10 PM Current Affairs Quiz: September 29, 2020

Statement 1 is correct. Article 248 of the Constitution provides for the residuary powers of legislation:

Parliament has exclusive power to make any law with respect to any matter not enumerated in the Concurrent List or State List.

Further, such power shall include the power of making any law imposing a tax not mentioned in either of those Lists.

Statement 2 is incorrect. Article 249 provides for power of Parliament to legislate with respect to a matter in the State List in the national interest:

If the Council of States has declared by resolution supported by not less than two-thirds of the members present and voting that it is necessary or expedient in the national interest that Parliament should make laws with respect to any matter enumerated in the State List specified in the resolution; Parliament is empowered to make laws for the whole or any part of the territory of India with respect to that matter while the resolution remains in force.

The resolution passed by Rajyasabha remains in force for such period not exceeding one year. Further, the law made by Parliament, to the extent of the incompetency, ceases to have effect on the expiration of a period of six months after the resolution has ceased to be in force.

The new Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP) has been cleared by the Defence Ministry recently.

Statement 1 is correct. There may be occasions when procurements would have to be done from friendly foreign countries which may be necessitated due to geo-strategic advantages or imperatives of strategic partnerships or major military, technological, economic, diplomatic or political benefits.

The DAP 2020 has done away with the offset clause on government to government buys and states that No offsets will be applicable in cases progressed through IGA like Foreign Military Sales (FMS).

Statement 2 is correct. Leasing is introduced as another category for acquisition in addition to the existing ‘Buy’ and ‘Make’ acquisition categories as it provides for an innovative technique for financing of equipment.

Leasing would be permitted in two sub categories i.e. Lease (Indian), where Lessor is an Indian entity and is the owner of the asset, and Lease (Global) which refers to lease of equipment from foreign or Indian Lessors. Lease (Indian) would be the preferred category.

Statement 1 is correct. The Himalayan Chandra Telescope is housed within the Indian Astronomical Observatory in Hanle near Leh in Ladakh.

Statement 2 is correct. The telescope remotely operated using a dedicated satellite communication link from the Centre for Research & Education in Science & Technology (CREST), Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA).

# IIA is an autonomous institute of the Department of Science and Technology (DST).

# The telescope has completed two decades in operation.

Both statements are correct.

Vigyan Jyoti scheme is intended to create a level-playing field for the meritorious girls in high school to pursue Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) in their higher education. It also offers exposure for girl students from the rural background to help to plan their journey from school to a job of their choice in the field of science.

Selected students (100 girl students in 550 districts from 2020-2025, chosen based on their percentile) would be given opportunities to attend science camps at IITs, NITs, and other leading institutions of science and technology education where women are not adequately represented.

Statement 1 is incorrect. The Magellanic Clouds are comprised of two irregular galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC).

Statement 2 is correct. Magellanic Clouds orbit the Milky Way once every 1,500 million years and each other once every 900 million years.

They are only visible from the southern hemisphere and became known in Europe after the expeditions led by the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan.

Option 1 is incorrect. The agricultural market is not listed in the Seventh Schedule.

The committees headed by Ashok Dalwai, Ramesh Chand, and Swaminathan Commission recommended that ‘agricultural markets’ should be entered in the Concurrent List.

Option 2 is correct. Agriculture, including agricultural education and research, protection against pests, and prevention of plant diseases are mentioned as Entry 14 in the State List.

Option 3 is correct. The ‘taxes on agricultural income’ is Entry 46 in the State List.

The Palk Strait is a strait between the Tamil Nadu and the Jaffna District of the Northern Province of Sri Lanka.

The Bab-el-Mandeb strait is located between Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula and Djibouti and Eritrea in the Horn of Africa. It connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.

The Malacca Strait is a narrow stretch of water between the Malay Peninsula and Indonesia (Sumatra). It is the main shipping channel between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.

Statement 1 is correct. Herd immunity happens when so many people in a community become immune to an infectious disease. As many viral and bacterial infections spread from person to person. This chain is broken when most people don’t get or transmit the infection.

This provides indirect protection (herd protection) to those who are not immune to the disease.

Statement 2 is incorrect. Herd Immunity can be developed when many people in the population:

–contract the disease and in time build up an immune response to it (natural immunity).

-are vaccinated against the disease to achieve immunity.

Statement 1 is correct. The proposed Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT) is intended to prohibit the production of fissile material. It has been on the proposed agenda of the Conference on Disarmament for many years, but the CD has not been able to establish a committee to begin formal negotiations.

# UN Conference on Disarmament (CD), a body of 65 member nations established as the sole multilateral negotiating forum on disarmament. The CD operates by consensus and is often stagnant, impeding progress on an FMCT.

Statement 2 is incorrect. Those nations that joined the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) as non-weapon states are already prohibited from producing or acquiring fissile material for weapons.

An FMCT would provide new restrictions for the five recognized nuclear weapon states (NWS—United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, and China), and for the four nations that are not NPT members (Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea).

# In order for negotiations to begin on an FMCT, Pakistan will have to remove its opposition vote, and a consensus to move forward with negotiations must be reached. Pakistan, in order to offset its disadvantageous position relative to India’s superior nuclear stockpile, wants treaty to include current fissile material stockpiles, instead of just capping future production.

The 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution passed in 1987 is an outcome of the Indo-Lanka Accord of July 1987, signed by the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and President J.R. Jayawardene, in an attempt to resolve Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict.

It led to the creation of Provincial Councils, assured a power sharing arrangement to enable all nine provinces in the country, including Sinhala majority areas, to self-govern.

Education, health, agriculture, housing, land and police are devolved to the provincial administrations, but because of restrictions on financial powers and overriding powers given to the President, the provincial administrations have not made much progress. Particularly, the provisions relating to police and land have never been implemented.