BPSC 71st CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 58 of 150

Correct — A, 1 and 4 are correct. Take the four subjects one at a time against the Seventh Schedule as it now stands. Statement 1, protection of wildlife, is Concurrent List Entry 17B, printed in the Constitution as 'Protection of wild animals and birds.' It was not there originally: Entries 11A, 17A, 17B and 20A were inserted into the Concurrent List by section 57 of the Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976, with effect from 3 January 1977, and the same section simultaneously omitted Entries 19 and 20 of the State List — which were Forests and Protection of wild animals and birds. So wildlife did not become a shared subject; it was moved, out of the States' exclusive domain and into the shared one. Statement 4, price control, is Concurrent List Entry 34, which reads simply 'Price control.' — an original entry, unamended, and the shortest entry in the list. That is two Concurrent items, which already points to option (a); the other two confirm it. Statement 2, income on agriculture, is State List Entry 46, 'Taxes on agricultural income.' Its mirror sits in Union List Entry 82, 'Taxes on income other than agricultural income.' — the Union's power over income tax is defined by carving agricultural income out of it, and Article 366(1) supplies the definition. Statement 3, tax on electricity consumption or sale, is State List Entry 53, 'Taxes on the consumption or sale of electricity.' This is the finest cut in the question, and it is deliberate: 'Electricity' by itself is Concurrent List Entry 38, but the tax on consuming or selling it is a State head. A candidate who recalls only that electricity is a Concurrent subject will mark statement 3 correct and land on option (b). Entry 53 also survived the Constitution (One Hundred and First Amendment) Act, 2016, which restructured the State List's tax entries for GST — it omitted Entries 52 and 55 and substituted Entry 54, but left electricity duty untouched as a State levy. So the Concurrent pair is 1 and 4, and the State pair is 2 and 3.

• (b)2 and 3 are correct — The exact mirror image of the truth, and the strongest distractor because it has a pattern behind it: statements 2 and 3 are the two items phrased as taxes, so they cluster naturally in the mind. But both are State List heads — Entry 46 'Taxes on agricultural income' and Entry 53 'Taxes on the consumption or sale of electricity.' Choosing this option means calling the two exclusively State entries the Concurrent ones.
• (c)Only 4 is correct — Right about price control, wrong to drop wildlife — and the error has a real historical basis, which is what makes it dangerous. Until 3 January 1977 protection of wild animals and birds genuinely was a State subject, Entry 20 of the State List. A candidate revising from pre-42nd Amendment logic, or from the assumption that wildlife is a forest-department matter and therefore a State one, will stop at statement 4 alone.
• (d)Only 2 is correct — The weakest option on the paper, because taxation of agricultural income is the single most famous example of an exclusively State head — Entry 46 of the State List, defined by its exclusion from Union List Entry 82. Picking it requires believing that the one item unambiguously reserved to the States is the Concurrent one, while rejecting both entries the Schedule actually places in List III.

The Seventh Schedule is the operative text of Indian federalism, and Article 246 is the switch that reads it: Parliament has exclusive power over List I, the State legislatures have exclusive power over List II, and both may legislate on List III. As originally enacted the Union List carried 97 entries, the State List 66 and the Concurrent List 47, and the original numbering has been preserved ever since — which is why you meet inserted entries like 11A, 17A, 17B and 20A, and seven blank omitted entries in the State List — 11 (Education), 19 (Forests), 20 (protection of wild animals and birds) and 29 (spread of infectious disease between States), all dropped by the Forty-second Amendment; 36 (weights and measures), dropped by the Seventh Amendment of 1956; and 52 and 55, dropped by the One Hundred and First Amendment for GST. Two structural rules make the Schedule navigable. First, concurrency is not equality: under Article 254 a State law repugnant to a Union law on a Concurrent subject is void to the extent of the repugnancy, unless the State law was reserved for the President's consideration and received his assent — and even then Parliament may legislate afresh and override it. Second, taxation is treated as a separate species of entry. The framers kept general heads of taxation out of the Concurrent List altogether to avoid concurrent taxing powers and the double taxation they invite; List III's only fiscal entries are narrow ones on recovery of claims (43), stamp duties other than rates of stamp duty (44) and fees (47). Whatever is left over falls to the Union under Article 248 read with Union List Entry 97, the residuary power.

