Indian Polity and Constitution Mixed Practice — MCQs with Answers (Set 27)

Directive Principles like Article 38 aren’t directly enforceable in court, but courts do use them to interpret other rights and laws.

Article 38 opens the welfare-focused cluster of DPSPs, setting the broad goal that more specific Articles like 39 and 41 implement.

Article 38(2) explicitly covers inequality among individuals AND among groups living in different regions or working in different vocations.

The 44th Amendment added Article 38(2), directing the State to minimise income inequality and status/facility/opportunity gaps.

Article 38(1) directs the State to secure a social order infused with social, economic, and political justice.

The Court upheld the curriculum framework’s value education and comparative study of religions as consistent with Article 28.

The Court distinguished religious instruction (banned under 28(1)) from a comparative, academic study of religions (permitted).

For a minor, Article 28(3) requires the guardian’s consent before the child can be required to attend religious instruction or worship.

Article 28(2) exempts State-administered institutions that were established under a trust or endowment requiring religious instruction.

Aid to a religious trust for a secular welfare purpose, like running a hospital, does not violate Article 27.

The 1954 Shirur Mutt case shaped both Articles: Article 26’s denomination test, and Article 27’s tax-versus-fee test.

A tax whose proceeds specifically promote one religion violates Article 27; fees for secular services do not.

The Court struck down the levy. Section 76(1) of the Madras HR&CE Act, 1951 allowed an annual contribution from the mutt. The Court held this was a tax, not a fee. The State legislature lacked the competence to impose it, so the levy was invalid. The Article 27 challenge failed. The money went to secular administration, not to promote a religion. But that did not save the levy. Source: Shirur Mutt judgment, 1954 SCR 1005.

Article 27 bars compelling anyone to pay a tax specifically earmarked for promoting or maintaining a particular religion.

States typically recognise additional languages through their own legislative power under Article 345, as Uttar Pradesh did for Urdu, making Article 347’s Presidential route rarely necessary.

The Supreme Court upheld UP’s 1989 law recognising Urdu as its second official language for seven specified purposes, confirming a state doesn’t need a Presidential order under Article 347 to act on its own.

Uttar Pradesh recognised Urdu through its own state law under Article 345, not through a Presidential order under Article 347.

The President can only act under Article 347 on a demand made by the population concerned, and must be satisfied that demand reflects a substantial proportion of the population.

Article 347 lets the President direct that a language spoken by a substantial section of a State’s population also be officially recognised, throughout the state or in part of it.

The AMASR (Amendment) Bill, 2017 proposed to allow certain public works within the prohibited area around protected monuments. It passed the Lok Sabha in January 2018 and went to a select committee. It lapsed with the 16th Lok Sabha in 2019 and was never enacted.

The 2010 amendment created a 100-metre prohibited area and a further 200-metre regulated area, overseen by the new National Monuments Authority.

ASI was founded in 1861, under Alexander Cunningham as its first Director-General, decades before Article 49 existed.

The AMASR Act, 1958, replaced the 1904 law and is the main statute implementing Article 49’s protection duty today.

Article 49 is a Directive Principle of State Policy, directing the State to protect monuments of national importance.

Article 26 lets the State regulate an institution’s secular activities, like its finances, without touching genuine religious practice.

Correct: Article 17. Article 17 says untouchability is abolished and its practice in any form is forbidden. Enforcing any disability from it is an offence. Articles 15 and 16 deal with discrimination and public jobs. Article 46 is a directive principle.

Helping organise village Panchayats is not one of the Fundamental Duties under Article 51A; the actual duties are broader (protecting environment, culture, public property, etc.), not this specific administrative task.

India borrowed the provision for suspending Fundamental Rights during a national Emergency from Germany’s Weimar Constitution.

Article 239 lets the President appoint an Administrator for each Union Territory; in several, this Administrator is titled Lieutenant Governor.