With reference to the 'National Intellectual Property Rights Policy', consider the following statements: 1. It reiterates India's commitment to the Doha Development Agenda and the TRIPS Agreement. 2. Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion is the nodal agency for regulating intellectual property rights in India. Which of the above statements is/are correct?

The correct answer is C, because both statements are correct.

Statement 1 is correct. The National Intellectual Property Rights Policy, approved by the Union Cabinet in May 2016, places IPR within India's development goals. It reiterates India's commitment to the Doha Development Agenda and the TRIPS Agreement, while keeping the policy space that TRIPS flexibilities provide on public health and food security.

Statement 2 is correct. The policy names the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) as the nodal department for IPR policy coordination. Individual statutes are administered by bodies such as the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks, but overall policy coordination sits with the nodal department. DIPP was renamed the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) in 2019, so the nodal body today is DPIIT.

Core concept: IPR as an instrument of innovation, with TRIPS as the baseline and flexibilities as policy space. For Mains, this connects to compulsory licensing, Section 3(d) of the Patents Act and the debate on access to medicines.

Trap: Aspirants often reject statement 1 by assuming the policy is purely domestic in focus, or they wrongly pick the Patent Office as the nodal agency because it is the most visible IPR body.