[Mission 2023] QUED ( Questions from Editorials ) 2 June 2023

Solution: c)

FLOPs, or Floating-Point Operations per Second, is a commonly used metric to measure the computational performance – processing power and efficiency – especially in the field of high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI). Floating-point operations are a certain kind of mathematical calculation using real numbers with fractional parts.

Due to the immense computing power of today’s computers, the FLOPs metric is most often represented in terms of billions (giga), trillions (tera), or even quadrillions (peta) of operations per second (GFLOPs, TFLOPs, PFLOPs, respectively).

The National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast (NCMRWF) houses ‘Mihir’, a 2.8 petaflop supercomputer, while the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, is home to ‘Pratyush’, a 4.0 petaflop supercomputer, as per PTI. These were launched in 2018.

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Solution: b)

Statement 2 is incorrect.

There are three All India Services – the Indian Administrative Service, the Indian Police Service and the Indian Forest Service – which are selected by the central government with officers allotted to various state cadres. The Centre then gets a certain percentage of officers from each state on central deputation. These bureaucrats work directly for the Centre. All India Services are governed by Article 312 of the Constitution of India.

Other services are called Central Civil Services. These services are under the central government itself with no state cadre system. They include services such as the Indian Foreign Service, the Indian Revenue Service, Customs and Central Excise Service and several others.

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Solution: c)

(The European Commission’s website describes the EU’s Generalised Scheme of Preferences Plus (GSP+) as giving “developing countries a special incentive to pursue sustainable development and good governance”, in return for which “the EU cuts its import duties to zero on more than two thirds of the tariff lines of their exports”.)

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Solution: b)

Statement 3 is incorrect.

The Memorandum of Procedure (MoP) that governs the appointment of members of the higher judiciary says that the “Union Minister of Law, Justice…would, at the appropriate time, seek the recommendation of the outgoing Chief Justice of India for the appointment of the next Chief Justice of India”.

As per the process laid down in the MoP, “after receipt of the recommendation of the Chief Justice of India, the Union Minister of Law, Justice…will put up the recommendation to the Prime Minister who will advise the President in the matter of appointment”.

Article 124(1) of the Constitution says that “there shall be a Supreme Court of India consisting of a Chief Justice of India…and…other Judges”; Article 124(2) lays down that “every Judge of the Supreme Court shall be appointed by the President by warrant under his hand and seal…”.

The MoP has evolved as the standard based on three decisions of the Supreme Court, known as the First Judges Case (1981), Second Judges Case (1993) and the Third Judges Case (1998). These three judgments form the basis of a peer selection process for the appointment of judges.

Solution: a)

Lothal was one of the southernmost sites of the Indus Valley civilization, located in the Bhāl region of what is now the state of Gujarat. The port city is believed to have been built in 2,200 BC.

Lothal was nominated in April 2014 as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and its application is pending on the tentative list of UNESCO. As per the nomination dossier submitted to UNESCO, “The excavated site of Lothal is the only port-town of the Indus Valley Civilisation. A metropolis with an upper and a lower town had in on its northern side a basin with vertical wall, inlet and outlet channels which has been identified as a tidal dockyard.