Assistant Provident Fund Commissioner and Enforcement Officer / Accounts Officer (APFC and EO/AO) 2025 recruitment test. Transcribed from the Commission's own booklet (series A, PENA-A-PTS); answer worked out by our faculty — UPSC has published no answer key for this sitting. This question is in Part B. Answer last reviewed 25 August 2026.

Which of the following subjects/provisions fall(s) under the Directive Principles of State Policy of the Constitution of India ? 1. Uniform Civil Code for all persons living in India 2. Provision for early childhood care and education to children up to the age of 14 years 3. Promotion of international peace and security Select the answer using the codes given below :

(a)1, 2 and 3
(b)2 and 3 only
(c)1 only
(d)3 only

Answer

Why

Correct — D, (d) 3 only. All three entries are built from the marginal headings of Directive Principles, and two of them have been altered in the building.

Entry 3 — CORRECT, and it is exact. Article 51 is headed 'Promotion of international peace and security', and the Article directs the State to promote international peace and security, maintain just and honourable relations between nations, foster respect for international law and treaty obligations, and encourage settlement of international disputes by arbitration. Nothing has been changed.

Entry 2 — INCORRECT as printed. Article 45 is headed 'Provision for early childhood care and education to children below the age of six years', and its text directs the State to provide early childhood care and education for all children UNTIL THEY COMPLETE THE AGE OF SIX YEARS. The fourteen-year figure belonged to the ORIGINAL Article 45, which promised free and compulsory education for all children until fourteen; the Constitution (Eighty-sixth Amendment) Act, 2002 moved that promise out of the Directive Principles and into Article 21A as the fundamental right to free and compulsory education for children of six to fourteen years, and rewrote Article 45 for the years before six. So the entry attaches a Directive Principle's phrasing to an age that now belongs to a Fundamental Right.

Entry 1 — INCORRECT for the same kind of reason. Article 44 is headed 'Uniform civil code for the citizens' and reads: 'The State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India.' The entry substitutes 'for all persons living in India' for 'for the citizens' — a wider class, taking in persons resident in India who are not its citizens. The subject of the Article is unquestionably a Directive Principle; the provision as stated in the entry is not the provision the Constitution contains.

Why a single standard has to be applied to all three. Read the entries loosely — as naming SUBJECTS that appear among the Directive Principles — and entries 1 and 2 both pass, giving 1, 2 and 3. Read them strictly — as reproducing the PROVISIONS — and both fail, giving 3 only. What is not available is a mixed standard, strict about the age in entry 2 and forgiving about the class of persons in entry 1, because the combination it produces, 1 and 3, is not among the four options at all. The strict reading is the right one for an item that says 'subjects/provisions' and then quotes constitutional headings: an entry is judged by what it says. On that footing only entry 3 stands, and the answer is 3 only.

Why the others are wrong

(a)1, 2 and 3 — This is the arguable alternative and deserves a fair statement. Uniform civil code and early childhood care and education are both genuinely Directive Principle subjects — Articles 44 and 45 — so a reader who treats the entries as naming subjects rather than reproducing provisions will mark all three correct. It is rejected because each of the first two entries changes the operative words of the Article it is drawn from: 'the citizens' becomes 'all persons living in India', and 'six years' becomes 'fourteen years'. The second change is the graver, since fourteen years now marks the fundamental right in Article 21A rather than any Directive Principle.
(b)2 and 3 only — This spots the trouble in entry 1 and lets entry 2 through, which is the wrong way round if only one of the two is to be doubted: the age in entry 2 is not a shade of meaning but the very number the Eighty-sixth Amendment changed. A candidate landing here has remembered that Article 44 speaks of citizens and has not noticed that Article 45 was rewritten in 2002.
(c)1 only — Rejects the two entries that are hardest to fault and keeps the one that misstates Article 44. It would be right only if promotion of international peace and security were not a Directive Principle, and it plainly is — Article 51, the last of the Directive Principles, is devoted to it.

Concept

The Directive Principles of State Policy are Part IV of the Constitution, Articles 36 to 51. They are not enforceable by any court, but Article 37 declares them fundamental in the governance of the country and makes it the duty of the State to apply them in making laws. The best-known of them include Article 39 on the distribution of material resources and equal pay, Article 39A on free legal aid, Article 40 on village panchayats, Article 41 on the right to work and to public assistance, Article 42 on maternity relief and just conditions of work, Article 43 on a living wage, Article 43A on workers' participation in management, Article 44 on a uniform civil code for the citizens, Article 45 on early childhood care and education, Article 47 on nutrition and public health, Article 48A on the environment, and Article 51 on international peace. The Eighty-sixth Amendment of 2002 rearranged this area: it inserted Article 21A as a fundamental right, rewrote Article 45, and added the duty of a parent or guardian to provide education opportunities in Article 51A(k).

