Ranjana Prakash Desai who became the first woman chairperson of the Press Council of India originally worked in which of the following organs of the government?

Correct — D. Ranjana Prakash Desai is a retired judge of the Supreme Court of India, so the organ of government she came from is the judiciary.

She sat on the Bombay High Court before her elevation to the Supreme Court, and moved to the Press Council of India after retiring from the bench. Option (d) is the branch that describes a career spent judging cases rather than making or administering law.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Legislature — The legislature is Parliament and the state assemblies. Justice Desai never held an elected seat; her working life was on the bench.
• (b)
  Executive — The executive is the administrative arm, from ministers to the civil services. A serving judge is deliberately kept outside it — that is what separation of powers means.
• (c)
  Vigilance — Vigilance is not an organ of government. The Central Vigilance Commission is a statutory anti-corruption body sitting inside the executive, not a fourth branch.

The Indian state is described in three organs — legislature, executive and judiciary — and a large share of SSC's polity questions reduce to sorting a person or a body into one of them.

The Press Council of India is a statutory body constituted under the Press Council Act, 1978 to preserve the freedom of the press and maintain standards in print media. Its chair has customarily been a retired Supreme Court judge, and Justice Desai became its first woman chairperson.

Sort her career and the answer follows: judge means judiciary.

Key facts

• Ranjana Prakash Desai served as a judge of the Supreme Court of India.
• She became the first woman chairperson of the Press Council of India.
• The Press Council of India is a statutory body under the Press Council Act, 1978.
• She later chaired the Delimitation Commission of India, best known for its order redrawing the assembly constituencies of Jammu and Kashmir.

Common traps

• Reading 'Press Council' as a media or ministry job and answering executive.
• Treating vigilance as an organ of government alongside the three real ones.
• Confusing the statutory Press Council, which covers print, with self-regulatory bodies for television news.

No directly related past PYQ was found.