MPSC 2024 Prelims Paper-I · Question 75 of 100

Correct — option (2), '(A), (B), (C) and (D)'. All four printed statements hold. Statement (A) is right on the date: S. R. Bommai v. Union of India was decided by the Supreme Court on 11 March 1994, by a bench of nine judges. The proceedings arose from the dismissal of Bommai's own government in Karnataka in 1989 and were heard together with challenges to the President's rule imposed in several other States, including those dismissed after the demolition at Ayodhya in December 1992. Statement (B) is right in substance: the Court held that a proclamation issued under Article 356 is not immune from scrutiny, so an aggrieved State government may move the Supreme Court against it — the proclamation is justiciable, and the burden lies on the Union to produce the material on which it acted. Statement (C) follows from the same holding and is also right: if the Court finds that the proclamation rests on wholly irrelevant grounds, on no material at all, or on mala fide considerations, it may strike it down; and, most strikingly, it may restore the dismissed ministry and revive the dissolved or suspended Assembly, since a power exercised unconstitutionally can be undone. Statement (D) states the procedural safeguard the judgment built around dissolution: the Assembly is not to be dissolved until Parliament has approved the proclamation under Article 356(3), so until that approval the President may at most suspend the House. The reason is plain — dissolution is irreversible in practice, and to allow it before Parliament has spoken would let the Union destroy a State legislature that Parliament might refuse to sanction the dismissal of. Two further holdings, not printed here but part of the same judgment, complete the picture: the majority of a ministry must be tested on the floor of the House rather than by the Governor's own assessment, and secularism is part of the basic structure of the Constitution.

• (1)Only (C) and (D) — This option keeps the two statements about the Court's remedial powers and about dissolution but rejects the date and the availability of an appeal, both of which are correct. The judgment was delivered in 1994, and its central contribution was precisely that the proclamation under Article 356 is open to challenge — without that, the power to quash asserted in statement (C) would have nothing to attach to. Rejecting statement (B) while accepting statement (C) is internally inconsistent, and noticing that inconsistency is enough to discard this option without recalling the date at all.
• (3)Only (B), (C) and (D) — This option accepts everything of substance and rejects only the year, which is nevertheless right: the case was decided on 11 March 1994. It is the option a candidate reaches for when he is sure of the doctrine but hazy on the date, and it illustrates why the year of each landmark judgment is worth memorising alongside its holding — Kesavananda 1973, Minerva Mills 1980, Bommai 1994, Vishaka 1997. Dates are the cheapest detail for a paper-setter to falsify and the cheapest for a candidate to secure.
• (4)Only (A), (B) and (C) — This option drops the statement about dissolution, which is one of the most important operative directions in the judgment. The Court laid down that a State Assembly is not to be dissolved before Parliament has approved the proclamation under Article 356(3), leaving suspension as the only permissible interim step; the direction exists because dissolution cannot be undone once elections have followed. A candidate who omits statement (D) has usually remembered Bommai as a case about judicial review alone and forgotten the procedural discipline it imposed on the sequence of dismissal, suspension, parliamentary approval and dissolution.

Article 356 allows the President, on receipt of a report from the Governor of a State or otherwise, to proclaim that the government of that State cannot be carried on in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution, and thereupon to assume the functions of the State government and declare that the powers of its legislature shall be exercisable by Parliament. The proclamation must be laid before both Houses and ceases to operate after two months unless approved by them; once approved it runs for six months at a time, subject to an outer limit of three years and to the additional conditions inserted by the Forty-fourth Amendment. Before 1994 the power was used freely and was widely regarded as unreviewable, following the reasoning of earlier decisions and the political practice of the preceding decades. Bommai changed that. The nine-judge bench held that the proclamation is subject to judicial review; that the material on which the President acted must be relevant and can be examined by the Court, although the Court will not sit in judgment on the adequacy of that material; that a proclamation founded on irrelevant, extraneous or mala fide grounds can be struck down and the status quo ante restored, including the revival of the ministry and the Assembly; that the test of majority is the floor of the House; and that a State government acting against secularism, which is part of the basic structure, may properly be dismissed. The practical result was a marked fall in the casual use of Article 356 in the years that followed, and the judgment is regularly cited as a landmark in Indian federalism.

MPSC's polity section returns often to Article 356 and to Bommai, because the subject sits at the junction of federalism, the emergency provisions and the powers of the Governor — three themes the Commission examines separately as well. The questions are usually statement lists in which the year, the size of the bench or one operative holding is altered. The efficient preparation is the same short record used for every landmark case: year, bench, what was decided, what changed afterwards. It is worth noticing that this question is unusual in that every printed statement is true; candidates trained to expect exactly one false statement in a list of four can talk themselves out of the correct option, and the discipline of judging each statement on its own merits, rather than on an expectation about how many should be true, is what protects the mark here. Note also that the statement labels are printed in upper case, (A) to (D), as they are on several questions in this paper but not on all.

• S. R. Bommai v. Union of India was decided on 11 March 1994 by a nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court.
• The Court held that a proclamation under Article 356 is subject to judicial review, and that the Union must disclose the material on which the President acted.
• A proclamation based on irrelevant or mala fide grounds can be struck down, and the Court may restore the dismissed ministry and revive the Assembly.
• A State Assembly is not to be dissolved until Parliament has approved the proclamation under Article 356(3); until then it may only be suspended.
• The judgment also held that the majority of a ministry must be tested on the floor of the House, and that secularism is part of the basic structure of the Constitution.

• Assuming that a statement list must contain at least one false statement; here all four are correct
• Confusing suspension of an Assembly with its dissolution — the second must wait for Parliament's approval of the proclamation
• Misremembering the year of the judgment; Bommai was decided in 1994
• Believing the Court reviews the sufficiency of the material before the President; it reviews its relevance and the bona fides of the proclamation

Article 356 and Bommai appear in MPSC papers as statement lists on what the judgment held, as direct questions on the duration and approval of President's rule, and as part of broader items on Centre-State relations and the Governor's discretion. The Commission tends to test the operative consequences — can the proclamation be challenged, can the Assembly be revived, when may it be dissolved — rather than the reasoning, so those consequences are worth learning as a numbered list. Companion questions ask which body recommended reform of Article 356 and how the Forty-fourth Amendment altered the emergency provisions.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  According to the Supreme Court's decision in the Bommai case, the majority enjoyed by a State ministry is to be tested :

  • (a)By the Governor on the basis of his own assessment
  • (b)On the floor of the Legislative Assembly
  • (c)By the President on the report of the Governor
  • (d)By the Election Commission

  Answer(b) On the floor of the Legislative Assembly — the Court held that the floor test is the only proper way to determine whether a ministry retains its majority, and that the Governor's subjective satisfaction cannot substitute for it. This holding has been applied repeatedly in later disputes over government formation in the States.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  A proclamation issued under Article 356 must be approved by both Houses of Parliament within which period, failing which it ceases to operate ?

  • (a)One month
  • (b)Two months
  • (c)Six months
  • (d)One year

  Answer(b) Two months — the proclamation must be laid before each House and ceases to operate at the end of two months unless approved by resolutions of both Houses; once approved it continues for six months at a time, subject to the outer limits laid down in Article 356.