Use AWS Firewall Manager to centrally apply AWS WAF policies across the organization and automatically associate Regional web ACLs with the API Gateway stages in both Regions is correct because it enables a single, organization wide WAF policy to be enforced across multiple accounts and Regions while providing application layer protections for SQL injection and cross site scripting.

Use AWS Firewall Manager to centrally apply AWS WAF policies across the organization and automatically associate Regional web ACLs with the API Gateway stages in both Regions lets you define WAF rule sets once and have Firewall Manager automatically deploy and associate Regional web ACLs with API Gateway stages in us-west-2 and ap-south-1 across accounts managed by AWS Organizations. This centralization reduces per account and per region setup and ongoing rule maintenance while ensuring consistent layer seven defenses for common web threats.

Configure AWS WAF separately in both Regions and attach a Regional web ACL to each API Gateway stage would provide the necessary layer seven protections but it forces manual per account and per region configuration and maintenance which increases operational effort compared to a centralized approach.

Enable AWS Shield Advanced in both Regions for the APIs and rely on it to block SQL injection and XSS is incorrect because Shield Advanced focuses on DDoS mitigation at the network and transport layers and it does not provide application layer rules to block SQL injection or cross site scripting.

Deploy AWS Network Firewall in the VPCs to filter malicious traffic before it reaches API Gateway is not appropriate because regional API Gateway endpoints are managed and their request paths do not traverse customer VPC data planes so Network Firewall cannot enforce protections for those managed endpoints.

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