EPFO EO/AO 2023 General Ability Test · Question 60 of 120

Correct — B, (b) The members of the Election Commission should be appointed by the President of India on the advice of a Committee, consisting of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. The booklet prints the 'not' of the stem in bold italic: the item asks which of the four was NOT recommended by the Committee on Electoral Reforms headed by Dinesh Goswami, and this is the one. The Committee's proposal was built on CONSULTATION, not on a committee of selectors. It recommended that the Chief Election Commissioner be appointed by the President in consultation with the Chief Justice of India and the Leader of the Opposition — and, where there is no recognised Leader of the Opposition, with the leader of the largest opposition group in the Lok Sabha. For the other Election Commissioners it proposed the same consultation with the addition of the Chief Election Commissioner himself. And it recommended that this consultation process be given statutory backing, so that it would bind rather than merely guide. Those three propositions are options (a), (d) and (c) respectively. What option (b) describes is a different mechanism from a different tradition of proposals — a small collegium of political office-holders whose ADVICE the President acts on, with the judiciary left out entirely. Advice binds; consultation does not. Replacing a consultation involving the Chief Justice of India with a two-member political committee would alter both who decides and how strongly, so it is not a paraphrase of the Committee's scheme but a substitute for it. The option is not a fantasy, which is what makes it a good distractor, and the reason is chronological. Decades after this Committee reported, the selection of Election Commissioners did move to a committee model: a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court held in 2023 that appointments should be made on the advice of a committee of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and the Chief Justice of India until Parliament legislated, and Parliament then enacted the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act, 2023, under which a Selection Committee of the Prime Minister, a Union Cabinet Minister and the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha recommends names to the President. A candidate who has read about that recent arrangement and attributes it backwards to 1990 walks straight into this option.

• (a)The appointment of the Chief Election Commissioner should be made by the President of India in consultation with the Chief Justice of India and the Leader of the Opposition. — This WAS recommended, so it cannot answer a 'not' stem. It is the Committee's central proposal on the subject: the appointment stays with the President, but the discretion of the government of the day is tempered by consultation with the head of the judiciary and with the principal opposition. The Committee added that if no Leader of the Opposition has been recognised in the Lok Sabha, the leader of the largest opposition group there should be consulted instead — a detail worth remembering, since it recurs in later proposals on the same subject.
• (c)The consultation process should have a statutory backing. — This WAS recommended. A convention of consultation can be observed thinly or abandoned quietly, and the Committee's concern throughout was to make the independence of the Commission enforceable rather than customary — it made a parallel recommendation that the salaries and conditions of service of the Commissioners be protected on the analogy of the protection given to judges of the Supreme Court. Statutory backing for the consultation belongs to the same design, and Article 324(2) leaves room for it by making appointments subject to any law made by Parliament.
• (d)The appointment of the other Election Commissioners should be made in consultation with the Chief Election Commissioner, the Chief Justice of India and the Leader of the Opposition. — This WAS recommended, and it is the natural extension of the proposal for the Chief Election Commissioner. The addition of the Chief Election Commissioner to the consultees reflects the structure of the Commission: he presides over a body whose other members will sit with him, and Article 324(5) already makes his recommendation a condition of their removal. The Committee's scheme thus gives him a voice at both ends, appointment and removal, without giving him the power to decide either.

Article 324(2) provides that the Chief Election Commissioner and such other Election Commissioners as the President may fix shall be appointed by the President, subject to the provisions of any law made in that behalf by Parliament. For decades no such law existed, so appointment rested with the executive alone, and every committee that examined electoral reform proposed a check on it. The Committee on Electoral Reforms of 1990, chaired by the then Law Minister Dinesh Goswami, proposed consultation with the Chief Justice of India and the Leader of the Opposition, with statutory backing, and protection of the Commissioners' service conditions on the analogy of the higher judiciary. Its wider report is one of the standard sources on electoral reform and ranged well beyond appointments — amendments to the anti-defection provisions, a bar on a candidate contesting from more than two constituencies, use of electronic voting machines, measures against booth capturing, and provisions on election expenditure. Some of its work reached the statute book: the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Conditions of Service) Act followed in 1991, while a constitutional amendment bill on the manner of appointment lapsed. The subject was reopened much later, and the position today rests on the Act of 2023 and the Supreme Court judgment that preceded it. Alongside Goswami, the committees regularly named in this area are the Tarkunde Committee of 1975, the Indrajit Gupta Committee of 1998 on state funding of elections, the Law Commission's reports on electoral reform, and the Second Administrative Reforms Commission.

The polity block of this paper likes committees, and asks them in the shape used here — three genuine recommendations and one plausible substitute. The substitute is usually a proposal from a different committee or a later development, which is why chronology is the strongest defence: a mechanism that came into existence in the 2020s cannot have been recommended in 1990. The habit rewarded is attaching each committee to its distinctive proposal — Goswami to consultation with the Chief Justice of India and the Leader of the Opposition, Indrajit Gupta to state funding, Tarkunde to a three-member Commission chosen on the advice of a body including the Chief Justice — so that a recommendation can be traced to its author rather than recognised only as reasonable.

• The Committee on Electoral Reforms of 1990 was chaired by Dinesh Goswami, then the Union Law Minister, and reported in May of that year.
• It recommended that the Chief Election Commissioner be appointed by the President in consultation with the Chief Justice of India and the Leader of the Opposition.
• Where no Leader of the Opposition is recognised, it proposed consultation with the leader of the largest opposition group in the Lok Sabha.
• For the other Election Commissioners it proposed the same consultation with the addition of the Chief Election Commissioner.
• It recommended that the consultation process be given statutory backing, and that the Commissioners' salaries and conditions of service be protected on the analogy of judges of the Supreme Court.
• Article 324(2) makes appointment by the President subject to the provisions of any law made by Parliament.
• In 2023 a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court directed appointment on the advice of a committee of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and the Chief Justice of India, until Parliament legislated.
• The Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act, 2023 substituted a Selection Committee of the Prime Minister, a Union Cabinet Minister and the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha.
• Article 324(5) protects the Chief Election Commissioner from removal except in the manner of a Supreme Court judge, and bars removal of any other Election Commissioner except on his recommendation.

• Reading a present-day arrangement back into a committee that reported decades earlier.
• Treating 'consultation with' and 'on the advice of a committee consisting of' as the same proposal — they differ in who decides and in how binding the input is.
• Missing the bold-italic 'not' and marking the first recommendation that is recognisably genuine.
• Attributing to Goswami the state-funding proposal, which is the Indrajit Gupta Committee's signature recommendation.

Committee questions in EO/AO papers come in two shapes: a match between a committee and its subject, and a 'which of these did the committee NOT recommend' item like this one. The second is harder and is answered by chronology plus one distinctive recommendation per committee. For electoral reform specifically, know Goswami on appointment by consultation, Indrajit Gupta on state funding, and the constitutional position under Article 324 as it stands now.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Indrajit Gupta Committee (1998) is associated with which aspect of electoral reform ?

  • (a)State funding of elections
  • (b)Delimitation of constituencies
  • (c)Anti-defection law
  • (d)Reservation of seats for women in legislatures

  Answer(a) State funding of elections

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under Article 324(5) of the Constitution, an Election Commissioner other than the Chief Election Commissioner may be removed from office :

  • (a)By the President at his discretion
  • (b)Only on the recommendation of the Chief Election Commissioner
  • (c)Only by a resolution of both Houses of Parliament
  • (d)Only by the Supreme Court on a reference by the President

  Answer(b) Only on the recommendation of the Chief Election Commissioner