MPSC 2023 Prelims Paper-I · Question 87 of 100

Correct — option (4). This question prints only THREE statements, labelled a., b. and c. in lower case, and all three are true, so the option that admits all of them is the answer. Statement a is correct: Ramesh Bais was appointed Governor of Maharashtra and took office on 18 February 2023, succeeding Bhagat Singh Koshyari, whose term ended on 17 February 2023 after he had asked to be relieved. Statement b is correct: Bais had earlier been Governor of Tripura, holding that office from 29 July 2019 to 13 July 2021. This is the statement most likely to be doubted, and the doubt is instructive rather than fatal — between Tripura and Maharashtra he was Governor of Jharkhand, from 14 July 2021 to 17 February 2023, so Jharkhand and not Tripura was the office he held immediately before coming to Raj Bhavan in Mumbai. But the statement does not say 'immediately before'; it says 'earlier he was the Governor of Tripura State', and that is exactly true. Reading the claim a statement actually makes, rather than the stronger claim it resembles, is the whole skill this item tests. Statement c is correct: Bais was born in Raipur on 2 August 1947, in what was then the Central Provinces and Berar and is now Chhattisgarh, and he belongs to that State. With all three statements standing, options (1), (2) and (3), each of which admits only one or two of them, are all incomplete, and option (4) is the answer.

• (1)Only a is correct — 'Only a is correct' admits the appointment to Maharashtra and rejects both of the other statements, which is the choice of a candidate who followed the February 2023 news but knows nothing of the Governor's earlier career. The appointment itself was widely reported, since Bhagat Singh Koshyari's tenure in Maharashtra had been politically contentious and his departure was news in its own right; the successor's name travelled with that story. But statement b and statement c are both independently true — Bais was Governor of Tripura from 2019 to 2021, and he was born in Raipur and belongs to Chhattisgarh. In a question that offers cumulative options of this shape, choosing the narrowest is not the safe course it appears to be. It is a positive assertion that the other two statements are false, and it must be defended as such rather than chosen as a hedge.
• (2)a and b both are correct — 'a and b both are correct' gets the appointment and the earlier Tripura tenure right and then rejects the statement about which State the Governor belongs to, which is also true. Ramesh Bais was born on 2 August 1947 at Raipur, then in the Central Provinces and Berar and now the capital of Chhattisgarh, and his political career was made there. The reason a candidate rejects statement c is usually that it feels like a different kind of claim from the other two — a biographical detail rather than an office — and biographical details are the ones people are least confident about. But the convention that a Governor is appointed to a State other than the one he belongs to actually supports statement c rather than undermining it: a Governor of Maharashtra who belongs to Chhattisgarh is exactly what that convention predicts.
• (3)a and c both are correct — 'a and c both are correct' accepts the appointment and the home State and rejects the Tripura tenure, and it is the most understandable of the three wrong answers. A candidate who remembers that Ramesh Bais came to Maharashtra from Jharkhand will read statement b, see Tripura where Jharkhand should be, and strike it out. The trouble is that statement b claims only that he was 'earlier' Governor of Tripura, and he was: 29 July 2019 to 13 July 2021 in Tripura, then 14 July 2021 to 17 February 2023 in Jharkhand, then Maharashtra from 18 February 2023. A career with three governorships makes 'earlier' true of two different States, and the statement does not claim to name the most recent. Half-knowledge is more dangerous than none here, because the candidate who knows about Jharkhand is precisely the one who will reject a statement that is correct as written.

The Governor is the constitutional head of a State, appointed by the President under Article 155 and holding office during the President's pleasure under Article 156, ordinarily for a term of five years. The qualifications in Article 157 are minimal — a citizen of India who has completed thirty-five years of age — and Article 158 requires that the Governor not be a member of either House of Parliament or of a State Legislature and hold no other office of profit. Around these bare provisions a set of conventions has grown: that a Governor is normally appointed to a State other than the one to which he belongs, that the Chief Minister of the State is consulted, and that a Governor may be transferred from one State to another during the five-year term, which is how careers like Ramesh Bais's — Tripura, then Jharkhand, then Maharashtra — come about. The office matters far more than its ceremonial description suggests, because the Governor appoints the Chief Minister, decides when a party has been shown to command a majority, reserves Bills for the President's consideration under Article 200, and reports to the President under Article 356. In Maharashtra the office had been in the news through 2022 and into 2023 for precisely these discretionary functions.

