Which of the following statement/s is incorrect about Committee on Public Undertakings of the Parliament ?
(a) Pandit Nehru recommended the creation of this Committee in 1963.
(b) The Chairman of this

Question

Which of the following statement/s is incorrect about Committee on Public Undertakings of the Parliament ?
(a) Pandit Nehru recommended the creation of this Committee in 1963.
(b) The Chairman of this Committee is appointed only from amongst its members who are drawn from the Lok Sabha.
(c) From, 1974, 15 members are elected from Lok Sabha and 7 members are elected from Rajya Sabha on this Committee.
(d) The tenure of members of this Committee is two years.

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (2), '(a) and (d)'. The stem asks which statements are INCORRECT, with 'incorrect' printed in bold, and exactly two of the four fail. Statement (a) is wrong on both its facts: the Committee on Public Undertakings was created in 1964, and it was created on the recommendation of the KRISHNA MENON COMMITTEE, not of Pandit Nehru. Statement (d) is wrong on its number: the term of office of the members of this committee is ONE year, not two — the same one-year term that the Public Accounts Committee and the Estimates Committee carry, all three being re-elected annually. The other two statements hold. Statement (b) is correct: the chairman is appointed by the Speaker from amongst those members of the committee who are drawn from the Lok Sabha only, so a Rajya Sabha member of the committee can never chair it. Statement (c) is correct: the committee began with 15 members, 10 from the Lok Sabha and 5 from the Rajya Sabha, and its strength was raised in 1974 to 22 — 15 from the Lok Sabha and 7 from the Rajya Sabha — which is where it stands. So the two false statements are (a) and (d), and the answer is option (2). Statement (a) is worth pausing on as a specimen of distractor design: it takes a real event, the creation of a committee in the mid-1960s, and attaches to it a famous name and a nearly-right year. Both halves have to be checked, and the wrong attribution is the more important of the two, because a candidate who has learnt the phrase 'Krishna Menon Committee' spots it instantly.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) This option correctly identifies statement (a) as false but then condemns statement (b), which is true. The chairman of the Committee on Public Undertakings is indeed appointed by the Speaker from amongst its Lok Sabha members alone. The same restriction applies to the Public Accounts Committee, and the underlying logic is the same in both cases: these are instruments of financial scrutiny, financial control rests with the popular House, and the Rajya Sabha members are associated with the committee rather than placed in charge of it. A candidate who knows only that the Rajya Sabha is represented on the committee may read statement (b) as an unfair exclusion and mark it false.  (c) Statement (d) is correctly identified as false, but statement (c) is not. The figures in statement (c) are exactly right: since 1974 the committee has had 15 members elected from the Lok Sabha and 7 from the Rajya Sabha, making 22 in all. This option is the one that catches a candidate who has confused the Committee on Public Undertakings with the Estimates Committee, whose 30 members are all drawn from the Lok Sabha and which has no Rajya Sabha component at all. Keeping the three financial committees straight by their numbers — 22, 30, 22 — is the whole defence against this option.  (d) This option condemns three statements, of which only one — (d) — actually fails, and it lets the genuinely false statement (a) pass unchallenged. That last point is the tell: an option that omits the statement most obviously open to attack is usually built to punish a candidate who never tested it. Statements (b) and (c) are both accurate descriptions of the committee's composition and chairmanship. Marking three statements as wrong in a set where two are demonstrably right is a heavy commitment, and in statement-based questions the safer discipline is to establish what is TRUE first and let the remainder identify itself.

Concept: Parliament exercises financial control through three standing committees, and they are best learnt as a set because papers constantly cross-examine one against another. The PUBLIC ACCOUNTS COMMITTEE, the oldest, was first set up in 1921 under the Government of India Act 1919; it has 22 members, 15 elected by the Lok Sabha and not more than 7 by the Rajya Sabha, and its central task is to examine the audit report of the Comptroller and Auditor-General after it has been laid before Parliament. The ESTIMATES COMMITTEE has 30 members, all from the Lok Sabha and none from the Rajya Sabha, which makes it the largest committee of Parliament; it examines the estimates of expenditure and suggests economies. The COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC UNDERTAKINGS, created in 1964 on the recommendation of the Krishna Menon Committee, began with 15 members and was enlarged in 1974 to 22 — 15 from the Lok Sabha and 7 from the Rajya Sabha. In all three, members are elected annually by the principle of proportional representation through the single transferable vote, the term of office is one year, and a minister cannot be elected a member.

State PCS 2026 Q78 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2026 Q78 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer