[Mission 2023] Current Affairs Quiz ,12 December 2022

Solution: b)

While a company can go for repurchase of its shares when it is sitting on a lot of cash but does not have many avenues to invest and prefers to return cash to shareholders, the case of Paytm is different – it’s sitting on huge losses and now using part of investors’ proceeds for the buyback.

Who is eligible to participate in buyback?

To be eligible to participate in the share repurchase process, a shareholder needs to hold the shares of the company, which has announced the buyback, before the record date declared in the announcement. The share also needs to be held in the demat form.

As many as 56 companies, including Infosys, TCS, Bajaj Auto and ACC, had opted for share buybacks in 2022.

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Solution: d)

There is also a facility for absentee voters to vote through PBs. These voters are those who are unable to physically cast their vote due to their service conditions. For instance, railway employees who are posted outside their home state are counted as absentee voters.

The Returning Officer:

The RO is appointed for each constituency by the Election Commission. During the duration of the election, the RO is the highest authority in the constituency having a wide range of powers in order to peacefully and impartially conduct elections.

ROs themselves do not count all votes but verify the counting at multiple stages and announce the results. They are the final authority in the matter of vote counting in an election. To assist the RO, the EC also appoints Assistant Returning Officers (AROs) to assist the RO in carrying out all the duties.

Generally, the District Magistrate is the ex-officio RO in Lok Sabha elections while the Sub-Divisional Magistrate is the RO in state assembly elections.

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Solution: a)

A cyclone is a low pressure system that forms over warm waters. Essentially, it is a system of high speed winds rotating around a low-pressure area, with the winds blowing counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.

According to the World Meteorological Organization, “Tropical cyclones are one of the biggest threats to life and property even in the formative stages of their development. They include a number of different hazards that can individually cause significant impacts on life and property, such as storm surge, flooding, extreme winds, tornadoes and lighting.

How are cyclones named?

Cyclones that form in every ocean basin across the world are named by the regional specialised meteorological centres (RSMCs) and Tropical Cyclone Warning Centres (TCWCs). There are six RSMCs in the world, including the India Meteorological Department (IMD), and five TCWCs.

As an RSMC, the IMD names the cyclones developing over the north Indian Ocean, including the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea, after following a standard procedure. The IMD is also mandated to issue advisories to 12 other countries in the region on the development of cyclones and storms.

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Solution: d)

The Uttarakhand Assembly recently passed a Bill to provide 30 per cent horizontal reservation to local women in state government services.

In simple terms, while a vertical reservation applies separately for each of the groups specified under the law, the horizontal quota is always applied separately to each vertical category, and not across the board.

Reservation for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes is referred to as vertical reservation. Horizontal reservation refers to the equal opportunity provided to other categories of beneficiaries such as women, veterans, the transgender community, and individuals with disabilities, cutting through the vertical categories.

For example, if women have 50 per cent horizontal quota, then half of the selected candidates will have to necessarily be women in each vertical quota category — i.e., half of all selected SC candidates will have to be women, half of the unreserved or general category will have to be women, and so on.

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Solution: b)

Both Parliament and the State legislatures enjoy equal power to legislate on Goods and Services Tax (GST), and that the Goods and Services Tax Council’s recommendations were just that: recommendations that could never be binding on a legislative body.

When, in July 2017, the Union government introduced the GST regime through the 101st constitutional Amendment, it did so based on an underlying belief that tax administration across India needed unification. ‘One Nation, One Tax’, was the mantra. To give effect to this idea, many entries in the State list of Schedule VII of the Constitution were either deleted or amended.