September 2026 Current Affairs Quiz PDF with Answers

Answer: B. Alaknanda basin

The study identified 219 hanging glaciers in Uttarakhand's Alaknanda basin and warned that warming and permafrost thaw are raising the risk of ice break-off. Such detachments can trigger ice-rock avalanches and outburst floods downstream. In India, hanging glaciers are concentrated along the steep glaciated slopes of the Garhwal and Kumaon Himalayas, Himachal Pradesh, Ladakh and Sikkim, making basin-level inventories important for disaster preparedness.

Answer: B. A glacier that originates high on a mountain wall and terminates abruptly at a steep cliff face instead of reaching the valley floor

A hanging glacier ends high above the valley trough and routinely sheds ice through calving, icefalls and avalanches. They form through high-altitude accumulation of snow in niches and cirques that compacts into firn and ice, through glacial retreat that disconnects tributary glaciers from thinning trunk glaciers, and through thermal destabilisation as permafrost and basal ice thaw and meltwater lubricates the glacier-bedrock interface.

Answer: B. The North-East or retreating monsoon, September to December

RAINCHNNAI covers the North-East or retreating monsoon from September to December and settles against rainfall recorded at the IMD stations at Meenambakkam and Nungambakkam in Chennai. Weather derivatives let farmers, agri-businesses and insurers hedge rainfall risk directly, rather than relying only on indemnity-based crop insurance, and are especially relevant for Tamil Nadu where the retreating monsoon is the main rainfall season.

Answer: B. Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana

The projects worth Rs 36.49 crore in Puducherry are being taken up under the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana, the flagship scheme for the fisheries sector. They focus on sustainable livelihoods for fishers, modern fisheries infrastructure and value-chain efficiency, covering elements such as landing and handling facilities that reduce post-harvest losses and improve realisation for coastal fishing communities.

Answer: C. 7.8 per cent

Real GDP grew 7.8 per cent in Q1 FY27, faster than the 6.9 per cent recorded in Q1 FY26 but slower than the 8.6 per cent of the January-March 2026 quarter. Nominal GDP growth was 10.3 per cent and real GVA growth was 8.2 per cent. The gap between nominal and real growth reflects the deflator, since real figures are computed at constant prices and strip out price effects.

Answer: A. Subsidies on products rose faster than taxes on products

GDP equals GVA plus taxes on products minus subsidies on products, where GVA itself is output minus intermediate consumption. When GDP grows more slowly than GVA, net product taxes have contributed negatively, which usually means subsidies rose faster than product taxes. This was consistent with the fertiliser subsidy overshoot in the quarter. NDP, by contrast, is GDP minus consumption of fixed capital or depreciation.

Answer: C. 26.8 per cent

The fiscal deficit stood at 26.8 per cent of the full-year Budget Estimate by end-July, in absolute terms Rs 4.55 lakh crore. Net tax revenue over the period was Rs 8.45 lakh crore while total expenditure was Rs 17.62 lakh crore. Monthly deficit-to-BE ratios are closely watched because front-loaded capital spending or weak revenue can signal slippage risk well before the revised estimates are presented.

Answer: A. Seaweed

The conclave promotes cooperative-led seaweed farming as part of the Blue Economy agenda. Seaweed cultivation is labour-intensive, needs little capital and no freshwater or fertiliser, and provides supplementary income to coastal households, particularly women's self-help groups. Organising it through cooperatives strengthens the seaweed value chain by aggregating production, improving bargaining power and linking growers to processors of agar, carrageenan and biostimulants.

Answer: B. Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, is hosting the 26th SCO Summit as the Eurasian bloc marks 25 years since its inception. Kyrgyzstan is a mountainous, landlocked Central Asian republic dominated by the Tien Shan system, formerly a Soviet union republic known as Kirgiziya, which declared independence on 31 August 1991. Bishkek lies in the fertile Chu river valley, and the country borders Kazakhstan, China, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Answer: C. Tashkent

The SCO's Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure is headquartered at Tashkent, while the SCO Secretariat is at Beijing. The organisation was founded in 2001 in Shanghai out of the earlier Shanghai Five, with China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as founding members. India and Pakistan joined in 2017, Iran in 2023 and Belarus in 2024. India hosted the 2023 summit in virtual format.

Answer: A. Department of Consumer Affairs

The Department of Consumer Affairs notified the Legal Metrology (Indian Standard Time) Rules, 2026, establishing IST as the single reference time for official purposes. The rules aim to improve accurate time-stamping, cybersecurity and synchronisation across networks, financial systems and critical infrastructure, where mismatched clocks can corrupt transaction records and audit trails. They will come into force 180 days after publication in the Gazette.

Answer: D. 5,000 tonnes per day

The projects will process 5,000 tonnes per day of municipal solid waste, with an expected output of 70 to 75 tonnes per day of compressed biogas and around 50 MW of green power. Such projects support the circular economy by diverting waste from landfills, while CBG output feeds into the broader push for domestic biofuels and reduced dependence on imported natural gas.

Answer: C. 30 August

National Small Industry Day is observed on 30 August and is linked to the comprehensive policy package announced for Small Scale Industries in the year 2000. The day recognises the role of small industries and MSMEs in employment generation, exports and inclusive economic development. The same date is also observed internationally as the Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances under UNGA Resolution A/RES/65/209.

Answer: C. Around Lagrange Point 2

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will operate around Lagrange Point 2, the same broad region used by the James Webb Space Telescope, where a spacecraft can keep the Sun, Earth and Moon behind it for stable infrared observations. Costing about USD 4.3 billion, it will study dark energy, survey exoplanets and map the infrared universe with a very wide field of view.

Answer: C. 9.5 per cent

The Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network report records an approximately 9.5 per cent fall in global hard coral cover against the 1980-2009 baseline, with a pronounced decline since 2010. Cover fell 8.9 per cent between 2023 and 2024 alone, the largest single-year relative decline recorded. The report also finds bleaching stress is now near-annual and recovery windows between events have shrunk to just four to six years.

Answer: D. About 87 per cent

Around 87 per cent of coral reefs faced unprecedented heat stress in 2024 during the fourth Global Mass Coral Bleaching Event of 2023-24. Of these, 42.6 per cent experienced heat stress of 8 degree-Celsius-weeks or more, the threshold associated with widespread bleaching and mortality; the comparable figure in 2025 was 27.4 per cent. Degree heating weeks measure accumulated thermal stress rather than a single peak temperature.

Answer: A. Zooxanthellae, symbiotic algae living in coral tissue

When water becomes unusually warm, corals expel their zooxanthellae, losing both their pigment and their main nutrient supply, and turn bone-white, leaving the calcified skeleton exposed to disease and starvation. Prolonged stress kills the coral. Reefs are built by polyps secreting calcium carbonate in warm, shallow, clear, nutrient-poor tropical seas, and are also threatened by ocean acidification, pollution, overfishing, sedimentation and coastal development.

Answer: D. About 65 per cent

The blue carbon asset value of the Pichavaram mangroves was estimated at Rs 1,612.40 crore, roughly 65 per cent of the Total Economic Value of Rs 2,485.38 crore. Per-hectare value works out to about Rs 1.83 crore and soil organic carbon stock to 251.14 tonnes per hectare. Such valuations strengthen the economic case for mangrove conservation by pricing carbon storage alongside fisheries, coastal protection and tourism benefits.

Answer: B. Ornamental fisheries

Mission Rangeen Machhli 2031 is a Strategic Action Plan for Ornamental Fisheries Development, covering breeding, rearing and trading of decorative fish for aquariums and commercial displays. It is implemented by the Department of Fisheries under the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying. Key features include standardised value-chain SOPs, biosecurity and quarantine, traceability and certification to prevent illegal wild capture, cluster-based value chains under PMMSY, and training for women's self-help groups in backyard rearing.

Answer: C. 2,366 crore

The Unified Payments Interface processed 2,366 crore transactions worth nearly Rs 30 lakh crore in July 2026, confirming its role as the backbone of India's digital economy. UPI is a real-time, interoperable payment system built as open-architecture digital public infrastructure, which converts a user's bank account details into a simple Virtual Payment Address or UPI ID and settles both person-to-person and person-to-merchant payments instantly.

Answer: B. It sponsors the third-party application and connects it to UPI

UPI has three layers. The TPAP or Third-Party Application Provider is the app the user sees, such as Google Pay, PhonePe or Paytm. The PSP Bank sponsors that TPAP and connects it to the UPI network. NPCI operates the central switch that routes payment instructions between banks. Understanding this separation explains why regulatory obligations fall differently on apps, sponsor banks and the network operator.

Answer: B. 21 banks

UPI was piloted in April 2016 with 21 banks under the then RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan, and has since expanded to over 730 participating banks. It was developed by the National Payments Corporation of India. Its stated aims are a seamless interoperable cashless ecosystem, bringing unbanked and underbanked populations into formal digital finance, and friction-free settlement for both P2P and P2M payments.

Answer: A. From 6.6 per cent to 7.3 per cent

SBI Research raised its FY27 GDP growth forecast from 6.6 per cent to 7.3 per cent after India recorded 7.8 per cent real GDP growth in Q1 FY27, with real GVA growth of 8.2 per cent, manufacturing at 9.2 per cent and services at around 10 per cent. Quarterly estimates for the rest of the year are 7.3 per cent, 7.2 per cent and 6.9 per cent, with growth driven by domestic demand and government capital expenditure.

Answer: B. SMS-based architecture

The service uses an SMS-based architecture suited to low or 2G connectivity, letting feature-phone users make UPI payments without internet access. It supports P2P and P2M payments, balance checks and transaction history, and includes an AI-powered voice helpline in English and 12 Indian languages. Such offerings matter for financial inclusion because a large share of rural users still rely on feature phones and patchy data coverage.

Answer: A. University of Gothenburg, Sweden

The Varieties of Democracy Institute at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, publishes the annual Democracy Report. It measures electoral integrity, civil liberties, institutional autonomy, judicial accountability, freedom of expression and public administration, and produces five indices: Electoral, Liberal, Participatory, Deliberative and Egalitarian. The Electoral Democracy Index rests on Robert Dahl's polyarchy concept. The report describes India as undergoing slow autocratisation, the gradual erosion of democratic institutions rather than a sudden breakdown.

Answer: B. Indore

Depalpur Nagar Parishad worked with Indore Municipal Corporation, which has repeatedly ranked as India's cleanest city in Swachh Survekshan. Swachh Shehar Jodi, under Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0 launched in 2021, follows an Each One Teach One model in which mentor cities transfer practices to mentee cities. Depalpur remediated 1,250 metric tonnes of legacy waste through bio-mining, recovering 4.5 tonnes of recyclables and 50 to 60 tonnes of Refuse Derived Fuel.

Answer: B. Ravi, Beas and Sutlej

The 1960 treaty, brokered by the World Bank, allots the Eastern Rivers of Ravi, Beas and Sutlej to India and the Western Rivers of Indus, Jhelum and Chenab primarily to Pakistan, with India permitted limited non-consumptive hydropower use on the latter. The Permanent Court of Arbitration, founded in 1899 and seated at the Peace Palace in The Hague, ruled the treaty remains in force and restricted works on the 850 MW Ratle project on the Chenab; India rejected the ruling as null and void.

Answer: A. Monthly Per Capita Consumption Expenditure at national and State levels

The framework will use Household Consumption Expenditure Survey data to estimate Monthly Per Capita Consumption Expenditure at national and State levels. MPCE is the central input for poverty estimation, for updating consumer price index weights and for economic planning, and more frequent estimates would reduce reliance on infrequent survey rounds. The collaboration also signals growing use of artificial intelligence within India's official statistical system.

Answer: C. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

UNCCD COP17 was themed "Restoring Land. Restoring Hope." and deliberately coincided with the UN International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP 2026), which suited a host nation whose economy rests on pastoral grazing land. India was represented by Bhupender Yadav, Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change. Egypt will host COP18 at Sharm El-Sheikh in 2028.

Answer: C. USD 400 million

DRIF was one of three drought-focused launches at COP17, alongside Phase-II of the International Drought Resilience Observatory (IDRO) and the AI-powered Drought Resilience Index (DRI). Together they shift the desertification convention's work from monitoring land degradation towards financing preparedness, a distinction worth noting for agriculture and environment questions in NABARD Grade A.

Answer: D. 77 per cent

IPPB's rural skew is the point of the payments-bank model built on the postal network, and 49 per cent of its 13.25 crore customers are women. On its Foundation Day it launched the DakPay Sound Box for merchants plus digital insurance and mutual fund platforms, moving from pure payments into distribution of third-party financial products, which payments banks are permitted to do.

Answer: C. Rs 29,104 crore

Deposits of this size against a 13.25 crore customer base indicate very small average balances, which is characteristic of last-mile financial inclusion accounts rather than mainstream savings banking. Payments banks cannot lend, so these deposits are deployed in government securities and bank deposits, and the entity earns largely from fees and commissions.

Answer: D. Plan 894

Jeevan Raksha (Plan 894) offers a Basic Sum Assured of Rs 5-24 lakh with no savings element, while its companion LIC Bima Platinum (Plan 770) is a savings-plus-protection plan with a minimum Basic Sum Assured of Rs 3 lakh. Both are non-linked and non-participating, meaning returns are not tied to markets and policyholders do not share in LIC's surplus.

Answer: C. Over Rs 6,600 crore

The merged AI-enabled distribution platform runs under the InsuranceDekho brand with Ankit Agrawal as CEO, offering more than 750 products from 52 insurers across motor, health, life, travel and commercial lines. Consolidation among insurance web aggregators and broking platforms is a recurring theme as IRDAI pushes distribution reach deeper into tier-2 and tier-3 markets.

Answer: C. A-

JCR moved India from BBB+ to A- and raised the country ceiling to A, citing sustained growth near 7 per cent, GST reforms, Digital Public Infrastructure and healthier bank balance sheets. The country ceiling matters because it caps the rating most domestic borrowers can obtain, so a higher ceiling lowers external borrowing costs for Indian corporates and banks.

Answer: D. 2022-23

NAS 2026 carries 60 statistical statements covering GDP, national income, consumption, savings, capital formation, and public-sector and external transactions. The base-year revision is accompanied by new or updated indices including the Producer Price Index, the Index of Industrial Production and a Banking Services Price Index, the last of which helps measure output of financial services more accurately.

Answer: D. 7.8 per cent

MoSPI issued a clarification because a negative manufacturing deflator had raised doubts about the estimate. A deflator converts nominal values to real ones, so when input and output prices fall, the deflator can turn negative and real growth exceeds nominal growth in that segment. The episode is a useful reminder of the nominal-real-deflator relationship tested in RBI Grade B economics.

Answer: D. 1.08

A GPI above 1.0 means women's enrolment exceeds men's relative to the eligible population, and it has now held above 1.0 for the seventh straight year. Over the decade covered by the 13th and 14th AISHE editions, total enrolment rose from 3.42 crore to 4.50 crore (31.5 per cent) while female enrolment rose faster, from 1.57 crore to 2.24 crore (42.2 per cent).

Answer: C. 200 schools

The initiative uses co-learning games, school activities, a bilingual resource platform and teacher certification to strengthen ties across children, parents and grandparents. It complements AVYAY, the umbrella scheme for senior citizens' welfare, and Elderline, the national toll-free helpline for the elderly, both run by the same department.

Answer: B. 1.8 degrees Celsius

This is UNEP's first detailed "overshoot, peak and decline" pathway, which accepts that breaching 1.5 degrees is now unavoidable within a few years and focuses on holding the peak low before returning below the limit by 2100 through net-negative emissions. Current policies point to roughly 2.6 degrees by 2100. UNEP, set up in 1972 after the Stockholm Conference, is headquartered in Nairobi.

Answer: B. Rs 6,003.65 crore

The National Quantum Mission runs from 2023-24 to 2030-31 and targets quantum computers in the 50-1,000 qubit range. FQCI will work across photonic quantum systems, superconducting circuits, semiconductor quantum devices, neutral atoms and trapped ions, the five leading hardware approaches, rather than betting on a single technology.

Answer: B. Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation and the Premises Department

Suman Ray was earlier Regional Director for Maharashtra and brings over 30 years of RBI experience across currency management, financial inclusion, payment systems, consumer protection and HR. DICGC is a wholly owned RBI subsidiary that insures bank deposits up to Rs 5 lakh per depositor per bank, a figure frequently asked in banking awareness sections.

Answer: B. Data in Climate Resilient Agriculture

Under the MoU, IMD supplies short, medium and extended-range forecasts, crop-specific agro-advisories, ground-station observations and extreme-event alerts into a dedicated Weather Portal within DiCRA. Delivery is through web portals, mobile interfaces and APIs, the last of which lets banks, insurers and agri-tech firms pull weather data directly into their own credit and claims systems.

Answer: C. United Nations Development Programme

DiCRA already served as the digital backbone for NABARD's National Climate Stack Innovation Challenge, where SatSure, EXPERIQS and VARSAPRADAYA built village-level climate risk tools on top of it. Adding IMD data turns it from a static geospatial layer into a live weather intelligence service, which matters for crop insurance pricing and climate-resilient lending.

Answer: D. Ministry of Earth Sciences

SSSS v5.0 was launched by Dr Jitendra Singh as a week-long ocean conservation drive covering beach clean-ups, conservation pledges and youth programmes. The campaign began in 2022 as a far larger 75-day coastal clean-up across 75 beaches tied to Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav, and has since settled into an annual week-long format.

Answer: C. Sabka Bima Sabki Raksha (Amendment of Insurance Laws) Act, 2025

The PIR consultation paper proposes a population-scale, interoperable and non-exclusionary information exchange layer rather than a central data warehouse. In this federated model data stays with the source institution and is shared only on authorised request, the same architectural idea the RBI used for its Account Aggregator framework.

Answer: B. Insurance Information Bureau

Participants in the PIR would include insurers, reinsurers, intermediaries, policyholders, financial institutions, government departments and research institutions, with planned integration into vehicle, health, weather, disaster and court databases. IRDAI itself was established under the IRDA Act, 1999 and is headquartered at Hyderabad.

Answer: D. Rs 50 crore

SEBI raised the Category-I threshold sharply from the earlier Rs 5 crore, while Category-II merchant bankers need Rs 10 crore and cannot manage main-board public issues. Only Category-I bankers may run main-board IPOs and underwrite them, which is why the licence is the gateway for Zerodha's move from broking into equity capital markets.

Answer: D. 20 times

The cap ties underwriting exposure to capital actually available to absorb losses, the same prudential logic behind capital adequacy in banking. Zerodha Corporate Advisors plans to begin with IPOs, follow-on public offers and issuer advisory, extending its low-cost, low-pressure brokerage philosophy into investment banking.

Answer: C. Ujjivan Small Finance Bank

Her appointment runs for three months or until a permanent successor is named, following the resignation of Sanjeev Nautiyal on 31 August 2026. Interim CEO appointments at banks require prior RBI approval under the Banking Regulation Act, which is why such moves appear in current affairs at all. Furtado earlier headed Ujjivan Financial Services.

Answer: D. Pakistan

The summit was chaired by President Sadyr Japarov of Kyrgyzstan on the theme "25 Years of the SCO: Together for Sustainable Peace, Development and Prosperity". The Bishkek Declaration condemned cross-border terrorism and terror financing, opposed unilateral strikes on Iran, and backed national-currency trade and discussions on an SCO Development Bank.

Answer: C. Tashkent

The SCO Secretariat sits at Beijing while RATS operates from Tashkent, a split candidates often confuse. The grouping grew out of the Shanghai Five and was founded in 2001 at Shanghai; India and Pakistan joined in 2017, Iran in 2023 and Belarus in 2024, taking membership to ten. The Bishkek Declaration restated that the SCO is not a military-political alliance.

Answer: C. Rs 1,27,500 crore

That is Rs 1.27 lakh crore, a substantial step up from the first semiconductor mission outlay. The programme covers the entire value chain, from fabless chip design and silicon and compound wafer fabrication to advanced packaging (ATMP/OSAT), equipment, materials, specialty chemicals, R&D and talent development, with the aim of building Indian-owned intellectual property rather than only assembly capacity.

Answer: C. 6 pillars and 10 categories

The India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) under MeitY is the nodal agency, with C-DAC as design and technical partner. Structuring incentives by category rather than as a single subsidy lets the government target weak links such as materials and specialty chemicals, where India currently imports almost everything, instead of concentrating support on fabrication alone.

Answer: B. GSLV-F17

EOS-05 is built on the I-2K platform and will operate in geosynchronous orbit at about 35,786 km, launching from the Second Launch Pad at SDSC-SHAR, Sriharikota. The high orbit matches Earth's rotation, removing the multi-day revisit gaps of Low Earth Orbit satellites and enabling near-continuous monitoring for disaster response, agriculture and border surveillance. It replaces the lost GISAT-1.

Answer: C. 2008

IGEF is the highest-level bilateral environmental policy forum between the two countries. The new declaration extends cooperation beyond wetlands to biodiversity, forests, mountains and climate resilience, along with circular economy, sustainable finance and green skills. Wetland cooperation is significant for India given its large and growing list of Ramsar sites.

Answer: B. Ministry of Science and Technology

Dr Jitendra Singh launched it at a joint roundtable with startups and investors in New Delhi. Unlike a conventional pitching event, BIO-NIVESH is designed as a two-way mechanism: startups learn what investors expect, while investors gain insight into biotechnology's long scientific, regulatory and clinical development pathways, which is precisely why biotech struggles to attract private capital.

Answer: D. Mastercard and RuPay

The card carries zero joining fee, zero annual fee and zero forex mark-up, targeting digitally native, travel-focused users. Issuing on RuPay alongside an international network matters because RuPay credit cards can be linked to UPI, which has become a major distribution advantage for co-branded cards in India.

Answer: C. Rs 1,470 crore

The purchase, made through the stock exchange mechanism, raised ICICI Bank's holding to about 52.8 per cent. It was driven by regulatory requirements arising from Prudential's proposed acquisition of Bharti Life Insurance, since a promoter cannot hold controlling interests in two competing life insurers, forcing a rebalancing of shareholding.

Answer: B. About 130 GtCO2

At current emission rates that budget would be exhausted in roughly three years, which is why the report treats overshoot as unavoidable rather than hypothetical. A carbon budget is the cumulative quantity of CO2 that can still be emitted for a given probability of staying under a temperature limit, so it shrinks every year emissions continue.

Answer: C. 1.4 degrees Celsius, rising 0.25 degrees per decade

At that rate the remaining gap to 1.5 degrees closes within a few years. Note the distinction between human-induced warming, which strips out natural variability such as El Nino, and observed annual temperature, which can cross 1.5 degrees in a single hot year without meaning the long-term limit has been breached.

Answer: D. 75 per cent

The World Meteorological Organization is the UN's specialised agency for weather, climate and water, headquartered at Geneva. A five-year average crossing the threshold is far more significant than a single year doing so, because averaging smooths out short-term natural swings and therefore points to a structural breach of the Paris goal.

Answer: B. Exceedance, Plateau/Peak, Decline, Stabilization

The full report title is "Limiting Overshoot: Navigating Exceedance of 1.5 degrees Celsius and Pathways Towards Return". The decline stage is the hard part, because falling below the peak requires net-negative emissions, meaning more CO2 must be removed from the atmosphere than is emitted, not merely a cut in emissions.

Answer: D. 220 GtCO2

This quantifies the cost of delay: waiting makes the eventual clean-up larger than the emissions saved. The report cautions that engineered removal such as DACCS and BECCS demands heavy energy, water and land, while nature-based removal faces saturation and wildfire risk, so removal should supplement rather than substitute for emission cuts.

Answer: D. Up to 14 per cent

The report also flags mountain glaciers losing over 25 per cent of their mass by 2100 and roughly 40 cm of extra sea-level rise by 2300 for each century spent above 1.5 degrees. For agricultural economies, rising humid heat is an additional channel of loss because it directly cuts outdoor labour productivity during peak farm operations.

Answer: C. 10 years

Released at Kartavya Bhawan, RAKSHA rests on four pillars: Strategic Partnerships, Capacity Building, Indigenous Exports and Maritime Security. It was formulated by the Ministry of Defence in coordination with the Ministry of External Affairs and the National Security Council Secretariat, and frames India as a Net Security Provider and First Responder in the Indian Ocean Region.

Answer: D. 30 districts

A parallel MoU with CivicDataLab covers the IDS-DRR platform, with both focused on floods, coastal flooding and heatwaves. The work underpins Odisha's Zero Casualty approach, which shifted the state from reactive relief to anticipatory evacuation and is widely cited as a national model in disaster management questions.

Answer: C. 2,367 kg

That makes EOS-05, also known as GISAT-1A, the heaviest payload carried by a GSLV so far, and the mission demonstrated improved reliability of the GSLV Mk II. It is India's first Earth-imaging satellite placed in geosynchronous orbit at about 36,000 km, allowing it to stare continuously at the same region instead of revisiting every few days like LEO satellites.

Answer: D. 27 November

The observance targets child, early and forced marriage through stronger laws, social awareness and coordinated action, linking to children's rights, education and health. It is distinct from the International Day of the Girl Child on 11 October and the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on 25 November, which are common distractors.

Answer: B. Waste-to-Value-to-Market ecosystem

The Textiles Committee will identify and certify producers and provide standardisation support while GeM handles onboarding, market access and procurement of recycled and upcycled products. Using public procurement to create guaranteed demand is a standard tool for making circular-economy products commercially viable before private markets mature.

Answer: C. Chhattisgarh

The state completed 77,719 of its 79,775 registered water conservation structures, moving up from second place in both JSJB 1.0 and JSJB 2.0. Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai presented the model at a national summit in New Delhi in the presence of the Prime Minister. Completion rate, not merely the number registered, is what the ranking rewards.

Answer: C. 2019

The campaign runs under the Ministry of Jal Shakti with the theme "Catch the rain, where it falls, when it falls", targeting water-stressed blocks and districts through rainwater harvesting, renovation of traditional water bodies, watershed development, recharge structures and afforestation. Jal Sanchay Jan Bhagidari, its community-participation component, was launched separately from Gujarat in 2024.

Answer: B. Unique Identification Authority of India

The Punjab School Education Board became India's first school education board and Maharishi Dayanand University, Rohtak the first university to onboard the framework. OVSE allows verification using verifiable digital credentials held locally rather than querying central identity databases, which keeps the process tamper-evident and privacy-preserving. UIDAI functions under MeitY.

Answer: C. ICICI Bank

RBI prior approval is mandatory before any entity acquires a significant shareholding in a private sector bank, which is why such approvals become news. The clearance lets LIC raise its holding within permitted regulatory limits and remains subject to applicable RBI conditions. As the country's largest institutional investor, LIC's bank shareholdings are closely tracked by markets.

Answer: C. 2017

A Central Counterparty sits between buyer and seller in a trade, becoming the buyer to every seller and the seller to every buyer, thereby absorbing counterparty risk. The new MoU with the European Securities and Markets Authority restores supervisory cooperation and information sharing, allowing Indian CCPs to re-apply for recognition under the European EMIR framework.

Answer: B. An AI-based conversational account manager on WhatsApp

RAY lets businesses and MSMEs handle payments, transactions, settlements and refunds through chat, supplying payment insights, alerts and recommendations without a traditional dashboard. It has already recorded more than 20,000 conversations. For small merchants, removing the dashboard barrier is significant because many operate entirely on a phone.

Answer: C. The Vimy Ridge Memorial in France

King Charles III becomes the first British monarch on Canadian currency in more than seven decades, reflecting Canada's status as a Commonwealth realm with the monarch as head of state. The note uses a vertical orientation like the CAD 10 note and is expected to enter general circulation in early 2027.

Answer: B. Arunachal Pradesh

It was recorded at 2,185 metres in West Kameng district by researchers from the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun and the Uluberia Botanical Institute Herbarium, West Bengal. Known as dwarf lilyturf or mondo grass and belonging to family Asparagaceae, its tuberous roots are the medicinally used part. It is native to China, Japan, Korea, Nepal and Vietnam.

Answer: C. Punjab

A medium-to-large raptor of the family Accipitridae, historically Accipiter gentilis and recently reclassified as Astur gentilis, it is a classic falconry bird valued for speed and manoeuvrability. It inhabits mature temperate and boreal woodlands across Eurasia and North America and is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List.

Answer: C. Varanasi

The campaign draws on the revised Supplementary Nutrition Programme guidelines and is linked with Mission Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0, delivering nutrition and child development interventions through the Anganwadi network. Poshan Maah is observed through September each year and follows National Nutrition Week, held from 1 to 7 September.

Answer: B. Burrowing caecilian amphibians

Caecilians are limbless, soil-dwelling amphibians, a third amphibian order alongside frogs and salamanders, and in India are largely confined to the Western Ghats. Their discovery rate remains high precisely because they live underground and are rarely seen, reinforcing the Western Ghats' standing as a global biodiversity hotspot.

Answer: B. Green Highways Policy, 2015

The awards cover avenue plantations, median plantations and plantation in land parcels, recognising best practices in highway landscaping and plantation management. Roadside plantation along national highways serves more than aesthetics: it reduces dust and noise, stabilises embankments and contributes to carbon sequestration targets.

Answer: D. 2012

The date marks the death anniversary of Mother Teresa and links charitable and humanitarian effort to the Sustainable Development Goals on poverty and inequality. The same date is National Teachers' Day in India, marking the birth anniversary of Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, India's second President and first Vice-President, first celebrated in 1962.

Answer: C. India's 2023 Foreign Higher Educational Institutions regulations

The campus will start with business-related undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, with degrees awarded by the University of London under Birkbeck's academic oversight. The 2023 regulations operationalise an NEP 2020 commitment by letting reputed foreign universities set up full campuses in India rather than only twinning or franchise arrangements.

Answer: B. Puducherry, 1974

KVKs are district-level farm science centres funded by ICAR and hosted by State Agricultural Universities, ICAR institutes, NGOs and state departments. The first one at Puducherry in 1974 established the model of taking laboratory research directly to the farmer's field. The current review focuses on greater State participation, following recommendations of the 5th Chief Secretaries' Conference 2025.

Answer: B. ATARI — Agricultural Technology Application Research Institutes

ATARIs sit between ICAR at the national level and the individual KVKs at the district level, supervising and monitoring KVK activities within their zone. The KVK mandate covers on-farm testing, frontline demonstrations, capacity building of farmers and extension personnel, and functioning as knowledge and resource centres for the district.

Answer: D. 90–95 per cent

In RAS, fish are raised in a controlled environment where water is continuously filtered, treated and reused, cutting freshwater dependence dramatically. This makes intensive fish farming viable in water-scarce and landlocked regions. RAS is being supported under the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana as part of the Blue Economy push.

Answer: B. Second-largest fish producer with about 8 per cent of global fish production, and the largest producer and exporter of shrimp

India is second-largest in fish production, aquaculture and capture fisheries, but ranks first in shrimp, which dominates its seafood export basket. The sector supports the livelihoods of nearly three crore fishers and fish farmers, making technology upgrades in aquaculture a rural-livelihood question as much as an export one.

Answer: A. Biofloc relies on beneficial microorganisms to manage waste and water quality, whereas RAS relies mainly on mechanical and biological filtration with recirculation

In Biofloc, microbes convert fish waste and excess nutrients into microbial biomass, which doubles as a supplementary feed source for the fish. This cuts both feed cost and water exchange. RAS achieves similar water savings but through engineered filtration rather than a managed microbial community.

Answer: B. Melastomataceae; Agasthyamala Biosphere Reserve

The species occurs in shola grasslands and montane ecosystems spanning Kerala and Tamil Nadu at roughly 1,200–1,500 metres elevation. Shola-grassland mosaics are among the most restricted and threatened habitats of the Western Ghats, and such discoveries strengthen the conservation case for this global biodiversity hotspot.

Answer: B. 3 per cent

This is close to the weakest level since the SSBIG framework began in 2009. The IMF attributes much of the weakness to regulatory drag: about half of G20 advanced economies and nearly three-fourths of emerging-market members face restrictive labour, product or consumer-market regulation that deters private investment.

Answer: A. NITI Aayog; aggregating freight demand to create deployment opportunities for zero-emission trucks

PACT was launched by NITI Aayog Member Rajiv Gauba. Demand aggregation matters because individual shippers rarely have volumes large enough to justify electric-truck fleets or corridor charging infrastructure. The summit also introduced a ZET Marketplace linking vehicle manufacturers, financiers, charging operators and freight stakeholders.

Answer: D. Nearly 70 per cent

FATF, the global standard-setter on anti-money-laundering and counter-terror financing, warns that the marriage of virtual assets with traditional hawala settlement makes value transfer faster and harder to trace. Its recommendations centre on stronger investigation, supervision and international cooperation against professional money-laundering networks.

Answer: B. 9.99 per cent; within one year from September 4, 2026

LIC already held around 4.35 per cent of ICICI Bank as of Q1 FY27, so the approval creates headroom to roughly double the holding. RBI approval is required because acquiring 5 per cent or more in a private bank crosses the major-shareholding threshold, and such approvals carry a time limit after which they lapse.

Answer: B. Protecting WTO rules and MFN treatment while resisting protectionist tariff barriers

The five pillars are Principle, Openness, Win-Win, Engine and Responsibility. The framework is pitched to span India's 2026 chairship and China's 2027 presidency. Greater BRICS now covers nearly half the world's population, about 30 per cent of global GDP and a fifth of global trade turnover.

Answer: B. Bureau of Energy Efficiency under the Ministry of Power; Energy Conservation (Amendment) Act, 2022

The CCTS was notified in 2023 and succeeds the earlier PAT scheme, with a compliance mechanism for energy-intensive obligated entities and an offset mechanism for voluntary projects. Credits trade on power exchanges, with the Grid Controller of India as registry and CERC as regulator. UK recognition means carbon already priced at home is deducted from CBAM liability, sparing exporters double payment.

Answer: C. 27 November

India was among the 70 co-sponsors and the resolution was adopted without a vote, signalling broad consensus. The first observance falls on 27 November 2026. Member states are urged to frame multisectoral national strategies, action plans, laws and policies — a framing relevant to rural development and social-sector questions.

Answer: B. Bharat Connect; 22,722 billers across 30 categories

Users can settle electricity, gas, water, FASTag, insurance, credit-card and loan bills using UPI, debit cards or credit cards. Bharat Connect is the rebranded Bharat Bill Payment System operated under NPCI, and embedding it in a widely used messaging app pushes recurring bill payments deeper into semi-urban and rural user bases.

Answer: B. 9.5 kg to 30 kg

The drivers are population growth, rising incomes, urbanisation, public nutrition programmes and changing dietary preferences. The report's uncomfortable finding is that even after tripling, India stays protein insecure with sharp dietary inequality — so the challenge is distribution and source-mix, not merely volume.

Answer: B. 0.25 Gt CO2e

That is a gap of more than seven times. A combined mitigation approach still lands at 0.30 Gt CO2e, so the report argues that dietary source-mix and livestock productivity gains must both be pursued. Enteric fermentation in ruminants is the single largest agricultural methane source in India.

