MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 70 of 100

Correct — option (4), none of the above. Three statements are printed here, (a) to (c), not four, and every one of them is wrong; the question is set so that a candidate who has read about the panel of chairpersons casually will recognise the vocabulary in each statement and accept it. Statement (a) says the panel of chairpersons is elected by the Lok Sabha from among its members. It is not elected at all — it is nominated. Rule 9 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in Lok Sabha provides that at the commencement of the House, or from time to time as the case may be, the Speaker shall nominate from among the members a panel of not more than ten chairpersons, any one of whom may preside over the House in the absence of the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker when so requested by the Speaker, or in the absence of the Speaker by the Deputy Speaker. Election and nomination are different acts done by different authorities, and the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker are the offices in this House that are filled by election; the panel is the Speaker's own nomination. Statement (b) says a member of the panel can preside when the office of the Speaker or the Deputy Speaker is VACANT. This is the most carefully constructed of the three, because a panel member certainly does preside when the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker are ABSENT — that is the whole point of the panel. What he cannot do is preside while either office is vacant. The distinction between an absent office-holder and an empty office is the hinge of the question, and Article 95(1) settles it: while the office of Speaker is vacant, the duties of the office shall be performed by the Deputy Speaker or, if the office of Deputy Speaker is also vacant, by such member of the House of the People as the President may appoint for the purpose. Statement (c) then takes that same rule and attaches it to the wrong situation. It says that in the ABSENCE of the Speaker, the Deputy Speaker and the members of the panel, the Speaker's duties are to be performed by a member appointed by the President. Article 95(2) governs absence, and it says something different: during the absence of the Speaker from any sitting of the House, the Deputy Speaker or, if he is also absent, such person as may be determined by the rules of procedure of the House, or, if no such person is present, such other person as may be determined by the House, shall act as Speaker. So on the failure of the panel the House itself determines who shall take the chair; the President has no part in it. The President appoints only where the offices are vacant, which is clause (1) and not clause (2). Each of the three statements therefore fails, and the answer is option (4).

• (1)Only (a) — This option asserts that statement (a) alone is correct, and statement (a) is not correct. The panel of chairpersons is nominated by the Speaker under Rule 9 of the Rules of Procedure, not elected by the House; the rule provides for a panel of not more than ten chairpersons, nominated from among the members at the commencement of the House or from time to time. In practice the leaders of the various parties suggest names of their members and the Speaker nominates from those suggestions, so the panel is not confined to the ruling party — but suggestion followed by nomination is still not election. A nominated chairperson holds his place until a new panel is nominated, unless he resigns from the panel earlier, is appointed a Minister, or is elected Deputy Speaker. Keeping nomination and election apart is worth doing across the whole of parliamentary procedure, because the two words mark out different offices: the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker of the Lok Sabha and the Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha are elected by their Houses, while the panel of chairpersons and the Rajya Sabha's panel of vice-chairmen are nominated by the presiding officer.
• (2)Only (b) — This option asserts that statement (b) alone is correct, and statement (b) fails on a single word. A member of the panel of chairpersons presides when the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker are absent from a sitting; he does not preside when the office of either is vacant. The statement says vacant, and that is the situation Article 95(1) reserves for a different arrangement altogether: while the office of Speaker is vacant, the duties are performed by the Deputy Speaker, and if the office of Deputy Speaker is also vacant, by such member of the House as the President may appoint for the purpose. The reason for the difference is worth understanding. Presiding in the Speaker's absence is a matter of keeping the sitting going, and the House's own rules can provide for it; but when the office itself is empty there is no Speaker whose authority the panel member could be exercising, and the Constitution therefore steps in with an appointment from outside the House's own machinery. This is the single most productive distinction in this topic and it is asked repeatedly — absent office-holder, empty office.
• (3)(a) and (c) — This option asserts that statements (a) and (c) are correct, and neither is. Statement (a) fails because the panel is nominated by the Speaker rather than elected by the House. Statement (c) fails because it applies the President's power of appointment to the wrong situation. Article 95 has two clauses and they deal with different things. Clause (1) deals with a vacancy in the office: while the office of Speaker is vacant the Deputy Speaker performs the duties, and if that office is also vacant, such member of the House as the President may appoint. Clause (2) deals with absence from a particular sitting: the Deputy Speaker acts, or if he too is absent, such person as may be determined by the rules of procedure of the House — which is where the panel of chairpersons comes in — or, if no such person is present, such other person as may be determined by the House. The last limb is the one statement (c) misdescribes. When the Speaker, the Deputy Speaker and every member of the panel are absent from a sitting, it is the House that determines who shall act as Speaker, not the President.

The Lok Sabha has a layered arrangement for presiding over its sittings, and the layers are governed partly by the Constitution and partly by the House's own rules. The Speaker and the Deputy Speaker are elected by the House from among its members under Article 93. Article 95 then deals with what happens when one or both are unavailable, and it distinguishes two cases. Clause (1) covers a vacancy in the office: while the office of Speaker is vacant, the Deputy Speaker performs the duties, and if the office of Deputy Speaker is also vacant, the duties are performed by such member of the House as the President may appoint for the purpose. Clause (2) covers absence from a sitting: the Deputy Speaker acts as Speaker, and if he is also absent, such person as may be determined by the rules of procedure of the House, and if no such person is present, such other person as may be determined by the House. It is clause (2) that gives the panel of chairpersons its constitutional footing, because the rules of procedure referred to there are the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in Lok Sabha, whose Rule 9 requires the Speaker to nominate from among the members a panel of not more than ten chairpersons, any of whom may preside in the absence of the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker when so requested. A chairperson so nominated holds his place until a new panel is nominated, unless he resigns from the panel, becomes a Minister or is elected Deputy Speaker. The Rajya Sabha has the corresponding institution in its panel of vice-chairmen, nominated by the Chairman. A member of the panel presiding over a sitting has the same powers as the Speaker for that sitting, but he has no authority when the office of the Speaker or the Deputy Speaker is vacant, and he does not exercise the Speaker's functions outside the chamber, such as certifying a Money Bill.

Parliamentary procedure is examined in MPSC papers with a particular fondness for the small distinctions that separate one office or one situation from another: elected against nominated, absent against vacant, resignation against removal, casting vote against ordinary vote. This question packs three such distinctions into three statements and makes all three false, which is a construction worth recognising in its own right. Candidates are taught, correctly, that a list is unlikely to be entirely wrong, and examiners know it; a question in which every statement fails is therefore a deliberate test of whether a candidate evaluates statements independently or calibrates them against an expectation of how many should be true. The defence is to check each statement against a remembered rule and to accept the arithmetic that results, however improbable it feels. Notice also the layout of this item. It does not print the usual answer options label; instead each language block ends its stem with the lead-in sentence asking which of the statements given above is or are correct, and the four choices are printed as a single row of four columns rather than in the two-column grid used elsewhere in the paper. Nothing about that changes the reasoning, but a candidate skimming for a familiar visual pattern can misread a row of four as something else, and it is worth pausing for a second on any question whose layout differs from its neighbours.

• Rule 9 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in Lok Sabha requires the Speaker to nominate from among the members a panel of not more than ten chairpersons; the panel is nominated by the Speaker, not elected by the House.
• A member of the panel may preside in the ABSENCE of both the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker when so requested by the Speaker, or in the Speaker's absence by the Deputy Speaker; he cannot preside while the office of the Speaker or the Deputy Speaker is VACANT.
• Article 95(1) provides that while the office of Speaker is vacant the duties are performed by the Deputy Speaker, and if that office is also vacant, by such member of the House as the President may appoint for the purpose.
• Article 95(2) provides that during the Speaker's absence from a sitting the Deputy Speaker acts, or if he is also absent, such person as may be determined by the rules of procedure of the House, or, if no such person is present, such other person as may be determined by the House — so on the failure of the panel it is the House and not the President that decides.
• A nominated chairperson holds his place until a new panel is nominated, unless he resigns from the panel earlier, is appointed a Minister or is elected Deputy Speaker; the Rajya Sabha's corresponding body is the panel of vice-chairmen, nominated by the Chairman.

• Confusing nomination with election; the panel of chairpersons is nominated by the Speaker under Rule 9, while the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker are themselves elected by the House
• Confusing absence of an office-holder with a vacancy in the office; a panel member presides in the first case and cannot preside in the second, which is the hinge of this whole question
• Attributing to the President the power to name a presiding member where the Speaker, the Deputy Speaker and the panel are merely absent; on absence Article 95(2) leaves the choice to the House
• Assuming a statement list cannot be wholly wrong and adjusting the answer to make one statement true; here all three fail and the keyed answer is none of the above

The presiding officers of Parliament are a small topic that yields a disproportionate number of questions, because the constitutional articles and the rules of procedure between them create many finely separated situations. MPSC asks who elects or nominates a particular office-holder; who presides in a stated situation; what happens when an office falls vacant; and what powers the presiding officer has, particularly the casting vote and the certification of Money Bills. Statement lists of the kind used here are the commonest instrument, and the statements are usually built by taking a correct rule and shifting one word — absent for vacant, elected for nominated, President for House. The preparation that answers all of them is a short table with a row for each situation, absence and vacancy kept separate, and a column each for the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha; adding the corresponding provisions for a State legislature under Articles 178 to 181 costs little and covers a further set of questions, since the scheme there is deliberately parallel.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  When the offices of both the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker of the Lok Sabha are vacant, who performs the duties of the Speaker ?

  • (a)The senior-most member of the panel of chairpersons
  • (b)Such member of the House as the President may appoint for the purpose
  • (c)The Leader of the House nominated by the Prime Minister
  • (d)The Secretary-General of the Lok Sabha

  Answer(b) Such member of the House as the President may appoint for the purpose. Article 95(1) provides that while the office of Speaker is vacant the duties shall be performed by the Deputy Speaker, and if the office of Deputy Speaker is also vacant, by such member of the House of the People as the President may appoint. A member of the panel of chairpersons cannot step in here, because the panel exists under Article 95(2) and Rule 9 to preside during the absence of the Speaker and Deputy Speaker, not during a vacancy in either office.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The panel of chairpersons of the Lok Sabha is constituted in which of the following ways ?

  • (a)Elected by the Lok Sabha by proportional representation through the single transferable vote
  • (b)Nominated by the Speaker from amongst the members of the House
  • (c)Appointed by the President on the advice of the Prime Minister
  • (d)Chosen by the Business Advisory Committee at the start of each session

  Answer(b) Nominated by the Speaker from amongst the members of the House. Rule 9 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in Lok Sabha requires the Speaker, at the commencement of the House or from time to time, to nominate a panel of not more than ten chairpersons from among the members; in practice the leaders of the various parties suggest names, so the panel is not drawn from the ruling party alone. A nominated chairperson holds his place until a new panel is nominated, unless he resigns, becomes a Minister or is elected Deputy Speaker.