With reference to ‘Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation (IOR-ARC)’, consider the following statements: 1) It was established very recently in response to incidents of piracy and accidents of oil spills.  2) It is an alliance meant for maritime security only.  Which of the following statements given above is/are correct?

Both statements are false, so the answer is D. Here is the reasoning.

Statement 1 is wrong. The grouping was founded in March 1997 at Mauritius as the Indian Ocean Rim Initiative and formalised as IOR-ARC. That was long before the piracy surge off Somalia, and it was not a response to oil spills. The body was renamed IORA in 2013, so if you see the old name in a question, it refers to the same organisation.

Statement 2 is wrong too. IORA is a broad consultative forum with six priority areas: maritime safety and security, trade and investment facilitation, fisheries management, disaster risk management, academic cooperation, and tourism and cultural exchanges. Security is only one pillar among several.

Core concept: regional maritime groupings such as IORA, BIMSTEC and the ASEAN Regional Forum are cooperation platforms, not defence alliances. For Mains GS-2 and GS-3, IORA is useful when discussing India's Indian Ocean policy and the SAGAR vision.

Trap: aspirants pick 2 only because the Indian Ocean context looks like security. Read the mandate, not the geography.