BPSC 70th CCE Re-exam Prelims General Studies · Question 69 of 142

Correct — D, Three tier structure of local self government at the village, block and district levels. The Constitution states this outright. Article 243B(1), inserted by the Constitution (Seventy-third Amendment) Act, 1992 and in force from 24 April 1993, reads: 'There shall be constituted in every State, Panchayats at the village, intermediate and district levels in accordance with the provisions of this Part.' Those three levels are the Gram Panchayat at the village, the Panchayat Samiti at the intermediate or block level, and the Zila Parishad at the district. The design was not invented in 1992 — the Balwant Rai Mehta Committee had recommended exactly this three-tier scheme of 'democratic decentralisation' in 1957, its recommendation was accepted by the National Development Council in January 1958, and Jawaharlal Nehru inaugurated Panchayati Raj at Nagaur in Rajasthan on 2 October 1959. What the 73rd Amendment did was to lift that arrangement out of State discretion and into the Constitution, with a fixed five-year term, mandatory elections within six months of dissolution, reservation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in proportion to population and not less than one-third of seats for women, a State Finance Commission every five years and a State Election Commission to conduct the polls. There is exactly one lawful departure from the three tiers, and Article 243B(2) sets it out: 'Panchayats at the intermediate level may not be constituted in a State having a population not exceeding twenty lakhs.' That is a narrow exemption for small States, not an alternative model.

• (a)Two tier system of local self government at the village and block levels — This is what a small State looks like after applying the Article 243B(2) exemption — except that the exemption removes the intermediate tier and leaves village and district, not village and block. So the option describes neither the general rule nor the exception correctly. It is also close to the Ashok Mehta Committee's 1977 recommendation, which proposed a two-tier system, but that recommendation was never the constitutional scheme.
• (b)Single tier structure of local self government at the village level — The Gram Panchayat alone. This is the popular picture of panchayati raj — the village council — and it is the tier that existed in many States before 1959 and again wherever the higher tiers had been allowed to lapse. But Article 243B(1) requires three, and the whole point of the intermediate and district tiers is to give rural government a unit large enough to plan and to spend.
• (c)Four tier system of local self government at the village, block, district and in the State levels — There is no panchayat at the State level and there cannot be one — the State Legislature sits above the system, not inside it. Part IX creates rural local government within a State; a State-level panchayat would duplicate the legislature it reports to. The option works as a decoy because a candidate who has learned 'village, block, district' may add the obvious next rung upwards without noticing that it is a different kind of body altogether.

Panchayati Raj is India's system of rural local self-government, and its constitutional home is Part IX, Articles 243 to 243-O, inserted by the 73rd Amendment. The essential architecture is a three-tier pyramid: Gram Panchayat at the village, Panchayat Samiti at the block, Zila Parishad at the district, with the Gram Sabha — every registered voter of the village — as the base from which the village panchayat draws its authority. Around that skeleton the Amendment fixed six guarantees that States cannot dilute: a five-year term with elections within six months of any dissolution, reservation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes proportionate to their population, not less than one-third of all seats and of chairperson posts for women, a State Election Commission to conduct the polls, a State Finance Commission every five years to review panchayat finances, and the Eleventh Schedule's list of twenty-nine subjects that States may devolve. The word 'may' in that last item is the system's weakness: functions, funds and functionaries are devolved at each State's discretion, so the constitutional structure is uniform while the real powers of a panchayat vary sharply from State to State.

The answer can be reached by eliminating on principle rather than by recall. Ask what a *local* self-government tier is: a body of elected representatives for an area smaller than the State. A State-level panchayat is therefore a contradiction, which removes option (c) at once. Then ask which units of rural India have an administrative existence — village, block and district all do, and each already has an officer and an office attached to it, so a system built on those three is the natural one. That leaves the three-tier answer standing while the single-tier and two-tier options describe fragments of it. Two refinements are worth carrying beyond the question. First, the exemption in Article 243B(2) is population-based — under twenty lakhs — and it drops the intermediate tier, which is why Goa, Sikkim and several small States have run two-tier systems. Second, the parallel for urban India is Part IXA and the 74th Amendment, which creates municipalities in three forms — Nagar Panchayat, Municipal Council and Municipal Corporation — a classification by settlement type rather than a hierarchy of tiers.

• Article 243B(1), verbatim: 'There shall be constituted in every State, Panchayats at the village, intermediate and district levels in accordance with the provisions of this Part.'
• Article 243B(2) allows the intermediate tier to be omitted in a State with a population not exceeding twenty lakhs — the only lawful departure from three tiers.
• Part IX was inserted by the Constitution (Seventy-third Amendment) Act, 1992 and came into force on 24 April 1993, now observed as National Panchayati Raj Day.
• The three-tier design came from the Balwant Rai Mehta Committee of 1957, accepted by the National Development Council in January 1958; Nehru inaugurated Panchayati Raj at Nagaur on 2 October 1959. The Ashok Mehta Committee of 1977 later recommended a two-tier scheme, which was not adopted.
• The 73rd Amendment guarantees a five-year term, elections within six months of dissolution, reservation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and of not less than one-third of seats for women, a State Election Commission, a State Finance Commission every five years, and the Eleventh Schedule's twenty-nine subjects.

• Adding a State-level tier. Part IX creates local self-government within a State; the State Legislature is not a panchayat.
• Treating the two-tier exemption as general. Article 243B(2) applies only to States with a population not exceeding twenty lakhs, and it removes the intermediate tier, leaving village and district.
• Confusing the Ashok Mehta Committee's two-tier recommendation of 1977 with the constitutional scheme. The Constitution followed the Balwant Rai Mehta three-tier design.

BPSC asks the structure flat — how many tiers and which ones — and builds its wrong options by subtracting a tier or adding one. UPSC has asked this identical question in that same flat form once, in 1996, but has since preferred the machinery around it: what the 73rd Amendment did and did not provide, or where a State Finance Commission fits.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under Article 243B, the intermediate level of Panchayats may be omitted in a State having a population not exceeding

  • (a)Five lakhs
  • (b)Ten lakhs
  • (c)Twenty lakhs
  • (d)Fifty lakhs

  Answer(c) Twenty lakhs — the only lawful departure from the three-tier structure, which is why several small States run a two-tier system of village and district panchayats.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The three-tier Panchayati Raj system was first recommended by

  • (a)The Ashok Mehta Committee
  • (b)The Balwant Rai Mehta Committee
  • (c)The L. M. Singhvi Committee
  • (d)The G. V. K. Rao Committee

  Answer(b) The Balwant Rai Mehta Committee — which recommended 'democratic decentralisation' in 1957; the Ashok Mehta Committee of 1977 later proposed a two-tier scheme that was not adopted.