NDA (II) 2023 General Ability Test · Question 138 of 146

Correct — A, 243ZD. The article opens by saying that there shall be constituted in every State at the district level a District Planning Committee to consolidate the plans prepared by the Panchayats and the Municipalities in the district and to prepare a draft development plan for the district as a whole. That single sentence is the whole point of the article, and it is the reason the district is the level at which rural and urban planning are meant to be stitched together. Article 243ZD came in with the Seventy-fourth Amendment of 1992, the amendment that gave municipalities constitutional status, and it also fixes the committee's composition — not less than four-fifths of the members must be elected from among the elected members of the district panchayat and the municipalities in the district, in proportion to the ratio of the district's rural and urban populations.

• (b)243ZB — Article 243ZB is headed application to Union territories. It carries Part IX-A into the Union territories, reading the Administrator for the Governor and the Legislative Assembly of the territory for the Legislature of a State. It creates no committee of any kind.
• (c)243ZE — This is the closest wrong answer and the one most candidates pick. Article 243ZE is the Metropolitan Planning Committee, required in every metropolitan area, whose job is the draft development plan for the metropolitan area — the same idea as 243ZD but one rung up and confined to the big urban agglomerations.
• (d)243ZC — Article 243ZC does not set up a planning body at all. It is the exception clause of Part IX-A, keeping the Part from applying to certain areas, so it is the wrong kind of provision entirely.

The Seventy-third and Seventy-fourth Amendments of 1992 built local government into the Constitution — Part IX for panchayats, Part IX-A for municipalities. Both stop at the level of a single body, so the amendments added two articles to pull the separate plans together. Article 243ZD makes the District Planning Committee responsible for consolidating panchayat and municipal plans into one draft development plan for the district, and Article 243ZE does the same job for a metropolitan area through a Metropolitan Planning Committee. The Chairperson of each committee forwards the plan to the State Government.

The trap in this question is not the law but the labelling. All four options are neighbouring articles in the same Part, distinguished only by a final letter, so a candidate who knows perfectly well what a District Planning Committee does can still lose the mark. The reliable way to hold them is by content rather than by letter: 243ZD is the district committee, 243ZE the metropolitan committee, and the letters run in that order — district first, then metropolis. Then remember that the remaining articles at the end of Part IX-A are housekeeping, not institutions: 243ZB extends the Part to the Union territories and 243ZC keeps it out of certain areas. When an article number question offers you four consecutive numbers, work out which two create bodies and which two are procedural, and the field halves at once.

• Article 243ZD requires a District Planning Committee in every State at the district level to consolidate the plans of the panchayats and municipalities and prepare a draft development plan for the district as a whole.
• Not less than four-fifths of the members of a District Planning Committee must be elected from among the elected members of the district panchayat and the municipalities, in proportion to the rural and urban population of the district.
• Article 243ZE provides for a Metropolitan Planning Committee to prepare the draft development plan for a metropolitan area.
• Article 243ZB applies Part IX-A to the Union territories, substituting the Administrator for the Governor.
• Both articles were inserted by the Constitution (Seventy-fourth Amendment) Act, 1992, which gave municipalities constitutional status.

• Swapping 243ZD and 243ZE — the district committee comes first, the metropolitan one after it.
• Assuming every article in the ZA to ZG run creates an institution; several are application and exception clauses.
• Crediting the District Planning Committee with implementing schemes; its constitutional task is to prepare the draft plan.

Asked as a bare article-number recall with three neighbouring articles as decoys — the format NDA uses whenever a body has a numbered home in the Constitution.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Metropolitan Planning Committee is provided for by which article of the Constitution of India ?

  • (a)243ZC
  • (b)243ZD
  • (c)243ZE
  • (d)243ZG

  Answer(c) 243ZE — it prepares the draft development plan for a metropolitan area, the district committee under 243ZD doing the same for a district.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The District Planning Committee was introduced into the Constitution by

  • (a)the Seventy-third Amendment, 1992
  • (b)the Seventy-fourth Amendment, 1992
  • (c)the Forty-second Amendment, 1976
  • (d)the Ninety-seventh Amendment, 2011

  Answer(b) the Seventy-fourth Amendment, 1992 — the municipalities amendment, which added Part IX-A including Articles 243ZD and 243ZE.