Which of the following is NOT correctly matched ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — C, 'Allocation of seats in the Council of States — Second Schedule'. This is the mismatched pair, because the allocation of Rajya Sabha seats is made by the FOURTH Schedule, not the Second. The Fourth Schedule is headed by Articles 4(1) and 80(2) and does exactly one job: it lists every State and Union territory against the number of seats allotted to it in the Council of States. The Second Schedule is about money and status, not seats — it fixes the emoluments, allowances and privileges of the President, the Governors of States, the Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the House of the People, the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the Council of States and their State-level counterparts, the Judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts, and the Comptroller and Auditor-General. The two are easy to confuse only if the Schedules are memorised as bare numbers; once you attach the Fourth Schedule to Article 80(2) — the clause that says representatives of the States in the Council of States shall be allotted in accordance with the Fourth Schedule — the pairing settles itself. Note also why the Fourth Schedule sits beside Article 4: when Parliament creates or reorganises a State under Articles 2 and 3, Article 4(1) allows the same ordinary law to amend the First and Fourth Schedules, and Article 4(2) says such a change is not an amendment of the Constitution under Article 368. The other three pairs in the question are all correct, so (c) is the answer.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Correctly matched, so it cannot be the answer. 'Public health and sanitation; hospitals and dispensaries' is Entry 6 of List II, the State List, in the Seventh Schedule — which is why health is primarily a State subject and Union health schemes operate through Centrally sponsored funding rather than direct legislative command.  (b) Correctly matched, so it cannot be the answer. 'Census' is Entry 69 of List I, the Union List, in the Seventh Schedule — the decennial census is conducted by the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India under the Census Act, 1948, a Union law.  (d) Correctly matched, so it cannot be the answer. The anti-defection provisions were inserted as the Tenth Schedule by the Constitution (Fifty-second Amendment) Act, 1985, and are read with Articles 102(2) and 191(2), which disqualify a member of Parliament or of a State legislature on the ground of defection.

Concept: The Constitution now has twelve Schedules, and prelims papers mine them relentlessly for matching questions. The four that appear in this question sit in very different parts of the design. The Second Schedule is a pay-and-privileges annexe for high constitutional office-holders. The Fourth Schedule is a seat table for the Council of States, keyed to Article 80(2) and revisable by ordinary law under Article 4 whenever States are created or reorganised. The Seventh Schedule carries the three legislative lists — Union (List I), State (List II) and Concurrent (List III) — that divide law-making power between the Centre and the States. The Tenth Schedule, a 1985 addition, is the anti-defection code that lets the presiding officer disqualify a member who voluntarily gives up party membership or votes against the party whip.

State PCS 2019 Q143 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2019 Q143 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer