MPSC 2025 Prelims Paper-I · Question 35 of 100

Correct — option (1), the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India, is the nodal ministry the Hazardous Waste (Management, Handling and Transboundary Movement) Rules, 2008 designate for this role. Framed under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, these rules govern how hazardous waste is generated, stored, treated, disposed of and — where it crosses India's borders — moved into, out of, or through the country, in line with India's obligations under the Basel Convention on the control of transboundary movements of hazardous wastes. Because hazardous waste management is fundamentally an environmental-protection function, the rules place the Ministry of Environment and Forests at the centre of the process: an applicant seeking to import, export, or transit hazardous waste through Indian territory must apply to the Ministry, which examines the application (taking into account comments from the concerned State Pollution Control Board) before granting or refusing permission. This concentrates authority over an environmentally sensitive, cross-border activity in the ministry whose core mandate is environmental regulation, rather than splitting it across ministries handling internal security, diplomacy, or trade policy.

• (2)Ministry of Home Affairs, Govt. of India — The Ministry of Home Affairs handles internal security, law and order, and border administration, not environmental regulation. While hazardous waste crossing India's borders does raise security-adjacent questions of what enters the country, the specific statutory role of examining and permitting transboundary hazardous-waste movement under the 2008 Rules is assigned to the environment ministry, not the home ministry.
• (3)Ministry of External Affairs, Govt. of India — The Ministry of External Affairs conducts India's foreign relations and diplomatic engagement, including India's participation in international conventions such as Basel — but conducting diplomacy around a convention is different from being the domestic nodal authority that receives applications and grants permission for hazardous-waste transit under India's own rules. That operational, permission-granting role sits with the Ministry of Environment and Forests.
• (4)Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Govt. of India — The Ministry of Commerce and Industry oversees India's trade policy and industrial promotion, and hazardous-waste movement can certainly intersect with cross-border trade, particularly where waste is imported for recycling or reuse. But the 2008 Rules do not make trade policy the deciding lens for whether such movement is permitted — environmental risk is — so the nodal role is given to the Ministry of Environment and Forests rather than the commerce ministry.

The Hazardous Waste (Management, Handling and Transboundary Movement) Rules, 2008 were notified under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 to regulate the generation, handling, treatment, storage, disposal and — critically — the cross-border movement of hazardous waste into, out of, and through India, implementing India's obligations under the Basel Convention. The Ministry of Environment and Forests is designated the nodal ministry for transboundary movement: applicants must route their applications through it, and it decides on permission after considering the concerned State Pollution Control Board's views, with the rules also barring the import of hazardous waste for disposal (import is permitted only for recycling, recovery or reuse).

MPSC and UPSC both test 'which ministry is the nodal authority under Rule/Act X' questions because they are precise, single-fact recall items that reward candidates who have actually read the environmental-legislation framework rather than only its general subject matter. The trap here lies in the plausibility of every wrong option: home affairs genuinely handles border security, external affairs genuinely represents India on the Basel Convention internationally, and commerce genuinely regulates trade — each ministry has some real connection to cross-border hazardous-waste movement, but only the environment ministry holds the specific statutory nodal role the question asks about.

• The Hazardous Waste (Management, Handling and Transboundary Movement) Rules, 2008 are framed under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986.
• The Ministry of Environment and Forests is the designated nodal ministry for transboundary movement of hazardous waste and for granting transit permission through India.
• The rules implement India's obligations under the Basel Convention on the control of transboundary movements of hazardous wastes and their disposal.
• Applications for import/transit are examined by the Ministry taking into account comments from the concerned State Pollution Control Board before permission is granted.
• Import of hazardous waste into India for disposal is not permitted; import is allowed only for recycling, recovery, or reuse.

• Assuming the ministry that negotiates an international convention (External Affairs) is automatically the one that administers the domestic rules implementing it
• Confusing border-crossing regulation in general (which can suggest Home Affairs) with the specific environmental-permission role assigned by name in the rules
• Overlooking that a rule's 'nodal ministry' is usually the ministry whose core subject-matter mandate matches the rule's purpose, here environmental protection rather than trade or security

MPSC's Paper-I polity/environment interface regularly tests 'nodal ministry/authority under Rule X' questions in this fill-in-the-blank format, usually with three plausible-sounding but incorrect ministries as distractors. The safest preparation is to fix each major environmental rule together with its parent Act and its nodal ministry as a single linked fact, rather than learning the rules and the administrative structure separately.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Hazardous Waste (Management, Handling and Transboundary Movement) Rules, 2008 were framed under which parent legislation ?

  • (a)The Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974
  • (b)The Environment (Protection) Act, 1986
  • (c)The Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981
  • (d)The Factories Act, 1948

  Answer(b) The Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 — this Act is the umbrella legislation under which most of India's specific environmental rules, including the 2008 Hazardous Waste Rules, are notified.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Hazardous Waste (Management, Handling and Transboundary Movement) Rules, 2008, import of hazardous waste into India is permitted only for which purpose(s) ?

  • (a)Final disposal in designated landfills
  • (b)Recycling, recovery, or reuse
  • (c)Any commercial purpose approved by the State government
  • (d)Incineration for energy generation

  Answer(b) Recycling, recovery, or reuse — the rules explicitly bar the import of hazardous waste into India for disposal.