Indian Polity GK Questions with Answers – Page 47

Article 1 says that India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States, and the Drafting Committee chose that phrase with care.

Article 3 deals only with territory that is already part of India.

The Second Backward Classes Commission, headed by B. P. Mandal, recommended 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Classes in central government services and public undertakings.

Article 243G allows a state legislature to endow Panchayats with the powers and authority they need to work as institutions of self-government.

Parliament frames a charge, takes evidence and gives the President a hearing, so the two Houses act like a court even though they are law-making bodies.

Section 62(5) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 says that no person shall vote at any election while he is confined in a prison, whether under a sentence of imprisonment or transportation or otherwise, or is in the lawful custody of the police.

Manipur was the first part of India to hold an election on universal adult franchise, when its state assembly was elected in 1948 under the Manipur State Constitution Act of 1947.

India follows the parliamentary system, taken from Britain, in which the real executive is responsible to the legislature.

The Directive Principles of State Policy, in Part IV of the Constitution from Articles 36 to 51, were taken from the Constitution of Ireland, which had in turn drawn the idea from Spain.

The Sarkaria Commission said the Governor should be a detached figure chosen without regard to party, and ideally someone who has not taken an active part in politics in the recent past or belonged to the ruling party at the centre.

The Constitution (100th Amendment) Act was passed in 2015 and received the President's assent on 31 May 2015, when Pranab Mukherjee held the office; he was President from 2012 to 2017.

The amendment of 1986 changed the rule of citizenship by birth with effect from 1 July 1987: a person born in India on or after that date is a citizen by birth only if one of the parents was an Indian citizen at the time of the birth.

India follows the British practice of single citizenship: there is only citizenship of India and no separate citizenship of a state, so every citizen carries the same rights in every part of the country.

The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 provides that Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who entered India on or before 31 December 2014 shall not be treated as illegal migrants and are eligible for citizenship, with the qualifying period for naturalisation reduced from eleven years…

The Citizenship (Amendment) Act of 2015 merged the older Person of Indian Origin card scheme into the Overseas Citizen of India scheme, so that holders of PIO cards were treated as OCI cardholders and only one category remained.

Citizenship, naturalisation and aliens form an entry in the Union List of the Seventh Schedule, so only Parliament can make law on them, which matches Article 11 and explains why there is a single central Citizenship Act and no state citizenship law.

Article 9 lays down that a person who has voluntarily acquired the citizenship of any foreign state is not a citizen of India, and Section 9 of the Citizenship Act gives the same rule the name termination of citizenship.

The Act lists exactly five modes of acquiring citizenship: by birth, by descent, by registration, by naturalisation and by incorporation of territory.

Article 11 states that nothing in the preceding provisions takes away the power of Parliament to make any provision with respect to the acquisition and termination of citizenship and all other matters relating to citizenship.

The Constitution settles only who was a citizen on 26 January 1950, and Article 11 leaves the rest to Parliament, which enacted the Citizenship Act in 1955.