MPSC 2023 Prelims Paper-I · Question 80 of 100

Correct — option (4). This is a genuine match-the-columns question, and the two lists must be read as two lists: the left list holds four Parts of the Constitution labelled A to D, the right list holds four subjects labelled i to iv, and the fact that the paper prints them side by side is a matter of layout and asserts no pairing whatever. Item A is Part I, which is headed 'The Union and its Territory' and runs from Article 1 to Article 4; Article 1 opens with the declaration that India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States, and the Part goes on to deal with the territory of India and with the admission, establishment and formation of new States and the alteration of their areas, boundaries and names. A therefore matches iv. Item B is Part III, headed 'Fundamental Rights', running from Article 12 to Article 35 and containing the rights to equality, freedom, protection against exploitation, freedom of religion, cultural and educational rights, and the right to constitutional remedies. B therefore matches i. Item C is Part IX, headed 'The Panchayats', inserted by the Seventy-third Amendment Act of 1992 and running from Article 243 to Article 243-O, the Part that gave panchayati raj its constitutional footing along with the Eleventh Schedule. C therefore matches ii. Item D is Part II, headed 'Citizenship', running from Article 5 to Article 11, which settled who would be a citizen at the commencement of the Constitution and left the wider law of acquisition and loss of citizenship to Parliament under Article 11. D therefore matches iii. The complete matching is A–iv, B–i, C–ii and D–iii, which is exactly what option (4) prints, and it is the answer. The efficient way to work an item of this kind is never to construct the whole matching from scratch but to anchor on the pair you are surest of and eliminate. Part III as Fundamental Rights is the single most familiar association in the Indian Constitution, so fixing B–i at once removes option (1), which offers B–ii, and option (3), which offers B–iii. That leaves options (2) and (4), which agree about B and C and differ only in whether Part I is Citizenship and Part II the Union and its territory, or the reverse. One further recollection settles it: Article 1 is the very first Article of the Constitution and it is about the Union and its territory, so Part I is the Union and its territory and Part II is Citizenship, giving option (4).

• (1)A - iv, B - ii, C - iii, D - i — This option gets only A–iv right and misplaces the other three, offering Part III as Panchayat Raj, Part IX as Citizenship and Part II as Fundamental Rights. Each of those is wrong on the face of the Constitution: Part III is Fundamental Rights, Part IX is The Panchayats, and Part II is Citizenship. The option is worth a moment's attention because of how it is built — it takes the correct matching and rotates the last three pairings among themselves, leaving the first pair intact. That is a common construction in matching questions and it is designed for the candidate who checks the first pairing in an option, finds it right, and marks the option without checking the rest. Verifying two pairs before committing, rather than one, defeats the construction almost every time.
• (2)A - iii, B - i, C - ii, D - iv — This is the closest of the wrong options and the one that costs most marks, because it gets B–i and C–ii right and errs only by swapping the remaining two: it offers Part I as Citizenship and Part II as the Union and its territory, when the Constitution has them the other way round. Part I, 'The Union and its Territory', comprises Articles 1 to 4 and opens the Constitution proper with the declaration that India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States, together with the provisions on admitting and forming new States. Part II, 'Citizenship', comprises Articles 5 to 11. The way to keep the order fixed is to remember that the Constitution first establishes the territory of the polity and only then defines who its citizens are — the container before its members — and that Article 1 being the first Article makes Part I the territorial Part.
• (3)A - ii, B - iii, C - i, D - iv — Every pairing in this option is wrong. It offers Part I as Panchayat Raj, Part III as Citizenship, Part IX as Fundamental Rights and Part II as the Union and its territory, whereas the Constitution assigns the Union and its territory to Part I, Citizenship to Part II, Fundamental Rights to Part III and the Panchayats to Part IX. Two of these can be rejected on chronological grounds alone, without recalling the numbering at all: the Panchayats entered the Constitution only through the Seventy-third Amendment Act of 1992 and were placed in a Part inserted after Part VIII, so panchayati raj cannot possibly be the subject of Part I, which is where the original Constitution began. An option that misplaces every pair is generally there to absorb a candidate who has no anchor at all, and it should fall to the first pairing checked.

The Constitution is organised into Parts, each covering a subject and each containing a run of Articles, and the numbering of the early Parts follows a deliberate logic: Part I establishes the Union and its territory in Articles 1 to 4, Part II defines citizenship in Articles 5 to 11, Part III sets out the Fundamental Rights in Articles 12 to 35, Part IV the Directive Principles of State Policy in Articles 36 to 51, and Part IVA the Fundamental Duties in Article 51A, inserted by the Forty-second Amendment Act of 1976. Part V deals with the Union, Part VI with the States, Part VIII with the Union Territories, and Part VII — which dealt with the former Part B States — was repealed by the Seventh Amendment Act of 1956. The later Parts continue through the relations between the Union and the States in Part XI, finance and property in Part XII, services in Part XIV, elections in Part XV, special provisions for certain classes in Part XVI, official language in Part XVII, the emergency provisions in Part XVIII and the amendment procedure in Part XX. Three Parts were added by later amendments and are the ones examiners return to most: Part IX, 'The Panchayats', inserted by the Seventy-third Amendment Act of 1992 with the Eleventh Schedule; Part IXA, 'The Municipalities', inserted by the Seventy-fourth Amendment Act of 1992 with the Twelfth Schedule; and Part IXB, on co-operative societies, inserted by the Ninety-seventh Amendment Act of 2011, whose provisions relating to co-operative societies within a State were later held by the Supreme Court to be invalid for want of ratification by the States, the Part surviving for multi-State co-operative societies. Holding the Parts as a numbered sequence, and knowing which of them were later insertions and by which amendment, answers a very large share of the structural questions that appear on the Constitution.

Match-the-columns questions are a fixed component of MPSC papers — this paper carries four of them — and they are best approached as elimination exercises rather than as construction exercises. A candidate who tries to build the whole matching from memory before looking at the options spends far more time than the item is worth and risks being defeated by one uncertain pair; a candidate who anchors on the single pairing they are surest of and strikes out every option inconsistent with it usually reduces four options to two in a few seconds, after which a second anchor finishes the job. On this item Part III as Fundamental Rights removes two options immediately and the identity of Part I removes a third. The other discipline the format demands is to read the two columns as two independent lists. They are printed side by side because the reader has to match them, and the left-hand item on any given line has no relationship to the right-hand item on the same line; a candidate who reads across the page will produce a pairing that the paper never asserted. Note that the left column here is labelled A to D in the English block and अ to ड in the Marathi, while the right column is labelled i to iv in both, and the answer options are printed as a grid of numerals; this paper uses several different labelling schemes across its hundred questions, so the labels must be taken from the question in front of you.

• Part I of the Constitution is headed 'The Union and its Territory' and comprises Articles 1 to 4, dealing with the name and territory of India and with the formation of new States and the alteration of their areas, boundaries and names.
• Part II is headed 'Citizenship' and comprises Articles 5 to 11, settling who was a citizen at the commencement of the Constitution and leaving the law of acquisition and loss of citizenship to Parliament under Article 11.
• Part III is headed 'Fundamental Rights' and comprises Articles 12 to 35, containing the rights to equality, freedom, protection against exploitation, freedom of religion, cultural and educational rights and constitutional remedies.
• Part IX, 'The Panchayats', comprising Articles 243 to 243-O, was inserted by the Seventy-third Amendment Act of 1992 along with the Eleventh Schedule; Part IXA, 'The Municipalities', was inserted by the Seventy-fourth Amendment Act of 1992 along with the Twelfth Schedule.
• Part IV contains the Directive Principles of State Policy in Articles 36 to 51 and Part IVA the Fundamental Duties in Article 51A, the latter inserted by the Forty-second Amendment Act of 1976; Part VII was repealed by the Seventh Amendment Act of 1956.

• Reading a match-the-columns question across the page as though items printed on the same line were paired, when side-by-side printing is layout and asserts no matching at all
• Swapping Part I and Part II, which is the single commonest error on this topic and the basis of the closest wrong option here
• Building the whole matching from memory before looking at the options, when anchoring on one certain pair and eliminating is faster and more reliable
• Checking only the first pairing in an option, when wrong options are commonly built by leaving the first pair intact and rotating the rest
• Forgetting that Parts IX, IXA and IXB were inserted by later amendments, which places local government far down the numbering rather than among the opening Parts

The structure of the Constitution — Parts, Articles and Schedules — is examined in MPSC papers every year, most often as a matching item of this kind and sometimes as a single-fact question asking which Part or which Articles cover a named subject. The Commission draws on a stable set of Parts, favouring those with clean subject headings: the Union and its territory, citizenship, Fundamental Rights, Directive Principles, the Panchayats, the Municipalities, official language, emergency provisions and the amendment procedure. The wrong options are built by permuting correct pairings rather than by inventing false subjects, so every option tends to contain only genuine Parts and genuine subjects and the pairing alone distinguishes them. The companion family asks the same about the Schedules, and the two are worth preparing on a single sheet, since a question that gives a subject and asks for its Part is the same question as one that gives a subject and asks for its Schedule. Adding the amendment that inserted each later Part or Schedule covers a third variant at no extra cost.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Citizenship is dealt with in which Part of the Constitution of India ?

  • (a)Part I
  • (b)Part II
  • (c)Part III
  • (d)Part IV

  Answer(b) Part II — citizenship occupies Articles 5 to 11, and these provisions settled who would be a citizen at the commencement of the Constitution while leaving the acquisition and loss of citizenship thereafter to Parliament under Article 11, a power exercised through the Citizenship Act, 1955. Part I covers the Union and its territory in Articles 1 to 4, Part III the Fundamental Rights and Part IV the Directive Principles of State Policy.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Part IX of the Constitution, dealing with the Panchayats, was inserted by which Constitutional Amendment Act ?

  • (a)The 42nd Amendment Act, 1976
  • (b)The 73rd Amendment Act, 1992
  • (c)The 74th Amendment Act, 1992
  • (d)The 97th Amendment Act, 2011

  Answer(b) The 73rd Amendment Act, 1992 — it inserted Part IX, comprising Articles 243 to 243-O, together with the Eleventh Schedule listing twenty-nine subjects that may be devolved on the panchayats. The 74th Amendment Act of the same year inserted Part IXA on the Municipalities and the Twelfth Schedule, and the 97th Amendment Act of 2011 inserted Part IXB on co-operative societies, so the three are easily confused and are best held together with their Schedules.