NDA (II) 2018 General Ability Test · Question 140 of 146

Correct — C, Protection of personal law. Part IV of the Constitution contains no such directive, and the Article that comes closest points the other way: Article 44 asks the State to endeavour to secure a uniform civil code for the citizens throughout the territory of India. A directive to protect personal law would be the opposite of a directive to work towards a uniform civil code, so this option is not merely absent from Part IV, it contradicts what Part IV actually says. The other three are all genuine Directive Principles with identifiable Articles.

• (a)Equal justice and free legal aid — This is Article 39A, which requires the State to secure that the legal system promotes justice on a basis of equal opportunity and to provide free legal aid so that no citizen is denied justice by reason of economic or other disability. It is one of the Directive Principles inserted by the Forty-second Amendment Act of 1976.
• (b)Protection of monuments and places and objects of national importance — This is Article 49 — the obligation on the State to protect every monument or place or object of artistic or historic interest declared to be of national importance from spoliation, disfigurement, destruction, removal, disposal or export. It is easy to mistake for a Fundamental Duty, but Article 51A separately asks citizens to value and preserve the composite culture, and the two provisions coexist.
• (d)Separation of Judiciary from Executive — This is Article 50, which directs the State to take steps to separate the judiciary from the executive in the public services of the State. It is a Directive Principle, not a Fundamental Right and not a constitutional guarantee — which is why it took the Criminal Procedure Code of 1973 to give it practical effect.

The Directive Principles in Part IV are not enforceable in a court, but the Constitution calls them fundamental in the governance of the country and makes it the duty of the State to apply them in making laws. Commentators usually sort them into three groups — socialist, Gandhian, and liberal-intellectual. Article 39A and Article 43A sit in the socialist group, Articles 40 and 43 in the Gandhian one, and Articles 44, 45, 48, 49, 50 and 51 in the liberal-intellectual one, of which the uniform civil code and the separation of judiciary from executive are the best-known members.

The distractor here is not a misplaced Article but an invented one, and that is a common device in this kind of question — three real provisions and one plausible-sounding sentence that appears nowhere. The way to catch it is to ask which Article each option corresponds to. Three of these convert immediately into numbers, 39A, 49 and 50; the fourth does not, because there is nothing to convert. It also helps to remember that the Constitution's stated direction on personal law is towards a uniform civil code rather than towards protecting the existing personal laws, so a directive to protect them would be out of place in Part IV.

• Article 39A directs the State to secure equal justice and to provide free legal aid; it was inserted by the Forty-second Amendment Act, 1976.
• Article 49 requires the State to protect monuments and places and objects of national importance.
• Article 50 directs the State to separate the judiciary from the executive in the public services.
• Article 44 asks the State to endeavour to secure a uniform civil code; there is no Directive Principle protecting personal law.
• Directive Principles are not enforceable in a court but are declared fundamental in the governance of the country.

• Confusing Article 49, on protecting monuments, with the Fundamental Duty in Article 51A to value and preserve the composite culture.
• Reading a plausible-sounding sentence as constitutional text; three options in this item map to Articles and one does not.
• Assuming the separation of judiciary from executive is a Fundamental Right; it is a Directive Principle in Article 50.

Asked as a negative item — the odd one out is a sentence that never appears in the Constitution at all.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Directive Principle asking the State to endeavour to secure a uniform civil code for the citizens is contained in

  • (a)Article 39A
  • (b)Article 44
  • (c)Article 48A
  • (d)Article 51

  Answer(b) Article 44 — which is why a directive to protect personal law would sit oddly in Part IV.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following statements about the Directive Principles of State Policy is correct?

  • (a)They are enforceable by the courts
  • (b)They are fundamental in the governance of the country but not enforceable by any court
  • (c)They apply only to the Union and not to the States
  • (d)They were all inserted after the Constitution came into force

  Answer(b) They are fundamental in the governance of the country but not enforceable by any court — the position stated in Article 37.