MPSC 2024 Prelims Paper-I · Question 83 of 100

Correct — option (2), '(A) and (B)'. Take the four statements one at a time. Statement (A) is correct: India's first general election was held over roughly four months, from 25 October 1951 to 21 February 1952, and the first Lok Sabha was duly constituted on 17 April 1952. Statement (B) is correct: the first session of that House commenced on 13 May 1952. Statement (C) fails on its date. The first Lok Sabha did serve its full five-year term — that half of the sentence is true — but it was dissolved on 4 April 1957, not on 1 April 1957, and a statement-list question is decided by what is printed, not by what is nearly printed. Statement (D) fails on the office. Ganesh Vasudev Mavalankar was the first SPEAKER of the Lok Sabha, not its first Deputy Speaker; he had already presided over the Constituent Assembly (Legislative) and the provisional Parliament, is remembered as the father of the Lok Sabha, and held the chair until his death on 27 February 1956, when M. Ananthasayanam Ayyangar succeeded him. Ayyangar was the House's first Deputy Speaker, elected in May 1952, and he moved up to the Speaker's chair in March 1956. So exactly two statements survive, (A) and (B), which is option (2). It is worth seeing why 1 April 1957 reads plausibly: the first House was dissolved on 4 April 1957 and the second Lok Sabha was constituted the very next day, 5 April 1957, so the changeover did fall in the first week of that April — the statement is wrong by three days inside a window that is otherwise correct. That is the characteristic shape of a false statement in this format, and it is why the number itself, rather than the sense of the sentence, has to be read as the claim.

• (1)(A) Only — Statement (A) is indeed correct, but so is statement (B): the first session of the first Lok Sabha commenced on 13 May 1952. This option is the trap for a candidate who verifies the first statement, is satisfied, and stops. In a 'which of the statements is/are correct' item every statement has to be tested, because the answer is a set and not a first hit; the presence of an 'only' option is designed precisely to reward stopping early.
• (3)(B), (C) and (D) — This option keeps the one true statement it contains, (B), and then adds both of the false ones. Statement (C) misdates the dissolution: the first Lok Sabha ran its full term but was dissolved on 4 April 1957. Statement (D) misassigns the office: G. V. Mavalankar was the first Speaker of the Lok Sabha, while the first Deputy Speaker was M. Ananthasayanam Ayyangar. It also drops statement (A), the constitution date and the election dates, which is correct. Choosing it usually means the candidate recognised Mavalankar's name in connection with the first Lok Sabha without checking which chair he occupied.
• (4)(D) Only — This option selects the single statement that is plainly wrong. Mavalankar was the first Speaker, an office he had effectively held since 1947 as President of the Constituent Assembly (Legislative), and the first Deputy Speaker of the Lok Sabha was M. Ananthasayanam Ayyangar. The option is offered to catch the candidate who associates the name with the first Lok Sabha and reads no further; the fix is to attach an office, not just a period, to every name learnt for polity.

The first Lok Sabha is a compact set of dates that MPSC returns to, and it helps to see them as a sequence rather than as isolated facts. Polling for the first general election ran from 25 October 1951 to 21 February 1952 over many phases, because the electorate of about 173 million was overwhelmingly non-literate and the Election Commission under Sukumar Sen had to build the machinery from nothing, including the system of party symbols and separate ballot boxes. The House was constituted on 17 April 1952, its first session commenced on 13 May 1952, and it was dissolved on 4 April 1957 after completing its full term. Its Speaker was G. V. Mavalankar, who had presided over the Constituent Assembly (Legislative) from 1947 and over the provisional Parliament, and who is called the father of the Lok Sabha; on his death in February 1956 the Deputy Speaker, M. Ananthasayanam Ayyangar, succeeded him and went on to serve as Speaker of the second Lok Sabha as well. The convention that grew from this period — that the Speaker's chair is vacated only by death, resignation or the end of the House — is part of why these names are worth holding.

Questions on the first Lok Sabha are date questions, and MPSC builds them by moving one digit rather than by inventing a wholly different fact. That is exactly what statement (C) does: the tenure claim is true and only the day is wrong. A candidate who reads for the sense of a sentence rather than for its numbers will pass over it. The discipline that works on any statement list carrying dates is to read the number itself as the claim, and to ask what would have to be true for the sentence as a whole to be right. The second habit this question rewards is keeping offices distinct from names. Speaker and Deputy Speaker, Chairman and Deputy Chairman, Chief Justice and Attorney General are all pairs that MPSC swaps around, and the swap is invisible to anyone who has learnt the name attached only to a period.

• India's first general election was held from 25 October 1951 to 21 February 1952; the first Lok Sabha was constituted on 17 April 1952.
• The first session of the first Lok Sabha commenced on 13 May 1952.
• The first Lok Sabha completed its full term and was dissolved on 4 April 1957.
• G. V. Mavalankar was the first Speaker of the Lok Sabha, having earlier presided over the Constituent Assembly (Legislative); he died in office on 27 February 1956.
• M. Ananthasayanam Ayyangar was the first Deputy Speaker of the Lok Sabha and succeeded Mavalankar as Speaker in March 1956.
• Sukumar Sen was India's first Chief Election Commissioner and conducted the 1951-52 general election.

• Accepting a date that is close to the right one — the dissolution was 4 April 1957, not 1 April 1957
• Reading only the first statement and taking the 'only' option that names it
• Confusing the Speaker with the Deputy Speaker; Mavalankar was the first Speaker and Ayyangar the first Deputy Speaker
• Assuming that a House dissolved before the very last day of its term did not complete its tenure — the first Lok Sabha did serve out its full five years

Parliamentary firsts are standard MPSC material and are asked either as a single-line recall item — who was the first Speaker, when did the first session meet — or, as here, as a statement list in which one statement carries a slightly wrong number and another swaps an office. The reliable preparation is a short chronology of 1947 to 1957 with the offices attached to names, and the habit of treating every printed date as a separate claim to be verified rather than as scenery around the fact being tested.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Who was the first Deputy Speaker of the Lok Sabha ?

  • (a)G. V. Mavalankar
  • (b)M. Ananthasayanam Ayyangar
  • (c)Sardar Hukam Singh
  • (d)Gurdial Singh Dhillon

  Answer(b) M. Ananthasayanam Ayyangar — he was elected Deputy Speaker of the first Lok Sabha in May 1952 and became Speaker in March 1956 after the death of G. V. Mavalankar, who was the House's first Speaker.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  India's first general election to the Lok Sabha was conducted under which Chief Election Commissioner ?

  • (a)Sukumar Sen
  • (b)K. V. K. Sundaram
  • (c)S. P. Sen Verma
  • (d)T. Swaminathan

  Answer(a) Sukumar Sen — he was India's first Chief Election Commissioner and organised the 1951-52 general election, held from 25 October 1951 to 21 February 1952, for an electorate of about 173 million, most of whom could not read.