UPSC Quiz – 2021 : IASbaba’s Daily Current Affairs Quiz 22nd JULY 2021

Solution (b)

‘Police’ and ‘Public Order’ are State subjects under the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution of India and therefore, it is the primary duty of the State Governments to prevent, detect, register and investigate crime and prosecute the criminals. Central Government, however, supplements the efforts of the State Governments by providing them financial assistance for modernization of their Police Forces in terms of weaponry, communication, equipment, mobility, training and other infrastructure under the Scheme of Modernization of State Police Forces.

Criminal law including all matters included in the Indian Penal Code at the commencement of the Constitution is part of Concurrent list under the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution.

Article Link: A more humane police force

Solution (d)

The only floating constituency in India is Sangha- that is in Sikkim. This is the only constituency in the country without any geographical boundaries and one for which only Buddhist monks registered with 51 monasteries within the state can contest and vote.

The 32- Sangha assembly constituency in Sikkim was created in 1958 for the Sikkim state council on the requests of monastery associations and was retained with its special character even after 1975 when Sikkim became a state of India. Article 371 (F) of the Constitution of India protects the special character of Sikkim and various laws of the then kingdom.

The same was also upheld by the Supreme Court in 1993. The apex court recognised that Sanghas were culturally a part of Sikkim’s council decision-making for the last 300 years and since the time of Chogyal kings of the state and hence ruled that this reservation was not purely religion based and therefore not unconstitutional.

Article Link: Kashmiri Pandits propose ‘floating’ constituency

Solution (d)

The president from time to time summons each House of Parliament to meet. But, the maximum gap between two sessions of Parliament cannot be more than six months. In other words, the Parliament should meet at least twice a year.

A ‘session’ of Parliament is the period spanning between the first sitting of a House and its prorogation (or dissolution in the case of the Lok Sabha).

An adjournment suspends the work in a sitting for a specified time, which may be hours, days or weeks.

Adjournment sine die means terminating a sitting of Parliament for an indefinite period. In other words, when the House is adjourned without naming a day for reassembly, it is called adjournment sine die.

Solution (b)

Near-Earth Asteroid Scout, or NEA Scout, is a miniaturized spacecraft, known as a CubeSat, developed under NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) Program.

Its main mission is to fly by and collect data from a near-Earth asteroid. It will also be America’s first interplanetary mission using special solar sail propulsion.

NEA Scout is equipped with special cameras and can take pictures ranging from 50 cm/pixels to 10 cm/pixels. It can also process the image and reduce the file sizes before sending them to the earth-based Deep Space Network via its medium-gain antenna.

Article Link: What makes NASA’s new spacecraft NEA Scout special?

Solution (c)

Africa has become the first continent in the world to complete the collection of accurate, comprehensive and harmonised digital land use and land use change data under the Africa Open DEAL initiative. 

DEAL stands for Data for the Environment, Agriculture and Land Initiative.

The data collection and analysis initiative is led by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the African Union Commission (AUC).

The continent survey revealed that there are around seven billion trees outside forests in Africa.

Article Link: Africa becomes first continent to complete collection of digital land use data