Consider the following statements :
(a) Legislative Council is a Permanent Chamber.
(b) The Governor is the ex-officio chairman of Legislative Council.
(c) Except few nominated members the members of

Question

Consider the following statements :
(a) Legislative Council is a Permanent Chamber.
(b) The Governor is the ex-officio chairman of Legislative Council.
(c) Except few nominated members the members of Legislative council are indirectly elected.
Which of the statement/s given above is/are correct ?

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (3), statements (a) and (c). Statement (a) is right. Article 172(2) provides that the Legislative Council of a State shall not be subject to dissolution, but that as nearly as possible one-third of its members shall retire as soon as may be on the expiration of every second year. A Council is therefore a continuing or permanent chamber in exactly the sense the Rajya Sabha is: individual members come and go on six-year terms with a third retiring every two years, but the House itself never comes to an end and cannot be dissolved by anybody. That is the sharpest contrast with the Legislative Assembly, which sits for five years unless sooner dissolved and can be dissolved by the Governor. Statement (c) is right as well, and it needs to be read carefully because it contains a negation of its own — 'Except few nominated members', as the paper prints it — which describes the membership of the Council and is not the question's ask. Article 171(3) divides the Council's membership five ways. One-third is elected by an electorate consisting of members of municipalities, district boards and other local authorities in the State; one-third is elected by the members of the Legislative Assembly from among persons who are not members of the Assembly; one-twelfth is elected by graduates of three years' standing residing in the State; one-twelfth is elected by teachers of at least three years' standing in institutions not lower than secondary schools; and the remaining one-sixth is nominated by the Governor from persons having special knowledge or practical experience in literature, science, art, the co-operative movement and social service. So five-sixths of the House reaches it by election, and in every case the electorate is a defined body — of representatives, or of graduates and teachers voting directly in their own registered constituencies — rather than the general public, which is why standard accounts call the Council indirectly constituted, while the remaining sixth is nominated. That is precisely what statement (c) says. Statement (b) is the false one. Article 182 provides that the Legislative Council shall choose two of its own members to be Chairman and Deputy Chairman, so the Council elects its presiding officer from within itself. The Governor is not the Chairman and could not be, for he is not a member of either House — although under Article 168 the State legislature consists of the Governor together with the House or Houses, so he is part of the legislature without sitting in it. The confusion the statement plays on is with the Union Parliament, where the Vice-President of India is the ex-officio Chairman of the Rajya Sabha; there is no equivalent office at the State level. Since statements (a) and (c) stand and statement (b) falls, the keyed option is the one pairing (a) with (c). Two printing points: statement (c) writes 'Legislative council' with a small c where the other two statements capitalise it, and option (4) reads 'None of above' without the definite article.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) This pairs the true statement (a) with the false statement (b) about the Governor presiding over the Council. Article 182 gives the Council the power to choose two of its own members as Chairman and Deputy Chairman, and the Chairman may be removed by a resolution of the Council passed by a majority of all the then members, after fourteen days' notice. The Governor has no seat and no vote in either House. What he does have are the functions Article 168 and the rest of Part VI give him from outside the House: he summons and prorogues the Houses, may dissolve the Assembly, addresses the House or Houses at the commencement of the first session after each general election and at the beginning of the first session of each year, may send messages, and gives or withholds assent to Bills. Presiding is not among them, and the office of Chairman of the Council is not an executive office at all.  (b) This pairs the false statement (b) with the true statement (c), so it fails on the presiding officer alone. It is worth using the occasion to fix the parallel between the Union and the States, because the Commission tests it repeatedly and the two are not symmetrical. In Parliament the Rajya Sabha is presided over by the Vice-President of India as ex-officio Chairman, an outsider to the House, while the Deputy Chairman is chosen by the House from among its members. In a State legislature both the Chairman and the Deputy Chairman of the Council are chosen by the Council from among its own members, and both the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker of the Assembly are likewise chosen by the Assembly from among its members. So the ex-officio arrangement exists at the Union level only, and importing it into the State legislature is the error this statement invites.  (d) This asserts that none of the three statements is correct, which cannot be sustained, since statements (a) and (c) both reproduce the constitutional position accurately: the Council is a continuing chamber not subject to dissolution under Article 172(2), and five-sixths of its members are indirectly elected while one-sixth is nominated by the Governor under Article 171(3). An option denying everything is a real answer in some statement lists, but it requires every statement to fail, and here two of the three come straight from the text of the Constitution. Note also the printed wording, 'None of above' rather than 'None of the above'. This paper spells its escape options in many different ways, and a candidate who has trained himself to recognise a remembered phrase rather than to read the option as printed can misidentify what he is choosing.

Concept: A State legislature under Article 168 consists of the Governor and either one House or two. Where there are two, the lower is the Legislative Assembly and the upper the Legislative Council. Article 169 allows Parliament to create or abolish a Council if the Legislative Assembly of the State passes a resolution to that effect by a majority of the total membership of the Assembly and by not less than two-thirds of the members present and voting, and such a law is expressly not deemed to be an amendment of the Constitution for the purposes of Article 368. At present six States have a Legislative Council — Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh. Article 171(1) fixes the strength at not more than one-third of the strength of the Legislative Assembly of the State and not less than forty; Maharashtra's Vidhan Parishad has seventy-eight members. Article 171(3) prescribes the fivefold composition — one-third by local authorities, one-third by the members of the Assembly from non-members, one-twelfth by graduates, one-twelfth by teachers, and one-sixth nominated by the Governor for distinction in literature, science, art, the co-operative movement and social service. Members serve six years, one-third retiring every second year, and the House is not subject to dissolution. Its powers are markedly weaker than the Assembly's: a Money Bill cannot be introduced in it and it may hold such a Bill for only fourteen days, on an ordinary Bill it can delay proceedings for a maximum of about four months in all, there is no provision for a joint sitting to resolve a deadlock, and the council of ministers is responsible to the Assembly alone.

State PCS 2021 Q79 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2021 Q79 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer