrated power exercised through wide discretion carries obvious risks of arbitrariness, bias, corruption and disregard of individual rights. Several developments reflect this need for control.

• Expansion of judicial review. The extension of natural justice to administrative action, the grounds of illegality, irrationality and procedural impropriety, the doctrines of legitimate expectation and proportionality, and the duty to give reasons.
• Expansion of the meaning of 'State'. The inclusion of corporations, societies and other bodies controlled by the Government within Article 12, so that the constraints of Part III follow the exercise of public power into new institutional forms.
• Public interest litigation. The relaxation of standing and the use of continuing mandamus, as in Vineet Narain v. Union of India, (1998) 1 SCC 226, which allowed the courts to supervise the functioning of administrative agencies.
• Transparency and accountability institutions. The Right to Information Act, 2005, the Central Vigilance Commission Act, 2003, the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013 and the various human rights and information commissions.
• Independence of tribunals. The insistence, from L. Chandra Kumar to the Madras Bar Association decision of 19 November 2025, that tribunals performing judicial functions must be independent of the executive.

Administrative law thus grows in step with administrative power. Each new function assigned to the executive brings with it new questions about the limits of that function, and the answers to those questions form the substance of the subject.

13. The Reasons at a Glance

14. Related Topics and Provisions

• Administrative Law: Meaning, Definitions, Nature and Scope (Topic 1): the definition and scope of the subject whose growth is explained here.
• Historical Development of Administrative Law (Topic 2): the Donoughmore and Franks Committees, the judicial revival of the 1960s and the Indian phases of development.
• Delegated Legislation: meaning, reasons, permissible limits and control, developing Section 3 above.
• Administrative Tribunals: Articles 323A and 323B, the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985 and the independence of tribunals, developing Section 4 above.
• Administrative Discretion and its Control: the legal response to the wide discretionary powers described in this topic.
• Public Corporations and Regulatory Bodies: the institutional forms of the regulatory State.
• Constitution of India: Preamble; Articles 12, 14, 19, 21, 38, 39, 41, 47, 48A, 226, 243 to 243ZG, 323A and 323B.