MPSC 2021 Prelims Paper-I · Question 71 of 100

Correct — option (4), three. The Constitution (One Hundred and Fifth Amendment) Act, 2021, which received the President's assent on 18 August 2021, works on three articles of the Constitution: Article 338B, Article 342A and Article 366. To see why those three and no others, it helps to know what the amendment was undoing. The Constitution (One Hundred and Second Amendment) Act, 2018 had inserted Article 338B, giving constitutional status to the National Commission for Backward Classes, along with Article 342A on the specification of socially and educationally backward classes and a matching definition of that expression in Article 366. In May 2021, deciding the Maratha reservation case, Jaishri Laxmanrao Patil against the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, the Supreme Court read those provisions as having taken away from the States the power to identify their own socially and educationally backward classes and vested it in the President alone. Parliament moved within three months to restore the position. The amendment recast Article 342A so that the list notified by the President is described as the Central List and added a new clause providing that notwithstanding that list, every State and Union territory may by law prepare and maintain, for its own purposes, its own list of socially and educationally backward classes. It amended Article 338B, whose scheme required the Union and the States to consult the National Commission for Backward Classes on all major policy matters affecting these classes, so that the obligation does not stand in the way of a State preparing its own list. And it amended Article 366, the definitions article, so that the definition of the expression matches the new two-list arrangement. Three articles, therefore, and the count in the keyed option follows directly. Two further points are worth carrying away because examiners build questions on them. The first is the number gap: the measure was introduced in Parliament as the Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-seventh Amendment) Bill, 2021, and became the One Hundred and Fifth Amendment Act — a bill number and an act number never match, because bills are numbered as introduced and acts as enacted, and many bills lapse. The second is what the amendment did not do. It restored a power of identification; it did not create any new reservation, did not amend Article 15 or Article 16, and did not disturb the ceiling on the total extent of reservation laid down by the Supreme Court in the Indra Sawhney case.

• (1)two — Two is the count a candidate reaches by remembering the substantive change and the definition that follows it — Article 342A and Article 366 — while overlooking Article 338B. But Article 338B had to be touched, and for a reason that goes to the heart of the amendment. That article is the one that constitutionalised the National Commission for Backward Classes and required the Union and the State governments to consult it on all major policy matters affecting socially and educationally backward classes. If a State is now to prepare and maintain its own list by its own law, that consultation requirement cannot be read as controlling the exercise, and the article had to be amended accordingly. The lesson for the examination hall is that an amendment which changes who exercises a power usually has to adjust the machinery attached to that power as well, so counting only the article carrying the substantive change tends to undercount.
• (2)four — Four overcounts, and the usual way of arriving at it is to add Article 15 or Article 16 to the list — the two articles that actually authorise reservation for backward classes in educational institutions and in public employment. Neither was touched. This is the most valuable distinction in the whole topic, and it is worth stating plainly: the articles that permit reservation are Article 15(4), Article 15(5) and Article 16(4); the articles that govern who identifies the classes entitled to it are Articles 340, 342A and 338B. The 105th Amendment operated entirely on the second group. It restored to the States the power to say which communities are socially and educationally backward for their own purposes, and it left untouched both the power to make reservations and the limits on that power, including the ceiling laid down in the Indra Sawhney judgment.
• (3)five — Five is further from the mark still, and no reading of the Act reaches it. The amendment is a short one, aimed at a single, narrow object — reversing the effect of a judicial interpretation on the question of who may identify socially and educationally backward classes — and short amendments of that kind characteristically touch two or three articles. The contrast with a wide-ranging amendment is instructive and is itself examinable: the Forty-second Amendment of 1976 altered dozens of provisions across the Preamble, the Fundamental Rights, the Directive Principles and the judiciary, whereas an amendment passed to correct one line of interpretation does not need to range widely. Reading the object of an amendment therefore gives a useful check on any number offered for the count of articles it changed.

The constitutional scheme for backward classes has three layers. Article 15(4), Article 15(5) and Article 16(4) permit the State to make special provision for socially and educationally backward classes in education and in public employment; Article 340 empowers the President to appoint a commission to investigate their conditions, the provision under which the Kalelkar and Mandal Commissions were appointed; and Articles 338B and 342A, both inserted by the 102nd Amendment Act of 2018, deal respectively with the National Commission for Backward Classes as a constitutional body and with the notification of the classes themselves. The Constitution nowhere defines who is socially and educationally backward, which is why the identification machinery matters so much. The 102nd Amendment was read by the Supreme Court in the Maratha reservation case of May 2021 as having centralised identification in the President, leaving the States without the power to maintain their own lists — a serious practical difficulty, since State lists for State services and State educational institutions had existed for decades. The Constitution (One Hundred and Fifth Amendment) Act, 2021, assented to on 18 August 2021, restored that power: the presidential list became the Central List, every State and Union territory was empowered to prepare and maintain its own list by law for its own purposes, the consultation requirement in Article 338B was adjusted, and the definition in Article 366 was aligned. What the amendment did not touch is as important as what it did: the extent of reservation, and the ceiling on it laid down in Indra Sawhney against Union of India, were left exactly as they were.

