MPSC 2023 Prelims Paper-I · Question 71 of 100

Correct — option (2). Read the stem twice before anything else, because this is a negative question: it asks which statement is not included in Article 164, and nothing in the printing marks the word 'not' out — it is set in exactly the same weight as the rest of the line. The three statements that do appear in the Article must therefore be set aside, and the one that does not is the answer. Article 164 of the Constitution is the provision headed 'Other provisions as to Ministers' in the chapter on the State executive, and its clauses are these. Clause (1) provides that the Chief Minister shall be appointed by the Governor and the other Ministers shall be appointed by the Governor on the advice of the Chief Minister, and that the Ministers shall hold office during the pleasure of the Governor. Clause (1A), inserted by the Ninety-first Amendment in 2003, caps the total number of Ministers including the Chief Minister at fifteen per cent of the total membership of the Legislative Assembly, with a floor of twelve. Clause (1B), from the same amendment, disqualifies a member disqualified on the ground of defection from being appointed a Minister. Clause (2) provides that the Council of Ministers shall be collectively responsible to the Legislative Assembly of the State. Clause (3) requires the Governor to administer the oaths of office and secrecy in the forms set out in the Third Schedule. Clause (4) provides that a Minister who for any period of six consecutive months is not a member of the Legislature of the State shall at the expiration of that period cease to be a Minister. Clause (5) leaves the salaries and allowances of Ministers to the State Legislature, with the Second Schedule applying until it legislates. Checking the options against that text, option (1) reproduces the first limb of clause (1), option (3) reproduces its second limb, and option (4) reproduces clause (4) almost word for word. Option (2) states that the Council of Ministers shall NOT be collectively responsible to the State Legislature, which is the exact reverse of what clause (2) provides. It is not merely absent from Article 164; it contradicts it, and it contradicts the central principle of parliamentary government, under which the ministry holds office only so long as it retains the confidence of the elected house. Option (2) is therefore the statement not included in Article 164 and is the answer. One point of precision worth carrying away: the Article makes the Council of Ministers responsible to the Legislative Assembly of the State, that is to the directly elected lower house, and not to the State Legislature as a whole — which is worth saying plainly, because the ENGLISH column of this very option prints the looser 'to the State Legislature'. The मराठी column prints राज्याच्या विधानसभेला, which is exactly the Article's term, so on this point the Marathi paper is the more accurate of the two, so in the states that have a Legislative Council the upper house cannot bring a ministry down.

• (1)The Chief Minister shall be appointed by the Governor — This statement is included in Article 164 and therefore cannot be the answer to a question asking what is not included. Clause (1) opens with exactly this provision: the Chief Minister shall be appointed by the Governor. The appointment is a formal act rather than a free choice, since by convention the Governor must call the leader of the party or coalition commanding a majority in the Legislative Assembly, and the Governor's discretion becomes real only when no such leader is evident, as after an inconclusive election or the collapse of a coalition. The parallel provision for the Union is Article 75, under which the Prime Minister is appointed by the President. A candidate may hesitate here because the statement seems too obvious to be printed, but in a negative question the obviously true statements are precisely the ones to be eliminated, and the failure will lie elsewhere.
• (3)The other Minister shall be appointed by the Governor on the advice of the Chief Minister — This statement is included in Article 164 and is not the answer. The second limb of clause (1) provides that the other Ministers shall be appointed by the Governor on the advice of the Chief Minister, and the phrase carries real constitutional weight: the Governor appoints, but the choice of colleagues belongs to the Chief Minister, which is what makes the Council a team of the Chief Minister's making rather than the Governor's. The same clause adds that Ministers hold office during the pleasure of the Governor, a formula which in practice means during the pleasure of the Chief Minister, since the Governor acts on ministerial advice in this as in most matters. Article 75 makes the identical arrangement at the Union level with the President and the Prime Minister, and the symmetry between the two Articles is itself a frequent subject of examination.
• (4)A Minister who for any period of six consecutive months is not a member of the Legislature of the State shall at the expiration of that period cease to be a minister — This statement is included in Article 164, and it reproduces clause (4) almost in its exact words: a Minister who for any period of six consecutive months is not a member of the Legislature of the State shall at the expiration of that period cease to be a Minister. The clause is what permits a person who is not currently a legislator to be appointed a Minister — including as Chief Minister — on condition of securing election to the State Legislature within six months, failing which the office is lost automatically. It is also the clause behind the settled rule that such a person cannot simply be reappointed at the end of the six months to begin a fresh term without facing the electorate. The length of the statement makes it look like the planted error to a candidate skimming for the odd one out, but length is not falsity, and this is the most literally accurate of the four options on the page.

Article 164 supplies the working rules of the State executive and should be read alongside the two Articles that surround it. Article 163 provides that there shall be a Council of Ministers with the Chief Minister at its head to aid and advise the Governor in the exercise of his functions, except where the Governor is required to act in his discretion. Article 164 then deals with the Ministers themselves: their appointment, their number, their responsibility, their oath, the six-month membership rule and their salaries. Article 167 lays on the Chief Minister the duty to communicate to the Governor the decisions of the Council of Ministers and to furnish such information relating to the administration as the Governor may call for. Two clauses of Article 164 are later insertions and are commonly asked about. Clause (1A), added by the Ninety-first Amendment Act of 2003, limits the Council of Ministers in a State to fifteen per cent of the strength of the Legislative Assembly, subject to a minimum of twelve, a restraint introduced to end the practice of enlarging ministries to secure political support. Clause (1B), from the same amendment, provides that a legislator disqualified for defection is also disqualified from being appointed a Minister for the remainder of the term. The proviso to clause (1) is a further examinable detail: it requires a Minister in charge of tribal welfare in certain states, and the list of those states was altered by the Ninety-fourth Amendment Act of 2006. The principle underlying the whole Article is collective responsibility, the rule that the Council of Ministers stands or falls together before the elected house, which is what distinguishes a parliamentary executive from a presidential one and which the Constitution states for the Union in Article 75 and for the States in Article 164 in parallel terms.

