Which of the following agencies is primarily concerned with the measurement of…

In Indian environmental governance every central agency has a function fixed by the statute or the department that creates it, and a question of the form “which agency does X” is answered by matching the function named in the stem to that statutory mandate. Adjudication of environmental disputes belongs to a tribunal; the development and management of a natural resource belongs to a technical commission; mapping and surveying belongs to a survey organisation; and the measurement, monitoring and standard-setting of pollution belongs to the statutory pollution-control boards created under the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974 and the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981.

The stem asks for the agency primarily concerned with the measurement of pollution. At the central level the apex body under those two Acts is the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), a statutory organisation functioning under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. It lays down national ambient air and water quality standards, coordinates the work of the State Pollution Control Boards, and operates nationwide monitoring networks — the National Air Quality Monitoring Programme and the national water-quality monitoring network — from which the daily Air Quality Index and the water-quality reports are published. Measurement of pollution is therefore its core statutory function, so the Central Pollution Control Board is the correct answer.

Cross-checking the remaining agencies against their own statutory mandates confirms that none of them carries the pollution-measurement mandate:

• The Green Tribunal (National Green Tribunal), created under the National Green Tribunal Act, 2010, is a judicial forum: it decides environmental cases and awards relief and compensation, but it does not operate pollution-measurement networks.

• The Central Water Commission, under the Ministry of Jal Shakti, plans and coordinates schemes for irrigation, hydropower and flood management — resource development and management rather than pollution measurement.

• The Survey of India, the national mapping organisation, carries out geodetic control and topographical surveying — cartography rather than environmental monitoring.

Matching the function named in the stem to these statutory mandates leaves the Central Pollution Control Board as the only agency primarily concerned with the measurement of pollution in India.