Current Affairs Quiz 03 September 2026

NM-ICPS was approved by the Union Cabinet in 2018 with an outlay of ₹3,660 crore over nine years, under the Department of Science and Technology. Option (a) has the wrong year and tenure, 2021 and five years, option (c) halves the outlay to ₹1,800 crore, and option (d) has both a wrong year, 2020, and wrong tenure, seven years. The outlay of ₹3,660 crore and nine-year tenure are a paired fact worth memorising together: NM-ICPS equals 2018, ₹3,660 crore, 9 years, DST.

Statements 1 and 3 are correct, while Statement 2 inflates the count. TIHs are established as Section 8, non-profit, companies under the Companies Act, 2013, allowing academic institutions to hold equity in technology ventures, and in 2025, four high-performing TIHs were selected and supported as Technology Translation Research Parks at IIT Kanpur, IISc Bengaluru, IIT (ISM) Dhanbad, and IIT Indore. NM-ICPS has actually established 25 TIHs, not 30, a classic UPSC magnitude trap worth remembering as 25 TIHs leading to 4 TTRPs in 2025, with Section 8 signifying the non-profit company structure.

IIT Kanpur is matched to Cybersecurity, IISc Bengaluru to Robotics and AI Systems, IIT (ISM) Dhanbad to Mining Technologies, covering exploration to mineral beneficiation, and IIT Indore to Digital Healthcare, home to the CharakDT digital twin project. Option (b) swaps IISc and Dhanbad, option (c) swaps IIT Kanpur and IISc, and option (d) misplaces IIT Kanpur into Healthcare. The memory anchor worth using is that Kanpur keeps cyber safe while ISc handles intelligent systems (robotics), and Dhanbad, a coal-belt city, pairs with Mining while Indore pairs with Healthcare via CharakDT.

Statements 2 and 3 are correct, while Statement 1 names the wrong ministry. The Rules come into force 180 days from gazette publication on 29 August 2026, and CSIR-NPL is India's National Metrology Institute and the scientific custodian of IST, maintaining it within nanoseconds of UTC. The Rules were actually notified by the Department of Consumer Affairs, Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, not MeitY, since although MeitY seems the intuitive ministry for a digital time standard, IST regulation falls specifically under Legal Metrology within Consumer Affairs, with CSIR-NPL serving as the IST custodian.

White Rabbit is an open-source networking technology developed at CERN that synchronises clocks over fibre-optic networks with sub-nanosecond accuracy, and a White Rabbit IST Dissemination Demo Network was commissioned at the RRSL in Bengaluru in July 2026. Option (a) is wrong since the first caesium atomic clock was developed at the UK's National Physical Laboratory in 1955, not CSIR-NPL, option (b) is wrong since IST is actually traceable within a few nanoseconds, not microseconds, of UTC, and option (d) is wrong since PTP, Precision Time Protocol under IEEE 1588, rather than NTP, provides sub-microsecond accuracy, with SEBI mandating PTP for stock exchanges. It helps to fix NTP as common internet time, PTP as the financial-markets standard, and White Rabbit as CERN-origin, fibre-optic, sub-nanosecond precision.

Under the IWT, 1960, the Eastern Rivers, Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej, were allocated for India's exclusive use, while the Western Rivers, Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab, were allocated primarily for Pakistan's use, though India retains limited non-consumptive rights such as run-of-river hydro and domestic or agricultural use on them. Options (a), (c), and (d) each include at least one Western River in India's column. A useful memory aid is Eastern Rivers to India, closer to India's heartland, as RBS for Ravi-Beas-Sutlej, and Western Rivers to Pakistan as IJC for Indus-Jhelum-Chenab.

Statements 2 and 3 are correct, while Statement 1 is wrong. The CCS decision of 23 April 2025 placed the IWT in abeyance, conditional on Pakistan credibly abjuring cross-border terrorism support, and India invokes Article 60, material breach, of the VCLT along with the principle of rebus sic stantibus, fundamental change of circumstances, to justify holding treaty obligations in abeyance. India has actually never appeared before the CoA, consistently refusing to recognise its legal existence or participate in proceedings, and calls all CoA pronouncements "null and void" — India's position is best remembered as no appearance, no recognition, no jurisdiction.

Statements 1 and 2 are correct, while Statement 3 reverses who bears the risk. IFSCA was set up under the IFSCA Act, 2019 as India's unified regulator for financial products, services, and institutions in IFSCs, replacing the earlier patchwork of RBI, SEBI, and IRDAI jurisdiction, and 20 IBUs sanctioned USD 54.02 billion, with USD 52.82 billion disbursed, as of 31 August 2026. In FCNR(B) deposits, the bank actually bears the exchange-rate risk, not the depositor, with principal and interest fully repatriable in foreign currency, insulating the NRI depositor, which is precisely why FCNR(B) is attractive to NRIs and why RBI offers the swap facility to offset that bank-borne risk.

