The National Commission for Scheduled Castes consists of 1 Chairman, ______…

Article 338 of the Constitution of India establishes the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) as a constitutional body for safeguarding the interests of Scheduled Castes. The Constitution (Eighty-ninth Amendment) Act, 2003 split the earlier joint National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes into two separate commissions and fixed the composition of each new body directly in the constitutional text.

Article 338(2), as substituted by the 89th Amendment, provides that the National Commission for Scheduled Castes consists of a Chairperson, one Vice-Chairperson, and three other Members, all appointed by the President by warrant under his hand and seal. Filling the stem's two blanks with these fixed numbers gives one Vice-Chairman and three Members, i.e. "1; 3".

• "2; 3" would need Article 338(2) to fix two Vice-Chairperson posts alongside three Members; the Article fixes only one Vice-Chairperson post.

• "1; 5" would need the Member strength fixed at five under one Vice-Chairperson; the Article fixes the Member strength at three.

• "2; 4" would need both two Vice-Chairperson posts and four Members; the Article's text matches neither figure.

The parallel National Commission for Scheduled Tribes, created in the same 89th Amendment as Article 338A, is given the identical single-Vice-Chairperson-plus-three-Member structure, confirming this composition pattern as the one the Constitution adopted for these post-2003 national commissions.