Indian National Flag was adopted by the Constituent Assembly on which date ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — C, 22 July 1947. The Constituent Assembly adopted the national flag on 22 July 1947, twenty-four days before Independence, on a resolution moved by Jawaharlal Nehru. The resolution specified a horizontal tricolour of deep saffron, white and dark green in equal proportion, with a navy-blue wheel in the centre of the white band — the wheel of the Sarnath Lion Capital of Ashoka, whose diameter was to approximate the width of the white band — and a width-to-length ratio of 2:3. The design was worked out by an ad hoc Flag Committee set up in June 1947 under the chairmanship of Dr Rajendra Prasad, which took the Congress's own Swaraj flag and replaced the charkha at its centre with the Ashoka Chakra of twenty-four spokes, a change that made the flag the emblem of a state rather than of a party. The date matters because the flag had to exist before the state did: the Assembly was legislating for a Dominion that would come into being on 15 August 1947, and the flag was hoisted on that day. Every other option is drawn from the 1949-50 constitutional cluster, and the question is really testing whether a candidate keeps the flag date separate from those. Note also the wording of option (b): 26 November 1950 is not the date of anything — the Constitution was adopted on 26 November 1949, a year earlier.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) The correct date for a different national symbol. On 24 January 1950, at its final session, the Constituent Assembly adopted 'Jana Gana Mana' as the national anthem and gave 'Vande Mataram' equal honour as the national song; the same day, members signed the copies of the Constitution. It is the single most commonly substituted wrong answer for a flag question.  (b) A doctored version of a real date. The Constitution was adopted by the Constituent Assembly on 26 November 1949 — the day recorded in the Preamble itself and now observed as Constitution Day — not in 1950. The option shifts the year by one, so it is wrong on two counts: it is the wrong event and the wrong year.  (d) The date the Constitution came into force and India became a Republic, chosen to honour the Purna Swaraj declaration of 26 January 1930. It marks the commencement of the Constitution, not the adoption of any national symbol, and the flag had already been in official use for two and a half years by then.

Concept: India's national symbols were settled by the Constituent Assembly at three separate moments, and confusing them is the most common source of error in this area. The flag came first, on 22 July 1947, because the Dominion needed one immediately. The Constitution itself was adopted on 26 November 1949 and commenced on 26 January 1950. The national anthem and national song were adopted on 24 January 1950, on a statement by President Rajendra Prasad rather than by a formal resolution. The flag's own lineage runs back through the Swaraj flag designed by Pingali Venkayya and presented to Gandhi at Bezwada in 1921, and the Congress tricolour with the charkha adopted in 1931; substituting the Ashoka Chakra for the spinning wheel in 1947 was the deliberate step that converted a movement's banner into a state's flag.

State PCS 2024 Q65 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q65 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer