MPSC 2021 Prelims Paper-I · Question 80 of 100

Correct — option (1), 31st October 2019. That date is the 'appointed day' fixed under the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, the day on which the State of Jammu and Kashmir ceased to exist and was reorganised into the two Union territories of Jammu and Kashmir, which has a legislature, and Ladakh, which does not. The date was chosen for its symbolism: 31 October is the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who as the first Home Minister brought the princely states into the Indian Union, and it is observed as Rashtriya Ekta Diwas, National Unity Day. The Act itself had a swift passage — it was passed by the Rajya Sabha on 5 August 2019 and by the Lok Sabha on 6 August 2019, and received the President's assent on 9 August 2019 — but its substantive provisions were brought into force only from the appointed day nearly three months later. Why the State Human Rights Commission went with it follows from the way a statutory body exists. The Commission was not a constitutional body; it had been constituted under the State's own human-rights legislation, and a statutory body has exactly the life its parent statute gives it. The Reorganisation Act repealed a long list of the former State's laws — 153 State enactments and Governor's Acts in all — and when the statute under which a commission was constituted stands repealed, the commission ceases to exist with it. That is what happened on 31 October 2019, and the same fate overtook several of the former State's other statutory oversight bodies, whose restoration human-rights organisations have since urged. Complaints of human rights violations from the territory now go to the National Human Rights Commission, which is constituted under the central Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 and whose jurisdiction extends across the country. The lesson to carry beyond this particular question is the distinction between a constitutional body and a statutory one. A constitutional body — the Election Commission, the Comptroller and Auditor-General, the Union Public Service Commission, the Finance Commission — owes its existence to the Constitution and can be abolished only by amending it. A statutory body owes its existence to an ordinary law, and can be created, altered or extinguished by the legislature that made that law, which is precisely why the reorganisation of a State can sweep away a commission of this kind at a stroke.

• (2)15th August 2019 — 15 August 2019 is a plausible-looking date because it falls only days after the parliamentary action of 5 and 6 August and the President's assent on 9 August, and because Independence Day gives it a resonance the examiner can exploit. But an Act does not necessarily take effect when it receives assent. The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act defined an 'appointed day' to be notified by the Central Government, and it was that day — 31 October 2019 — on which the State ceased to exist, the two Union territories came into being and the repeal of the State's laws took effect. The gap of nearly three months was needed for the administrative work of dividing the assets, the services and the institutions of a State between two new Union territories. The distinction between the date of assent and the date of commencement is worth carrying generally, since examiners use it for many statutes.
• (3)31st December 2019 — 31 December 2019 has no significance in this story at all; it is offered because a candidate who remembers only that the change happened late in 2019 may reach for the end of the calendar year. It is worth using the option to fix the sequence of dates properly, because the whole episode is examined by date. On 5 August 2019 the President issued the constitutional order superseding the earlier order of 1954, and a resolution recommending that the provisions of Article 370 cease to be operative was moved in Parliament, the Reorganisation Bill being passed by the Rajya Sabha the same day and by the Lok Sabha the next. The President assented to the Act on 9 August 2019. The appointed day on which the reorganisation actually took effect was 31 October 2019. Those four dates, in that order, answer nearly every question this subject produces.
• (4)1st January 2020 — 1 January 2020 is later still and belongs to nothing in this sequence. The reorganisation was complete two months before it, and by that date the two Union territories had already been functioning with their Lieutenant Governors for two months. Options of this kind — a round date shortly after the true one — are included to catch a candidate who has the year right and the month wrong, and they are best defeated by attaching each date to a reason rather than remembering it as a bare number. Here the reason is memorable: the appointed day was fixed for the birth anniversary of Sardar Patel, observed as National Unity Day, and the choice of that date was itself part of the political message of the reorganisation. A date with a reason attached is far harder to dislodge than a date learnt alone.

The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019 was passed by the Rajya Sabha on 5 August 2019 and the Lok Sabha on 6 August 2019 and received the President's assent on 9 August 2019, and it took effect on the appointed day, 31 October 2019. On that day the State of Jammu and Kashmir ceased to exist and two Union territories came into being — Jammu and Kashmir, with a Legislative Assembly, and Ladakh, without one — each administered by a Lieutenant Governor. The Act abolished the State's Legislative Council, repealed 153 State laws and Governor's Acts, and extended a large body of central legislation to the new territories; the State's own Constitution ceased to operate. Statutory bodies constituted under the repealed State laws, among them the State Human Rights Commission, ceased to exist with the statutes that had created them, and the corresponding central institutions now operate in the territory: human rights complaints, for example, lie to the National Human Rights Commission constituted under the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993. The reorganisation followed the presidential order of 5 August 2019 and the parliamentary resolution by which the special provisions of Article 370 ceased to be operative, and the Supreme Court upheld that action in December 2023. Reorganisation of States is a familiar constitutional exercise: Article 3 empowers Parliament by law to form a new State, alter the area or boundaries of an existing one or change its name, on the President's recommendation and after the views of the State legislature have been obtained, and such a law is expressly not treated as an amendment of the Constitution under Article 368.

This is a current-affairs question in polity dress, drawn from the largest constitutional change of the years immediately before the examination, and MPSC's papers regularly carry two or three of the kind. The Commission asks such episodes by their dates, and it distinguishes between dates that look alike: the date on which a Bill was passed, the date of assent, and the date on which the law took effect. That is the whole difficulty here, since three of the four options are dates from the second half of 2019 and only one of them is the appointed day. The reliable preparation for questions of this type is to keep, for each major legislative or constitutional event, a short chain of dates with a reason attached to each, because reasons survive in the memory where isolated numbers do not — and the reason for 31 October is easy, being the birth anniversary of Sardar Patel and National Unity Day. The question also carries a general lesson about institutions that is examined in its own right: a body created by an ordinary statute lives and dies with that statute, whereas a body created by the Constitution can be abolished only by amending the Constitution.

• The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019 came into effect on the appointed day, 31 October 2019, when the State of Jammu and Kashmir ceased to exist and the Union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and of Ladakh came into being.
• The Bill was passed by the Rajya Sabha on 5 August 2019 and by the Lok Sabha on 6 August 2019 and received the President's assent on 9 August 2019 — the date of assent and the date of commencement are different, and the question turns on the latter.
• The Act repealed 153 State laws and Governor's Acts and abolished the State's Legislative Council; statutory bodies constituted under the repealed laws, including the State Human Rights Commission, ceased to exist with them.
• Human rights complaints from the territory now lie to the National Human Rights Commission, which is constituted under the central Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 and whose jurisdiction runs throughout India.
• 31 October is the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and is observed as Rashtriya Ekta Diwas, National Unity Day, which is why that date was chosen as the appointed day for the reorganisation.

• Confusing the date on which a Bill was passed or assented to with the appointed day on which it came into force, when an Act often names a later day for commencement
• Assuming a State Human Rights Commission is a constitutional body, when it is statutory and therefore lives only as long as the statute that created it
• Attaching a change to a round or symbolic date such as Independence Day or the first of January without checking the actual notification
• Forgetting that the reorganisation produced two Union territories, only one of which — Jammu and Kashmir — was given a Legislative Assembly, Ladakh being without one

MPSC's current-affairs questions in polity are usually date questions or institution questions, and this one is both. Expect the reorganisation of Jammu and Kashmir to be asked through the number of Union territories created, the presence or absence of a legislature in each, the date on which the change took effect, the laws repealed or extended, and the fate of institutions such as the State Human Rights Commission and the State Information Commission. The Commission also uses such episodes to test the general constitutional machinery behind them, so a question on Article 3 and the procedure for creating or altering a State often sits close by. The most useful preparation is a dated timeline of the major constitutional events of the last decade, each entry carrying the instrument used — a constitutional amendment, an ordinary law under Article 3, a presidential order — since the Commission asks both what happened and by what means.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, which of the newly created Union territories was provided with a Legislative Assembly ?

  • (a)Ladakh only
  • (b)Jammu and Kashmir only
  • (c)Both Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh
  • (d)Neither of the two

  Answer(b) Jammu and Kashmir only — the Act created two Union territories with effect from 31 October 2019, giving the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir a Legislative Assembly, on the model of Puducherry, while the Union territory of Ladakh was constituted without a legislature and is administered by its Lieutenant Governor. The distinction matters constitutionally, because a Union territory with a legislature has its own council of ministers and its own legislative field, whereas one without is administered directly by the President through an administrator under Article 239.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following is a statutory body rather than a constitutional body ?

  • (a)The Union Public Service Commission
  • (b)The Finance Commission
  • (c)The National Human Rights Commission
  • (d)The Comptroller and Auditor-General of India

  Answer(c) The National Human Rights Commission — it was constituted under the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993, an ordinary law of Parliament, and so is a statutory body that Parliament could alter or abolish by another ordinary law. The Union Public Service Commission is created by Article 315, the Finance Commission by Article 280 and the office of the Comptroller and Auditor-General by Article 148, so all three are constitutional bodies and could be abolished only by amending the Constitution. The distinction explains why a State Human Rights Commission ceased to exist when the statute constituting it was repealed.