The National Commission for Scheduled Castes (SC) is constituted by which Article of the Constitution ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (2), Article 338. Before reading anything else, notice how the four choices are printed: 337, 338, 336, 335. They do not run in order, ascending or descending, and a candidate who glances at the block and assumes the smallest number sits at the top or that the numbers climb down the column will mark the wrong row while knowing the right article. Read the numeral printed against the option you want and mark that numeral. Article 338 is the provision under which the National Commission for the Scheduled Castes exists, and its opening words say so directly: there shall be a Commission for the Scheduled Castes to be known as the National Commission for the Scheduled Castes. The article goes on to provide that the Commission shall consist of a Chairperson, a Vice-Chairperson and three other Members, appointed by the President by warrant under his hand and seal, with their conditions of service and tenure to be determined by the President by rule. Its duties, also set out in the article, are worth learning as a list because they are asked in their own right: to investigate and monitor all matters relating to the safeguards provided for the Scheduled Castes under the Constitution or under any law or any order of the Government, and to evaluate their working; to inquire into specific complaints with respect to the deprivation of rights and safeguards; to participate in and advise on the planning process of socio-economic development and to evaluate the progress of that development; to present annual and other reports to the President, which are then laid before each House of Parliament along with a memorandum explaining the action taken on the recommendations; and to discharge such other functions in relation to the protection, welfare and development and advancement of the Scheduled Castes as the President may specify. While investigating or inquiring, the Commission has all the powers of a civil court trying a suit, and the Union and every State Government are required to consult it on all major policy matters affecting the Scheduled Castes. The Commission in its present form is not as old as the article number suggests. Article 338 as it now stands is the result of the Constitution (Eighty-ninth Amendment) Act, 2003, which divided the earlier combined commission for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes into two separate bodies — the National Commission for the Scheduled Castes, which stayed with Article 338, and the National Commission for the Scheduled Tribes, for which the same amendment inserted the new Article 338A. That division is the single most useful thing to remember here, because it explains why the two commissions sit under article numbers that differ only by a letter, and it is the fact a follow-up question will test. The answer to be marked is option (2).

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Article 337 has nothing to do with the Scheduled Castes. Its marginal heading is special provision with respect to educational grants for the benefit of the Anglo-Indian community, and it provided that the grants made by the Union and by the States for the benefit of that community should continue at the level of the financial year ending on the thirty-first of March 1948, falling by ten per cent in each succeeding period of three years and ceasing altogether, so far as they were a special concession to the community, at the end of ten years from the commencement of the Constitution. The article attached a condition to the grant: an educational institution receiving it had to admit at least forty per cent of its annual intake from communities other than the Anglo-Indian community. Note that this option is printed first, at (1), which is exactly the position a candidate scanning for the lowest or the highest number will not expect. Article 337 sits immediately before Article 338 in the text, and adjacency in the Constitution is precisely why it makes an effective distractor.  (c) Article 336 is the companion to Article 337 and, like it, concerns the Anglo-Indian community rather than the Scheduled Castes. Its marginal heading is special provision for Anglo-Indian community in certain services, and it dealt with the reservation of posts for members of that community in the railway, customs, postal and telegraph services of the Union. The arrangement was designed to expire: for the first two years after the Constitution commenced, appointments were to be made on the same basis as immediately before independence, and in each succeeding period of two years the number of posts reserved was to be ten per cent less than in the period before, until at the end of ten years all such reservations ceased. Both Article 336 and Article 337 are therefore transitional provisions that have long since spent themselves, which is what makes them good distractors: they are real articles with real subject matter, and a candidate who remembers only that the three hundred and thirties deal with special provisions for particular classes has no way to separate them.  (d) Article 335 is the most tempting of the three wrong options, because it genuinely concerns the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes — but it establishes no commission. Its marginal heading is claims of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes to services and posts, and it provides that the claims of members of those communities shall be taken into consideration, consistently with the maintenance of efficiency of administration, in the making of appointments to services and posts in connection with the affairs of the Union or of a State. The phrase consistently with the maintenance of efficiency of administration is the operative qualification and has been litigated repeatedly. A proviso added by the Constitution (Eighty-second Amendment) Act, 2000 makes clear that nothing in the article prevents the State from relaxing qualifying marks in any examination or lowering the standards of evaluation for reservation in matters of promotion. The distinction to hold is simple: Article 335 is about appointments, Article 338 is about the Commission.

Concept: Part XVI of the Constitution, headed special provisions relating to certain classes, runs from Article 330 to Article 342A and gathers together the protections given to the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes, the backward classes, the Anglo-Indian community and linguistic minorities. Within it, the articles cluster by subject. Articles 330 to 334 deal with reservation of seats in the legislatures. Article 335 deals with claims to services and posts. Articles 336 and 337 are the two Anglo-Indian articles, one on reservation in certain Union services and the other on educational grants, both of them transitional and both long expired by their own terms. Articles 338, 338A and 338B set up the three watchdog commissions — for the Scheduled Castes, for the Scheduled Tribes and for the backward classes. Article 339 concerns Union control over the administration of Scheduled Areas and the welfare of Scheduled Tribes; Article 340 provides for a commission to investigate the conditions of backward classes, the provision under which the Kaka Kalelkar and Mandal Commissions were appointed; Articles 341 and 342 empower the President to specify by public notification the castes and tribes deemed to be Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in relation to a State or Union territory, with Parliament alone able to alter the list thereafter. The three commissions arrived at different times. Article 338 was rewritten by the Eighty-ninth Amendment Act of 2003, which separated the Scheduled Tribes into a new Article 338A; Article 338B, establishing the National Commission for Backward Classes as a constitutional rather than a statutory body, was inserted by the One Hundred and Second Amendment Act of 2018. All three commissions share the same design — a Chairperson, a Vice-Chairperson and members appointed by the President, the powers of a civil court while inquiring, an annual report to the President laid before Parliament, and a duty on governments to consult the commission on major policy affecting the group.

State PCS 2022 Q63 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2022 Q63 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer