Which Article of the Indian Constitution empowers the Parliament of India to create or abolish Legislative Councils, if the Legislative Assembly of the State passes a resolution to that effect ?

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Correct — option (4), Article 169. The article is headed 'Abolition or creation of Legislative Councils in States', and it sets out a two-stage procedure that is worth learning as a whole because the Commission tests both stages. The first stage belongs to the State. The Legislative Assembly of the State must pass a resolution asking either for the abolition of its Legislative Council, where one exists, or for the creation of one, where it does not, and the resolution must be carried by a special majority — a majority of the total membership of the Assembly and a majority of not less than two thirds of the members present and voting. The second stage belongs to Parliament. Once such a resolution has been passed, Parliament may by law provide for the abolition or the creation, and only Parliament can do so; the Assembly's resolution is a request that opens the door and not the act that changes the position. Parliament is not obliged to act on the resolution, and resolutions have in fact lain without a corresponding law being made, so a State that has asked for a second chamber does not thereby have one. The article contains a third provision that is examined almost as often as the procedure itself: a law made under it, although it necessarily alters the Constitution's own description of that State's legislature, is expressly not to be deemed an amendment of the Constitution for the purposes of Article 368, which means it is passed by the ordinary legislative process and by a simple majority rather than by the special majority an amendment would require. The reason for this design is the federal one that runs through the whole of Part VI: whether a State should have a second chamber is treated as a matter for the State to decide, but the composition of a State legislature is a constitutional matter and so the change must be effected by the national Parliament. The result is that the number of States with Legislative Councils has moved up and down over time, and Andhra Pradesh is the standard illustration, its Council having been abolished and then revived years later, each step requiring an Assembly resolution followed by an Act of Parliament. At the date of this paper six States had Legislative Councils — Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh — and Maharashtra is one of them, its Vidhan Parishad sitting alongside the Vidhan Sabha, which makes this a question of direct interest to a candidate for the State services. Option (4) is the answer.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Article 168 is the immediate neighbour of the right answer and is therefore the most attractive wrong option, especially for a candidate who remembers that the subject lies somewhere in the late one-hundred-and-sixties. It is headed 'Constitution of Legislatures in States' and it does the different work of declaring what a State legislature consists of: for every State there shall be a Legislature consisting of the Governor and either one House or two, and the article names the States that have two. It is therefore the article that records the existing position, while Article 169 is the article that provides the machinery for changing it. The pairing is a useful one to hold, because the Commission likes to set neighbouring articles against each other in an option set, and the distinction here — one article describes the arrangement, the next provides for altering it — is exactly the kind of difference that decides such questions.  (b) Article 167 has nothing to do with second chambers. It deals with the duties of the Chief Minister in respect of furnishing information to the Governor, requiring the Chief Minister to communicate to the Governor all decisions of the Council of Ministers relating to the administration of the State and proposals for legislation, to furnish such information relating to administration as the Governor may call for, and to submit for the consideration of the Council of Ministers any matter on which a decision has been taken by a Minister but which the Council has not considered, if the Governor so requires. It is in other words an article about the relationship between the political executive and the constitutional head of the State, and it belongs to the chapter on the State executive rather than to the chapter on the State legislature. It is worth learning in its own right, since the Commission asks it directly, and its Union counterpart in Article 78 imposes the same duties on the Prime Minister towards the President.  (c) Article 166 concerns the conduct of the business of the Government of a State. It provides that all executive action of the Government of a State shall be expressed to be taken in the name of the Governor, that orders and instruments so made shall be authenticated in the manner prescribed by rules made by the Governor, and that the Governor shall make rules for the more convenient transaction of the business of the Government and for its allocation among Ministers. Like Article 167 it belongs to the State executive and not to the State legislature, and it has no bearing on Legislative Councils. Its Union counterpart is Article 77, which makes identical provision for the business of the Government of India in the name of the President. A candidate who can place the run of articles by chapter — the State executive in the one-hundred-and-fifties and one-hundred-and-sixties, the State legislature from Article 168 onwards — can eliminate both this option and the previous one without recalling either article's contents.

Concept: Part VI of the Constitution governs the States, and within it the chapter on the State legislature begins at Article 168, which provides that every State shall have a Legislature consisting of the Governor and one or two Houses. Where there are two, the lower is the Legislative Assembly, or Vidhan Sabha, whose members are directly elected from territorial constituencies and which alone can bring down a government and alone controls money bills, and the upper is the Legislative Council, or Vidhan Parishad, which is a permanent body not subject to dissolution, one third of whose members retire every second year. Article 169 supplies the machinery for adding or removing a Council, on a special-majority resolution of the Assembly followed by an Act of Parliament, and expressly provides that such an Act is not an amendment of the Constitution for the purposes of Article 368. Article 171 fixes the Council's size and composition: its total strength may not exceed one third of the strength of the Assembly and may not be less than forty, and its members come from five sources — one third elected by electorates of local authorities, one twelfth by graduates of three years' standing, one twelfth by teachers of at least secondary level and three years' standing, one third by the members of the Legislative Assembly from persons who are not themselves members of it, and the remainder nominated by the Governor from persons having special knowledge or practical experience in literature, science, art, the cooperative movement and social service. The Council's powers are deliberately weaker than the Assembly's: it can delay an ordinary bill but not defeat it, and in respect of money bills it can only make recommendations which the Assembly may reject.

State PCS 2022 Q59 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2022 Q59 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer