UGC-NET (June 2025) · India · National Testing Agency
Original practice questions written to the published syllabus · not past papersThe laws an agribusiness manager meets most, from contracts and sale of goods to company, commodity, consumer and competition law, and the ethics of business.
In the exams: agricultural master's entrance examinations, principles of corporations (present)
How our questions for UGC-NET spread across the units of Agribusiness Law & Ethics. Difficulty: 13 easy, 20 medium, 9 hard.
| Business ethics | 9 | |
| Contract law principles (with national contract acts as examples) | 6 | |
| Sale of Goods Act 1930 | 5 | |
| Companies Act | 5 | |
| Legal systems: common law, civil law and mixed systems | 4 | |
| Consumer Protection Act | 4 | |
| Competition Act 2002 | 4 | |
| Negotiable Instruments Act | 2 | |
| Regulation of international business | 2 | |
| Right to Information Act | 1 |
Choose an answer, then open the working. Each explanation says why the right answer is right and why the others are not.
A federal constitution lists trade in foodstuffs as a concurrent subject, so both the national and the state legislatures may legislate on it. If a valid national law and a state law on that subject conflict, the usual rule is that:
B. the national law prevails to the extent of the inconsistency
Federal constitutions commonly give national law priority on shared subjects to the extent of any inconsistency: section 109 of Australia's Constitution, Article 31 of Germany's Basic Law and Article 254 of India's Constitution are examples. Neither the date of enactment nor closeness to producers decides the conflict.
A sugar mill's effluent kills fish in the river below it. Applying the polluter pays principle, who should bear the cost of cleaning the river and compensating the fishers?
A. The mill that discharged the effluent, which bears cleanup and compensation costs
The polluter pays principle, set out by the OECD in 1972 and as Principle 16 of the Rio Declaration 1992, puts the cost of prevention and remedy on the polluter; courts in several countries have applied it, India's in a 1996 tannery case among them. The public trust doctrine makes the State a trustee of rivers but does not shift the polluter's cost to taxpayers.
In common-law contract theory, a contract is best defined as:
C. an agreement enforceable by law
A contract is an agreement enforceable by law; contract codes in the English tradition state it in those words. Writing is not an essential of a contract in general, and an intention to create legal relations is necessary but not sufficient.
How do civil-law systems such as those of France and Germany generally differ from common law on consideration?
A. They need no consideration: a seriously intended promise binds, sometimes subject to form
Civil-law systems have no doctrine of consideration; some gratuitous promises need form, such as notarisation of a promise of a gift in Germany. Within the common law, codes differ too: English law requires consideration to move from the promisee and not be past, while India's code accepts consideration from a third person and past consideration.
The rule that damages for breach cover only loss arising naturally from the breach or which both parties contemplated as likely when contracting, followed across the common-law world and written into several codes, comes from:
B. Hadley v Baxendale (1854)
Hadley v Baxendale set the two-limb remoteness rule. Salomon and Turquand are company-law cases; Carlill concerns offer and acceptance.
Under sale-of-goods law in the English tradition, where property in goods is to pass at a future time or on fulfilment of a condition, the contract is:
A. an agreement to sell
Sale-of-goods statutes in this tradition distinguish a sale (property passes at once) from an agreement to sell (property passes later or on a condition). Barter is exchange of goods for goods, not for money.
A trader contracts to buy '50 tonnes of wheat from the 200 tonnes in warehouse X'. Before any wheat is set aside, the warehouse floods. Who bears the loss, as a general rule?
D. The seller: the goods are unascertained, so property has not passed, and risk prima facie follows property
No property passes in unascertained goods until they are ascertained, and risk prima facie follows property. The warehouse keeper is liable only if it failed to take reasonable care.
The principle that a company is a legal person separate from its members was established in:
B. Salomon v A Salomon and Co Ltd (1897)
Salomon is the separate-personality case. Ashbury is the ultra vires case and Turquand the indoor management rule; Carlill is contract law.
In most competition laws, which agreement is treated as the most serious, being illegal per se or presumed to harm competition?
C. An agreement among rival rice millers to fix the price they pay farmers for paddy
Horizontal agreements between competitors to fix prices, including purchase prices, are per se illegal in the United States, restrictions 'by object' in the EU and presumed harmful under many other laws. The other three are vertical agreements, usually judged by their effects.
The principle that one should act only on a maxim one could will to become a universal law, and treat people as ends and never merely as means, belongs to:
A. Kant's deontological ethics
These are formulations of Kant's categorical imperative. Utilitarianism looks to consequences; virtue ethics to character.
Ten here, 42 in the app. The Laisha app has every practice question we have written to UGC-NET in this subject, marked as you go, with timed papers, a jump-to-unanswered list and a certificate when you pass at 70 per cent.
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