MPSC 2026 Prelims Paper-I · Question 85 of 100

Correct — option (4), '(a)-(iii), (b)-(i), (c)-(iv), (d)-(ii)'. All four subjects come from Chapter IV of Part XVII of the Constitution, headed 'Special Directives', and the four Articles run in a tidy sequence that makes the mapping easy once you have seen it laid out. Subject (a), the language in which a grievance may be submitted, is Article 350. It provides that every person shall be entitled to submit a representation for the redress of any grievance to any officer or authority of the Union or a State in any of the languages used in the Union or in the State, as the case may be. So (a) pairs with (iii). Subject (b), instruction in the mother tongue at the primary stage, is Article 350A. It makes it the endeavour of every State and of every local authority within the State to provide adequate facilities for instruction in the mother tongue at the primary stage of education to children belonging to linguistic minority groups. So (b) pairs with (i). Subject (c), the special officer for linguistic minorities, is Article 350B, which provides that there shall be a Special Officer for linguistic minorities appointed by the President, to investigate all matters relating to the safeguards provided for linguistic minorities under the Constitution and to report to the President on them. So (c) pairs with (iv). Subject (d), the directive for the development of Hindi, is Article 351. It makes it the duty of the Union to promote the spread of Hindi and to develop it so that it may serve as a medium of expression for all the elements of the composite culture of India, drawing on Hindustani and the other Eighth Schedule languages and, for vocabulary, primarily on Sanskrit. So (d) pairs with (ii). There is a shortcut worth noticing in the way this question is built. Every one of the four options assigns a different Article to subject (d): option (1) gives it 350B, option (2) gives it 350, option (3) gives it 350A and option (4) gives it 351. That means a single certain pairing — Hindi development is Article 351 — settles the whole question without checking the other three. The same is true of subject (c), which each option maps differently. In matching questions, always scan the option column for a row on which all four options disagree, and spend your certainty there.

• (1)(a)-(ii), (b)-(iii), (c)-(i), (d)-(iv) — This shifts the whole set one place. It makes the grievance-representation subject Article 351, which is the Hindi directive; mother-tongue instruction Article 350, which is the grievance provision; the special officer Article 350A, which is mother-tongue instruction; and the Hindi directive Article 350B, which is the special officer. Every pair is wrong. The single decisive error is (d)-(iv): the Hindi development directive is Article 351, not 350B.
• (2)(a)-(ii), (b)-(iv), (c)-(i), (d)-(iii) — This also opens with (a)-(ii), assigning the Hindi directive of Article 351 to the grievance-representation subject, and it closes by giving the Hindi directive itself to Article 350, the grievance provision — a straight swap of the two ends of the chapter. It further exchanges 350A and 350B between subjects (b) and (c), putting mother-tongue instruction under the special-officer Article.
• (3)(a)-(iv), (b)-(ii), (c)-(iii), (d)-(i) — Every pair here is wrong. It makes the grievance provision Article 350B, mother-tongue instruction Article 351, the special officer Article 350 and the Hindi directive Article 350A. The tell-tale is the last pair again: Article 350A is about primary schooling for linguistic minority children, and has nothing to do with promoting Hindi. This is the option for a candidate who remembers that the four Articles exist but has not fixed which is which.

Part XVII of the Constitution, Articles 343 to 351, deals with official language and is arranged in four chapters: Language of the Union, Regional Languages, Language of the Supreme Court and High Courts, and Special Directives. The last chapter is where the Constitution protects speakers who are in a minority in the State they live in, and where it sets out the Union's obligation towards Hindi. The two provisions numbered with letters, 350A and 350B, were not in the Constitution as adopted — they were inserted by the Constitution (Seventh Amendment) Act, 1956, following the report of the States Reorganisation Commission. That timing matters: States were being redrawn on a linguistic basis, and reorganisation necessarily left pockets of speakers on the wrong side of a new boundary. Article 350A gives their children schooling in the mother tongue at the primary stage, and Article 350B creates an officer to watch over the safeguards, that officer being designated the Commissioner for Linguistic Minorities. The President causes the Special Officer's reports to be laid before each House of Parliament and sent to the Governments of the States concerned.

