SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 26 September 2024, Shift 1 · General Awareness · Question 15 of 100

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 10 September 2026.

The Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 empowers the _________ to establish authorities charged with the mandate of preventing environmental pollution in all its forms.

(a)State Government
(b)Supreme Court
(c)Central Government
(d)local municipalities

Answer

Why

Correct — C. The Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 is central legislation, and the powers it creates are placed with the Central Government.

Section 3 gives the Centre power to take all measures it thinks necessary to protect and improve the environment. Section 3(3) then lets it constitute, by order published in the Official Gazette, an authority or authorities for that purpose.

So the blank takes option (c): the body that may set up such pollution-prevention authorities under this Act is the Central Government.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
State Government — State Governments run the state pollution control boards under the Water and Air Acts, but the authority-creating power in the 1986 Act is written for the Centre.
(b)
Supreme Court — The Supreme Court interprets and enforces environmental law. It is not the body this Act empowers to constitute authorities, which is an executive function.
(d)
local municipalities — Local municipalities handle sanitation and waste under municipal law, but the 1986 Act does not hand them the power to constitute these authorities.

Concept

The Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 is India's umbrella environmental law. It does not replace the Water Act of 1974 or the Air Act of 1981 — it sits over them and fills the gaps they leave.

Its design is deliberately centralising. The Act hands the Central Government wide power to lay down standards, restrict industries and areas, and constitute authorities for particular problems.

That is why a question drawn from this Act asking who is empowered almost always answers with the Centre.

The Act was passed in 1986, after the Bhopal gas disaster of December 1984 exposed how thin the existing law was.

Do not confuse the empowering government with the implementing agency. State pollution control boards do much of the fieldwork; the powers in this Act are the Centre's.

Key facts

The Environment (Protection) Act was enacted in 1986.
Section 3(3) lets the Central Government constitute authorities to carry out the Act's purposes.
The Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act dates from 1974.
The Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act dates from 1981.

Study next

Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 — what Sections 3, 5 and 15 each empower or penaliseWater Act 1974 and Air Act 1981 — the central and state pollution control board structureNational Green Tribunal Act, 2010 and the tribunal's jurisdiction

Common traps

Answering State Government because the state pollution control boards are the visible enforcers on the ground.
Reading authorities as courts, when the Act means executive authorities constituted by an order in the Gazette.

SSC asks environmental statutes by their year and by the body they empower, so learn each Act as a pair — year and empowered authority.

Environmental damage is also reached through agriculture: 17 Sep 2024, 12:30, GA Q.20 asks the significant negative environmental impact of the Green Revolution and keys soil degradation.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.