MPSC 2025 Prelims Q81: When was the National Commission for Women established in

Q: What is the answer to MPSC 2025 Prelims Q81?

(3). Correct — option (3), 1992. Parliament passed the National Commission for Women Act in 1990 — the Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha on 22 May 1990 and received the President's assent on 30 August 1990 — but an Act receiving assent and a body being constituted under it are two different events, and this question turns on the second one. The National Commission for Women itself, as a functioning statutory body with a Chairperson, five Members and a Member-Secretary as provided under Section 3 of the Act, was first constituted on 31 January 1992, with Jayanti Patnaik as its first Chairperson. The Commission's mandate, laid out in the Act, is to review the constitutional and legal safeguards available to women, recommend remedial legislative measures, facilitate redressal of grievances, and advise the Government on all policy matters affecting women. It is a statutory body, not a constitutional one — it exists because Parliament created it by ordinary law, not because the Constitution itself provides for it — and that statutory character is why its date of establishment is anchored to the Act's commencement and the Commission's actual constitution rather than to any constitutional provision.

MPSC 2025 Prelims Paper-I · Question 81 of 100

Maharashtra Civil Services Gazetted Combined Preliminary Examination 2025, held 9 November 2025. Transcribed from the commission's own booklet (संच A); answer as per the official MPSC final answer key.

When was the National Commission for Women established in India ?

(1)1990
(2)1991
(3)1992
(4)1993

Answer

(3)

Why

Correct — option (3), 1992. Parliament passed the National Commission for Women Act in 1990 — the Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha on 22 May 1990 and received the President's assent on 30 August 1990 — but an Act receiving assent and a body being constituted under it are two different events, and this question turns on the second one. The National Commission for Women itself, as a functioning statutory body with a Chairperson, five Members and a Member-Secretary as provided under Section 3 of the Act, was first constituted on 31 January 1992, with Jayanti Patnaik as its first Chairperson. The Commission's mandate, laid out in the Act, is to review the constitutional and legal safeguards available to women, recommend remedial legislative measures, facilitate redressal of grievances, and advise the Government on all policy matters affecting women. It is a statutory body, not a constitutional one — it exists because Parliament created it by ordinary law, not because the Constitution itself provides for it — and that statutory character is why its date of establishment is anchored to the Act's commencement and the Commission's actual constitution rather than to any constitutional provision.

Why the others are wrong

(1)1990 — 1990 is the year Parliament passed the National Commission for Women Act — the Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha on 22 May 1990 and received presidential assent on 30 August 1990 — but the Commission itself was not constituted that year. A candidate who read 'the NCW Act is a 1990 Act' and stopped there, without registering that the body took until 1992 to actually stand up, lands here.
(2)1991 — No National Commission for Women event is dated to 1991. This option carries no documented significance for the Commission and functions purely as a numerical decoy sitting between the Act's passage in 1990 and the Commission's actual constitution in 1992.
(4)1993 — 1993 belongs to a different, easily confused national body: the National Human Rights Commission, set up under the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993. Both are statutory rights bodies created within a few years of each other, both review legal safeguards and handle grievances, and that structural similarity is exactly why a candidate who has the two commissions' founding years transposed picks this option.

Concept

The National Commission for Women is a statutory body — created by an Act of Parliament, not by the Constitution — established to safeguard the constitutional and legal rights of women in India. Its founding has two distinct dates that this question is built to separate: the National Commission for Women Act, 1990 (Bill introduced 22 May 1990, presidential assent 30 August 1990) supplied the legal framework, and the Commission itself was first constituted, with its Chairperson and Members in place, on 31 January 1992. Jayanti Patnaik was its first Chairperson.

MPSC and UPSC both like this precise distinction between when a law creating a body was passed and when the body itself began functioning, because it rewards a candidate who has actually read past the headline year. The Commission's core functions — reviewing constitutional and legal safeguards for women, recommending remedial legislation, facilitating redressal of grievances, and advising government on policy affecting women — recur as a separate question type, but the founding-date question specifically tests whether the 1990-versus-1992 gap has been noticed at all.

Key facts

National Commission for Women Act passed by Parliament in 1990; Bill introduced in the Lok Sabha on 22 May 1990, presidential assent on 30 August 1990.
The Commission itself was first constituted on 31 January 1992, under Section 3 of the Act, with a Chairperson, five Members and a Member-Secretary.
Jayanti Patnaik was the first Chairperson of the National Commission for Women.
It is a statutory body, not a constitutional one — created by ordinary parliamentary legislation rather than by a provision of the Constitution.
Its functions include reviewing constitutional and legal safeguards for women, recommending remedial legislative measures, facilitating redressal of grievances, and advising government on policy matters affecting women.

The Act and the Commission, two years apart

30 August 1990 — National Commission for Women Act gets presidential assent
31 January 1992 — Commission itself constituted, Jayanti Patnaik first Chairperson

The question asks when the Commission was established — that is 1992, not the 1990 Act.

Study next

The National Commission for Women Act, 1990 — its provisions on composition, tenure and powers of the CommissionOther statutory rights commissions and their founding years — the National Human Rights Commission (Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993) and the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (2007)The distinction between statutory bodies (created by ordinary law) and constitutional bodies (created by a provision of the Constitution itself, such as the Election Commission or the UPSC)State Commissions for Women and their relationship to the national bodyKey legislative milestones for women's rights in India — the Dowry Prohibition Act 1961, the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005, and the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act 2013

Common traps

Treating the year an Act was passed as the year the body it creates began functioning — the gap between the two is exactly what this question tests
Confusing the National Commission for Women (1992) with the National Human Rights Commission (1993), which share a similar statutory-rights-body profile and adjoining founding years
Assuming a body named 'National Commission for X' must be a constitutional body rather than a statutory one

MPSC and UPSC both favour a bare founding-year question for national commissions and statutory bodies, and the wrong options are almost always adjacent years drawn either from the same body's own legislative history (the year the Act was passed versus the year the body was constituted) or from a genuinely different, similarly named body founded a year or two apart. The reliable defence is to hold two separate dates for any statutory commission — the year its enabling Act was passed, and the year the commission itself was first constituted — because questions are built specifically to exploit whichever one is missing.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
The National Commission for Women Act, under which the National Commission for Women was later constituted, received the assent of the President in which year ?
- (a)1988
- (b)1990
- (c)1992
- (d)1993
Answer(b) 1990 — the National Commission for Women Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha on 22 May 1990 and received presidential assent on 30 August 1990, though the Commission itself was not constituted until 31 January 1992.
practice — not a real PYQ
Who was the first Chairperson of the National Commission for Women ?
- (a)Jayanti Patnaik
- (b)Mohini Giri
- (c)Poornima Advani
- (d)Lalitha Kumaramangalam
Answer(a) Jayanti Patnaik — she headed the Commission when it was first constituted on 31 January 1992. The others named are later Chairpersons of the Commission.