MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 64 of 100

Correct — option (4), Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. The resolution the stem refers to is the one normally called the Objectives Resolution, printed here in the singular as the paper has it, and Nehru moved it in the Constituent Assembly on 13 December 1946, four days after the Assembly first met. It was debated over several sittings and adopted unanimously on 22 January 1947. What the resolution did was to fix, before a single article was drafted, the ends the Constitution was to serve. It declared the firm and solemn resolve to proclaim India an Independent Sovereign Republic and to draw up for her future governance a Constitution; it declared that the territories of India would be a Union of those territories that then formed British India, those that formed the Indian States, and such other parts outside both as were willing to be constituted into the independent sovereign India; it declared that all power and authority of the sovereign independent India, its constituent parts and organs of government, were derived from the people; it guaranteed and secured to all the people of India justice, social, economic and political, equality of status and of opportunity before the law, and freedom of thought, expression, belief, faith, worship, vocation, association and action, subject to law and public morality; it provided that adequate safeguards would be given for minorities, backward and tribal areas, and depressed and other backward classes; it undertook to maintain the integrity of the territory of the Republic and its sovereign rights on land, sea and air according to justice and the law of civilised nations; and it looked forward to India attaining her rightful and honoured place in the world and making her full and willing contribution to the promotion of world peace and the welfare of mankind. Read that list against the Preamble to the Constitution as it now stands and the connection is unmistakable: sovereignty, the republican form, justice in its three dimensions, liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship, and equality of status and of opportunity all come across from the resolution almost word for word. That is why the Objectives Resolution is usually described as the source of the Preamble and as the statement of the philosophy of the whole Constitution, and it is why the question is set at all. One further detail is worth carrying, because it disposes of a plausible wrong answer: the sitting at which Nehru moved the resolution was presided over by Dr Rajendra Prasad, who had been elected permanent President of the Assembly two days earlier. Presiding over the sitting and moving the resolution are different things, and the question asks for the mover. The answer to be marked is option (4).

• (1)Sucheta Kripalani — Sucheta Kripalani was a member of the Constituent Assembly, but she did not move the Objectives Resolution, and the association most candidates half-remember belongs to a different occasion. She sang at the Assembly on the night of 14 August 1947, in the session at which India became independent, immediately before Nehru rose to deliver the speech known as the tryst with destiny. Her larger place in Indian political history is later still: on 2 October 1963 she became Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, the first woman to hold that office in any Indian state, and she remained in it until 13 March 1967, a tenure remembered for her handling of a state employees' strike that lasted sixty-two days. She had earlier worked in the underground network of the Quit India movement. The pattern behind this distractor is one MPSC uses often: an option that names a real member of the Assembly, genuinely associated with a famous moment in its proceedings, but the wrong moment. Anchoring each name to a date is what separates them.
• (2)Sarojini Naidu — Sarojini Naidu was also a member of the Constituent Assembly, elected from Bihar, and she spoke there on 11 December 1946 — but she was not the mover of the Objectives Resolution. Her distinctions lie elsewhere and are examined in their own right. She was the first Indian woman to be President of the Indian National Congress, at its Kanpur session in 1925, and after independence she became Governor of the United Provinces from 15 August 1947, the first woman to be Governor of an Indian province, holding the office until her death at Lucknow on 2 March 1949. She was a poet as well as a political organiser, which is why she is remembered as the Nightingale of India. Note that two of the four options in this question are women who sat in the Assembly, which is a deliberate construction: a candidate who remembers only that women took a prominent part in the Assembly's proceedings has been given two names to choose between and no reason to prefer either.
• (3)Dr. Rajendra Prasad — Dr Rajendra Prasad is the most dangerous of the three wrong options, because he was present at the very sitting the question describes — he was in the chair. The Constituent Assembly met for the first time on 9 December 1946 with Dr Sachchidananda Sinha, its oldest member, as temporary President, following the practice of electing the senior member to preside until a permanent choice is made. On 11 December 1946 Dr Rajendra Prasad was elected permanent President of the Assembly, and it was therefore he who presided when Nehru moved the Objectives Resolution two days later, and he who presided through the whole of the Assembly's work until the Constitution was adopted. He went on to become the first President of the Republic. Presiding and moving are distinct roles, and this option tests whether a candidate has stored the distinction or only the association between a name and an occasion. When a question names a specific parliamentary act — moved, seconded, introduced, presided — the verb is doing the work and must be read.

The Constituent Assembly of India was constituted under the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946 and met for the first time on 9 December 1946 in the Constitution Hall in New Delhi, with the Muslim League boycotting the sitting. Dr Sachchidananda Sinha, as the oldest member, took the chair as temporary President; on 11 December 1946 Dr Rajendra Prasad was elected permanent President and H. C. Mukherjee Vice-President, and B. N. Rau was appointed constitutional adviser. On 13 December 1946 Jawaharlal Nehru moved the Objectives Resolution, which was adopted unanimously on 22 January 1947 and became the statement of purpose from which the Preamble was later drawn. After independence the Assembly's character changed: it became a fully sovereign body, it doubled as the legislature of the new dominion, and its membership was reduced as the representatives of the areas that went to Pakistan withdrew. The Drafting Committee was appointed on 29 August 1947 with Dr B. R. Ambedkar as chairman and six other members. The Constitution was adopted on 26 November 1949, which is why that day is now observed as Constitution Day, and it came into force on 26 January 1950, the date chosen because the Congress had first observed complete independence day on 26 January 1930. The Assembly sat for two years, eleven months and eighteen days in eleven sessions, and the Objectives Resolution stands at the head of all of it — the reason the Preamble reads as a statement of political philosophy rather than as a technical recital is that it was written down as one, in December 1946, before the drafting began.

