[Mission 2023] Current Affairs Quiz , 30 May 2023

Solution: b)

Statement 3 is incorrect.

Despite their relatively small size and considerable distance from India, many of the pacific island countries have large exclusive economic zones (EEZs).

EEZs is the distance up to which a coastal nation has jurisdiction over the ocean, including both living and non-living resources. It generally goes to 200 nautical miles or 230 miles (around 370 km) beyond a nation’s territorial sea.

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Solution: b)

Statement 3 is incorrect.

What is practice of forum shopping?

When litigants or lawyers attempt to deliberately move their case to a particular judge or Court where they think the judgment could be more favourable, they are said to be “forum shopping.”

Even the US and UK courts have criticised the practice of forum shopping as something to be avoided or prohibited.

Last year, on March 22, an SC Bench of Justice S. Abdul Nazeer and Justice Krishna Murari in the case of ‘Vijay Kumar Ghai vs. State of W.B.’ termed forum shopping as a “disreputable practise by the courts” that “has no sanction and paramountcy in law”.

On March 28, the Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh High Court in ‘Dr. Khair-Un-Nisa and Ors vs. UT of Jammu and Kashmir and Ors’ imposed costs worth one lakh rupees on the petitioners for indulging in forum shopping by filing multiple petitions before different wings of the court, albeit having the same cause of action.

Similarly, “Bench hunting” refers to petitioners managing to get their cases heard by a particular judge or court to ensure a favourable order, the court added.

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Solution: c)

The UPSC has its genesis in the Civil Service Commission set up by the British government in 1854. Prior to this, civil servants for India were nominated by the East India Company, and then trained at Haileybury College in London.

However, following a report by Lord Thomas Macaulay, it was decided that instead of nominations, civil servants should be selected through a competitive exam. Thus, the Civil Service Commission was set up, and for some years, exams were held only in London. It was a decade later, in 1864, that Satyendranath Tagore (brother of Rabindranath Tagore) became the first Indian to clear the exam. The exam started being held in India only from 1922, after the First World War.

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Solution: a)

Only statement 1 is correct.

A Census is Constitutionally mandated in India. There are repeated references to the Census exercise in the Constitution in the context of reorganisation of constituencies for Parliament and state Assemblies. But the Constitution does not say when the Census has to be carried out, or what the frequency of this exercise should be. The Census of India Act of 1948, which provides the legal framework for carrying out the Census, also does not mention its timing or periodicity.

There is, therefore, no Constitutional or legal requirement that a Census has to be done every 10 years. However, this exercise has been carried out in the first year of every decade, without fail, since 1881. Most other countries also follow the 10-year cycle for their Census. There are countries like Australia that do it every five years.

It is not the legal requirement but the utility of the Census that has made it a permanent regular exercise. The Census produces primary, authentic data that becomes the backbone of every statistical enterprise, informing all planning, administrative and economic decision-making processes.

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Solution: d)

A stem cell is a cell with the unique ability to develop into specialised cell types in the body. In the future they may be used to replace cells and tissues that have been damaged or lost due to disease.

Stem cells provide new cells for the body as it grows, and replace specialised cells that are damaged or lost. They have two unique properties that enable them to do this:

• They can divide over and over again to produce new cells.
• As they divide, they can change into the other types of cell that make up the body.