Indian Politics Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The president dismisses a minister on the recommendation of the prime minister.

Article 75 says ministers hold office during the pleasure of the president, but that pleasure is exercised on the prime minister's advice. This is what makes the council of ministers a team the prime minister can reconstitute at will.

Answer: A

Correct answer: The first hour of a sitting, when members question ministers

Question Hour is the first hour of a parliamentary sitting, in which members put questions to ministers and ministers are obliged to answer. It is one of the sharpest instruments of executive accountability, and much of the information that reaches the public about administration emerges from it. Questions are of three kinds. A starred question is answered orally and admits supplementary questions, which is where the real scrutiny happens. An unstarred question receives a written answer and no supplementaries. A short notice question concerns an urgent matter and may be asked at less than ten days’ notice. It is immediately followed by Zero Hour, an Indian innovation not found in the rules of procedure: from noon, members raise matters of urgent public importance without prior notice. The name arose because it begins at twelve o’clock. Question Hour can be suspended by the presiding officer, and its suspension is usually contested by the opposition for that reason.

Answer: C

Correct answer: The Supreme Court

Under Article 71 all doubts and disputes arising out of the election of the President or Vice President are inquired into and decided by the Supreme Court, whose decision is final. This is part of the Court’s original and exclusive jurisdiction. Two consequences follow. The election cannot be challenged on the ground that the electoral college was incomplete - a vacancy among the members of Parliament or a state assembly is no ground - and if an election is declared void, acts done by the President before that declaration remain valid. The Election Commission conducts the election but does not adjudicate disputes about it. Ordinary election petitions concerning members of Parliament and state legislatures follow a different route: they are tried by the relevant High Court under the Representation of the People Act, with an appeal to the Supreme Court. Indira Gandhi’s election was set aside by the Allahabad High Court in 1975 under that provision.

Answer: C

Correct answer: Tripura

The Seven Sisters are Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura. Sikkim, added later and connected to the rest only through the narrow Siliguri corridor, is often called the brother. They are joined to the rest of India by that corridor alone - the Chicken’s Neck - barely 22 km wide at its narrowest, which gives the region both its strategic sensitivity and much of its economic isolation. Around 98 per cent of the region’s boundary is international, with China, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Bhutan. The region is exceptionally diverse ethnically and linguistically, and much of it is governed under the Sixth Schedule, which provides for autonomous district councils in the tribal areas of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram. Several states also have special provisions under Article 371. West Bengal, Odisha and Bihar are eastern states, but not part of the group.

Answer: D

A court enforces fundamental rights by issuing a writ - habeas corpus, mandamus, prohibition, certiorari or quo warranto.

The Supreme Court does so under Article 32 and the High Courts under Article 226. A decree settles a civil suit, an ordinance is legislation by the executive, and a notification is an administrative order.

Answer: B

Correct answer: The administration of Scheduled Areas and Scheduled Tribes

The Fifth Schedule governs the administration and control of Scheduled Areas and Scheduled Tribes in states other than Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram, which are covered by the Sixth Schedule instead. Under it the Governor has special responsibility. Each such state must have a Tribes Advisory Council; the Governor may direct that a law of Parliament or the state legislature shall not apply to a Scheduled Area, or shall apply with modifications; and the Governor reports annually to the President on their administration. Its aim is to protect tribal communities from the alienation of their land and to allow customary practice to continue - concerns given further effect by PESA in 1996 and the Forest Rights Act of 2006. Ten states have Scheduled Areas, among them Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. The Sixth Schedule takes a different approach for the northeast, creating autonomous district and regional councils with their own legislative, judicial and financial powers.

Answer: A

Correct answer: Five years

Article 280 requires the President to constitute a Finance Commission every five years, or earlier if considered necessary. Its task is to recommend how the net proceeds of taxes should be divided between the Union and the states, and how the states’ share should be distributed among them; the principles governing grants-in-aid from the Consolidated Fund; and measures to augment the resources of panchayats and municipalities. It has a chairman and four other members, appointed by the President. Its recommendations are advisory, but by long convention on the vertical and horizontal division of taxes they are accepted. It is the principal instrument of fiscal federalism, and its importance grew after the Planning Commission - which had allocated plan funds separately - was replaced by NITI Aayog in 2015, leaving the Finance Commission as the main channel of transfers. It should not be confused with the Finance Ministry, or with the annual Union Budget under Article 112.

Answer: B

Correct answer: NITI Aayog

NITI Aayog - the National Institution for Transforming India - replaced the Planning Commission on 1 January 2015. The change was one of function as well as name. The Planning Commission, set up by a cabinet resolution in 1950, drew up the Five-Year Plans and allocated funds to the states, which gave it considerable leverage over them. NITI Aayog has no power to allocate funds; that passed to the Finance Ministry. It is instead a policy think tank, intended to work through what it calls cooperative federalism, with the states as partners rather than supplicants. Its Chairman is the Prime Minister, and its Governing Council includes all Chief Ministers and Lieutenant Governors. It is run day to day by a Vice Chairman and a Chief Executive Officer. The Twelfth Plan (2012–17) was the last of the series; no Thirteenth followed. The Finance Commission is a distinct constitutional body under Article 280, appointed every five years to recommend the sharing of tax revenues.

Answer: C

Members of a State Public Service Commission are appointed by the governor.

Removal, however, lies only with the president, and only on a report of the Supreme Court - a split designed to keep the commission out of the state government's reach once appointed.

Answer: C

Zakir Husain had the shortest tenure, dying in office in May 1969 after less than two years.

He was the first president to die in office and the first Muslim to hold it. V.V. Giri, then vice-president, acted as president, and when he resigned to contest the election Chief Justice M. Hidayatullah acted in his place.