MPSC 2021 Prelims Paper-I · Question 81 of 100

Correct — option (2), three. The Constitution (Seventy-fourth Amendment) Act, 1992 inserted Part IX-A, 'The Municipalities', into the Constitution as Articles 243P to 243ZG, together with the Twelfth Schedule, and brought it into force on 1 June 1993. The provision the question is built on is Article 243Q, which says that there shall be constituted in every State — and here it names exactly three bodies and no more — a Nagar Panchayat for a transitional area, that is an area in transition from a rural area to an urban area; a Municipal Council for a smaller urban area; and a Municipal Corporation for a larger urban area. That is the whole constitutional list: three types of Municipality. Everything else about the classification is left to the Governor. Article 243Q(2) tells the Governor what to weigh when he decides, by public notification, whether an area is a transitional area, a smaller urban area or a larger urban area: the population of the area, the density of population in it, the revenue generated for local administration, the percentage of employment in non-agricultural activities, the economic importance of the area, and such other factors as he may think fit. So the Constitution fixes the number of categories at three but fixes no population threshold for any of them, which is why the population at which a council becomes a corporation differs from State to State and is set by State law — in Maharashtra by the Maharashtra Municipal Corporation Act (originally the Bombay Provincial Municipal Corporations Act, 1949) and the Maharashtra Municipal Councils, Nagar Panchayats and Industrial Townships Act, 1965. One qualification sits in the proviso to Article 243Q(1) and is worth carrying because it is examined: a Municipality need not be constituted in an urban area or part of it which the Governor, having regard to the size of the area and the municipal services being provided or proposed by an industrial establishment, specifies by public notification as an industrial township. That is an exception to the duty to constitute a Municipality, not a fourth type of Municipality. The answer the Commission wants is therefore the count in Article 243Q itself — three.

• (1)two — Two is the answer of a candidate who remembers only the pair everybody has seen — the Municipal Council in a district town and the Municipal Corporation in a city — and forgets the category the Seventy-fourth Amendment actually added to the scheme. The Nagar Panchayat is the newest of the three and the one most often dropped: it is the body for a transitional area, a place that is ceasing to be a village and has not yet become a proper town, and its whole purpose is to give such a place an urban local government instead of leaving it under a Gram Panchayat until its population catches up. Miss it and the count falls to two. It is also the type most likely to be in the news in Maharashtra, because transitional areas are regularly upgraded — a Gram Panchayat becomes a Nagar Panchayat, and a Nagar Panchayat later becomes a Municipal Council.
• (3)four — Four is what a candidate reaches by adding the Cantonment Board to the three named in Article 243Q, and it is a genuine confusion rather than a careless one, because a Cantonment Board really does run a civic administration and really does exist alongside the three. But it is not a Municipality under Part IX-A at all. Cantonments are a Union subject and Cantonment Boards are constituted under a Central law administered by the Ministry of Defence, with a mixed elected-and-nominated composition in which the station commander presides — nothing in Article 243Q creates them and nothing in Part IX-A governs them. The industrial township of the proviso to Article 243Q(1) misleads in exactly the same way: it is a reason for not constituting a Municipality in an area whose civic services an industrial establishment already provides, not a fourth species of Municipality.
• (4)five — Five belongs to a different list. Standard textbook treatments of urban local government in India enumerate eight kinds of urban body — municipal corporation, municipality, notified area committee, town area committee, cantonment board, township, port trust and special purpose agency — and a candidate half-recalling that longer enumeration reaches for a number bigger than three without being able to say which five. The distinction the question is testing is the one between a statutory or administrative classification of urban bodies, which is long and varies with the State, and the CONSTITUTIONAL classification in Article 243Q, which is short and is the same everywhere: Nagar Panchayat, Municipal Council, Municipal Corporation. Notified area committees and town area committees are creatures of State municipal law, not of Part IX-A, and their existence does not change the constitutional count.

Urban local government became a constitutional subject only in 1992. Before that, municipalities existed entirely at the pleasure of State legislatures, which could supersede a municipal body or postpone its elections indefinitely, and many did. The Constitution (Seventy-fourth Amendment) Act, 1992 changed that by inserting Part IX-A and the Twelfth Schedule, in force from 1 June 1993, and its companion, the Seventy-third Amendment, did the same for Panchayats in Part IX and the Eleventh Schedule from 24 April 1993. Part IX-A carries a small number of provisions worth knowing as a block. Article 243Q creates the three types of Municipality — Nagar Panchayat for a transitional area, Municipal Council for a smaller urban area, Municipal Corporation for a larger urban area — and leaves the classification of any given area to the Governor by public notification. Article 243R deals with composition and direct election of the seats filled by election from territorial constituencies called wards. Article 243S provides for Ward Committees in municipalities with a population of three lakh or more. Article 243T reserves seats for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in proportion to population and reserves not less than one-third of all seats, and of the offices of chairperson, for women. Article 243U fixes a five-year term and requires elections before its expiry, or within six months of a dissolution. Article 243W allows the State legislature to endow Municipalities with the powers needed to function as institutions of self-government, with reference to the eighteen subjects of the Twelfth Schedule. Articles 243Y and 243ZA place a State Finance Commission and a State Election Commission in the picture, and Article 243ZD provides for a District Planning Committee. The number in this question is the smallest fact in that structure, but it is the entry point to all of it.

