Daily Current Affairs MCQ- July 20, 2022 - UPSC MCQ

Elections for Vice-President are scheduled for August 6, with the last date for filing nominations July 19.

Vice-President on India

• The office of the Vice-president is a unique feature of India, which follows a parliamentary system, and has no exact parallel in other democratic countries, including the Commonwealth.
• The second-highest constitutional authority after the President, the Vice-President draws his or her powers from Article 63 of the Constitution.
• Article 63 states that there shall be a Vice-President of India.
• Role & responsibilities
  • Article 64 confers upon the post the power to be ex-officio Chairman of the Council of States (the Rajya Sabha).
  • In effect, the Vice-President discharges duties of both the Vice-President and Rajya Sabha chairperson.
  • Under Article 64 (2), the Vice-President(VP) also discharges presidential functions when the President is unable to do so owing to absence, illness or any other cause.
  • As per Article 65, the VP can act as the President, in the event of the occurrence of any vacancy in the office of the President by reason of his death, resignation or removal or “until the date on which a new President enters upon his office.

Hence only statement 2 is correct.

Customers will have to pay a 5% Goods and Services Tax (GST) on pre-packed, labelled food items such as atta, paneer and curd, besides hospital rooms with rents above ₹5,000, starting from 18 July 2022.

• Hotel rooms with tariffs of up to ₹1,000 a day, maps and charts, including atlases, will attract a 12% GST, while cartons and fees charged by banks for the issue of cheques (loose or in book form) will attract 18%.
• Tax rates on products such as printing, writing or drawing ink; knives with cutting blades, pencil sharpeners; LED lamps; and drawing instruments will be hiked to 18% on July 18, 2022, from 12% currently, to correct the inverted duty anomaly.
• Solar water heaters will now attract a 12% GST from the 5% earlier.
• The tax on services such as work contracts for roads, bridges, railways, metro facilities, effluent treatment plants and crematoriums will go up to 18% from the current 12%.
• Renting of trucks and goods carriages where the cost of fuel is included will now attract a lower 12% rate as against 18%.

Hence only statement 1 is correct.

Europe is battling intense wildfires with countries like Spain, Greece and France struggling to stamp out fires and contain the damage.

• Wildfires require right climatic conditions, burnable fuel and a spark.
• Rising temperatures suck moisture out of plants, creating an abundance of dry fuel.
• Drought and high heat can kill plants and dry out dead grass, and other material on the forest floor that fuel the fire once it starts sweeping through a patch.
• While dry vegetation is the burnable fuel that serves as kindling for fires, the spark is sometimes caused by lightning, at other times by accident or recklessness of the local population.
• As for Europe, the region has been hit by an early fire season due to an unusually dry, hot spring that left the soil parched. Authorities attribute this to climate change.

Hence only statement 1 is correct.

Eleven districts of Bengal reported at least 65 cases of black fever or ‘Kala-Azar disease in the last couple of weeks.

• Kala-azar or Visceral Leishmaniasis is a protozoan parasitic disease, spread by sandfly bites. Sandflies are brown in colour and have hairs on their bodies.
• The flies are infected with the parasite called ‘leishmania donovani’.
• The vector sandfly is known to live in cracks and crevices of muddy houses, especially in dark and humid corners. According to the WHO, there are 3 main forms of leishmaniases of which kala-azar is the most serious form.
• The disease affects some of the poorest people and is linked to malnutrition, population displacement, poor housing, a weak immune system and a lack of financial resources.
• Leishmaniasis is also linked to environmental changes such as deforestation, and urbanisation, according to WHO.
• In 2020, more than 90 per cent of new cases reported to WHO occurred in 10 countries: Brazil, China, Ethiopia, Eritrea, India, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Yemen.
• In India, the disease is endemic in Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

Hence both statements are correct.

After banning the import of plastic waste in 2019, the Environment Ministry has permitted containers made of polyethylene terephthalate, as plastic waste, to be imported for processing.

• The decision to roll back the ban was taken last year after representations by several industries in the business of processing waste said there was too little waste available for them in India and this was causing them financial losses.
• An expert committee of the Environment Ministry, last December, recommended that firms which had applied for permission could import polyethylene terephthalate flakes and bottles up to 50% of their production capacity.
• Polyethylene terephthalate is a category of plastic, and nearly 90% of the domestic supply of containers using them is already recycled.
• However, this reprieve has not gone down well with environmentalist groups.

Hence both statements are correct.

The Rajya Sabha approved the Constitution (Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) Order (Amendment) Bill, 2022 to remove the Bhogta caste from the list of Scheduled Castes (SCs).

