The Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate change, Government of India has announced 'Dolphin Day' which will be celebrated on

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — A, October 5. India's National Dolphin Day is observed on 5 October, a decision taken by the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife at its 67th meeting and announced by the Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Bhupender Yadav; the observance began in 2022, only weeks before this paper was set on 12 June 2022. The date is not arbitrary — it is the anniversary of 5 October 2009, when the Central Government notified the Gangetic river dolphin as India's National Aquatic Animal. The purpose of the day is public awareness and community participation in conserving that species, Platanista gangetica gangetica, which survives in the Ganga–Brahmaputra–Meghna and Karnaphuli–Sangu river systems of India, Nepal and Bangladesh, is listed in Schedule I of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, and is classified as Endangered by the IUCN. It is worth keeping this observance separate from the various international dolphin days marked elsewhere in the world on other dates; the question asks specifically about the day announced by India's environment ministry.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) Not the date fixed by the ministry. The announcement named 5 October, tying the observance to the anniversary of the Gangetic dolphin's designation as the National Aquatic Animal in 2009. The presence of a second October date in the option list is the standard device of putting a near-miss beside the correct answer, so the month alone cannot carry a candidate through.  (c) Not India's National Dolphin Day. Several countries and campaigning organisations mark dolphin-related observances of their own on spring dates, which is precisely why the anchor for this question has to be the Indian announcement rather than a half-remembered international day. The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change fixed 5 October.  (d) Has no connection with the dolphin calendar in India. It is included only to spread the options across the year. The single fact the question turns on is the announcement of 5 October as National Dolphin Day, first observed in 2022.

Concept: The Ganges river dolphin is one of the world's few surviving freshwater cetaceans and the flagship species of India's river conservation effort. It is functionally blind — the eye lacks a lens — and navigates and hunts entirely by echolocation in the silt-laden water of the northern rivers, surfacing to breathe through a blowhole because, like all cetaceans, it is an air-breathing mammal and not a fish. Its decline has been driven less by deliberate hunting than by the engineering of the rivers themselves: dams and barrages fragment populations and cut off migration, reduced dry-season flow shrinks the deep pools it needs, entanglement in fishing nets kills adults, and agricultural chemicals and industrial effluent poison the prey base. India's response has been layered — Schedule I protection under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972; the notification of the species as the National Aquatic Animal in 2009; the Vikramshila Gangetic Dolphin Sanctuary in Bihar, the only sanctuary in the country dedicated to it; Project Dolphin, announced by the Prime Minister from the Red Fort on 15 August 2020; and now National Dolphin Day on 5 October to carry the message to the public.

State PCS 2022 Q68 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2022 Q68 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer