BPSC 71st CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 56 of 150

Correct — D, President after consultation with the Speaker of the House of the people. The governing provision is Article 98, and within it the operative clause is Article 98(3). Read the article in its three steps. Article 98(1) begins: 'Each House of Parliament shall have a separate secretarial staff', with a proviso that this shall not be construed as preventing the creation of posts common to both Houses. Article 98(2) then provides that Parliament 'may by law regulate the recruitment, and the conditions of service of persons appointed, to the secretarial staff of either House of Parliament'. Article 98(3) supplies what governs in the meantime: 'Until provision is made by Parliament under clause (2), the President may, after consultation with the Speaker of the House of the People or the Chairman of the Council of States, as the case may be, make rules regulating the recruitment, and the conditions of service of persons appointed, to the secretarial staff of the House of the People or the Council of States, and any rules so made shall have effect subject to the provisions of any law made under the said clause.' Option (d) reproduces that clause almost word for word — the rule-making authority is the President, the Speaker is the consultee where the House of the People is concerned, and the House named in the question is the House of the People, which is the Constitution's own name for the Lok Sabha (Article 79). Get the clause number right, because this is where cards and coaching notes routinely slip: it is 98(3), not 98(2). Clause (2) vests the power in Parliament by law; clause (3) is the interim fallback the Constitution builds in so that neither House is ever left without a staffing rule, and it expressly yields to any law Parliament later makes. Behind the drafting lies a straightforward separation-of-powers idea: a legislature whose clerks, reporters, researchers and committee officers were recruited by the executive's own agencies would depend on the very government it exists to scrutinise. So the Constitution gives each House a secretariat of its own and keeps the rule-making inside the President–Speaker channel.

• (a)Prime Minister's Office (PMO) — The PMO is the Prime Minister's own secretariat inside the executive; it is not a recruiting agency for anybody, not even for the Government's own services, and it finds no mention in the Constitution. It attracts candidates who read 'in whom is the power vested' as 'who is the most powerful office'. Article 98(1)'s separate secretariat exists precisely to keep the executive's core office out of the legislature's staffing.
• (b)Union Public Service Commission — The most respectable wrong answer, because the UPSC genuinely is the Constitution's recruiting body — Article 320(1) makes it the duty of the Union Public Service Commission to conduct examinations for appointments to the services of the Union, and Articles 315 to 323 constitute and protect it. But the secretariat of a House of Parliament is not a service of the Union under executive control; Article 98 carves it out and routes it through the President with the Speaker consulted.
• (c)Staff Selection Commission — The Staff Selection Commission works under the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions and recruits Group B and Group C staff for the Ministries and Departments of the Government of India. Every element of that remit is executive, and the SSC is a body created by executive decision, not by the Constitution. Its familiarity to candidates as 'the clerical-recruitment body' is exactly what makes it tempting here, and exactly why it is wrong.

A recurring device in the Constitution is to let an institution that must stand apart from the executive control, or at least insulate, its own staff — and the standard drafting formula for it is 'X, after consultation with Y'. Article 98 does this for Parliament: each House has a separate secretarial staff, Parliament may legislate on recruitment, and until it does the President makes the rules after consulting the Speaker or the Chairman. Article 187 repeats the design word-for-word one level down for the States: each House of a State legislature has a separate secretarial staff, the State legislature may legislate, and until then the Governor makes rules after consultation with the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly or the Chairman of the Legislative Council. The judiciary gets a stronger version: under Article 146(1) appointments of officers and servants of the Supreme Court are made by the Chief Justice of India or such other Judge or officer as he may direct, and Article 229(1) gives the Chief Justice of a High Court the same power for that Court. Article 148(5) applies the same formula to audit — the conditions of service of persons serving in the Indian Audit and Accounts Department are prescribed by rules made by the President after consultation with the Comptroller and Auditor-General. Once the pattern is visible, a whole family of exam questions collapses into one idea: the more an institution is meant to check the government, the further its staffing is kept from the government's recruiting machinery.

