Who said ‘India is a Quasi-Federal State’?

The correct answer is D) K.C. Wheare. In Federal Government (1946), Wheare tested federalism by asking whether the general and regional governments are each supreme within their own spheres. He found India's Union too dominant in ordinary times to be a true federation, and classed it as a quasi-federal state, a federation with a strong unitary bias.

• A) Lord Bryce wrote The American Commonwealth and studied the US system, not the Indian Constitution. Wrong.
• B) Ivor Jennings (the option is misspelt) was a constitutional scholar who wrote on Indian constitutional features, but the quasi-federal label is not his. Wrong.
• C) H.J. Laski was a pluralist and socialist political theorist, not a classifier of federal systems. Wrong.

The core concept is the classification of federations, where Wheare's test separates a true federation from a quasi-federal one. For Mains, connect it to Article 1 (India as a Union of States), Article 356, the single integrated judiciary, and the Sarkaria and Punchhi Commission debates on Centre-State relations.

Trap: Aspirants pick the most famous name, usually Laski or Bryce, and forget that the question is about a specific term from a specific book.