BPSC 71st CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 46 of 150

Correct — C, 2 1 4 3. Build the code pairing by pairing instead of reading the four options. (a) Perform, Achieve and Trade is the Bureau of Energy Efficiency's market instrument under the Ministry of Power. It fixes a mandated cut in specific energy consumption — energy used per tonne of output — on each notified 'designated consumer', the largest plants in energy-intensive sectors such as thermal power, iron and steel, cement, aluminium and fertiliser, and lets a plant that beats its target sell the surplus as a tradeable Energy Savings Certificate. Its legal machinery was notified as GSR 269(E) on 30 March 2012 under the Energy Conservation Act, 2001, and BEE's own dashboard puts its reach at 1,333 industrial units, about 55% of all industrial energy consumed in India, and 25.78 million tonnes of oil equivalent saved. That is item 2, 'Aims to reduce emissions in energy-intensive industries'. (b) MISHTI was announced by the Finance Minister in the Union Budget speech of 1 February 2023 — the Budget for 2023-24 — and launched on World Environment Day, 5 June 2023, so b) takes item 1. (c) The 'LIFE — Lifestyle For Environment' idea was put to the world by the Prime Minister in India's National Statement at COP26, Glasgow, on 1 November 2021, in the same address that carried the Panchamrit pledges, so c) takes item 4. (d) The National Clean Air Programme was launched by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change on 10 January 2019 as India's first national, time-bound air-quality strategy, so d) takes item 3. Read in the printed order a-b-c-d that is 2 1 4 3, which is option (c). Notice also that List-II offers each attribute exactly once — one bare year, one Budget, one international summit and one functional description — so every item is used once and no pairing can be doubled up.

• (a)1 3 2 4 — All four pairings fail. It makes PAT the Union Budget 2023-24 announcement, when PAT is a regulatory instrument notified under the Energy Conservation Act, 2001 and not a Budget scheme at all; it dates MISHTI to 2019, which is NCAP's year; it sends the Lifestyle for Environment initiative to 'energy-intensive industries', when LiFE targets individual and household behaviour and sets no industrial target; and it puts the National Clean Air Programme on the COP26 stage, when NCAP was launched domestically in New Delhi in January 2019.
• (b)3 4 1 2 — This is the mirror-image error and is wrong in all four places. It dates PAT to 2019 (that is NCAP's launch year), sends MISHTI to COP26 Glasgow (MISHTI is a domestic mangrove-restoration scheme run by MoEFCC and was never announced at a Conference of the Parties), makes LiFE a Union Budget 2023-24 item (the Budget item that year was MISHTI, alongside Amrit Dharohar and GOBARdhan), and turns the National Clean Air Programme into an industrial energy-efficiency scheme when its entire architecture is city-level air-quality action plans for particulate matter.
• (d)More than one of the above — In a matching question only one permutation of List-II can be the correct answer, because each List-I entry has exactly one true partner. For 'More than one of the above' to hold, two different codes would have to be simultaneously correct, which is arithmetically impossible here. Checking directly: (a) mis-pairs all four items and (b) mis-pairs all four items, so neither can join (c). BPSC's fourth option is genuinely correct on other questions in this paper, so treat it as a live possibility and disprove it — but on a single code-matching item it can never be right.

The four names in List-I look alike — all four are Government of India environmental programmes of the last decade — but each one is a different kind of policy instrument, and that is what the question really tests. PAT is market-based regulation: a statutory target imposed on named industrial plants under the Energy Conservation Act, 2001, made tradeable through Energy Savings Certificates, so the cheapest tonne of energy saved gets saved first. MISHTI is a budget-announced, convergence-funded ecosystem-restoration scheme of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, paying for physical mangrove planting out of CAMPA, MGNREGS and State plan money rather than a new line of its own. LiFE is a demand-side behaviour-change movement with no target, no penalty and no beneficiary list — it works on what individuals buy and waste, and its purpose is diplomatic as much as domestic. NCAP is a national target-setting programme delivered through city action plans, with money routed to municipal bodies and cities graded on whether their particulate readings fall. Regulation, restoration, behaviour and abatement targets are four distinct levers, and once you can name the lever a programme pulls, you can usually place it even when its launch year escapes you.

