Current Affairs Quiz 25 August 2026

Statements 1 and 3 are correct, while Statements 2 and 4 are wrong. The Supreme Court reduced the minimum legal practice period for entry-level judicial service from three years to one year, and the one-year structured clerkship following academy training is treated as equivalent to one year of Bar practice. Trainees actually receive only half, not the full salary, of a Judicial Magistrate First Class during academy training, one of the most commonly tested traps in service-conditions questions, and the clerkship sequence is reversed in Statement 4, since the first six months are actually spent under District or Sessions Judges while the last six months are spent under a High Court judge. Whenever a statement specifies a fraction or a sequence, it is worth writing it out and verifying each term independently against the source.

The BWSSB Triple Test has three limbs: systematic and organised activity, employer-employee cooperation, and the production of goods or services to satisfy human wants, so Statements 1, 3 and 4 are correct. Profit motive is explicitly irrelevant, since the 1978 judgment held that the absence of a profit motive does not take an activity outside the definition of "industry," making Statement 2 incorrect, and Justice Bagchi's opinion in the 2026 nine-judge ruling reaffirmed this same principle. For any multi-limb legal test, it is worth memorising what is explicitly excluded, not only what is included, since a plausible-sounding addition like profit motive is one of the most tested traps in labour law questions.

Statements 1 and 2 are correct, while Statement 3 is wrong. The IRC consolidates the Industrial Disputes Act 1947, the Trade Unions Act 1926, and the Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act 1946, and it came into force on 21 November 2025, simultaneously repealing the ID Act, 1947. The IRC actually raised the threshold for prior government permission on retrenchment or closure from 100 workers to 300 workers, one of its most significant and frequently tested changes, rather than keeping it at 100. The four Labour Codes each changed at least one key threshold, and the IRC's shift from 100 to 300 is the single most examinable number within it.

Statements 1 and 3 are correct, while Statement 2 gets the timeline backwards. Press Note 3, issued in April 2020, required prior government approval for any investment from a country sharing a land border with India, expanding an earlier requirement that had applied only to Bangladesh and Pakistan, and the March 2026 relaxation does allow the automatic route for entities with less than 10% stake held by land-border-country investors on a non-controlling basis. Press Note 3 actually predates the Galwan clashes, since it was issued in April 2020 while Galwan occurred in May 2020, with the stated rationale being prevention of opportunistic takeovers of COVID-19-weakened Indian companies rather than the border clashes. It is worth always verifying whether a stated cause predates or post-dates the policy it is said to explain, since this April-May 2020 sequence is a recurring trap.

Press Note 3 (2020) applies to any country sharing a land border with India, and India's land-border countries are Pakistan, China, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, and Afghanistan. Sri Lanka does not share a land border with India, being separated by the Palk Strait and the Gulf of Mannar, so it is excluded, leaving China, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bhutan as the correctly covered countries from the given list. India has seven land-border countries and two maritime neighbours without a land border, Sri Lanka and Maldives, and this distinction is worth memorising firmly since UPSC regularly tests it.

Statements 1, 3 and 4 are correct, while Statement 2 reverses the wind direction. El Niño is defined by SST anomalies of at least +0.5°C above the 30-year rolling baseline in the Niño 3.4 region, it causes drier-than-normal conditions in Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, and northern Brazil, and a positive IOD, warmer western Indian Ocean relative to eastern, generally enhances Indian monsoon precipitation and can partially counteract El Niño suppression. During El Niño, trade winds actually weaken rather than strengthen, allowing warm water to migrate eastward toward South America, the precise reversal of the normal-year pattern where strong trade winds push warm water westward. The mechanism worth fixing: in El Niño, trade winds weaken, warm water goes east, and the western Pacific, including India, Southeast Asia, and Australia, gets drier.

Statements 1, 3 and 4 are correct, while Statement 2 reverses the impact on the fishermen's catch. The Met Office's head of long-range forecasting forecast a peak above 3°C, described as "unheard of in modern climate records," confirmed that El Niño is causing well-below-normal rainfall in India as of August 2026, and Met Office scientist Nick Dunstone stated that 2027 is "very likely" to replace 2024 as the warmest year on record. The fishermen actually coined "El Niño" for a warm current that reduced, not boosted, their catch, since warmer water suppresses the cold upwelling that brings nutrient-rich water to the surface, driving fish away or causing die-offs — precisely why the fishermen noticed and named the phenomenon in the first place.

Statements 2 and 3 are correct, while Statement 1 omits a key exclusion. Heatwaves and lightning were included in the list of notified natural calamities in August 2026, enabling SDRF access for relief and SDMF access for mitigation projects, and a 2021 NITI Aayog report found that 65% of India's 7,933 urban settlements have no master plan. Section 41A actually empowers state governments to constitute UDMAs in every state capital and city with a municipal corporation except Delhi and Chandigarh, which the amendment explicitly excludes because they have their own Union Territory-level arrangements. Whenever a law says "all cities except X and Y," it is worth remembering that the exception itself is almost always the testable unit.

Statements 1, 3 and 4 are correct, while Statement 2 mixes up two generations. Ujjayini was the capital of Avanti, one of the sixteen Mahajanapadas, standing on the banks of the Shipra, a tributary of the Chambal, Vedisadevi was the daughter of a merchant at Vidisha whose children Mahinda and Sanghamitta spread Buddhism to Sri Lanka, and the 1938-39 excavations by the Gwalior State archaeology department at Vaishya Tekri found large bricks and punch-marked coins supporting a tentative Mauryan-period dating. Ashoka was actually sent to Ujjain as viceroy by his father Bindusara, not his grandfather Chandragupta Maurya, a classic genealogical trap in Mauryan questions. It is worth memorising the succession in order: Chandragupta Maurya is the grandfather, Bindusara the father, and Ashoka the grandson.

Pairs 1, 2 and 4 are correctly matched, while Pair 3 is wrong. Vaishya Tekri in Ujjain is the large mound tentatively identified as a Mauryan-era stupa, with fresh excavations begun by the MP government in 2026, the Great Stupa at Sanchi was built by Ashoka and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Madhya Pradesh famous for its torana gateways, and Bodh Gaya in Bihar is where the Buddha attained enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, with the Mahabodhi Temple also holding UNESCO status. Sarnath is actually the site of the Buddha's first sermon, the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, also known as the Deer Park at Isipatana, not where Ashoka met Vedisadevi, whom he actually met at Vidisha, nor where Mahinda was dispatched to Sri Lanka from, which was the Vidisha/Ujjain region. It is worth fixing the four Buddhist pilgrimage sites firmly: Lumbini for birth, Bodh Gaya for enlightenment, Sarnath for the first sermon, and Kushinagar for death.