Option D is incorrectly stated, since India's monthly SIP contributions actually reached a record ₹31,961 crore, not ₹21,500 crore, though the MF AUM figure of ₹85.76 lakh crore itself is correct. Options A, remittances of USD 143.6 billion, B, equity market capitalisation of USD 5.18 trillion, and C, forex reserves crossing USD 700 billion, are all correctly stated as per the source material. The figures worth memorising together are SIP record of ₹31,961 crore, MF AUM of ₹85.76 lakh crore, and remittances of USD 143.6 billion.

Statements 1 and 2 are correct, while Statement 3 confuses the two administrative levels. DEH is anchored at DGFT under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, with DGFT Regional Authorities coordinating implementation with district administrations, and DEH was formally institutionalised under the Foreign Trade Policy 2023, giving it statutory recognition in the national trade framework. DEAPs are actually prepared by District Export Promotion Committees (DEPCs) at the district level, not by SEPCs, which operate at the State level to provide coordination while the DEAP preparation mandate lies specifically with DEPCs — DEPC pairs with DEAP since both share the "District" level.

Statements 1 and 2 are correct, while Statement 3 confuses a sub-component with the total. The TEV was estimated at ₹2,485.38 crore, with a per-hectare value of ₹1.83 crore, and the soil organic carbon stock was estimated at 251.14 tonnes of carbon per hectare. The ₹1,224.63 crore figure is actually the soil organic carbon value alone, not the combined total, since the total blue carbon asset value, vegetation plus soil carbon combined, is ₹1,612.40 crore. It is worth fixing the three tiers: soil carbon alone is ₹1,224 crore, vegetation plus soil combined (the blue carbon total) is ₹1,612 crore, and TEV, covering all services, is ₹2,485 crore.

Statements 1 and 3 are correct, while Statement 2 overstates the vaccine's effect. Reverse vaccinology identifies vaccine candidates computationally from the pathogen's genome, bypassing the need to culture and purify bacteria, and was also used for COVID-19 vaccines, and the vaccine provided 80-100% survival in mice exposed to a lethal dose of the hypervirulent serotype 1. Despite systemic protection, ZPY-CpG-Ch did not actually reduce bacterial load in the upper respiratory tract, since vaccinated mice could still carry and spread S. pneumoniae, a critical distinction for a public health vaccine worth remembering as systemic protection achieved, but upper respiratory carriage not eliminated.

Statements 1 and 2 are correct, while Statement 3 is wrong. Article 124(3) lists three eligibility routes: a High Court judge for five-plus years, a High Court advocate for ten-plus years, or a distinguished jurist in the President's opinion, and the 42nd Amendment of 1976 added the distinguished jurist route to High Courts under Article 217, effective January 1977, before the 44th Amendment of 1978 subsequently omitted this provision, so the route currently exists only at the Supreme Court level. Bar Council Rule 49 actually requires full-time salaried employees, including law teachers, to cease practice as advocates rather than permitting continued practice, which is also why legal academics rarely reach the Supreme Court, since they cannot maintain active bar membership.

Green Forge provides controlled simulation chambers where light quality and quantity, humidity, and temperature can be varied to create tailored environments for growing and experimenting with genetically modified crops, helping researchers study crop performance under different conditions and identify suitable cultivation locations before field deployment. Option (a) is wrong since Green Forge is for research and simulation rather than commercial seed production, option (c) describes a separate DBT carbon-capture bioreactor initiative with 38 CCU projects, and option (d) conflates BRIC-NABI's genuine space biotech collaborations, such as myogenesis and cyanobacteria research, with Green Forge's specific function. The facility is best remembered as GM crop simulation chambers controlling light, humidity, and temperature.

The strategic impetus for NavIC was the US denial and degradation of GPS access to India during the Kargil War of 1999, which revealed India's vulnerability to a foreign-controlled navigation and timing system and directly motivated the development of an indigenous regional navigation satellite system. Option (a) is wrong since GPS actually provides nanosecond-level timing accuracy, far beyond millisecond, with the real concern being control and availability rather than accuracy, option (c) is wrong since White Rabbit was developed at CERN rather than CSIR-NPL, with India merely adopting it, and option (d) is wrong since NavIC provides regional rather than global coverage over India and neighbouring areas. The key strategic link worth remembering is Kargil War leads to GPS denied leads to NavIC born, with White Rabbit being CERN-origin technology that India is deploying.