The efficient route is to match by type before you match by fact. List-II mixes four different kinds of attribute — a bare year (2019), a Budget (2023-24), an international summit (COP26, November 2021) and a functional description (energy-intensive industries) — so ask which programme could possibly carry each. Only one of the four is an industry-facing instrument, so PAT must take the industrial description; only one is a scheme that first appeared in a Finance Minister's speech, so MISHTI takes the Budget; only one was unveiled from an international podium, so LiFE takes COP26; and NCAP inherits the remaining year. Anchoring works too: almost every candidate knows NCAP is the 2019 air-quality programme, and locking d) to 3 alone kills options (a) and (b), because neither ends in 3. The single discriminating fact, if you only get to keep one, is NCAP = January 2019. Two traps sit in the wording. First, the 2023-24 Budget pull: candidates instinctively attach a Budget announcement to the biggest industrial-sounding name on the list, when the Budget item is the mangrove scheme. Second, the announce-versus-launch gap on LiFE — the idea was put to COP26 in November 2021, but Mission LiFE was formally launched on 20 October 2022 at the Statue of Unity, Kevadia. A candidate anchored on 2022 will reject item 4 and hunt for a slot that does not exist on the page.

• PAT is administered by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency, Ministry of Power, under the Energy Conservation Act, 2001; its operating rules — energy-consumption norms for designated consumers and the procedure for issuing Energy Savings Certificates — were notified as GSR 269(E) on 30 March 2012 and amended in 2015, 2016 and 2018. BEE's dashboard reports 1,333 energy-intensive industries covered, about 55% of total industrial energy consumption, and 25.78 million tonnes of oil equivalent saved.
• Over-achieving designated consumers earn tradeable Energy Savings Certificates (ESCerts), sold on the power exchanges — this is what makes PAT a market mechanism rather than a plain command-and-control rule, and it is the feature UPSC-style questions probe.
• MISHTI — Mangrove Initiative for Shoreline Habitats & Tangible Incomes — was announced in the Union Budget 2023-24 and launched on 5 June 2023 by MoEFCC; it runs from FY2023-24 to FY2027-28 and targets about 540 sq km of mangroves across 9 States and 4 Union Territories, funded by convergence of CAMPA, MGNREGS and State plans rather than a dedicated new outlay.
• The LiFE sequence matters and is routinely misremembered: the idea was introduced at COP26 in Glasgow, which ran 31 October to 13 November 2021; the LiFE global movement followed on World Environment Day 2022; and Mission LiFE was formally launched on 20 October 2022 at the Statue of Unity, Kevadia, in the presence of the UN Secretary-General. Its design has three phases — Change in Demand, Change in Supply and Change in Policy. BPSC's item 4 points at the COP26 moment.
• NCAP was launched on 10 January 2019 by MoEFCC and now covers 131 non-attainment and million-plus cities; its original goal of a 20–30% cut in PM10 and PM2.5 by 2024 against a 2017 baseline was later revised to 40% by 2025-26. Ambient standards themselves come from the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, and the National Air Quality Index reports on eight pollutants.

• Confusing when an idea was first announced with when the scheme was formally launched — LiFE was introduced at COP26 in November 2021 but Mission LiFE was launched only on 20 October 2022 at Kevadia.
• Assuming the most industrial-sounding scheme in a list is the Budget announcement. Here the Budget 2023-24 item is the mangrove scheme MISHTI, and PAT is a statutory instrument that no Budget created.
• Mixing up the green announcements of the same Budget speech — MISHTI (mangroves) and Amrit Dharohar (wetlands) came from the 2023-24 Budget together and are routinely swapped in coaching material.

BPSC's habit is the two-list match with 'More than one of the above' as the fourth option, and it deliberately mixes attribute types inside one list — a year, a Budget, a summit and a function — so the fastest route is to type-match first and then anchor on the single item you are surest of. Because a code question can have only one true permutation, disproving a code is worth as much as proving one. UPSC almost never asks where or when a scheme was launched; it asks what the scheme actually aims to do, or whether a stated feature of it is true, and when UPSC does set a match both lists are homogeneous. So learn the ministry-plus-instrument-plus-purpose triplet for BPSC and the mechanism — ESCerts, energy productivity, non-attainment cities — for UPSC.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Energy Savings Certificates (ESCerts), issued to industrial units that beat their mandated energy-consumption targets, are associated with which one of the following?

  • (a)National Clean Air Programme
  • (b)Perform, Achieve and Trade scheme
  • (c)Mission LiFE
  • (d)MISHTI

  Answer(b) Perform, Achieve and Trade scheme — ESCerts are the tradeable instrument that turns PAT's specific-energy-consumption targets into a market mechanism, issued by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency under the Energy Conservation Act, 2001 and traded on the power exchanges.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Mangrove Initiative for Shoreline Habitats & Tangible Incomes (MISHTI) was announced in which Union Budget, and which ministry implements it?

  • (a)Union Budget 2019-20; Ministry of Jal Shakti
  • (b)Union Budget 2021-22; Ministry of Earth Sciences
  • (c)Union Budget 2023-24; Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change
  • (d)Union Budget 2024-25; Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare

  Answer(c) Union Budget 2023-24; Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change — announced in the Budget speech of 1 February 2023 and launched on 5 June 2023, funded by convergence of CAMPA, MGNREGS and State plans.