Consider the following statements :
1) The summoning of the House means convocation
2) Prorogation ends a session
3) Dissolution terminates a House
4) Prorogation of a session can be effected by the l

Question

Consider the following statements :
1) The summoning of the House means convocation
2) Prorogation ends a session
3) Dissolution terminates a House
4) Prorogation of a session can be effected by the leader of the House alone
Out of these which is not true?

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — D, Only 4. Read the stem's polarity first: it asks which statement is NOT true, so the mark goes to the option that lists the false line, and statements 1, 2 and 3 are all sound. Article 85 puts every one of these powers in the same place and in the same pair of hands. Clause (1): "The President shall from time to time summon each House of Parliament to meet at such time and place as he thinks fit, but six months shall not intervene between its last sitting in one session and the date appointed for its first sitting in the next session." Clause (2): "The President may from time to time — (a) prorogue the Houses or either House; (b) dissolve the House of the People." Summoning is therefore the convocation, the calling-together of the House, which is statement 1. Prorogation is the act that terminates a session, which is statement 2. Dissolution ends the life of the House itself and sends the country to a general election, which is statement 3. Statement 4 is the planted error, and it is wrong twice over: prorogation is a constitutional act of the President, notified in the Gazette and exercised on the advice of the Council of Ministers under Article 74(1), and the officer who does have a power to close proceedings — the presiding officer — can only adjourn, including adjourning the House sine die, which ends a sitting and not the session. The Leader of the House is a genuine office, held in the Lok Sabha by the Prime Minister or a Minister he nominates, and its business is the arrangement of government business on the floor; nothing in that role reaches a session's termination. The Commission read it the same way when it disposed of objections, recording that statements 1, 2 and 3 are true while statement 4 is not, and citing D. D. Basu at pages 245–246. Article 85 in its present form is itself a later text: it was substituted by the Constitution (First Amendment) Act, 1951, with effect from 18 June 1951.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Both statements are accurate, so neither can be the untrue one the question is hunting. Prorogation under Article 85(2)(a) terminates a session — the House survives, its members remain members, and a Bill pending in Parliament does not lapse, because Article 107(4) says so expressly. Dissolution under Article 85(2)(b) is the heavier act: it ends the House of the People itself, and under Article 83(2) the House lasts five years from the date appointed for its first meeting unless sooner dissolved. This option catches the candidate who conflates prorogation with adjournment sine die and, at the same time, half-believes that the Rajya Sabha can be dissolved.  (b) Summoning is exactly convocation — the President calling the House together at such time and place as he thinks fit — and dissolution does terminate the House. The option tempts a candidate who thinks of "summons" as merely the notice posted to individual members rather than the constitutional act of convening the House, or who reads "terminates a House" as too strong and imagines the House somehow continues in caretaker form. It does not: on dissolution every seat falls vacant. The one office that survives is the Speaker's — under the proviso to Article 94 he does not vacate office until immediately before the first meeting of the newly elected House.  (c) Statement 2 is the textbook definition of prorogation and the reason candidates doubt it is always the same confusion with adjournment sine die. The two look identical from the press gallery — the House stops meeting, and prorogation usually follows the sine die adjournment by a few days — but they are different acts by different authorities with different effects. Adjournment is ordered by the Speaker or Chairman and ends a sitting; prorogation is ordered by the President and ends the session, at which point pending notices lapse and must be given afresh even though Bills survive.

Concept: Parliamentary time runs on a four-step ladder, and almost every question in this area is really asking you to place an act on the correct rung. A sitting is a single meeting of the House; it ends by adjournment, ordered by the presiding officer, and an adjournment sine die closes the sitting without naming the next date. A session is a run of sittings, beginning when the President summons the House under Article 85(1) and ending when he prorogues it under Article 85(2)(a); by convention there are three a year — Budget, Monsoon and Winter — but the Constitution prescribes no minimum number of sitting days at all, only the outer limit that six months shall not intervene between the last sitting of one session and the first sitting of the next. Dissolution under Article 85(2)(b) applies to the House of the People alone and ends the House itself: Article 83(2) gives it five years from the date appointed for its first meeting unless sooner dissolved, extendable by Parliament by law while a Proclamation of Emergency is in operation for not more than one year at a time and in no case beyond six months after the Proclamation ceases to operate. The Council of States is never dissolved — Article 83(1) makes it a continuing body with as nearly as possible one-third of its members retiring every second year. The consequences of prorogation and dissolution differ sharply, and that is where the marks are: Article 107(4) saves a Bill pending in Parliament from lapsing on prorogation; Article 107(5) saves a Bill pending in the Council of States that the House of the People has not passed from lapsing on dissolution, while Bills pending in the Lok Sabha do lapse; and Article 108(5) saves a Bill on which the President has already notified a joint sitting. The State-level mirror is Article 174, where the Governor summons, prorogues and dissolves the Legislative Assembly, with Article 172(2) making the Legislative Council, like the Rajya Sabha, immune from dissolution.

State PCS 2025 Q65 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q65 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer