UPPSC 2019 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 143 of 150

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.

• (a)Public Health and Sanitation — State List — 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)Census — Union List — 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)Anti-Defection — Tenth Schedule — 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.

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.

'Which is NOT correctly matched' is answered fastest by verifying the pairs you are certain of and letting the residue be the answer — but here you can do better, because option (c) fails on a fact worth owning. Rajya Sabha seats are State-wise and unequal (unlike the United States Senate's flat two per State), so the Constitution needs a table, and that table is the Fourth Schedule. The Second Schedule never mentions seats at all. A second reason this pair is worth locking in: the Fourth Schedule was amended by the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, in force from 31 October 2019 — six weeks before this very paper — which is almost certainly why the examiner reached for it that December.

• Fourth Schedule (Articles 4(1) and 80(2)): allocation of seats in the Council of States to the States and Union territories. Article 80(1) caps the Council of States at 250 members — not more than 238 representing States and Union territories, plus 12 nominated by the President.
• Second Schedule: emoluments, allowances and privileges of the President, Governors, the Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the House of the People, the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the Council of States and their State counterparts, Judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts, and the Comptroller and Auditor-General.
• Tenth Schedule: disqualification on the ground of defection, inserted by the Constitution (Fifty-second Amendment) Act, 1985 and read with Articles 102(2) and 191(2).
• Seventh Schedule: Union List Entry 69 is 'Census'; State List Entry 6 is 'Public health and sanitation; hospitals and dispensaries'.
• Article 4 makes the Fourth Schedule unusually easy to change: a law under Article 2 or 3 forming or reorganising a State may itself amend the First and Fourth Schedules, and that is expressly not an amendment of the Constitution under Article 368.

• Swapping the Second and Fourth Schedules. Second = salaries and privileges of high office-holders; Fourth = Rajya Sabha seat allocation. Tie the Fourth to Article 80(2) and the confusion disappears.
• Assuming public health is a Union subject because so many national health schemes exist. It is Entry 6 of the State List; the Union works through funding and Concurrent-List entries, not through a health entry of its own in List I.
• Confusing the Fifth Schedule (administration of Scheduled Areas) with the Sixth (tribal areas of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram) when a question widens the Schedule set.

Schedule questions are near-annual in both papers, and the Fourth Schedule is the single most repeated item — UPSC asked 'which statement correctly describes the Fourth Schedule' in 2001 and repeated it word for word in 2004, while UPPSC prefers the 'not correctly matched' framing and reused this exact Rajya Sabha-seats trap in 2023, that time hanging it on the Ninth Schedule.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Fourth Schedule of the Constitution of India is directly connected with which Article?

  • (a)Article 80(2)
  • (b)Article 81(1)
  • (c)Article 148(3)
  • (d)Article 243W

  Answer(a) Article 80(2) — that clause provides that representatives of each State and Union territory in the Council of States shall be allotted in accordance with the Fourth Schedule; the Schedule is also headed by Article 4(1). Article 148(3) belongs to the Second Schedule family (the CAG's salary) and Article 243W to the Twelfth Schedule.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following is listed in the Union List of the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution of India?

  • (a)Public health and sanitation
  • (b)Census
  • (c)Agriculture
  • (d)Local government

  Answer(b) Census — Entry 69 of List I. Public health and sanitation (Entry 6), agriculture (Entry 14) and local government (Entry 5) are all in the State List, which is why the decennial census is the only one of the four run directly by the Union.