[Mission 2023] Current Affairs Quiz , 13 May 2023

Solution: b)

Parambikulam Tiger Reserve is a protected area lying in Palakkad district and Thrissur district of Kerala.

Mahananda Wildlife Sanctuary is located on the foothills of the Himalayas, between the Teesta and Mahananda rivers. It is situated in the Darjeeling district of West Bengal.

The Mukundra Tiger Reserve (TR) is located near Kota, Rajasthan.

Pilibhit Tiger Reserve is located in Pilibhit district of Uttar Pradesh and was notified as a tiger reserve in 2014.

Gandhi Sagar Sanctuary is a wildlife sanctuary situated on the northern boundary of Mandsaur and Nimach districts in Madhya Pradesh.

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Solution: a)

• Since 1973, the year of the Kesavananda Bharati judgment, the Constitution has been amended more than 60 times. In these five decades, the Supreme Court has tested constitutional amendments against the doctrine of basic structure in at least 16 cases.
• In nine of these 16 cases, the Supreme Court has upheld constitutional amendments that had been challenged on grounds of violation of the basic structure doctrine. Six of these cases relate to reservations — including the quota for Other Backward Classes (OBC) and Economically Weaker Section (EWS), and reservations in promotions.
• The Supreme Court has struck down a constitutional amendment entirely just once — The Constitution (Ninety-ninth Amendment) Act, 2014, which established the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC)

In six instances since 1973, including the Kesavananda ruling itself, the Supreme Court has “partially struck down” a constitutional amendment. In all these cases, the provision that was struck down related to the denial of judicial review.

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Solution: b)

Kihoto Hollohan vs Zachillhu And Others (1992): The Supreme Court upheld The Constitution (Fifty-second Amendment) Act that introduced the Tenth Schedule or the so-called “anti-defection law” in the Constitution. The only portion of the amendment that was struck down was the one that stated that the decisions of the Speaker relating to disqualification cannot be judicially reviewed.

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Solution: b)

In May 2015, the Centre made it mandatory to coat all indigenously manufactured and imported urea with neem oil. This was followed by replacing 50-kg bags with 45-kg ones in March 2018, and the launch of liquid ‘Nano Urea’ by the Indian Farmers’ Fertiliser Cooperative (IFFCO) in June 2021.

Solution: c)

Under NBS, the government fixed a per-kg subsidy for each fertiliser nutrient: Nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potash (K) and sulphur (S). This was as against the earlier product-specific subsidy regime.

Linking subsidy to nutrient content was intended to promote balanced fertilisation by discouraging farmers from applying too much urea, di-ammonium phosphate (DAP) and muriate of potash (MOP). These are fertilisers with high content of a single nutrient: Urea (46% N), DAP (46% P plus 18% N) and MOP (60% K).

NBS was expected to induce product innovation, besides more use of complex fertilisers (having lower concentrations of N, P, K and S in different proportions) and SSP (containing only 16% P but also 11% S).

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