Which of the following prepared the Annual Groundwater Quality Report 2024 ?
1. Central Pollution Control Board
2. Central Water Commission
3. Central Groundwater Board
Select the correct answer from

Question

Which of the following prepared the Annual Groundwater Quality Report 2024 ?
1. Central Pollution Control Board
2. Central Water Commission
3. Central Groundwater Board
Select the correct answer from the code given below :
Code :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — C, Only 3, the Central Ground Water Board. The Annual Ground Water Quality Report 2024 was prepared and published by the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) under the Ministry of Jal Shakti, and was released on 31 December 2024 by the Union Minister of Jal Shakti, C. R. Patil. It was the first edition to follow a Standard Operating Procedure for groundwater quality monitoring, and it drew on 15,259 monitoring locations across the country together with a focused assessment at 4,982 trend stations. Its headline findings are worth carrying: about a fifth of the samples exceeded the BIS limit of 45 mg per litre for nitrate, fluoride remained a serious problem in Rajasthan, Haryana, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, while every sample tested in Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Jammu and Kashmir met BIS standards. The logic of the question is a division of labour between three bodies that all sound alike. Groundwater is the CGWB's subject — it is the national apex agency for the assessment, monitoring, development and regulation of India's groundwater, and the annual quality report is one of its standing products. So statement 3 alone is right, and only option (c) says so.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Neither body prepared this report, and the option is wrong twice over. The Central Pollution Control Board is a statutory body under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, created by the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974; its water work is on rivers, lakes and effluent standards, not on a national groundwater quality assessment. The Central Water Commission, under the same Ministry of Jal Shakti as the CGWB, is the surface-water agency — river basins, flood forecasting, reservoir storage and irrigation projects. Groundwater is deliberately not its remit.  (b) Half right and therefore the most tempting wrong answer, because the Central Water Commission and the Central Ground Water Board really are siblings under the Ministry of Jal Shakti and are often named in the same breath. But the division between them is exactly the point: the Commission handles surface water and the Board handles groundwater. Adding the Commission to the correct answer converts a precise fact into a vague one.  (d) The Central Pollution Control Board is the natural guess for anyone who reads 'quality' and thinks 'pollution', but it is the wrong ministry and the wrong statute. The CPCB sits under the Environment Ministry and takes its powers from the Water Act of 1974 and the Air Act of 1981; the groundwater quality report comes from the Jal Shakti stable. Note also the related trap: it is the Central Ground Water AUTHORITY, not the CPCB, that was constituted under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 to regulate groundwater extraction.

Concept: India's water administration splits along a clean line that examiners test again and again. Surface water — rivers, dams, canals, floods — belongs to the Central Water Commission. Groundwater — aquifers, water levels, recharge, and the chemical quality of what comes out of a borewell — belongs to the Central Ground Water Board. Both sit under the Ministry of Jal Shakti. Pollution control as a regulatory function, by contrast, belongs to the Central Pollution Control Board under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, a statutory body created by the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974. A fourth name completes the set: the Central Ground Water Authority, constituted under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, is the regulator that controls groundwater extraction, while the Board is the technical and scientific agency that measures and reports.

State PCS 2025 Q118 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer

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