Answer: A. India imports about 90 per cent of processed plant-protein isolates and is the world's largest milk producer with about 24 per cent of global output

A protein isolate is protein extracted and concentrated from a plant source such as soy or pea, and the near-total import dependence is a clear gap for domestic food processing. Pulses actually fix atmospheric nitrogen and need far less fertiliser, while dairy and pulses are expected to remain India's main protein sources with red meat staying small.

Answer: B. Wildlife Crime Control Bureau; Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972

The WCCB is a statutory body under MoEFCC established in 2007. Since the 2022 amendment giving effect to CITES, exotic species fall under Schedule IV of the Act. Orangutans are in CITES Appendix I, barring commercial international trade, and the rescued juveniles are being quarantined at Nandankanan Zoological Park, Bhubaneswar.

Answer: B. Orangutans are Asia's only great apes, native only to Borneo and Sumatra, while India's only ape is the Hoolock gibbon, a lesser ape

The three orangutan species — Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli — are all Critically Endangered, with the Tapanuli described only in 2017 and now the world's rarest great ape. The great apes are orangutan, gorilla, chimpanzee, bonobo and human. Because orangutans are not native to India, their presence in an Odisha forest points to international trafficking.

Answer: B. 73 on the Tentative List; 44 inscribed

Of the 44 inscribed sites, 36 are cultural, 7 natural and 1 mixed — Khangchendzonga. A site must remain on the Tentative List for at least one year before it can be nominated for inscription. India's most recent inscriptions are the Moidams of the Ahom Dynasty in 2024 and the Maratha Military Landscapes in 2025.

Answer: B. Sikar, Jhunjhunu and Churu

Shekhawati havelis are famed for painted frescoes commissioned by Marwari merchant families. The other three additions are the Rangpur-Sivasagar Historic Ensemble in Assam, the Colonial Penal Settlement in the Andamans and Nicobarese Cultural Continuity in the Nancowry group. All four are cultural properties, nominated through the Archaeological Survey of India.

Answer: B. It becomes a Scheduled Bank with access to RBI liquidity facilities and money-market operations, while continuing to operate as a Local Area Bank

Vijayawada-based Coastal Local Area Bank was India's first Local Area Bank. LABs were conceived as small, private, locally focused banks serving a few contiguous districts. Scheduled status is a listing in the Second Schedule of the RBI Act, 1934, and it improves the bank's funding options without changing its licensing category.

Answer: B. Madhya Pradesh; developing renewable-energy projects through Public-Private Partnerships

Signed on 7 September 2026, the mandate could attract up to US$1 billion in private investment. ADB will assist with project preparation, financial structuring, procurement and tender development. A solar facility with a Battery Energy Storage System at Shajapur is among the projects, addressing the intermittency problem that limits solar's grid value.

Answer: B. US$500 million went to SIDBI and another US$500 million will come through a lender syndicate, with funds converted into rupees via the RBI's special swap window

The rupee conversion through the swap window removes exchange-rate risk for the borrower, which is what makes long-tenure lending workable. SIDBI can on-lend for up to seven years, and the key beneficiary sectors are automobiles, engineering, electronics, textiles and food processing. The IFC is the private-sector arm of the World Bank Group.

Answer: A. Sparks, Ignite, Flare and Lumina

The cards offer benefits across grocery, apparel, travel, dining, entertainment and international spending, and can be applied for digitally or at branches. For a bank with microfinance roots, a tiered credit-card ladder is a way of moving existing customers up the retail-credit curve as their incomes grow.

Answer: B. A non-statutory body under the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment

The NCSK's mandate covers welfare, dignity, socioeconomic rehabilitation and rights of Safai Karamcharis and manual scavengers, including abolition of hazardous manual scavenging, statutory compensation and safety gear. The new appointments, including Kaishab Bihari as Vice-Chairperson, run until 31 March 2028, completing the tenure of the 10th Commission.

Answer: A. OPEC was founded in 1960 at the Baghdad Conference; OPEC+ was formed in late 2016 through the Declaration of Cooperation signed at Vienna

OPEC's founding five were Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, and it is headquartered at Vienna. OPEC+ emerged after the 2014-16 US shale surge crashed prices, bringing in Russia and others; compliance is reviewed by the JMMC. The decision came amid disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of global oil moves — directly relevant to India, which imports over 85 per cent of its crude.

Answer: B. BRICS Chief Justices' Forum — New Delhi; 14th Science Ministerial — Chennai; 18th Academic Forum — Lucknow

The Supreme Court of India hosted the Chief Justices' Forum from 4 to 6 September 2026. Other venues were Visakhapatnam for the Sports Ministers' Meeting and Friendship Cycling event, and Goa for the Ocean and Polar Science Working Group. The Academic Forum's theme was "Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability", and the 18th BRICS Summit is to be held in New Delhi.

Answer: B. 37 per cent; 370.74 million tonnes

Within that total, vegetables were 217.80 mt, fruits 117.65 mt and other categories 35.29 mt. Horticulture is the cornerstone of the diversification argument because it generates higher gross value added per unit of land and uses water more efficiently than the paddy-wheat rotation it is meant to displace. Decadal agricultural growth stands at 4.45 per cent.

Answer: B. India ranks second globally in fruits and vegetables and first in onions and shallots, and horticulture output has exceeded foodgrain output since 2012-13

India's share in onions and shallots is 22.42 per cent. That horticulture has outstripped foodgrains for over a decade is a favourite exam fact, and it explains why schemes such as MIDH — the Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture — carry disproportionate policy weight relative to their budget size.

Answer: A. Kerala — largest area; Tamil Nadu — highest production; Andhra Pradesh — highest yield

The pattern shows that area does not equal output: Kerala's ageing palms drag its yield below Tamil Nadu's and Andhra Pradesh's. India produces 13.97 mt across 2.19 million hectares at a yield of 6.36 tonnes per hectare, ranking second in output with 22.44 per cent and third in area. The Coconut Development Board is headquartered at Kochi under the Ministry of Agriculture.

Answer: B. Aquilaria; CITES Appendix II

Agarwood yields oud oil, one of the costliest natural perfume raw materials. India has nearly 150 million trees, over 90 per cent of them in the Northeast, making agarwood a genuine agroforestry income opportunity for the region. Appendix II covers species not necessarily threatened with extinction but whose trade must be controlled.

Answer: B. Component A — decentralised ground-mounted grid-connected solar plants up to 2 MW on barren or fallow farmland; Component B — standalone solar pumps replacing diesel pumps; Component C — solarisation of existing grid-connected agriculture pumps

PM-KUSUM stands for Pradhan Mantri Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthaan Mahabhiyan, launched in 2019 under the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. Component C includes feeder-level solarisation. Since agriculture takes a large share of India's subsidised power, solar pumps cut both the state subsidy burden and diesel consumption at the same time.

Answer: B. Combining agricultural activity and solar generation on the same land, with panels raised or spaced so crops grow beneath or between them

The announcement came from Union Minister for New and Renewable Energy Pralhad Joshi at the curtain raiser for the 7th Agrivoltaics World Conference 2026. The appeal of agrivoltaics is that it avoids the land-use trade-off between food and energy. India's solar capacity has risen from about 3 GW in 2016 to over 160 GW by mid-2026.

Answer: B. ASEAN; agriculture and forestry, with a focus on food security

AIMMAF is the ASEAN-India Ministerial Meeting on Agriculture and Forestry. The 2026 edition was co-chaired by Francisco P. Tiu Laurel, Secretary of Agriculture of the Philippines, alongside India's representative. Such platforms matter for coordinating on sustainable agriculture and regional food-security buffers.

Answer: A. Bhiwadi, Medchal and Meerut; Rs 2,171 crore across 9 ITI clusters

The clusters lie in Rajasthan, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh respectively, with allocations of Rs 241 crore, Rs 254.30 crore and Rs 240.40 crore. The hub-and-spoke ITI cluster model is meant to upgrade industrial training capacity around existing manufacturing concentrations rather than spreading investment thinly.

Answer: B. Storage, logistics, quality control and technology adoption, with capacity building of FCI employees

The MoU targets reduction of storage losses, better supply-chain management and optimised storage capacity. Grain lost in storage and transit is a direct fiscal cost on the food subsidy bill, which is why such performance agreements focus on the physical handling chain rather than pricing policy.

Answer: A. 9.95 per cent of CSB Bank

Any acquisition of 5 per cent or more in a private bank needs prior RBI approval under its major-shareholding norms, and mutual funds routinely seek such headroom for scheme portfolios. The same set of approvals gave RNFI Services in-principle authorisation as a Payment Aggregator-Physical, and PB Pay, a PB Fintech subsidiary, began commercial operations as a Payment Aggregator.

Answer: B. IFSCA

The International Financial Services Centres Authority is the unified regulator for GIFT City, exercising powers that RBI, SEBI, IRDAI and PFRDA hold in the domestic market. The licence gives Niyo a regulated base for cross-border services covering overseas education, employment, global spending and money movement, blending digital delivery with physical branches.

Answer: B. A Restricted Union of 32 member countries under Article 8 of the UPU Constitution, headquartered at Bangkok

APPU was founded on 1 April 1962 as the Asian-Oceanic Postal Union and renamed through the Asian-Pacific Postal Convention at Yogyakarta in 1981; its headquarters moved from Manila to Bangkok in 2002. The parent UPU, founded in 1874 by the Treaty of Bern, is the second-oldest international organisation and became a UN specialised agency in 1948. India joined the UPU in 1876.

Answer: B. Sunda Strait; the 1883 Krakatoa eruption, rated VEI-6

The Sunda Strait separates Java and Sumatra, and the volcano rose permanently above sea level on 11 August 1930 after submarine activity from 1927. It sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire where the Indo-Australian Plate subducts beneath the Sunda Plate. Its 2018 flank collapse caused a volcanogenic tsunami, which is why no earthquake warning preceded it.

Answer: B. Rs 20,804 crore across nine States

The projects involve additional lines and doubling of existing ones, including Arakkonam-Renigunta, Whitefield-Bangarapet, Hosur-Omalur and Salem-Karur-Dindigul. Multitracking relieves saturated corridors where passenger and freight trains compete for the same path, and is expected to aid freight movement, employment and regional economic development.

Answer: B. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia; "Restoring Land, Restoring Hope"

The session focused on rangeland conservation, drought financing and community-led restoration, though it deadlocked over a binding global drought treaty. Holding it in Mongolia was symbolically apt — 77 per cent of Mongolian land is degraded, against 40 per cent globally. India hosted COP14 at New Delhi in 2019.

Answer: B. It was adopted at Paris on 17 June 1994, is one of the three Rio Conventions along with the UNFCCC and CBD, and is the only legally binding international agreement on land management

The Convention emerged from the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and now has 197 Parties. Its finance arm is the Global Mechanism. The central goal, Land Degradation Neutrality, corresponds directly to SDG target 15.3, which is how land restoration links to the wider development agenda.

Answer: A. Drought becomes a standalone agenda item from COP18, and the Drought Resilience Investment Facility was co-launched with Luxembourg

Parties could not agree on a binding drought protocol, so elevating drought to a standalone agenda item is the compromise outcome. The Drought Resilience Index and the DRIF are the operational instruments. COP17 coincided with the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists in 2026, and about 30 per cent of India's land is degraded per the SAC-ISRO Atlas.

Answer: B. 9 September to 8 October 2026; "Hamari Anganwadi Hamari Jimmedari"

Union Minister Annapurna Devi of the Ministry of Women and Child Development launched it at the Rudraksh International Cooperation and Convention Centre. The theme calls for shared community ownership of Anganwadi centres. Focus areas are dietary diversity and adequate protein, fresh hot cooked meals, community accountability, and linking nutrition with early childhood development.

Answer: B. Part XXI — Temporary, Transitional and Special Provisions; a directly elected Union Territory-level governing body with legislative authority over specified subjects

Under the J&K Reorganisation Act, 2019, Ladakh became a Union Territory without a legislative assembly, leaving governance largely with the Lieutenant Governor and bureaucracy while the LAHDC councils of Leh and Kargil were sidelined. The Leh Apex Body and Kargil Democratic Alliance pressed for statehood and Sixth Schedule status; this proposal offers a sui generis middle path without granting either.

Answer: B. AI-based geospatial data analytics for tea plantation monitoring, including yield estimation and pest and disease forecasting

CHAYANKAN stands for Comprehensive AI-based Geospatial Data Analytics for Tea Plantation Monitoring, and runs from April 2026 to March 2029. It combines satellite imagery, UAV hyperspectral data, ground observations and AI. Early pest and disease forecasting matters commercially because tea quality and price collapse quickly once an outbreak spreads through a garden.

Answer: B. UAE-based AIM Global Foundation

The aim is to draw UAE and Gulf investment into Bihar's agro-food sector and promote value addition, processing, exports and employment. For a state with high agricultural output but thin processing capacity, the more significant gain may be linking local farmers and processors to international food supply chains.

Answer: A. The projects cover 31 districts across nine states, with three projects worth Rs 10,783 crore adding about 656 km to the network

The five southern projects worth Rs 10,021 crore span Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Telangana, while the three eastern and central projects cover West Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. The eastern corridors carry heavy mineral and coal freight, which is why capacity augmentation there has an outsized effect on logistics cost.

Answer: B. MoSPI; improving identification, standardisation and quality of administrative datasets across Central Ministries and Departments

Administrative data generated during routine governance is potentially far richer and more frequent than survey data, but is unusable if definitions and formats differ across departments. The portal supports automated validation, dashboards and cross-verification with the National Metadata Structures portal, strengthening India's National Data System.

Answer: A. Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs, under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs

The framework seeks to make CSR spending in the coal sector transparent, measurable and outcome-oriented rather than scattered across one-off activities. Coal-bearing districts bear concentrated environmental and displacement costs, so directing CSR outlays toward those host communities is the framework's central purpose.

Answer: B. Tokenisation of corporate bonds using distributed ledger technology, with digital money settlement

If Demat 1.0, introduced in 1996, converted paper shares into electronic records, Demat 2.0 converts digital bonds into tokens on a shared ledger owned by the depositories and maintained by market infrastructure institutions. It was launched jointly by RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra and SEBI Chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey — a joint appearance that signals coordination on the settlement leg.

Answer: B. FOMO Pay

Indian travellers can pay in rupees through their UPI apps while Singapore merchants receive settlement in Singapore dollars, with the currency conversion handled in the background. Resorts World Sentosa is among the first merchant partners. Merchant-acceptance tie-ups like this are how UPI internationalisation actually scales beyond person-to-person remittance corridors.

Answer: B. Karnataka, with 81 organisations and 73 chip tape-outs; launched by MeitY in 2023 at C-DAC

Karnataka also recorded about 88 lakh hours of Electronic Design Automation tool usage, followed by Tamil Nadu with 79 organisations and 33 tape-outs, and Telangana with 42 organisations and 28 tape-outs. The ChipIN Centre lowers the entry barrier for startups by pooling expensive EDA licences and design infrastructure. A tape-out is the point at which a finished chip design is sent for fabrication.

Answer: B. Rs 2,000 crore fund; up to Rs 2 crore each through convertible and milestone-based funding

Focus areas include AI-driven subsurface intelligence, drilling, hydrogen, mobility, bioenergy, refinery technology and digital asset management. Milestone-based tranches let a public-sector investor manage risk in early-stage deep tech, where failure rates are high and technical validation takes years. SINE is IIT Bombay's incubator.

Answer: C. Rs 565.50 crore

DILRMP 3.0 was launched by Union Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan at Krishi Bhawan, New Delhi. Being a Central Sector Scheme, the entire outlay is borne by the Centre rather than shared with States. Its aim is an integrated GIS-based digital land records ecosystem that improves citizen access to land-related services.

Answer: C. 14 digits

Bhu-Aadhaar works like a permanent address for land, so that a parcel can be tracked across sale, partition and mutation without ambiguity. A single identifier lets revenue records, registration data and survey maps be linked together, which is the core idea behind the digital land records ecosystem.

Answer: B. Passport Seva Kendras

Sub-Registrar Offices handle property registration and are among the most crowded revenue offices. Modelling them on Passport Seva Kendras brings appointment systems, queue management and a front-office/back-office split. The other two components are the Revenue Court Case Management System and NAKSHA for urban survey.

Answer: A. GIS-based land survey of urban habitations and issue of Urban Property Cards

NAKSHA stands for National Geospatial Knowledge-based Land Survey of Urban Habitations. Urban land records in India have historically been weaker than rural revenue records, so the pilot is being accelerated to create accurate urban maps and issue UrPro Cards to property holders.

Answer: C. National Statistical Office under MoSPI

This is the first time India has received estimates of the unincorporated non-agricultural sector at the district level. ASUSE covers the survey period January to December 2025 and captures small shops, street vendors, repair units and household enterprises that are not registered as companies under the Companies Act.

Answer: B. Rangareddy

Rangareddy topped Telangana with 23.53 per cent, the highest single-district share among the States listed. Other State toppers include Surat in Gujarat at 19.43 per cent, North 24 Parganas in West Bengal at 15.99 per cent and Ludhiana in Punjab at 14.74 per cent, showing how activity clusters around industrial and peri-urban districts.

Answer: C. Rice

It is a fine grain aromatic rice variety developed at the Mountain Research Centre for Field Crops, Khudwani, under SKUAST-Kashmir. Development began in 2021 and certified seed reached farmers in 2024. An aromatic variety lets Valley farmers diversify from ordinary paddy into a higher-value crop.

Answer: B. APEDA

The Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority regulates Basmati exports and holds the GI. The GI area covers Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Delhi, 30 districts of western Uttar Pradesh and Jammu, Kathua and Samba in J&K. Pakistan has contested India's claim in the European Union.

Answer: C. Stok Kangri Glacier

The Stok village nallah carries nearly 90 million litres daily, which was flowing unused into the Indus while fields nearby went short of water. Instead of building costly new infrastructure, basic earthwork linked the stream to existing canals, now irrigating over 1,000 acres across 12 villages.

Answer: A. Monitoring of tea plantations

CHAYANKAN combines satellite imagery, UAV-based hyperspectral data and ground observations for plantation mapping, yield estimation, crop-health assessment and pest and disease forecasting. The three-year project runs from April 2026 to March 2029, an example of remote sensing being applied to plantation crop management.

Answer: C. 4,395 Gram Panchayats

The Centre has approved Rs 1,684 crore for the state-led model in Jharkhand, with demand-based connectivity to around 26,777 villages. Rural broadband underpins e-governance, online education, telemedicine and digital payments, which is why BharatNet is treated as rural development infrastructure rather than merely a telecom project.

Answer: B. Payment Aggregator for online and physical transactions

The PA-O and PA-P licence lets Pluxee onboard merchants, collect payments, settle funds and manage refunds across cards, QR codes, NFC and online modes. Pluxee already holds a Prepaid Payment Instrument licence issued in 2009, so this authorisation widens its role from issuing instruments to acquiring merchants.

Answer: B. "Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability"

This is India's fourth Chairship and the summit culminated over 350 meetings across 25 cities. BRICS now has 11 full members after Indonesia joined in January 2025, plus 10 partner countries. Its financial agenda covers IMF and World Bank quota reform, the NDB and CRA, and local-currency settlement.

Answer: C. $100 billion

Current bilateral trade stands at around $60 billion, so the target implies a substantial expansion over the rest of the decade. The trade is heavily skewed by Indian crude oil imports, which makes diversification of the basket and payment settlement arrangements central to reaching the goal.

Answer: B. Gir

GANGA is a Gir female calf produced using Ovum Pick-Up for oocyte collection and Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer for embryo reconstruction. Cloning is being pursued mainly to multiply elite indigenous animals whose genetics would otherwise be lost, since conventional breeding takes several generations to spread superior traits.

Answer: B. World's first buffalo calf cloned using the Hand-guided Cloning Technique

The hand-guided method dispenses with expensive micromanipulators, making cloning cheaper and more field-adaptable. NDRI Karnal has since extended the work to cattle and to cloned Badri embryos, with elite high-producing Badri cows being explored for conservation of Himalayan bovine diversity.

Answer: C. December 2014

RGM was realigned for 2021-22 to 2025-26 with Rs 2,400 crore, enhanced by Rs 1,000 crore in March 2025 to take the total to Rs 3,400 crore for the 15th Finance Commission cycle. Its interventions include the Nationwide Artificial Insemination Programme, sex-sorted semen and IVF technology. Note that NPBBDD was the February 2014 scheme.

Answer: B. Uttarakhand

Badri is important for Himalayan bovine diversity and mountain agriculture, where hardy low-input animals matter more than high yield. India has over 50 officially recognised indigenous cattle breeds, valued for climate adaptability, disease resistance and A2 beta-casein milk.

Answer: C. Sahiwal

The programme began in 2022-23 to standardise OPU-IVF-ET protocols under both farm and field conditions, with Sahiwal cattle, Tharparkar cattle and Murrah buffalo as the target breeds. The chain runs elite female to ovum pick-up to in vitro fertilisation to embryo transfer in a synchronised recipient.

Answer: D. Vigna aconitifolia

Also called mat bean, Turkish gram or dew bean, it is a short-day annual legume of the family Fabaceae. Vigna radiata is moong, Vigna mungo is urad and Vigna unguiculata is cowpea, so the genus is shared but the species differ. Rhizobium symbiosis in its root nodules fixes atmospheric nitrogen.

Answer: E. 35 days

The dry spell ran from 3 August to 7 September 2026 in an El Nino year, against normal dry spells of only 20 to 30 days in the region. The crop survives through developmental plasticity, flowering at about 30 days and adjusting its maturity to available moisture. The varieties come from ICAR-CAZRI, Jodhpur.

Answer: A. Thar Desert region of western Rajasthan

It is also grown in parts of Gujarat, Haryana and Punjab, on nearly 10 lakh hectares with a yield of about 350 kg per hectare. It thrives on poor sandy soils, rainfall of 150 to 250 mm and temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius. Its dry fodder, called Pala, is valued for desert livestock.

Answer: C. Pangkang Teng Tso Lake in Tawang district

The lake lies at 12,800 feet in Arunachal Pradesh. The cold-adapted snowtrout of the family Cyprinidae was confirmed by ICAR-CIFRI-Coldwater with the State Fisheries Department using an integrative taxonomic approach combining morphology with mitochondrial DNA analysis. Yamdok Lake in Tibet is its type locality, not the Indian record.

Answer: C. 1891

The new Act received Presidential assent on 13 August 2026 and replaces a 135-year-old statute. It governs admissibility, certification and legal validity of bank records as prima facie evidence without producing original physical registers, creating a technology-neutral regime for digital, virtual and cloud-based financial data.

Answer: B. It empowers the Central Government to extend the Act to NBFCs and fintechs by notification

The Act retains coverage of commercial banks and Post Office Savings Banks while allowing scope expansion by notification. It also accepts manual, digital or electronic signatures for certification, and defines a statutory "special cause" so bank officials are not routinely summoned where the bank is not a party to the case.

Answer: C. Orders within plus or minus 1 per cent of the reference price can be cancelled, while those beyond 1 per cent and up to 3 per cent cannot be cancelled but can be modified to improve price

The restriction is meant to prevent orders being placed merely to influence the indicative equilibrium price and then withdrawn. SEBI's seven proposals, open for comments until 3 October 2026, also cover expiry-day settlement price, market timings and discontinuing the Indicative Index Value during CAS.

Answer: C. 40 per cent

The bloc accounts for about 49.5 per cent of world population, 40 per cent of global GDP and 26 per cent of global trade. The New Delhi Declaration at the 18th Summit sought greater representation of emerging economies in the UN, IMF and World Bank, and discussed local currency settlement and CBDC cooperation. This was India's fourth chairship after 2012, 2016 and 2021.

Answer: B. Rail Vikas Nigam Limited

The 125-km line achieved the breakthrough on 11 September 2026 with the completion of Escape Tunnel-1. Tunnelling dominates the project because of the difficult Himalayan terrain, and the line is expected to improve connectivity in Uttarakhand's hill districts, including for pilgrimage and disaster-time movement.

Answer: B. It was made from the company's own funds even though the credits were not yet fully sold

Farmers received Rs 3,000 to Rs 15,000 each. Paying before the credits find buyers shifts the market risk from the farmer to the aggregator, which matters because uncertain and delayed payouts have been the main reason smallholders hesitate to adopt carbon-farming practices.

Answer: D. 90 per cent

Flooded paddy fields create anaerobic conditions in which methane-producing bacteria thrive, so avoiding continuous standing water sharply cuts emissions. The study also reported better water productivity and soil health, which is why DSR has become the main source of agricultural carbon credits in India.

Answer: C. 1 tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent

The tonne of CO2-equivalent is the common unit that lets emissions of different gases be compared and traded. Agricultural carbon credits arise from practices that either cut emissions, as direct-seeded rice does with methane, or raise soil carbon storage, which is harder to measure and verify.

Answer: B. Aquatic weeds and grasses removed from Dal Lake

The craft adapts Kashmir's centuries-old papier-mache tradition. Dried weeds are turned into a fine fibrous pulp, mixed, moulded and dried into a natural, stone-like texture. It is a practical example of the circular economy, turning a waste stream from lake de-weeding into an input for livelihoods.

Answer: C. Lakes Conservation and Management Authority

The LCMA was formerly known as LAWDA. Dal Lake is an urban lake suffering from eutrophication, encroachment and weed infestation, with Azolla, Salvinia, water hyacinth and Ceratophyllum as the main invasive weeds. Unlike Wular, Dal is not a Ramsar Site, though Wular, Hokersar, Surinsar-Mansar and Tsomoriri are.

Answer: B. Arunachal Pradesh

The evergreen perennial herb of the family Asparagaceae, known as dwarf lilyturf or mondo grass, was recorded from West Kameng district. It is mainly found in China, Japan and Korea at 200 to 2,800 metres, and its roots, called Ophiopogonis Radix or Maidong, are used in traditional East Asian medicine.

Answer: D. Rs 20,050 crore

PMMSY was launched in 2020 for FY2020-21 to FY2024-25 and later extended through FY2025-26. It is implemented by the Department of Fisheries under the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying, and has both Central Sector and Centrally Sponsored Scheme components, a structure NABARD aspirants should note.

Answer: C. Rs 500 crore over five years

NIPUN stands for New-Age Industry Preparedness through Up-skilling of New Generation Youth. It will set up Entrepreneurship Development Centres in all 33 districts, five Centres of Excellence and 100 Emerging Technology Labs covering AI, Internet of Things, Big Data and Blockchain, with a NIPUN Job Engine linking trained youth to industry.

Answer: D. $785.7 billion

The weekly jump of $44.9 billion was itself a record, and reserves have risen by more than $100 billion since 5 June, when the concessional swap scheme was announced. FCNR(B) flows of about $127 billion exceeded expectations, taking India to the position of fourth-largest holder of reserves globally.

Answer: C. Unified Fintech Forum

An SRO sets and enforces conduct standards within an industry, easing the regulator's supervisory burden as the sector grows. At the same 7th edition in Mumbai, the RBI expanded Bharat Connect forex services to EUR, GBP, CAD, CHF and AED, and SEBI launched the Demat 2.0 pilot for corporate bond tokenisation using Distributed Ledger Technology.

Answer: C. Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund

WCEF was created to mark the centenary of Finland's independence. The 2026 edition at the Mahatma Mandir Convention Centre from 15 to 18 September is the 10th milestone edition and its debut in South Asia, themed "Circular Economy: Transition for People and Prosperity", aimed at moving from a take-make-waste model to a regenerative one.

Answer: C. Rs 1,800 crore

Each partner invests Rs 900 crore. The venture pairs CSL's shipbuilding and repair capability with Drydocks World's expertise in vessel repair, maintenance, conversion and offshore EPC services. CSL is a Miniratna enterprise under the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, and ship repair is a focus area for import substitution.

Answer: C. 55 per cent

COG is a hydrogen-rich by-product of coke production. Purified gas injected through tuyeres at Blast Furnace 1 partially replaces carbon-based reducing agents, cutting fossil-fuel use and emissions. The project at the Odisha plant supports Tata Steel's Net Zero target for 2045, part of the wider push to decarbonise steel.

Answer: B. The Khejarli Massacre of 1730

The massacre took place in Rajasthan, where villagers died resisting the felling of khejri trees. The observance was designated by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change in 2013 and is commemorated at the National Forest Martyrs Memorial in Dehradun, honouring those who died protecting forests and wildlife.

Answer: B. Sahiwal

The calf was born on 11 September 2026 through a collaboration between ICAR-NDRI Karnal and GBPUAT Pantnagar, funded by the Uttarakhand Biotechnology Council, Haldi. Using a surrogate of a different breed lets a scarce indigenous breed be multiplied without depending on its own small female population.

Answer: A. The first cattle breed from Uttarakhand registered by ICAR's NBAGR

Badri is a dual-purpose Bos indicus breed named after the Badrinath shrine and is the state animal of Uttarakhand. It is found in Garhwal and Kumaon districts such as Almora, Pauri Garhwal, Chamoli and Champawat, thriving on steep slopes and cold climates where exotic cattle fail. NBAGR at Karnal is the nodal body for breed registration.

Answer: C. Rs 3,000

PM-KMY is a voluntary contributory scheme launched in 2019 by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare with LIC as pension fund manager. The farmer contributes Rs 55 to Rs 200 a month depending on entry age, and the Centre makes an equal matching contribution to the pension fund.

Answer: B. Small and marginal farmers with cultivable landholding up to 2 hectares, aged 18 to 40

The name must appear in State or UT land records as on 1 August 2019. On the pensioner's death the spouse receives 50 per cent as family pension. Farmers may also opt to have contributions deducted directly from their PM-KISAN benefits, which removes the friction of separate monthly payments.

Answer: C. Rs 23,731 crore

GOBARdhan, or Galvanizing Organic Bio-Agro Resources Dhan, was launched in 2018 under the Ministry of Jal Shakti with the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation as nodal department, initially within Swachh Bharat Mission-Grameen. The new guidelines assure full offtake of compressed biogas and introduce a pricing mechanism, addressing the investor risk that had held the sector back.

Answer: D. USD 128 billion

AIMMAF was held in New Delhi on 9 September 2026. The two sides reaffirmed cooperation on climate-resilient agriculture, low-emission rice, water productivity, AI-enabled digital agriculture, soil health and agroforestry, areas where ASEAN's monsoon rice systems and India's face similar climate stress.

Answer: C. ICRISAT

The theme was "Transforming Dryland Agriculture with South-South Cooperation" and the event marked 50 years of the ICAR-ICRISAT partnership. Drylands matter disproportionately for India because rainfed areas account for a large share of cultivated land and carry most of the country's pulse and coarse cereal production.

Answer: D. 27,652 hectares

Union Minister Bhupender Yadav launched the portal at Bhuj to support habitat monitoring, conservation planning and technology-based restoration. The Guneri Inland Mangrove ecosystem was highlighted as a community-led initiative. MISHTI stands for Mangrove Initiative for Shoreline Habitats and Tangible Incomes.

Answer: B. PFRDA

The initiative rides on the women-led DAY-NRLM network, including BC Sakhis and community resource persons, to reach SHG members, Lakhpati Didis and other underserved groups. Digital dashboards and the LoKoS system will monitor outreach and enrolment, using an existing last-mile cadre rather than building a new one.

Answer: C. Rs 6 lakh at 6 per cent

The loans will be routed through the Uttar Pradesh Sahkari Gram Vikas Bank, a long-term cooperative credit institution. Long-term credit supports capital formation on the farm, such as land development, wells and machinery, unlike short-term crop loans that only finance a single season's inputs.

Answer: B. 5.0 per cent

The rate declined from 5.1 per cent in July. The Labour Force Participation Rate rose from 55.4 to 55.6 per cent and the Worker Population Ratio from 52.5 to 52.8 per cent. A falling unemployment rate alongside a rising LFPR is the healthier combination, since it means more people entered the labour force and still found work.

Answer: C. 0.4 per cent

MDR is capped at Rs 300 for transactions above Rs 75,000, with essential sectors such as railways, telecom, fuel, insurance, utility bills and agricultural inputs paying a flat Rs 5 above Rs 2,000, and capital market transactions 0.02 per cent. All P2P transfers, P2M up to Rs 2,000 and small merchants under P2PM up to Rs 1 lakh monthly receipts stay at zero, and 5 per cent of collections will fund UPI adoption among small merchants.

Answer: C. Rs 25,000

More than 51 lakh additional employees are expected to come under mandatory coverage, at an estimated cost of about Rs 11,339 crore annually and roughly Rs 56,696 crore over five years. The change extends EPF, the Employees' Pension Scheme and Employees' Deposit Linked Insurance to workers whose wages had outgrown the old threshold.

Answer: C. Delhi

Delhi scored 84, followed by Maharashtra at 78, Karnataka at 73, Chandigarh at 71 and Goa at 65. The index, built by NITI Aayog with WRI India across 36 States and UTs, weights Transport Electrification Progress at 50 per cent, Charging Infrastructure Readiness at 30 per cent and EV Research and Innovation at 20 per cent. Karnataka leads on charging readiness and Delhi on research and innovation.

Answer: C. 52

Of the 52, 49 are at Kuno and 3 at Gandhi Sagar, and 32 cubs have been born on Indian soil. Seventeen are free-ranging at Kuno. The programme has moved into its consolidation phase, four years after being launched on 17 September 2022.

Answer: B. 1952

The last cheetahs were reportedly shot in Koriya, in present-day Chhattisgarh. The cheetah is the only large carnivore to have gone extinct in independent India, which is why Project Cheetah — the world's first intercontinental large carnivore translocation — carries the weight it does. IUCN lists the species as Vulnerable, with the Asiatic subspecies Critically Endangered, and CITES places it in Appendix I.

Answer: C. Gymnophiona

Caecilians form Gymnophiona, the third order of amphibians alongside Anura (frogs and toads) and Caudata/Urodela (salamanders and newts). They are limbless, fossorial animals with vestigial eyes and chemosensory tentacles. Squamata is an order of reptiles, not amphibians.

Answer: B. Kolhapur, Maharashtra

The species was described by the Zoological Survey of India and Savitribai Phule Pune University from Buzawade village, Chandgad taluka, in the northern Western Ghats. The exam point is where it was found — a human-modified rural backyard free of synthetic pesticides, not pristine forest, showing that agroecosystems can still hold undescribed biodiversity. ZSI was established in 1916, is headquartered at Kolkata and works under the MoEFCC.

Answer: C. ₹13,000 crore

PM Vishwakarma is a Central Sector Scheme, fully funded by the Centre and jointly implemented by MoMSME, MSDE and DFS. Launched on 17 September 2023 on Vishwakarma Jayanti, it completed three years with 30 lakh registrations, and covers 18 traditional trades.

