UPSC Exam: Weekly GK and Current Affairs Quiz Dec 16 - Dec 23

Statement 2 is only correct.

The President is a member of neither Houses of Parliament.

• ‘YUVA’ initiative by Delhi Police aims to connect with youth by upgrading their skill as per their competencies.
• It will help them to get a gainful employment under Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojna under the Ministry of Skill Development.
• National Skill Development Corporation shall be providing skill training to the youth under ‘Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojna’ (PMKVY) and CII will provide job linked training through its Sector Skill Councils who are connected to industry and thereby provide job guarantee.

• Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) is the flagship outcome-based skill training scheme of the Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE).
• The objective of this skill certification and reward scheme is to enable and mobilize a large number of Indian youth to take up outcome based skill training and become employable and earn their livelihood.
• Under the scheme, monetary reward would be provided to trainees who are successfully trained, assessed and certified in skill courses run by affiliated training providers.

• Article 164 (1A) provides for limiting the number of ministers in the state cabinets. The total number of ministers including the Chief Minister, has to be within 15 per cent of the total number of members of the legislative assembly of the state.
• Article 164 (1A) was inserted in the Constitution on the recommendation of the National Commission for Review of the Working of the Constitution headed by former Chief Justice of India, M.N. Venkatachaliah on misuse and drainage of public money to put a ban on over-sized cabinet.

• The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India is an authority, established by the Constitution under Constitution of India/Part V – Chapter V/Sub-part 7B/Article 148, which audits all receipts and expenditure of the Government of India and the state governments, including those of bodies and authorities substantially financed by the government.
• The CAG is also the external auditor of Government-owned corporations and conducts supplementary audit of government companies, i.e., any non-banking/ non-insurance company in which Union Government has an equity share of at least 51 per cent or subsidiary companies of existing government companies.
• The reports of the CAG are taken into consideration by the Public Accounts Committees (PACs) and Committees on Public Undertakings (COPUs), which are special committees in the Parliament of India and the state legislatures

GI is covered under the Intellectual Property Rights and the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. A GI tag certifies the origin of a product or produce from a particular region as the quality or other features of the product is attributable only to the place of its origin. The tag helps farmers or manufacturers, as the case may be, to get a better price in the market.

Cabinet Mission. See more.

Dr. Sachchidananda Sinha (the oldest member) was first elected interim or temporary chairman. Later Dr. Rajendra Prasad was elected as the President.

The death or resignation of the PM automatically dissolves the Council of Ministers.

Writ habeas corpus can be issued when the right to life and personal liberty of a person is deprived, when procedure established by law is contravened, when the law which authorises imprisonment is invalid or unconstitutional, and when the arrest is without any authority of law.

Nuakhai is the chief festival of Western Odisha. It is the harvest festival of Odisha wherein farmers are in possession of new rice of the season. They offer the first produce of their respective lands to Goddess Samaleswari and then consume it personally.

Gobindobhog rice, a speciality from Burdwan district of West Bengal, has got the geographical indication (GI) status. It is a short grain, white, aromatic, sticky rice having a sweet buttery flavor.

The country’s first technology-driven Mysuru public transport system has become “smart, safe, efficient” and beneficial to lakhs of people across the city, the World Bank has said in its latest newsletter.

For a property to be included on the World Heritage List, the World Heritage Committee must find that it meets one or more of the following criteria:

1. to represent a masterpiece of human creative genius;
2. to exhibit an important interchange of human values, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town-planning or landscape design;
3. to bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared;
4. to be an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history;
5. to be an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement, land-use, or sea-use which is representative of a culture (or cultures), or human interaction with the environment especially when it has become vulnerable under the impact of irreversible change;
6. to be directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions, with ideas, or with beliefs, with artistic and literary works of outstanding universal significance. (The Committee considers that this criterion should preferably be used in conjunction with other criteria);
7. to contain superlative natural phenomena or areas of exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance;
8. to be outstanding examples representing major stages of earth’s history, including the record of life, significant on-going geological processes in the development of landforms, or significant geomorphic or physiographic features;
9. to be outstanding examples representing significant on-going ecological and biological processes in the evolution and development of terrestrial, fresh water, coastal and marine ecosystems and communities of plants and animals;
10. to contain the most important and significant natural habitats for in-situ conservation of biological diversity, including those containing threatened species of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science or conservation.

Only statement 3 is correct.

The second statement is wrong as this feature in the architecture was introduced much before Babur’s arrival, i.e., during the Delhi Sultanate era.

Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. Read more.

All statements are correct. Read more 

Both the organisations were against upper caste domination.

1905 Bengal partition

Cash crops like cotton and Sugarcane were known as Jins-i-Kamil or Jins-i-Ala. Cotton was produced mostly in Khandesh and Bengal.

Individual Satyagraha. Read more

Government of India Act 1935. Read more.

Sushir Vadya are wind instruments. All three are wind instruments.

Both are listed.

It is performed after the harvest season.

Zabti system was the land revenue system during Akbar’s reign.

Lord Chelmsford. Read more.

