UPSC Prelims 2018 · Question 32 of 99
UPSC Prelims 2018 question on Presidential Election Vote Value
With reference to the election of the President of India, consider the following statements:
1. The value of the vote of each MLA varies from State to State.
2. The value of the vote of MPs of the Lok Sabha is more than the value of the vote of MPs of the Rajya Sabha.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Show answer
Answer: A. 1 only
Verdict
Only statement 1 is correct, so the answer is (a) 1 only.
Statement by statement
Statement 1 is CORRECT. Every elected member of a State legislative assembly has as many votes as there are multiples of one thousand in the quotient obtained by dividing the population of the State by the total number of elected members of the assembly. Because population differs across States, the value varies from State to State.
Statement 2 is INCORRECT. Every elected member of either House of Parliament has the same number of votes, obtained by dividing the total votes assigned to all State assembly members by the total number of elected members of both Houses. There is no separate figure for Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha members.
Source
Indian Polity by M. Laxmikanth, chapter on the President.
How to crack it
Learn the two formulae as a matched pair, because the whole design aims at parity between the Union and the States taken together. Once you see that the parliamentary value is derived from the State total divided across all MPs, it follows that a single figure applies to every MP, which kills statement 2. Understanding why the formula exists beats memorising the arithmetic.