State and Local Government

• Option (a) is incorrect. The proviso to Article 153, inserted by the Constitution (Seventh Amendment) Act, 1956, expressly permits the same person to be appointed Governor for two or more States, and the practice is routine, particularly in the north eastern States.
• Option (b) is incorrect, and is the trap of the question: High Court judges are appointed by the President under Article 217, not by the Governor. The Governor is one of the consultees, along with the Chief Justice of India and the Chief Justice of the High Court concerned, but the appointing authority for both the Supreme Court and the High Courts is the President.
• Option (c) is correct. Article 156 says only that the Governor holds office during the pleasure of the President, which is a tenure condition, not a procedure. Nowhere does the Constitution prescribe grounds, a charge, an inquiry or a mode of proof for removal, in deliberate contrast to Article 61 for the President, Article 124(4) for judges and Article 67(b) for the Vice President, all of which lay down a procedure.
• Option (d) is incorrect. In a Union Territory with a legislature the Chief Minister is appointed by the President, not by the Lieutenant Governor: for Delhi by Article 239AA(5), and for Puducherry by section 4 of the Government of Union Territories Act, 1963. Since the question asks for the single correct statement, establishing (c) is sufficient, but each of the other three fails on an identifiable provision.

• Statements 1 and 3 are correct and statements 2 and 4 are incorrect, so the official answer is (b).
• Statement 1 is a discretionary power because a report under Article 356 that the government of the State cannot be carried on in accordance with the Constitution is by its nature a report on the Council of Ministers, and it would be absurd to require the Governor to make it on the advice of the very ministry whose functioning is in question.
• Statement 3 is a discretionary power under Article 200, which expressly permits the Governor to reserve a bill for the consideration of the President, and the second proviso makes reservation obligatory where the bill would derogate from the powers of the High Court.
• Statement 2 is incorrect: Article 164 provides that the other Ministers shall be appointed by the Governor on the advice of the Chief Minister, so the Governor acts on advice, the only genuine element of discretion arising in the appointment of the Chief Minister himself in a hung assembly, which is not what the statement says.
• Statement 4 is incorrect: Article 166(3) empowers the Governor to make rules for the more convenient transaction of the business of the State Government, but that power, like the corresponding power of the President under Article 77(3), is exercised on ministerial advice, not in discretion. The governing test throughout is Article 163, under which the Governor acts on the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers except where required to act in his discretion, so a power is discretionary only where the Constitution says so or where the nature of the function makes advice impossible.

• Statement 1 is incorrect. Article 171(1) provides that the total number of members in the Legislative Council of a State shall not exceed one third of the total number of members in the Legislative Assembly of that State, with a floor of forty members, so a Council can never be as large as half the Assembly. The composition is also fixed: about one third elected by local authorities, one twelfth by graduates of three years standing, one twelfth by teachers of three years standing in institutions not lower than secondary, one third by members of the Assembly from outside the Assembly, and the remainder nominated by the Governor from persons with special knowledge of literature, science, art, cooperative movement and social service.
• Statement 2 is incorrect. The Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the Legislative Council are elected by the Council from among its own members, under Article 182, and the Governor has no role. The confusion is with the Rajya Sabha, whose Chairman is the ex officio Vice President and therefore not a member of the House, a design the States do not follow. The official answer (d) follows. Elimination route: the one third ceiling is standard and removes options (a) and (c), leaving the item to turn on Article 182.

The key takes items 1 and 3, giving option (c). Popular participation in development and democratic decentralisation are the two ideas that run through the whole lineage of Panchayati Raj, from the Balwantrai Mehta Committee of 1957, which framed it as democratic decentralisation to make community development work, through the Ashok Mehta Committee of 1978 and the L. M. Singhvi Committee of 1986, to the Seventy third Amendment of 1992, whose Article 243G contemplates panchayats as institutions of self government preparing plans for economic development and social justice.

• Item 2 is excluded as being political accountability of representatives to the electorate, which is a feature of every representative institution rather than a fundamental object peculiar to Panchayati Raj.
• Item 4 is excluded because financial mobilisation is a means and a persistent weakness rather than an object; panchayats depend overwhelmingly on devolved and tied funds, which is the standing criticism of the system. There is no clean elimination route, and the item requires the candidate to distinguish an object from a mechanism.

