UKPSC Prelims 2024 Q107: The Permanent Secretariat of the Bay of Bengal Initiative

Q: What is the answer to UKPSC Prelims 2024 Q107?

C. Correct — C, Dhaka. BIMSTEC ran for its first seventeen years without a permanent office, working through ministerial and senior-officials meetings. Bangladesh took the hosting rights, and the Permanent Secretariat opened in **Dhaka** on 13 September 2014, inaugurated by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The idea to carry away is that the city that created a grouping need not be the city that runs it: BIMSTEC was **founded in Bangkok, headquartered in Dhaka**. The Secretariat services the summits and ministerial meetings and coordinates the sectoral work. Ambassador Indra Mani Pandey of India took charge as its Secretary-General in January 2024.

UKPSC Prelims 2024 General Studies Paper-I · Question 107 of 147

Verified against the official question booklet. Answer as per UKPSC's provisional answer key.

Answers from UKPSC's provisional answer key. The Commission publishes a provisional key for UKPSC Prelims 2024 and invites objections before issuing a final key. Every answer shown here is the Commission's own provisional answer (key PDF), not our derivation. If the final key changes an answer, this page is updated to match.

The Permanent Secretariat of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is located at:

(a)New Delhi
(b)Colombo
(c)Dhaka
(d)Kathmandu

Answer

Why

Correct — C, Dhaka.

BIMSTEC ran for its first seventeen years without a permanent office, working through ministerial and senior-officials meetings. Bangladesh took the hosting rights, and the Permanent Secretariat opened in Dhaka on 13 September 2014, inaugurated by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

The idea to carry away is that the city that created a grouping need not be the city that runs it: BIMSTEC was founded in Bangkok, headquartered in Dhaka.

The Secretariat services the summits and ministerial meetings and coordinates the sectoral work. Ambassador Indra Mani Pandey of India took charge as its Secretary-General in January 2024.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
New Delhi — India is the largest economy in the grouping, which makes New Delhi read as the obvious administrative centre. But the hosting right went to Bangladesh, and the Dhaka office has run BIMSTEC's day-to-day work since 2014.
New Delhi is the right answer for the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI), the partnership launched by India in 2019, whose secretariat is based there.
(b)
Colombo — Sri Lanka is a founding member and has held the BIMSTEC chairmanship, which is what gives this option its pull. It chaired the Fifth BIMSTEC Summit of 30 March 2022, held in virtual format from Colombo, at which the BIMSTEC Charter was signed.
Chairing a summit is a rotating role; housing the Secretariat is a fixed one. Colombo is the right answer for the Colombo Plan, conceived at the Colombo conference of 1950 and launched in 1951, whose secretariat is in that city.
(d)
Kathmandu — Nepal was admitted to BIMSTEC in 2004 and hosted the Fourth BIMSTEC Summit in Kathmandu in August 2018, so the city has a genuine association with the grouping — but as a summit host, not as its administrative seat.
Kathmandu is the right answer for the SAARC Secretariat, established there in 1987. Two overlapping South Asian groupings, two different secretariat cities.

Concept

BIMSTEC is a regional grouping of seven countries on and around the Bay of Bengal — Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand — bridging South Asia and Southeast Asia.

Its Permanent Secretariat is the standing office that services the grouping's meetings and coordinates its sectoral work, and it is located in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

An organisation's founding declaration, its summit venues and its secretariat are three separate pieces of information, and they point to three different cities in BIMSTEC's case.

A secretariat's location is one of the few single, stable and checkable facts about an international grouping, so it is worth pinning down for every organisation you study alongside membership and founding year.

BIMSTEC's institutional history is short and easy to hold: a 1997 declaration, an expansion to seven members by 2004, a Secretariat from 2014, and a Charter in force from 2024. The Charter gave the grouping legal personality and a route for admitting observers and new members.

Key facts

BIMSTEC was launched by the Bangkok Declaration of 6 June 1997 as BIST-EC, with Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand as founding members.
Myanmar joined in December 1997, making it BIMST-EC; Nepal and Bhutan were admitted in 2004, taking the membership to seven.
The present name, Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation, was adopted at the First BIMSTEC Summit in Bangkok in July 2004.
The Permanent Secretariat in Dhaka was inaugurated on 13 September 2014 by Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
The BIMSTEC Charter, signed at the Fifth Summit hosted by Sri Lanka in March 2022, entered into force on 20 May 2024.
Ambassador Indra Mani Pandey of India assumed charge as BIMSTEC Secretary-General in January 2024 for a three-year term.
Nepal hosted the Fourth BIMSTEC Summit in Kathmandu in August 2018, while the Secretariat remained in Dhaka.

