MPSC 2024 Prelims Paper-I · Question 84 of 100

Correct — option (4), '(B) and (C)'. The four statements mix constitutional bodies with statutory ones, and the two that survive are precisely the two created by ordinary Acts of Parliament. Statement (B) is correct: the National Commission for Women was set up under the National Commission for Women Act, 1990, and the commission itself was constituted in January 1992, with Jayanti Patnaik as its first chairperson. Statement (C) is correct: the National Commission for Minorities was given statutory footing by the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992, and the statutory commission was constituted in 1993 — its predecessor, the Minorities Commission of 1978, had been created merely by a resolution of the Ministry of Home Affairs and had no statutory basis at all. Statement (A) fails on the article number. The National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes was created under Article 338, which the Constitution (Sixty-fifth Amendment) Act, 1990 rewrote for the purpose, replacing the earlier Special Officer for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Article 339 is a different provision altogether: it deals with the control of the Union over the administration of Scheduled Areas and the welfare of Scheduled Tribes, and provides for the appointment of a commission to report on their administration. Statement (D) fails on the date. The ordinance that brought the National Human Rights Commission into being was promulgated on 28 September 1993, and the commission was constituted on 12 October 1993 under what became the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 — not on 27 December 1993.

• (1)(A) and (C) — Statement (C) is right, but statement (A) puts the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes under Article 339 when it was created under Article 338, as rewritten by the Sixty-fifth Amendment of 1990. Article 339 is the Union's supervisory provision for Scheduled Areas and tribal welfare. This option also drops statement (B), the National Commission for Women, which is correct. It is aimed at a candidate who remembers that a Scheduled Castes commission has a constitutional home somewhere in the late 330s without having fixed which article it is.
• (2)(B) and (D) — Statement (B) is right, but statement (D) misdates the founding ordinance of the National Human Rights Commission. The Protection of Human Rights Ordinance was promulgated on 28 September 1993 and the commission was constituted on 12 October 1993; the ordinance was later replaced by the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993. December 1993 is close enough to look plausible and wrong enough to fail. The option also omits statement (C), the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992, which is correct.
• (3)(A) and (D) — This option selects both of the false statements and neither of the true ones — the wrong article for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes commission and the wrong date for the human rights ordinance. It is worth pausing on why a candidate might land here: (A) and (D) are the two statements that carry a technical detail, an article number and a precise date, and a reader who treats technical detail as a mark of authenticity rather than as the thing being tested will find them the most convincing sentences in the set.

India's national commissions divide into two families and questions in this format nearly always turn on which family a body belongs to. The constitutional commissions live in the Constitution itself: the National Commission for Scheduled Castes under Article 338, the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes under Article 338A — the two were a single body under Article 338 from the Sixty-fifth Amendment of 1990 until the Eighty-ninth Amendment of 2003 split them with effect from 2004 — and the National Commission for Backward Classes under Article 338B, which acquired constitutional status only through the Hundred and Second Amendment of 2018. Their reports go to the President and are laid before Parliament, and their advice must be sought on major policy matters affecting the groups they protect. The statutory commissions are creatures of ordinary legislation and can be altered or abolished by ordinary law: the National Commission for Women under the Act of 1990, the National Commission for Minorities under the Act of 1992, the National Human Rights Commission under the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993, and the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights under the Commissions for Protection of Child Rights Act, 2005. Article 339, which this question dangles as a decoy, belongs to neither family — it is the provision empowering the President to appoint a commission on the administration of Scheduled Areas and the welfare of Scheduled Tribes and empowering the Union to direct a state on that subject.

MPSC uses this format to test whether a candidate can tell a constitutional body from a statutory one, because the distinction has consequences the exam cares about: how the body is created, how it can be dissolved, who its reports go to, and whether Parliament can change its composition by ordinary law. The commonest error is to assume that any body with 'National Commission' in its name has a constitutional article behind it. Only three do. The habit worth building is to store each commission with three tags — the instrument that created it, the year, and the authority its findings carry — and to be suspicious of any statement that pairs a well-known commission with an article number, since substituting a neighbouring article is the cheapest false statement an examiner can write. Notice too that in this question the two true statements are the plain ones and the two false statements are the ones dressed in detail.

• Article 338 provides for the National Commission for Scheduled Castes; Article 338A for the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes, created when the Eighty-ninth Amendment of 2003 split the earlier joint commission.
• The joint National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes was created by the Constitution (Sixty-fifth Amendment) Act, 1990, replacing the Special Officer provided for in the original Article 338.
• Article 339 concerns the control of the Union over the administration of Scheduled Areas and the welfare of Scheduled Tribes, and the appointment of a commission to report on them.
• The National Commission for Women was established under the National Commission for Women Act, 1990 and constituted in January 1992.
• The National Commission for Minorities was given statutory status by the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992; its non-statutory predecessor dated from a Home Ministry resolution of 1978.
• The National Human Rights Commission was created by an ordinance of 28 September 1993 and constituted on 12 October 1993, under what became the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993.
• The National Commission for Backward Classes became a constitutional body under Article 338B through the Hundred and Second Amendment Act, 2018.

• Assuming every 'National Commission' is a constitutional body; only the SC, ST and Backward Classes commissions are
• Substituting Article 339 for Article 338 — the two are adjacent and cover entirely different subjects
• Accepting a precise-looking date without checking it; the NHRC ordinance was of 28 September 1993, not December 1993
• Confusing the year of the Act with the year the commission was actually constituted, which differs for the NCW (1990 and 1992) and the NCM (1992 and 1993)

MPSC asks about national commissions in three ways: which instrument created a named body, which article houses a constitutional commission, and matching commissions to their founding years. The distractors are usually built by shifting an article number by one or by moving a date within the same year, so the safe preparation is a small table of commissions with the exact instrument and year against each. Expect the National Human Rights Commission and the National Commission for Women to appear most often, because both are statutory bodies whose names sound constitutional.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The National Human Rights Commission of India was established under which of the following ?

  • (a)Article 338 of the Constitution
  • (b)The Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993
  • (c)The National Human Rights Commission Act, 1994
  • (d)A resolution of the Ministry of Home Affairs, 1978

  Answer(b) The Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 — the commission was first created by an ordinance promulgated on 28 September 1993 and constituted on 12 October 1993, and the ordinance was replaced by the Act of the same name. It is a statutory body, not a constitutional one.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which constitutional amendment gave the National Commission for Backward Classes the status of a constitutional body ?

  • (a)The Sixty-fifth Amendment, 1990
  • (b)The Eighty-ninth Amendment, 2003
  • (c)The Hundred and Second Amendment, 2018
  • (d)The Hundred and Fifth Amendment, 2021

  Answer(c) The Hundred and Second Amendment, 2018 — it inserted Article 338B and made the National Commission for Backward Classes a constitutional body. The Sixty-fifth Amendment created the joint commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes under Article 338, and the Eighty-ninth Amendment split it into separate commissions under Articles 338 and 338A.