BPSC 70th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 8 of 143

Correct — B, 85 years. The facility the stem is describing is the Election Commission's optional home-voting arrangement, under which a qualifying elector votes by postal ballot at home instead of travelling to a polling station, and the qualifying age for senior citizens was set at 85. The Commission's own account of the 2024 general election puts it in those words twice over: that "voting from the comfort of home for senior citizens above 85 years of age and PwDs with 40% benchmark disability was extended for the first time on pan India basis in General Elections 2024", and that "any eligible citizen aged 85 and above or with 40% benchmarked disability, can avail the provision of home voting facility through postal ballot in these elections". Before the 2024 revision the senior-citizen threshold stood at 80, which is why the stem is careful to date itself — "after the changes made in March 2024" — and why 80 is printed as option (a). The mechanics matter as much as the number, because BPSC has asked about them elsewhere: the home vote is not posted by the elector, it is collected. A full contingent of polling staff travels to the house with security personnel, agents of the candidates are permitted to accompany the team and witness the process, and the secrecy of the ballot is maintained throughout. The facility is also optional, not automatic — an elector who qualifies may still choose to vote at the booth, and many did.

• (a)80 years — 80 years — and this is the whole trap. It is the figure that applied before the revision, so it is the number printed in older notes and repeated on coaching lists. The stem defuses it by dating itself: it asks for the age "after the changes made in March 2024", which by construction excludes whatever the age was before those changes. A candidate who reads the date clause and still answers 80 has answered a different question from the one asked.
• (c)90 years — 90 years — ninety is not the threshold this scheme uses, at any stage of it. It is the kind of round, plausible-sounding number that gets printed to absorb candidates who know the threshold was raised but not how far it moved. Raising the bar to ninety would also have shrunk the eligible group to a fraction of its size, which is the opposite of the Commission's stated aim of widening participation.
• (d)82 years — 82 years — pure noise, and deliberately close to the correct figure. Electoral thresholds in India are set at round numbers (18 for the franchise, 25 for Lok Sabha candidature, 30 for Rajya Sabha, 40 per cent for benchmark disability); an odd figure such as 82 fits none of them. Its only function is to punish a half-remembered '8-something'.

Indian election law separates two things that students routinely merge: who is entitled to vote, and how that vote may be cast. The entitlement is constitutional. Article 326 provides that elections to the House of the People and to every State Legislative Assembly shall be on the basis of adult suffrage, and the qualifying age was brought down from twenty-one to eighteen by the Constitution (Sixty-first Amendment) Act, 1988. The method, by contrast, is subordinate legislation — the Representation of the People Acts of 1950 and 1951 and the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961, made under them. Ordinary electors vote in person at a polling station. A limited set of categories may instead vote by post: service voters such as members of the armed forces, electors on election duty, electors under preventive detention, and — a later addition to the Rules — "absentee voters", the class that covers senior citizens, persons with benchmark disability and notified essential-services workers. Because the absentee-voter age lives in the Rules and not in the Constitution, it can be revised by notification. That is precisely what happened here, and it is why a number that looks fundamental is in fact easy to move.

Reason from the shape of the options before you reach for memory. Two of the four — 82 and 90 — are unattached to anything in Indian election law, which reduces the question to a straight contest between 80 and 85. At that point the stem itself decides it. A question that says "after the changes made in March 2024" is telling you that the number changed in March 2024, so the pre-change figure cannot be the answer; 80 is the stale number the stem has already ruled out, and it is printed as option (a) for exactly that reason. The corroborating memory is the headline accessibility story of the 2024 Lok Sabha election, which was reported in the same breath every time: home voting for electors aged 85 and above and for those with 40 per cent benchmark disability, offered across the whole country for the first time in a general election. Store the two numbers as a pair — 85 and 40 per cent — because they always appear together, and an examiner who wants a harder version of this question will ask for the disability percentage instead of the age.

• In the 2024 Lok Sabha election the home-voting facility through postal ballot was open to any eligible elector aged 85 and above, or with 40 per cent benchmark disability — the Election Commission's own formulation.
• The Commission describes the optional home-voting facility as having been made available "for the first time in the history of India's general elections", extended on a pan-India basis in 2024.
• Postal voting in India runs on the Representation of the People Acts, 1950 and 1951 and the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961; the "absentee voter" class covering senior citizens, persons with benchmark disability and notified essential-services workers is a later addition to those Rules, which is why its qualifying age can be revised by notification rather than by constitutional amendment.
• Home voting is collected, not posted: a full contingent of polling staff visits the elector's house with security personnel, candidates' agents may accompany them to witness the process, and the secrecy of the ballot is preserved.
• The voting age itself is constitutional — Article 326, adult suffrage, lowered from 21 to 18 by the Constitution (Sixty-first Amendment) Act, 1988 — and cannot be changed by a rule notification the way the 85-year postal-ballot threshold was.
• Other 2024 accessibility figures from the same Commission record: about 2,697 polling stations were managed by officials with disabilities, Uttar Pradesh setting up the most at 302; over 48,260 third-gender electors were enrolled nationwide, led by Tamil Nadu with 8,467.

• Answering 80 because that is the number in older material. The stem's phrase 'after the changes made in March 2024' exists specifically to exclude the pre-revision figure.
• Mixing up the thresholds that travel together — 85 years for the senior-citizen home vote, 40 per cent for benchmark disability, 18 years for the franchise itself. An examiner only has to swap one of them to make the same question look new.
• Assuming home voting is compulsory for anyone above the age, or that the elector posts the ballot personally. It is optional and opted into, and the ballot is collected at the house by a polling team.

BPSC asks this as flat numeric recall pinned to a month — 'after the changes made in March 2024' — and prints the superseded figure as one of the four options, so the date clause in the stem is doing real work and must be read. Expect the same treatment for any threshold the Government revised during the year. UPSC almost never asks the number; it asks what kind of right the vote is, who conducts elections and under what article, and who may file a nomination paper, so the same syllabus area is examined through the character of the franchise rather than through a figure.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In the 2024 general election, electors with what minimum percentage of benchmark disability were eligible for the home-voting facility through postal ballot ?

  • (a)20 per cent
  • (b)40 per cent
  • (c)50 per cent
  • (d)75 per cent

  Answer(b) 40 per cent — the Election Commission offered home voting to electors aged 85 and above or with 40 per cent benchmark disability. The two figures are always quoted together.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The voting age in India was reduced from 21 years to 18 years by which Constitutional Amendment ?

  • (a)42nd Amendment
  • (b)44th Amendment
  • (c)52nd Amendment
  • (d)61st Amendment

  Answer(d) 61st Amendment — the Constitution (Sixty-first Amendment) Act, 1988 amended Article 326. The 42nd added 'Socialist' and 'Secular' to the Preamble, the 44th restored several changes the 42nd had made, and the 52nd introduced the anti-defection law in the Tenth Schedule.