NDA (I) 2018 General Ability Test · Question 137 of 150

Correct — B, There are no nominated members in the Lok Sabha. At the date of this exam the Lok Sabha did have nominated members. Article 331 allowed the President, if he thought the Anglo-Indian community was not adequately represented, to nominate not more than two members of that community to the House of the People, and two such members sat in every Lok Sabha from 1952 onwards. So the statement was false in April 2018 and is the one the question is asking for. The other three are accurate. Article 79 makes Parliament consist of the President and the two Houses. Article 83(1) says the Council of States shall not be subject to dissolution, one third retiring every second year. Article 80(1)(a) provides twelve members nominated by the President for their special knowledge of literature, science, art and social service.

• (a)The Parliament consists of the President, the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha — This is correct and therefore not the answer. Article 79 reads that there shall be a Parliament for the Union which shall consist of the President and two Houses. The President is a constituent part of Parliament even though he sits in neither House.
• (c)The Rajya Sabha cannot be dissolved — This is correct. Article 83(1) states that the Council of States shall not be subject to dissolution; it is a permanent House in which as nearly as possible one third of the members retire every second year.
• (d)Some members of the Rajya Sabha are nominated by the President — This is correct. Under Article 80 the Council of States includes twelve members nominated by the President from persons with special knowledge or practical experience in literature, science, art and social service.

Parliament under Article 79 is the President plus the Council of States and the House of the People. The Council of States has a sanctioned strength of 245 — up to 238 representatives of the States and Union territories, elected by the elected members of the State legislatures by proportional representation with a single transferable vote, plus 12 nominated by the President. It is never dissolved; members serve six years and a third retire every two years. The House of the People under Article 81 has up to 530 members from the States and up to 20 from the Union territories, all directly elected, and it runs for five years from its first sitting unless dissolved earlier.

This item has moved since the exam, and the change is the single most useful thing to carry away from it. The Constitution (One Hundred and Fourth Amendment) Act, 2019 amended Article 334 so that the special representation of the Anglo-Indian community by nomination would cease after seventy years from the commencement of the Constitution — that is, from 25 January 2020. Article 331 still stands in the printed text but no longer has any effect, and no Anglo-Indian member has been nominated to the Lok Sabha since. So statement (b), which was false when this paper was set in April 2018, would be true today, and the item as printed no longer has a wrong statement in it. That reversal is exactly the kind of thing an examiner now exploits, so a candidate should keep the date of the change as firmly as the rule itself. The same amendment extended the reservation of seats for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes to eighty years.

• Article 79 — Parliament consists of the President and the two Houses.
• Article 331 allowed the President to nominate not more than two Anglo-Indian members to the Lok Sabha; two sat in every House from 1952.
• Article 334, as amended by the 104th Amendment Act, 2019, ended that nomination with effect from 25 January 2020.
• Article 80(1)(a) — twelve members of the Rajya Sabha are nominated by the President for special knowledge of literature, science, art and social service.
• Article 83(1) — the Rajya Sabha is not subject to dissolution; one third of its members retire every second year.

• Forgetting that the President is part of Parliament, which makes statement (a) look wrong at first glance.
• Treating nomination as a Rajya Sabha monopoly — until 2020 the Lok Sabha had it too, under a different article and for a different reason.
• Answering this item from today's position rather than from the position in April 2018, when it was set.

NDA sets Parliament as a NOT-correct statement item, and increasingly builds it on a provision that has recently changed.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The nomination of Anglo-Indian members to the Lok Sabha ceased to have effect from

  • (a)26 January 2019
  • (b)25 January 2020
  • (c)1 April 2021
  • (d)26 November 2019

  Answer(b) 25 January 2020 — seventy years from the commencement of the Constitution, under the 104th Amendment Act, 2019.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  How many members of the Rajya Sabha are nominated by the President?

  • (a)2
  • (b)10
  • (c)12
  • (d)20

  Answer(c) 12 — for special knowledge or practical experience in literature, science, art and social service.