Indian Politics Questions and Answers

Answer: A

Correct answer: The Constitution creates a federation with a strong centre

The description quasi-federal, associated with K. C. Wheare, reflects a federation whose balance is deliberately tilted towards the centre. The federal features are genuine: a written constitution, a division of powers through the Seventh Schedule, a bicameral Parliament, and an independent judiciary to arbitrate disputes. But the unitary features are substantial. Residuary powers rest with Parliament rather than the states. Parliament can create or abolish states and alter their boundaries by ordinary law, without their consent. The Governor is appointed by the centre. There is a single unified judiciary, a single citizenship, and all-India services whose officers serve both levels. Emergency provisions can convert the system into a unitary one outright, and Article 356 has been used to dismiss state governments. The Constitution never uses the word federal: Article 1 says Union of States, which Ambedkar explained as meaning that the union is not the outcome of an agreement and that no state may secede. Federalism is nonetheless part of the basic structure.

Answer: A

The Government of India Act, 1919 provided for the first Public Service Commission in India.

It was set up in 1926 on the recommendation of the Lee Commission. The 1935 Act then provided for a Federal Public Service Commission and provincial commissions, which became the UPSC and the state commissions in 1950.

Answer: D

Correct answer: The right to work

The right to work is not a fundamental right. It appears in Article 41, among the Directive Principles, which requires the State to make effective provision for securing the right to work, to education and to public assistance within the limits of its economic capacity - and is therefore not enforceable in any court. That qualification, within the limits of its economic capacity, is precisely why it could not be made a right: the State cannot be compelled to provide employment it cannot fund. Legislation has nevertheless given it partial effect, most notably the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005, which creates a statutory entitlement to a hundred days of wage employment - enforceable as a statutory right, not a constitutional one. The other three are all in Part III: equality in Articles 14 to 18, freedom of religion in 25 to 28, and the right against exploitation in 23 and 24. Note that the right to education, which sat alongside the right to work in Article 41, was later made a fundamental right by the 86th Amendment.

Answer: C

Correct answer: Indian Councils Act, 1909

The Indian Councils Act of 1909, the Morley–Minto reforms, introduced separate electorates for Muslims, under which Muslim members were elected by Muslim voters alone. Lord Minto is sometimes called the father of communal electorates for it. The system was extended by the 1919 Act to Sikhs, Indian Christians, Anglo-Indians and Europeans, and the 1935 Act extended it further to depressed classes, women and labour. Its proposed extension to the depressed classes under the Communal Award of 1932 provoked Gandhi’s fast unto death and the resulting Poona Pact with Ambedkar, which replaced separate electorates for them with reserved seats within a joint electorate - the arrangement the Constitution later adopted in Articles 330 and 332. The Constituent Assembly abolished separate electorates altogether, judging that they had entrenched communal division. That history is why India uses reserved constituencies today, in which all voters vote and only candidature is restricted.

Answer: D

The directive principles aim at establishing social and economic democracy.

Political democracy - one person one vote - was secured by the fundamental rights and the electoral system. Ambedkar warned that it would be a contradiction so long as social and economic inequality persisted, and the directive principles are the programme for removing it.

Answer: A

The Supreme Court is the guardian of fundamental rights.

Article 32 makes the right to move the Supreme Court for their enforcement a fundamental right in itself - which Ambedkar called the very soul of the Constitution. The High Courts have a parallel and wider power under Article 226.

Answer: C

Correct answer: Pratibha Patil

Pratibha Patil was the first woman President of India, serving from 2007 to 2012. She had earlier been a member of the Maharashtra legislature, a Rajya Sabha member and Governor of Rajasthan. The distractors each hold a different first, which is what makes them plausible. Indira Gandhi was the first woman Prime Minister, from 1966, an office quite distinct from the presidency. Sarojini Naidu was the first woman Governor of an Indian state, of the United Provinces in 1947, and the first Indian woman to preside over the Congress. Droupadi Murmu, elected in 2022, is the second woman President and the first from a tribal community. Other constitutional firsts for women worth knowing: Meira Kumar as the first woman Speaker of the Lok Sabha in 2009, and Fathima Beevi as the first woman judge of the Supreme Court in 1989.

Answer: D

Checks and balances stop any one branch of government from becoming too powerful.

Each branch is given some means of restraining the others: the legislature makes law but the judiciary may strike it down, the executive implements it but is answerable to the legislature, and appointments to the judiciary are made by the executive.

Answer: A

Telangana's population at the 2011 census was about 35 million - 35.19 million, or roughly 2.9 per cent of India's.

The figure was derived after the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh in 2014, since the census had been taken while the state was undivided.

Answer: A

President's rule was first imposed in Punjab, in June 1951.

The provision, Article 356, allows the centre to take over a state where its government cannot be carried on in accordance with the Constitution. It has since been used well over a hundred times, and the Supreme Court restricted it sharply in the Bommai judgment of 1994.