Negative-sense questions are the most reliably mishandled family in this paper — seven stems carry a negation or exclusion, and unlike the 2024 paper the negating word is not printed in bold, so nothing on the page warns the reader. The procedure that survives it is mechanical: read the stem, note in the margin that you are hunting for the statement that fails, then judge each option on its own before returning to the stem. Marks are lost here far more often by candidates who knew all four provisions and answered the opposite question than by candidates who did not know the Article. This particular item is unusually kind once the direction is fixed, because the Commission has built its wrong option by simple negation — inserting the word 'not' into a provision the Constitution states affirmatively — which is its commonest way of manufacturing a false statement about a specific Article. A candidate who reads each option asking 'does the Constitution say this, or its opposite?' will find the reversal quickly. The wider lesson is that Article-numbered questions reward knowing the contents of an Article as a list of clauses rather than as a single remembered sentence, since the Commission draws its options from different clauses of the same Article and expects the candidate to recognise all of them.

• Article 164(1) provides that the Chief Minister shall be appointed by the Governor and the other Ministers shall be appointed by the Governor on the advice of the Chief Minister, the Ministers holding office during the pleasure of the Governor.
• Article 164(2) provides that the Council of Ministers shall be collectively responsible to the Legislative Assembly of the State — to the directly elected lower house, and not to the State Legislature as a whole.
• Article 164(4) provides that a Minister who for any period of six consecutive months is not a member of the Legislature of the State shall at the expiration of that period cease to be a Minister.
• Article 164(1A), inserted by the Ninety-first Amendment Act of 2003, caps the total number of Ministers including the Chief Minister at fifteen per cent of the total strength of the Legislative Assembly, with a minimum of twelve; clause (1B) of the same amendment bars a member disqualified for defection from being appointed a Minister.
• Article 164(3) requires the Governor to administer the oaths of office and of secrecy to a Minister in the forms set out in the Third Schedule, and Article 164(5) leaves ministerial salaries and allowances to the State Legislature, the Second Schedule applying until it legislates.

• Missing the negation in the stem and choosing a statement that the Article does contain, which is how this format is most often failed since nothing in the printing marks the word 'not'
• Treating the longest option as the planted error, when length is a feature of a provision quoted in full and not evidence of falsity
• Reading collective responsibility as running to the whole State Legislature, when Article 164(2) makes the Council responsible to the Legislative Assembly alone
• Confusing Article 163, which creates the Council of Ministers to aid and advise the Governor, with Article 164, which deals with the appointment, number and responsibility of the Ministers themselves
• Assuming the fifteen per cent ceiling has always been part of Article 164, when it was inserted as clause (1A) by the Ninety-first Amendment Act of 2003

Polity questions in MPSC papers are heavily Article-anchored, and Article 164 is among the most worked provisions in the State executive chapter because it contains several distinct rules that can each seed a question: who appoints the Chief Minister, who appoints the other Ministers and on whose advice, to whom the Council is collectively responsible, the six-month rule for a non-member Minister, and the fifteen per cent ceiling with its floor of twelve. The Commission's usual construction is either the negative stem used here, in which one provision is reversed by the insertion of a 'not', or a statement list mixing clauses of Article 164 with clauses of Article 163 or Article 75. A candidate who prepares each Article of the executive chapter as a numbered list of its clauses rather than as a single sentence answers both forms, and the Union–State parallel is worth learning as a pair, since a question about the Prime Minister and a question about the Chief Minister are usually the same question with one word changed.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under Article 164 of the Constitution, the Council of Ministers of a State is collectively responsible to which of the following ?

  • (a)The Governor of the State
  • (b)The Legislative Assembly of the State
  • (c)The Legislative Council of the State
  • (d)The President of India

  Answer(b) The Legislative Assembly of the State — Article 164(2) fixes collective responsibility on the directly elected lower house alone, which is why a Legislative Council, where one exists, cannot bring down a ministry. Ministers hold office during the pleasure of the Governor under clause (1), but that is a formal formula exercised on ministerial advice and is not the same thing as responsibility, which in a parliamentary system runs to the elected chamber.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The ceiling of fifteen per cent of the strength of the Legislative Assembly on the size of a State Council of Ministers was introduced by which Constitutional Amendment ?

  • (a)The 42nd Amendment Act, 1976
  • (b)The 73rd Amendment Act, 1992
  • (c)The 91st Amendment Act, 2003
  • (d)The 97th Amendment Act, 2011

  Answer(c) The 91st Amendment Act, 2003 — it inserted clause (1A) into Article 164, capping the total number of Ministers including the Chief Minister at fifteen per cent of the total membership of the Legislative Assembly with a minimum of twelve, and inserted clause (1B) barring a legislator disqualified for defection from being appointed a Minister. The same amendment made the corresponding change for the Union in Article 75, the object in both cases being to prevent ministries being enlarged to secure political support.