Shifting the Sign extended constant in MIPS

Question

Why do we shift by 2 the sign extended 16bit constant in branching instruction in MIPS? I am confused with this idea. What good does this shifting brings to the sign extended 16 bit constant. Here is the picture:

Regards

Answer 1

MIPS instructions are 32 bits = 4 bytes, so the branch offset is specified as a multiple of 4, i.e. a branch offset of 1 = 4 bytes. This enables a much larger range of branch offsets than if the offset were specified in bytes (as there would then be two redundant bits). Shifting left by 2 is the same as multiplying by 4, of course.

Answer 2

Every binary that is shifted two times to the left is multiple of 4. So by Shifting the immediate two times to the left and adding it to the next instruction address the next instruction address would be obtained.