Consider the following statements: 1. In the election for Lok Sabha or State Assembly, the winning candidate must get at least 50 percent of the votes polled, to be declared elected. 2. According to the provisions laid down in the Constitution of India, in Lok Sabha, the Speaker's post goes to the majority party and the Deputy Speaker's to the Opposition. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

Neither statement is correct, so the answer is D. India uses first-past-the-post (FPTP) for Lok Sabha and Assembly seats under the Representation of the People Act, 1951. The candidate with the most votes wins, even with a small share. Multi-cornered contests often produce winners with 30 to 40 percent of votes polled. The majority-threshold idea belongs to the Presidential election, which uses an electoral college, value-based votes and the single transferable vote.

• Statement 1 is wrong. No provision in Article 84 or the RP Act, 1951 requires a 50 percent threshold. The plurality principle governs.
• Statement 2 is wrong. Article 93 only says the House shall choose two members as Speaker and Deputy Speaker. Nothing in the Constitution ties either post to the majority or the Opposition. The Speaker is usually from the ruling party and the Deputy Speaker from the Opposition, but that is a convention. The Deputy Speaker's post stayed vacant for most of the 17th Lok Sabha, which shows it is not a constitutional rule.

Core concept: electoral system and parliamentary office-bearers, which sits under Polity and Governance. For Mains, this links to electoral reform and the debate on FPTP versus proportional representation.

Trap: assuming the Speaker-Opposition arrangement is written into the Constitution, or mixing up the Presidential election's majority rule with Lok Sabha polls.