BPSC 71st CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 65 of 150

Correct — D, Only 4. Read the stem's polarity first: it asks which statement is NOT true, so the mark goes to the option that lists the false line, and statements 1, 2 and 3 are all sound. Article 85 puts every one of these powers in the same place and in the same pair of hands. Clause (1): "The President shall from time to time summon each House of Parliament to meet at such time and place as he thinks fit, but six months shall not intervene between its last sitting in one session and the date appointed for its first sitting in the next session." Clause (2): "The President may from time to time — (a) prorogue the Houses or either House; (b) dissolve the House of the People." Summoning is therefore the convocation, the calling-together of the House, which is statement 1. Prorogation is the act that terminates a session, which is statement 2. Dissolution ends the life of the House itself and sends the country to a general election, which is statement 3. Statement 4 is the planted error, and it is wrong twice over: prorogation is a constitutional act of the President, notified in the Gazette and exercised on the advice of the Council of Ministers under Article 74(1), and the officer who does have a power to close proceedings — the presiding officer — can only adjourn, including adjourning the House sine die, which ends a sitting and not the session. The Leader of the House is a genuine office, held in the Lok Sabha by the Prime Minister or a Minister he nominates, and its business is the arrangement of government business on the floor; nothing in that role reaches a session's termination. The Commission read it the same way when it disposed of objections, recording that statements 1, 2 and 3 are true while statement 4 is not, and citing D. D. Basu at pages 245–246. Article 85 in its present form is itself a later text: it was substituted by the Constitution (First Amendment) Act, 1951, with effect from 18 June 1951.

• (a)2 and 3 — Both statements are accurate, so neither can be the untrue one the question is hunting. Prorogation under Article 85(2)(a) terminates a session — the House survives, its members remain members, and a Bill pending in Parliament does not lapse, because Article 107(4) says so expressly. Dissolution under Article 85(2)(b) is the heavier act: it ends the House of the People itself, and under Article 83(2) the House lasts five years from the date appointed for its first meeting unless sooner dissolved. This option catches the candidate who conflates prorogation with adjournment sine die and, at the same time, half-believes that the Rajya Sabha can be dissolved.
• (b)1 and 3 — Summoning is exactly convocation — the President calling the House together at such time and place as he thinks fit — and dissolution does terminate the House. The option tempts a candidate who thinks of "summons" as merely the notice posted to individual members rather than the constitutional act of convening the House, or who reads "terminates a House" as too strong and imagines the House somehow continues in caretaker form. It does not: on dissolution every seat falls vacant. The one office that survives is the Speaker's — under the proviso to Article 94 he does not vacate office until immediately before the first meeting of the newly elected House.
• (c)Only 2 — Statement 2 is the textbook definition of prorogation and the reason candidates doubt it is always the same confusion with adjournment sine die. The two look identical from the press gallery — the House stops meeting, and prorogation usually follows the sine die adjournment by a few days — but they are different acts by different authorities with different effects. Adjournment is ordered by the Speaker or Chairman and ends a sitting; prorogation is ordered by the President and ends the session, at which point pending notices lapse and must be given afresh even though Bills survive.

Parliamentary time runs on a four-step ladder, and almost every question in this area is really asking you to place an act on the correct rung. A sitting is a single meeting of the House; it ends by adjournment, ordered by the presiding officer, and an adjournment sine die closes the sitting without naming the next date. A session is a run of sittings, beginning when the President summons the House under Article 85(1) and ending when he prorogues it under Article 85(2)(a); by convention there are three a year — Budget, Monsoon and Winter — but the Constitution prescribes no minimum number of sitting days at all, only the outer limit that six months shall not intervene between the last sitting of one session and the first sitting of the next. Dissolution under Article 85(2)(b) applies to the House of the People alone and ends the House itself: Article 83(2) gives it five years from the date appointed for its first meeting unless sooner dissolved, extendable by Parliament by law while a Proclamation of Emergency is in operation for not more than one year at a time and in no case beyond six months after the Proclamation ceases to operate. The Council of States is never dissolved — Article 83(1) makes it a continuing body with as nearly as possible one-third of its members retiring every second year. The consequences of prorogation and dissolution differ sharply, and that is where the marks are: Article 107(4) saves a Bill pending in Parliament from lapsing on prorogation; Article 107(5) saves a Bill pending in the Council of States that the House of the People has not passed from lapsing on dissolution, while Bills pending in the Lok Sabha do lapse; and Article 108(5) saves a Bill on which the President has already notified a joint sitting. The State-level mirror is Article 174, where the Governor summons, prorogues and dissolves the Legislative Assembly, with Article 172(2) making the Legislative Council, like the Rajya Sabha, immune from dissolution.

