Where is the seventeenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity being held?

The correct answer is Rs 2.02 crore, the sum the Authority released among twenty-seven states and three union territories as their share of contributions paid by seed companies. Option A names the amount that went to the ten largest recipient states alone, which is a part of the total and not the total itself. Option C is simply a tenfold misreading of the figure and matches nothing in the announcement. Option D names the cumulative disbursement made by the Authority over the years, which reached that level once this release was added, so it measures the whole record rather than this single payment. Candidates should keep the three numbers apart: the single disbursement, the top ten share and the cumulative total, because questions are often framed to confuse them.

The correct answer is the Biological Diversity Act of that year, under which the National Biodiversity Authority, the State Biodiversity Boards and the Union Territory Biodiversity Councils function, and through which access and benefit-sharing is implemented. The framework also works with the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan for the period ending in the next decade. Option A deals with general environmental protection powers and not with benefit-sharing from genetic resources. Option B protects wild species and their habitats through schedules and sanctuaries, a separate scheme of law. Option D governs the diversion of forest land for non-forest use and has nothing to do with sharing the benefits of biological resources. The Act named in the correct option is the one that created the Authority making this disbursement.

The correct answer is Dr. S.D. Attri, Member (Technical), CAQM, under whose chairmanship the high-level team visited the two hotspot districts and held the review meeting. Option A is wrong because the visit was led by the Member (Technical) and not by the head of the Commission. Option C is wrong because the Deputy Commissioners of Amritsar and Tarn Taran were the district officials who attended and reported to the visiting team, not its leaders. Option D is wrong because State Pollution Control Boards are among the agencies whose measures the Commission monitors and reviews, so the Punjab board's chairman would be on the receiving side of such a review rather than leading it. The team's brief was to assess preparedness for in-situ and ex-situ use of paddy straw.

The correct answer is 18. As part of its monitoring mechanism the Commission has deployed Flying Squads in eighteen districts of Punjab for the period running from the first of October to the last day of November in the same year. The named districts include Sangrur, Tarn Taran, Firozpur, Muktsar, Bathinda, Amritsar, Moga, Mansa, Fazilka, Patiala, Ludhiana, Kapurthala, Faridkot, Barnala, Malerkotla, Gurdaspur, Jalandhar and Fatehgarh Sahib. Options A, B and D give smaller or larger counts that do not match this list, so they are wrong. Candidates should also note that the Flying Squads are only one layer of surveillance; district, nodal and cluster officers, low-cost sensors, control rooms and helplines form the rest of the monitoring arrangement described by the Commission.

The correct answer is Amritsar and Tarn Taran. The high-level CAQM team visited these two districts during the paddy harvesting season because both have been identified as hotspots for paddy stubble burning, and the review meeting with Deputy Commissioners was held at Amritsar. Options A, C and D all name districts of Punjab, and each of them appears in the separate list of eighteen districts where the Commission has posted Flying Squads for the season, but none of them was the subject of this particular visit and review meeting. Ludhiana and Patiala, Sangrur and Bathinda, and Moga and Mansa are therefore plausible but wrong. The distinction to hold on to is between the two districts reviewed on the ground and the wider set of districts under Flying Squad surveillance.