National Coastal Mission 2.0 is to be implemented across how many coastal states and Union Territories?

The correct answer is Rs 767 crore. The mission is a Central Sector Scheme, so the whole of that amount comes from the Centre, and it is to be spent up to the year 2030-31 across nine coastal states and four Union Territories. Option A, Rs 367 crore, is wrong because no such figure is attached to the mission; the sanctioned outlay is larger. Option C, Rs 1,767 crore, and option D, Rs 2,767 crore, are wrong for the same reason and are the kind of inflated figures a paper setter adds to test whether a candidate remembers the exact number rather than the order of magnitude. For the examination hall the safest way to hold this fact is as a set: the scheme is National Coastal Mission 2.0, the money is Rs 767 crore, the type is Central Sector, and the closing year is 2030-31.

The correct answer is the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, and the guidelines were released by its minister, Bhupender Yadav, in New Delhi. Option A, the Ministry of Jal Shakti, handles rivers, irrigation and drinking water, not the coastal zone programme. Option B, the Ministry of Earth Sciences, runs ocean research and forecasting services and is a natural distractor for anything to do with the sea, but the mission is not its scheme. Option D, the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, looks after ports and shipping rather than coastal ecosystems. The mission sits with the environment ministry because its subject matter is coastal resilience: vulnerability assessment, ecosystem restoration, pollution management and biodiversity conservation, with sustainable tourism and spatial planning alongside them, and the blue economy as the wider goal.

The correct answer is the Commission for Air Quality Management, usually written as CAQM, which the ministry named as the body coordinating work with the agencies concerned. Option A, the Central Pollution Control Board, sets and enforces pollution standards across the country and runs the monitoring network, but it is not the coordinating commission for the capital region named here. Option C, the National Green Tribunal, is an adjudicating body that hears environmental cases and does not run pollution control programmes. Option D, the Indian Meteorological Department, forecasts weather and supplies the wind and temperature data that air quality forecasts rest on, which makes it a plausible distractor, but it is a weather agency rather than a pollution authority. Along with the numbers, examiners like to ask which body owns the air quality mandate for the capital region, and the answer is CAQM.

The correct answer is 102. The Environment Ministry placed the September average for Delhi at 102, and set it against 105 in 2025, 105 in 2024, 108 in 2023 and 104 in 2022, which makes it the lowest September reading across those five years. Option A, 92, is wrong because the index did not fall that far; it would have put Delhi in a better band than the moderate one the reading actually sits in. Option C, 112, and option D, 122, are both higher than any of the five September averages named, so neither can be the lowest of the run. Candidates should note that a lowest-in-five-years claim always needs the comparison set, and here the whole set is worth carrying: 102 for the current year against 105, 105, 108 and 104 for the four years before it.

The correct answer is 194 days. A daily average below 200 falls in the moderate category, and the nine months of the current year gave 194 such days, the most in the five-year comparison. Option A, 146 days, is the figure for 2022, the weakest year of the set, and is a classic trap because it belongs to the same table. Option B, 187 days, is the figure for 2025, the year immediately before, and is the nearest wrong answer a candidate can pick by confusing the two most recent years; 2024 gave 188 days and 2023 gave 193 days. Option D, 214 days, does not appear in the comparison at all. Read together with the fall in bad-air days from 127 in 2022 to 79 this year, the direction of the trend is what the release is claiming, and the figure asked for is 194.