Laxmikanth Test: Other Constitutional Dimensions- 1 - UPSC MCQ

The Constitution (Ninety Seventh Amendment) Act 2011 relating to the cooperatives is aimed to encourage economic activities of co-operatives which in turn help the progress of rural India. It is expected to not only ensure autonomous and democratic functioning of co-operatives, but also the accountability of the management to the members and other stakeholders.

• It makes the Right to form cooperatives a fundamental right.
• Reservation of one seat for SC/ST and two seats for women on the board of every co-operative society.
• Co-operatives could set up agencies that would oversee elections.
• Uniformity in the tenure of the Co-operative Board of Directors.
• Provisions for incorporation, regulation, and winding up of co-operative societies based on the principles of the democratic process and specifying the maximum number of directors as twenty-one.
• Providing for a fixed term of five years from the date of the election in respect of the elected members of the board and its office bearers.
• Providing for a maximum time limit of six months during which a board of directors of co-operative society could be kept under suspension.
• Providing for independent professional audit.
• Providing for the right of information to the members of the co-operative societies.
• Empowering the State Governments to obtain periodic reports of activities and accounts of co-operative societies, which have individuals as members from such categories.
• Providing for offenses relating to cooperative societies and penalties in respect of such offenses.

The 97th constitutional amendment act gave a constitutional status and protection to cooperative societies and made the following changes in the constitution:

• It made the right to form cooperative societies a fundamental right (Article 19).
• It included a new Directive Principle of State Policy on the promotion of cooperative societies (Article 43-B).
• It added a new Part IX-B in the Constitution which is entitled ‘The Co-operative Societies’.

• Indian Constitution did not give the status of national language to any one language. Hindi was identified as the official language. But Hindi is the mother tongue of only about 40 percent of Indians. Therefore, there were many safeguards to protect other languages.
• Besides Hindi, there are 21 other languages recognized as Scheduled Languages by the Constitution (Eighth Schedule contains a list of 22 languages recognized by the constitution). Of the 22 languages that are included in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian constitution and are therefore called ‘Scheduled Languages’. Others are called ‘non-scheduled Languages’.
• According to the Constitution, the use of English for official purposes was to stop in 1965. But the Central Government continues to use. English along with Hindi for official purposes. The promotion of Hindi continues to be the official policy of the Government of India. Promotion does not mean that the Central Government can impose Hindi on States where people speak a different language.
• The States Reorganization Commission under the chairmanship of Fazal Ali, which created states on a linguistic basis rejected the theory ‘one language- one state’.

• Articles 343-351 of the constitution deal with the official language of the Union. It empowers the Parliament to provide for the continued use of the English language even after 1965. Accordingly, Parliament enacted the Official Languages Act 1963.
• The act provides for the continued use of English (even after 1965), in addition to Hindi, for all official purposes of the Union and also for the transaction of business in Parliament.

• The continued use of English was prescribed, not by the constitution, but by the Official Languages Act 1963.
• The legislatures of the states decide their official language. The constitution is silent on deciding their official languages.

Hindi and English are to be the languages for transacting business in the Parliament as per the constitution. However, the presiding officer can permit a member to address the House in his mother tongue. In both the Houses, arrangements are made for simultaneous translation.

• The legislature of a state may adopt any one or more of the languages in use in the state or Hindi as the official language of that state.
• Under this provision, most of the states have adopted the major regional language as their official language. For example, Andhra Pradesh has adopted Telugu, Kerala - Malayalam, Assam - Assamese, West Bengal - Bengali, Odisha - Odia. The nine northern states of Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Haryana, and Rajasthan have adopted Hindi.
• Gujarat has adopted Hindi in addition to Gujarati.
• Similarly, Goa has adopted Marathi in addition to Konkani, Jammu, and Kashmir has adopted Urdu (and not Kashmiri). On the other hand, certain northeastern States like Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, and Nagaland have adopted English. Notably, the choice of the state is not limited to the languages enumerated in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution.

• Civil Servants for the East India Company used to be nominated by the Directors of the Company and thereafter trained at Haileybury College in London and then sent to India. This changed after Lord Macaulay’s Report.
• It was entrusted with the task of recruiting civil servants.
• The Government of India Act of 1935 provided for the establishment of not only a Federal Public Service Commission but also a Provincial Public Service Commission and Joint Public Service Commission for two or more provinces.

• Persons working in the State services (Civil servants) are required to act in the course of their duties in a politically neutral manner. This includes the requirement to act impartially and to implement the Government’s policies.
• The requirement is that State servants must be apolitical when carrying out their duties, functions, and powers. This means, essentially, that State servants must keep their jobs out of their politics and their politics out of their jobs.
• If the contest for such offices, they will no longer be able to remain neutral in day-to-day administration and will tend to extract political gains from their actions.
• Most policies have a political objective, for example, policy to distribute natural resources based on auctions, rather than first come first serve basis, clearly has a political objective. It is to curb the exploitation of political power by the high and mighty. But, civil servants must implement these policies, for example, by way of executing the auction sale.

• There are three all India Civil Services of India, namely the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), the Indian Forest Service (IPS), and the Indian Police Service (IPS).
• AIS officers are governed by the service conditions laid down by the central government.
• An IAS or IPS officer is assigned to a particular State, where he or she works under the supervision of the State government. However, the IAS or IPS officers are appointed by the central government, they can go back into the service of the central government, and most importantly, only the central government can take disciplinary action against them.
• Rajya Sabha is empowered to make laws creating one or more All India Services, which would be common to the Union and State if it is deemed to serve the national interest.