CDS (I) 2022 General Knowledge · Question 76 of 120

Correct — A, Article 78. The Article is headed the duties of the Prime Minister as respects the furnishing of information to the President, and its first clause says it shall be the duty of the Prime Minister to communicate to the President all decisions of the Council of Ministers relating to the administration of the affairs of the Union and proposals for legislation. Two more duties follow in the same Article: to furnish any information about the administration or about proposals for legislation that the President calls for, and, if the President so requires, to place before the Council of Ministers any matter on which a single Minister has taken a decision that the Council has not considered. Together these are the constitutional plumbing that keeps a head of state who does not sit in Cabinet informed of what his Cabinet has decided — the counterpart of the President's obligation under Article 74 to act on the Council's advice.

• (b)Article 74 — Article 74 runs the other way. It requires the Council of Ministers with the Prime Minister at its head to aid and advise the President, and, since the Forty-second and Forty-fourth Amendments, binds the President to act on that advice, though he may require the Council to reconsider once.
• (c)Article 75 — Article 75 is about the Ministers themselves — the Prime Minister's appointment by the President, the appointment of other Ministers on his advice, the fifteen per cent ceiling in clause (1A), the oath, and collective responsibility to the House of the People. It says nothing about furnishing information.
• (d)Article 81 — Article 81 is not about the executive at all. It fixes the composition of the House of the People and the way seats are allotted to States and to territorial constituencies.

Articles 74 to 78 set out the working relationship between the President and the Union executive. Article 74 makes the Council of Ministers the advising body and the President bound by its advice; Article 75 governs appointment, tenure, size and responsibility of the Ministers; Article 77 requires all executive action of the Government of India to be expressed to be taken in the name of the President and lets him make rules for the transaction of business; Article 78 places on the Prime Minister a personal duty of disclosure to the President.

This is a plain article-number recall, and the reliable way to hold it is by the function rather than the number. Ask who is doing what to whom. Under Article 74 the Council advises the President. Under Article 78 the Prime Minister informs the President. Advice flows one way and information the other, and the two articles sit close together for exactly that reason. Article 78 is also the constitutional hook for the President's power to ask questions and to send a matter back for the Council's consideration, which is why it is quoted whenever the scope of a head of state's discretion is discussed.

• Article 78(a): the Prime Minister must communicate to the President all decisions of the Council of Ministers relating to the administration of the affairs of the Union and proposals for legislation.
• Article 78(b): the Prime Minister must furnish such information relating to those matters as the President may call for.
• Article 78(c): if the President so requires, the Prime Minister must submit for the Council's consideration any matter decided by a single Minister but not considered by the Council.
• Article 74(1) obliges the President to act in accordance with the Council's advice, with one power to require reconsideration.
• Article 77(1) requires all executive action of the Government of India to be expressed to be taken in the name of the President.

• Swapping Articles 74 and 78; one carries advice to the President, the other carries information.
• Attaching the fifteen per cent ceiling on Ministers to Article 74; it is Article 75(1A).
• Assuming Article 78 gives the President a power to overrule; it gives him a right to be told, and to require reconsideration through the Council.

As an article-number question like this one, or as a statements item mixing the duties in Article 78 with the advice rule in Article 74.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Article 167 of the Constitution of India, which places on the Chief Minister a duty to furnish information to the Governor, corresponds most closely to which Article at the Union level?

  • (a)Article 74
  • (b)Article 75
  • (c)Article 78
  • (d)Article 79

  Answer(c) Article 78 — Article 167 is the State-level counterpart of the Prime Minister's duty of disclosure to the President.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The requirement that all executive action of the Government of India be expressed to be taken in the name of the President is contained in

  • (a)Article 53
  • (b)Article 74
  • (c)Article 77
  • (d)Article 78

  Answer(c) Article 77 — Article 53 vests the executive power, and Article 77 governs how it is formally expressed.