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NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 5 Election to the Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assemblies — LET’S EXPLORE

Book page 134 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.
Who are the MP and MLA / MLAs of the constituency you are located in? (A Lok Sabha constituency may have two or more assembly constituencies.)
Answer

Find this out for your own area — but do it in the right order, because the bracketed hint in the question is the key to the whole exercise.

Step 1 — identify your constituencies. You live in two at once: one parliamentary (Lok Sabha) constituency and, inside it, one assembly constituency. The country is divided into 543 parliamentary constituencies; each of these contains two or more assembly constituencies, because a state has far more MLAs than MPs.

Step 2 — find the names. Ask at home, look at the voter card of an adult in your family (it names the assembly constituency), check a local newspaper, or look up the Election Commission of India’s website.

Step 3 — write it up like this:

 ConstituencyRepresentativeElected to
MPYour parliamentary constituencyNameLok Sabha, New Delhi
MLAYour assembly constituencyNameYour state / UT legislative assembly
Why one MP and several MLAs: a Lok Sabha constituency is far larger in population than an assembly constituency, so it is divided into several of the latter. That is why a single MP’s area may be represented by five, six or seven MLAs — and why the question says “MLA / MLAs”. Your own vote goes to one MLA and one MP, but the MP you elect also represents the voters of all the neighbouring assembly segments.
Sample answer (replace with your own): “Our parliamentary constituency has one MP, and our assembly constituency lies inside it along with six other assembly constituencies, each with its own MLA. I found the names of both on my mother’s voter card and confirmed them from the ECI website.”
Q2.
Which party does each of them belong to?
Answer

Look this up and record it factually. Two points make the answer complete rather than a bare name.

Where to check: the ECI publishes the result of every constituency, showing each winning candidate with the party on whose symbol he or she contested. A local newspaper’s result page, or the assembly’s and Lok Sabha’s own member lists, will also carry it.

Point one — the MP and the MLA need not be from the same party. This is common and completely normal: a voter may support one party for the state assembly and another for the Lok Sabha, because the two bodies deal with different subjects. As the chapter puts it, MPs focus on issues affecting the entire country, while MLAs focus primarily on regional issues.

Point two — a member may be from a party, or an independent. Political parties are registered by the Election Commission of India — that is one of the four crucial tasks shown in Fig. 5.9 — and each registered party has its own symbol. A candidate may also stand without any party.

Why the party matters for what a representative can do: the party or coalition winning a majority of seats in the Lok Sabha forms the national government, and the leader of that majority typically becomes the prime minister; the same happens in a state, where the leader of the majority party becomes chief minister. So a representative from the governing party works from inside the government, while one from another party works mainly through questioning, debate and opposition. Both roles are part of how the legislature functions.
Write it neutrally. The task is to record which party each representative belongs to — not to say which party is better. In a school exercise, state the fact and leave the judgement to the voter.
Q3.
What are the concerns of the MP and MLA, respectively?
Answer

The short answer is in the chapter’s own LET’S REMEMBER box: MPs deal with issues affecting the entire country; MLAs focus primarily on regional issues. Fig. 5.22 says it in the students’ own words: “MPs represent us in the national parliament, while MLAs represent us in our state assembly. Both are chosen through similar electoral processes but work at different levels of governance.”

 Member of Parliament (MP)Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA)
Elected toThe Lok Sabha — the lower house of ParliamentThe legislative assembly of a state or union territory
Elected byVoters of one of the 543 parliamentary constituenciesVoters of one assembly constituency, where they are registered
Main concernsMatters affecting the whole country — national laws and the budget, defence and foreign relations, railways, national highways, and issues that cross state boundariesMatters of the state and the locality — state laws, schools and hospitals in the state, roads, water supply, electricity, land and local development
Leader from this houseThe leader of the majority party or coalition becomes the prime ministerThe leader of the majority party becomes the chief minister
Why the concerns are divided this way: India is too large and too varied for every decision to be taken in one place. Subjects that must be uniform across the country — currency, defence, foreign policy — belong at the national level, where an MP speaks. Subjects where local conditions differ — a canal, a district hospital, a state’s school system — belong at the state level, where an MLA speaks. Universal adult franchise runs through both, which is why a citizen elects a representative at each level rather than one representative for everything.
Check it yourself: read a week of local news and sort the reported problems into two columns — those your MLA could take up and those that need your MP. Water supply in your ward, a state highway, a school appointment: MLA. Railway services, a national scheme, import duties: MP. A few will land in both, which is itself worth discussing.
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