MPSC 2024 Prelims Paper-I · Question 77 of 100

Correct — option (4), '(A) and (D) correct'. Each statement pairs a territorial or institutional change with a numbered amendment, and only two of the four pairings hold. Statement (A) is right: the Tenth Amendment of 1961 incorporated Dadra and Nagar Haveli into the Union as a Union Territory. The territory had been taken from Portuguese control in 1954 and administered separately in the years that followed, and the amendment gave that position constitutional form by adding it to the First Schedule. Statement (D) is right as well: the Twenty-second Amendment of 1969 is the amendment associated with the creation of Meghalaya, which it established as an autonomous State within Assam by inserting the necessary provisions into the Constitution; Meghalaya became a full-fledged State three years later under the North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act, 1971, which took effect in 1972. The other two statements attach real events to the wrong amendments, and each is off by a small number, which is exactly how this format is built. Diu, Daman and Goa were incorporated into India by the Twelfth Amendment of 1962, following the military action of December 1961, not by the Eleventh; the Eleventh Amendment of 1961 belongs to an entirely different subject, having changed the procedure for the election of the Vice-President by providing for an electoral college of the members of both Houses instead of a joint meeting, and having provided that an election to the office of President or Vice-President cannot be challenged on the ground of any vacancy in the electoral college. Legislatures for the Union Territories were provided for by the Fourteenth Amendment of 1962, which also incorporated Puducherry into the Union, not by the Fifteenth Amendment of 1963, whose principal change was raising the retirement age of High Court judges from sixty to sixty-two. Since only statements (A) and (D) are correctly paired, option (4) is the answer.

• (1)(A) and (C) correct — Statement (A) is correctly paired, but statement (C) is not. Legislatures and councils of ministers for the Union Territories were created by the Fourteenth Amendment of 1962, the same amendment that incorporated Puducherry into the Union; the Fifteenth Amendment of 1963 dealt with the higher judiciary, raising the retirement age of High Court judges from sixty to sixty-two and making related provisions about writs, ad hoc judges and the determination of a judge's age. The option is designed for a candidate who remembers the Union Territory legislature reform but not which of two consecutive amendments carried it.
• (2)(B) and (D) correct — Statement (D) is correctly paired, but statement (B) is not. Goa, Daman and Diu were incorporated into the Union by the Twelfth Amendment of 1962, after the Portuguese possessions were taken over in December 1961; the Eleventh Amendment of 1961 concerned the election of the Vice-President and the immunity of presidential and vice-presidential elections from challenge on the ground of a vacancy in the electoral college. The proximity of the Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Amendments in both number and date is the whole difficulty of this question, and this option punishes an off-by-one memory.
• (3)(B) and (C) correct — Neither statement in this option is correctly paired. The incorporation of Goa, Daman and Diu belongs to the Twelfth Amendment rather than the Eleventh, and the creation of legislatures in the Union Territories belongs to the Fourteenth rather than the Fifteenth. Both errors are of the same kind, an event attributed to the amendment immediately before the one that carried it, and a candidate who selects this option has usually memorised the events without the numbers and then guessed consistently low.

The early amendments to the Constitution include a cluster concerned with the absorption of former French and Portuguese possessions and with the administration of Union Territories, and they are best learnt as a sequence rather than singly. The Tenth Amendment of 1961 brought in Dadra and Nagar Haveli as a Union Territory. The Eleventh Amendment of 1961 is not territorial at all: it altered the electoral college for the Vice-President to the members of both Houses of Parliament rather than a joint meeting of them, and barred challenges to a presidential or vice-presidential election on the ground of a vacancy in the electoral college. The Twelfth Amendment of 1962 incorporated Goa, Daman and Diu. The Thirteenth Amendment of 1962 gave Nagaland statehood with the special provisions of Article 371A. The Fourteenth Amendment of 1962 incorporated Puducherry and empowered Parliament to create legislatures and councils of ministers for certain Union Territories. The Fifteenth Amendment of 1963 moved to a different subject, the High Courts, raising the retirement age of their judges to sixty-two. The Twenty-second Amendment of 1969 created Meghalaya as an autonomous State within Assam, a step completed when the North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act, 1971 gave it full statehood along with Manipur and Tripura in 1972. Behind all of these lies Article 368, which prescribes three routes of amendment — by simple majority outside Article 368, by special majority, and by special majority with ratification by half the State legislatures — and Articles 2, 3 and 4, under which the admission and reorganisation of States is achieved by ordinary law rather than by amendment.

