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Three separate gates decide who governs India, and the Constitution treats them as three unrelated problems.
The first gate is membership: who is an Indian citizen at all. Articles 5 to 11 answer this, and Article 11 hands the whole subject to Parliament, which passed the Citizenship Act, 1955.
The second gate is the vote: who may elect and who may contest. Article 324 creates the Election Commission, Articles 325 and 326 guarantee one common roll and adult suffrage, and two Representation of the People Acts of 1950 and 1951 carry the working detail.
The third gate is the one most people forget — staying in the House after you win it. The Tenth Schedule, added in 1985, disqualifies a member who defects.
Almost every mark lost here is lost the same way: a fact from one gate is offered as the answer to another. Keep the gates apart and the chapter becomes easy.
1. Citizenship is dealt with in which Articles of the Constitution?
2. The Tenth Schedule, containing the anti-defection provisions, was inserted into the Constitution by which amendment?
3. The voting age in India was lowered from 21 years to 18 years by which Constitutional Amendment?
4. After the 91st Amendment Act, 2003, a group of legislators leaving their party escapes disqualification under the Tenth Schedule only when
5. Which Article of the Constitution vests the superintendence, direction and control of elections in the Election Commission of India?
6. A person born in India on 15 August 1990 is a citizen of India by birth only if
7. Who decides a question of disqualification of a member on the ground of defection?
8. The 91st Amendment Act, 2003 limited the size of the Council of Ministers to