• Statement 1 is incorrect. Article 243F provides that a person shall be qualified to be chosen as a member of a Panchayat if he has attained the age of twenty one years, notwithstanding that he may be under twenty five, and is otherwise qualified for election to the State Legislature. The twenty five year threshold applies to the Lok Sabha and to State Legislative Assemblies, and the framers of the Seventy Third Amendment deliberately lowered it for local bodies to widen participation.
• Statement 2 is correct. Article 243E provides that a Panchayat continues for five years from the date appointed for its first meeting and no longer, and that a Panchayat constituted upon the dissolution of a Panchayat before the expiry of its duration continues only for the remainder of the period for which the dissolved Panchayat would have continued had it not been dissolved. The purpose is to remove any incentive for a State Government to dissolve a Panchayat in order to reset the electoral clock in its favour. A further safeguard is that no dissolution occurs where the unexpired period is less than six months. Hence (b).
• Options (a) and (c) fall on the age, and (d) on the remainder-period rule.

• Option (b) is correct. Local self government means the devolution of powers, functions and finances to elected bodies at the local level which are accountable to the local electorate. Devolution to an elected tier, as distinct from the mere transfer of administrative work, is what democratic decentralisation names.
• Option (a) is wrong because federalism in the Indian constitutional scheme describes the division of powers between the Union and the States under the Seventh Schedule; panchayats and municipalities, though given constitutional status by the 73rd and 74th Amendments, are creatures of State law and are not a third federal tier in the sense that would make the local level a federal unit.
• Option (c) is wrong and is the sharpest distractor: administrative delegation transfers the performance of functions to a subordinate agency which remains accountable upwards to the delegating authority, whereas local self government creates a body accountable downwards to its own voters.
• Option (d) is wrong because panchayats and municipalities work through elected representatives and are therefore representative rather than direct; the gram sabha is the only genuinely direct element, and it does not characterise the system as a whole. Governing principle: the discriminator between (b) and (c) is the direction of accountability.

• Statement 1 is correct. Article 179(a) provides that the Speaker of a Legislative Assembly shall vacate office if he ceases to be a member of the Assembly, subject to the proviso discussed below. The office is derivative of membership, so loss of membership through resignation, disqualification or the setting aside of an election ends the office.
• Statement 2 is incorrect. The proviso to Article 179 is explicit: the Speaker shall not vacate office upon a dissolution of the Assembly until immediately before the first meeting of the Assembly after the dissolution. The reason is institutional continuity. Some presiding authority must exist to authenticate records, deal with the business of the outgoing House and, in the case of the Lok Sabha, be available should the House be summoned; a gap between dissolution and the first sitting of the new House would leave the office vacant for weeks. The identical rule applies to the Speaker of the Lok Sabha under Article 94. Elimination route: statement 1 is the general rule and statement 2 is the exception stated as though it were the rule, and the candidate has to recognise that dissolution is the one case in which the Speaker survives the House. Note the contrast with the Chairman of the Legislative Council and with the Vice President as Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, since a Council and the Rajya Sabha are permanent bodies not subject to dissolution at all.

Hence (a).

• Statement 1 is correct. Article 361(2) provides that no criminal proceedings whatsoever shall be instituted or continued against the President or the Governor of a State in any court during the term of office. The immunity is absolute as to criminal process and is not confined to acts done in the discharge of official functions, which distinguishes it from the immunity in Article 361(1). It is an immunity from process rather than from liability, so proceedings may be instituted once the term ends. Article 361(3) adds that no process for arrest or imprisonment shall issue during the term, and Article 361(4) requires two months notice before civil proceedings in respect of anything done in a personal capacity.
• Statement 2 is correct. Article 158(4) provides that the emoluments and allowances of the Governor shall not be diminished during the term of office. The protection is one of the standard devices for securing the independence of a constitutional functionary, and it parallels the corresponding provisions for the President under Article 59(4) and for judges of the higher judiciary. Both statements being correct, the answer is (c). The teaching point is that these are the two conventional pillars of protection for an office of this kind, immunity from legal process during tenure and a bar on reduction of remuneration, and a candidate who recognises the pattern will accept both statements even without the article numbers.

Hence (c).

