UPPSC 2022 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 81 of 150

Correct — B, 7th – 1982. The Seventh Lok Sabha was returned by the general election of JANUARY 1980, not 1982 — and in fact no Lok Sabha general election was held in 1982 at all, so the pair is doubly wrong. The 1980 election was the one that followed the collapse of the Janata government: Indira Gandhi's Congress came back with 353 of 529 seats on a turnout of about 57 per cent, ending the two-and-a-half-year Janata interlude that had begun with the 6th Lok Sabha in 1977. Because this is a 'NOT correctly matched' question, the three remaining pairs are all accurate and only the odd one out is marked, so the safe method is to place the whole election sequence rather than to test one pair in isolation.

• (a)11th – 1996 — This pair IS correct, so it cannot be the answer. The Eleventh Lok Sabha was elected in 1996 — the hung house that produced the two-week Vajpayee government followed by the United Front ministries of H. D. Deve Gowda and I. K. Gujral, and that lasted barely two years before the 1998 election.
• (c)13th – 1999 — This pair IS correct, so it cannot be the answer. The Thirteenth Lok Sabha was elected in 1999 and is notable for carrying the first non-Congress coalition government to serve a full five-year term. The House itself was dissolved early, on 6 February 2004, so the achievement belongs to the government rather than to the House.
• (d)9th – 1989 — This pair IS correct, so it cannot be the answer. The Ninth Lok Sabha came out of the 1989 election, which ended Rajiv Gandhi's majority and brought in V. P. Singh's National Front minority government — the start of the coalition era in Indian politics.

Every Lok Sabha carries an ordinal number fixed by the general election that constituted it, and the numbering runs unbroken from the First Lok Sabha of 1951-52. Because Lok Sabhas have often been dissolved early, the gap between successive elections is not a steady five years: 1980, 1984, 1989, 1991, 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2004 are all election years within twenty-four years, three of them (1991, 1998, 1999) caused by a house falling before its term. Learning the ordinal-to-year sequence therefore doubles as learning the political history of the period, since each number is attached to a specific government and a specific reason the previous house ended.

A 'NOT correctly matched' pair question is answered by confirming the pairs you are sure of and letting the remainder fall out. Here the three coalition-era anchors — 1989, 1996 and 1999 — are widely drilled and easy to confirm, which isolates the 7th. The trap in option (b) is the year itself: 1982 is not an election year in the Lok Sabha series at all, so a candidate who half-remembers 'early 1980s' can be tempted. The reliable anchor is that the Janata government fell in 1979 and the mid-term poll followed in January 1980, giving the 7th Lok Sabha; 1982 is remembered instead for the Asian Games in Delhi and the election of Giani Zail Singh as President.

• The general elections in sequence: 1st 1951-52, 2nd 1957, 3rd 1962, 4th 1967, 5th 1971, 6th 1977, 7th 1980, 8th 1984, 9th 1989, 10th 1991, 11th 1996, 12th 1998, 13th 1999, 14th 2004, 15th 2009, 16th 2014, 17th 2019, 18th 2024.
• The 7th Lok Sabha was elected in January 1980, after the Janata government collapsed; Indira Gandhi's Congress won 353 of 529 seats on a turnout of about 57 per cent.
• No Lok Sabha general election was held in 1982 — the year printed in option (b) does not appear anywhere in the series.
• The 11th (1996), 12th (1998) and 13th (1999) form the short-lived-government cluster; the 13th carried the first non-Congress coalition government to serve a full five-year term, though the House was dissolved early on 6 February 2004.

• Assuming Lok Sabha elections come at neat five-year intervals; 1989, 1991, 1996, 1998 and 1999 are only ten years apart in total
• Confusing the year a Lok Sabha was elected with the year its government changed hands mid-term, as in 1979, 1990 and 1997
• Reading a 'NOT correctly matched' stem as 'correctly matched' and marking one of the three accurate pairs

UPPSC asks this area as a pair-matching or 'not correctly matched' item linking a Lok Sabha number to its election year, its Speaker or its Prime Minister. UPSC prefers the constitutional side — the term of the house, dissolution, and the powers of the Election Commission — so learn the sequence for the state exam and the articles for UPSC.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which Lok Sabha was constituted by the general election held in January 1980?

  • (a)6th Lok Sabha
  • (b)7th Lok Sabha
  • (c)8th Lok Sabha
  • (d)9th Lok Sabha

  Answer(b) 7th Lok Sabha — the January 1980 mid-term poll followed the collapse of the Janata government and returned Indira Gandhi's Congress to power.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Consider the following Lok Sabhas and arrange them in ascending chronological order of the general elections that constituted them: 1. 12th Lok Sabha 2. 9th Lok Sabha 3. 13th Lok Sabha 4. 10th Lok Sabha Select the correct answer from the code given below:

  • (a)2, 4, 1, 3
  • (b)4, 2, 3, 1
  • (c)2, 1, 4, 3
  • (d)1, 2, 3, 4

  Answer(a) 2, 4, 1, 3 — that is 1989, then 1991, then 1998, then 1999.