Attorney General of India :

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — B, He gives advice to the President on legal matters. The provision is Article 76(2): 'It shall be the duty of the Attorney-General to give advice to the Government of India upon such legal matters, and to perform such other duties of a legal character, as may from time to time be referred or assigned to him by the President, and to discharge the functions conferred on him by or under this Constitution or any other law for the time being in force.' Advisory work is not one incidental task among many — the Constitution frames it as the Attorney-General's duty, and it is the only one of the four propositions in this question that the constitutional text supports. Around it sit the rest of Article 76: clause (1), the President appoints as Attorney-General a person qualified to be appointed a Judge of the Supreme Court; clause (3), he 'shall have right of audience in all courts in the territory of India'; clause (4), he holds office during the pleasure of the President and receives such remuneration as the President may determine. Article 88 completes the picture from the parliamentary side: every Minister and the Attorney-General has the right to speak in, and otherwise to take part in the proceedings of, either House, any joint sitting, and any committee of Parliament of which he may be named a member — but shall not by virtue of that article be entitled to vote. One honest calibration, because a careful student will notice it and should not be left confused. The article's own words route the advice to the Government of India on matters referred by the President; the option's 'gives advice to the President' is the loose textbook rendering the Commission chose. It is nevertheless the right answer on this paper, and not merely by elimination: the President is the constitutional trigger for the whole advisory function — nothing reaches the Attorney-General as a duty unless it is referred or assigned by the President — so the option captures the operative relationship even though it compresses the wording. The three rival options, by contrast, each assert something the constitutional text directly contradicts, and the Commission said as much for option (d) when it disposed of objections on 31 October 2025, citing D. D. Basu's Introduction to the Constitution of India (26th edition, 2022) at page 233.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) This inverts Article 76(3), which is unusually generous: the Attorney-General 'shall have right of audience in all courts in the territory of India' — every High Court, every district and subordinate court, every tribunal, not the Supreme Court alone. The option is tempting because the Attorney-General is popularly pictured only in the Supreme Court, where the Union's constitutional litigation is argued, and because ordinary advocates are enrolled with a single State Bar Council.  (c) The exact opposite of Article 88, which gives the Attorney-General the right to speak in and otherwise take part in the proceedings of either House, any joint sitting, and any parliamentary committee of which he is named a member. What he cannot do is vote — Article 88 withholds that expressly. The distractor works on candidates who half-remember the correct 'no vote' rule and over-generalise it into 'no participation at all'.  (d) The option BPSC was formally challenged on, and the one it defended in writing. The Attorney-General is not a whole-time counsel for the Government and is not a government servant; he is therefore not debarred from private practice, subject to the standing restriction that he must not advise or hold a brief against the Government of India. The Commission's published remark rests this on D. D. Basu's Introduction to the Constitution of India, 26th edition (2022), page 233.

Concept: The Attorney-General is the first law officer of the Government of India and the only law officer the Constitution itself creates — Article 76 sits in Part V, among the organs of the Union, not in the chapter on the judiciary. Four features define the office and each one is examinable. Appointment and qualification: the President appoints a person qualified to be a Judge of the Supreme Court, which means a citizen who has been a High Court judge for five years, or a High Court advocate for ten, or is in the President's opinion a distinguished jurist. Tenure: Article 76(4) makes it a pleasure post, so there is no fixed term, no security-of-tenure procedure and no removal machinery — a sharp contrast with the Comptroller and Auditor-General under Article 148, who can be removed only in the manner provided for a Supreme Court judge. Function: advice and such legal duties as the President refers, plus the functions conferred by the Constitution or any law. Reach: right of audience in all courts under Article 76(3), and the right to speak in Parliament under Article 88 without the right to vote — and because Article 105(4) extends parliamentary privileges to persons who have the right to speak in a House, the Attorney-General carries those privileges too. Note also what the Constitution does not create: the Solicitor General and the Additional Solicitors General are not mentioned in it at all. Article 165 sets up the parallel office of Advocate-General for each State, and Article 177 gives that officer the same speak-but-not-vote right in the State legislature.

State PCS 2025 Q57 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q57 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer