Environment · 8 Aug 2026

Asan Wetland Conservation Reserve

Consider the following pairs: List I (Term) - List II (Correct Description) 1. Asan Wetland Conservation Reserve - Located at a river confluence in Uttarakhand 2. Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2017 - Retained the explicit list of prohibited activities from the 2010 Rules 3. Eco-Sensitive Zone around national parks and wildlife sanctuaries - Fixed at 1 km under earlier Supreme Court rulings 4. Supreme Court's 2026 clarification on the Asan wetland mining buffer - Extended the 10-km mining clearance requirement to all notified wetland conservation reserves nationwide How many of the above pairs are correctly matched?

AOnly one pair
BOnly two pairs
COnly three pairs
DAll four pairs
This question is based on: Why Himachal Pradesh's "We Aren't Bound" Argument Just Failed in the Supreme Court
Take this in full test mode → Instructions for 8 Aug 2026
About this question

Why in news

The Supreme Court clarified that its 2024 mining-buffer order for the Asan Wetland Conservation Reserve applies to all wetland conservation reserves nationwide, after Himachal Pradesh argued it wasn't bound since wetland reserves carry no statutory buffer zone.

Why for UPSC

This tests whether aspirants know that the 2017 Wetlands Rules actually reduced regulatory specificity compared to the 2010 Rules - a counter-intuitive regulatory rollback that created the exact gap the judiciary had to step into.

Prelims summary

The Asan Wetland Conservation Reserve sits at Uttarakhand's Asan-Yamuna confluence. The 2017 Wetlands Rules removed the 2010 Rules' explicit prohibited-activities list, decentralising regulation to states. The Supreme Court's 2026 order extended the Asan mining buffer nationwide for parity.

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