Indian Polity Quiz: Prime Minister and Council of Ministers

The correct answer is Council of Ministers to aid and advise President. Article 74(1) says there shall be a Council of Ministers with the Prime Minister at its head to aid and advise the President, who shall act in accordance with that advice. The 42nd Amendment (1976) made the advice binding, and the 44th Amendment (1978) allowed the President to send it back once for reconsideration. Article 74(2) adds that no court can inquire whether, and what, advice was given.

The other options describe appointments made under other Articles. The Chief Justice of India is appointed by the President under Article 124. The Vice-President is not appointed at all; he or she is elected by the members of both Houses of Parliament under Article 66. The chairman of the Finance Commission is appointed by the President under Article 280. Article 74 is the foundation of parliamentary government in India: it is the reason the President acts as a constitutional head while real power lies with the Council of Ministers.

The correct answer is Article 75. Article 75(1) says the Prime Minister shall be appointed by the President and the other ministers shall be appointed by the President on the advice of the Prime Minister. The rest of Article 75 contains the other key rules: the 15% cap on the size of the ministry (clause 1A), collective responsibility to the Lok Sabha (clause 3), the oath (clause 4), the six-month rule for non-members (clause 5) and salaries (clause 6).

The wrong options are Articles from other parts of Chapter I and II of Part V. Article 70 deals with the discharge of the President's functions in other contingencies. Article 79 says Parliament consists of the President and the two Houses. Article 85 deals with the sessions of Parliament and its prorogation and dissolution. Since Article 75 packs so many rules into one Article, questions from it come up again and again; learn its clauses rather than just the number.

The correct answer is conduct of business of the Government of India. Article 77 says all executive action of the Government of India shall be expressed to be taken in the name of the President, and that the President shall make rules for the more convenient transaction of the government's business and for allocating it among ministers. These are the Government of India (Allocation of Business) Rules and the Transaction of Business Rules, under which each ministry knows its subjects.

The three other options all concern the Vice-President, and they come from a different set of Articles: the office of Vice-President is created by Article 63, the term of office is in Article 67, and the oath is in Article 69. Examiners mix them in because the Articles are close together. Remember the sequence of the executive Articles: 74 Council of Ministers, 75 appointment and rules, 76 Attorney General, 77 conduct of business, and 78 the Prime Minister's duties towards the President.

The correct answer is Prime Minister's duty regarding keeping the President informed about the government's decisions and policies. Article 78 makes it the duty of the Prime Minister to communicate to the President all decisions of the Council of Ministers relating to the administration of the Union and proposals for legislation; to furnish such information about them as the President may call for; and, if the President so requires, to submit for the Council's consideration any matter on which a minister has decided but which the Council has not considered.

The other options are close enough to confuse. The President's power to send messages to Parliament is in Article 86. Emergency powers are in Part XVIII, Articles 352 to 360. Option C describes the effect of Article 78 from the President's side, but the Article is framed as a duty of the Prime Minister, which is what the question asks. Article 78 is what makes the Prime Minister the link between the President and the Council of Ministers.

The correct answer is 6 consecutive months. Article 75(5) says a minister who for any period of six consecutive months is not a member of either House of Parliament shall, at the end of that period, cease to be a minister. So a person can be appointed a minister, or even Prime Minister, without being an MP, but must win a seat in the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha within six months. P.V. Narasimha Rao became Prime Minister in 1991 this way and then won a Lok Sabha by-election.

The other durations are made up, and three months is the most tempting because people half-remember the "three months" in other rules. The same six-month rule applies in the States under Article 164(4): a Chief Minister or State minister who is not a member of the State legislature must become one within six months. The rule lets a government bring in talent from outside politics, but only for a limited time, after which the minister must face the voters or be chosen by a legislature.

The correct answer is President of India. Article 75(4) says that before a minister enters office, the President shall administer to him or her the oaths of office and of secrecy according to the forms set out in the Third Schedule. The oath of office is a promise to bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution and to discharge duties faithfully; the oath of secrecy is a promise not to reveal matters that come before the minister, except as required by duty.

