EPFO APFC 2023 General Studies · Question 59 of 120

Correct — C, (c) Both 1 and 2. Each statement reproduces the elected-membership requirement written into the Constitution for one of the two planning committees, and both are accurate. Statement 1 is correct. Article 243ZD requires every State to constitute a District Planning Committee at the district level to consolidate the plans prepared by the Panchayats and the Municipalities in the district and to prepare a draft development plan for the district as a whole. The State legislature may provide for the composition of the Committee, but the Article itself fixes a floor: not less than four-fifths of the total number of members shall be elected by, and from amongst, the elected members of the Panchayat at the district level and of the Municipalities in the district, in proportion to the ratio between the population of the rural areas and of the urban areas in the district. That is exactly what the statement says, and the printed 4/5th is the four-fifths of the Article. Statement 2 is correct as well. Article 243ZE requires a Metropolitan Planning Committee in every Metropolitan area to prepare a draft development plan for the area as a whole, and fixes its own floor: not less than two-thirds of the members shall be elected by, and from amongst, the elected members of the Municipalities and the Chairpersons of the Panchayats in the Metropolitan area, in proportion to the ratio between the population of the Municipalities and of the Panchayats in that area. Again the statement matches the Article, and the printed 2/3rd is the two-thirds. The reason the two fractions differ is worth holding on to, because it is the thing most often mixed up. In the metropolitan case the Constitution expressly contemplates representation for the Government of India, the State Government and such organisations and institutions as may be deemed necessary, since a metropolitan plan has to accommodate investment by central and State agencies; that representation is accommodated within the remaining one-third. The district committee has no such requirement, so the elected share is set higher, at four-fifths. Both Articles were inserted in Part IX-A of the Constitution by the Seventy-fourth Amendment Act, 1992, which came into force on 1 June 1993, and a Metropolitan area is defined in Article 243P as an area of ten lakh population or more, comprised in one or more districts and consisting of two or more Municipalities or Panchayats or other contiguous areas, specified as such by the Governor by public notification.

• (a)1 only — This accepts the district requirement and rejects the metropolitan one, which is what happens when the two fractions are remembered as a single rule. They are not the same, and the difference is deliberate. Article 243ZE sets the elected floor for a Metropolitan Planning Committee at two-thirds rather than four-fifths, and it does so because the same Article requires the law to provide for the representation of the Government of India, of the State Government and of such organisations and institutions as may be deemed necessary — a metropolitan plan has to bring in agencies whose investment decisions shape the area, and that representation lives in the remaining third. A candidate who has learnt only the four-fifths rule will read the two-thirds as a misprint, when in fact it is the constitutional text.
• (b)2 only — This accepts the metropolitan requirement and rejects the district one, and it is generally reached either by swapping the two fractions or by doubting the second sentence of the first statement, which describes the allocation of the elected seats as following the ratio of urban to rural population. The Article expresses the same ratio the other way round, in proportion to the ratio between the population of the rural areas and of the urban areas in the district, but a ratio between two populations allocates seats identically however the two are named. The substance — that the elected members come from the district-level Panchayat and from the Municipalities, and that their numbers follow the rural and urban populations — is exactly what the Constitution provides, and the floor of four-fifths is its own words.
• (d)Neither 1 nor 2 — This rejects both requirements, and the usual route to it is having the two fractions the wrong way round — believing that the metropolitan committee has the four-fifths floor and the district committee the two-thirds — so that each statement looks wrong when read against a remembered rule that is itself inverted. The safeguard is to attach each fraction to a reason rather than to a name. The metropolitan committee reserves room for the Union Government, the State Government and other agencies, so its elected floor is the lower of the two at two-thirds; the district committee makes no such reservation, so its elected floor is the higher at four-fifths. Reasons survive examination pressure better than bare numbers do.

District and metropolitan planning were given constitutional form by the Seventy-fourth Amendment, which inserted Part IX-A on Municipalities and, within it, two Articles that bridge the urban and rural halves of local government. Article 243ZD requires a District Planning Committee in every district, whose task is to consolidate the plans prepared by the Panchayats and the Municipalities of the district and to prepare a draft development plan for the district as a whole. In doing so it must have regard to matters of common interest between the Panchayats and the Municipalities, including spatial planning, the sharing of water and other physical and natural resources, the integrated development of infrastructure and environmental conservation, and to the extent and type of resources available; the Chairperson forwards the plan to the State Government. Article 243ZE requires a Metropolitan Planning Committee in every Metropolitan area, charged with preparing a draft development plan for the whole area, having regard to the plans prepared by the Municipalities and Panchayats within it, to matters of common interest including co-ordinated spatial planning and shared resources, to the overall objectives and priorities set by the Government of India and the State Government, and to the investment likely to be made in the area by central and State agencies. Both Articles leave composition and functions to State law but fix a constitutional floor on elected membership — four-fifths for the district committee and two-thirds for the metropolitan one — and in both cases the elected members are chosen by and from among the elected representatives of the local bodies, with the seats distributed according to the ratio between the relevant populations. A Metropolitan area, for this purpose, is defined by Article 243P as an area with a population of ten lakh or more, lying in one or more districts and made up of two or more Municipalities or Panchayats or other contiguous areas, which the Governor specifies by public notification.

