Services Under the Union and the States — Part XIV, Articles 308 to 314

Cross-paper relevance

• GS2 — Core: the constitutional position of the civil servant, the doctrine of pleasure against the Article 311 safeguards, the All India Services as an instrument of federal integration, and the All India Judicial Service debate
• GS4 — Ethics: security of tenure as the structural condition for an honest and impartial civil service, and what the Article 311(2) exceptions do to it
• Essay — Recurring themes: "The steel frame and the democratic state"; "Neutrality and the permanent executive"

Part XIV answers a question that decides how a bureaucracy behaves: can the government dismiss an official who displeases it?

The Constitution's answer is deliberately two-sided. Article 310 says every civil servant holds office during the pleasure of the President or the Governor. Article 311 then makes that pleasure very difficult to exercise. The tension between those two articles is the whole of civil service security of tenure in India, and every question on the subject is really a question about where the line falls.

Article 308 — what "State" means here

Article 308 supplies the definition for the whole Part. As the text stands, the expression excludes "the State of Jammu and Kashmir", a substitution made by the Seventh Amendment Act, 1956. Jammu and Kashmir ceased to be a state on 31 October 2019, so the exclusion no longer has a subject, but the words remain in the printed text.

Article 309 — who writes the service rules

The primary power belongs to the legislature: Acts of the appropriate Legislature, Parliament for Union services and a state legislature for state services, may regulate recruitment and conditions of service.

The proviso is the part that actually operates. It allows the President, for Union services, and the Governor, for state services, or a person either may direct, to make rules on the same subjects, and it says those rules hold "until provision in that behalf is made by or under an Act". Any such rule then has effect subject to that Act.

So the constitutional design is: legislation first, executive rules as a stopgap. The practical position is the reverse. Most service conditions in India rest on rules made under the Article 309 proviso rather than on statutes, because the legislature has largely not occupied the field. Every one of those rules is, on the text, provisional.

Article 310 — the doctrine of pleasure

Article 310(1) provides that, except as expressly provided by this Constitution, every member of a defence service, a civil service of the Union, an all-India service, or the holder of any civil post under the Union, holds office during the pleasure of the President; and every member of a state civil service, or holder of a civil post under a state, holds office during the pleasure of the Governor.

Two things follow.

The doctrine is Indian law, not merely a British inheritance. In England it is a rule of the common law. Here it is written into the Constitution, which is why it cannot be displaced by an ordinary contract or by a service rule.

The opening words carve out the exceptions. Where the Constitution itself lays down how a holder of an office is to be removed, the pleasure doctrine does not operate. That is why these offices sit outside it:

Article 310(2) adds a narrow commercial provision: where a person with special qualifications is engaged on contract for a civil post, compensation may be provided for if the post is abolished early, or if they are required to vacate it for reasons unconnected with any misconduct.

Article 311 — the two safeguards

Article 311 is the counterweight, and it protects a defined class: members of a civil service of the Union, an all-India service, or a civil service of a State, and holders of a civil post under the Union or a State.

Note who is not protected: members of the defence services. Article 311 does not mention them, so they hold office at pleasure without these safeguards.

Safeguard one, Article 311(1). No such person shall be dismissed or removed by an authority subordinate to that by which he was appointed. This is about rank, not procedure. The dismissing authority must be of at least the same rank as the appointing authority.

Safeguard two, Article 311(2). No such person shall be dismissed, removed, or reduced in rank except after an inquiry in which they have been informed of the charges and given a reasonable opportunity of being heard in respect of those charges.

Two features of clause (2) are worth marking because both were changed by amendment.

Clause (2) in its present form was substituted by the Fifteenth Amendment Act, 1963, with effect from 5 October 1963.

The Forty-second Amendment Act, 1976, with effect from 3 January 1977, then removed the second opportunity. Before it, an official who had been found guilty also had to be heard on the quantum of penalty. The first proviso now says in terms that where a penalty is proposed after such inquiry, it may be imposed on the evidence adduced at that inquiry and "it shall not be necessary to give such person any opportunity of making representation on the penalty proposed."

The three exceptions

The second proviso to Article 311(2) removes the inquiry requirement altogether in three situations:

Read the differences carefully, because they are the exam. Exception (b) requires written reasons; exception (c) does not, and it is exercisable only by the President or the Governor. And Article 311(3) closes the loop on (b): if a question arises whether it was reasonably practicable to hold an inquiry, "the decision thereon of the authority empowered to dismiss or remove such person or to reduce him in rank shall be final."

That finality is the strongest thing in Part XIV in favour of the executive, and it is the provision an answer on civil service tenure should reach for.

Article 312 — the All India Services

Article 312(1) is where the federal significance of Part XIV sits, and the mechanism is unusual.

Parliament may by law create one or more all India services common to the Union and the States, but only if the Council of States has first declared, by a resolution supported by not less than two-thirds of the members present and voting, that it is necessary or expedient in the national interest to do so.

Three points, each frequently mis-stated.

The threshold is two-thirds of those present and voting, not of the total membership. This is the same formula as Article 249, and it is not the Article 368 special majority.

Only the Rajya Sabha can start it. The states' own House must consent before Parliament may legislate. That is the federal safeguard: a service that will serve both levels cannot be created over the states' heads.

