UPPSC 2024 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 21 of 150

Correct — C, 'Article 155 – Removal of the Governor'. Article 155 is headed 'Appointment of Governor' and reads in full: 'The Governor of a State shall be appointed by the President by warrant under his hand and seal.' It is the appointing provision, and it says nothing at all about removal. The Constitution in fact contains no article headed 'Removal of the Governor' — removal is dealt with obliquely inside the NEXT article, in Article 156(1), which says the Governor 'shall hold office during the pleasure of the President'. That pleasure doctrine is what allows a Governor to be removed at any time before the five-year term ends, without any charge, enquiry or reason being stated. So the pairing offered in option (c) attaches to Article 155 a subject that belongs partly to Article 156 and partly to no article at all, which makes it the one pair that is not correctly matched.

• (a)Article 153 – Office of the Governor — This pair is correct, so it cannot be the answer. Article 153 is the article that creates the office: 'There shall be a Governor for each State.' A proviso added by the Constitution (Seventh Amendment) Act, 1956 allows the same person to be appointed Governor of two or more States — which is why a single Governor often holds charge of a neighbouring State as well.
• (b)Article 154 – Executive Authority of the Governor — This pair is correct. Article 154(1) provides that 'the executive power of the State shall be vested in the Governor and shall be exercised by him either directly or through officers subordinate to him in accordance with this Constitution' — the state-level mirror of Article 53 for the President. The formal vesting of executive authority in the Governor is exactly what Article 154 does.
• (d)Article 156 – Term of the Governor — This pair is correct. Article 156 is headed 'Term of office of Governor': clause (1) puts him in office during the pleasure of the President, clause (2) lets him resign by writing addressed to the President, clause (3) fixes a term of five years from the date he enters upon office, and clause (4) lets him continue in office until his successor enters upon office. Because the removal provision sits inside this term article, students who half-remember it are tempted to shift 'removal' one article back to 155 — which is precisely the trap the examiner set.

Part VI, Chapter II of the Constitution (Articles 153 to 167) lays out the State Executive, and the first block of articles maps cleanly onto the Governor's office: 153 creates the office, 154 vests the State's executive power in him, 155 provides for his appointment by the President by warrant, 156 fixes his term and his tenure at the President's pleasure, 157 lays down the qualifications (citizen of India, 35 years of age completed), 158 sets the conditions of the office, and 159 prescribes the oath. Note that the Governor is appointed, not elected — the Constituent Assembly deliberately dropped the elected-Governor proposal — and that the appointment power and the removal power sit in two different articles.

Two things make this an easy question once you see the structure. First, the four options are consecutive articles in one continuous block, so you are being asked to recall an ordered list rather than four scattered facts — recite 153, 154, 155, 156 in order and the odd one out falls out. Second, the Constitution nowhere gives 'removal' its own heading for the Governor, so any option that offers 'Removal of the Governor' as an article heading is already suspect. The trap works on students who correctly remember that a Governor holds office 'during the pleasure of the President' but attach that memory to the wrong article number.

• Article 155: 'The Governor of a State shall be appointed by the President by warrant under his hand and seal' — appointment, not election and not removal.
• Article 156(1) contains the pleasure doctrine — the Governor holds office during the pleasure of the President — and Article 156(3) fixes the five-year term; there is no separate article headed 'Removal of the Governor'.
• Article 156(4) allows a Governor to continue in office beyond five years until his successor enters upon office, so the five-year figure is neither a guaranteed floor nor an absolute ceiling.
• Article 153's proviso, inserted by the Seventh Amendment Act, 1956, permits one person to be Governor of two or more States.
• In B.P. Singhal v. Union of India (2010) a Constitution Bench held that the President's pleasure under Article 156(1) need not be exercised for stated reasons, but cannot be exercised arbitrarily, capriciously or on irrelevant grounds such as a change of government at the Centre.

• Assuming the Constitution has an article specifically headed 'Removal of the Governor' — it does not; removal rides on the pleasure clause in Article 156(1).
• Swapping Article 155 (appointment) and Article 156 (term and pleasure) — the single commonest error in this block, and the exact error this question rewards.
• Reading the five-year term in Article 156(3) as a guarantee. It is neither a floor (the President may remove earlier at pleasure) nor a ceiling (Article 156(4) allows a holdover until the successor arrives).

UPPSC repeatedly sets article-number-to-heading matching across Articles 148 to 167 in 'which is NOT correctly matched' form, so the article numbers must be memorised as an ordered block; UPSC prefers to give you one article and ask what follows from it, as in its 1995 question on whether a five-year term means a Governor cannot be removed early.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under which Article of the Constitution is the Governor of a State appointed by the President by warrant under his hand and seal ?

  • (a)Article 153
  • (b)Article 154
  • (c)Article 155
  • (d)Article 156

  Answer(c) Article 155 — Article 153 creates the office, Article 154 vests the State's executive power in the Governor and Article 156 deals with the term of office.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under Article 157 of the Constitution, a person is eligible for appointment as Governor of a State only if he is :

  • (a)a citizen of India and has completed 30 years of age
  • (b)a citizen of India and has completed 35 years of age
  • (c)a citizen of India and has completed 25 years of age, and is a voter in that State
  • (d)a citizen of India and has completed 40 years of age, and is not a member of any political party

  Answer(b) a citizen of India who has completed 35 years of age — these are the only two qualifications Article 157 lays down; the residence and non-political conventions come from the Sarkaria Commission, not from the Constitution.