Reason to this answer in two moves rather than trying to recall Article 98 cold. First, sort the options by which branch they belong to. The Prime Minister's Office, the Union Public Service Commission and the Staff Selection Commission are all executive-side bodies — the PMO is the executive's own office, the UPSC recruits for the services of the Union under Article 320, and the SSC recruits Group B and C posts for Government Ministries. The question, however, asks about the staff of the House of the People, which is a limb of the legislature. Handing any of those three the power to staff Parliament would make the legislature's own establishment a creature of the executive, which is the outcome Article 98(1) was written to prevent by giving each House a separate secretarial staff. That single fact — 'separate secretarial staff' — is the discriminator, and it removes three options at once. Second, notice that the surviving option is not a guess but a quotation: 'President after consultation with the Speaker' is the exact statutory formula of Article 98(3), and the appearance of the Speaker inside it is the tell, not a distraction. Two further traps sit around this question. One is over-correction: a candidate who knows that the Lok Sabha Secretariat runs its own recruitment concludes 'so the Speaker alone', and then rejects an option merely because it names the President. The other is the clause number — many notes cite 98(2). Clause (2) is Parliament's power to legislate; clause (3) is the President's rule-making power, and it operates only until such a law is made, with any rules made under it taking effect subject to that law.

• Article 98(1): 'Each House of Parliament shall have a separate secretarial staff', with a proviso that this does not prevent the creation of posts common to both Houses — the clause that keeps the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha secretariats out of the executive's recruiting machinery, each headed by its own Secretary-General.
• Article 98(2) vests in Parliament the power to regulate by law the recruitment and conditions of service of the secretarial staff of either House; Article 98(3) provides that until such a law is made the President may make those rules after consultation with the Speaker of the House of the People or the Chairman of the Council of States — so the answer is clause (3), and rules made under it have effect subject to any law made under clause (2).
• Article 187 is the State-level twin: a separate secretarial staff for each House of a State legislature, and until the State legislature legislates, the Governor makes the rules after consultation with the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly or the Chairman of the Legislative Council.
• The judicial parallels are stronger still — Article 146(1) puts appointments of officers and servants of the Supreme Court in the hands of the Chief Justice of India or a Judge or officer he directs, and Article 229(1) does the same for a High Court's Chief Justice; Article 148(5) uses the 'President after consultation' formula for staff of the Indian Audit and Accounts Department.
• The two rejected recruiting bodies have precisely defined, executive-side mandates: Article 320(1) makes it the UPSC's duty to conduct examinations for appointments to the services of the Union (Articles 315–323 constitute and protect it), while the Staff Selection Commission is a non-constitutional body under the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions that recruits Group B and Group C posts for Government Ministries and Departments.

• Citing Article 98(2) for the President's power — clause (2) is Parliament's power to legislate; the President's rule-making power is clause (3), and it lasts only until Parliament legislates
• Assuming that because the UPSC and the SSC are India's recruiting bodies they must recruit for Parliament too — both are executive-side, and Article 98(1) deliberately gives each House a separate secretarial staff
• Over-correcting to 'the Speaker alone' after learning that the Lok Sabha Secretariat runs its own recruitment — the constitutional formula is the President after consultation with the Speaker, not the Speaker by himself

BPSC asks this as a bare 'the power is vested in' one-liner and prints the constitutional formula itself as one of the four options, so a candidate who has read Article 98 once recognises the answer by its wording in seconds — memorising the article text pays directly here. UPSC almost never asks the bare authority; it hides the same idea inside a statement set, testing whether you know that an institution appoints its own staff (its 2012 paper made 'officers and staff of the Supreme Court are appointed by the Government' a false statement under Article 146) or how the President's and the Speaker's powers over the House divide between them.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Constitution of India, until the State Legislature makes a law on the subject, the rules regulating recruitment to the secretarial staff of a House of the State Legislature are made by

  • (a)The State Public Service Commission
  • (b)The Governor, after consultation with the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly or the Chairman of the Legislative Council
  • (c)The Chief Minister, on the advice of the Council of Ministers
  • (d)The Chief Secretary of the State

  Answer(b) The Governor, after consultation with the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly or the Chairman of the Legislative Council — Article 187 mirrors Article 98 at the State level, including the separate secretarial staff and the interim rule-making power.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Appointments of officers and servants of the Supreme Court of India are made by

  • (a)The President of India
  • (b)The Union Ministry of Law and Justice
  • (c)The Chief Justice of India or such other Judge or officer of the Court as he may direct
  • (d)The Union Public Service Commission

  Answer(c) The Chief Justice of India or such other Judge or officer of the Court as he may direct — Article 146(1); the parallel provision for a High Court is Article 229(1), which vests the power in that Court's Chief Justice.