Current Affairs Quiz 07 October 2026

Pair 1 is correct — railways fall under Entry 22, Union List. Pair 2 is correct too, since ropeways are named in Entry 13, State List, alongside roads, bridges, ferries and inland waterways (subject to Lists I and III), making the Varanasi ropeway a State-subject project. Pair 3 is incorrect — ports other than major ports are in Entry 31 of the Concurrent List, while major ports are in Entry 27 of the Union List. Pair 4 is incorrect — airways, aircraft, air navigation and aerodromes are in Entry 29 of the Union List, not the Concurrent List. This matters for the new Integrated Transport & Logistics Authority (ITLA), which must plan across subjects split between the Union, States and the Concurrent List.

Statement 1 is correct — NLP 2022 (launched 17 September 2022) targets a top-25 LPI rank by 2030 and logistics costs comparable to global benchmarks; India ranked 38th of 139 in LPI 2023. Statement 2 is incorrect — LEADS (Logistics Ease Across Different States), published since 2018, is actually prepared by DPIIT, Ministry of Commerce & Industry, not NITI Aayog, which publishes many other State indices but not this one. Statement 3 is correct, since the PM GatiShakti National Master Plan (October 2021) is a GIS-based platform with an Empowered Group of Secretaries, a Network Planning Group and a Technical Support Unit, and the new ITLA approved on 6 October 2026 adds a 10-year-plus National Transport Master Plan and a National Transport Data Repository.

Statement 1 is correct — AIFs are governed by the SEBI (Alternative Investment Funds) Regulations, 2012, in three categories (I, II, III), and the Cabinet's ₹10,000 crore SME Growth Fund will be routed through an AIF making direct equity investments in SMEs. Statement 2 is incorrect — ₹50 crore and ₹250 crore were the 2020 limits; from 1 April 2025, a medium enterprise may have investment up to ₹125 crore and turnover up to ₹500 crore, with small at ₹25 crore / ₹100 crore and micro at ₹2.5 crore / ₹10 crore.

Statement 1 is correct — the 1st Asian Games were held in New Delhi in March 1951, with 11 nations, 489 athletes and 6 sports, and India finished second behind Japan. Statement 2 is correct too, since the OCA, formed in 1982, succeeded the Asian Games Federation (1949) and is headquartered in Kuwait City with 45 members. Statement 3 is incorrect — Aichi-Nagoya 2026 (the 20th Games) was Japan's third hosting, after Tokyo (1958) and Hiroshima (1994); it is only Japan's first hosting of the Asian Para Games. Statement 4 is correct, as India hosted in 1951 and 1982 (9th Games), both in New Delhi, and finished 4th in 2026 with 85 medals (21 gold).

Statement 1 is correct — the National Sports Governance Act, 2025 (passed August 2025) creates a National Sports Board to recognise sports bodies and a National Sports Tribunal for disputes. Statement 2 is correct too, since Khelo Bharat Niti (1 July 2025) replaced the National Sports Policy, 2001, targeting excellence at the 2036 Olympics and linking sport with NEP 2020. Statement 3 is incorrect — TOPS was actually launched in 2014 by the Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports, predating both Tokyo and Paris, and it backed medallists at Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024, with Core athletes receiving ₹50,000 a month.

Statement 1 is correct — the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, awards Physiology or Medicine, which in 2026 went to Deisseroth, Hegemann and Nagel for optogenetics. Statement 2 is correct too, since the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awards Physics and Chemistry (and Economic Sciences), with Physics 2026 going to Francis Halzen for IceCube. Statement 3 is incorrect — the statutes cap a prize at three laureates, which is why the 2026 Medicine prize stopped at three. Statement 4 is incorrect — the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences was established in 1968 by Sweden's central bank; Nobel's will (1895) created five prizes: Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature and Peace.

Statement-I is correct — IceCube reconstructs each neutrino's direction, which let it link a neutrino to the blazar TXS 0506+056 (2017) and find emission from NGC 1068 and the Milky Way's plane. Statement-II is correct too, since neutrinos are electrically neutral and interact only weakly, so they travel essentially undisturbed, unlike cosmic rays, whose charged particles are bent by galactic magnetic fields. Statement-II explains Statement-I — because neutrinos are not bent, their arrival direction points back to the source, which is why they form a window of multi-messenger astronomy alongside light and gravitational waves.

Option (d) is correct — light slows in a medium (to about 75% of c in ice or water), and a neutrino striking a nucleus produces a charged particle that can move faster than this, emitting a cone of Cherenkov light, the same blue glow seen in reactor cooling pools. Option (a) is incorrect since the neutrino itself does not glow, but the charged secondary particle it creates does. Option (b) is incorrect because nothing with mass can exceed the speed of light in vacuum; only the speed of light in a medium can be exceeded. Option (c) is incorrect too, as it describes fluorescence, and at 1.5–2.5 km below the South Pole ice there is no sunlight at all.

Statement 1 is correct — Section 3(d), added in 2005, blocks 'evergreening', that is patents on salts, polymorphs or new forms that do not improve therapeutic efficacy. Statement 2 is correct too, since in Novartis AG v. Union of India (2013) the Supreme Court denied a patent on the beta-crystalline form of imatinib (Glivec), an issue Swiss pharma firms still raise with India. Statement 3 is incorrect — the Model BIT 2015 actually requires investors to exhaust local remedies (ordinarily for at least five years) before arbitration; India then terminated older BITs, including the 1997 India–Switzerland BIT (ended 2017), and Swiss investors now seek a new pact. The 2015 model was a reaction to arbitration losses such as the White Industries award (2011), so it narrows rather than widens investor access.

The WTO, ILO and WIPO are headquartered in Geneva, as are the WHO and the UN Human Rights Council, and Switzerland will host the Geneva AI Summit in 2027, following India's AI Impact Summit (February 2026). The IAEA is NOT in Geneva — it is in Vienna, Austria (with UNIDO and UNODC) — and UNESCO is in Paris, France. All five are UN-system bodies, so eliminating the IAEA and UNESCO leaves only option (d).

Statement 1 is correct — PMAY-G (20 November 2016) restructured the Indira Awaas Yojana, which began in 1985-86 under RLEGP and became independent in 1996. Statement 2 is correct too, since sharing is 60:40, 90:10 for NE and Himalayan States, and 100% Central for UTs. Statement 3 is incorrect — beneficiaries come from the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011 and the Awaas+ surveys, verified by the Gram Sabha, not Census house-listing data. Statement 4 is incorrect — unit assistance is ₹1.20 lakh in the plains, with ₹1.30 lakh applying to hilly States, difficult areas and IAP districts. A 177-house 3D Concrete Printing pilot under PMAY-G began in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, on 4 October 2026.

Statement 1 is correct — NSM (April 2015, about ₹4,500 crore) is steered by DST and MeitY and implemented by C-DAC, Pune and IISc, Bengaluru; as of September 2026 it has 40 systems and 68 PF, against a target of 50 systems and 123+ PF. Statement 2 is correct too, since C-DAC was set up in 1988 after Western export restrictions on supercomputers, and PARAM 8000 (about 1 gigaflop) followed in 1991. Both hold, so a long, detail-heavy statement should not be marked false merely for its length.

Statement-I is correct — the RBI circular of 6 July 2017 gives zero liability where there is bank fault, or a third-party breach reported within 3 working days, while liability is limited (₹5,000–25,000 by account type) for reports in 4–7 working days, and the bank must credit the amount within 10 working days. Statement-II is correct too, since the same circular places the burden of proof on the bank, though victims in the SPIR 2026 study reported that banks routinely said they had 'collaborated' with fraudsters. But Statement-II does NOT explain Statement-I — Statement-I is about the reporting window that decides how much loss the customer bears, while Statement-II is about who must prove fault; they are separate provisions of one circular.

Statement 1 is incorrect — HSL, founded in 1941 as the Scindia Shipyard and taken over by the Government in 1952, has been under the Ministry of Defence since 2010, like the other defence shipyards (MDL, GRSE, GSL); it launched Surya, the first of five indigenous Fleet Support Ships (₹19,000 crore contract, 82% indigenous content), on 6 October 2026. Statement 2 is incorrect too — DAP 2020 gives the highest priority to Buy (Indian-IDDM), that is Indigenously Designed, Developed and Manufactured, while Buy (Global) is the last resort.

Pair 1 is correct — Arikamedu, near Puducherry, has yielded Roman amphorae and Arretine ware from Indo-Roman trade (1st century BCE to 1st century CE). Pair 2 is correct too, since Muziris (identified with Pattanam, Kerala) was the Malabar pepper port described in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. Pair 3 is correct, as the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang, a Silk Road oasis, preserve Buddhist murals and manuscripts. Pair 4 is incorrect — the Fourth Buddhist Council was held in Kashmir under the Kushan king Kanishka, while Ashoka patronised the Third at Pataliputra; the Kushans controlled a key overland stretch of the Silk Road. The patrons run Ajatashatru (I), Kalashoka (II), Ashoka (III) and Kanishka (IV).