Which one of the following is electoral college for the President but not forum for his impeachment ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — C, State Legislative Assemblies. The stem sets a two-part test, and the second part is a negative — the booklet prints 'but not forum for his impeachment' with the negation emphasised, an emphasis that does not survive into plain text, so read the words rather than the look of them. Part one is Article 54: 'The President shall be elected by the members of an electoral college consisting of — (a) the elected members of both Houses of Parliament; and (b) the elected members of the Legislative Assemblies of the States', with an Explanation inserted by the Seventieth Amendment Act, 1992 extending 'State' to the National Capital Territory of Delhi and Puducherry. Part two is Article 61: a charge for violation of the Constitution 'shall be preferred by either House of Parliament', on fourteen days' notice signed by not less than one-fourth of the total members of that House and passed by not less than two-thirds of its total membership; the other House then investigates, and if it too passes such a resolution by two-thirds of its total membership the President is removed from that date. Impeachment is therefore entirely a parliamentary process. Put the two provisions side by side and only one body satisfies both halves of the stem: the State Legislative Assemblies are named in the electoral college by Article 54 and appear nowhere in Article 61. Note also that UPSC put this identical question in 1996 and its published key names State Legislative Assemblies, the same text that stands at option (C) here — independent corroboration of the constitutional point, though not evidence about this Commission's own key, which was never published.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Passes the first half of the test and fails the second, which is exactly what the question is checking. Its elected members are in the electoral college under Article 54(a), and it is fully a forum for impeachment under Article 61 — it may prefer the charge, or investigate a charge preferred by the Lok Sabha. Note the asymmetry within the House itself: its twelve nominated members cannot vote in the presidential election, because Article 54 says 'elected members', but they count towards the two-thirds of total membership that Article 61 requires.  (b) Fails in the same way. Its elected members vote in the presidential election under Article 54(a), and under Article 61 either House may prefer the charge and the other must investigate it, so the Lok Sabha is squarely an impeachment forum. A candidate who reads only the first half of the stem will find both Houses qualifying and be unable to choose between them, which is the trap the negation exists to set.  (d) Fails the first half instead of the second. Article 54(b) counts only the elected members of the Legislative Assemblies of the States; the Councils, which exist in only a handful of states — Bihar has one — are left out entirely, and so are nominated MLAs. Since a Council is in neither the electoral college nor the impeachment forum, it cannot be the body that is in one but not the other.

Concept: The Constitution builds the presidency out of a deliberate asymmetry: the States help choose the President but have no say in removing him. Election is federal by design. Article 55 requires 'as far as practicable' uniformity in the scale of representation of the different States, and parity between the States as a whole and the Union. It achieves both arithmetically: each elected MLA has as many votes as there are multiples of one thousand in the state's population divided by the number of elected members of its Assembly, with a remainder of five hundred or more adding one; each elected MP then has a number of votes equal to the total value of all the MLAs' votes divided by the total number of elected members of both Houses. Because the two totals are made equal by construction, the States collectively carry exactly the same weight as Parliament. Voting is by proportional representation with a single transferable vote and by secret ballot. The 'population' in that formula is not the current one — an Explanation added by amendment freezes it at the 1971 census until the figures of the first census taken after 2026 are published. Removal, by contrast, is exclusively parliamentary, and the reason is that impeachment is a quasi-judicial trial for violation of the Constitution rather than a referendum: a compact, self-regulating body has to conduct it.

State PCS 2025 Q95 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q95 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer