UPSC Civil Services 2015 Previous Year GK Questions with Answers

The correct answer is C, 1 and 3 only. BirdLife International is a worldwide partnership of independent national conservation organisations, with its secretariat at Cambridge in the United Kingdom, so statement 1 is correct. It is also the body that identifies and maintains the inventory of Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas, the sites that hold key populations of birds, which makes statement 3 correct. Statement 2 is the trap: the concept of biodiversity hotspots was proposed by the British ecologist Norman Myers in 1988 and was later developed by Conservation International, not by BirdLife International. Because statement 2 is wrong, option D, which takes all three, falls away, and option B, which keeps statement 2 while dropping the correct statement 1, is doubly wrong. Option A is incomplete because it leaves out statement 3. Remember the pairing: hotspots belong to Myers and Conservation International, Important Bird Areas belong to BirdLife.

The correct answer is D, Fundamental Duties. Upholding and protecting the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India is listed as a duty of every citizen, so the provision sits among the Fundamental Duties and not in any other part. The Fundamental Duties were added as Part IVA, Article 51A, by the 42nd Constitutional Amendment Act of 1976 on the recommendation of the Swaran Singh Committee; ten were added then and an eleventh, on the education of children, came with the 86th Amendment of 2002. They are moral obligations and cannot be enforced by a court on their own. A is wrong because the Preamble speaks of the unity and integrity of the nation as an ideal but lays no duty on a citizen. B is wrong because the Directive Principles address the State, not the citizen. C is wrong because Fundamental Rights are claims a citizen holds against the State. Exam tip: Article 51A came with the 42nd Amendment, 1976.