The government can never be sued in India.

Article 300 explicitly allows the Union and State governments to be sued, though courts have debated limits like sovereign immunity for certain governmental functions.

Article 300 itself lists all the situations where government can be sued.

Article 300 mainly sets up the *mechanism and continuity* for suits (naming, succession from old entities); the actual scope of liability has been shaped by case law and other statutes, not spelled out in this Article's text.

The Constitution of India

Article 300

Suits and proceedings

(1) The Government of India may sue or be sued by the name of the Union of India and the Government of a State may sue or be sued by the name of the State and may, subject to any provisions which may be made by Act of Parliament or of the Legislature of such State enacted by virtue of powers conferred by this Constitution, sue or be sued in relation to their respective affairs in the like cases as the Dominion of India and the corresponding Provinces or the corresponding Indian States might have sued or been sued if this Constitution had not been enacted.§

(2) If at the commencement of this Constitution —§

(a) any legal proceedings are pending to which the Dominion of India is a party, the Union of India shall be deemed to be substituted for the Dominion in those proceedings; and (§

b) any legal proceedings are pending to which a Province or an Indian State is a party, the corresponding State shall be deemed to be substituted for the Province or the Indian State in those proceedings.§

Why this exists

Before independence, the Dominion of India, the Provinces, and hundreds of princely States could sue and be sued under British-Indian law and various local laws. When the Constitution created the Union of India and new States in 1950, the framers needed to ensure legal continuity — pending lawsuits, contracts, debts, and liabilities did not vanish or need to restart from scratch. Article 300 was designed to smoothly transfer legal identity and litigation rights and obligations from the old colonial-era entities to the new constitutional government structure, while also giving Parliament and State Legislatures the power to later modify these rules by law.

How courts read it

Courts have used Article 300's reference to 'like cases as the Dominion of India... might have sued or been sued' to import the old common-law doctrine of sovereign immunity into independent India. In State of Rajasthan v. Vidhyawati (1962), the Supreme Court held the State liable for a government driver's negligence, treating the government like any other employer. But in Kasturi Lal v. State of U.P. (1965), the Court drew a distinction between 'sovereign' functions (like police power) and 'non-sovereign' commercial functions, granting immunity for the former — a ruling much criticized for letting the State escape liability. Later, in N. Nagendra Rao & Co. v. State of A.P. (1994), the Supreme Court narrowed this immunity considerably, holding that the welfare State's expanding role left little room for blanket sovereign immunity. These cases collectively show courts wrestling with how much of the old Dominion/Crown immunity Article 300 actually preserves.

Common misconceptions

Myth: The government can never be sued in India.
Fact: Article 300 explicitly allows the Union and State governments to be sued, though courts have debated limits like sovereign immunity for certain governmental functions.
Myth: Article 300 itself lists all the situations where government can be sued.
Fact: Article 300 mainly sets up the *mechanism and continuity* for suits (naming, succession from old entities); the actual scope of liability has been shaped by case law and other statutes, not spelled out in this Article's text.