Article 351 is the constitutional counterweight to that protection, and its wording repays close reading: Hindi is to be developed 'without interfering with its genius' by assimilating forms and expressions from Hindustani and from the other languages of the Eighth Schedule, drawing for vocabulary primarily on Sanskrit and secondarily on other languages. It is a directive to the Union, not an obligation on any State or citizen, and it does not displace Article 343, which makes Hindi in the Devanagari script the official language of the Union while the Official Languages Act, 1963 permits the continued use of English. For a Maharashtra candidate the Eighth Schedule reference is worth holding on to: Marathi was one of the fourteen languages listed in the Schedule as originally enacted, and the Schedule now carries twenty-two languages after successive amendments added Sindhi in 1967, Konkani, Manipuri and Nepali in 1992, and Bodo, Dogri, Maithili and Santhali in 2003.

• Article 350: every person is entitled to submit a representation for the redress of any grievance to any officer or authority of the Union or a State in any of the languages used in the Union or in the State
• Article 350A: it shall be the endeavour of every State and every local authority to provide adequate facilities for instruction in the mother tongue at the primary stage of education to children of linguistic minority groups
• Article 350B: there shall be a Special Officer for linguistic minorities appointed by the President, to investigate the constitutional safeguards for linguistic minorities and report to the President, who lays the reports before Parliament and sends them to the States concerned
• Articles 350A and 350B were both inserted by the Constitution (Seventh Amendment) Act, 1956, on the recommendation of the States Reorganisation Commission
• Article 351: it is the duty of the Union to promote the spread of Hindi and to develop it as a medium of expression for all elements of India's composite culture, drawing on Hindustani and the Eighth Schedule languages, and for vocabulary primarily on Sanskrit

• Swapping Article 350A and Article 350B. The mnemonic that works is alphabetical order of function: A comes first and covers the child in the classroom, B comes second and covers the officer who supervises the safeguards
• Treating Article 351 as an obligation on the States or on citizens. It is a directive addressed to the Union alone, and its own text protects the other Eighth Schedule languages by requiring Hindi to draw on them
• Assuming Article 350 is confined to linguistic minorities. It is not — the right to submit a representation in any language used in the Union or the State belongs to every person, and only 350A and 350B are limited to linguistic minority groups

MPSC uses the matching format for this chapter more often than the single-line format, because four adjacent Articles with four distinct subjects make a clean four-row grid. UPSC prefers the statement form — typically a pair of statements on what Article 350A obliges a State to do, or on who appoints the Special Officer under Article 350B and to whom the reports go. Both forms reward the same preparation: a four-line table of Article against subject, learned in the order 350, 350A, 350B, 351, together with the fact that the two lettered Articles arrived with the Seventh Amendment in 1956.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Articles 350A and 350B were inserted into the Constitution of India by which amendment ?

  • (a)The Constitution (Seventh Amendment) Act, 1956
  • (b)The Constitution (Twenty-first Amendment) Act, 1967
  • (c)The Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976
  • (d)The Constitution (Seventy-first Amendment) Act, 1992

  Answer(a) The Constitution (Seventh Amendment) Act, 1956 — inserted after the States Reorganisation Commission's report, when States were redrawn on linguistic lines and linguistic minorities needed express protection. The 21st Amendment added Sindhi to the Eighth Schedule and the 71st added Konkani, Manipuri and Nepali; the 42nd Amendment did not touch these Articles.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Special Officer for linguistic minorities under Article 350B of the Constitution is appointed by :

  • (a)the Prime Minister
  • (b)the President
  • (c)the Chief Justice of India
  • (d)the Governor of the State concerned

  Answer(b) the President — Article 350B provides that the Special Officer for linguistic minorities shall be appointed by the President, shall investigate all matters relating to the constitutional safeguards for linguistic minorities, and shall report to the President, who causes the reports to be laid before each House of Parliament and sent to the Governments of the States concerned.