This item is a test of whether a candidate can hold the Directive Principles and the Fundamental Rights apart after the Eighty-sixth Amendment, which moved a promise from one to the other and left the two documents looking similar. The examiner's method — take an Article's own marginal heading and change three or four words in it — is worth recognising, because the altered clause always reads naturally. Compare the entry against the Article's wording, not against your impression of its subject.

The construction is worth naming because it recurs. Each entry is an Article's own marginal heading with a few words altered — the class of beneficiary in one, the age in another, nothing at all in the third. A heading that has been altered still reads naturally, which is why the entries feel familiar and pass inspection. The defence is to recall the Article's wording rather than its subject: ask what Article 44 actually secures and for whom, and the substitution shows itself. It also pays to check the option list for a missing combination — the absence of '1 and 3' here is the paper telling you that the same standard must be applied to entries 1 and 2.

Key facts

Directive Principles are Part IV, Articles 36 to 51; Article 37 makes them non-justiciable but fundamental in governance.
Article 44 is headed 'Uniform civil code for the citizens' and directs the State to endeavour to secure a uniform civil code for the citizens throughout the territory of India.
Article 45, as rewritten by the Constitution (Eighty-sixth Amendment) Act, 2002, is about early childhood care and education for all children until they complete the age of six years.
Article 21A, inserted by the same amendment, makes free and compulsory education for children of six to fourteen years a fundamental right.
The original Article 45 had promised free and compulsory education for all children until the age of fourteen, within ten years of the commencement of the Constitution.
Article 51 is headed 'Promotion of international peace and security' and covers just and honourable relations between nations, respect for international law and treaty obligations, and settlement of disputes by arbitration.
Article 51A(k), added in 2002, makes it a fundamental duty of a parent or guardian to provide education opportunities to a child between six and fourteen.
The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 is the law made under Article 21A.

Study next

The Eighty-sixth Amendment and the three provisions it touched — Article 21A, Article 45 and Article 51A(k)Fundamental Rights against Directive Principles — Articles 31C, and the doctrine of harmonious constructionThe Directive Principles added by amendment — Articles 39A, 43A, 43B and 48AArticle 44 and the debate on a uniform civil code, including its treatment in judicial decisionsFundamental Duties in Article 51A and the Swaran Singh Committee

Common traps

Quoting the pre-2002 Article 45 and its fourteen-year promise as if it were the present Directive Principle.
Placing free and compulsory education for six-to-fourteen-year-olds in Part IV; since 2002 it is a fundamental right in Part III.
Reading 'citizens' and 'all persons living in India' as interchangeable in a constitutional provision.
Applying different standards of strictness to different statements in the same set.

Part IV questions in these papers most often ask which of several provisions is a Directive Principle, or pair Articles with subjects in a Match List. The provisions that move — those touched by the Forty-second and Eighty-sixth Amendments — are asked disproportionately often, because they let the examiner build a plausible false statement out of the older text.

Related PYQs

EPFO_APFC_2023_Q101

Article 43 of the Constitution of India enjoins the State to endeavour through legislation or economic organization for payment of which of the following wages?

(a) Living wage
(b) Minimum wage
(c) Fair wage
(d) Need-based minimum wage

Answer(a) Living wage

Another Directive Principle asked by its own words — Article 43 and what the State is enjoined to secure for workers, which is the labour-facing half of Part IV that an EPFO candidate meets again in the statute block.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
Free and compulsory education for all children of the age of six to fourteen years is provided for in which one among the following ?
- (a)Article 21A, as a Fundamental Right
- (b)Article 45, as a Directive Principle
- (c)Article 51A, as a Fundamental Duty
- (d)Article 41, as a Directive Principle
Answer(a) Article 21A, as a Fundamental Right
practice — not a real PYQ
Promotion of international peace and security is dealt with in which one among the following Articles of the Constitution of India ?
- (a)Article 44
- (b)Article 47
- (c)Article 48A
- (d)Article 51
Answer(d) Article 51

Why