The Sargasso Sea is a region of the North Atlantic Ocean bounded by four currents forming an ocean gyre. Unlike all other regions called seas, it has no land boundaries. It is distinguished from other parts of the Atlantic Ocean by its characteristic brown Sargassum seaweed and often calm blue water. The sea is bounded on the west by the Gulf Stream, on the north by the North Atlantic Current, on the east by the Canary Current, and on the south by the North Atlantic Equatorial Current, a clockwise-circulating system of ocean currents termed the North Atlantic Gyre. It lies between 70º and 40º W, and 20º to 35º N, and is approximately 1,100 km wide by 3,200 km long (700 by 2,000 statute miles).[5][6] Bermuda is near the western fringes of the sea. All the currents deposit the marine plants and refuse they carry into this sea, yet the ocean water in the Sargasso Sea is distinctive for its deep blue color and exceptional clarity, with underwater visibility of up to 61 m (200 ft).It is also a body of water that has captured the public imagination, and so is seen in a wide variety of literary and artistic works and in popular culture.

Group of Monuments at Hampi

The austere, grandiose site of Hampi was the last capital of the last great Hindu Kingdom of Vijayanagar. Its fabulously rich princes built Dravidian temples and palaces which won the admiration of travellers between the 14th and 16th centuries. Conquered by the Deccan Muslim confederacy in 1565, the city was pillaged over a period of six months before being abandoned.

BRT wildlife sanctuary is located in Karnataka.

The most common chemicals used for cloud seeding include silver iodide, potassium iodide and dry ice (solid carbon dioxide). Liquid propane, which expands into a gas, has also been used.

Researchers have found that the common bonnet monkey of South India may soon become an ‘endangered’ species. They say the distributional range of this monkey is shrinking in eastern Maharashtra, northern parts of Karnataka, and western Telangana because of the slow incursion of the larger, more aggressive rhesus monkey from the northern region.

Statement 2 is incorrect.

Greenhouse gases are – water vapour, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, ozone and chlorofluorocarbons.

Salim Ali National park, Dachingham National Park and Kishtwar National Park are located in the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Hirpora Wildlife Sanctuary or Heerpora Wildlife Sanctuary is located in Shopian district. Critically endangered Pir Panjal markhor is found here.

White-bellied heron

• Scientific name: Ardea insignis
• Habitat: The white-bellied heron, also known as the imperial heron or great white-bellied heron, is a species of large heron found in the foothills of the eastern Himalayas in India, northeastern Bangladesh, Burma and Bhutan.
• IUCN classification: Critically Endangered
• Threats: species is threatened by disturbance and habitat degradation.

ASEAN is India’s fourth largest trading partner with total trade in 2016-17 at $71.69 billion. India has suffered a trade deficit in respect of five ASEAN members.

NBFCs lend and make investments and hence their activities are akin to that of banks; however there are a few differences as given below:

1. NBFC cannot accept demand deposits;
2. NBFCs do not form part of the payment and settlement system and cannot issue cheques drawn on itself;
3. deposit insurance facility of Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation is not available to depositors of NBFCs, unlike in case of banks.

Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC)

• It is an apex-level body constituted by the government of India.
• FSDC has replaced the High Level Coordination Committee on Financial Markets (HLCCFM), which was facilitating regulatory coordination, though informally, prior to the setting up of FSDC. It is not a statutory body.
• Chairperson: The Union Finance Minister of India

The Nilgiri langur is a type of Old World monkey found in the Nilgiri Hills of the Western Ghats in South India. Its range also includes Kodagu in Karnataka, Kodayar Hills in Tamil Nadu, and many other hilly areas in Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

• India’s first museum on the Partition of the Indian Sub-continent will soon open in Amritsar, Punjab, which focuses on stories and display memorabilia of survivors.

• The museum will include newspaper clippings and donated personal items meant to tell the story of how the region’s struggle for freedom from colonial rule turned into one of its most violent episodes, as communal clashes left hundreds of thousands of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs dead and another 15 million displaced from their ancestral homes.

India’s first-ever railways disaster management centre is expected to come up near Bengaluru, Karnataka by 2018 and will be used to replicate train accidents to improve rescue operation efforts. It will also have a virtual reality centre for analyzing railway accidents. The focus is on imparting state-of-the-art training on rescue, medical relief and rolling stock restoration techniques in a classroom and also using various simulated teaching aids.

Japanese encephalitis (JE) is a disease spread through mosquito bites. Symptoms usually take 5-15 days to develop and include fever, headache, vomiting, confusion, and difficulty moving. Symptoms that develop later include swelling around the brain and coma. JE is a serious disease that may cause death.

In significant changes in electoral funding norms, corporate donations to political parties will no longer face any ceiling linked to firms’ profitability and companies will no longer be obliged to inform their shareholders which party’s coffers they contribute to. These changes were introduced by the government in the amendments to the Finance act of 2017 Earlier, companies can only contribute up to 7.5% of their average net profits in the past three financial years to political parties. Moreover, they are required to disclose the amount of contributions made and the names of the political parties to which they were made, in their profit and loss accounts. The government has included an amendment to the Companies Act of 2013 to do away with the 7.5% of net profits limit set on donations and the requirement for a company to disclose the name of political parties to which they donate.

Prime Minister

State List

Both are correct.

All the weather phenomenon takes place in the troposphere. Meteorites burn up on entering the mesosphere. Stratosphere is ideal for flying aeroplanes.

Teesta is a tributary of River Brahmaputra.

Karst topography

Tropical cyclones do not form over the equator because the Coriolis force is zero at the equator. 

Gini coefficient is a measure of statistical dispersion intended to represent the income or wealth distribution of a nation’s residents.

Transport of water

Majuli in Assam.

Maldives

KONKAN is an annual bilateral maritime exercise between the Indian Navy and the Royal Navy of the UK.