CDS (I) 2020 General Knowledge · Question 32 of 120

Correct — D, The Government of India Act, 1935. This is the statute that first set aside seats for women in Indian legislatures and then distributed those seats across the communal blocks — general, Muslim, Sikh, Indian Christian, Anglo-Indian — into which the electorate had already been divided. The scheme came out of the Second Round Table Conference, which recommended both that each provincial legislature reserve seats for named communities and that about 2.5 per cent of the total seats go to women. The 1935 Act carried that recommendation into law, reserving the women's seats in the lower houses of the provinces while shutting women out of the upper chambers altogether. It also widened the franchise so that roughly six million women could vote, up from a few hundred thousand.

• (a)The Government of India Act, 1858 — The 1858 Act ended Company rule and transferred the government of India to the Crown, creating the Secretary of State for India and his Council. There were no elected Indian legislatures at all at that date, so there were no seats to reserve.
• (b)The Indian Councils Act, 1909 — The Morley–Minto reforms of 1909 are where communal representation begins — separate electorates for Muslims — but the enlarged councils they created had no provision for women. Women could not even vote under this Act.
• (c)The Government of India Act, 1919 — The Montagu–Chelmsford Act left the question of women's votes to each provincial council, several of which did enfranchise propertied women through the 1920s. Permitting a province to give women the vote is not the same as reserving seats for them, and the 1919 Act did neither in its own text.

Communal representation was built into Indian legislatures in stages — separate Muslim electorates in 1909, more communities added in 1919, and the whole architecture frozen by the Communal Award of 1932 and the Government of India Act, 1935. The 1935 Act layered a women's reservation on top of that structure, so a woman's seat was itself labelled by community rather than being a single national quota.

Date the four statutes and the question answers itself. 1858 is Crown rule, 1909 is separate electorates for Muslims, 1919 is dyarchy, 1935 is provincial autonomy and the federation that never came. Only the last of these is late enough to sit after the Round Table Conferences, where the demand for women's representation was actually argued out by Indian women's organisations. Reading the stem closely also helps: the phrase 'in accordance with the allocation of seats for different communities' is a description of the 1935 communal scheme and rules out any Act that predates communal electorates.

• The Second Round Table Conference recommended that provincial legislatures allocate seats to named communities and reserve about 2.5 per cent of seats for women.
• The Government of India Act, 1935 reserved seats for women in the lower houses of the provincial legislatures and excluded them from the second chambers.
• The Act's franchise extension brought roughly six million Indian women onto the electoral rolls.
• Separate electorates for Muslims date from the Indian Councils Act, 1909, not from 1935.
• The Government of India Act, 1919 left the enfranchisement of women to the discretion of individual provincial councils.

• Answering 1919 because provinces began enfranchising women in the 1920s under it — that was a provincial choice, not a reservation in the Act.
• Assuming any question mentioning communities must point to 1909, which introduced separate electorates but said nothing about women.

Usually as a statement-set on the features of the 1935 Act, or as an Act-to-provision match across 1909, 1919 and 1935.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Separate electorates for Muslims were introduced in India by which one of the following?

  • (a)The Indian Councils Act, 1892
  • (b)The Indian Councils Act, 1909
  • (c)The Government of India Act, 1919
  • (d)The Government of India Act, 1935

  Answer(b) The Indian Councils Act, 1909 — the Morley–Minto reforms created separate Muslim electorates, the starting point of communal representation in India.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following was NOT provided for by the Government of India Act, 1935?

  • (a)Provincial autonomy
  • (b)A Federal Court
  • (c)An All India Federation of provinces and princely states
  • (d)Universal adult suffrage

  Answer(d) Universal adult suffrage — the 1935 Act widened the franchise but still tied it to property, income and education; adult suffrage came with the Constitution of India.