Match the correct pairs of the following articles of the Constitution of India with the subject.
Subject
(a) Language to be used in the complaint for redressal of grievances
(b) Facilities for educati

Question

Match the correct pairs of the following articles of the Constitution of India with the subject.
Subject
(a) Language to be used in the complaint for redressal of grievances
(b) Facilities for education in mother tongue at primary level
(c) Special officer for linguistic minority communities
(d) Directive for development of Hindi Language
Articles
(i) 350 A
(ii) 351
(iii) 350
(iv) 350 B

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (4), '(a)-(iii), (b)-(i), (c)-(iv), (d)-(ii)'. All four subjects come from Chapter IV of Part XVII of the Constitution, headed 'Special Directives', and the four Articles run in a tidy sequence that makes the mapping easy once you have seen it laid out. Subject (a), the language in which a grievance may be submitted, is Article 350. It provides that every person shall be entitled to submit a representation for the redress of any grievance to any officer or authority of the Union or a State in any of the languages used in the Union or in the State, as the case may be. So (a) pairs with (iii). Subject (b), instruction in the mother tongue at the primary stage, is Article 350A. It makes it the endeavour of every State and of every local authority within the State to provide adequate facilities for instruction in the mother tongue at the primary stage of education to children belonging to linguistic minority groups. So (b) pairs with (i). Subject (c), the special officer for linguistic minorities, is Article 350B, which provides that there shall be a Special Officer for linguistic minorities appointed by the President, to investigate all matters relating to the safeguards provided for linguistic minorities under the Constitution and to report to the President on them. So (c) pairs with (iv). Subject (d), the directive for the development of Hindi, is Article 351. It makes it the duty of the Union to promote the spread of Hindi and to develop it so that it may serve as a medium of expression for all the elements of the composite culture of India, drawing on Hindustani and the other Eighth Schedule languages and, for vocabulary, primarily on Sanskrit. So (d) pairs with (ii). There is a shortcut worth noticing in the way this question is built. Every one of the four options assigns a different Article to subject (d): option (1) gives it 350B, option (2) gives it 350, option (3) gives it 350A and option (4) gives it 351. That means a single certain pairing — Hindi development is Article 351 — settles the whole question without checking the other three. The same is true of subject (c), which each option maps differently. In matching questions, always scan the option column for a row on which all four options disagree, and spend your certainty there.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) This shifts the whole set one place. It makes the grievance-representation subject Article 351, which is the Hindi directive; mother-tongue instruction Article 350, which is the grievance provision; the special officer Article 350A, which is mother-tongue instruction; and the Hindi directive Article 350B, which is the special officer. Every pair is wrong. The single decisive error is (d)-(iv): the Hindi development directive is Article 351, not 350B.  (b) This also opens with (a)-(ii), assigning the Hindi directive of Article 351 to the grievance-representation subject, and it closes by giving the Hindi directive itself to Article 350, the grievance provision — a straight swap of the two ends of the chapter. It further exchanges 350A and 350B between subjects (b) and (c), putting mother-tongue instruction under the special-officer Article.  (c) Every pair here is wrong. It makes the grievance provision Article 350B, mother-tongue instruction Article 351, the special officer Article 350 and the Hindi directive Article 350A. The tell-tale is the last pair again: Article 350A is about primary schooling for linguistic minority children, and has nothing to do with promoting Hindi. This is the option for a candidate who remembers that the four Articles exist but has not fixed which is which.

Concept: Part XVII of the Constitution, Articles 343 to 351, deals with official language and is arranged in four chapters: Language of the Union, Regional Languages, Language of the Supreme Court and High Courts, and Special Directives. The last chapter is where the Constitution protects speakers who are in a minority in the State they live in, and where it sets out the Union's obligation towards Hindi. The two provisions numbered with letters, 350A and 350B, were not in the Constitution as adopted — they were inserted by the Constitution (Seventh Amendment) Act, 1956, following the report of the States Reorganisation Commission. That timing matters: States were being redrawn on a linguistic basis, and reorganisation necessarily left pockets of speakers on the wrong side of a new boundary. Article 350A gives their children schooling in the mother tongue at the primary stage, and Article 350B creates an officer to watch over the safeguards, that officer being designated the Commissioner for Linguistic Minorities. The President causes the Special Officer's reports to be laid before each House of Parliament and sent to the Governments of the States concerned.

State PCS 2026 Q85 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2026 Q85 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer