Which Amendment to the Constitution abolished the two seats that were reserved for the Anglo-Indian community ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — C, 104th. The Constitution (One Hundred and Fourth Amendment) Act, 2019 amended Article 334, which sets the time limit on two quite separate special provisions: the reservation of seats for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the Lok Sabha and the State Legislative Assemblies, and the nomination of Anglo-Indian members. The amendment extended the first for a further ten years, to 25 January 2030, and did not extend the second. So from 25 January 2020, when the amendment took effect, the two Anglo-Indian members nominated to the Lok Sabha under Article 331 and the one nominated to certain State Legislative Assemblies under Article 333 ceased to be provided for. Note the mechanism, because examiners test it: Articles 331 and 333 were not deleted from the Constitution. What lapsed was the authority in Article 334 to continue the nomination beyond the deadline, so the seats disappeared by expiry rather than by repeal. The Anglo-Indian provision was one of the original special arrangements of 1950, meant to give a small community with no geographical concentration a voice it could not win at the ballot box, and it had been renewed every ten years until this point. The three wrong options are all real amendments from the same broad period and all deal with representation or status in some form, which is what makes the option set work: 100th, 102nd and 104th sit within four years of each other, and the 108th is a bill that a well-read candidate will half-remember without recalling that it never became law.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) The Constitution (One Hundredth Amendment) Act, 2015 gave effect to the Land Boundary Agreement with Bangladesh, transferring and receiving enclaves and adverse possessions and amending the First Schedule. It changed India's territory, not its scheme of reserved seats — a different kind of representation question entirely.  (b) The 108th was the Women's Reservation Bill introduced in 2008, seeking one-third of seats for women in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies. It lapsed and never became an Act, so no 108th Amendment exists — a trap for candidates who remember the number from years of news coverage. Women's reservation was finally enacted as the 106th Amendment in 2023.  (d) The Constitution (One Hundred and Second Amendment) Act, 2018 gave constitutional status to the National Commission for Backward Classes, inserting Articles 338B and 342A. It is the closest miss because it belongs to the same cluster of amendments about disadvantaged groups and was passed only a year before the 104th.

Concept: The Constitution protects certain groups in the legislature by two different devices, and Article 334 is what puts a clock on both. The first device is reservation of seats: under Articles 330 and 332, seats are reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the Lok Sabha and in State Legislative Assemblies, filled by ordinary election in which only candidates of that community may stand. The second is nomination: under Article 331 the President could nominate up to two members of the Anglo-Indian community to the Lok Sabha if he considered the community inadequately represented, and under Article 333 a Governor could nominate one to a State Assembly. Both were framed as temporary, originally for ten years from the commencement of the Constitution, and Article 334 has been amended repeatedly to push the deadline out — by the 8th, 23rd, 45th, 62nd, 79th, 95th and finally the 104th Amendments. The 104th broke the pattern by renewing one arm and letting the other lapse.

State PCS 2024 Q139 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q139 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer