UPPSC 2024 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 127 of 150

Correct — D, A-3, B-1, C-4, D-2, i.e. 42nd → 1976, 52nd → 1985, 86th → 2002, 96th → 2011. Take them one at a time. The Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976 is the Emergency-era 'Mini-Constitution': it added Socialist, Secular and Integrity to the Preamble, created Part IVA with the Fundamental Duties in Article 51A, inserted Articles 39A, 43A and 48A, and moved Education, Forests, Weights and Measures, Protection of wild animals and birds, and Administration of justice from the State List to the Concurrent List. It received assent on 18 December 1976, so A pairs with 3. The Constitution (Fifty-second Amendment) Act, 1985 is the anti-defection amendment: it added the Tenth Schedule and amended Articles 101, 102, 190 and 191 so that a legislator who defects loses his seat. It received assent on 15 February 1985, so B pairs with 1. The Constitution (Eighty-sixth Amendment) Act, 2002 inserted Article 21A, making free and compulsory education for children aged six to fourteen a Fundamental Right, recast Article 45 as early-childhood care and education for children below six, and added the parental duty in Article 51A(k); assent came on 12 December 2002, so C pairs with 4. The Constitution (Ninety-sixth Amendment) Act, 2011 is the smallest of the four — it substituted 'Odia' for 'Oriya' in the Eighth Schedule, correcting the name of Odisha's language, and received assent on 23 September 2011, so D pairs with 2. Only option (d) carries all four pairs. One honest caution about the wording. The question says 'year of implementation', but the years on offer are the years of the Acts themselves, and for two of these four the Act and its actual commencement fall in different years: the bulk of the 42nd Amendment came into force on 3 January 1977, and Article 21A of the 86th Amendment was notified into force only on 1 April 2010, the day the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 commenced. Answer with the year printed in the Act's short title, which is what the codes are built on, and keep the commencement dates as a separate piece of knowledge.

• (a)A-2, B-1, C-3, D-4 — Only one of its four pairs survives. B-1 is right — the 52nd Amendment is indeed of 1985 — but A-2 dates the 42nd Amendment to 2011, C-3 dates the 86th to 1976 and D-4 dates the 96th to 2002. This is the option built for a candidate who remembers the anti-defection year and then guesses. Anchoring the 42nd Amendment to the Emergency (1975–77) is enough on its own to kill it.
• (b)A-4, B-3, C-2, D-1 — Every pair is wrong. It puts the 42nd Amendment in 2002, the 52nd in 1976, the 86th in 2011 and the 96th in 1985 — in effect the correct sequence read backwards. The giveaway is 96th → 1985: amendment numbers rise monotonically with time, so a ninety-sixth amendment cannot predate an eighty-sixth.
• (c)A-1, B-2, C-3, D-4 — All four pairs are wrong. It dates the 42nd Amendment to 1985, the 52nd to 2011, the 86th to 1976 and the 96th to 2002. Here too the chronology test settles it instantly: this option makes the 86th Amendment (1976) older than the 52nd (2011), which is impossible for consecutively numbered amendments.

Constitutional amendments in India are numbered strictly in the order Parliament passes them, so the number itself is a rough clock: the 1st is 1951, the 42nd is 1976, the 52nd is 1985, the 73rd and 74th are 1992, the 86th is 2002, the 96th is 2011, the 101st is 2016 and the 106th is 2023. Matching questions of this kind are therefore solvable even from partial memory, because any option that puts a higher-numbered amendment before a lower-numbered one is automatically out. What still has to be learned by heart is the content of the landmark amendments and the year attached to each.

The intended route is: fix the one date you are surest of, then eliminate. Almost every candidate knows the 42nd Amendment as the Emergency amendment of 1976, and that single pair — A-3 — is present in only one of the four codes, which finishes the question. If you do not trust that, use monotonicity: options (b) and (c) both invert the order of two amendments, so they die without any date knowledge at all. That leaves (a) and (d), separated by whether the 42nd is 1976 or 2011. The trap the setter has laid is the phrase 'year of implementation'. A careful student who knows that most of the 42nd Amendment commenced on 3 January 1977, and that Article 21A of the 86th Amendment was enforced only on 1 April 2010, may hesitate and look for a code with 1977 or 2010 in it. There is none — UPPSC is using 'implementation' loosely for the year of the Act. Read the codes first; if no option reflects the technical commencement dates, the examiner means the year of enactment.

• Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976 — assent 18 December 1976, most provisions in force 3 January 1977. Added Socialist, Secular and Integrity to the Preamble, created Part IVA (Fundamental Duties, Article 51A), inserted Articles 39A, 43A and 48A, and moved Education, Forests, Weights and Measures, Protection of wild animals and birds, and Administration of justice from the State List to the Concurrent List.
• Constitution (Fifty-second Amendment) Act, 1985 — the anti-defection amendment. It added the Tenth Schedule and amended Articles 101, 102, 190 and 191; assent 15 February 1985. The Tenth Schedule was later modified by the 91st Amendment, 2003, which deleted the one-third 'split' exemption.
• Constitution (Eighty-sixth Amendment) Act, 2002 — assent 12 December 2002. Inserted Article 21A (free and compulsory education for children of 6 to 14 as a Fundamental Right), substituted Article 45 (early-childhood care and education below 6) and added Article 51A(k), the duty of a parent or guardian to provide education. Article 21A was brought into force on 1 April 2010, together with the RTE Act, 2009.
• Constitution (Ninety-sixth Amendment) Act, 2011 — assent 23 September 2011. It substituted 'Odia' for 'Oriya' in the Eighth Schedule, the schedule that lists the recognised languages of India (22 since the 92nd Amendment, 2003).
• The Eighth Schedule has been enlarged by amendment several times — the 21st Amendment (1967) added Sindhi, the 71st (1992) added Konkani, Manipuri and Nepali, and the 92nd (2003) added Bodo, Dogri, Maithili and Santali, taking the count to 22.

• Confusing the year in an Act's short title with the year it actually came into force. The 42nd Amendment is 'of 1976' but mostly commenced on 3 January 1977; Article 21A of the 86th Amendment (2002) was enforced only on 1 April 2010.
• Mixing up the 86th Amendment (2002, Article 21A, education) with the 93rd Amendment (2005, Article 15(5), OBC reservation in educational institutions) — both are education-related and adjacent in number.
• Mixing up the 52nd Amendment (1985, which created the anti-defection law) with the 91st Amendment (2003, which tightened it by removing the one-third split exemption and capping the size of ministries).

UPPSC prefers exactly this shape — a four-item match of amendment number against year, subject or Schedule — while UPSC more often asks it as 'which amendment did X' or as a statement set on one amendment's content. Either way the examinable unit is amendment number + year + one signature change.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Constitution (Ninety-sixth Amendment) Act, 2011 made which of the following changes?

  • (a)It added four new languages to the Eighth Schedule
  • (b)It substituted 'Odia' for 'Oriya' in the Eighth Schedule
  • (c)It gave constitutional status to the National Commission for Backward Classes
  • (d)It extended reservation of seats for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes

  Answer(b) It substituted 'Odia' for 'Oriya' in the Eighth Schedule — a purely nomenclatural change, given assent on 23 September 2011. Four languages (Bodo, Dogri, Maithili, Santali) were added by the 92nd Amendment, 2003; the NCBC became a constitutional body under the 102nd Amendment, 2018.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following Constitutional Amendments inserted the Tenth Schedule into the Constitution of India?

  • (a)42nd Amendment Act, 1976
  • (b)44th Amendment Act, 1978
  • (c)52nd Amendment Act, 1985
  • (d)91st Amendment Act, 2003

  Answer(c) 52nd Amendment Act, 1985 — it added the Tenth Schedule, the anti-defection law. The 91st Amendment, 2003 only amended that Schedule (deleting the one-third split exemption); it did not create it.