BPSC 70th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 139 of 143

Correct — C, 104th. The Constitution (One Hundred and Fourth Amendment) Act, 2019 amended Article 334, which sets the time limit on two quite separate special provisions: the reservation of seats for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the Lok Sabha and the State Legislative Assemblies, and the nomination of Anglo-Indian members. The amendment extended the first for a further ten years, to 25 January 2030, and did not extend the second. So from 25 January 2020, when the amendment took effect, the two Anglo-Indian members nominated to the Lok Sabha under Article 331 and the one nominated to certain State Legislative Assemblies under Article 333 ceased to be provided for. Note the mechanism, because examiners test it: Articles 331 and 333 were not deleted from the Constitution. What lapsed was the authority in Article 334 to continue the nomination beyond the deadline, so the seats disappeared by expiry rather than by repeal. The Anglo-Indian provision was one of the original special arrangements of 1950, meant to give a small community with no geographical concentration a voice it could not win at the ballot box, and it had been renewed every ten years until this point. The three wrong options are all real amendments from the same broad period and all deal with representation or status in some form, which is what makes the option set work: 100th, 102nd and 104th sit within four years of each other, and the 108th is a bill that a well-read candidate will half-remember without recalling that it never became law.

• (a)100th — The Constitution (One Hundredth Amendment) Act, 2015 gave effect to the Land Boundary Agreement with Bangladesh, transferring and receiving enclaves and adverse possessions and amending the First Schedule. It changed India's territory, not its scheme of reserved seats — a different kind of representation question entirely.
• (b)108th — The 108th was the Women's Reservation Bill introduced in 2008, seeking one-third of seats for women in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies. It lapsed and never became an Act, so no 108th Amendment exists — a trap for candidates who remember the number from years of news coverage. Women's reservation was finally enacted as the 106th Amendment in 2023.
• (d)102nd — The Constitution (One Hundred and Second Amendment) Act, 2018 gave constitutional status to the National Commission for Backward Classes, inserting Articles 338B and 342A. It is the closest miss because it belongs to the same cluster of amendments about disadvantaged groups and was passed only a year before the 104th.

The Constitution protects certain groups in the legislature by two different devices, and Article 334 is what puts a clock on both. The first device is reservation of seats: under Articles 330 and 332, seats are reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the Lok Sabha and in State Legislative Assemblies, filled by ordinary election in which only candidates of that community may stand. The second is nomination: under Article 331 the President could nominate up to two members of the Anglo-Indian community to the Lok Sabha if he considered the community inadequately represented, and under Article 333 a Governor could nominate one to a State Assembly. Both were framed as temporary, originally for ten years from the commencement of the Constitution, and Article 334 has been amended repeatedly to push the deadline out — by the 8th, 23rd, 45th, 62nd, 79th, 95th and finally the 104th Amendments. The 104th broke the pattern by renewing one arm and letting the other lapse.

Amendment-number questions reward a small, well-organised list rather than broad reading, and the useful unit is the cluster. Learn the recent ones together and their differences become memorable: 100th in 2015 for the Bangladesh land boundary, 101st in 2016 for the Goods and Services Tax, 102nd in 2018 for constitutional status to the National Commission for Backward Classes, 103rd in 2019 for the ten per cent economically weaker sections quota, 104th in 2019 for extending Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe reservation while dropping Anglo-Indian nomination, and 106th in 2023 for women's reservation. Two habits then do the work. First, if an option is a number you associate with a long-running Bill rather than an Act, check whether it was ever enacted — the 108th was not. Second, watch the wording of the stem: 'abolished the two seats' fits nomination to the Lok Sabha, so the amendment has to be one that touched Article 334, not one that dealt with territory or with a commission. The date is worth carrying too — 25 January 2020, the day the provision lapsed, and 25 January 2030, the new deadline for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe reservation.

• The Constitution (One Hundred and Fourth Amendment) Act, 2019 amended Article 334 and came into force on 25 January 2020
• It extended reservation of seats for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies to 25 January 2030, but did not extend Anglo-Indian nomination
• Article 331 allowed the President to nominate up to two Anglo-Indians to the Lok Sabha; Article 333 allowed a Governor to nominate one to a State Legislative Assembly
• Articles 331 and 333 were not deleted — the seats ended because the time limit in Article 334 was not renewed for them
• The 100th Amendment (2015) implemented the India–Bangladesh Land Boundary Agreement; the 102nd (2018) gave constitutional status to the National Commission for Backward Classes
• There is no 108th Amendment Act — the 108th was the Women's Reservation Bill of 2008, which lapsed; women's reservation was enacted as the 106th Amendment in 2023

• Choosing the 108th; it was a Bill that lapsed, not an enacted amendment
• Confusing the 102nd, which gave the National Commission for Backward Classes constitutional status, with the 104th
• Saying the amendment deleted Articles 331 and 333 — the articles remain; it was the time limit in Article 334 that was not renewed for them

BPSC asks constitutional amendments as bare number-to-content recall, with the distractors drawn from amendments of the same decade, so the recent cluster from the 100th onwards is high-yield and finite. UPSC prefers to test the same material sideways — through the article that carries the provision, through a statement set about nominated members, or by asking which amendments required ratification by the States — so it is worth learning each amendment with the article it changed attached to it.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under which Article could the President nominate members of the Anglo-Indian community to the Lok Sabha ?

  • (a)Article 330
  • (b)Article 331
  • (c)Article 333
  • (d)Article 334

  Answer(b) Article 331 — Article 333 covered nomination to a State Legislative Assembly, Article 330 covers reservation for SCs and STs in the Lok Sabha, and Article 334 set the time limit on all of them.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Constitution (One Hundred and Second Amendment) Act, 2018 is associated with

  • (a)The Goods and Services Tax
  • (b)Constitutional status to the National Commission for Backward Classes
  • (c)Reservation for economically weaker sections
  • (d)The India–Bangladesh Land Boundary Agreement

  Answer(b) Constitutional status to the National Commission for Backward Classes — the GST came with the 101st (2016), EWS reservation with the 103rd (2019) and the land boundary with the 100th (2015).