QUIZ – 2017: Insights Current Affairs Quiz, 20 February 2017

Solution: a.

• Statement 1: Red Sanders (a tree) has a highly restrictive distribution in the South Eastern portion of Indian peninsula (Eastern Ghats of South India) to which it is endemic.
• Statement 2: It occurs in the forest formation which is classified as “Southern Tropical Dry Deciduous Forests”.

It is generally found at altitudes of 150 – 900 m. It grows on dry, hilly, often rocky ground, and occasionally found on precipitous hill sides also. It prefers lateritic and gravelly soil and cannot tolerate water logging.

MoEF;

TH;

Q28, CS(P) 2016;

Solution: b.

Article 164 clearly states that the council of ministers is collectively responsible to the Legislative Assembly. This means that all the ministers own joint responsibility to the legislative assembly for all their acts of omission and commission. They work as a team and swim or sink together. When the legislative assembly passes a no-confidence motion against the council of ministers, all the ministers have to resign including those ministers who are from the legislative council.

Ch-28, ‘State Council of Ministers’, Indian Polity 4^th Edition by M Laxmikanth;

Improvisation: TH: Marred by violence;

Solution: c.

“Only an elected legislature, after careful deliberation, could decide to restrict some speech in the interests of an overwhelmingly important public goal. This could then be challenged before independent courts. Thus, the Constitution protected citizens’ rights through two layers of safeguards: the legislature had to make a law, and then the courts could be called upon to test its constitutionality.”

Article 13 declares that all laws that are inconsistent with or in derogation of any of the fundamental rights shall be void. In other words, it expressively provides for the doctrine of judicial review. This power has been conferred on the Supreme Court (Article 32) and the high courts (Article 226) that can declare a law unconstitutional and invalid on the ground of contravention of any of the Fundamental Rights.

Ch-7, ‘Fundamental Rights’, Indian Polity 4^th Edition by M Laxmikanth

Improvisation: TH: Upsetting a very fine balance;

Solution: a.

• A stent is a small mesh tube that’s used to treat narrow or weak arteries. Arteries are blood vessels that carry blood away from your heart to other parts of your body.
• Doctors also may place stents in weak arteries to improve blood flow and help prevent the arteries from bursting.
• Stents usually are made of metal mesh, but sometimes they’re made of fabric. Fabric stents, also called stent grafts, are used in larger arteries.
• Some stents are coated with medicine that is slowly and continuously released into the artery. These stents are called drug-eluting stents. The medicine helps prevent the artery from becoming blocked again.

Improvisation: TH: Government meets stent makers to ensure a steady supply ;

TH: Stent prices heavily slashed;
NHLBI;

Solution: b.

Maharashtra is not among the seven states.

• Globally India ranks third after China and the USA in terms of number of large dams with a total storage capacity of about 283 billion cubic meters. Close to 80% of large dams have surpassed the age of twenty-five years, and many of them face the challenges of deferred maintenance. Many of these dams are considerably old (about 170 dams exceed the age of 100 years) and built in an era whose design practices and safety considerations do not match with the current design standards and the prevailing safety norms.
• Several of these dams may be experiencing distress and are in urgent need of attention for ensuring their structural safety as well as operational efficiency. Large dams’ failure may seriously affect the lives, property and the environment in addition to disrupting the services provided by the dam.
• The DRIP project is being implemented in the seven States (Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and Jharkhand).

PIB: Third National Dam Safety Conference held;

—

Solution: d.

Started in 1996, Aero India is among the world’s biggest aerospace shows. The exhibition began on a low key, but as India opened up its purse strings after the Kargil conflict to become a major buyer in the global arms bazaar, companies began to flock to Bangalore for Aero India.

Wikipedia;

TH: What is the Aero India show?;

—