Regional grouping and the city of its secretariat

BIMSTEC — seven Bay of Bengal states→Dhaka, Bangladesh

SAARC — eight South Asian states→Kathmandu, Nepal

ASEAN→Jakarta, Indonesia

Shanghai Cooperation Organisation→Beijing, China

Indian Ocean Rim Association→Ebene, Mauritius

Five regional groupings, five secretariat cities. The Bay of Bengal grouping is administered from Dhaka, not from Bangkok where it was founded.

Study next

The BIMSTEC Charter — signed in 2022, in force from 20 May 2024 — and the legal personality it confersBIMSTEC's sectoral pillars and the lead-country arrangement under which member states steer themSAARC and BIMSTEC compared: the five members they share, and the collapse of the SAARC summit process — the last summit held was Kathmandu 2014, and the 19th (Islamabad, 2016) was called offSecretariat cities of ASEAN, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Indian Ocean Rim Association and the Colombo PlanBIMSTEC connectivity and trade work, including the Master Plan for Transport Connectivity and the Free Trade Area negotiations

Common traps

Reading a summit venue as the secretariat's address: Sri Lanka hosted the 2022 summit and Nepal the 2018 one, while the standing office stayed in Dhaka.
Treating the founding declaration's city as the headquarters — the Bangkok Declaration of 1997 created BIMSTEC, which is administered from Dhaka.
Assuming the largest member hosts the office: India is the biggest economy in BIMSTEC and the Secretariat is in Bangladesh.
Carrying SAARC's Kathmandu secretariat across to BIMSTEC because the two groupings share five members.
Confusing the 2014 opening of the Secretariat with the 2024 entry into force of the Charter — two different milestones, nearly ten years apart.

The location can be asked directly, as it is here, with four South Asian capitals as options.

It can also sit inside a statement-based item, where one statement names the founding declaration or the membership and another names the headquarters, so that recognising the organisation is not enough on its own.

A third form is the matched-pairs question, listing several groupings against several cities and asking which pair is correct.

Related PYQs

CAPF_GAI_2022_Q1252022

Same organisation, different fact. That item asks which seven states make up BIMSTEC; this one asks where its Permanent Secretariat sits. Membership and headquarters are separate things to hold, and knowing the member list does not deliver the city.

CDS_GK_2024_I_Q1162024

Same demand — an institutional fact about a regional grouping — applied to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation instead. It tests the SCO's stated objectives and Iran's membership status, so it is a statement-pair format about goals and members, not a single-fact question about a secretariat's location.

UPSC_2015_GS1_Q642015

Another sub-regional grouping tested through its composition, here the participants in the Mekong-Ganga Cooperation. It shares the requirement to know a grouping as an institution rather than as a name, but it turns on which countries are in and out, not on where an office is located.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
The Permanent Secretariat of BIMSTEC was inaugurated in Dhaka in the year:
- (a)2004
- (b)2014
- (c)2018
- (d)2024
Answerb — the Secretariat was inaugurated on 13 September 2014, seventeen years after the grouping was launched.
2004 is when Nepal and Bhutan were admitted and the present name was adopted at the Bangkok summit. 2018 is the year of the Kathmandu summit. 2024 is when the BIMSTEC Charter entered into force.
practice — not a real PYQ
Consider the following statements about BIMSTEC: 1. It was established by the Bangkok Declaration of 1997. 2. Its Permanent Secretariat is located in Kathmandu. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
- (a)1 only
- (b)2 only
- (c)Both 1 and 2
- (d)Neither 1 nor 2
Answera — statement 1 is correct: the Bangkok Declaration of 6 June 1997 launched the grouping, then called BIST-EC.
Statement 2 is incorrect: the Permanent Secretariat is in Dhaka. Kathmandu houses the SAARC Secretariat and hosted the Fourth BIMSTEC Summit, which is what makes the statement tempting.
Since exactly one statement holds, options b, c and d all fail.
practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following pairs of an organisation and the city of its secretariat is correctly matched?
- (a)BIMSTEC — Dhaka
- (b)SAARC — Colombo
- (c)ASEAN — Bangkok
- (d)Colombo Plan — New Delhi
Answera — the BIMSTEC Permanent Secretariat is in Dhaka.
The SAARC Secretariat is in Kathmandu, not Colombo. The ASEAN Secretariat is in Jakarta, not Bangkok. The Colombo Plan's secretariat is in Colombo, not New Delhi.
Only the first pair survives, so a is the single defensible answer.
practice — not a real PYQ
The BIMSTEC Charter, which gave the grouping a legal personality, entered into force in:
- (a)September 2014
- (b)March 2022
- (c)May 2024
- (d)July 2004
Answerc — the Charter entered into force on 20 May 2024, once the member states had completed ratification.
March 2022 is when it was signed, at the Fifth Summit hosted by Sri Lanka, so b confuses signature with entry into force. September 2014 is the Secretariat's inauguration. July 2004 is the First Summit in Bangkok, where the present name was adopted.