MPSC 2025 Prelims Paper-I · Question 78 of 100

Correct — option (1), Only A, B. B. Pattabhi Sitaramayya, a Constituent Assembly member elected from the Madras Province and a senior Congress leader, chaired both the House Committee, which handled matters of accommodation and facilities for Assembly members, and the Committee on Chief Commissioner's Provinces, a seven-member committee formed to examine the political and administrative arrangements of the areas then under direct central control — Ajmer-Merwara, Coorg, Delhi, Panth-Piploda, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands — submitting its report to the Assembly on 21 October 1947. Both A and B are therefore accurate. C, the Adhoc Committee on Citizenship, and D, the Adhoc Committee on Supreme Court, were separate bodies chaired by other members — the Ad hoc Committee on Citizenship is associated with S. Varadachariar, and the Ad hoc Committee on the Supreme Court is likewise linked to Varadachariar's expertise as a former judge, not to Sitaramayya. Since Sitaramayya's confirmed chairmanships among these four are specifically the House Committee and the Committee on Chief Commissioner's Provinces, and not the citizenship or Supreme Court committees, the correct set is 'Only A, B'.

• (2)Only C, D — This names the two committees Sitaramayya did not chair — the Adhoc Committee on Citizenship and the Adhoc Committee on Supreme Court — while omitting the House Committee and the Committee on Chief Commissioner's Provinces, which he actually did chair. It inverts the correct pairing entirely.
• (3)Only A, D — This correctly includes A, the House Committee, which Sitaramayya did chair, but incorrectly adds D, the Adhoc Committee on Supreme Court, a body associated with a different Constituent Assembly member. It also omits B, the Committee on Chief Commissioner's Provinces, which is one of Sitaramayya's genuine chairmanships.
• (4)Only B, C — This correctly includes B, the Committee on Chief Commissioner's Provinces, which Sitaramayya did chair, but incorrectly adds C, the Adhoc Committee on Citizenship, which he did not. It also omits A, the House Committee, another of his genuine chairmanships.

The Constituent Assembly relied on a very large number of committees, both major and minor, to divide up the enormous task of drafting the Constitution and managing the Assembly's own affairs. Some committees dealt with substantive constitutional questions — citizenship, the structure of the judiciary, fundamental rights — while others, like the House Committee, handled the Assembly's own practical, housekeeping needs, and still others, like the Committee on Chief Commissioner's Provinces, examined the specific administrative status of smaller centrally-administered territories that did not fit neatly into the provincial or princely-state categories. B. Pattabhi Sitaramayya, a veteran Congress leader from Madras Province who later became the first Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, was entrusted with two such bodies: the House Committee and the Committee on Chief Commissioner's Provinces, the latter reporting on the administrative arrangements needed for Ajmer-Merwara, Coorg, Delhi, Panth-Piploda, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

MPSC's polity questions on Constituent Assembly committees frequently ask which specific committees a named member chaired, out of a longer list that mixes genuine and non-genuine attributions, testing precise recall rather than a general sense that a prominent leader 'was involved in many committees'. Because the Constituent Assembly had dozens of committees and sub-committees with overlapping subject matter, a candidate who has only a loose sense of Sitaramayya's role is likely to accept plausible-sounding but wrong attributions like the citizenship or Supreme Court committees.

• B. Pattabhi Sitaramayya was a Constituent Assembly member from Madras Province and a senior Indian National Congress leader.
• He chaired the House Committee, responsible for members' accommodation and facilities within the Constituent Assembly.
• He also chaired the Committee on Chief Commissioner's Provinces, a seven-member body examining Ajmer-Merwara, Coorg, Delhi, Panth-Piploda, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, reporting to the Assembly on 21 October 1947.
• The Adhoc Committee on Citizenship and the Adhoc Committee on Supreme Court were separate bodies, not chaired by Sitaramayya.
• Sitaramayya later became the first Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh after Independence.

• Assuming a prominent Constituent Assembly member chaired every committee associated with his general area of expertise or seniority
• Confusing committees with similarly bureaucratic-sounding names, such as the House Committee and the Committee on Chief Commissioner's Provinces, with unrelated adhoc committees
• Attributing the Adhoc Committee on Citizenship or the Adhoc Committee on Supreme Court to Sitaramayya simply because all these committees operated in the same Assembly session period
• Treating committee-chairman questions as testing only whether a name 'sounds right' rather than the exact, verified pairing

MPSC polity questions on Constituent Assembly committees commonly list four committee names against one member and ask which subset that member actually chaired, mixing genuine chairmanships with plausible-sounding but incorrect ones, to test whether a candidate has the precise committee-to-chairman table memorised rather than a general impression of who was 'important' in the Assembly.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Committee on Chief Commissioner's Provinces, chaired by B. Pattabhi Sitaramayya, examined the administrative arrangements of which centrally-administered areas ?

  • (a)Only Delhi and Coorg
  • (b)Ajmer-Merwara, Coorg, Delhi, Panth-Piploda, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands
  • (c)Only the princely states
  • (d)All the provinces of British India

  Answer(b) Ajmer-Merwara, Coorg, Delhi, Panth-Piploda, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands — this seven-member committee, chaired by Sitaramayya, reported on these five centrally-administered areas to the Assembly on 21 October 1947.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which Constituent Assembly committee was responsible for arrangements relating to members' accommodation and facilities, and was chaired by B. Pattabhi Sitaramayya ?

  • (a)The Drafting Committee
  • (b)The House Committee
  • (c)The Steering Committee
  • (d)The Order of Business Committee

  Answer(b) The House Committee — this committee, chaired by Sitaramayya, handled housekeeping matters such as accommodation and facilities for Constituent Assembly members.