Answer: B. 5 per cent

The artisan pays 5 per cent, with an 8 per cent interest subvention borne by the government — the two numbers are easy to swap in an exam. The first tranche of ₹1 lakh runs 18 months and the second of ₹2 lakh runs 30 months. The scheme also gives a training stipend of ₹500 a day, a ₹15,000 toolkit e-voucher and ₹1 per digital transaction up to 100 a month.

Answer: B. Tons

The Tons is the largest tributary of the Yamuna, which is why the 422 MW project is tied to Yamuna rejuvenation along with storage and irrigation. Storage capacity is 1,562 MCM. The six signatories are Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Rajasthan. As a National Project it carries 90 per cent central funding and 10 per cent from the participating state.

Answer: B. Ahmedabad

The centre trains in ATMP, OSAT and semiconductor backend manufacturing, with 8 equipment units supplied by Infineon. Bhubaneswar is the distractor for a reason — on the same day MeitY gave in-principle approval for an AI Centre of Excellence there under the IndiaAI Mission.

Answer: B. Absorb durable liquidity from the banking system

An OMO sale takes securities out of the RBI's book and rupees out of the system. This was the first tranche of a ₹1 trillion programme, with ₹25,000 crore each scheduled for 21 and 28 September 2026. Net liquidity surplus was ₹7.37 trillion and durable liquidity around ₹14 trillion, and the WACR had slipped to 5.05 per cent against a 5.25 per cent repo rate — a call rate below the repo is the classic signal of surplus liquidity.

Answer: A. 371A and 371G

371A covers Nagaland and came from the 16-Point Agreement of 1960; 371G covers Mizoram and came from the Mizo Peace Accord of 1986. These are the strongest asymmetric provisions in Part XXI (Articles 369 to 392). The news peg is a proposed Article 371K, agreed in principle with the Apex Body Leh and the Kargil Democratic Alliance, which would give Ladakh a directly elected UT-level legislative body without statehood or Sixth Schedule status.

Answer: C. Kerala

The test begins in December 2026. It measures anticipation rather than rule knowledge — the gap between knowing a rule and reacting in time. The provision already exists under the Central Motor Vehicles Rules, 1989; the UK pioneered the format in 2002. Motor vehicles is a Concurrent List subject and licences are issued by State Transport Authorities under the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988. India recorded 4,87,707 accidents and 1,77,175 deaths in 2024, about 485 a day.

Answer: C. USD 399.27 billion

That is 15.5 per cent growth, of which merchandise exports were USD 215.91 billion. Imports over the same period were USD 459.65 billion, up 18.01 per cent — imports growing faster than exports is the part an examiner tests. In August 2026 alone, exports were USD 82.68 billion against imports of USD 92.09 billion.

Answer: B. Anant Nag

He is the 56th recipient and the second Kannada cinema artist to receive the award, after Rajkumar. The honour will be conferred at the 72nd National Film Awards ceremony on 22 September 2026. Separately, the CBFC was reconstituted with 18 members for a three-year term under chairperson Shashi Shekhar Vempati.

Answer: B. CRPF CoBRA

The IPS officer took charge as Inspector General of CoBRA — Commando Battalion for Resolute Action — a specialised 10-battalion CRPF unit trained for guerrilla warfare, long-range operations and counter-insurgency.

Answer: B. CIFOR-ICRAF

CIFOR-ICRAF is the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry, working here through the Landscape Alliance. The report came out under the Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF) Joint Initiative. FAO was founded in 1945, is headquartered at Rome, and also publishes SOFA, SOFI and the Global Forest Resources Assessment.

Answer: C. 35 per cent

The 85 per cent figure in the options is the other headline number — forested watersheds supply freshwater to over 85 per cent of the world's major cities. Examiners routinely swap these two. The report also finds agricultural zones across 155 countries depend on forests in other countries for up to 40 per cent of annual rainfall, through atmospheric moisture recycling.

Answer: C. 1.8 billion

That is 23 per cent of the global population. A separate 410 million depended on wood energy simply to boil and sterilise drinking water, and more than 1 billion rely on forest-derived medicinal plants for primary healthcare. Over 5 billion depend on forests to some extent for livelihoods.

Answer: D. 10.9 million hectares

Deforestation and net forest loss are different measures, and both appear in the options. Net loss fell from 10.7 to 4.12 million hectares a year, because losses are partly offset by forest expansion, while gross deforestation stayed at 10.9 million hectares annually.

Answer: A. Grow Indigo

Grow Indigo is an agri-tech joint venture between Mahyco and the US-based Indigo Ag. More than 2,550 small farmers in Punjab and Haryana received over ₹2.9 crore through DBT for verified regenerative practices. The initiative began in 2019 to curb paddy stubble burning and groundwater depletion in the Indo-Gangetic plains.

Answer: D. 75 per cent

The chain runs: adoption of Direct Seeded Rice, minimum tillage, cover crops and in-situ residue retention → measurement, reporting and verification using satellite data, digital crop models and soil sampling → credit issuance in the voluntary carbon market → payment to the farmer. The first cycle covered 2019 to 2022, roughly 30,000 acres and over 50,000 certified credits.

Answer: B. Miyawaki

Miyawaki uses high-density planting of multi-layered indigenous vegetation to create self-sustaining micro-forests quickly. The project is implemented by the New Delhi Municipal Council with funding under the CSR initiative of IIFCL and execution by the Enviro Creators Foundation. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman inaugurated it. The aim is to cut particulate pollution and lower the urban heat island effect.

Answer: D. ₹25,000 per month

The ceiling rises from ₹15,000. It is the statutory threshold of basic pay plus dearness allowance that decides mandatory coverage under the EPF and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952 — any worker joining an establishment with 20 or more employees at or below that wage must be enrolled. The Expenditure Finance Committee cleared the hike in June 2026.

Answer: C. ₹6,500

₹6,500 applied from 2004 until 1 September 2014, when it was raised to ₹15,000. Over the next twelve years rising state minimum wages pushed baseline earnings to or above ₹15,000, which quietly left new workers outside automatic coverage — the reason the ceiling had to move again.

Answer: D. 7.0 per cent

Up from 6 per cent, and the highest among major agencies: RBI 6.7, ADB 6.6, S&P 6.6, Goldman Sachs 6.5, Fitch 6.4. The 7.8 per cent in the options is Q1 FY27 actual GDP growth. Moody's also put FY27 inflation at 4.8 per cent against 2.4 per cent in FY26.

Answer: C. Baa3, stable

Baa3 is Moody's lowest investment grade. The equivalents are Fitch BBB− and Morningstar DBRS BBB, all stable, while S&P upgraded India to BBB last year — one notch above Fitch and Moody's. The constraints cited are high general government debt, weak debt affordability (the share of revenue eaten by interest payments) and low per capita income.

Answer: D. 8.2 per cent

Against 7.3 per cent in 2025 — both numbers are in the options, so read the period carefully. The drivers were strong private consumption, robust gross fixed capital formation and sustained services activity, with continued public infrastructure spending and an expected revival in private investment.

Answer: B. "Silicon to Systems: Building the Ecosystem"

The 5th edition was inaugurated by the Prime Minister at Yashobhoomi, the India International Convention & Expo Centre in New Delhi, coinciding with Vishwakarma Diwas. It is jointly organised by the India Semiconductor Mission, MeitY and SEMI, the global industry association for electronics manufacturing and design.

Answer: C. More than 50,000

Of these, at least 10,000 are consumed directly as human food — the number in option A, and the usual trap. In remote forest-dependent communities wild forest foods supply up to 80 per cent of daily dietary protein and nearly half of total food mass by weight.

Answer: B. SpeedSeed Phenotyping and Resource Optimization for Unified Trait Analysis

Inaugurated by Dr Jitendra Singh to develop climate-resilient crops, with chickpea as the first crop taken up. Phenotyping means measuring a plant's observable traits — height, yield, stress response — and high-throughput means doing it automatically at scale. NIPGR was established in 1998 and its Director is Prof. Manoj Prasad.

Answer: B. 40 days

That allows several generations a year instead of one or two, which is the whole point — a breeder testing for drought or heat tolerance no longer waits a full season per attempt. Remember the pair: genotype is the genetic makeup, phenotype is what is actually expressed, shaped by both genes and environment.

Answer: D. 14

BRIC is the Biotechnology Research and Innovation Council, an autonomous body under the Department of Biotechnology. Related facts worth carrying: the BioE3 Policy approved in 2024 for biomanufacturing; India's first genome-edited rice varieties DRR Dhan 100 (Kamala) and Pusa DST Rice 1 released in 2025; and SDN-1 and SDN-2 genome editing, which introduces no foreign DNA and is exempt from GM regulation in India.

Answer: C. 3% in FY27, 4% in FY28, 5% from FY29

Issued by MoPNG, with the government assuring full offtake of CBG available for sale, subject to technical and operational feasibility. The initial Administered CBG Price is ₹2,110 per MMBTU — roughly ₹98 a kg — guaranteed for at least 10 years, up to 31 March 2036. A guaranteed price plus a rising purchase obligation is how a market is created where none existed.

Answer: B. "Swachhata Mein Sahbhag; Swachh Bharat, Viksit Bharat"

Launched on 17 September 2026 by MoHUA and DDWS, the campaign runs to 2 October 2026, culminating on Gandhi Jayanti. Its five pillars are Clean Public Places, Swachh Paathshala, SafaiMitra Suraksha Evam Samman, Jan Bhagidari and Swachhata Se Samriddhi.

Answer: B. HPCL

The ₹16.01 crore project covers 11 districts and will benefit more than 10,000 Scheduled Tribe students a year. Each school gets four smart classrooms, a computer lab and 10 tablets loaded with competitive-exam content, with completion expected within six months.

Answer: B. Metals and ores

The edition covers Q1 FY27. Global goods trade reached USD 13.7 trillion in H1 2026, up 12.5 per cent. India's merchandise and services trade was USD 506.9 billion in Q1 FY27, up 15.5 per cent, with merchandise exports up 16 per cent to USD 129.5 billion and imports up 19.8 per cent to USD 216.1 billion — a merchandise trade deficit of USD 86.6 billion.

Answer: C. ₹2,000

P2P transactions stay free at any amount. Above ₹2,000, specified categories such as railways, telecom, insurance and fuel attract a flat ₹5 MDR, while capital-market transactions attract 0.02 per cent capped at ₹300. Note that a flat fee and a percentage fee behave very differently as ticket size grows — that is the reasoning an interview panel looks for.

Answer: B. SEBI Regulatory Sandbox Framework, 2020

The issuances were worth ₹1,000 crore in all, with REC and L&T raising ₹500 crore each. They use Distributed Ledger Technology to digitally represent and manage the securities, aimed at better transparency, operational efficiency and settlement. Corporate bonds sit with SEBI, not the RBI — which is what decides the answer here.

Answer: B. Indian Revenue Service

A 1990-batch IRS officer, he joined SEBI as a Whole-Time Member in September 2023 and will now continue until 4 August 2029, when he turns 65, or until further orders. His portfolios have included market intermediaries, legal affairs, surveillance and information technology.

Answer: B. Ireland and Vietnam

The survey is produced by Business Sweden with the Swedish Chamber of Commerce in India, and captures how Swedish multinationals view their markets. India has been in the global top three for four consecutive years, and 73 per cent of Swedish firms rated its operating climate good or very good. India, the Philippines and Poland recorded the highest revenue and growth projections. India-Sweden ties include a Strategic Partnership since 2018 and LeadIT, launched jointly at the UN Climate Action Summit 2019.

Answer: C. Maharashtra

Delhi is the distractor — it tops the UTs and city states category and the overall score with 84, up from 77, but it is not a large State. Karnataka came second among large States and Tamil Nadu third with 61. Manipur (46) led the hilly and northeastern category. The index is the 2nd edition, built by NITI Aayog with WRI India, using 16 indicators weighted 50 per cent transport electrification, 30 per cent charging infrastructure and 20 per cent research and innovation.

