MPSC 2024 Prelims Paper-I · Question 80 of 100

Correct — option (2), 'Articles 324 to 329'. Elections have a Part of the Constitution to themselves: Part XV, which runs from Article 324 to Article 329. Article 324 vests the superintendence, direction and control of the preparation of the electoral rolls and of the conduct of all elections to Parliament, to the State legislatures and to the offices of President and Vice-President in an Election Commission. Article 325 forbids any person to be excluded from an electoral roll, or claimed to be included in a special roll, on grounds of religion, race, caste or sex, and requires one general electoral roll for every territorial constituency — the provision that abolished the separate electorates of the colonial period. Article 326 lays down adult suffrage as the basis of elections to the House of the People and to the legislative assembly of every State, the qualifying age having been reduced from twenty-one to eighteen by the Sixty-first Amendment. Article 327 gives Parliament the power to make provision by law with respect to elections to the legislatures, the authority under which the Representation of the People Acts of 1950 and 1951 were enacted, and Article 328 gives a State legislature a corresponding power in respect of its own elections so far as Parliament has not provided. Article 329 bars the courts from interfering in electoral matters, providing that the validity of a delimitation law cannot be called in question and that an election to either House of Parliament or of a State legislature may be challenged only by an election petition presented to such authority and in such manner as the appropriate legislature provides. The block therefore begins with the Commission and ends with the mode of challenge, and the range printed in option (2) is exactly it.

• (1)Articles 124 to 128 — This range belongs to the Supreme Court, in Part V of the Constitution. Article 124 establishes the Court and provides for the appointment of its judges, Article 125 for their salaries, Article 126 for an acting Chief Justice, Article 127 for ad hoc judges and Article 128 for the attendance of retired judges at sittings of the Court. Nothing in the range concerns elections. It is offered because a candidate who remembers only that some important institution occupies a short numbered block may pick the first such block that comes to mind.
• (3)Articles 256 to 259 — These articles belong to Part XI, in the chapter on administrative relations between the Union and the States: they deal with the obligation of States to comply with laws made by Parliament, the control of the Union over States in certain matters and the power of the Union to entrust its functions to a State. They form part of the machinery of federal administration and have no connection with the conduct of elections. The range is a plausible-looking distractor precisely because it is a short, well-defined block, but the subject is Centre-State relations rather than electoral law.
• (4)Articles 274 to 279 — These articles fall in Part XII and belong to the financial relations between the Union and the States — the requirement of the President's prior recommendation for bills affecting taxation in which States are interested, grants from the Union to certain States, taxes on professions and trades, and the definition of net proceeds. They are the neighbourhood of the Finance Commission article, 280, rather than of the Election Commission article, 324. A candidate who confuses the two Commissions is likely to confuse their article ranges as well, which is exactly the error this option is designed to catch.

Part XV of the Constitution, comprising Articles 324 to 329, sets up the framework within which Indian elections are held. Its central provision is Article 324, which creates the Election Commission and gives it superintendence, direction and control over the preparation of electoral rolls and the conduct of elections to Parliament, to the State legislatures and to the offices of President and Vice-President — elections to local bodies fall outside its remit and belong to the State Election Commissions created by the Seventy-third and Seventy-fourth Amendments. The Commission consists of the Chief Election Commissioner and such other Election Commissioners as the President may from time to time fix, and it has functioned as a three-member body since 1993. The remaining articles supply the principles and the machinery: one general electoral roll and no exclusion on grounds of religion, race, caste or sex under Article 325; adult suffrage under Article 326, with the voting age reduced to eighteen by the Sixty-first Amendment of 1988; the legislative powers of Parliament and of the State legislatures over elections under Articles 327 and 328, exercised principally through the Representation of the People Acts of 1950 and 1951; and the bar on judicial interference except by election petition under Article 329. Between them the Constitution and the two Acts cover the whole ground — the Act of 1950 dealing largely with the allocation of seats, delimitation and electoral rolls, and the Act of 1951 with the conduct of elections, qualifications and disqualifications, corrupt practices and election disputes.

Article-range questions are a recurring MPSC format, and they are answered from memory alone, so the ranges must be learnt as blocks with their Parts attached. The most useful blocks are Articles 12 to 35 for fundamental rights, 36 to 51 for the directive principles, 51A for fundamental duties, 52 to 78 for the Union executive, 124 to 147 for the Supreme Court, 148 to 151 for the Comptroller and Auditor General, 214 to 231 for the High Courts, 243 to 243-O for panchayats and municipalities, 266 to 267 for the government funds, 280 for the Finance Commission, 315 to 323 for the public service commissions and 324 to 329 for elections. Once those are fixed, a question of this kind takes seconds. It is worth noticing the adjacency of the two ranges 315 to 323 and 324 to 329: the public service commissions and the Election Commission sit next to each other in the Constitution, both being institutions designed to stand outside the ordinary executive, and a candidate who remembers one boundary has a check on the other.

• Part XV of the Constitution, Articles 324 to 329, contains the provisions relating to elections.
• Article 324 vests the superintendence, direction and control of elections to Parliament, the State legislatures and the offices of President and Vice-President in the Election Commission of India.
• Article 325 requires one general electoral roll for every constituency and forbids exclusion on grounds of religion, race, caste or sex; Article 326 provides for adult suffrage.
• The voting age was reduced from twenty-one to eighteen years by the Sixty-first Amendment Act of 1988.
• Articles 327 and 328 give Parliament and the State legislatures power to legislate on elections — the source of the Representation of the People Acts of 1950 and 1951 — and Article 329 bars judicial interference except by election petition.

• Confusing the Election Commission's article range with that of the public service commissions immediately before it
• Assuming the Election Commission conducts local body elections; those belong to the State Election Commissions
• Mixing up the ranges of Part XI and Part XII, on Centre-State administrative and financial relations, with the electoral Part XV
• Forgetting that the voting age of eighteen came from the Sixty-first Amendment and was not in the Constitution as enacted

MPSC sets article-range questions on the institutions and the Parts of the Constitution regularly, and it also sets the reverse — naming an article and asking what it provides. The Election Commission attracts a second family of questions on composition, tenure and removal, and a third on the Representation of the People Acts and the conduct of elections. Because these can all be prepared from a single page of notes covering Part XV and the two Acts, they are among the most reliably scoreable items in the polity section.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The voting age in India was reduced from twenty-one years to eighteen years by which constitutional amendment ?

  • (a)The Forty-second Amendment
  • (b)The Fifty-second Amendment
  • (c)The Sixty-first Amendment
  • (d)The Seventy-third Amendment

  Answer(c) The Sixty-first Amendment — enacted in 1988, it amended Article 326 to lower the qualifying age for voting in elections to the Lok Sabha and the State legislative assemblies from twenty-one to eighteen years. The Fifty-second Amendment introduced the anti-defection law and the Seventy-third gave constitutional status to the panchayats.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Constitution, an election to either House of Parliament may be called in question :

  • (a)By a writ petition to the Supreme Court under Article 32
  • (b)Only by an election petition presented to such authority and in such manner as provided by law
  • (c)By a reference made by the Election Commission to the President
  • (d)By a resolution of the House concerned

  Answer(b) Only by an election petition presented to such authority and in such manner as provided by law — Article 329 bars ordinary judicial interference in electoral matters and channels every challenge into the election petition provided for by the appropriate legislature, which under the Representation of the People Act, 1951 is heard by the High Court.