Current Affairs Quiz 10 October 2026

Statement 1 is correct — the NTA was set up in 2017 under the Ministry of Education as an autonomous, self-sustaining body registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860, and has no parent Act, which is why the Committee asked for a parliamentary framework for its accountability. Statement 2 is correct — the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024 lists the NTA among the public examination authorities it covers, alongside UPSC, SSC, the RRBs and IBPS; the Committee wants it amended further to bar rallies on exam days and to act on blacklisted vendors. Statement 3 is incorrect — the Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports is a Rajya Sabha committee, chaired by a Member of the Rajya Sabha, and the report was presented to the Chairman, Rajya Sabha. The giveaway in the news itself is that the report went to the "Chairman", a title only the Rajya Sabha presiding officer holds.

Statement 1 is correct — the system of 24 DRSCs (8 Rajya Sabha, 16 Lok Sabha) has operated since 2004, expanding the 17 committees created in 1993, and each has 31 members: 21 from the Lok Sabha and 10 from the Rajya Sabha. Statement 2 is incorrect — a Minister is not eligible to be a member of any DRSC, and a member who becomes a Minister ceases to be a member, since the committees scrutinise the executive. The qualifier "a ministry other than his or her own" sounds like a reasonable safeguard, but the rule is absolute: no Minister on any DRSC. Their reports are recommendatory.

Statement 1 is correct — the Council recommended a ₹10,000 floor below which no show cause notice will issue, and pending notices and appeals below this amount will be decided on the same basis. Statement 2 is correct — the prosecution threshold is to rise from ₹1 crore to ₹5 crore, alongside the withdrawal of arrest powers and the narrowing of offences in Section 132(1) of the CGST Act. Statement 3 is incorrect — under the proposed e-way bill rules, interception requires specific intelligence and Joint Commissioner-level authorisation, and action may be taken only in the State where the supplier or recipient is located, not in transit States, unless documents are missing. Statement 4 is incorrect — the direction is reversed, as the maximum general penalty is to be reduced from ₹25,000 to ₹10,000. The reform's spirit is trust-based, decriminalising and lighter on penalties, so any statement making compliance harsher deserves a second look.

Statement 1 is correct — Article 19(1)(b) guarantees the right to assemble peaceably and without arms, and read with Article 19(1)(a) (speech and expression), it grounds the right to protest. Statement 2 is incorrect — Article 19(3) permits restrictions on assembly only in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India or public order, whereas "decency or morality" is a ground under Article 19(2), which governs speech. Statement 3 is correct — the prohibitory-order power formerly in Section 144 CrPC is now Section 163 BNSS, and disobeying such an order is punishable under Section 223 BNS (formerly Section 188 IPC). Each clause of Article 19 has its own list of grounds, and the setter moves a valid ground from clause (2) to clause (3); remember clause (3) as the shortest list, with two grounds only.

Pair 1 is correct — a Constitution Bench in Babulal Parate upheld the prohibitory-order power (then Section 144 CrPC), while recognising that affected persons can challenge the magistrate's order. Pair 2 is incorrect — in MKSS the Court held the opposite: a prior-permission requirement is valid, but it must not become a device to reject every protest, as demonstrations should be regulated, not banned; the case arose from the restrictions at Jantar Mantar. Pair 3 is correct — in the Jammu & Kashmir restrictions case (Anuradha Bhasin), the Court held that prohibitory orders must be proportionate and cannot be used to suppress legitimate expression. Pair 4 is correct — in the Shaheen Bagh case (Amit Sahni), the Court held that dissent is protected but public ways cannot be occupied indefinitely, so protests must be held in designated areas. Pair 2 turns a nuanced holding into a sweeping one, and in constitutional law, answers with absolute words such as "any", "always" or "never" are usually wrong.

