With reference to the Parliament of India, consider the following statements:
- 1.A private member's bill is a bill presented by a Member of Parliament who is not elected but only nominated by the President of India.
- 2.Recently, a private member's bill has been passed in the Parliament of India for the first time in its history.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Answer & explanation
Answer: (d) Neither 1 nor 2
A private member's bill is any bill moved by an MP who is not a minister, whether elected or nominated. And such bills are not new to Parliament: fourteen of them have become law since 1952, so neither statement holds.
- ✗ 1. The test is whether the mover is a minister, not how the member reached Parliament. Any non-minister MP, elected or nominated, introduces a private member's bill; a minister's bill is a government bill.
- ✗ 2. The Rajya Sabha Secretariat records 14 private members' bills enacted so far, starting with the Muslim Wakf Bill, 1952; the last of them became law in 1970. So when the Rajya Sabha passed the Rights of Transgender Persons Bill, 2014 on 24 April 2015, it was not a first.
Remember · Private member's bill = moved by any MP who is not a minister. Only 14 have ever become law; the last one cleared both Houses in 1970.
📘 Read it in NCERT: Class 11 Indian Constitution at Work, Ch 5 (practise this chapter)
Sources
- NCERT Class 11 · Indian Constitution at Work, Chapter 5 “When a non-minister proposes a bill, it is called private member's Bill. A bill proposed by a minister is described as Government Bill.”
- Rajya Sabha Secretariat, Private Members' Legislation (2023) ↗ “The following 14 Private Members' Bills have been enacted so far, out of which 5 were introduced in Rajya Sabha”
Question and answer: UPSC's official GS Paper I (2017, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 30 Sept 2026 (how we verify). ·