Two habits solve this item, and the first is simply reading the question. It asks which statement is NOT true, and a large share of the marks lost here go to candidates who correctly identified statements 1, 2 and 3 as true and then marked an option listing them. Check the polarity of a negative stem before you check any fact. The second habit is to ask, of every parliamentary act, a single question: presiding officer or President? Adjournment and adjournment sine die belong to the Speaker or the Chairman and end a sitting. Summoning, prorogation and dissolution belong to the President, acting on the Council of Ministers' advice under Article 74(1), and they open a session, close a session and end a House respectively. Applied to the four statements, that test disposes of the question at once. There is also a structural tell worth carrying to other papers. Statements 1, 2 and 3 are pure definitions with no actor named in them; statement 4 is the only line in the list that names an authority. When an examiner plants an office in exactly one item of a definitions list, that item is where the error has been put, because naming an authority is the cheapest way to make a definition false without touching the definition. The reason statement 4 is still plausible is that the Leader of the House is a real office recognised in the Rules of Procedure and does control the parliamentary calendar in a practical sense — he moves the business, he decides what is taken up. But arranging business inside a session and terminating the session are different orders of act, and only the second is in Article 85.

• Article 85(1): the President summons each House to meet at such time and place as he thinks fit, and six months shall not intervene between the last sitting of one session and the first sitting of the next — the Constitution fixes no minimum number of sitting days. Article 85 in its present form was substituted by the Constitution (First Amendment) Act, 1951, with effect from 18 June 1951.
• Article 85(2): the President may (a) prorogue the Houses or either House and (b) dissolve the House of the People; both are exercised on the advice of the Council of Ministers under Article 74(1), and prorogation is generally notified after the House has been adjourned sine die although there is no bar to proroguing a House that is sitting.
• Adjournment and adjournment sine die are ordered by the presiding officer and end a sitting only; the Leader of the House — in the Lok Sabha the Prime Minister or a Minister nominated by him — arranges government business under the Rules of Procedure and has no power to end a session.
• Article 83(1): the Council of States is not subject to dissolution, with as nearly as possible one-third of its members retiring every second year. Article 83(2): the House of the People continues five years from the date appointed for its first meeting unless sooner dissolved, extendable by law during a Proclamation of Emergency for one year at a time and not beyond six months after the Proclamation ceases. Under the proviso to Article 94 the Speaker continues in office until immediately before the first meeting of the new House.
• Effects: Article 107(4) — a Bill pending in Parliament does not lapse on prorogation; Article 107(5) — a Bill pending in the Council of States and not passed by the House of the People does not lapse on dissolution, while Bills pending in the Lok Sabha do; Article 108(5) — a Bill survives dissolution if the President has already notified his intention to summon a joint sitting. The State mirror is Article 174, with Article 172(2) exempting the Legislative Council from dissolution.

• Missing the negative stem — the question asks which statement is NOT true, and identifying the three true ones is only half the work
• Treating adjournment sine die as the end of the session; the session ends only when the President prorogues
• Thinking the Rajya Sabha can be dissolved — it is a continuing House under Article 83(1) with one-third retiring every second year
• Assuming a pending Bill dies at prorogation; Article 107(4) saves it, and it is dissolution that kills Bills pending in the Lok Sabha
• Believing that because the Leader of the House controls the parliamentary calendar in practice, he can close the session in law

BPSC runs this as a vocabulary ladder — four definitions with an authority quietly swapped in one of them — and wraps it in a negative stem, so the item punishes careless reading at least as often as thin knowledge. UPSC asks the same content but pushes past the definitions into the nuances a definition cannot carry: whether the President needs ministerial advice to prorogue, whether a House that is still sitting may be prorogued, whether the Speaker survives dissolution, which Bills lapse and which do not. Fix the four acts against their authorities first — the Chair adjourns, the President summons, prorogues and dissolves — and then learn the consequences, because that is the layer UPSC lives in.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following ends a sitting of the House but not the session?

  • (a)Prorogation
  • (b)Dissolution
  • (c)Adjournment sine die
  • (d)Summoning

  Answer(c) Adjournment sine die — ordered by the presiding officer, it closes a sitting without fixing the next date. Only prorogation by the President under Article 85(2)(a) ends the session, and dissolution under 85(2)(b) ends the House itself.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following Bills does NOT lapse on the dissolution of the Lok Sabha?

  • (a)A Bill pending in the Lok Sabha
  • (b)A Bill passed by the Lok Sabha but pending in the Rajya Sabha
  • (c)A Bill pending in the Rajya Sabha which has not been passed by the Lok Sabha
  • (d)A Bill returned by the President to the Lok Sabha for reconsideration

  Answer(c) A Bill pending in the Rajya Sabha which has not been passed by the Lok Sabha — Article 107(5) expressly saves it, because it has never been before the dissolved House. Article 107(4) separately saves every pending Bill from lapsing on prorogation.