UPPSC 2022 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 48 of 150

Correct — A, A-1, B-2, C-3, D-4. The four committees fall in their listed order, and the code is simply the unshuffled sequence. The BALWANT RAI MEHTA Committee was appointed by the Government of India in January 1957 — formally the Team for the Study of Community Projects and National Extension Service — and its report later that year recommended 'democratic decentralisation' through a three-tier structure of Gram Panchayat, Panchayat Samiti and Zila Parishad; Rajasthan acted on it first, and Panchayati Raj was inaugurated at Nagaur on 2 October 1959 (A-1). The ASHOK MEHTA Committee followed in 1977 and moved in the opposite direction, recommending a TWO-tier system of Mandal Panchayat at the base and Zila Parishad above, with the district as the unit of planning (B-2). The L. M. SINGHVI Committee of 1986 is the one that mattered most in the long run: it recommended constitutional status for the panchayats and the revival of Nyaya Panchayats, and is the direct intellectual ancestor of the Seventy-third Amendment (C-3). That leaves the P. K. THUNGON Committee at 1988 (D-4) — the year given in the standard accounts of Panchayati Raj, though the primary record for it is thinner than for the other three. The answer does not depend on it: with 1957, 1977 and 1986 securely attached to the first three committees, only 1988 remains for the fourth.

• (b)A-3, B-4, C-2, D-1 — A complete inversion of the chronology. It dates the Balwant Rai Mehta Committee to 1986 and the Thungon Committee to 1957, turning the oldest of the four into one of the youngest. Balwant Rai Mehta is the foundational committee of Indian Panchayati Raj and precedes the others by two decades — its report is what produced the panchayats Rajasthan inaugurated in 1959.
• (c)A-4, B-1, C-2, D-3 — Not one pair is right. It gives Balwant Rai Mehta 1988, Ashok Mehta 1957, Singhvi 1977 and Thungon 1986. It also produces an absurdity: the Ashok Mehta Committee is a response to the decline of the panchayats set up on Balwant Rai Mehta's model, so it cannot possibly predate the committee it was reacting to.
• (d)A-2, B-3, C-1, D-4 — It keeps only Thungon–1988 and shuffles the other three, giving Balwant Rai Mehta 1977, Ashok Mehta 1986 and Singhvi 1957. Singhvi in 1957 is the clearest error: his committee's central recommendation was constitutional status for panchayats, an argument that only makes sense after three decades of experience with statutory panchayats had shown how easily State governments could supersede them.

The four committees mark the swings of Indian thinking on rural local government across three decades. Balwant Rai Mehta (1957) created the model: three tiers, with real weight at the intermediate Panchayat Samiti level, and community development routed through elected bodies rather than officials. The system flourished briefly and then decayed, as elections were postponed and bodies superseded. Ashok Mehta (1977) diagnosed that decay and proposed a leaner two-tier structure with the district as the planning unit, along with open participation by political parties — but its recommendations were largely not implemented at the Centre. G. V. K. Rao (1985) then argued that development administration had been bureaucratised and that the district-level machinery should be strengthened. L. M. Singhvi (1986) drew the conclusion the others had circled: that panchayats would remain fragile as long as they existed only in State statutes, and should be given constitutional status with regular elections guaranteed. That argument, after two failed Bills, became the Constitution (Seventy-third Amendment) Act, 1992, which inserted Part IX and the Eleventh Schedule and came into force on 24 April 1993.

Year-matching questions are won on anchors, not on four separate acts of recall. Two anchors do almost all the work here. The first is 1957 for Balwant Rai Mehta, which is unmissable because it leads to the famous inauguration at Nagaur on 2 October 1959. The second is 1977, which is easy to place because the Ashok Mehta Committee is a creature of the Janata government that took office that year. Fix those two and options (b), (c) and (d) all fall, since none of them puts 1 at A and 2 at B. The remaining pair, Singhvi 1986 and Thungon 1988, then follows from the order in which the names are listed. Note also the committee this list leaves out — G. V. K. Rao in 1985, which sits between Ashok Mehta and Singhvi and is a standing distractor in chronology questions.

• Balwant Rai Mehta Committee — appointed by the Government of India in January 1957 as the Team for the Study of Community Projects and National Extension Service; recommended 'democratic decentralisation' through a three-tier system of Gram Panchayat, Panchayat Samiti and Zila Parishad.
• Panchayati Raj was first inaugurated on the Balwant Rai Mehta model at Nagaur in Rajasthan on 2 October 1959, making Rajasthan the pioneer State.
• Ashok Mehta Committee — 1977; recommended a TWO-tier system of Mandal Panchayat and Zila Parishad, with the DISTRICT as the first point of decentralisation below the State. UPPSC has tested this directly: its own 2023 paper marks the statement that the block should be that first point as FALSE.
• L. M. Singhvi Committee — 1986; recommended constitutional status for Panchayati Raj Institutions and the revival of Nyaya Panchayats, the line of argument that produced the Seventy-third Amendment.
• P. K. Thungon Committee — the year is given as 1988 in the standard accounts of Panchayati Raj; the primary documentation is thinner than for the other three, and here the pairing is fixed by elimination.
• The chronology also includes the G. V. K. Rao Committee of 1985, which is not in this list but is the usual extra name in ordering questions.

• Confusing Balwant Rai Mehta with Ashok Mehta. The first recommended THREE tiers in 1957, the second TWO tiers in 1977 — the names are similar and the recommendations are opposite.
• Forgetting the G. V. K. Rao Committee of 1985 when a question asks for chronological order. It sits between Ashok Mehta and Singhvi, and UPPSC has set exactly that four-committee ordering.
• Treating Nyaya Panchayat as one of the three tiers recommended by Balwant Rai Mehta. The three tiers are Gram Panchayat, Panchayat Samiti and Zila Parishad; the Nyaya Panchayat is a judicial body, and its revival was a Singhvi recommendation.

Panchayati Raj is among the most heavily repeated areas on this paper, and UPPSC works it from every angle — committee-to-year matching here, committees in chronological order in 2021, the tiers recommended by Balwant Rai Mehta in 2024, the Ashok Mehta recommendations in 2023. UPSC almost never asks the committee years; it asks instead what the 73rd Amendment provides, when a dissolved panchayat must be re-elected, or where Panchayati Raj was first introduced.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which committee recommended that Panchayati Raj Institutions be given constitutional status ?

  • (a)Balwant Rai Mehta Committee
  • (b)Ashok Mehta Committee
  • (c)G. V. K. Rao Committee
  • (d)L. M. Singhvi Committee

  Answer(d) L. M. Singhvi Committee — its 1986 report argued that panchayats would remain fragile while they rested only on State statutes, and recommended constitutional recognition along with the revival of Nyaya Panchayats. That recommendation became the Seventy-third Amendment in 1992.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Ashok Mehta Committee (1977) recommended which structure of Panchayati Raj ?

  • (a)a single tier at the village level only
  • (b)a two-tier system of Mandal Panchayat and Zila Parishad
  • (c)a three-tier system of Gram Panchayat, Panchayat Samiti and Zila Parishad
  • (d)a four-tier system adding a State-level council

  Answer(b) a two-tier system of Mandal Panchayat and Zila Parishad — with the DISTRICT, not the block, as the first point of decentralisation below the State. The three-tier structure in option (c) is the Balwant Rai Mehta model of 1957.