Emergency, Schedules and Special Area Provisions

• Option (d) is correct. The Tenth Schedule was inserted by the Constitution (Fifty-second Amendment) Act, 1985 and sets out the grounds on which a member of Parliament or of a State legislature incurs disqualification for defection, namely voluntarily giving up membership of the party on whose ticket the member was elected, or voting or abstaining contrary to the party direction without prior permission and without subsequent condonation, together with separate provisions for nominated members and independents. The exemption for a split by one-third of a legislature party was removed by the Ninety-first Amendment in 2003, leaving only merger by two-thirds.
• Option (a) is incorrect: the Second Schedule deals with the emoluments, allowances and privileges of the President, Governors, Speakers, judges and the Comptroller and Auditor General.
• Option (b) is incorrect: the Fifth Schedule provides for the administration and control of Scheduled Areas and Scheduled Tribes outside the north-eastern States covered by the Sixth Schedule.
• Option (c) is incorrect: the Eighth Schedule lists the languages recognised by the Constitution, at present twenty-two. The mnemonic worth holding is the sequence from the Eighth to the Twelfth, languages, land reform laws, defection, panchayats and municipalities.

• Option (a) is correct. The Fifth Schedule, under Article 244(1), governs the administration of Scheduled Areas and Scheduled Tribes in States other than Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram, providing for a Tribes Advisory Council, for the Governor's power to direct that a law of Parliament or the State legislature shall not apply or shall apply with modifications, and for regulations on land transfer and moneylending. The Sixth Schedule, under Articles 244(2) and 275(1), provides for the administration of tribal areas in those four north eastern States through Autonomous District and Regional Councils with legislative, executive, judicial and financial powers. Both therefore exist to protect tribal interests, differing in the degree of self government conferred.
• Option (b) is wrong: State boundaries are altered under Article 3 by ordinary law.
• Option (c) is wrong: Panchayat powers are in Part IX and the Eleventh Schedule, and their extension to Scheduled Areas is by the separate PESA Act of 1996.
• Option (d) is wrong: the Schedules attach to tribal areas, which are not coterminous with border States, and several Fifth Schedule States are landlocked interior States. The elimination route is that the word Scheduled in Scheduled Areas points directly at Scheduled Tribes.

The stem asks which consequences are not necessary, so each item must be tested for necessity rather than for possibility, and misreading the negative is the commonest way of losing this item.

• Statement 1 is not a necessary consequence. On a proclamation under Article 356 the President may assume the functions of the State government and may declare that the powers of the State legislature shall be exercisable by or under the authority of Parliament; the Assembly may be dissolved, but it may instead be kept in suspended animation, and after Bommai in 1994 dissolution before both Houses of Parliament have approved the proclamation is impermissible.
• Statement 3 is not a necessary consequence either, and is not even an ordinary one. Article 356 operates on the State government and legislature, whereas panchayats and municipalities derive their existence from Parts IX and IXA and from State law, with their own five year terms; the local tier is simply untouched.
• Statement 2 is a necessary consequence. The proclamation assumes to the President the functions of the State government and the powers vested in the Governor, which necessarily displaces the Council of Ministers, since the executive power cannot vest in the President and simultaneously be exercised by ministers responsible to the Assembly.
• Statements 1 and 3 being the non necessary ones, the official answer (b) follows. Governing principle: Article 356 suspends the responsible government of the State, so the ministry must go, while the legislature may be suspended rather than dissolved and the local tier lies outside the article altogether.

• Statement 1 is correct. Parliament can place a law in the Ninth Schedule, and does so by exercising its constituent power under Article 368, that is by a constitutional amendment adding an entry to the Schedule. The Ninth Schedule was itself inserted by the First Amendment in 1951 together with Article 31B, which grants the listed laws immunity from challenge on the ground of inconsistency with any Fundamental Right.
• Statement 2 is incorrect, and it is incorrect twice over. First, the immunity conferred by Article 31B is confined to Part III; it was never an immunity from all judicial examination, so a Ninth Schedule law can still be challenged on grounds such as legislative competence. Second, and decisively, in I. R. Coelho v. State of Tamil Nadu (2007) the Supreme Court held that laws placed in the Schedule after 24 April 1973, the date of Kesavananda Bharati, are open to judicial review on the touchstone of the basic structure. The absolute bar asserted in statement 2 therefore does not exist. Elimination route: statement 1 is uncontroversial for anyone who knows the First Amendment, which removes (b) and (d); the choice between (a) and (c) then turns entirely on whether Coelho is known. Hence (a). This is settled law from 2007 and is not a case of the key decaying.

• Option (b) is correct and is the text of Article 356(1)(b), which provides that on a Proclamation the President may declare that the powers of the Legislature of the State shall be exercisable by or under the authority of Parliament.
• Option (a) is wrong. Dissolution of the Assembly is not automatic; the Proclamation may either dissolve the Assembly or keep it in suspended animation, and after S. R. Bommai in 1994 the settled position is that the Assembly should not be dissolved before both Houses of Parliament have approved the Proclamation, since dissolution is irreversible while a suspension is not.
• Option (c) is wrong and rests on confusing two distinct emergencies. Article 19 is suspended automatically only under Article 358, and only when a National Emergency is proclaimed on the ground of war or external aggression, a restriction introduced by the Forty fourth Amendment; a Proclamation under Article 356 suspends no Fundamental Right. This is the single most useful discrimination in the question.
• Option (d) is wrong on the identity of the law making authority. Under Article 357 Parliament may confer on the President the power of the Legislature of the State and may authorise the President to delegate it further, and when Parliament is not in session the President may promulgate ordinances; but the power originates in Parliament and the President does not acquire an independent legislative competence over the State. Note that Article 356 does not permit Parliament to assume the powers of the State High Court, which the proviso to Article 356(1) expressly protects.

Hence (b).

The Fifth Schedule governs the administration of Scheduled Areas and Scheduled Tribes in States other than the four north eastern States covered by the Sixth Schedule. Under it the Governor may by regulation prohibit or restrict the transfer of land by or among members of Scheduled Tribes in a Scheduled Area, and it was on this foundation that the Supreme Court in the Samatha case of 1997 held that the transfer of tribal land in Scheduled Areas of Andhra Pradesh to private mining companies was void, reading government land, forest land and tribal land in Scheduled Areas as barred from lease to non tribals.

• Option (b) is therefore correct.
• Option (a) is wrong because the Third Schedule contains only the forms of oath and affirmation for constitutional functionaries.
• Option (c) is wrong because the Ninth Schedule is the repository of laws protected from Fundamental Rights challenge under Article 31B, a protection device unrelated to land transfer in tribal areas.
• Option (d) is wrong because the Twelfth Schedule lists the eighteen functional items for municipalities under Article 243W. The governing anchor is the pairing of the Fifth Schedule with Scheduled Areas and the Sixth with the autonomous districts of the north east, and every tribal land and self governance question in Prelims turns on holding that pair.

The Fifth Schedule provides for the administration and control of Scheduled Areas and Scheduled Tribes in states other than those covered by the Sixth Schedule. Its operative instrument is the Governor's power to make regulations for peace and good government in a Scheduled Area, and the Schedule expressly contemplates regulations prohibiting or restricting the transfer of land by or among members of the Scheduled Tribes, which is the protection the Schedule is chiefly valued for.

• Option (a) captures this and is correct.
• Option (b) is wrong and confuses the two schedules: it is the Sixth Schedule that creates autonomous district and regional councils as local self governing bodies in the tribal areas of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram, whereas the Fifth Schedule creates a Tribes Advisory Council, which advises and does not govern.
• Option (c) is wrong because the declaration of a Scheduled Area alters neither the territory's constitutional status nor its membership of the state.
• Option (d) is wrong because Special Category Status was a classification for the devolution of central plan assistance, determined on criteria such as terrain, low population density and strategic location, and had no connection with the Fifth Schedule.

• Statement 1 is correct. Paragraph 6 of the Fifth Schedule empowers the President to declare an area to be a Scheduled Area, and to alter or rescind such declaration, by order.
• Statement 2 is correct. In practice Scheduled Areas are demarcated with the district as the largest unit and clusters of villages within a block as the smallest, following the criteria of preponderance of tribal population, compactness and reasonable size, and economic backwardness relative to neighbouring areas.
• Statement 3 is incorrect and is the decisive error. Paragraph 3 of the Fifth Schedule places the reporting duty on the Governor of the State, who reports annually or whenever required to the President, not on the Chief Minister and not to the Union Home Ministry. Two statements stand, giving (b).
• Option (c) requires the reporting channel to be misdescribed, and (a) and (d) deny the presidential order or the demarcation practice.

• Statement I is incorrect. Declaration as a Scheduled Area does not displace the State Government, which retains its executive power. What the Fifth Schedule adds is a layer of protective supervision: the Governor acquires a special responsibility, may by public notification direct that a particular law of Parliament or the State Legislature shall not apply or shall apply with modifications, and may make regulations for peace and good government, including regulating the transfer of land by Scheduled Tribes and the business of money lending. A Tribes Advisory Council is constituted to advise on tribal welfare. At no point does a local body assume total administration.
• Statement II is also incorrect. Paragraph 3 of the Fifth Schedule requires the Governor to report annually, or whenever required by the President, on the administration of the Scheduled Areas, and provides that the executive power of the Union extends to giving directions to the State as to their administration. Giving directions is not the same as taking over administration, and the Schedule contains no provision for a Union takeover on the Governor's recommendation. The Union's power under Article 356 is a distinct and general provision, not a Fifth Schedule mechanism. Neither statement holds, giving (d).
• Options (a), (b) and (c) each accept a displacement of the State that the Schedule does not effect.