Parliamentary Devices and Committees — Question Hour, Zero Hour, Every Motion and Who Sits on the PAC

Everyone studying polity learns how a bill becomes law. Far fewer learn the machinery that runs alongside it — the hour set aside for questions, the motions members move to corner a minister, and the committees that do the real scrutiny once the cameras are off.

That machinery is a reliable scoring block. It is finite, it is factual, and the same handful of facts is reused paper after paper: which motion can be moved only in the Lok Sabha, which one brings the government down if passed, how many members sit on the Public Accounts Committee, and which committee has no Rajya Sabha member at all.

Committees matter more than their share of study time suggests. Parliament sits for a few dozen days a year; the committees, often called mini-Parliaments, work through the year and examine what the House has no time for. Learn the numbers as a table and this whole area becomes recall, not reasoning.

1. Which statement about Zero Hour in the Indian Parliament is correct?

2. The Estimates Committee of Parliament consists of:

3. How is the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee chosen?

4. Which motion can be moved only in the Lok Sabha and, if passed, obliges the entire Council of Ministers to resign?

5. A Token Cut motion seeks to reduce the amount of a demand for grant by:

6. The quorum required to constitute a sitting of either House of Parliament is:

7. The Department-Related Standing Committees of Parliament are correctly described as:

8. Which of the following correctly describes the Adjournment Motion?