Given below are two statements, one is labelled as Assertion (A) and the other as Reason (R).
Assertion (A) : India has a Parliamentary system of Government.
Reason (R) : In India, the executive is re

Question

Given below are two statements, one is labelled as Assertion (A) and the other as Reason (R).
Assertion (A) : India has a Parliamentary system of Government.
Reason (R) : In India, the executive is responsible to the legislature.
Select the correct answer from the code given below :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — D, Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A). Assertion (A) is true: India adopted the Westminster or 'responsible government' model rather than the American presidential one, and the Constitution builds it twice over — Articles 74 and 75 for the Union, Articles 163 and 164 for every State. Reason (R) is true as a matter of constitutional text: Article 75(3) says the Council of Ministers 'shall be collectively responsible to the House of the People', and Article 164(2) makes a State Council of Ministers collectively responsible to the Legislative Assembly. And (R) is the correct explanation of (A), because the responsibility of the executive to the legislature is not one feature of the parliamentary system among many — it is the criterion that defines it. A government that must retain the confidence of the elected House, and that falls the moment it loses a no-confidence vote, is by definition parliamentary; a government with a fixed term that the legislature cannot vote out is presidential. The Reason therefore states precisely why the Assertion is true, which is code (d).

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Half right, and the half it gets wrong is the one being tested. Both statements are indeed true, but this option then severs the link between them. Reserve code (a) for a Reason that is true yet unrelated — say, 'India has a Parliamentary system because Parliament is bicameral'. Here the Reason is the textbook definition of the Assertion, so it does explain it.  (b) (R) is not false. Collective responsibility of the Council of Ministers to the Lok Sabha is written into Article 75(3), and Article 164(2) repeats it for the States. The one refinement worth carrying is that the responsibility runs to the Lok Sabha alone and not to the Rajya Sabha — but the statement here says only 'the legislature', which is correct as far as it goes.  (c) India is unambiguously parliamentary at both the Union and the State levels. The Constituent Assembly examined the American presidential alternative and rejected it; Dr B. R. Ambedkar defended the choice on the ground that the British model gives more responsibility, even if the American gives more stability. Nothing in Indian practice — a Prime Minister drawn from the majority in the Lok Sabha, ministers sitting in the House, governments falling on confidence votes — supports calling (A) false.

Concept: A parliamentary system fuses the executive and the legislature instead of separating them. The real executive — the Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers — is drawn from the legislature, sits in it and stays in office only so long as the elected House supports it; beside it stands a nominal executive, the President (Articles 52 and 53), who acts on the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers under Article 74(1). A presidential system does the opposite: the executive is separately elected, serves a fixed term and cannot be turned out by an ordinary legislative vote. Every other familiar feature of the Indian system — ministers who must be members of Parliament, cabinet secrecy, a dissolvable lower House — hangs off that one principle of responsibility.

State PCS 2025 Q16 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q16 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer