Daily Current Affairs MCQ - July 27, 2021 - UPSC MCQ

The central government last week decided to declare the “84 kos parikrama marg” around Ayodhya a national highway.

• Road Transport and Highways Ministry has issued Draft Notification declaring ‘Chaurasi Koshi Parikrama Marg’ as National Highway in the state of Uttar Pradesh.
• All three parikramas in Ayodhya — the 5 kos (around 15 km), 14 kos (42 km), and 84 kos (about 275 km) parikramas — are linked to Lord Ram.
• The Baal Kand of the Valmiki Ramayana mentions that Ayodhya was earlier known as Koshaldesh, intially spread over 48 kos, and was later expanded to 84 kos.
• The 84 kos parikrama is a circumambulation of Koshaldesh, touching all important places associated with the kingdom of Ram.
• The 14 kos parikrama is for the main Ayodhya city of that time, and the 5 kos parikrama circumabulates the inner circle within which the heart of Ram’s kingdom was located.

Parikrama and its route

• It is believed that King Dasharath performed a Putrayeshthi Yajna on the bank of the Manorama river some 20 km from Ayodhya, to seek sons from the gods.
• Subsequently, he was blessed with four sons from his three wives.
• The 84 kos parikrama starts and ends — after about 22 days — from the place where the yajna was performed, now identified as Makhaura in Basti.
• Besides Ayodhya, similar parikramas are performed by devotees at Govardhan in Braj, Kamadgiri in Chitrakoot, and Tiruvannamalai in Tamil Nadu.
• Hence both statements are correct.

The National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG), conceived as a ₹20,000-crore programme in 2014 to clean up the river, has so far been allocated ₹15,074 crore.

• Of this only ₹10,972 crore, or about two-thirds, has been released by the Finance Ministry to the NMCG, a body under the Jal Shakti Ministry. The NMCG further allocates the money to the riverine States.
• The planned outlay for the Ganga clean-up mission, accounting for future costs, is well over ₹20,000 crore.
• Overall, 346 projects had been taken up at a sanctioned cost of ₹30,235 crore, out of which, 158 projects are completed.
• Uttar Pradesh, at ₹3,535 crore, has received the most funds, followed by Bihar (₹2,631 crore), Bengal (₹1,030 cr) and Uttarakhand (₹1001 cr).

Hence only statement 1 is correct.

Typhoon In-fa, known in the Philippines as Typhoon Fabian, is an active and very large tropical cyclone inland over China.

• The system was first noted as an area of low pressure, located east of the Philippines on July 14. Favorable conditions helped the storm to intensify, becoming a tropical depression, two days later and a tropical storm on July 17.
• The storm has exacerbated and played a part in starting the 2021 Henan floods. Since 17 July 2021, China's Henan province has been affected by severe flooding, caused by a period of prolonged heavy rainfall.
• according to projections, In-fa would beat Typhoon Fitow of 2013 as the costliest typhoon to strike China, and the third costliest typhoon on record (a total of $14.7 billion) when adjusted for inflation.
• Hence both statements are correct.

India’s foreign exchange reserves rose by $835 million to touch a record high of $612.73 billion in the week ended July 16, 2021, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data showed.

• According to weekly data from the RBI, forex reserves rose to a record $612.73 billion in the reporting week, helped by a rise in Foreign Currency Assets (FCA), a major component of the overall reserves.
• India’s forex reserves cover Foreign Currency Assets (FCAs), Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), Gold Reserves and the country’s reserve position with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
• Currently, China has the largest reserves followed by Japan and Switzerland. India has overtaken Russia to become the fourth largest country with foreign exchange reserves.

Hence, option (d) is the correct answer.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 26, 2021, paid tributes to Kargil martyrs on the Vijay Diwas day.

• Kargil Vijay Diwas is commemorated every 26th July in India, to observe India’s victory over Pakistan in the War of 1999 for the ejecting the Pakistani Forces from the mountain tops of Northern Kargil District in Ladakh in 1999. Initially, the Pakistani army denied involvement in the war, claiming that it was caused by Kashmiri militants forces. However, documents left behind by casualties, testimony of POWs and later statements by Pakistan's Prime Minister and Chief of Army Staff showed the involvement of Pakistani paramilitary forces, led by General Ashraf Rashid.
• The infiltration was code named "Operation Badri". The aim of the Pakistani incursion was to sever the link between Kashmir and Ladakh and cause Indian forces to withdraw from the Siachen Glacier, thus forcing India to negotiate a settlement of the broader Kashmir dispute.

Hence only statement 2 is correct.

Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI):

• Launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in September 2019 at the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Action Summit in New York, US.
• A platform where knowledge is generated and exchanged on different aspects of disaster and climate resilience of infrastructure.
• It will create a mechanism to assist countries to upgrade their capacities and practices, with regard to infrastructure development in accordance with their risk context and economic needs.

The department of public enterprises (DPE) has now been made part of the finance ministry. For years, DPE was part of the ministry of heavy industries, with a separate department carved out for public enterprises. The department will oversee the functioning of 36 PSUs, apart from issues such as heavy engineering and automobiles, providing the finance minister direct oversight over policies related to some key manufacturing sectors.

REITs are investment vehicles that pool investor money like mutual funds and use it to buy a portfolio of real estate assets. They manage these assets to generate a regular income and capital appreciation. In order to ensure that the REIT is able to generate income, 80 per cent of the portfolio of a REIT should be invested in completed and rent-generating properties.

While REITs can invest in all kinds of income-generating properties — residences, offices, hotels, malls, warehouses, in India the listed REITs are focussed mainly on office space.

As per SEBI’s guidelines, REITs need to mandatorily distribute 90 per cent of their income to unit-holders. The distribution could be in the form of dividend or interest income or both.

• The term "Minority" is not defined in the Indian Constitution. However, the Constitution recognises only religious and linguistic minorities.
  • 6 Minority Communities in India: Jain, Parsi, Buddhist, Christian, Sikh and Muslim (notified by the Government).
• Article 29: It provides that any section of the citizens residing in any part of India having a distinct language, script or culture of its own, shall have the right to conserve the same.
  • It grants protection to both religious minorities as well as linguistic minorities. Hence, statement 1 is not correct.
• Article 30: Under the article, all minorities shall have the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice.
  • The protection under Article 30 is confined only to minorities (religious or linguistic) and does not extend to any section of citizens (as under Article 29). Hence, statement 2 is not correct.
• Article 350-B: The 7^th Constitutional (Amendment) Act 1956 inserted this article which provides for a Special Officer for Linguistic Minorities appointed by the President of India. Hence, statement 3 is correct.

• The Western Indian Ocean (WIO) is where the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea meet.
  • It connects North America, Europe and Asia, and as such is of global strategic importance. Hence, statement 1 is correct.
• The Western Indian Ocean (WIO) region comprises 10 countries: Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa, Comoros, Madagascar, Seychelles, Mauritius, and the French overseas territory of Réunion.
  • Its rich natural resource profile has pushed global players to view the region with increasing interest in recent years.
• The Maritime Security (MASE) Programme was adopted in 2010 in Mauritius, and is jointly run by the European Union (EU) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
  • The programme’s primary objective is to strengthen the maritime security capacity of Eastern and Southern Africa and the WIO region in order to implement the Regional Strategy and Action Plan against Piracy. Hence, statement 2 is correct.
  • Indian Ocean Commission (IOC) is a part of the MASE Programme. Hence, statement 3 is correct.