Current Affairs Quiz 17 August 2026

Statement 1 is the close-number trap — the 42nd Amendment froze seats until 2001, and it was the 84th Amendment of 2001 that extended the freeze to 2026, so remember the chain as 42 leads to 2001 and 84 leads to 2026. Statement 2 is correct, since Article 81(2) mandates that the seats-to-population ratio be uniform across States as far as practicable, the basis of the one-person-one-vote principle. Statement 3 is correct because Delimitation Commission orders are final and cannot be challenged in any court, a well-tested Prelims fact. Statement 4 is correct, as the 106th Amendment of 2023 provides one-third women's reservation in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies, to be implemented through delimitation after the 2027 Census.

The Assertion is correct, as India's NDC under the Paris Agreement commits to an additional carbon sink of 2.5–3 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent by 2030 through additional forest and tree cover, a target GIM is designed to serve. The Reason is also correct and supplies the direct mechanism, since India's Long-Term Low Carbon Development Strategy identifies GIM as a key programme for the carbon-sink target and names increasing forest and tree cover as the primary route to it. Candidates often drift to option (b) on a vague sense that the Reason is only partially relevant, but where R names the exact mechanism that makes A possible, R is the correct explanation and (a) is the answer.

Statements 1 and 3 are correct — Avicennia marina, the grey mangrove, dominates the Hara forests and survives hypersaline conditions through leaf-gland salt excretion, and the Hara forests of Qeshm Island are a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve under the Man and Biosphere programme. Statement 2 reverses the truth, since mangroves sequester carbon at rates far higher than terrestrial forests per unit area, with their sediment-bound blue carbon estimated at three to five times the rate of tropical rainforests. Statement 4 is incorrect because Indonesia, not India, holds the world's largest mangrove cover; India's mangroves are concentrated in the Sundarbans of West Bengal and Bhitarkanika in Odisha.

Statement 1 is incorrect and carries the central trap of the question: the Artemis Accords are not legally binding treaties but a set of non-binding bilateral arrangements between the United States and individual partner nations, resting on the principles of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and requiring no legislative ratification. Statement 2 is correct, as India signed the Accords in June 2023 and is a partner nation in the Artemis framework, with ISRO's specific mission-level role continuing to develop. The takeaway to carry into the exam hall is simply that Accords are not the same thing as treaties — they set out voluntary principles rather than enforceable international law.

All four statements are correct. NCCR, Chennai — formerly the ICMAM Project Directorate — is an attached office of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, and the body to distinguish it from is the National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management (NCSCM), which sits under the MoEFCC. The CRZ Notification of 2019 classifies the coast into CRZ-I (ecologically sensitive), CRZ-II (urban), CRZ-III (rural) and CRZ-IV (aquatic areas), while geotextile tubes are large cylindrical structures of high-strength porous polypropylene fabric filled with sand slurry and deployed as sea walls. Per the NCCR study cited in Parliament, Jagatsinghpur has 47.6% of its 55.8 km coastline eroding, the highest proportion among Odisha's six coastal districts.

Vaishya Tekri is an earthen mound in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, first excavated in 1938–39 by the Gwalior State Archaeological Department, which found evidence of a massive stupa roughly 350 feet in base diameter with an original height above 100 feet — larger than the Sanchi Stupa at about 54 feet. Brick sizes and coin finds, including punch-marked and Avanti coins, dated the structure to the Mauryan period of the third century BCE, and Ashoka himself served as viceroy of Ujjain before his accession; the ASI is now pursuing fresh excavation after a gap of about ninety years. Options (a), (b) and (d) attach the wrong period or site type — Gupta, Harappan and medieval Paramara respectively — whereas Ujjain's central historical importance runs through the Avanti Mahajanapada and the Mauryan viceroyalty.

Statements 1, 2 and 3 are correct — the DLI Scheme covers up to 50% of eligible expenditure on chip design tools, IP licensing, tape-out costs and product development over as much as five years; VIHAAN is a networking System-on-Chip for fibre broadband built on the indigenous VEGA microprocessor, itself based on the open-source RISC-V instruction set; and Semicon India 2.0, approved in July 2026 with a ₹1,27,500 crore outlay, spans design, fabrication, ATMP and R&D. Statement 4 inflates the figure, since the Chips to Startup programme has seen 245 chip designs taped out across 71 academic institutions rather than more than 500. Scheme-specific numbers like these are a standing UPSC favourite, so carry 245 designs and 71 institutions as the C2S anchor.

Statement 1 gets the succession right but reverses the lists — SAPTA worked on a positive-list approach in which only specified goods received concessions, while SAFTA is the negative-list arrangement covering all goods except those on the Sensitive List. Statement 2 is correct, as SAFTA gives LDC members such as Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives and Nepal faster tariff reduction from non-LDC members like India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Statement 3 is correct too, with Rules of Origin typically demanding 30–40% domestic value addition or a change in tariff heading as the anti-abuse safeguard. Statement 4 is incorrect because the DRI works under the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs, since CBDT administers direct taxes while CBIC handles customs and GST.

The Assertion is correct, as the PFBR at Kalpakkam, operated by BHAVINI under the Department of Atomic Energy, marks India's entry into Stage II of the Bhabha three-stage programme. The Reason is correct and directly explains it, because Stage II Fast Breeder Reactors run on plutonium produced in Stage I pressurised heavy water reactors from natural uranium, and that plutonium link is precisely what makes the PFBR the Stage II vehicle. Some candidates reach for option (b) on the reasoning that R merely describes fuel rather than stage classification, but the fuel is what defines the stage. Hold the sequence as uranium, then plutonium, then thorium — PFBR is the plutonium stage.

Option (d) is correct — NBHM was launched in 2020 under the AtmaNirbhar Bharat Abhiyan with an outlay of ₹500 crore for 2020–23, and the National Bee Board under the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare is the nodal agency. Option (a) wrongly places the mission under PMGSY, the rural roads programme, and the Ministry of Rural Development. Option (b) gives the wrong year and wrongly links it to PM-KISAN. Option (c) is the subtlest distractor, since the tripling target is genuine but APEDA under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry handles honey export promotion rather than running the production mission — two different bodies with two different mandates.