Questions about who holds which constitutional office are the cheapest current affairs questions to set and among the most reliably answered, so an examiner who wants them to discriminate adds a second and third clause about the office-holder's past. That is what has happened here: the appointment in statement a was general knowledge in Maharashtra in 2023, and the question is really decided by statements b and c. A State PSC will always favour office-holders with a connection to its own State — the Governor, the Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court, the State's Chief Secretary and Director General of Police, the Chief Election Commissioner, the chairperson of MPSC itself — so those should be tracked with their predecessors and their earlier postings rather than as bare names. The reading habit this item rewards is worth stating separately, because it recurs across the whole paper: a statement saying someone was 'earlier' something does not claim that this was the immediately preceding post, and a candidate who supplies the stronger claim and then refutes it has refuted a sentence the paper did not print. Note finally that this question prints three statements and not four, and labels them with bare lower-case letters a., b., c., where several neighbouring questions in the same paper use upper-case A. to D.; argue only about the items your own question prints.

• Ramesh Bais took office as Governor of Maharashtra on 18 February 2023, succeeding Bhagat Singh Koshyari, whose term ended on 17 February 2023; Bais held the office until 30 July 2024.
• He was Governor of Tripura from 29 July 2019 to 13 July 2021, and Governor of Jharkhand from 14 July 2021 to 17 February 2023, so Jharkhand rather than Tripura was the post he held immediately before Maharashtra.
• Ramesh Bais was born on 2 August 1947 at Raipur, then in the Central Provinces and Berar and now the capital of Chhattisgarh, and belongs to that State.
• A Governor is appointed by the President under Article 155 and holds office during the President's pleasure under Article 156, ordinarily for five years, and may be transferred from one State to another during that term.
• By convention a Governor is appointed to a State other than the one to which he belongs, which is consistent with a Governor of Maharashtra who belongs to Chhattisgarh.

• Reading 'earlier he was the Governor of Tripura' as a claim that Tripura was the post held immediately before Maharashtra, and rejecting a true statement on that misreading
• Choosing the narrowest option in a cumulative set as though it were the cautious choice, when it positively asserts that the other statements are false
• Arguing about a fourth statement in a question that prints only three, which wastes time on an item the Commission never set and can push a candidate towards an option that seems to account for it
• Tracking a constitutional office-holder as a bare name without the predecessor, the date of appointment and the earlier postings, which is where the discriminating clauses come from

MPSC sets office-holder questions every year, and it sets them in two grades. The easy grade asks the name alone and is answered by anyone who read a newspaper that month. The harder grade, used here, wraps the name in two or three subsidiary claims about the person's earlier career, home State or predecessor, so that recognising the name is only the first step. Governors of Maharashtra are an obvious target, and so are the Chief Justice of India, the Chief Election Commissioner, the Comptroller and Auditor General, the Attorney General and the heads of the constitutional commissions. Because such questions are dated by construction, they should be prepared as a running list built through the year, with each entry carrying the date of taking office, the predecessor and the previous post; a list of names alone will fail exactly the questions that were written to discriminate.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Ramesh Bais, who became Governor of Maharashtra in February 2023, had immediately before that held the office of Governor of which State ?

  • (a)Tripura
  • (b)Jharkhand
  • (c)Chhattisgarh
  • (d)Meghalaya

  Answer(b) Jharkhand — he was Governor of Tripura from July 2019 to July 2021 and then of Jharkhand from July 2021 until 17 February 2023, taking charge in Maharashtra the following day. Chhattisgarh, named in the third option, is the State he belongs to rather than one he governed; by convention a Governor is appointed to a State other than his own.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under which Article of the Constitution is the Governor of a State appointed by the President ?

  • (a)Article 153
  • (b)Article 155
  • (c)Article 156
  • (d)Article 157

  Answer(b) Article 155, which provides that the Governor of a State shall be appointed by the President by warrant under his hand and seal. Article 153 requires that there be a Governor for each State, Article 156 provides that the Governor holds office during the pleasure of the President for a term of five years, and Article 157 sets the qualifications, namely citizenship of India and the completion of thirty-five years of age.