The making of the Constitution is one of the few topics in the polity syllabus that is almost entirely a matter of dates and names, and MPSC examines it accordingly: who moved which resolution, who presided over which sitting, who chaired which committee, when the Assembly first met, when the Constitution was adopted and when it came into force. Questions of this kind are cheap for a Commission to set and impossible to argue with, so they recur every year. The construction used here is characteristic. All four names are real figures of the period and three of the four sat in the Constituent Assembly, so the question cannot be answered by eliminating people who were not there; it can only be answered by knowing who did the specific thing named. Notice too that the stem is printed as a fill-in-the-blank rather than as a direct question, with a long underscore rule where the name belongs. That format changes nothing about the reasoning but it does change how the sentence reads, and candidates working quickly sometimes complete the sentence with the most familiar name rather than the correct one. The defence is to convert the blank back into a question before choosing — who moved the Objectives Resolution on 13 December 1946 — and then to answer that question rather than the sentence.

• Jawaharlal Nehru moved the Objectives Resolution in the Constituent Assembly on 13 December 1946, and the Assembly adopted it unanimously on 22 January 1947; its language is the source of the Preamble to the Constitution.
• The Constituent Assembly met for the first time on 9 December 1946 with Dr Sachchidananda Sinha, its oldest member, as temporary President; Dr Rajendra Prasad was elected its permanent President on 11 December 1946 and presided when the resolution was moved.
• The Objectives Resolution declared India an Independent Sovereign Republic, derived all power and authority from the people, and guaranteed justice, equality of status and opportunity, and freedom of thought, expression, belief, faith, worship, vocation, association and action.
• It also promised adequate safeguards for minorities, backward and tribal areas and the depressed and other backward classes, and undertook to maintain the integrity of the territory of the Republic and its sovereign rights on land, sea and air.
• Sucheta Kripalani sang at the Assembly's independence session on the night of 14 August 1947 and later became India's first woman Chief Minister, in Uttar Pradesh from 1963 to 1967; Sarojini Naidu was the first Indian woman President of the Congress, in 1925, and the first woman Governor of an Indian province, from 1947 until her death in 1949.

• Confusing the person who presided over a sitting with the person who moved the resolution; Dr Rajendra Prasad was in the chair on 13 December 1946 while Nehru moved the Objectives Resolution
• Confusing the date the Objectives Resolution was moved, 13 December 1946, with the date it was adopted, 22 January 1947, since questions are set on both
• Answering a fill-in-the-blank stem by completing the sentence with the most familiar name instead of converting the blank back into a question and answering that
• Assuming that a woman named among the options must be the answer because women were prominent in the Assembly; two of these four options are women who sat in it, and neither moved the resolution

The Constituent Assembly appears in MPSC papers in a small number of predictable forms: name the mover of a resolution, name the chairman of a committee, name the presiding officer of a sitting, give a date, or state what a resolution contained. Because the material is finite, the Commission distinguishes between candidates by drawing distractors from the same room — everyone named in this question was a public figure of the period and three sat in the Assembly itself. Preparation should therefore be organised as a table of who did what and when, not as a list of names associated loosely with the Assembly. Two columns repay particular attention: the committee table, because chairmanships are asked more often than any other single fact about the Assembly, with the Drafting Committee under Ambedkar, the Union Powers Committee and the Union Constitution Committee under Nehru, the Provincial Constitution Committee under Patel and the Rules of Procedure Committee under Rajendra Prasad; and the date table, because a question that cannot be set on a name can always be set on a date.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  On which date was the Objectives Resolution finally adopted by the Constituent Assembly of India ?

  • (a)9 December 1946
  • (b)13 December 1946
  • (c)22 January 1947
  • (d)26 November 1949

  Answer(c) 22 January 1947. Jawaharlal Nehru moved the Objectives Resolution on 13 December 1946, four days after the Constituent Assembly first met on 9 December 1946, and after several sittings of debate the Assembly adopted it unanimously on 22 January 1947. The remaining date in the options, 26 November 1949, is the day the Constitution itself was adopted, now observed as Constitution Day; the Constitution came into force two months later, on 26 January 1950.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Who presided over the first sitting of the Constituent Assembly of India on 9 December 1946 ?

  • (a)Dr Rajendra Prasad
  • (b)Dr Sachchidananda Sinha
  • (c)Dr B. R. Ambedkar
  • (d)H. C. Mukherjee

  Answer(b) Dr Sachchidananda Sinha. As the oldest member of the Assembly he took the chair as temporary President at the first sitting, following the convention of letting the senior member preside until a permanent choice is made. Dr Rajendra Prasad was elected permanent President two days later, on 11 December 1946, with H. C. Mukherjee as Vice-President, and Dr B. R. Ambedkar was appointed chairman of the Drafting Committee only later, on 29 August 1947.