The Chief Justice of India administers the oath to the President, not to ministers. The Prime Minister, though the head of the government, does not swear in colleagues; the Prime Minister takes the oath from the President too. The Vice-President takes his or her own oath before the President and has no role in swearing in ministers. At the State level the pattern repeats: the Governor administers the oaths to the Chief Minister and the State ministers.

The correct answer is A Minister of State with independent charge may head a ministry without being under a Cabinet Minister. The Council of Ministers has three ranks. Cabinet Ministers head the most important ministries and sit in the Cabinet. Ministers of State come in two kinds: those with independent charge run a ministry or department on their own, just as a Cabinet Minister would, while others are attached to Cabinet Ministers and help them. Deputy Ministers assist the more senior ministers.

The distinction that matters is that a Minister of State with independent charge is not a member of the Cabinet and attends Cabinet meetings only when invited, usually for matters of his or her own ministry. That makes option A wrong, since such ministers are not regular members of Cabinet meetings. Options C and D are wrong because these ministers do exercise significant powers and do hold specific responsibilities: they are fully in charge of their ministries. Only option B captures the real difference.

The correct answer is 91st Amendment. The 91st Amendment Act, 2003 inserted Article 75(1A), which says the total number of ministers, including the Prime Minister, in the Union Council of Ministers shall not exceed 15% of the total number of members of the Lok Sabha, and Article 164(1A), which applies the same limit to the States, with a minimum of 12 ministers. It also barred a member disqualified for defection from being appointed a minister, and strengthened the anti-defection law by deleting the provision that allowed "splits".

The other amendments are from around the same time but on different subjects. The 97th Amendment (2011) dealt with co-operative societies. The 87th Amendment (2003) provided for delimitation of constituencies on the basis of the 2001 census. The 90th Amendment (2003) concerned representation in the Assam Legislative Assembly from the Bodoland Territorial Areas District. The 15% cap was meant to stop jumbo ministries formed to reward supporters and hold coalitions together.

The correct answer is 44th Constitutional Amendment Act, 1978. The word "Cabinet" did not appear anywhere in the original Constitution, which speaks only of the Council of Ministers. After the Emergency of 1975, which was proclaimed on the Prime Minister's advice alone, with the Cabinet told only the next morning, the 44th Amendment laid down that the President can proclaim a National Emergency under Article 352 only when the decision of the Union Cabinet is communicated in writing. That is how the word entered the Constitution, in Article 352(3), and it remains the only Article that uses it.

The 42nd Amendment (1976), passed during the Emergency, is the tempting wrong answer, but it strengthened the Centre and did not mention the Cabinet. The 43rd Amendment (1977) restored some powers of the courts that the 42nd had curtailed, and the 45th Amendment (1980) extended the reservation of seats for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. The same 44th Amendment also replaced "internal disturbance" with "armed rebellion" as a ground for emergency.

The correct answer is 75(3). Article 75(3) says the Council of Ministers shall be collectively responsible to the House of the People, the Lok Sabha. Collective responsibility means ministers stand or fall together: a Cabinet decision binds every minister, even one who disagreed in private, and if the Lok Sabha passes a no-confidence motion the entire Council of Ministers, including ministers who are members of the Rajya Sabha, must resign.

The other options are real clauses with different content. Article 74(1) provides the Council of Ministers to aid and advise the President. Article 72(1) is the President's power to grant pardons. Article 73 deals with the extent of the executive power of the Union, the subjects on which the Union government can act. Notice that the responsibility runs to the Lok Sabha alone, not to the Rajya Sabha or to Parliament as a whole, because only the directly elected House can make or unmake a government.

The correct answer is The Council of Ministers. A no-confidence motion tests whether the government still has the support of the Lok Sabha, and because the Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to that House under Article 75(3), the motion is moved against the Council as a whole, never against a single minister. It can be moved only in the Lok Sabha, needs the support of at least 50 members to be admitted and does not have to state reasons. If it is passed, the whole Council must resign.

