Indian Administration Questions and Answers

Answer: A

The correct matches are the National Authority for the Chemical Weapons Convention with 1997, the Performance Management Division with 2009, the National Advisory Council with 2004 and the Council on Climate Change with 2008. This is the code (iv) (iii) (ii) (i).

The other codes give at least one body a wrong year, for example the Chemical Weapons Authority with 2008 or the National Advisory Council with 2009, and are wrong.

Answer: D

Article 258 empowers the President to entrust, with the consent of the State Government, functions of the Union Government to a State. It is the Article about the President's power to entrust Union matters to a State with its consent.

Article 248 gives residuary powers of legislation to Parliament. Article 256 requires States to comply with Union laws, and Article 257 gives the Union control over States in certain matters. They do not relate to entrusting functions by consent.

Answer: C

The correct matching is a-iii, b-ii, c-iv, d-i. The Second Report of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission is Unlocking Human Capital: Entitlements and Governance. The Tenth Report is Refurbishing of Personnel Administration, the Eleventh is Promoting e-Governance, the SMART Way Forward, and the Twelfth is Citizen Centric Administration, the Heart of Governance.

The other codes give the Citizen Centric title or the e-governance title to the wrong report. Only the third code matches all four reports.

Answer: A

The Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister is the administrative head of the Prime Minister's Office. He or she runs the Office and is the Prime Minister's principal link with the civil service.

The Cabinet Secretary heads the Cabinet Secretariat and the civil service as a whole, not the PMO. The Home Secretary heads the Ministry of Home Affairs. A senior Secretary to the Government of India is a post that has no fixed charge of the PMO. The first option is the answer.

Answer: A

Both statements are correct and (R) explains (A). Judicial activism has widened the avenues for growth and reduced the grievances of ordinary citizens by making administration more orderly. The reason is that citizens approach the courts against excesses and inefficiencies of administration.

The courts act on those complaints and direct the administration to correct its conduct, so (R) gives the reason for (A). The second option would hold if the link were absent, and the last two options call a correct statement false. The first option is the answer.

Answer: B

The key treats the guidance of the Central Bureau of Investigation as the one that is not a function of the Central Vigilance Commission. The Commission does exercise superintendence over the Delhi Special Police Establishment in matters under the Prevention of Corruption Act, and it concurs in the appointment of Chief Vigilance Officers.

It also takes part in the committee that recommends the Director of the CBI, so the first, third and fourth statements are functions. By elimination the second statement is the one the official key names.

Answer: B

The key identifies the decentralisation of training institutions for gazetted officers up to district level all over India as the one that is not a recommendation of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission on training.

The other three fit its report: a monitoring mechanism for the implementation of the National Training Policy, encouraging public servants to write papers for reputed journals, and a National Institute of Good Governance. By elimination, the second option is the one that was not a recommendation.

Answer: C

Proliferating political parties is not oriented to tackle bureaucratisation. A growth in the number of parties does not curb the power of the bureaucracy and can even raise dependence on it.

Educating people about their rights, organising them in self-help groups and promoting democratic decentralisation all give citizens a stronger voice, which is the way to check excessive bureaucratisation.

A fragmented party system can make government unstable and strengthen the permanent civil service, so it works against any effort to reduce bureaucratic dominance.

Answer: B

The Department of Border Management is part of the Ministry of Home Affairs, which looks after the management of the international borders, border infrastructure and the Border Roads work.

The Ministry of Defence deals with the armed forces, External Affairs with foreign relations, and Road Transport and Highways with roads, so none of them houses this department.

Border management covers the guarding of land borders, the building of border fencing and roads, and the integrated check posts, and it is a department within the Home Ministry.

Answer: C

The statement that is not correct is that the cabinet is an executor of policy. The cabinet is the prime policy maker and an advisory body to the President, but carrying policy out is the work of the ministries and departments under the ministers, not of the cabinet as a body.

'It is a chief executive' is accepted by the key as a loose description of the cabinet at the apex of the executive, since it is the cabinet that exercises the real executive power of the Union. So the keyed choice is the one that places execution in the cabinet itself.