•  The Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to the Lok Sabha.
• Collective Responsibility is based on the principle of the solidarity of the cabinet.
• It implies that a vote of no confidence even against a single minister leads to the resignation of the entire Council of Ministers.
• It also indicates that if a minister does not agree with a policy or decision of the cabinet, he or she must either accept the decision or resign.
• It is binding on all ministers to pursue or agree to a policy for which there is collective responsibility.

• The Rajya Sabha represents the States of India. It is an indirectly elected body.
• Residents of the State elect members to State Legislative Assembly.
• The elected members of State Legislative Assembly in turn elect the members of Rajya Sabha.
• The representation of States in the Rajya Sabha is different from the representation in the USA Senate, which has symmetrical representation of all the States uniformly.
• In the Rajya Sabha, the number of members to be elected from each state has been fixed by the 4th Schedule of the constitution.

Discretionary powers of the President

• Consitutionally, the President has a right to be informed of all important matters and deliberations of the Council of Ministers.
• The Prime Minister is obliged to furnish all the information that the President may call for.
• There are atleast 3 situations where the President can exercise the powers using his or her own discretion.
  1. The President can send back the advice given by the Council of Ministers and ask the Council to reconsider the decision.
  2. The President also has veto power by which he can withhold or refuse to give assent to Bills other than Money Bill passed by the Parliament.
  3. The third kind of discretion arises more out of political circumstances in which the President appoints the Prime Minister when there is no clear majority in the Lok Sabha.

• In the No-confidence motion, only the members of the Lok Sabha are involved.
• Rajya Sabha has some special powers by which any matter that affects the States must be referred to it for its consent and approval.
• Thus, if the Union Parliament wishes to remove a matter from the State list to either the Union List or Concurrent List in the interest of the nation, the approval of the Rajya Sabha is necessary.

• All governmental activities take place in the name of the president.
• All laws and major policy decisions of the government are issued in the name of president.
• All major appointments are made in the name of the President.
• There is no direct election to the Post of the Prime Minister.

• At present, there is no reservation for women in the seats of Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assembly.
• The Constitution (One Hundred and Eighth Amendment) Bill, 2008 seeks to reserve one-third of all seats for women in the Lok Sabha and the state legislative assemblies.
• The allocation of reserved seats shall be determined by such authority as prescribed by Parliament.
• The bill is yet to be passed by the Parliament.
• In the Local government, reservation of not less than 1/3rd of the seats of gram panchayats and chairpersons is provided for women by the 73rd and 74th constitutional amendment act.

• The only ground for impeachment of the President is the violation of the constitution.
• However, the constitution does not define the meaning of the phrase ‘violation of the constitution’.
• There is no ground mentioned in the Constitution for the removal of Vice President.
• The President’s impeachment resolution should be passed by a majority of two-thirds of total membership of the Parliament House.
• The President’s Electoral College is different from impeachment resolution process in 2 ways –
• The nominated members of either house of the parliament can participate in the impeachment of the President though they do not participate in the election
• The elected members of the legislative assemblies of State and UT of Delhi and Puducherry do not participate in the impeachment of the President though they participate in his election.
• The resolution for the removal of Vice-President should be passed by a majority of all the then members of Rajya Sabha and agreed by Lok Sabha.

• 24th Amendment Act, 1971 – Made it compulsory for the President to give his assent to a constitutional amendment bill
• 44th Amendment Act, 1978 – Provided that the President require the Council of Ministers to reconsider such advice and the President shall act in accordance with the advice tendered after such reconsideration
• 70th Amendment Act, 1992 – Provided for the inclusion of the members of the Legislative assemblies of National Capital Territory of Delhi and Union Territory of Puducherry in the Electoral College for the election of President.

• Every person who wishes to contest an election has to fill a ‘nomination form’ and give some money as ‘security deposit’.
• Every candidate has to make a legal declaration, giving full details of
  1. Serious criminal cases pending against the candidate
  2. Education qualifications of the candidate
  3. Details of the assets and liabilities of the candidate and his/her family

Recognised Political Parties

• The Election Commission has laid down detailed criteria of the proportion of votes and seats that a party must get in order to be a recognized party.
• State Party - A party that
  1. Secures at least 6% of the total votes in an election to the Legislative Assembly of a State (AND)
  2. Wins at least 2 seats in the Legislative Assembly
• National Party - A party that
  1. Secures at least 6% of the total votes in Lok Sabha elections (OR) Assembly elections in 4 States (AND)
  2. Wins at least 4 seats in the Lok Sabha

• Delimitation commission of India is a statutory and independent body.
• Delimitation commission’s orders have the force of low and cannot be called in question in before any court.
• If decides on reservation of constituencies for SC’s/ST’s are in loksabha and legislative assemblies only not in Gram panchayat.

• The legislature is not involved in the process of appointment of judges.
• The salaries and allowances of the judges are not subjected to the approval of the legislative.

Independence of Judiciary and Judicial review have been taken from the US constitution. In the context of UK, the parliament is supreme.

Tolls are included in state list

• According to Article 246(4), the Parliament has exclusive legislative power over a Union Territory, including matters which are enumerated in the State List. But so far as the Andaman Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep islands, Daman and Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Puducherry are concerned, the President has got a legislative power, to make a regulations for the peace, progress and good government of these Territories.

Proceedings of High Court and Supreme Court

• 348 - Language to be used in the Supreme Court and in the High Courts and for Acts, Bills, etc.
• The constitution provides that all proceedings in the Supreme Court of India, the country's highest court and the High Courts, shall be in English. Parliament has the power to alter this by law, but has not done so. However, in many high courts, there is, with consent from the president, allowance of the optional use of Hindi. Such proposals have been successful in the states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar.
• The constitution gives the power to authorise the use of Hindi, or the state's official language in proceedings of the High Court to the Governor, rather than the state legislature, and requires the Governor to obtain the consent of the President of India, who in these matters acts on the advice of the Government of India. The Official Languages Act gives the Governor a similar power, subject to similar conditions, in relation to the language in which the High Court's judgments will be delivered.
• Four states—Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan—have been granted the right to conduct proceedings in their High Courts in their official language, which, for all of them, was Hindi. However, the only non-Hindi state to seek a similar power—Tamil Nadu, which sought the right to conduct proceedings in Tamil in its High Court—had its application rejected by the central government earlier, which said it was advised to do so by the Supreme Court.

National Legal Services Authority

• National Legal Services Authority of India (NALSA) was formed on 5 December 1995 under the authority of the Legal Services Authorities Act 1987.
• It is to provide free Legal Services to the weaker sections of the society and to organize Lok Adalats for amicable settlement of disputes.
• The Chief Justice of India is patron-in-chief of NALSA. 
• The State Legal Services Authority is headed by Chief Justice of the respective High Court who is the Patron-in-Chief of the State Legal Services Authority.  
• The District Legal Services Authority is situated in the District Courts Complex in every District and chaired by the District Judge of the respective district.

• Whenever the loksabha is dissolved, the speaker does not vacate his office and continues till the newly elected loksabha meets.
• The speaker remains in office during the life of the Lok Sabha and not during the pleasure of the President.