Answer: D. 8.25 per cent

Up from 0.5 per cent in 2018 — option A, and the usual trap. Within the index, Karnataka leads charging readiness with 97 and Delhi leads research and innovation with 94. Madhya Pradesh rose from 23rd to 7th overall and Goa climbed ten places to fifth.

Answer: B. 37th

An improvement of 9 places from 46th in GFCI 39, making GIFT City the only Indian centre in the Asia-Pacific top 15. Mumbai ranked 49th and Delhi 56th — both appear in the options. The index is published twice a year by Z/Yen Partners with the China Development Institute, and scores centres on business environment, human capital, infrastructure, financial sector development and reputation. The top four were New York, London, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Answer: C. 34 per cent

Up from 25 per cent in 2024 — both years are in the options. The 36 per cent figure is a different finding: about 36 per cent of global catchment area was drier than normal, making 2025 one of the driest years for river discharge in 35 years. The report has expanded over five years from 3 to 15 hydrological variables. WMO is a UN specialised agency, founded 1950, headquartered at Geneva.

Answer: C. 408 ±132 Gt

Equivalent to about 1.1 ±0.4 mm of sea-level rise, and the fourth consecutive year in which every major glaciated region recorded net ice loss. Global terrestrial water storage — all water on and below the land surface, measured by satellite gravimetry such as GRACE — has been declining persistently since 2014-16, with below-normal storage in northern India in 2025.

Answer: C. 60 per cent of irrigation and 85 per cent of rural drinking water

India is the world's largest user of groundwater — more than the United States and China combined. The Central Ground Water Board assesses it and classifies blocks as Safe, Semi-critical, Critical and Over-exploited; Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Delhi hold the most over-exploited blocks. Parts of India ran persistent groundwater deficits through 2022-2025, with over-abstraction an important driver.

Answer: B. Gulfood

India will be the Official Partner Country at Gulfood 2027 for the second consecutive year. The partnership is aimed at MSMEs, FPOs, startups and women- and SC/ST-led exporters, through buyer linkages and market access. APEDA was established in 1986 under the APEDA Act, 1985 and works under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry — note the gap between the Act and the body.

Answer: C. 50 lakh

The scheme covers all 55 districts and works through door-to-door visits, village camps and panchayat-level camps, with no stamp duty or registration charges. The purpose is to put a legal ownership document in rural hands — which is what converts an occupied house into collateral a bank will lend against.

Answer: D. 90 days

If an NGO's registration is cancelled, surrendered or lapses, unutilised foreign contributions and assets created from foreign funds provisionally vest in a government-appointed Designated Authority; if registration is not restored within the prescribed window they vest permanently, and may be transferred to public departments or auctioned with proceeds credited to the Consolidated Fund of India. The Bill also cuts the maximum prison term for specified compliance violations from five years to one. FCRA is administered by the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Answer: D. 2020

The timeline to memorise: FCRA first enacted 1976; FCRA 2010 replaced it; Rules notified 2011; major amendments in 2020 bringing the 20 per cent administrative-expense cap and the designated SBI New Delhi Main Branch account; in 2022 the limit on foreign contributions from relatives abroad rose from ₹1 lakh to ₹10 lakh a year; and in 2026 the Amendment Bill was introduced with new Rules notified.

Answer: A. Credilio Financial Technologies

The card comes in RuPay Select and RuPay Platinum variants and can be linked to UPI for credit-based payments. The design point worth remembering is the FD-backed credit facility — a fixed deposit standing as security lets someone with no formal credit history get a card and start building a credit profile, which is a standard financial-inclusion route.

Answer: B. Sri Lanka

This is the 13th edition, first held in 2005, conducted under the Eastern Naval Command. It tests coordinated manoeuvres, tactical communications and maritime interdiction. Other India-Sri Lanka exercises are Mitra Shakti (army) and the trilateral Dosti with the Maldives (coast guards). The policy frame is SAGAR, announced in 2015 in Mauritius, extended in 2025 as MAHASAGAR.

Answer: B. Bab el-Mandeb

Bab el-Mandeb, the "Gate of Tears", connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden between Yemen and Djibouti/Eritrea, and Perim Island sits in the middle, splitting it into two channels. About 12 per cent of global trade uses the Red Sea-Suez route; a detour via the Cape of Good Hope adds roughly 10-14 days to an Asia-Europe voyage. India's exposure is direct — most India-Europe trade and the planned IMEC corridor depend on it, and the Navy has deployed ships under Operation Sankalp. The Houthis, officially Ansar Allah, are a Zaidi Shia movement of northern Yemen; they also took the port of Mokha, which gave its name to mocha coffee.

Answer: C. Seven

Belarus, Russia, Moldova, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland. Ukraine has coastlines on the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, its capital Kyiv stands on the Dnieper, and its highest peak is Mount Hoverla (2,061 m) in the Carpathians. Its chernozem black soil makes it the "breadbasket of Europe" and a major wheat, maize and sunflower oil exporter — India is a large buyer of its sunflower oil. The news peg was Ukraine's largest-ever overnight drone offensive, using over 1,000 long-range UAVs and domestic cruise missiles.

Answer: C. ₹4,000 crore

S. Jaishankar visited Bhutan from 16 to 18 September 2026, reviewing energy, connectivity, healthcare, agriculture, education and clean mobility. Progress was reviewed on Punatsangchhu-II (1,020 MW) and Punatsangchhu-I (1,200 MW) — note which number goes with which project, since the smaller-numbered project is the larger one.

Answer: B. Gondhal

A Marathi psychological and cultural thriller set in rural Maharashtra, directed by Santosh Davakhar, chosen from 33 entries. Davakhar won the Silver Peacock for Best Director at IFFI 2025. Gondhal is the fourth Marathi film to be India's official entry, after Shwaas, Harishchandrachi Factory and Court — the three distractors in this question.

Answer: D. 1,000 km

Developed by IG Defence as part of its GRID STRIKE portfolio, KAL has an endurance of 7-8 hours, a 50 kg payload and GNSS plus INS-based navigation for autonomous long-endurance operations. Separately the same week, HAL handed over 2 LCA Tejas FOC twin-seat trainers and 3 HTT-40 trainers to the IAF, and 4 Dhruv NG helicopters to Pawan Hans.

Answer: C. 3,261

Read the options carefully — 1,868 is the height in metres of Agasthyarkoodam, the reserve's highest point, and 3,500 is its area in square kilometres. The reserve spans the southern extremity of the Western Ghats across Kerala and Tamil Nadu, was notified in 2001 and entered the UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves under the Man and the Biosphere Programme in 2016.

Answer: D. Fabaceae

Fabaceae recorded 349 taxa, ahead of Rubiaceae (194), Poaceae (193) and Orchidaceae (168). Fabaceae is the legume or pea family — beans, peas, lentils, chickpea; Rubiaceae is the coffee family, which also gives quinine; Poaceae is the grass family, covering rice, wheat, maize, sugarcane and bamboo; Orchidaceae is the orchid family.

Answer: B. Nilgiri

Notified in 1986. South India's four biosphere reserves are Nilgiri, Agasthyamala, Gulf of Mannar and Seshachalam Hills. A biosphere reserve conserves biodiversity while permitting sustainable use, which distinguishes it from a national park. Also linked to Agasthyamala is the Kani tribe and the Arogyapacha plant — the basis of India's first access and benefit-sharing model under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002.

Answer: B. "Climate Resilient Water Management"

Held in New Delhi. Keep the constitutional position ready: water is a State subject under Entry 17 of List II, inter-state rivers fall under Entry 56 of the Union List, and Article 262 governs disputes. The mission list to revise alongside: Namami Gange, Jal Jeevan Mission, PMKSY (Per Drop More Crop), Swachh Bharat Mission, Atal Bhujal Yojana, Jal Shakti Abhiyan: Catch the Rain and Mission Amrit Sarovar.

Answer: B. Aceclofenac and ketoprofen

Diclofenac was banned for veterinary use back in 2006, and meloxicam is the safe alternative — both appear in the options as traps. India's vulture population fell over 95 per cent in three decades. The news peg is Hazaribagh in Jharkhand, on the Chota Nagpur Plateau, where a 100-km radius now supports an estimated 400 to 450 vultures, the State's sole surviving wild stronghold.

Answer: A. Pinjore, Rajabhatkhawa and Rani

Pinjore is in Haryana, Rajabhatkhawa in West Bengal and Rani in Assam. Four Indian species are Critically Endangered — White-rumped, Indian (long-billed), Slender-billed and Red-headed. A Vulture Safe Zone is an area of roughly 100 km radius verified free of toxic NSAIDs, and the Action Plan for Vulture Conservation ran 2020-25.

Answer: C. 6 per cent

Down from 11 per cent, on loans through the Uttar Pradesh Cooperative Gramya Vikas Bank. The aim is to cut the interest burden and pull farmers towards institutional credit and away from informal lenders. It was launched alongside the Bharat Taxi service in the State.

Answer: B. The Gram Sabha

Launched under Swachh Bharat Mission-Grameen 2.0, SSA is an annual digital self-assessment framework in which Gram Panchayats rate ODF sustainability, cleanliness, Solid and Liquid Waste Management and sanitation infrastructure. Validation by the Gram Sabha is the design choice being tested — it puts verification with the village assembly rather than an outside inspector.

Answer: B. Sagarmala Finance Corporation

India's first maritime lender, planning the issue on 28 September. A blue bond finances sustainable water and marine projects — clean water, recycling, shipping, sustainable fishing, ocean energy and mapping — making it the marine equivalent of a green bond. Two terms that travel with it: the greenshoe option, which lets an issuer retain oversubscription beyond the base size, and "greenium", the yield discount a thematic bond earns over a conventional one.

Answer: C. Seychelles

In 2018, with World Bank support. For comparison, India issued its first Sovereign Green Bonds in January 2023 under the Sovereign Green Bond Framework. SEBI has issued a framework for green debt securities and proposed norms to curb greenwashing. The wider family is green, social, sustainability and sustainability-linked bonds.

Answer: C. OECD — 7.1 per cent

OECD moved from 6.3 to 7.1; ADB from 6.6 to 7.0; S&P from 6.6 to 7.0; Moody's from 6.0 to 7.0; Fitch from 6.4 to 6.9. All five now sit above the RBI's own 6.7 per cent projection — that gap is the examinable point. The upgrades follow 7.8 per cent growth in April-June on investment momentum, consumption demand and strong industrial activity, and all four institutions also expect an RBI rate hike later in the year.

Answer: C. Simultaneous sale of short-term and purchase of long-term securities

It reshapes the yield curve without expanding the balance sheet — option D is the same idea reversed, which is the trap. The news peg is the RBI's ₹25,000 crore OMO sale, the second tranche of a ₹1 trillion programme: ₹50,000 crore on 17 September, ₹25,000 crore on 21 September and ₹25,000 crore on 28 September. Bidding runs on e-Kuber, the RBI's core banking solution. Durable liquidity was ₹10.66 trillion on 31 August and near ₹14 trillion by mid-September; WACR is the operating target, with repo at 5.25 per cent and SDF at 5.00 per cent.

Answer: C. Indian Audit and Accounts Service

A 1986-batch IA&AS officer and a Whole-Time Member of IBBI, he took additional charge from 13 September 2026, succeeding Ravi Mital, and will hold it until 20 November 2026. IBBI is the statutory regulator under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016.

Answer: A. Theja Rio

A historical period drama set in the early 1960s in a remote Nagaland village near the Indo-Burma border, co-written with Rajkumar Kandamudi and co-produced with Nancy Nisa Beso. "Angh" is the hereditary village chief among the Konyak, Nagaland's largest tribe, known for facial tattoos. Santosh Davakhar in the options directed Gondhal, India's Oscar entry — a different film entirely.