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?

The correct answer is D, neither statement is correct.

• Statement 1 is wrong. A private member's bill is one introduced by any MP who is not a minister. Such an MP may be elected to Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha, or nominated to Rajya Sabha by the President. The 'not elected but nominated' framing is the error. The category is defined by the member's role, not by how they got their seat.
• Statement 2 is wrong. Private member's bills are not a recent first. A small number have been passed by Parliament in the past, so the claim of a first-ever passage does not hold. Such bills are rare because the government controls most of the time and business in both Houses. Most private member's bills lapse without a vote.

The core concept is the distinction between government bills, which are sponsored by ministers, and private member's bills, which give individual legislators a formal route to raise issues. This connects to the syllabus under Parliament and state legislatures, and to Mains questions on the functioning of Parliament and the decline of time for private business.

Trap: Candidates often assume a nominated member is somehow barred from moving a private member's bill, or accept statement 2 because it sounds like a recent news item.