UPPSC 2022 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 71 of 150

Correct — C, Manipur – 62. The Manipur Legislative Assembly has 60 elected members, not 62, so this is the one pair on the list that does not hold. The figure matters because 60 is not an arbitrary number: Article 170(1) says a State Legislative Assembly shall consist of not more than five hundred and not less than sixty members chosen by direct election from territorial constituencies. Manipur sits exactly on that constitutional floor, which is why the printed '62' is easy to plant and easy to miss — it is only two off, and it looks like the sort of odd number a real assembly might have. Learn Manipur as the '60 = the floor itself' case and the distractor stops working. The other three pairs in this question are all accurate as of the June-2022 exam and remain accurate today.

• (a)Goa – 40 — Correctly matched, so it is not the answer. Goa's Assembly has 40 seats. It is one of the small States that sit BELOW Article 170's floor of sixty — Sikkim and Mizoram are the others — which is possible only because Parliament made special provision for them in the Acts that created or reorganised those States. A candidate who half-remembers 'the minimum is 60' may wrongly flag Goa as the odd pair; the exception is exactly what makes Goa a favourite in these lists.
• (b)Uttarakhand – 70 — Correctly matched, so it is not the answer. Uttarakhand's elected strength has been 70 since the State was carved out of Uttar Pradesh in November 2000. The number is sometimes misquoted as 71, because the Assembly historically also had one nominated Anglo-Indian member alongside the 70 elected seats; that nomination was discontinued nationally by the 104th Constitutional Amendment, in force from 25 January 2020. The pair asks for members of the Legislative Assembly, and 70 is the elected strength.
• (d)Uttar Pradesh – 403 — Correctly matched, so it is not the answer. Uttar Pradesh has the largest Legislative Assembly in India at 403 elected seats, and has had that strength since the 2000 bifurcation that created Uttarakhand; before that it stood at 425. Anyone carrying the older 425 figure will misread this pair as the wrong one — which is precisely why the paper included it.

Article 170 of the Constitution governs the composition of a State Legislative Assembly: its members are chosen by direct election from territorial constituencies, and its strength must lie between sixty and five hundred. Within that band each State's actual number is fixed by law and adjusted by delimitation, so it is a fact to be learnt State by State rather than derived. A handful of small States — Goa, Sikkim and Mizoram — have Assemblies smaller than sixty, permitted by the special provisions Parliament wrote into the statutes creating or reorganising them. Article 170 also requires that seats be allotted to constituencies so that the ratio of population to seats is, so far as practicable, the same throughout the State.

A 'NOT correctly matched' question is answered by finding the single false pair, so the efficient route is to test the pairs you are surest of first and let the residue be the answer. Here three of the four numbers — Goa 40, Uttarakhand 70, Uttar Pradesh 403 — are among the most heavily drilled State figures in Indian polity, and all three are right. That alone delivers (c) without any need to recall Manipur precisely. If you do recall Manipur, the anchor is that it sits exactly at Article 170's minimum of sixty, which makes the printed 62 visibly wrong. The general trap in this family of questions is a number that is close but not equal — 62 for 60, 71 for 70, 425 for 403 — so read the digits rather than the shape of the pair.

• Article 170(1): a State Legislative Assembly shall consist of not more than 500 and not less than 60 members chosen by direct election from territorial constituencies
• Manipur's Legislative Assembly has 60 elected members — exactly the constitutional floor; the question's '62' is the false pair
• Goa has 40 seats, and along with Sikkim and Mizoram sits below the sixty floor under special provisions made by Parliament
• Uttar Pradesh has India's largest Assembly at 403 seats, down from 425 before Uttarakhand (70 seats) was created in November 2000
• The nominated Anglo-Indian seat that several Assemblies carried was discontinued by the 104th Constitutional Amendment, in force from 25 January 2020

• Treating Article 170's floor of sixty as absolute — Goa, Sikkim and Mizoram are below it by special statutory provision
• Carrying Uttar Pradesh's pre-2000 figure of 425 instead of the present 403
• Adding the erstwhile nominated Anglo-Indian seat to a State's elected strength; that nomination ended on 25 January 2020

UPPSC prefers this as a 'NOT correctly matched' State-to-seats list, with Uttar Pradesh's own numbers almost always present, while UPSC has historically asked the constitutional rule instead — the maximum and minimum under Article 170, or the qualifying age under Article 173 — so prepare the numbers for UPPSC and the Articles for UPSC.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under Article 170 of the Constitution of India, the strength of a State Legislative Assembly, in terms of members chosen by direct election, shall be

  • (a)not more than 400 and not less than 40
  • (b)not more than 450 and not less than 50
  • (c)not more than 500 and not less than 60
  • (d)not more than 550 and not less than 60

  Answer(c) not more than 500 and not less than 60 — the 550 figure in option (d) belongs to the Lok Sabha, not to a State Assembly.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The strength of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly stands at 403 today, having earlier been 425. This reduction followed

  • (a)the 42nd Constitutional Amendment
  • (b)the creation of Uttarakhand under the Uttar Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2000
  • (c)the 104th Constitutional Amendment
  • (d)a delimitation order based on the 2011 Census

  Answer(b) the creation of Uttarakhand under the Uttar Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2000 — Uttar Pradesh has had 403 seats since that bifurcation in November 2000, and Uttarakhand's Assembly was fixed at 70.