An individual minister cannot be targeted by a no-confidence motion; Parliament can express disapproval of a minister's policy through a censure motion, which must give reasons. The Prime Minister is not singled out either: the motion is against the government the Prime Minister leads. A political party is not answerable to the House at all. The first no-confidence motion in the Lok Sabha was moved in 1963 against Jawaharlal Nehru's government by Acharya J.B. Kripalani, and it was defeated.

The correct answer is Prime Minister. NITI Aayog, the National Institution for Transforming India, was set up on 1 January 2015 by a resolution of the Union Cabinet to replace the Planning Commission, which had existed since 1950. The Prime Minister is its ex officio Chairperson, just as the Prime Minister chaired the Planning Commission. It also has a Vice-Chairperson appointed by the Prime Minister, a Chief Executive Officer, and a Governing Council that includes the Chief Ministers of all States and the Lieutenant Governors of Union Territories.

The President has no role in NITI Aayog. Senior Union ministers, usually including the Home Minister and the Finance Minister, are its ex officio members, which makes them tempting options, but neither chairs it. Note that NITI Aayog is neither a constitutional nor a statutory body: it was created by an executive resolution, like the Planning Commission before it. The Prime Minister also chairs other bodies, such as the National Disaster Management Authority, the Inter-State Council and the National Integration Council.

The correct answer is Gulzarilal Nanda. When Jawaharlal Nehru died on 27 May 1964, Gulzarilal Nanda, the senior-most minister, was sworn in as acting Prime Minister and held office for about two weeks until the Congress party chose Lal Bahadur Shastri. When Shastri died at Tashkent in January 1966, Nanda again served as acting Prime Minister until Indira Gandhi took over. He is the only person to have been acting Prime Minister twice, and he received the Bharat Ratna in 1997.

Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister only in 1966, after Shastri's death, not after Nehru's. Morarji Desai was a contender for the post in 1964 and 1966 but became Prime Minister only in 1977, as the first non-Congress Prime Minister. Zakir Husain was Vice-President in 1964 and later became President; he never held the office of Prime Minister. The Constitution has no post of acting Prime Minister; the President simply appoints a Prime Minister to fill the gap.

The correct answer is Morarji Desai. Pakistan conferred its highest civilian award, the Nishan-e-Pakistan, on Morarji Desai in 1990, and India awarded him the Bharat Ratna in 1991. He is the only Prime Minister to have received the highest civilian honours of both countries. As Prime Minister from 1977 to 1979, heading the Janata Party government, he was India's first non-Congress Prime Minister, and at 81 the oldest person to take the office.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee received the Bharat Ratna in 2015 and is remembered for the Lahore bus journey of 1999, but he was not given the Nishan-e-Pakistan. P.V. Narasimha Rao received the Bharat Ratna in 2024. Lal Bahadur Shastri received it posthumously in 1966, the year he signed the Tashkent Declaration with Pakistan. The pairing of a peace gesture with Pakistan and a national award is what makes the distractors plausible, but only Morarji Desai holds both awards.

The correct answer is Sardar Vallabhai Patel. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was India's first Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister, from 1947 until his death in 1950. He is remembered above all for integrating more than 500 princely states into the Indian Union, which earned him the title "Iron Man of India"; the 182-metre Statue of Unity in Gujarat honours him. The post of Deputy Prime Minister is not mentioned in the Constitution; it is a political arrangement, and the holder is sworn in simply as a minister.

The other three options also served as Deputy Prime Minister later, which is exactly why the question asks for the first. Morarji Desai was Deputy Prime Minister under Indira Gandhi from 1967 to 1969. Charan Singh and Jagjivan Ram both became Deputy Prime Ministers in 1979 in Morarji Desai's Janata government. Charan Singh then went on to become Prime Minister himself later that year.