This question was set on current affairs of the year immediately before the examination, and it is a Maharashtra question as much as a constitutional one, since the judgment that provoked the amendment was the Maratha reservation case arising from Maharashtra's own legislation. MPSC follows constitutional amendments closely and asks them in a characteristic way — not what the amendment achieved in general terms, which most candidates will know, but a precise detail such as the number of articles amended, the year of assent, the bill number under which it was introduced, or the article inserted. The habit rewarded is therefore to prepare each recent amendment as a small dossier: act number, bill number, year of assent, the articles touched, the problem it solved, and one line on what it deliberately left alone. The last of those is where careless candidates lose marks, because an amendment concerning backward classes is easily assumed to have changed the reservation provisions themselves. Keeping the identification machinery separate from the reservation power is the single most useful distinction in this part of the syllabus, and it answers a large family of questions across MPSC and other examinations.

• The Constitution (One Hundred and Fifth Amendment) Act, 2021 received the President's assent on 18 August 2021 and restored to the States and Union territories the power to prepare and maintain their own lists of socially and educationally backward classes.
• It works on three articles — Article 338B, which constitutionalised the National Commission for Backward Classes and required consultation with it; Article 342A, on the specification of socially and educationally backward classes; and Article 366, the definitions article.
• Article 342A as amended describes the list notified by the President as the Central List and adds a clause providing that, notwithstanding that list, every State or Union territory may by law prepare and maintain its own list for its own purposes.
• The amendment was a response to the Supreme Court's judgment of May 2021 in Jaishri Laxmanrao Patil against the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, the Maratha reservation case, which read the 102nd Amendment Act of 2018 as having taken that power away from the States.
• It was introduced as the Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-seventh Amendment) Bill, 2021 and enacted as the One Hundred and Fifth Amendment Act — bill numbers and act numbers never coincide, and the gap is a standing examination trap.

• Assuming that an amendment about backward classes must have altered the reservation provisions themselves, when the 105th Amendment operated only on the machinery for identifying the classes and left Articles 15 and 16 untouched
• Confusing the bill number with the act number: this measure was introduced as the 127th Amendment Bill and enacted as the 105th Amendment Act, and the two series never coincide
• Believing that the amendment raised or removed the ceiling on the total extent of reservation, which was laid down by the Supreme Court and was not disturbed
• Mixing up the 102nd Amendment, which created the constitutional National Commission for Backward Classes in 2018, with the 105th, which restored the States' power to maintain their own lists in 2021

Constitutional amendments are a fixed feature of MPSC's polity and current-affairs sections, and the Commission asks them at a level of detail that rewards precise preparation: the number of the amendment, the year, the article inserted or omitted, the number of articles touched, and occasionally the bill number under which the measure was introduced. Amendments with a Maharashtra connection, as this one has through the Maratha reservation litigation, are especially likely to appear. Expect the topic to be examined from the judicial side as well, since the Commission asks which case laid down the ceiling on reservation, which introduced the creamy layer, and which held a State enactment invalid. The efficient preparation is a single table of the amendments from the 100th onwards, carrying for each the year of assent, the object in one line and the articles affected, kept alongside a short list of the leading reservation judgments.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Constitution (One Hundred and Fifth Amendment) Act, 2021 was enacted principally in order to

  • (a)raise the ceiling on the total extent of reservation beyond fifty per cent
  • (b)restore the power of the States and Union territories to prepare and maintain their own lists of socially and educationally backward classes
  • (c)provide reservation for the economically weaker sections in education and public employment
  • (d)give constitutional status to the National Commission for Backward Classes

  Answer(b) Restore the power of the States and Union territories to prepare and maintain their own lists of socially and educationally backward classes — the amendment answered the Supreme Court's reading of the 102nd Amendment in the Maratha reservation case of May 2021, which had left identification of such classes to the President alone. It did not touch the ceiling on reservation, which rests on the Supreme Court's judgment in Indra Sawhney; reservation for economically weaker sections came through the 103rd Amendment Act of 2019; and constitutional status for the National Commission for Backward Classes came through the 102nd Amendment Act of 2018.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which Article of the Constitution, inserted in 2018, deals with the specification of socially and educationally backward classes ?

  • (a)Article 338B
  • (b)Article 340
  • (c)Article 342A
  • (d)Article 341

  Answer(c) Article 342A — inserted by the 102nd Amendment Act of 2018, it provides for the notification of socially and educationally backward classes, and it was later amended by the 105th Amendment Act of 2021 to describe the presidential list as the Central List and to allow every State and Union territory to prepare and maintain its own list. Article 338B, inserted by the same 2018 amendment, constitutionalised the National Commission for Backward Classes; Article 340 empowers the President to appoint a commission to investigate the conditions of backward classes; and Article 341 deals with the Scheduled Castes.