Size of Council of Ministers has been restricted to 15 percent of membership of Lok Sabha by which Constitutional Amendment ?

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Correct — D, 91st Amendment. The Constitution (Ninety-first Amendment) Act, 2003 inserted Article 75(1A), which says that the total number of Ministers, including the Prime Minister, in the Council of Ministers shall not exceed fifteen per cent of the total number of members of the House of the People. The same Act inserted the mirror provision for the States — Article 164(1A) — capping a State Council of Ministers at 15 per cent of the strength of that State's Legislative Assembly, with a first proviso fixing a floor of twelve Ministers so that a very small Assembly is not left with a three-member cabinet. On a 543-member Lok Sabha the Union ceiling is 81 (15 per cent of 543 is 81.45, and the fraction is dropped); on Bihar's 243-member Vidhan Sabha the State ceiling is 36. The cap was only half of what the 91st Amendment did, and the other half explains why it exists: the same Act added Articles 75(1B) and 164(1B), which bar a legislator disqualified for defection under the Tenth Schedule from being appointed a Minister for the remainder of his term, and Article 361B, which bars him from any remunerative political post; and it deleted paragraph 3 of the Tenth Schedule, the clause that had let one-third of a legislature party 'split' away without being disqualified. Oversized ministries were the currency used to buy defectors, so Parliament shut off the reward and the loophole in one Act. It was enacted in 2003 and brought into force on 1 January 2004.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) The Constitution (Ninety-fifth Amendment) Act, 2009 amended Article 334 to extend the reservation of seats for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the Lok Sabha and the State Legislative Assemblies by a further ten years — to seventy years from the commencement of the Constitution, i.e. to 25 January 2020. It concerns reserved seats, not the size of the ministry.  (b) The Constitution (Ninety-second Amendment) Act, 2003 amended the Eighth Schedule to add Bodo, Dogri, Maithili and Santhali, taking the scheduled languages from 18 to 22. This is the sharpest trap in the set — it is the very next number and the very same year as the 91st, and Maithili makes it memorable to a Bihar candidate, but it is a language amendment.  (c) The Constitution (Ninety-third Amendment) Act, 2005 inserted Article 15(5), enabling the State to make special provision for the advancement of socially and educationally backward classes, SCs and STs in admission to educational institutions, including private institutions whether aided or unaided, other than minority institutions protected by Article 30(1). It was tested in Ashoka Kumar Thakur v. Union of India (2008) and has nothing to do with ministry size.

Concept: Until 2004 the Constitution set no upper limit on how many Ministers a Prime Minister or Chief Minister could appoint. Because a ministerial berth carries salary, staff, a bungalow and patronage, an unlimited Council of Ministers became the standard instrument for keeping a shaky coalition together — the 'jumbo ministry'. Reform bodies had objected for years: the Dinesh Goswami Committee on Electoral Reforms (1990) and the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution (2002) both urged a constitutional ceiling. The 91st Amendment finally wrote one in, and wrote it into both the Union chapter (Article 75) and the State chapter (Article 164) at the same time, so the discipline applies identically in Patna and in Delhi.

State PCS 2024 Q31 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q31 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer