BPSC 69th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 58 of 144

Correct — B, 1975. Sikkim was admitted as a State by the Constitution (Thirty-sixth Amendment) Act, 1975, and every date that Act fixes for itself falls in that year. The stem's own phrase comes from the Act's Statement of Objects and Reasons, signed by Y. B. Chavan on 19 April 1975: 'it is proposed to include Sikkim as a full-fledged State in the First Schedule to the Constitution and to allot to Sikkim one seat in the Council of States and one seat in the House of the People.' The four operative sections did exactly that. Section 2 inserted, after entry 21 of the First Schedule, the entry '22. Sikkim — The territories which immediately before the commencement of the Constitution (Thirty-sixth Amendment) Act, 1975, were comprised in Sikkim' — which is why Sikkim is always called India's 22nd State. Section 3 inserted Article 371F, the article of special provisions that still governs Sikkim. Section 4 amended the Fourth Schedule to allot Sikkim one seat in the Council of States and substituted the figure 232 for 231 in the total. Section 5 made the consequential deletions: Article 2A was omitted, the Tenth Schedule of that day was omitted, and the cross-references to its paragraph 4 were struck out of Articles 80(1) and 81(1). The footnotes printed in the official text of the Constitution date all of these w.e.f. 26 April 1975, because section 1(2) provides that the Act 'shall be deemed to have come into force on the date on which the Bill for this Act ... as passed by the House of the People, is passed by the Council of States'. The Act itself is then dated '[16th May, 1975]', the day of the President's assent. Commencement running ahead of assent is deliberate, not a printing error: Article 371F(p) was written to validate 'all things done and all actions taken in or in relation to the State of Sikkim ... during the period commencing on the appointed day and ending immediately before the date on which the Constitution (Thirty-sixth Amendment) Act, 1975, receives the assent of the President.' So the Constitution names two candidate moments for Sikkim's statehood, 26 April 1975 and 16 May 1975, and both of them are in 1975.

• (a)1974 — The year of the machinery that stopped one step short of statehood, which is what makes it the designed trap. Sikkim's Assembly was elected in April 1974; the Chogyal promulgated the Government of Sikkim Act, 1974 on 4 July 1974; and Parliament passed the Constitution (Thirty-fifth Amendment) Act, 1974 to give effect to it. But that amendment inserted Article 2A, headed 'Sikkim to be associated with the Union', and a Tenth Schedule headed 'Terms and Conditions of Association of Sikkim with the Union' — association, not membership. Sikkim got a seat in each House and a promise of Indian responsibility for its defence and external relations, and remained outside the First Schedule. Even that Act is dated 22 February 1975 and was brought into force on 1 March 1975, so 1974 is not the year anything constitutional actually changed.
• (c)1976 — Nothing in 1976 altered Sikkim's status, because by then it had been a State for months. What did happen is the sort of tidying that follows admission and can be mistaken for it: Parliament passed the Election Laws (Extension to Sikkim) Act, 1976 (Act 10 of 1976, dated 25 January 1976) to extend the Representation of the People Acts of 1950 and 1951 to the State of Sikkim and to fix its Assembly at 32 directly elected seats. That Act repealed an Ordinance of 1975 and was itself deemed to have come into force on 9 September 1975 — it is dated after statehood and back-dated into the year of statehood, which is the opposite of what this option claims.
• (d)None of the above — This can only be right if 1975 is wrong, and 1975 is written into the short title of the very Act that made Sikkim a State. On a paper where option (d) is 'None of the above' this often, treat it as a claim that has to be disproved rather than a safe place to park a doubt: here it would require the Constitution (Thirty-sixth Amendment) Act, 1975 to have been passed in some other year.

A territory becomes a State of the Indian Union only when Parliament puts its name into the First Schedule, which is the constitutional list of the States and their territories. Article 2 lets Parliament 'admit into the Union, or establish, new States on such terms and conditions as it thinks fit'; Article 3 covers the rearranging of States that already exist. Sikkim was an admission under Article 2, and it came in two stages rather than one. Sikkim had been a protectorate outside India, with the Chogyal as ruler; the Agreement of 8 May 1973 between the Chogyal, the leaders of Sikkim's political parties and the Government of India began the move to responsible government, and the Government of Sikkim Act, 1974 followed. The Constitution (Thirty-fifth Amendment) Act, 1974 then created a category the Constitution has never used again — the 'associate' state under Article 2A, with its terms set out in a Tenth Schedule. Association lasted under two months of operation. After the Sikkim Assembly's resolution of 10 April 1975 and the opinion poll of 14 April 1975, the Constitution (Thirty-sixth Amendment) Act, 1975 deleted the associate category outright and admitted Sikkim as a full State, adding Article 371F to carry over its assembly, its courts, its laws and its treaties into the new constitutional order.

Two anchors settle this, and the second is the one worth training because it survives a memory lapse. The first is the amendment pairing: 35th equals 1974 equals associate state, 36th equals 1975 equals full State. The second is the First Schedule count. Sikkim is universally described as India's 22nd State, and the reason is textual — section 2 of the 36th Amendment inserted it 'after entry 21' of the First Schedule. India had 21 States in 1974 after Himachal Pradesh and Manipur, Tripura and Meghalaya; the 22nd is Sikkim; the 23rd and 24th, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh, both arrived on 20 February 1987. Anyone who can place Sikkim as the 22nd can place it after 1971 and before 1987, and the only offered year in that window that matches an amendment is 1975. The discriminating word in the stem is 'full-fledged'. It is not a coaching flourish — it is the phrase Parliament's own Statement of Objects and Reasons used, and it was chosen precisely to mark the difference from the language of the year before, 'Sikkim to be associated with the Union'. A candidate who remembers only that 'something about Sikkim happened in 1974' will pick (a); a candidate who remembers that the thing which happened in 1974 was association rather than admission will pick (b). One further curiosity explains why 1974 clings to the wrong amendment number: the Bill that became the Thirty-fifth Amendment Act, 1974 was introduced as the Constitution (Thirty-sixth Amendment) Bill, 1974, and the Bill that became the Thirty-sixth Amendment Act, 1975 was introduced as the Constitution (Thirty-eighth Amendment) Bill, 1975. Bill numbers and Act numbers do not match here, so learn the Act numbers.

• The Constitution (Thirty-sixth Amendment) Act, 1975 is dated '[16th May, 1975]' — the date of the President's assent — while its section 1(2) deems it to have come into force on the day the Bill was passed by the Council of States, which the Constitution's footnotes record as 26 April 1975
• Section 2 inserted First Schedule entry '22. Sikkim — The territories which immediately before the commencement of the Constitution (Thirty-sixth Amendment) Act, 1975, were comprised in Sikkim'; the entry is now numbered 21, having been renumbered by section 6 of the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019 with effect from 31 October 2019
• Section 3 inserted Article 371F; section 4 gave Sikkim one Council of States seat in the Fourth Schedule and raised the House's total from 231 to 232; section 5 omitted Article 2A and the then Tenth Schedule and struck the references to its paragraph 4 out of Articles 80(1) and 81(1)
• The Constitution (Thirty-fifth Amendment) Act, 1974 — dated 22 February 1975 and in force from 1 March 1975 — inserted Article 2A, 'Sikkim to be associated with the Union', and a Tenth Schedule headed 'Terms and Conditions of Association of Sikkim with the Union' under which India took sole responsibility for Sikkim's defence, territorial integrity and external relations
• The Statement of Objects and Reasons of the 36th Amendment records the Sikkim Assembly's resolution of 10 April 1975 abolishing the institution of the Chogyal, and the special opinion poll of 14 April 1975 in which 59,637 votes were cast in favour and 1,496 against, out of an electorate of about 97,000
• Article 371F(b) deemed the Assembly elected in Sikkim in April 1974, with its 32 elected members, to be the Legislative Assembly of the State duly constituted under the Constitution; Article 371F(m) bars the courts from any dispute arising out of a treaty or agreement relating to Sikkim executed before the appointed day
• The Election Laws (Extension to Sikkim) Act, 1976 (Act 10 of 1976, dated 25 January 1976) extended the Representation of the People Acts of 1950 and 1951 to Sikkim and fixed its Assembly at 32 directly elected seats; it was deemed to have come into force on 9 September 1975

• Reading 1974 as the year of statehood because the Government of Sikkim Act, the Assembly elections and the Thirty-fifth Amendment all carry that year — all three produced association, not membership of the Union
• Assuming the amendment number follows the Bill number: the Thirty-fifth Amendment Act, 1974 began as the Thirty-sixth Amendment Bill, and the Thirty-sixth Amendment Act, 1975 began as the Thirty-eighth Amendment Bill
• Confusing today's Tenth Schedule with Sikkim's. The Schedule that carried Sikkim's terms of association was deleted in 1975; the Tenth Schedule now in the Constitution is the anti-defection schedule added by the Fifty-second Amendment in 1985
• Treating the assent date and the commencement date as interchangeable — here they differ by three weeks, which is exactly why Article 371F(p) had to be written

BPSC asks this as a bare year with 'None of the above' waiting at option (d), and expects nothing beyond the date — the entire test is whether 1974 or 1975 comes to mind first. UPSC almost never asks a naked year. It buries the same fact inside a chronological sequence, as in 2006 when 'Sikkim becomes 22nd State of the Indian Union' had to be ordered against Bangladesh, Pokhran-I and SLV-3, or in 2007 when four States had to be put in order of formation; or it asks the mechanism instead, such as which Schedule must be amended to create a new State, or which regional demands Articles 371A to 371I answer. Learn the year for BPSC and the amendment number, the Schedule and the Article for UPSC.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Constitution (Thirty-fifth Amendment) Act, 1974 conferred on Sikkim the status of

  • (a)a Union Territory with a legislature
  • (b)an associate State of the Indian Union
  • (c)a full-fledged State of the Indian Union
  • (d)a protectorate under Article 3

  Answer(b) an associate State of the Indian Union — it inserted Article 2A, 'Sikkim to be associated with the Union', and a Tenth Schedule setting out the terms and conditions of that association. Full statehood came only with the Thirty-sixth Amendment in 1975.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which Article of the Constitution of India contains the special provisions with respect to the State of Sikkim?

  • (a)Article 2A
  • (b)Article 371A
  • (c)Article 371F
  • (d)Article 371H

  Answer(c) Article 371F — inserted by section 3 of the Constitution (Thirty-sixth Amendment) Act, 1975. Article 2A was the associate-state provision and was deleted by the same Act; Article 371A covers Nagaland and Article 371H covers Arunachal Pradesh.