Amendment numbers are among the most heavily examined items in MPSC's polity section, and the Commission's habit is to print an event with an amendment number that is close to but not the same as the correct one. That means recognition is not enough: a candidate must hold the number, not merely the event. The most efficient way to store the early amendments is chronologically, because the territorial ones fall in a tight run between 1961 and 1962 in the order Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Goa and Daman and Diu, Nagaland, Puducherry — a sequence that follows the history itself and is therefore easier to recall than a list of numbers. It is also worth keeping in mind the distinction that this cluster illustrates: the creation or reorganisation of States within India is done by ordinary legislation under Articles 2 to 4, while the acquisition of new territory from a foreign power required a constitutional amendment to enter it in the First Schedule.

• The Tenth Amendment Act, 1961 incorporated Dadra and Nagar Haveli into the Union as a Union Territory.
• The Eleventh Amendment Act, 1961 changed the electoral college for the Vice-President to the members of both Houses of Parliament and barred challenges to presidential and vice-presidential elections on the ground of a vacancy in the electoral college.
• The Twelfth Amendment Act, 1962 incorporated Goa, Daman and Diu into the Union following the action of December 1961.
• The Fourteenth Amendment Act, 1962 incorporated Puducherry and provided for legislatures and councils of ministers in certain Union Territories; the Fifteenth Amendment Act, 1963 raised the retirement age of High Court judges from sixty to sixty-two.
• The Twenty-second Amendment Act, 1969 created Meghalaya as an autonomous State within Assam; full statehood followed under the North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act, 1971, effective in 1972.

• Attributing an event to the amendment immediately before or after the one that carried it; this question turns entirely on off-by-one errors
• Confusing the Eleventh Amendment, which concerns the election of the Vice-President, with the territorial amendments around it
• Assuming the Fifteenth Amendment created Union Territory legislatures; that was the Fourteenth, and the Fifteenth concerned High Court judges
• Overlooking that Meghalaya was first created as an autonomous State within Assam and became a full State only in 1972

MPSC asks amendments in three shapes: name the amendment that made a stated change, state what a numbered amendment did, or judge a list of amendment-and-event pairings as here. All three are answered from one chronological table, so building that table once is worth more than any amount of case-by-case revision. The Commission concentrates on the amendments with a clear narrative attached — the territorial ones, the Forty-second and Forty-fourth, the Seventy-third and Seventy-fourth, the Hundred and First — and it habitually sets its distractors one or two numbers away from the truth.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Goa, Daman and Diu were incorporated into the Indian Union by which constitutional amendment ?

  • (a)The Tenth Amendment
  • (b)The Eleventh Amendment
  • (c)The Twelfth Amendment
  • (d)The Fourteenth Amendment

  Answer(c) The Twelfth Amendment — enacted in 1962, it added the former Portuguese possessions of Goa, Daman and Diu to the Union. The Tenth Amendment had incorporated Dadra and Nagar Haveli, the Eleventh concerned the election of the Vice-President, and the Fourteenth incorporated Puducherry and provided for legislatures in certain Union Territories.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The creation of a new State within the Indian Union out of the territory of an existing State is effected by :

  • (a)A constitutional amendment under Article 368 requiring ratification by half the States
  • (b)An ordinary law of Parliament under Articles 3 and 4
  • (c)A resolution of the State legislature concerned
  • (d)An order of the President under Article 356

  Answer(b) An ordinary law of Parliament under Articles 3 and 4 — Parliament may form a new State by separation of territory or by uniting States or parts of them, after the President has referred the bill to the legislature of the State concerned for its views, and the consequential changes to the First and Fourth Schedules are not deemed to be amendments under Article 368.