CDS (II) 2020 General Knowledge · Question 20 of 120

Correct — A, M. S. Aney. Madhav Shrihari Aney, known as Loknayak Bapuji Aney, is the only one of the four who was in a position to move such a motion in 1942. He had been in the Central Legislative Assembly since 1923 as the representative of the Berar division, had been president of the Indian National Congress in 1933, and from 1941 to 1943 sat on the Viceroy's Executive Council in charge of Indians Overseas and Commonwealth Relations, resigning in 1943 when the Government refused to release Gandhi during his fast. The Assembly did hold a secret session on 27 February 1942 to discuss the war situation, at a moment when Singapore had just fallen and the Japanese advance was reaching Burma. One honest limitation belongs on this card: we could confirm that the secret session took place and could confirm Aney's position in that year, but we could not open the Legislative Assembly Debates to verify who moved the motion. The key marks Aney and the card is written to the key.

• (b)G. V. Mavalankar — Mavalankar was in the Bombay Legislative Assembly in this period and became Speaker of the Central Legislative Assembly only in 1946, and then the first Speaker of the Lok Sabha in 1952. He was not in the Central Assembly in 1942.
• (c)C. M. Stephen — A Congress parliamentarian of independent India, active in the Lok Sabha in the 1970s and 1980s. He is decades out of period for a 1942 sitting.
• (d)A. Ayyangar — M. Ananthasayanam Ayyangar was Deputy Speaker and then Speaker of the Lok Sabha in the 1950s. His parliamentary career belongs to independent India.

A secret sitting is one from which strangers, the press and the public are excluded so that the House can be told things that cannot be said openly, in practice matters of war or security. The Central Legislative Assembly created under the Government of India Act, 1919 used the device once, on 27 February 1942, to discuss the war situation. The practice survives: the Lok Sabha's rules allow the House to sit in secret on a motion moved by the Leader of the House and agreed to, and independent India has used it very sparingly.

This item is best solved by dating the four names rather than by recalling the sitting. Three of them belong to the Lok Sabha of independent India — Mavalankar from 1946 onwards, Ananthasayanam Ayyangar and C. M. Stephen later still — and only Aney was a member of the Central Legislative Assembly in 1942. That kind of elimination is the reliable technique whenever a stem names a specific year and offers well-known parliamentary names from mixed periods. The wider context is worth carrying too: February 1942 was the low point of the war in Asia, with Singapore fallen and Rangoon about to follow, and the Cripps Mission arrived the following month.

• The Central Legislative Assembly held a secret session on 27 February 1942 to discuss the war situation.
• M. S. Aney was nominated to the Central Legislative Assembly in 1923 as representative of the Berar division.
• He was president of the Indian National Congress in 1933 and a member of the Viceroy's Executive Council from 1941 to 1943, holding the portfolio of Indians Overseas and Commonwealth Relations.
• Aney resigned from the Executive Council in 1943 when the Government refused to release Gandhi during his fast, and later served as High Commissioner to Ceylon and as a member of the Constituent Assembly.
• G. V. Mavalankar became Speaker of the Central Legislative Assembly in 1946 and the first Speaker of the Lok Sabha in 1952.

• Picking a famous Speaker without checking the decade. Mavalankar and Ananthasayanam Ayyangar both belong after 1946.
• Assuming any Congress name of the 1940s could have moved a motion in the Central Assembly. Congress members had resigned from the provincial ministries in 1939 and the party's position in the central legislature was thin.
• Confusing a secret sitting with an in-camera committee meeting. A secret sitting is of the whole House.

As a who-and-when item on the colonial central legislature, or as a question on secret sittings of Parliament and how they are convened.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The first Speaker of the Lok Sabha, who had earlier presided over the Central Legislative Assembly from 1946, was which one of the following?

  • (a)M. S. Aney
  • (b)G. V. Mavalankar
  • (c)M. Ananthasayanam Ayyangar
  • (d)Vithalbhai Patel

  Answer(b) G. V. Mavalankar — Vithalbhai Patel was the first elected Indian President of the Central Legislative Assembly, in 1925, and Ananthasayanam Ayyangar succeeded Mavalankar in the Lok Sabha.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  A secret sitting of the Lok Sabha may be held in which one of the following circumstances?

  • (a)Whenever the Speaker alone decides
  • (b)On a motion moved by the Leader of the House and agreed to by the House
  • (c)Only during a Proclamation of Emergency
  • (d)Only when the President so directs

  Answer(b) On a motion moved by the Leader of the House and agreed to by the House — strangers and the press are then excluded for the whole of that sitting.