The IAS and the IPS were not created under Article 312. Article 312(2) says they "shall be deemed to be services created by Parliament under this article". They predate the Constitution and are brought inside it by a deeming provision.

The three All India Services

The Indian Forest Service is the only All India Service actually constituted through the Article 312 route, and it is the answer to the question of how many All India Services exist: three.

The All India Judicial Service, which does not exist

The words "(including an all-India judicial service)" were inserted into Article 312(1) by the Forty-second Amendment Act, 1976, with effect from 3 January 1977. Two further clauses came with them:

• Article 312(3): the all-India judicial service shall not include any post inferior to that of a district judge as defined in Article 236.
• Article 312(4): a law creating it may amend Chapter VI of Part VI as needed, and "no such law shall be deemed to be an amendment of this Constitution for the purposes of article 368".

That last clause is worth pausing on. It is the third place the Constitution uses this formula, alongside Article 4(2) for reorganisation laws and Article 169(3) for abolishing a Legislative Council. In each, Parliament may alter constitutional text by ordinary law and the change is not counted as an amendment. Recognising the pattern is worth more than memorising the three separately. See Amendments, Schedules & Special Provisions.

The service has never been constituted. A comprehensive proposal was approved by the Committee of Secretaries in November 2012, and the question was taken up again at a Parliamentary Consultative Committee in March 2017 and by the Parliamentary Committee on the Welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes on 22 February 2021. The Government's stated position is that a properly framed All India Judicial Service would strengthen justice delivery and improve social inclusion, but that there is no consensus among the High Courts and the state governments, and so the proposal remains unimplemented as of September 2026.

A constitutional provision, a government in favour of it, and repeated committee approval have between them produced no service in nearly fifty years. That is the answer to any question asking whether Article 312(1) has been used for the judiciary.

Source: Department of Justice, Ministry of Law and Justice, replies to Parliament, most recently in the Rajya Sabha Replies compilation for the Winter Session, 2025.

Article 312A, and the article that was deleted

Article 312A, inserted by the Twenty-eighth Amendment Act, 1972 with effect from 29 August 1972, lets Parliament vary or revoke, prospectively or retrospectively, the service conditions of officers who had been appointed by the Secretary of State or the Secretary of State in Council to a civil service of the Crown in India before the Constitution commenced. In plain terms, it deals with the pension and service rights of the old Indian Civil Service.

The same amendment omitted Article 314, which had guaranteed those officers their existing conditions of service. Article 312A carries a proviso protecting a narrow group even so: where such a person holds or has held office as a Judge of the Supreme Court or a High Court, as Comptroller and Auditor General, as Chairman or member of a Public Service Commission, or as Chief Election Commissioner, Parliament may not vary their conditions to their disadvantage after appointment, except so far as those conditions apply by reason of the original Secretary of State appointment.

Article 313 is a transitional provision keeping pre-Constitution service laws in force until superseded.

Confusion pairs

Prelims quick-fire facts

• Article 309 proviso: President or Governor may make service rules only until an Act of the appropriate legislature provides otherwise.
• Article 310: pleasure doctrine, subject to what the Constitution itself expressly provides.
• Article 311 does not protect defence service personnel.
• Article 311(2) was substituted by the 15th Amendment, 1963; the 42nd Amendment, 1976 removed the separate hearing on the quantum of penalty.
• Under Article 311(3), the disciplinary authority's decision on whether an inquiry was reasonably practicable is final.
• Article 312: Rajya Sabha resolution by two-thirds of members present and voting.
• Three All India Services: IAS, IPS and the Indian Forest Service, the last created in 1966 under the All India Services Act, 1951.
• The all-India judicial service was written into Article 312(1) by the 42nd Amendment and has never been constituted.
• Article 312(4): a law creating the AIJS is not an amendment for Article 368 purposes.
• Article 314 stands omitted, by the 28th Amendment, 1972.

Exam strategy

For Prelims, learn Article 311 as a structure rather than a paragraph: two safeguards, three exceptions, and one finality clause. Almost every question is asking which of those five things applies to the facts given.

For Mains, Part XIV is the constitutional half of every civil services answer, and the half that is usually missing. A question on bureaucratic neutrality, arbitrary transfers, or political interference is stronger when it locates the problem precisely: the Constitution secures the civil servant against dismissal through Article 311 and says nothing at all about transfer or posting, which is why tenure insecurity in practice operates through the transfer power rather than through disciplinary proceedings. Pair that with the reform proposals in Civil Services Reform and the answer has both a diagnosis and a remedy.

On the All India Judicial Service, the useful framing is federal rather than administrative. The obstacle has never been the Constitution, which has provided for it since 1977. It is that Article 312 requires the states' House to move first, and the High Courts and state governments have not agreed.

Sources

• The Constitution of India, as on 11 November 2025, Legislative Department, Ministry of Law and Justice. Articles 308 to 314 and their amendment footnotes read directly from the published volume. legislative.gov.in
• The All-India Services Act, 1951, and the Indian Forest Service (Cadre) Rules, 1966, published by the Department of Personnel and Training. dopt.gov.in
• Department of Justice, Ministry of Law and Justice, parliamentary replies on the status of the All India Judicial Service. doj.gov.in