BPSC 71st CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 69 of 150

No official answer — BPSC DELETED this question, so no option stands as correct and the mark was credited to every candidate who sat the paper. The Commission recorded its reasoning in the Remarks column of the final revised key published on 31 October 2025, when it disposed of candidates' objections, and it is worth reading closely because it disposes of two options at once. The Commission held that under the rules of procedure of the Lok Sabha no leave or permission of the House is required to move a censure motion, and that a motion of censure must specify the charge or the reasons for the censure, with the Speaker having the authority to decide whether the motion is admissible and in order. It cited the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in Lok Sabha, chapter on motions, together with Subhash Kashyap's Our Parliament (2020 edition, page 150). Apply that to the option set and the defect is arithmetic rather than a matter of opinion. Options (a) and (b) are flat contradictions of each other, so exactly one of them must be true — and it is (b), because a censure motion and a no-confidence motion differ on who they may be aimed at, on what they must allege and on what follows if they are carried. Option (c) is false on the Commission's own finding: stating the charge is not optional, it is the defining feature of the device, since a censure motion by definition censures somebody FOR something. That leaves option (d), which the Commission expressly held to be true. A single-answer question that contains two true statements has no key, and BPSC struck it out rather than defend one over the other. The contrast the question was reaching for is genuinely worth learning, and it turns on the leave requirement it got tangled in: a no-confidence motion under Rule 198 of the Lok Sabha's rules cannot even be taken up until the House grants leave, and the Speaker grants it only if not fewer than fifty members rise in their places in support. A censure motion carries no such threshold — the Speaker's admissibility ruling is the only filter. Do not attach a rule number to the censure motion when you revise this: Rule 198 belongs to the no-confidence motion alone, and the Lok Sabha's rules text could not be independently retrieved to confirm any number for the censure motion. This was not an isolated slip in the paper. Five of the 150 questions were struck out on the same day — Q11, this one, Q75, Q96 and Q118 — and each failed for a different kind of reason: a non-existent event, a defective option set, a misquoted title, a single wrong word and a claim about Bihar's mineral production.

• (a)It is not different from No-confidence motion — Clearly false, and the only option nobody could defend. The two motions differ on almost every axis: a censure motion may be aimed at one minister, at a group of ministers or at the whole Council, whereas a no-confidence motion lies only against the entire Council of Ministers; a censure motion must state its charge, a no-confidence motion need not state any ground at all; and a Government that loses a censure motion is not obliged to resign, while one that loses a no-confidence motion must.
• (b)It is different from the No-confidence motion — This one is TRUE, and that is precisely why the question collapsed. A candidate who marked (b) had a defensible answer — it is the direct negation of the plainly false (a), so one of the pair had to be right. It could not be scored as the single key because option (d) is true as well, and the Commission said so in its own remarks. Marks went to every candidate instead.
• (c)It is not mandatory to mention the reasons in this motion — The one squarely false statement about censure, and the option the question probably meant to punish. The Commission's remark states the opposite in terms — the motion of censure must specify the charge or the reasons for censure, and the Speaker then decides whether it is admissible and in order. It is the NO-CONFIDENCE motion that need not assign any reason, because it tests confidence rather than conduct; the censure motion is about conduct, so it must say what conduct.
• (d)Permission of the House is not essential to present it — This one is TRUE as well, on the Commission's express finding — under the rules of procedure of the Lok Sabha no leave or permission of the House is needed to move a censure motion. The contrast is with the no-confidence motion, where Rule 198 requires the Speaker to ask those in favour of leave to rise, and leave is refused unless at least fifty members do so. Because (b) and (d) are both true, the item had two answers and no key, and it was deleted.

Neither motion is named anywhere in the Constitution. What the Constitution supplies is the principle: Article 75(3) makes the Council of Ministers collectively responsible to the House of the People, and Article 118(1) lets each House make rules to regulate its own procedure and the conduct of its business. Every device by which the Lok Sabha actually enforces that responsibility — the no-confidence motion, the censure motion, the adjournment motion, cut motions, the calling-attention notice — is a creature of those rules, not of the constitutional text. Within that family the two motions in this question sit at different levels of severity. A no-confidence motion is an instrument of removal. It is directed only at the Council of Ministers as a whole, it need assign no reason whatever, it can be moved only in the Lok Sabha because Article 75(3) ties collective responsibility to that House alone, and if it is carried the entire Council must resign. Rule 198 fences it with a threshold: the Speaker reads the motion, asks those in favour of leave to rise, and grants leave only if not fewer than fifty members do. A censure motion is an instrument of disapproval. It may be moved against an individual minister, against a group of ministers or against the whole Council; it must state the charge or ground on which censure is sought; and if it is carried the Government is expected to explain itself to the House but is under no obligation to resign. Because it does not seek to bring down the Government, it is not fenced with the fifty-member leave requirement — the Speaker's ruling on admissibility is the filter. That asymmetry is the whole point of having two devices: a House that could only pass or withhold a verdict on the Government's survival would have no way of recording that one minister behaved badly.

