MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 63 of 100

Correct — option (2), Article 338. Before reading anything else, notice how the four choices are printed: 337, 338, 336, 335. They do not run in order, ascending or descending, and a candidate who glances at the block and assumes the smallest number sits at the top or that the numbers climb down the column will mark the wrong row while knowing the right article. Read the numeral printed against the option you want and mark that numeral. Article 338 is the provision under which the National Commission for the Scheduled Castes exists, and its opening words say so directly: there shall be a Commission for the Scheduled Castes to be known as the National Commission for the Scheduled Castes. The article goes on to provide that the Commission shall consist of a Chairperson, a Vice-Chairperson and three other Members, appointed by the President by warrant under his hand and seal, with their conditions of service and tenure to be determined by the President by rule. Its duties, also set out in the article, are worth learning as a list because they are asked in their own right: to investigate and monitor all matters relating to the safeguards provided for the Scheduled Castes under the Constitution or under any law or any order of the Government, and to evaluate their working; to inquire into specific complaints with respect to the deprivation of rights and safeguards; to participate in and advise on the planning process of socio-economic development and to evaluate the progress of that development; to present annual and other reports to the President, which are then laid before each House of Parliament along with a memorandum explaining the action taken on the recommendations; and to discharge such other functions in relation to the protection, welfare and development and advancement of the Scheduled Castes as the President may specify. While investigating or inquiring, the Commission has all the powers of a civil court trying a suit, and the Union and every State Government are required to consult it on all major policy matters affecting the Scheduled Castes. The Commission in its present form is not as old as the article number suggests. Article 338 as it now stands is the result of the Constitution (Eighty-ninth Amendment) Act, 2003, which divided the earlier combined commission for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes into two separate bodies — the National Commission for the Scheduled Castes, which stayed with Article 338, and the National Commission for the Scheduled Tribes, for which the same amendment inserted the new Article 338A. That division is the single most useful thing to remember here, because it explains why the two commissions sit under article numbers that differ only by a letter, and it is the fact a follow-up question will test. The answer to be marked is option (2).

• (1)Article 337 — Article 337 has nothing to do with the Scheduled Castes. Its marginal heading is special provision with respect to educational grants for the benefit of the Anglo-Indian community, and it provided that the grants made by the Union and by the States for the benefit of that community should continue at the level of the financial year ending on the thirty-first of March 1948, falling by ten per cent in each succeeding period of three years and ceasing altogether, so far as they were a special concession to the community, at the end of ten years from the commencement of the Constitution. The article attached a condition to the grant: an educational institution receiving it had to admit at least forty per cent of its annual intake from communities other than the Anglo-Indian community. Note that this option is printed first, at (1), which is exactly the position a candidate scanning for the lowest or the highest number will not expect. Article 337 sits immediately before Article 338 in the text, and adjacency in the Constitution is precisely why it makes an effective distractor.
• (3)Article 336 — Article 336 is the companion to Article 337 and, like it, concerns the Anglo-Indian community rather than the Scheduled Castes. Its marginal heading is special provision for Anglo-Indian community in certain services, and it dealt with the reservation of posts for members of that community in the railway, customs, postal and telegraph services of the Union. The arrangement was designed to expire: for the first two years after the Constitution commenced, appointments were to be made on the same basis as immediately before independence, and in each succeeding period of two years the number of posts reserved was to be ten per cent less than in the period before, until at the end of ten years all such reservations ceased. Both Article 336 and Article 337 are therefore transitional provisions that have long since spent themselves, which is what makes them good distractors: they are real articles with real subject matter, and a candidate who remembers only that the three hundred and thirties deal with special provisions for particular classes has no way to separate them.
• (4)Article 335 — Article 335 is the most tempting of the three wrong options, because it genuinely concerns the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes — but it establishes no commission. Its marginal heading is claims of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes to services and posts, and it provides that the claims of members of those communities shall be taken into consideration, consistently with the maintenance of efficiency of administration, in the making of appointments to services and posts in connection with the affairs of the Union or of a State. The phrase consistently with the maintenance of efficiency of administration is the operative qualification and has been litigated repeatedly. A proviso added by the Constitution (Eighty-second Amendment) Act, 2000 makes clear that nothing in the article prevents the State from relaxing qualifying marks in any examination or lowering the standards of evaluation for reservation in matters of promotion. The distinction to hold is simple: Article 335 is about appointments, Article 338 is about the Commission.

Part XVI of the Constitution, headed special provisions relating to certain classes, runs from Article 330 to Article 342A and gathers together the protections given to the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes, the backward classes, the Anglo-Indian community and linguistic minorities. Within it, the articles cluster by subject. Articles 330 to 334 deal with reservation of seats in the legislatures. Article 335 deals with claims to services and posts. Articles 336 and 337 are the two Anglo-Indian articles, one on reservation in certain Union services and the other on educational grants, both of them transitional and both long expired by their own terms. Articles 338, 338A and 338B set up the three watchdog commissions — for the Scheduled Castes, for the Scheduled Tribes and for the backward classes. Article 339 concerns Union control over the administration of Scheduled Areas and the welfare of Scheduled Tribes; Article 340 provides for a commission to investigate the conditions of backward classes, the provision under which the Kaka Kalelkar and Mandal Commissions were appointed; Articles 341 and 342 empower the President to specify by public notification the castes and tribes deemed to be Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in relation to a State or Union territory, with Parliament alone able to alter the list thereafter. The three commissions arrived at different times. Article 338 was rewritten by the Eighty-ninth Amendment Act of 2003, which separated the Scheduled Tribes into a new Article 338A; Article 338B, establishing the National Commission for Backward Classes as a constitutional rather than a statutory body, was inserted by the One Hundred and Second Amendment Act of 2018. All three commissions share the same design — a Chairperson, a Vice-Chairperson and members appointed by the President, the powers of a civil court while inquiring, an annual report to the President laid before Parliament, and a duty on governments to consult the commission on major policy affecting the group.

Article-number questions are a staple of every state commission paper, and they are as close to pure recall as an examination gets: either the number is in the memory attached to the right subject or it is not, and there is no way to reason to it from the stem. What a candidate can control is the way the numbers are learnt. Isolated numbers decay quickly; numbers learnt as a run do not, because each one is held in place by its neighbours. That is exactly why an examiner draws the distractors for a question like this from the articles immediately around the answer — 335, 336 and 337 all sit within three places of 338 — and why the run from 330 to 342A is worth learning as a single sequence rather than as five separate facts. There is a second thing this particular question tests, and it has nothing to do with the Constitution. The four options are printed 337, 338, 336, 335, in no order at all. Several questions in this paper print their options out of the order a reader expects, and the discipline that protects against it is to locate the option by reading its content and then to check the printed numeral against it before marking. A candidate who knows the answer is Article 338 and marks option (3) because the numbers seemed to be descending has lost the mark and a quarter of another for a reason that has nothing to do with preparation.

• Article 338 provides that there shall be a Commission for the Scheduled Castes to be known as the National Commission for the Scheduled Castes, consisting of a Chairperson, a Vice-Chairperson and three other Members appointed by the President by warrant under his hand and seal.
• The Constitution (Eighty-ninth Amendment) Act, 2003 divided the earlier combined commission into two bodies, leaving the National Commission for Scheduled Castes under Article 338 and inserting Article 338A for the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes.
• Article 335 concerns the claims of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes to services and posts, to be considered consistently with the maintenance of efficiency of administration; a proviso added by the Eighty-second Amendment Act, 2000 permits relaxation of qualifying marks and lowering of standards of evaluation for reservation in promotion.
• Articles 336 and 337 are the two Anglo-Indian provisions — reservation of posts in the railway, customs, postal and telegraph services of the Union, and educational grants — both drafted to taper by ten per cent at fixed intervals and to cease ten years after the Constitution commenced.
• Article 338B, which makes the National Commission for Backward Classes a constitutional body, was inserted by the One Hundred and Second Amendment Act, 2018, completing the set of three commissions in Part XVI.

• Confusing Article 335, which is about claims to services and posts, with Article 338, which establishes the Commission; both mention the Scheduled Castes, and only one sets up a body
• Assuming printed options run in numerical order — this question prints 337, 338, 336, 335, so the right article can be marked against the wrong numeral
• Mixing up Article 338 with Article 338A; the Scheduled Castes commission kept the original number and the Scheduled Tribes commission took the lettered one, both by the Eighty-ninth Amendment of 2003
• Treating Articles 336 and 337 as live provisions; both were transitional, tapered by design and ceased ten years after the Constitution commenced

Questions on the constitutional commissions come in three shapes in MPSC papers: name the article, name the composition, and name the amendment that created or altered the body. The article question is the most frequent because it can be set in a single line and marked without dispute, and the distractors are almost always drawn from the immediate neighbourhood of the correct article, as they are here. The practical consequence for preparation is that learning an article number in isolation is close to useless, because the wrong answers will be its neighbours; the run has to be learnt together. A second recurring shape asks which body is constitutional and which is statutory — the National Commission for Backward Classes became constitutional only in 2018, the National Commission for Women is statutory, and the National Human Rights Commission is statutory — and this distinction is set at least as often as the article numbers themselves. Build one table for Part XVI with the article, the subject and the amendment history, and a second for the commissions with their constitutional or statutory basis, composition and appointing authority.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The National Commission for Scheduled Tribes was created as a separate body under which article, and by which amendment ?

  • (a)Article 338, by the Sixty-fifth Amendment Act, 1990
  • (b)Article 338A, by the Eighty-ninth Amendment Act, 2003
  • (c)Article 338B, by the One Hundred and Second Amendment Act, 2018
  • (d)Article 339, by the Eighty-second Amendment Act, 2000

  Answer(b) Article 338A, by the Eighty-ninth Amendment Act, 2003. That amendment divided the earlier combined commission for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes into two separate bodies: the National Commission for Scheduled Castes remained under Article 338, and a new Article 338A was inserted for the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes. Article 338B, which makes the National Commission for Backward Classes a constitutional body, came later, with the One Hundred and Second Amendment Act of 2018.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which article of the Constitution provides that the claims of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes to services and posts shall be considered consistently with the maintenance of efficiency of administration ?

  • (a)Article 16
  • (b)Article 335
  • (c)Article 338
  • (d)Article 341

  Answer(b) Article 335. It requires that the claims of members of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes be taken into consideration, consistently with the maintenance of efficiency of administration, in making appointments to services and posts in connection with the affairs of the Union or of a State. A proviso inserted by the Eighty-second Amendment Act of 2000 makes clear that this does not prevent the relaxation of qualifying marks in any examination or the lowering of standards of evaluation for reservation in matters of promotion.