• The Bhogta caste will be included instead as a Scheduled Tribe in the State.
• The Bill also amends the schedule to the Scheduled Tribes order to include the Deshwari, Ganjhu, Dautalbandi (Dwalbandi), Patbandi, Raut, Maajhia, Khairi (Kheri), Tamaria (Tamadia) and Puran communities on the ST list.

Hence both statements are correct.

With space junk posing increasing threat to Indian assets in space, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is building up its orbital debris tracking capability by deploying new radars and optical telescopes under the Network for Space Objects Tracking and Analysis (NETRA) project.

• A space debris tracking radar with a range of 1,500 km and an optical telescope will be inducted as part of establishing an effective surveillance and tracking network under NETRA.
• The government has given the go-ahead for the deployment of the radar, which will be capable of detecting and tracking objects 10 cm and above in size, he said. It will be indigenously designed and built.
• Radars and optical telescopes are vital ground-based facilities for keeping an eye on space objects, including orbital junk.
• Space junk or debris consists of spent rocket stages, dead satellites, fragments of space objects and debris resulting from ASAT.
• Hurtling at an average speed of 27,000 kmph in LEO, these objects pose a very real threat as collisions involving even centimetre-sized fragments can be lethal to satellites.
• For protecting its space assets, ISRO was forced to perform 19 collision avoidance manoeuvres (CAM) in 2021, of which 14 were in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and five in the geostationary orbit. The number of CAMs jumped from just three in 2015 to 12 in 2020 and 19 in 2021.

Hence both statements are correct.

The Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Bill, 2022 was passed by Lok Sabha.

• The Bill seeks to amend the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act, 1957 passed by Parliament.
• The Act was amended in 2011 by Delhi Legislative Assembly to trifurcate the erstwhile Municipal Corporation of Delhi into: (i) North Delhi Municipal Corporation, (ii) South Delhi Municipal Corporation, and (iii) East Delhi Municipal Corporation.
• The Bill seeks to unify the three corporations. The Bill replaces the three municipal corporations under the Act with one Corporation named the Municipal Corporation of Delhi.
• The Act as amended in 2011 empowers the Delhi government to decide various matters under the Act such as total number of seats of councillors, delimitation of wards etc. The Bill instead empowers the central government to decide these matters.
• The Act provides that the number of seats in the three corporations taken together should not be more than 272. The Bill states that the total number of seats in the new Corporation should not be more than 250.
• The Act provides for a Director of Local Bodies to assist the Delhi government and discharge certain functions. The Bill omits the provision for a Director of Local Bodies.
• The Bill provides that the central government may appoint a Special Officer to exercise powers of the Corporation until the first meeting of the Corporation is held after the commencement of the Bill.

Hence only statement 1 is correct.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for strengthening the BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation), and welcomed the unveiling of the Charter of the organisation that connects the littoral countries of the Bay of Bengal.

• The summit concluded in Colombo.
• The signing of the Charter was the main outcome of this summit. Under this Charter, the members were expected to meet once in every two years.
• With the Charter, the BIMSTEC now has an international personality. It has an emblem, it has a flag. It has a formally listed purpose and principles that it is going to adhere to. It represents significant evolution of the grouping.
• India will be the “security pillar” of the BIMSTEC. For developing the organisation into a formal structure, the leaders of the member-countries had agreed to divide the working of the grouping into seven segments, with India providing leadership to the security pillar.
• The Prime Minister called for a Free Trade Agreement among the member countries.
• The summit saw the declaration of the Master Plan for Transport Connectivity that would provide a framework for regional and domestic connectivity.
• He mentioned the necessity for coastal shipping ecosystem and electricity grid interconnectivity, as two of the necessary components of the evolving shape of the BIMSTEC.
• It currently has 7 Member States, with:
  • 5 Members from South Asia that is Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal & Bhutan.
  • 2 from South-East Asia that is Myanmar and Thailand.

Hence, option (d) is the correct answer.

On March 23, Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded that European countries must pay for all natural gas imports in rubles instead of the US dollar or the euro. The European Union imports 40 per cent of its natural gas requirements.

• The Russian ruble or rouble is the official currency of the Russian Federation. The ruble is subdivided into 100 kopeks.
• Russia would not accept natural gas payments in currencies that have “compromised”. This list of currencies included dollars and euros.
• The move to accept payments only in rubles has been done to increase the demand for rubles in the international market.
• The ruble had been weakening against the dollar in the weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine.

Hence both statements are correct.