UPSC Prelims 2018 · Question 1 of 99
UPSC Prelims 2018 question on Leader of Opposition Lok Sabha
- ExamUPSC CSE
- Year2018
- PaperGeneral Studies Paper I
- SubjectPolity
- TopicParliament
- DifficultyMedium
- TypeStatement
Consider the following statements:
1. In the first Lok Sabha, the single largest party in the opposition was the Swatantra Party.
2. In the Lok Sabha, a ''Leader of the Opposition'' was recognised for the first time in 1969.
3. In the Lok Sabha, if a party does not have a minimum of 75 members, its leader cannot be recognised as the Leader of the Opposition.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Show answer
Answer: B. 2 only
Verdict
Only statement 2 is correct, so the answer is (b) 2 only.
Statement by statement
Statement 1 is INCORRECT. Congress won 364 of the 489 seats in the first Lok Sabha, and the party that came next was the Communist Party of India with just 16 seats. The Swatantra Party was founded only in 1959.
Statement 2 is CORRECT. An official Leader of the Opposition was recognised for the first time in 1969, with statutory recognition following in 1977.
Statement 3 is INCORRECT. The threshold is one-tenth of the total strength of the House, a proportional test, not a fixed figure of 75 members.
Source
Indian Polity by M. Laxmikanth, chapter on Parliament; NCERT Class XII, Politics in India since Independence, Chapter 2.
How to crack it
Laxmikanth's Parliament chapter carries a cluster of thresholds UPSC recycles, and almost all of them are fractions of House strength rather than seat counts. So when a statement hands you a bare number of members where you remember a proportion, treat it as planted. That reflex kills statement 3 without any recall.