Local government is a standing subject in this paper's polity block, and the Commission tests it at the level of the constitutional text — the fractions, the thresholds, the tenure, the lists of subjects — rather than at the level of general description. That is a deliberate choice of difficulty: the concepts of district and metropolitan planning are easy to state and impossible to distinguish without the numbers, so the numbers are what the item turns on. The same block of this paper carries a question on the committee that recommended constitutional status for local government, so the seventy-third and seventy-fourth Amendments repay being learnt as a package: what each inserted, when each came into force, and what each fixed as mandatory against what it left to State law. Note the printing of this item. The two fractions are set as stacked vulgar fractions followed immediately by an ordinal suffix, appearing as four over five with the letters th and two over three with the letters rd, and they are written here as 4/5th and 2/3rd. The statements are long, and the first begins at the foot of one column and continues at the top of the next, so a candidate reading in a hurry can easily lose the second sentence of the first statement.

• Article 243ZD requires a District Planning Committee in every district to consolidate the plans of the Panchayats and Municipalities and to prepare a draft development plan for the district as a whole.
• Not less than four-fifths of the District Planning Committee's members are elected by and from among the elected members of the district-level Panchayat and of the Municipalities in the district, in proportion to the ratio between the rural and urban populations of the district.
• Article 243ZE requires a Metropolitan Planning Committee in every Metropolitan area to prepare a draft development plan for the area as a whole.
• Not less than two-thirds of the Metropolitan Planning Committee's members are elected by and from among the elected members of the Municipalities and the Chairpersons of the Panchayats in the area, in proportion to the ratio between the populations of the Municipalities and of the Panchayats.
• The metropolitan floor is lower because Article 243ZE also requires representation for the Government of India, the State Government and such organisations and institutions as may be deemed necessary.
• A Metropolitan area is defined in Article 243P as an area of ten lakh population or more, in one or more districts, made up of two or more Municipalities or Panchayats or other contiguous areas, specified by the Governor by public notification.
• Both Articles were inserted in Part IX-A by the Constitution (Seventy-fourth Amendment) Act, 1992, which came into force on 1 June 1993; the Chairperson of each committee forwards the development plan to the State Government.

• Swapping the two fractions; the district committee has the four-fifths floor and the metropolitan committee the two-thirds
• Reading the second sentence of statement 1 as an error because the Article names the rural population before the urban one; the ratio allocates the seats identically either way
• Assuming the whole committee is elected; both Articles fix a floor on elected membership and leave the balance to State law, and in the metropolitan case that balance is where governmental representation sits
• Treating the District Planning Committee as a purely rural body; it consolidates the plans of the Municipalities in the district as well, which is why it sits in the Part on Municipalities
• Forgetting the ten lakh population threshold in the definition of a Metropolitan area, which is what decides whether a Metropolitan Planning Committee is required at all

Local government reaches this paper as two-statement items with a code, and the discriminating content is almost always a number from the constitutional text — a fraction, a population threshold, a term of years or a proportion. Expect both statements to be true as often as one, since the examiner builds them by quoting the Articles, and expect the trap to be a swap between two similar provisions rather than an invented fact. Learn the two planning committees side by side, with the reason for the difference in their elected floors.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Constitution, a Metropolitan area is an area having a population of

  • (a)one lakh or more
  • (b)five lakh or more
  • (c)ten lakh or more
  • (d)twenty lakh or more

  Answer(c) ten lakh or more — Article 243P defines a Metropolitan area as one with a population of ten lakh or more, comprised in one or more districts and consisting of two or more Municipalities or Panchayats or other contiguous areas, specified as such by the Governor by public notification. It is that specification which brings the requirement of a Metropolitan Planning Committee into play.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The District Planning Committee's principal function under Article 243ZD is to

  • (a)audit the accounts of the Panchayats and Municipalities in the district
  • (b)consolidate the plans prepared by the Panchayats and the Municipalities and prepare a draft development plan for the district as a whole
  • (c)conduct elections to the Panchayats and Municipalities of the district
  • (d)recommend the distribution of taxes between the State and its local bodies

  Answer(b) consolidate the plans prepared by the Panchayats and the Municipalities and prepare a draft development plan for the district as a whole — that is the function the Article assigns, and the Chairperson forwards the plan to the State Government. Auditing, the conduct of elections and the sharing of revenues belong respectively to the audit machinery, the State Election Commission and the State Finance Commission.