MPSC 2025 Prelims Paper-I · Question 72 of 100

Correct — option (3), C and D. Pairs A and B are both accurate: the Steering Committee, which managed the overall business and coordination of the Constituent Assembly's work, was chaired by Dr. Rajendra Prasad, who was also the President of the Constituent Assembly itself, and the Advisory Committee on Fundamental Rights, Minorities and Tribal and Excluded Areas was chaired by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Pairs C and D are both wrong, but for different reasons. Statement C names a committee, 'Central Rights Committee', that does not correspond to any standard body of the Constituent Assembly — the actual committee concerned with fundamental rights, working under Patel's larger Advisory Committee, was the Fundamental Rights Sub-Committee, and while its chairman genuinely was J. B. Kripalani, the committee name given in statement C is not that body's real name, which is enough to make the stated pairing invalid. Statement D then compounds the confusion by taking that same real committee — the Fundamental Rights Sub-Committee — and assigning it to the wrong chairman, Jawaharlal Nehru, when its actual chairman was Kripalani. Nehru chaired other important bodies (notably the Union Powers Committee and the Union Constitution Committee) but not the Fundamental Rights Sub-Committee. With A and B correctly matched and C and D each incorrect — C through a wrong committee name and D through a wrong chairman for the correctly named committee — the incorrect pairs are C and D, matching option (3).

• (1)A and C — This flags A as incorrect, but the Steering Committee of the Constituent Assembly was indeed chaired by Rajendra Prasad — a well-documented and accurate pairing — so including A among the incorrect pairs is wrong. It does correctly flag C as incorrect (since 'Central Rights Committee' is not the real name of the fundamental-rights body, which was properly called the Fundamental Rights Sub-Committee), but this option misses D, which incorrectly assigns the real Fundamental Rights Sub-Committee to Nehru instead of its actual chairman, Kripalani, and it wrongly implicates the genuinely correct A pairing instead.
• (2)B and D — This flags B as incorrect, but the Advisory Committee on Fundamental Rights, Minorities and Tribal and Excluded Areas was indeed chaired by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel — a correct and standard pairing — so including B among the incorrect pairs is wrong. It does correctly flag D as incorrect (the Fundamental Rights Sub-Committee's actual chairman was Kripalani, not Nehru), but this option misses C, whose stated committee name does not match any real Constituent Assembly body, and it wrongly implicates the genuinely correct B pairing instead.
• (4)A and B — Both A and B are accurate pairings — Rajendra Prasad did chair the Steering Committee, and Vallabhbhai Patel did chair the Advisory Committee — so neither belongs among the incorrect pairs. This option entirely misses both C, whose committee name is not a real Constituent Assembly body, and D, whose stated chairman (Nehru) is wrong for the Fundamental Rights Sub-Committee (whose real chairman was Kripalani), meaning it flags exactly the two pairs that are actually correct while ignoring the two that are actually wrong.

The Constituent Assembly of India, which drafted the Constitution between December 1946 and November 1949, divided its enormous workload among a large number of major committees and sub-committees, each with a designated chairman and a specific mandate. At the top sat coordinating bodies like the Steering Committee, chaired by Rajendra Prasad, which managed the Assembly's overall procedure and business. Below this sat substantive committees such as the Advisory Committee on Fundamental Rights, Minorities and Tribal and Excluded Areas, chaired by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, which itself oversaw several sub-committees, including the Fundamental Rights Sub-Committee, chaired by J. B. Kripalani, and the Minorities Sub-Committee, chaired by H. C. Mookherjee. Other major committees had their own separate chairmen: the Union Powers Committee and the Union Constitution Committee were both chaired by Jawaharlal Nehru, the Provincial Constitution Committee by Sardar Patel, and the Drafting Committee — the body responsible for the actual text of the Constitution — by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar. Because chairmanships were distributed across many overlapping bodies, and because sub-committees sat underneath larger advisory committees with different chairmen, this network of names is a dense and easily confused set of facts.

MPSC's polity questions on the Constituent Assembly regularly test this committee-chairman table because it rewards precision over general familiarity: a candidate must know not only who chaired which committee but also the committee's exact name, since a subtly altered name (like 'Central Rights Committee' in place of 'Fundamental Rights Sub-Committee') can look plausible without being real. This question layers two distinct traps in the same set of four statements — a fabricated or mislabelled committee name paired with an otherwise correct chairman (C), and a real committee name paired with the wrong chairman (D) — testing whether a candidate can catch each type of error independently rather than pattern-matching on either the committee name or the chairman's name alone.

• The Steering Committee of the Constituent Assembly was chaired by Dr. Rajendra Prasad, who was also President of the Constituent Assembly.
• The Advisory Committee on Fundamental Rights, Minorities and Tribal and Excluded Areas was chaired by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
• The Fundamental Rights Sub-Committee, working under Patel's Advisory Committee, was chaired by J. B. Kripalani, not Jawaharlal Nehru.
• There is no standard Constituent Assembly body called the 'Central Rights Committee'; the correctly named body dealing with fundamental rights is the Fundamental Rights Sub-Committee.
• Jawaharlal Nehru chaired other major bodies, notably the Union Powers Committee and the Union Constitution Committee, but not the Fundamental Rights Sub-Committee.

• Accepting a committee name that sounds plausible (like 'Central Rights Committee') without verifying it against the actual, precisely named Constituent Assembly bodies
• Assuming any fundamental-rights-related work must trace back to Nehru, given his general prominence, when the actual Fundamental Rights Sub-Committee was chaired by Kripalani
• Confusing the larger Advisory Committee (Patel) with its own sub-committee on Fundamental Rights (Kripalani), since one sits directly under the other
• Treating 'incorrect pair' questions as testing only the chairman's name, when a mismatched or invented committee name is an equally valid way for a pair to be wrong

MPSC polity questions on the Constituent Assembly's committee structure commonly present several name-chairman pairs and ask which are incorrect, mixing genuinely accurate pairs with two distinct kinds of errors — a wrong chairman for a real committee, and a real chairman attached to a fabricated or mislabelled committee name — to test precise recall of both halves of each pairing.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Who was the chairman of the Fundamental Rights Sub-Committee of the Indian Constituent Assembly ?

  • (a)Jawaharlal Nehru
  • (b)Vallabhbhai Patel
  • (c)J. B. Kripalani
  • (d)Rajendra Prasad

  Answer(c) J. B. Kripalani — the Fundamental Rights Sub-Committee, which worked under Patel's larger Advisory Committee, was chaired by J. B. Kripalani.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Union Powers Committee and the Union Constitution Committee of the Constituent Assembly were both chaired by which leader ?

  • (a)Rajendra Prasad
  • (b)Jawaharlal Nehru
  • (c)Vallabhbhai Patel
  • (d)B. R. Ambedkar

  Answer(b) Jawaharlal Nehru — Nehru chaired both the Union Powers Committee and the Union Constitution Committee, distinct from Patel's Advisory Committee and its Fundamental Rights Sub-Committee.