The Epidemic Diseases (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020 amended which of the following Acts?

Correct — D. The parent statute is the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897, passed while bubonic plague was spreading through Bombay, and still the law a state uses to take special measures against an epidemic.

The Epidemic Diseases (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020 was promulgated in April 2020 to amend that Act, after doctors and health workers were attacked during the Covid-19 response.

The other three options name Epidemic Diseases Acts that were never passed, so the year is the whole question. Option (d) is the one that exists.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  The Epidemic Diseases Act, 1890 — 1890 is earlier than the plague emergency that produced the law. No Indian Epidemic Diseases Act carries that year, so there would be nothing for the 2020 Ordinance to amend.
• (b)
  The Epidemic Diseases Act, 1892 — 1892 also predates the outbreak that reached Bombay in 1896. There is no Epidemic Diseases Act of this year.
• (c)
  The Epidemic Diseases Act, 1895 — 1895 is the closest miss and the one most often ticked. The Act came two years later, in 1897, in the middle of the plague outbreak.

The Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897 is a very short colonial statute that does one thing. When a state government is satisfied that an epidemic threatens, it may prescribe any temporary regulation it thinks necessary, and disobedience is punishable.

That brevity is why it survived. It became the legal backbone of India's Covid-19 restrictions, used alongside the Disaster Management Act, 2005.

The 2020 Ordinance added a protection the original lacked: violence against healthcare service personnel was made a cognizable and non-bailable offence, with compensation for damage to their property. Parliament later replaced the Ordinance with an amending Act.

Key facts

• The Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897 was enacted during the bubonic plague outbreak in Bombay.
• The Act empowers state governments to prescribe temporary regulations when an epidemic threatens.
• The Epidemic Diseases (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020 made violence against healthcare service personnel a cognizable and non-bailable offence.
• The Ordinance of April 2020 was later replaced by the Epidemic Diseases (Amendment) Act, 2020.

Common traps

• Guessing a neighbouring year because colonial statutes cluster in the 1890s.
• Assuming an ordinance creates a new Act when it only amends an existing one.

No directly related past PYQ was found.