Indian Politics Questions and Answers

Answer: B

Correct answer: 9 December 1946

The Constituent Assembly first met on 9 December 1946, in the Constitution Hall in New Delhi, with 207 members present. Dr Sachchidananda Sinha, the oldest member, was chosen as temporary chairman, and Dr Rajendra Prasad was elected permanent President two days later. The Muslim League boycotted the session, pressing its demand for a separate state, and members from the areas that became Pakistan withdrew after partition, which reduced the Assembly’s membership considerably. It was constituted under the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946, with members elected indirectly by the provincial assemblies. It took two years, eleven months and eighteen days to complete its work, adopting the Constitution on 26 November 1949 and bringing it into force on 26 January 1950. It went on to serve as the provisional Parliament of India until the first general election in 1951–52.

Answer: A

Six prime ministers had received the Bharat Ratna up to November 2014: Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi, Morarji Desai, Rajiv Gandhi and Gulzarilal Nanda.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee was announced as the seventh in December 2014 and conferred it in 2015.

Answer: B

The president's oath of office is administered by the Chief Justice of India, or in that person's absence by the senior-most judge of the Supreme Court.

The president in turn administers the oath to the prime minister and the other ministers.

Answer: D

Article 1 declares India to be a Union of States.

Ambedkar explained the wording deliberately: the Union is not the result of an agreement between states, and no state has the right to secede. The federation is a union because it is indestructible.

Answer: C

Article 368 lays down the procedure for amending the Constitution.

Most amendments need a two-thirds majority of members present and voting in each House and a majority of the total membership; those affecting the federal structure also need ratification by half the state legislatures. The Kesavananda Bharati case held that the power cannot be used to destroy the basic structure.

Answer: B

Members of the Union Public Service Commission are appointed by the president, under Article 316.

At least half must be persons who have held office under the government for at least ten years. Removal requires a report of the Supreme Court, which is what secures the commission's independence.

Answer: A

The Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909 aimed at the extension of the provincial legislative councils, enlarging them and admitting more elected Indian members.

They also introduced separate electorates for Muslims, a step whose consequences reached far beyond the reform itself.

Answer: A

'Procedure established by law' means judges cannot question the fairness or validity of a law, only whether the prescribed procedure was followed.

The phrase, taken from Japanese and English practice, is narrower than the American 'due process of law'. The Supreme Court effectively read due process into it in Maneka Gandhi (1978) by requiring the procedure itself to be fair and reasonable.

Answer: A

Correct answer: 395

As adopted in 1949 the Constitution had 395 articles in 22 parts, with 8 schedules. It has since grown to over 470 articles in 25 parts with 12 schedules, through more than a hundred amendments. The numbering does not track the count, which is what makes the question awkward. Articles have been added with letter suffixes - 21-A for the right to education, 51-A for the Fundamental Duties, 338-A and 338-B for the commissions - while a few have been repealed, notably Article 31 on the right to property. So the highest number is still 395, but the number of articles is larger. It remains the longest written constitution of any sovereign country. The length has several causes: it covers both the Union and the states in a single document, it borrowed heavily from the very detailed Government of India Act 1935, and the framers chose to spell matters out rather than leave them to convention, in a society with great diversity and little constitutional precedent.

Answer: B

Hyderabad is the capital of Telangana.

When the state was created on 2 June 2014, Hyderabad was made the joint capital of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh for up to ten years; Andhra Pradesh has since developed Amaravati as its own capital.