What is the system of governance in the Panchayat Raj set-up ?

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Correct — D, Three tier structure of local self government at the village, block and district levels. The Constitution states this outright. Article 243B(1), inserted by the Constitution (Seventy-third Amendment) Act, 1992 and in force from 24 April 1993, reads: 'There shall be constituted in every State, Panchayats at the village, intermediate and district levels in accordance with the provisions of this Part.' Those three levels are the Gram Panchayat at the village, the Panchayat Samiti at the intermediate or block level, and the Zila Parishad at the district. The design was not invented in 1992 — the Balwant Rai Mehta Committee had recommended exactly this three-tier scheme of 'democratic decentralisation' in 1957, its recommendation was accepted by the National Development Council in January 1958, and Jawaharlal Nehru inaugurated Panchayati Raj at Nagaur in Rajasthan on 2 October 1959. What the 73rd Amendment did was to lift that arrangement out of State discretion and into the Constitution, with a fixed five-year term, mandatory elections within six months of dissolution, reservation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in proportion to population and not less than one-third of seats for women, a State Finance Commission every five years and a State Election Commission to conduct the polls. There is exactly one lawful departure from the three tiers, and Article 243B(2) sets it out: 'Panchayats at the intermediate level may not be constituted in a State having a population not exceeding twenty lakhs.' That is a narrow exemption for small States, not an alternative model.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) This is what a small State looks like after applying the Article 243B(2) exemption — except that the exemption removes the intermediate tier and leaves village and district, not village and block. So the option describes neither the general rule nor the exception correctly. It is also close to the Ashok Mehta Committee's 1977 recommendation, which proposed a two-tier system, but that recommendation was never the constitutional scheme.  (b) The Gram Panchayat alone. This is the popular picture of panchayati raj — the village council — and it is the tier that existed in many States before 1959 and again wherever the higher tiers had been allowed to lapse. But Article 243B(1) requires three, and the whole point of the intermediate and district tiers is to give rural government a unit large enough to plan and to spend.  (c) There is no panchayat at the State level and there cannot be one — the State Legislature sits above the system, not inside it. Part IX creates rural local government within a State; a State-level panchayat would duplicate the legislature it reports to. The option works as a decoy because a candidate who has learned 'village, block, district' may add the obvious next rung upwards without noticing that it is a different kind of body altogether.

Concept: Panchayati Raj is India's system of rural local self-government, and its constitutional home is Part IX, Articles 243 to 243-O, inserted by the 73rd Amendment. The essential architecture is a three-tier pyramid: Gram Panchayat at the village, Panchayat Samiti at the block, Zila Parishad at the district, with the Gram Sabha — every registered voter of the village — as the base from which the village panchayat draws its authority. Around that skeleton the Amendment fixed six guarantees that States cannot dilute: a five-year term with elections within six months of any dissolution, reservation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes proportionate to their population, not less than one-third of all seats and of chairperson posts for women, a State Election Commission to conduct the polls, a State Finance Commission every five years to review panchayat finances, and the Eleventh Schedule's list of twenty-nine subjects that States may devolve. The word 'may' in that last item is the system's weakness: functions, funds and functionaries are devolved at each State's discretion, so the constitutional structure is uniform while the real powers of a panchayat vary sharply from State to State.

State PCS 2025 Q69 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q69 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer