MPSC 2023 Prelims Paper-I · Question 76 of 100

Correct — option (4). Read the stem twice, because it runs in the negative direction: it asks which of the listed bodies are non-constitutional, and the negation is printed in ordinary weight with nothing to mark it out. The bodies that do have a constitutional basis must therefore be set aside, and the ones left over are the answer. The distinction being tested is threefold and must be kept exact. A constitutional body is one created or expressly provided for by the Constitution itself, so that its existence can be altered only by a constitutional amendment. A statutory body is created by an Act of Parliament or of a State Legislature and can be altered by ordinary legislation. An executive or non-statutory body is created by a resolution or order of the government and can be reconstituted or abolished by another such order. Both of the last two categories are non-constitutional, which is the point on which this question turns. Taking the four in order. Item I, NITI Aayog, is non-constitutional: it was set up on 1 January 2015 by a resolution of the Union Cabinet, replacing the Planning Commission which had itself been created by a Cabinet resolution in 1950, and it has neither a constitutional provision nor an Act of Parliament behind it — it is both non-constitutional and non-statutory. Item II, the State Finance Commission, is constitutional: Article 243-I requires the Governor to constitute one every five years to review the financial position of the panchayats and to recommend the distribution of taxes between the State and its local bodies, and Article 243Y extends the same body's remit to the municipalities. Item III, the National Commission for Backward Classes, is constitutional: it began as a statutory body under the National Commission for Backward Classes Act, 1993, but the Hundred and Second Constitutional Amendment Act of 2018 inserted Article 338B and gave it constitutional status alongside the National Commission for Scheduled Castes under Article 338 and the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes under Article 338A. Item IV, the Central Information Commission, is non-constitutional: it was created by the Right to Information Act, 2005, which makes it a statutory body, and no Article of the Constitution provides for it. The non-constitutional bodies in the list are therefore I and IV, which is option (4), and it is the answer. Note carefully that the two reach that classification by different routes — NITI Aayog is an executive body with no statute at all, while the Central Information Commission is a fully statutory one — and that being statutory is no bar to being non-constitutional, which is the trap most of the wrong options are built on.

• (1)Only I is correct — This option correctly identifies NITI Aayog as non-constitutional but stops there, omitting the Central Information Commission, which is equally non-constitutional. The omission usually comes from a specific confusion: a candidate treats 'non-constitutional' as though it meant 'without any legal foundation', and since the Central Information Commission plainly rests on an Act of Parliament, concludes that it must belong on the other side of the line. It does not. The Right to Information Act, 2005 is an ordinary statute, and a body created by ordinary statute is a statutory body and therefore a non-constitutional one; only bodies provided for in the Constitution itself are constitutional. NITI Aayog is a step further removed still, resting on nothing more than a Cabinet resolution, but both fall outside the constitutional category and the question asks for both.
• (2)Only III and IV are correct — This option is wrong at both ends. It includes the National Commission for Backward Classes, which has been a constitutional body since the Hundred and Second Amendment Act of 2018 inserted Article 338B, and it omits NITI Aayog, which is the least constitutional body on the list, resting on an executive resolution alone. The inclusion of the National Commission for Backward Classes is the significant error and is the one this question was designed to catch, because the Commission's status changed within recent memory: from 1993 to 2018 it was a statutory body under its own Act, and a candidate whose preparation was formed before the amendment, or from material not revised since, will place it on the wrong side. It is worth carrying the date itself, since a question can be built on the status of this body either before or after 2018.
• (3)Only I, III and IV are correct — This option is right about NITI Aayog and right about the Central Information Commission, and it fails only because it adds the National Commission for Backward Classes, which is constitutional. That makes it the most dangerous option on the page — everything in it is correct except one item, and the one item is precisely the one whose status changed. The Hundred and Second Constitutional Amendment Act of 2018 inserted Article 338B and converted the Commission from a statutory body under the 1993 Act into a constitutional one, placing it alongside the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes. The same amendment inserted Article 342A, on the specification of socially and educationally backward classes, whose working was later revisited by the Hundred and Fifth Amendment Act of 2021. A candidate who has kept a dated list of which bodies acquired constitutional status when will reject this option immediately; one working from an undated list will not.

Indian public bodies are classified by the instrument that creates them, and the classification decides how securely they exist. Constitutional bodies are established or expressly provided for by the Constitution, so their composition and functions can be changed only by constitutional amendment: the Election Commission under Article 324, the Union and State Public Service Commissions under Articles 315 and 316, the Finance Commission under Article 280, the Comptroller and Auditor-General under Article 148, the Attorney-General under Article 76 and the Advocate-General under Article 165, the National Commissions for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Backward Classes under Articles 338, 338A and 338B, the Special Officer for Linguistic Minorities under Article 350B, the State Election Commission under Article 243K, the State Finance Commission under Articles 243-I and 243Y, and the Goods and Services Tax Council under Article 279A. Statutory bodies are created by ordinary legislation and can be reshaped by it: the Central and State Information Commissions under the Right to Information Act, 2005, the National Human Rights Commission under the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993, the Central Vigilance Commission under its Act of 2003, the Lokpal under the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013, the National Commission for Women under its Act of 1990, the National Green Tribunal under its Act of 2010, and the Securities and Exchange Board of India under its Act of 1992. Executive or non-statutory bodies rest on nothing more than a government resolution: NITI Aayog, created on 1 January 2015, the Planning Commission it replaced, and the National Development Council. A body may move between categories, and the movements are heavily examined: the Central Vigilance Commission began as an executive body in 1964 and became statutory in 2003, and the National Commission for Backward Classes began as a statutory body in 1993 and became constitutional in 2018.

The constitutional–statutory–executive classification is among the most productive question generators in the MPSC polity syllabus, because every body in the syllabus carries a classification and a question can be built by listing three or four of them and asking which belong to a named category. The construction used here is the negative one — which are non-constitutional — and it is worth noticing why that direction is harder. 'Non-constitutional' is a category with two quite different kinds of member, statutory bodies and executive bodies, and a candidate who has learnt the material as a simple two-way split between constitutional and statutory will not see where a purely executive body such as NITI Aayog belongs, or will suppose that a statutory body must count as constitutional because it has a legal foundation. Keeping the three categories distinct, and remembering that the second and third together make up the non-constitutional, is the whole technique. The second thing this item rewards is currency. The National Commission for Backward Classes changed category in 2018, and questions like this one are set precisely at such changes, because a candidate revising from older material answers confidently and wrongly. Note that this question labels its items with Roman numerals I to IV in both language columns, unlike its neighbours in this paper, which use lower-case a to d or upper-case A to D; the labelling scheme has to be read off the question in front of you rather than assumed.

• NITI Aayog was created on 1 January 2015 by a resolution of the Union Cabinet, replacing the Planning Commission which had itself been set up by a Cabinet resolution in 1950; it is both non-constitutional and non-statutory.
• The State Finance Commission is a constitutional body: Article 243-I requires the Governor to constitute one every five years to review the finances of the panchayats and recommend the distribution of taxes, and Article 243Y extends its remit to the municipalities.
• The National Commission for Backward Classes was a statutory body under the National Commission for Backward Classes Act, 1993, and became a constitutional body when the Hundred and Second Constitutional Amendment Act of 2018 inserted Article 338B.
• The Central Information Commission is a statutory body created under the Right to Information Act, 2005; being statutory, it is non-constitutional, since only bodies provided for in the Constitution itself are constitutional bodies.
• The non-constitutional category contains two distinct kinds of body — statutory bodies created by an Act of the legislature, and executive or non-statutory bodies created by a government resolution — and a body can move between categories, as the Central Vigilance Commission did on becoming statutory in 2003.

• Treating 'non-constitutional' as meaning 'without legal foundation', which wrongly moves statutory bodies such as the Central Information Commission into the constitutional category
• Collapsing the three-way classification into a two-way one, which leaves no place for executive bodies such as NITI Aayog that rest on a resolution alone
• Revising from undated material and so missing that the National Commission for Backward Classes became constitutional under Article 338B in 2018
• Missing the negative direction of the stem and listing the constitutional bodies instead, since the word 'non-constitutional' is printed in ordinary weight with only a hyphen
• Assuming a body's classification is permanent, when the Central Vigilance Commission moved from executive to statutory in 2003 and the National Commission for Backward Classes from statutory to constitutional in 2018

This classification appears in MPSC papers every year in one of three shapes: name the category a single body belongs to, list several bodies and ask which are constitutional or which are not, or match bodies to the Articles or Acts that create them. The Commission builds its wrong options from bodies whose status is genuinely easy to mistake — those that recently changed category, those whose names resemble constitutional bodies, and statutory bodies with high public profiles that candidates assume must be constitutional. Preparation should therefore be a single table with three columns holding the body, its category, and the Article or Act behind it, with a date recorded against any body whose category has changed. The same table answers the neighbouring family of questions on who appoints the head of each body and who can remove them, which the Commission asks almost as often, and it is worth extending to the state-level bodies, since the State Election Commission and the State Finance Commission are constitutional while many state commissions are not.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The National Commission for Backward Classes acquired constitutional status through which Constitutional Amendment Act ?

  • (a)The 89th Amendment Act, 2003
  • (b)The 102nd Amendment Act, 2018
  • (c)The 103rd Amendment Act, 2019
  • (d)The 105th Amendment Act, 2021

  Answer(b) The 102nd Amendment Act, 2018 — it inserted Article 338B into the Constitution, converting the Commission from a statutory body under the National Commission for Backward Classes Act, 1993 into a constitutional body alongside the National Commissions for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. The same amendment also inserted Article 342A, dealing with the specification of socially and educationally backward classes, whose working was revisited by the 105th Amendment Act of 2021.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following bodies is neither a constitutional body nor a statutory body ?

  • (a)The Central Vigilance Commission
  • (b)The National Human Rights Commission
  • (c)NITI Aayog
  • (d)The Central Information Commission

  Answer(c) NITI Aayog — it was created on 1 January 2015 by a resolution of the Union Cabinet and has neither a constitutional provision nor an Act of Parliament behind it, so it could in principle be reconstituted or abolished by another such resolution. The Central Vigilance Commission became statutory under its Act of 2003, the National Human Rights Commission rests on the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993, and the Central Information Commission on the Right to Information Act, 2005.