• Statement 1 is correct. Article 176 requires the Governor to address the Legislative Assembly, or where there are two Houses both Houses assembled together, at the commencement of the first session after each general election and at the commencement of the first session of each year, and to inform the Legislature of the causes of its summons. This is the State counterpart of the President's address under Article 87.
• Statement 2 is accepted by the key as correct. Article 208 empowers each House of a State Legislature to make rules regulating its procedure and the conduct of its business, and where no rule exists on a matter the settled practice is for the House to follow the corresponding Lok Sabha rule, the Speaker applying it by analogy. Since both statements hold, the official answer (c) follows. The reliable half of the question is statement 1, which rests directly on constitutional text, and a candidate confident of Article 176 is left choosing between (a) and (c) on statement 2 alone.

• Statement I is correct. Article 163(1) requires the Governor to act on the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers except in so far as he is required by or under the Constitution to exercise his functions in his discretion, and Article 163(2) makes the Governor's own decision final on whether a matter falls within that discretion. Specific instances appear elsewhere, including Article 371A for Nagaland concerning law and order, Article 371C for the Hill Areas of Manipur and provisions relating to Assam, Meghalaya, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh, apart from the discretion recognised under Article 200 in reserving a bill. The contrast with the President is instructive, since the Constitution contains no comparable discretionary provision for the President.
• Statement II is incorrect. Under Article 200 the route by which a State bill reaches the President is exclusively through the Governor, who may assent, withhold assent, return a non-money bill for reconsideration, or reserve it for the consideration of the President. The President has no independent power to reach out and call up a State bill on his or her own motion; the President's role under Article 201 arises only once a bill has been reserved. Only I holds, giving (a).
• Options (b), (c) and (d) each misstate one of the two positions.

• Statement I is correct and reproduces Article 361(1), under which the President and the Governor of a State are not answerable to any court for the exercise and performance of the powers and duties of their office or for any act done in that exercise. The immunity attaches to the office, and the settled position is that it does not bar judicial review of the official act itself, only personal answerability of the holder.
• Statement II is correct and reproduces Article 361(2), which provides that no criminal proceedings whatsoever shall be instituted or continued against the President or the Governor during the term of office. The protection is absolute for the duration of the term but does not extinguish liability once the term ends.
• Statement III is correct and reflects Article 194(2), the State counterpart of Article 105(2), under which no member of the legislature of a State is liable to any proceedings in any court in respect of anything said or any vote given by that member in the Legislature or any committee of it. This is the privilege of freedom of speech in the House, without which legislators could not debate freely. All three hold, giving (d).
• Options (a), (b) and (c) each discard one accurate statement, and none of the three contains an error justifying exclusion.

The stem asks which statements are not correct, and all three fail.

• Statement I is not correct: Article 243B provides for panchayats at the village, intermediate and district levels, but expressly exempts States having a population not exceeding twenty lakhs from constituting panchayats at the intermediate level, so smaller States such as Goa, Sikkim and Mizoram may operate a two tier structure.
• Statement II is not correct: Article 243F sets the minimum age for membership of a panchayat at twenty one years, not thirty. The figure of thirty is associated with membership of a State Legislative Council or the Council of States, and its appearance here is the intended confusion.
• Statement III is not correct: Article 243I requires the Governor of a State, not the Chief Minister, to constitute a Finance Commission at the expiry of every fifth year to review the financial position of the panchayats and make recommendations on the distribution of the net proceeds of taxes and duties leviable by the State. The office named is the error, since the substance of the function is accurately described. All three are incorrect, giving (d).
• Options (a), (b) and (c) each treat one of the three as accurate.

Only statement 2 is correct, so (b) is the answer. The Revamped Rashtriya Gram Swaraj Abhiyan is a capacity building scheme whose stated purpose is to strengthen Panchayati Raj Institutions so that they can deliver on the localised Sustainable Development Goals, the nine themes of localisation being the operational form this takes.

• Statement 1 is incorrect on the start date, since the revamped scheme was approved in April 2022 and runs from 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2026, coterminous with the Fifteenth Finance Commission cycle, so shifting the start to 2021 is wrong even though the closing date is right.
• Statement 3 is incorrect, since the scheme follows the standard centrally sponsored funding pattern of sixty to forty between the Centre and the States, with ninety to ten for the North Eastern and Himalayan States, and full central funding only for Union Territories, so a uniform hundred per cent share for all States and Union Territories is wrong. (a) and (c) accept the wrong start date and (c) and (d) accept the uniform funding claim.