‘Impartiality and non-partisanship are not the same as neutrality.’ Examine with reference to the contemporary debate on civil-service neutrality in India.

Definition: Impartiality is decision-making without favour across constituencies; non-partisanship is independence from party-political affiliation; neutrality, in the strong sense, is value-emptiness — which the Indian Constitution explicitly rejects in favour of substantive constitutional commitments.

Illustration: The Indian civil servant is bound to constitutional morality — affirmative action for Scheduled Castes, gender justice, secularism and federalism — and therefore cannot be neutral on these foundational values. T.N. Seshan's Election Commission tenure embodied non-partisanship without value-neutrality, enforcing the Model Code uniformly while asserting constitutional values. Ashok Khemka's land-record reversals in Haryana were impartial across political principals but principled on legality. The 2nd ARC's Tenth Report rejects 'neutrality' as a doctrine of passive complicity and endorses 'political-neutrality-with-value-commitment'. Ambedkar's constitutional morality concept anchors the distinction in the foundational text.

Application: The Civil Services Code of Ethics drafted by DoPT and the AIS (Conduct) Rules 1968 together codify impartiality and non-partisanship while binding officers to constitutional values, not value-neutrality.