Two habits would have got a candidate through this item even though it was defective. The first is a scan of the option set before any recall of content. Options (a) and (b) are exact contradictions — 'is not different from' and 'is different from' — and in a single-answer question a contradictory pair guarantees that exactly one of the two is true. If any option outside that pair also reads as true, the item has two answers and is broken. Spotting that in the hall is worth real marks, because the right move is to mark the most defensible option, spend no further time on it, and raise it in the objection window; here that instinct would have led to (b), which the Commission itself endorses as true. The second habit is knowing which feature belongs to which motion, because options (c) and (d) are built by swapping exactly that. The single discriminating fact is this: the requirement to state a reason and the requirement to obtain leave sit on OPPOSITE motions. A censure motion must state its charge but needs no leave; a no-confidence motion needs leave from fifty members but need state no charge. Once that cross-pairing is fixed, (c) reads as obviously false — a censure that names no fault censures nothing — and (d) reads as obviously true, which is exactly the collision that killed the question. The trap that makes (c) attractive is real, though: candidates remember the true proposition 'no reasons need be given' from the no-confidence motion and misfile it under censure.

• BPSC deleted this question in the final revised key published on 31 October 2025 — one of exactly five deletions among the 150 questions (Q11, Q69, Q75, Q96, Q118) — and the mark was credited to every candidate. The Commission's stated sources were the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in Lok Sabha, chapter on motions, and Subhash Kashyap, Our Parliament (2020), page 150.
• The Commission's two findings, which together broke the item: no leave or permission of the House is required to move a censure motion, and the motion of censure must specify the charge or the reasons for censure, the Speaker having the authority to decide whether it is admissible or in order.
• Neither motion appears in the Constitution by name. Article 75(3) makes the Council of Ministers collectively responsible to the House of the People, and Article 118(1) empowers each House to make its own rules of procedure — the motions are creatures of those rules.
• No-confidence motion, Rule 198 of the Lok Sabha rules: leave of the House is required and is granted only if not fewer than 50 members rise in their places; no ground need be stated; it lies only against the entire Council of Ministers, only in the Lok Sabha, and if carried the whole Council must resign.
• Censure motion: must specify the charge; may be directed at a single minister, a group of ministers or the whole Council; admissibility is ruled on by the Speaker; and if carried, the Council of Ministers is not constitutionally obliged to resign.
• Two dates worth carrying: the first no-confidence motion in the Lok Sabha was moved by Acharya J. B. Kripalani against Jawaharlal Nehru's government in August 1963, in the aftermath of the 1962 war with China, and was defeated; and Morarji Desai resigned in July 1979 while a no-confidence motion against his government was still under debate, before the vote could be taken.

• Attaching Rule 198 to the censure motion — that rule governs the no-confidence motion only, and no rule number for the censure motion should be quoted
• Cross-filing the two requirements: it is the censure motion that must state its reasons and the no-confidence motion that needs the leave of fifty members, not the other way round
• Assuming a carried censure motion brings the Government down — only a no-confidence motion compels the Council of Ministers to resign

BPSC asked this as a bare 'what is true about X' with four one-line options, which is the format most likely to break when two of the four happen to be true — and it duly broke. UPSC handles the same ground far more carefully, by fixing the number of statements and testing properties rather than truth-value: in 2014 it asked whether the no-confidence motion is mentioned in the Constitution and whether it lies only in the Lok Sabha, and in 2022 it asked which powers are exclusive to the Lok Sabha with the no-confidence motion as one candidate. Prepare the comparison table, not a single sentence.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following is a correct distinction between a censure motion and a no-confidence motion in the Lok Sabha?

  • (a)A censure motion can be moved only against the entire Council of Ministers, while a no-confidence motion can be moved against an individual minister
  • (b)A censure motion must state the reasons for its adoption, while a no-confidence motion need not state any ground
  • (c)A censure motion, if passed, compels the Council of Ministers to resign, while a no-confidence motion does not
  • (d)A censure motion can be moved only in the Rajya Sabha, while a no-confidence motion can be moved only in the Lok Sabha

  Answer(b) A censure motion must state the reasons for its adoption, while a no-confidence motion need not state any ground — options (a) and (c) reverse the true position, and (d) is simply wrong, since a no-confidence motion lies only in the Lok Sabha because of Article 75(3).

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Rules of Procedure of the Lok Sabha, leave to move a motion of no-confidence in the Council of Ministers is granted only if the motion is supported by at least how many members rising in their places?

  • (a)25 members
  • (b)50 members
  • (c)100 members
  • (d)One-tenth of the total membership of the House

  Answer(b) 50 members — the Speaker reads out the motion and asks those in favour of leave being granted to rise; leave is granted only if not fewer than fifty members rise. There is no such numerical threshold for a censure motion.