There is a mechanical route to this answer that works even if you cannot recall the entry numbers. Notice how the four items are phrased. Two of them — 'Income on Agriculture' and 'Tax on Electricity consumption or sale' — are taxation heads, and the Constitution deliberately excludes general taxing powers from the Concurrent List, so a tax head almost always sits in List I or List II and virtually never in List III. Apply that once and statements 2 and 3 are gone, which leaves 1 and 4 and identifies option (a) without a single entry number. Then confirm with the two remembered facts. Wildlife was pulled into the Concurrent List by the 42nd Amendment of 1976 along with forests, and price control has been Concurrent Entry 34 since 1950. The single discriminating fact, if you are allowed only one, is the split between a subject and the tax on that subject. 'Electricity' is Concurrent List Entry 38; 'Taxes on the consumption or sale of electricity' is State List Entry 53. The Constitution does this repeatedly — Concurrent Entry 35 covers mechanically propelled vehicles, while State Entry 57 covers taxes on vehicles and is expressly made subject to Entry 35. A candidate who has never noticed that split will read 'electricity' in statement 3, remember that electricity is Concurrent, and choose option (b), which is the mirror image of the right answer. The other classic error is temporal: revising from the pre-1977 position, where wildlife and forests were State List Entries 20 and 19, produces option (c).

• Concurrent List Entry 17B reads 'Protection of wild animals and birds.' — inserted, along with Entries 11A (Administration of Justice), 17A (Forests) and 20A (Population control and family planning), by section 57 of the Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976, with effect from 3 January 1977.
• The same section 57 omitted State List Entries 19 (Forests) and 20 (Protection of wild animals and birds), so those two subjects were transferred out of the States' exclusive domain rather than merely added to List III — the single most useful fact on this question.
• Concurrent List Entry 34 is 'Price control.', an original 1950 entry; the counterpart State entries on the same economic ground are State List Entry 26 (trade and commerce within the State) and Entry 27 (production, supply and distribution of goods), both expressly made subject to Concurrent List Entry 33.
• The two State heads in the question are Entry 46, 'Taxes on agricultural income.', and Entry 53, 'Taxes on the consumption or sale of electricity.'; Union List Entry 82 is its mirror, 'Taxes on income other than agricultural income.', and Article 366(1) defines agricultural income by reference to the income-tax enactments.
• The subject-versus-tax split is systematic: 'Electricity' is Concurrent List Entry 38 while the tax on it is State List Entry 53, and 'Mechanically propelled vehicles' is Concurrent List Entry 35 while State List Entry 57 taxes vehicles subject to that entry. Entry 53 was untouched by the Constitution (One Hundred and First Amendment) Act, 2016, which omitted State List Entries 52 and 55 and substituted Entry 54 when GST was introduced.

• Reading 'electricity' and marking statement 3 Concurrent — 'Electricity' is Concurrent List Entry 38, but the tax on its consumption or sale is State List Entry 53, a different entry in a different list
• Revising the pre-1977 position, in which forests and wildlife were State List Entries 19 and 20 — both were omitted and re-inserted into the Concurrent List by the 42nd Amendment with effect from 3 January 1977
• Assuming any subject where the Centre runs a scheme is a Concurrent subject — taxes on agricultural income remain exclusively with the States under Entry 46 whatever the Union's programmes on agriculture

BPSC gives you four bare subjects and asks which sit in the Concurrent List, so the whole question is a direct recall test on the Seventh Schedule — and it earns its marks by sliding one item from a subject into the tax on that subject, which is a trap you defeat by reading the phrasing rather than the topic. UPSC has asked the same schedule for thirty years but rarely so nakedly: in 2004 it ran it as a not-correctly-matched pairs question spanning all three lists, in the same year it embedded a false List claim inside an assertion-reason item, and in 2013 it slipped 'Economic and social planning is in the Concurrent List' into a three-statement set on planning bodies.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following pairs of a subject and its list under the Seventh Schedule is NOT correctly matched?

  • (a)Electricity — Concurrent List
  • (b)Taxes on the consumption or sale of electricity — Concurrent List
  • (c)Taxes on agricultural income — State List
  • (d)Taxes on income other than agricultural income — Union List

  Answer(b) Taxes on the consumption or sale of electricity — Concurrent List. That is State List Entry 53; the general subject 'Electricity' is Concurrent List Entry 38, and the other two pairs are correct as Entry 46 of the State List and Entry 82 of the Union List.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following subjects were transferred from the State List to the Concurrent List by the Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976? 1. Forests 2. Protection of wild animals and birds 3. Public health and sanitation 4. Education

  • (a)1 and 2 only
  • (b)1, 2 and 4 only
  • (c)2, 3 and 4 only
  • (d)1, 2, 3 and 4

  Answer(b) 1, 2 and 4 only — the 42nd Amendment inserted Forests (17A), Protection of wild animals and birds (17B) and the substituted education entry (25) into the Concurrent List; public health and sanitation remains State List Entry 6.