BPSC 70th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 19 of 143

Correct — D, Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy. He is the only person in India's history to have occupied both the Chair of the Lok Sabha and Rashtrapati Bhavan, and he held the Speakership twice over. His first term as Speaker ran from 17 March 1967 to 19 July 1969, in the Fourth Lok Sabha. He returned to the Chair on 26 March 1977 at the start of the Sixth Lok Sabha, and that second term lasted only three months and seventeen days, ending on 13 July 1977 when he stepped down to contest the presidential election. He took office as the sixth President of India on 25 July 1977 and served the full five-year term to 25 July 1982. Two further facts make him the single most examinable of India's Presidents. He remains the only President of India to have been elected unopposed. And the 1977 election was not his first attempt: he had contested the presidency in 1969 as the Congress's official candidate and lost, which is precisely why the man who beat him then, V. V. Giri, is printed as option (a) here. His career before the Speakership was entirely in Andhra politics and the Union Cabinet — Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh from 1956 to 1960 and again from 1962 to 1964, President of the Congress from 1960 to 1962, and then Union Minister first for Steel and Mines and afterwards for Transport, Civil Aviation, Shipping and Tourism. Nothing in the other three careers comes anywhere near the Chair of the House.

• (a)V. V. Giri — V. V. Giri — the fourth President of India, and a genuinely dangerous option because his path to the office crossed Reddy's directly: Giri defeated Reddy in the presidential election of 1969. His own career began in the trade-union movement, and he served as a Governor and then as Vice-President of India before becoming President. Vice-President is the office candidates most readily confuse with Speaker here, since both preside over a House, but the Vice-President chairs the Rajya Sabha ex officio and is not its elected Speaker. Giri never held the Lok Sabha Chair.
• (b)Giani Zail Singh — Giani Zail Singh — the seventh President of India, whose route ran through state and Union executive office rather than through Parliament's presiding chair. He was Chief Minister of Punjab and afterwards Union Home Minister before being elected President in 1982, succeeding Reddy himself. Being the immediate successor is what puts him on this list; a candidate who remembers that the two names sit next to each other in the sequence of Presidents can attach the wrong biography to the right period.
• (c)A. P. J. Abdul Kalam — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam — the eleventh President of India, and the most widely recognised name among the four, which is exactly why it is here. He came to the office from science rather than from politics, having worked at the Defence Research and Development Organisation and served as Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government. He never contested an election to any legislature and never held any legislative office at all, so he could not have been Speaker of the Lok Sabha at any point.

The Speaker of the Lok Sabha and the President of India occupy very different constitutional positions, and the reason only one person has ever held both is that their career routes almost never overlap. Article 93 provides that the House of the People shall choose two of its own members to be Speaker and Deputy Speaker, so the Speaker must be a sitting member of the House — which is why Reddy had to leave the Chair in July 1977 before he could take the presidency. The President, by contrast, is not a member of any legislature at all; under Articles 54 and 55 the President is elected by an electoral college of the elected members of both Houses of Parliament and the elected members of the legislative assemblies of the States, to which the Seventieth Amendment, 1992 later added the elected members of the assemblies of Delhi and Puducherry, voting by proportional representation with a single transferable vote. Presidents have therefore been drawn from very varied backgrounds — a scholar in Radhakrishnan, a trade unionist in Giri, a scientist in Kalam, career politicians in most of the rest — and the Speakership, which requires a long parliamentary career and cross-party acceptability, has produced only one of them.

Do not try to retrieve the fact the question asks for. Retrieve each of the four careers instead and check which one contains the office named, because three of these biographies are famous and none of the three passes through the Chair of the Lok Sabha. Kalam is the fastest elimination: he was a scientist who held no legislative office whatever, so no parliamentary post can be attached to him. Zail Singh's route is Punjab Chief Minister and then Union Home Minister — state executive followed by Union executive, with no parliamentary presiding role. Giri's is trade unionism, then a governorship, then the Vice-Presidency, and the Vice-President is the ex officio Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, which is where the confusion with 'Speaker' comes from and is worth deliberately separating. That leaves Reddy, and his biography is the outlier that the question exists to test. A useful cross-check if the careers blur: the answer to any question of the form 'who was both Speaker and President' can only be Reddy, because he is the only person the description has ever fitted.

• Neelam Sanjiva Reddy was Speaker of the Lok Sabha twice — from 17 March 1967 to 19 July 1969 in the Fourth Lok Sabha, and from 26 March 1977 to 13 July 1977 in the Sixth — and is the only person to have held both the Speakership and the Presidency.
• He was the sixth President of India, in office from 25 July 1977 to 25 July 1982, and remains the only President of India to have been elected unopposed.
• He had already lost one presidential election, in 1969, to V. V. Giri — the candidate printed as option (a) in this very question.
• Before Delhi his career was in Andhra Pradesh: Chief Minister from 1956 to 1960 and again from 1962 to 1964, President of the Indian National Congress from 1960 to 1962, then Union Minister for Steel and Mines and later for Transport, Civil Aviation, Shipping and Tourism.
• The President's Secretariat's own numbering places the four names in this order: V. V. Giri fourth President, Neelam Sanjiva Reddy sixth, Giani Zail Singh seventh and A. P. J. Abdul Kalam eleventh.
• Article 93 requires the Speaker to be chosen from among the members of the House of the People, which is why Reddy resigned the Chair on 13 July 1977 before contesting for the Presidency later that month.

• Confusing the Chair of the Rajya Sabha with the Speakership. V. V. Giri was Vice-President and therefore ex officio Chairman of the Rajya Sabha; he was never Speaker of the Lok Sabha.
• Picking the most famous name. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam is the best known of the four and held no legislative office at all.
• Assuming that because Zail Singh followed Reddy as President their earlier careers ran along similar lines. Zail Singh came through the Punjab Chief Ministership and the Union Home Ministry.

BPSC asks constitutional office-holders as a plain who-among-the-following, with three well-known names whose careers can be checked against the office in the stem and one that actually fits — so the paper rewards knowing career paths rather than isolated facts. UPSC handles the same ground either as an odd-one-out on who never held a named office, or as multi-statement questions on the office itself: whether the Speaker holds office during the pleasure of the President, whether a Speaker must be a member of the House, or who may move a resolution to remove a presiding officer.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which President of India was elected unopposed ?

  • (a)Dr. Rajendra Prasad
  • (b)V. V. Giri
  • (c)Neelam Sanjiva Reddy
  • (d)Dr. Zakir Husain

  Answer(c) Neelam Sanjiva Reddy — elected without a contest in 1977, the only President of India for whom that is true. He had lost the 1969 election to V. V. Giri eight years earlier.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Constitution of India, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha

  • (a)may be a person who is not a member of the House
  • (b)must be chosen from among the members of the House of the People
  • (c)is nominated by the President of India
  • (d)is the ex officio Chairman of the Rajya Sabha

  Answer(b) must be chosen from among the members of the House of the People — Article 93. Option (d) describes the Vice-President of India, who chairs the Rajya Sabha, not the Speaker.