With reference to 'International Solar Alliance', which of the following statements is/are correct ?
1. It is the first treaty based Inter-governmental organisation headquartered in India with 38 memb

Question

With reference to 'International Solar Alliance', which of the following statements is/are correct ?
1. It is the first treaty based Inter-governmental organisation headquartered in India with 38 member countries.
2. World Solar Bank and One Sun One World One Grid Initiative were initiated under it.
Select the correct answer using the code given below :
Code :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — A, Only 2. Statement 2 is right: both the World Solar Bank — a dedicated multilateral financing vehicle for solar deployment — and the One Sun One World One Grid initiative for interconnecting solar grids across time zones were taken forward under the International Solar Alliance's umbrella; OSOWOG was carried into the Green Grids Initiative launched at the Glasgow climate conference. Statement 1 breaks on its final clause. The opening half is the description the Government of India itself uses — the ISA is presented as the first treaty-based international intergovernmental organisation to be headquartered in India, its Secretariat sitting on the National Institute of Solar Energy campus at Gwal Pahari, Gurugram, Haryana. But '38 member countries' is badly out of date. By the October-2025 exam the Alliance had long passed a hundred: ISA's own figures give about 119 countries as signatories to the Framework Agreement, of which roughly 99 have deposited instruments of ratification and are full members. A single stale number is enough to sink an otherwise accurate statement — which is exactly the kind of falsifier UPPSC likes to bury at the end of a long clause.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) This is the trap for the candidate who reads the first two-thirds of statement 1, recognises the true 'first treaty-based intergovernmental organisation headquartered in India' formula, and stops there. The membership figure attached to it is wrong by an order of magnitude — the ISA is well past a hundred members, not 38 — so statement 1 cannot be accepted.  (c) Statement 2 is correct, so this cannot be the answer. The World Solar Bank and One Sun One World One Grid are both initiatives launched under the ISA banner, not schemes of some other body — OSOWOG in particular is the Alliance's flagship idea of a single interconnected solar grid spanning continents and time zones.  (d) This reverses both truth values. It accepts the statement that carries the false membership count and rejects the statement that is actually correct. If you can only be sure of one thing in this question, be sure that '38 member countries' is wrong.

Concept: The International Solar Alliance is a treaty-based intergovernmental organisation created to pool demand, finance and technology for solar energy among sun-rich countries. It was launched by India and France on 30 November 2015 alongside the Paris climate conference (COP-21); its Framework Agreement was opened for signature at Marrakech in November 2016 and entered into force on 6 December 2017 once fifteen countries had ratified it. India hosts the Secretariat at the National Institute of Solar Energy campus, Gwal Pahari, Gurugram — which is why Indian official material describes it as the first treaty-based intergovernmental organisation headquartered in India.

State PCS 2025 Q97 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q97 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer