Read the following sentences carefully:
I. By the 91st amendment of the Constitution the size of Council of Ministers was fixed.
II. Now the size of Council of Ministers cannot be more than 15% of the total member of Parliament.
The correct statement is/are:

Question

Read the following sentences carefully: 
I. By the 91st amendment of the Constitution the size of Council of Ministers was fixed. 
II. Now the size of Council of Ministers cannot be more than 15% of the total member of Parliament. 
The correct statement is/are:

Accepted Answer

The correct option is 1:

**Detailed explanation of why it is correct — include conceptual, or contextual depth:**

The correct option states that Sentence I is correct and Sentence II is incorrect. Let us first analyze Sentence I: "By the 91st amendment of the Constitution the size of Council of Ministers was fixed." This statement is **correct**. The 91st Constitutional Amendment Act of 2003 was a landmark reform introduced primarily to curb the trend of political defections and to prevent jumbo cabinets, which often led to immense financial costs and political instability. Before this amendment, there was no constitutional limit on the size of the Council of Ministers, allowing Prime Ministers to appoint a large number of ministers, often to placate allies or rivals. The 91st Amendment inserted a new Clause (1A) into Article 75, constitutionally fixing a ceiling on the total number of ministers. Therefore, the amendment did indeed fix, or limit, the size of the Council of Ministers.

Now let us analyze Sentence II: "Now the size of Council of Ministers cannot be more than 15% of the total member of Parliament." This statement is **incorrect**. While the 91st Amendment did fix the maximum size at 15%, this limit is explicitly applied to the total number of members of the **House of the People (Lok Sabha)**, and not the entire Parliament, which includes both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha (Council of States). According to the amended Article 75 (1A), the total number of Ministers in the Union Council of Ministers, including the Prime Minister, "shall not exceed fifteen per cent. of the total number of members of the House of the People." The purpose of relating the limit to the Lok Sabha is due to the principle of responsible government, where the Council of Ministers is collectively responsible only to the Lok Sabha.

The incorrect option is 2:

This option claims that Sentence I is incorrect and Sentence II is correct. As explained above, Sentence I is correct because the 91st Amendment Act of 2003 was enacted precisely to fix the maximum permissible size of the Council of Ministers in both the Union and the States. Therefore, stating that Sentence I is incorrect is fundamentally wrong regarding the constitutional reforms of 2003. Furthermore, Sentence II is incorrect because the constitutional limit of 15% is calculated based on the total strength of the *Lok Sabha* (House of the People), not the entire *Parliament*. Given the inaccuracy of both claims made in this option, it cannot be the correct answer.

The incorrect option is 3:

This option asserts that both Sentence I and Sentence II are correct. While Sentence I is absolutely correct (the 91st Amendment fixed the size of the Council of Ministers), Sentence II contains a critical factual error. The constitutional provision limits the size of the Council of Ministers to 15% of the total number of members of the *Lok Sabha*, the lower house. By mentioning the "total member of Parliament" (which includes both houses), the statement incorrectly specifies the base on which the 15% calculation is made. Since the base body is wrongly identified in Sentence II, this option, which claims both are correct, is incorrect.

The incorrect option is 4:

This option suggests that neither Sentence I nor Sentence II is correct. This is inaccurate because Sentence I, which states that the size of the Council of Ministers was fixed by the 91st Amendment, is a true statement describing the core purpose of that amendment. The constitutional cap on the size of the cabinet is the most defining feature of the 91st Amendment. Therefore, dismissing Sentence I as incorrect means ignoring a primary fact of the amendment. While Sentence II is indeed incorrect, Sentence I's accuracy makes this option wrong.