Science Institutions, Policy and Intellectual Property

• Statement 1 is correct. The National Innovation Foundation, set up at Ahmedabad in 2000, is an autonomous body of the Department of Science and Technology.
• Statement 2 is incorrect and inverts the Foundation's purpose. NIF exists to scout, document, value add and protect grassroots technological innovation and outstanding traditional knowledge developed by people in the unaided or informal sector, typically farmers, artisans and school children; it is a grassroots innovation body, not a frontier research body, and its work is not built on collaboration with foreign scientific institutions. The official answer (a) follows.
• Options (b) and (d) are excluded by statement 1 and option (c) by statement 2. The elimination route is the mismatch between the word innovation, which in Indian science administration attaches to grassroots and translational work, and the language of advanced research in premier institutions, which describes bodies such as SERB or the international bilateral programmes.

• Statement 1 is correct. The Regulations require a complete list of ingredients in descending order of composition by weight or volume at the time of manufacture, and additives must be declared by class name together with the specific name or the recognised international numerical identifier.
• Statement 2 is correct. Nutritional information is a mandatory declaration on the label, covering energy value and the amounts of protein, carbohydrate and fat per hundred grams or hundred millilitres or per serving.
• Statement 3 is incorrect and is the eliminating statement. Nothing in the Regulations requires a manufacturer to reproduce recommendations of the medical profession about possible allergic reactions; what the law imposes is a declaration of the ingredients themselves, from which an allergic consumer may draw the inference, and any medical advisory would in any event be a matter for professional bodies rather than a labelling obligation.
• Statement 4 is correct and is distinctively Indian: the green filled circle in a green square for vegetarian food and the corresponding brown or red mark for non-vegetarian food are mandatory on the principal display panel. Hence 1, 2 and 4, giving (c).
• Statement 3 is implausible on its face, which removes (a) and (b) at once, leaving (c) against (d) to turn on the nutrition declaration alone.

• Statement 1 is correct. BIS certification is voluntary as a general rule, but a schedule of products is brought under mandatory certification by orders issued in the interest of public health, safety or consumer protection, and pneumatic tyres and tubes for automotive vehicles have long been on that list.
• Statement 2 is incorrect and is the eliminating statement. AGMARK is a wholly Indian certification mark for agricultural produce, issued under the Agricultural Produce (Grading and Marking) Act, 1937 and administered by the Directorate of Marketing and Inspection under the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, covering commodities such as ghee, honey, spices, edible oils and pulses. The Food and Agriculture Organisation is a specialised agency of the United Nations engaged in standard setting through Codex Alimentarius jointly with the WHO, but it issues no product certification mark of this kind and certainly not an Indian one. The syllable 'AG' invites the misreading, and the presence of a UN agency name is the trap. Rejecting statement 2 eliminates (b) and (c); statement 1 then decides between (a) and (d). Governing principle: an Indian conformity mark is issued under an Indian statute by an Indian authority. BIS under the Bureau of Indian Standards Act, AGMARK under the 1937 Act, FSSAI licensing under the Food Safety and Standards Act, and Hallmarking by BIS. No international body issues any of them.

Both statements are correct.

• Statement 1 is correct: the Policy, approved in May 2016, expressly reaffirms India's commitment to the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health and to the flexibilities available within TRIPS, and this reaffirmation was the politically significant element of the document, since it signalled that compulsory licensing under section 84 and the exclusion of incremental innovation under section 3(d) of the Patents Act would be retained notwithstanding sustained external pressure, particularly through the United States Special 301 process.
• Statement 2 is correct: the Policy designates the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, then under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, as the nodal department to coordinate, guide and oversee implementation, and the Cell for IPR Promotion and Management was created under it for that purpose. The word 'regulating' is loosely used, since the actual grant of rights is made by the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks and copyright administration was itself transferred to DIPP from the Ministry of Human Resource Development in 2016, but the nodal coordinating role is accurately stated. Both statements standing, the official answer (c) follows.

Both statements are correct.

• Statement 1 is correct: the Quality Council of India was established in 1997 as a non profit autonomous body registered under the Societies Registration Act, jointly by the Government of India, acting through the then Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, and the three apex industry associations, ASSOCHAM, CII and FICCI. Its governing council is accordingly drawn from government, industry and other stakeholders in equal measure, and it is this joint parentage that distinguishes it from a statutory regulator such as BIS.
• Statement 2 is correct: the Chairman of QCI is appointed by the Prime Minister on the recommendations of the industry to the Government, which is the arrangement recorded in the Council's own constitution and is the second consequence of the joint public and private character of the body. The item is difficult because there is no elimination route and statement 2 in particular is not covered by any standard preparation source; a well prepared candidate would recognise QCI as the national accreditation body and would probably accept statement 1, but would be guessing on statement 2. Teaching point: QCI operates the accreditation boards, NABL for laboratories, NABH for hospitals and NABCB for certification bodies, and it accredits the accreditors rather than certifying products, which is the distinction from BIS.

• Option (d) is correct. Geographical indications are one of the seven categories of intellectual property covered by the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, which is Annexure 1C to the Marrakesh Agreement establishing the World Trade Organization. Articles 22 to 24 of TRIPS require members to provide legal means for interested parties to prevent misleading use of a geographical indication and to prevent unfair competition, with additional protection for wines and spirits. India, having had no sui generis law on the subject, enacted the 1999 Act and brought it into force in 2003 to discharge that obligation, the Darjeeling tea case having demonstrated how exposed Indian producers were without one.
• Option (a) is wrong because the International Labour Organization sets labour standards through conventions and recommendations and has no intellectual property mandate.
• Option (b) is wrong because the International Monetary Fund deals with exchange rates, balance of payments financing and macroeconomic surveillance.
• Option (c) is wrong and is the most instructive distractor, since the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development does work extensively on trade and development and on technology transfer, but it is a deliberative and research body that produces analysis and consensus texts, not binding obligations that require domestic legislation. Governing principle: only the World Trade Organization among the four generates treaty obligations enforceable through dispute settlement, and after 1995 nearly every Indian intellectual property statute or amendment traces to TRIPS.

Hence (d).

• Statement 1 is incorrect. Section 3(j) of the Patents Act, 1970 excludes from patentability plants and animals in whole or any part thereof other than micro organisms, including seeds, varieties and species, and essentially biological processes for the production or propagation of plants and animals. A biological process to create a seed therefore falls squarely within the exclusion.
• Statement 2 is incorrect as of the date of the paper. The Intellectual Property Appellate Board was constituted in 2003 under the Trade Marks Act, 1999 and heard appeals in trade mark, patent, geographical indication and later copyright matters, and it was functioning in 2019.
• Statement 3 is correct, and it is the corollary of statement 1. Plant varieties are not patentable in India; they are protected instead by a sui generis regime under the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Act, 2001, which India enacted to meet its TRIPS Article 27.3(b) obligation while preserving farmers' rights to save, use, sow and exchange seed. Since only statement 3 holds, the official answer (c) follows. The governing principle is the sui generis route, which explains both why plant varieties are excluded from patenting and where their protection actually lives.