MPSC returns to local government year after year, and it does so for a practical reason: a very large number of the posts filled through the State Services examination sit in exactly this machinery, and the Commission expects a candidate to know the frame before joining it. The questions are usually numerical and exact — how many types, how many subjects in the Twelfth Schedule, what fraction of seats is reserved for women, what the term of the body is, how long a dissolved body may remain unelected — because those are the facts that can be marked without argument. The habit this rewards is reading the Article rather than the summary. A summary of Article 243Q will tell you there are three kinds of Municipality; the Article itself also tells you that it is the GOVERNOR who classifies an area, that he does it by public notification, that population is only one of six listed considerations, and that an industrial township can be kept outside the scheme altogether. Each of those is a separate question waiting to be asked. The same discipline pays in Maharashtra-specific items, because the State's own municipal statutes — the Maharashtra Municipal Corporation Act for the corporations and the 1965 Act for councils, nagar panchayats and industrial townships — carry the thresholds and the detail that the Constitution deliberately leaves out.

• The Constitution (Seventy-fourth Amendment) Act, 1992 inserted Part IX-A (Articles 243P to 243ZG) and the Twelfth Schedule and came into force on 1 June 1993; its companion Seventy-third Amendment, on Panchayats, came into force on 24 April 1993.
• Article 243Q provides for exactly three types of Municipality — a Nagar Panchayat for a transitional area, a Municipal Council for a smaller urban area, and a Municipal Corporation for a larger urban area. The Constitution names no fourth.
• It is the Governor who decides, by public notification, whether an area is a transitional, smaller urban or larger urban area, having regard to population, density of population, the revenue generated for local administration, the percentage of employment in non-agricultural activities, the economic importance of the area, and such other factors as he thinks fit.
• The proviso to Article 243Q(1) allows the Governor to specify an urban area as an industrial township where an industrial establishment provides or proposes to provide municipal services, and in that case a Municipality need not be constituted — an exception to the rule, not a fourth type of Municipality.
• The Twelfth Schedule lists eighteen subjects that a State legislature may entrust to Municipalities under Article 243W, and Article 243U fixes a five-year term for every Municipality, with elections to be completed before the term expires or within six months of a dissolution.

• Counting the Cantonment Board as a type of Municipality. It is constituted under a Central law and administered through the Ministry of Defence; Part IX-A does not govern it and Article 243Q does not name it
• Treating the industrial township in the proviso to Article 243Q(1) as a fourth type of Municipality. It is a ground for NOT constituting a Municipality in that area, which is the opposite of being one
• Assuming the Constitution fixes the population at which a Municipal Council becomes a Municipal Corporation. It fixes none — the Governor classifies, and the thresholds live in State law, so they differ from State to State
• Mixing the two amendments and their schedules: the Seventy-third Amendment goes with Part IX and the Eleventh Schedule and its twenty-nine subjects, the Seventy-fourth with Part IX-A and the Twelfth Schedule and its eighteen

Local government is one of the few areas where MPSC's polity questions are reliably countable, and the Commission exploits that. Expect the number of types of Municipality, the number of subjects in a Schedule, the fraction of seats reserved for women, the term of a body, the six-month limit on holding an election after dissolution, and the population figure that triggers a Ward Committee. Expect also the 'who decides' variety, which is harder and more useful — the Governor classifies an urban area, the State Election Commission superintends municipal elections, the State Finance Commission reviews their finances, the State legislature decides what powers to devolve. A third shape pairs a constitutional provision with a Maharashtra statute or a Maharashtra institution, so the same fact is asked once in the abstract and once through a body the candidate will actually work with. Reading the bare text of Articles 243P to 243ZG once, slowly, covers all three shapes better than any summary of them.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under Article 243Q of the Constitution, who decides whether an urban area is a transitional area, a smaller urban area or a larger urban area ?

  • (a)The State Election Commission
  • (b)The Governor, by public notification
  • (c)The State Legislature, by law
  • (d)The District Planning Committee

  Answer(b) The Governor, by public notification. Article 243Q(2) requires him to have regard to the population of the area, the density of population in it, the revenue generated for local administration, the percentage of employment in non-agricultural activities, the economic importance of the area, and such other factors as he may think fit. The Constitution deliberately fixes no population threshold, which is why the point at which a Municipal Council becomes a Municipal Corporation is a matter of State law and differs between States.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following is NOT a Municipality within the meaning of Part IX-A of the Constitution ?

  • (a)Nagar Panchayat
  • (b)Municipal Council
  • (c)Cantonment Board
  • (d)Municipal Corporation

  Answer(c) Cantonment Board. Article 243Q names three types of Municipality and only three — Nagar Panchayat for a transitional area, Municipal Council for a smaller urban area and Municipal Corporation for a larger urban area. A Cantonment Board discharges civic functions in a cantonment but is constituted under a Central law and works under the Ministry of Defence, outside Part IX-A altogether; the industrial township of the proviso to Article 243Q(1) sits outside it as well.