Statement 1 is correct — the species is Critically Endangered (IUCN), and is also in Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 and Appendix I of the Convention on Migratory Species. Statement 2 is correct — the bustard is the State bird of Rajasthan, which holds about 130 (±20) of the roughly 150 birds left in the wild. Statement 3 is correct — both centres are in Jaisalmer district, and wild-laid eggs collected from 2019 have produced 98 birds. Statement 4 is incorrect — the first release, of two captive-bred males on 4 October 2026, was in Desert National Park, Rajasthan, and Gujarat may run a similar pilot only if the Rajasthan experiment succeeds. Gujarat is a genuine bustard State and a partner in Project GIB, so the false statement sounds plausible; anchor the news to Desert National Park, Jaisalmer.

Statement-I is correct — in M.K. Ranjitsinh v. Union of India, the Court, acting on an expert panel's advice, demarcated priority areas, directed that 80 km of power lines in Rajasthan be buried, and asked for powerline corridors to be created for re-routed lines. Statement-II is correct and explains Statement-I — collision with power lines, much of it renewable-energy transmission in western Rajasthan, is the most acute current threat, because the bird cannot see or manoeuvre around wires in time, and the undergrounding order is a direct response to that cause. Use the "because" test: "The Court ordered lines underground because the bird cannot see or avoid them" reads as a genuine cause.

Statement 1 is correct — Article 19 lets the WHA adopt conventions by a two-thirds vote, and they bind only States that ratify; the Agreement was adopted in May 2025 with 124 in favour, none against and 11 abstentions, and India voted in favour. Statement 2 is incorrect — it is the second such treaty, the first being the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (2003), while the International Health Regulations (2005) are regulations under Article 21, not a treaty under Article 19. Statement 3 is correct — the PABS annex, linking the sharing of pathogen samples and sequence data to guaranteed access to vaccines, diagnostics and treatments, is still under negotiation, and the Agreement opens for signature only after it is adopted. "First" claims are UPSC's favourite mutation, so keep the three WHO instruments apart: Art. 19 conventions, Art. 21 regulations, Art. 23 recommendations.

Statement 1 is incorrect — the ICC (Rome Statute, 1998; in force 2002) is an independent treaty body, not a UN organ, whereas the UN's principal judicial organ is the International Court of Justice, which settles disputes between States; both sit at The Hague. Statement 2 is correct — India has neither signed nor ratified the Rome Statute, and Pillay, a former ICTR judge and ICC judge, currently serves as an ad hoc judge of the ICJ in The Gambia v. Myanmar. ICJ and ICC share a city and both sound like "the world court", so separate them by who is tried: ICJ for States, ICC for individuals.

Statement-I is correct — under National PNG Drive 3.0, launched by the PNGRB on its 20th Foundation Day (1 October 2026), CGD entities receive an extra 200 SCM of APM gas for every incremental billed D-PNG connection, with targets by end-FY27 of 50 lakh new connections, 40 lakh unbilled connections activated and 50 lakh registrations. Statement-II is correct and explains Statement-I — APM gas comes from legacy domestic fields at government-administered, lower prices, so extra cheap gas lowers distributors' costs, which is why it works as an incentive to add billed connections. An incentive only works if the thing given is valuable, and Statement-II supplies exactly that value. The PNGRB is a statutory regulator (PNGRB Act, 2006) for the downstream sector and does not regulate exploration and production.

Option (d) is correct — the STL (Standard Tessellation Language) file represents a 3D model as a collection of triangular surfaces, telling the machine what to build. Option (a) is incorrect, as that describes the toolpath (often G-code) generated after slicing; (c) is incorrect, since that is the slicing software, the next step in the chain; and (b) is incorrect, because STL carries geometry only, not colour or texture. Every wrong option describes a real neighbouring step, so fix the sequence first: CAD design, STL file, slicing, layer-by-layer printing, post-processing. The National Strategy for Additive Manufacturing (NSAM), released by MeitY in February 2022, targets 5% of the global AM market, 50 India-specific technologies, 100 start-ups and 1 lakh skilled workers.

Pair 1 is correct — the World Development Report is the World Bank's annual flagship (since 1978), and WDR 2026, The Promise of Artificial Intelligence, was launched in India by the IndiaAI Mission, advising developing countries to adopt, adapt, then advance. Pair 2 is incorrect — the World Economic Outlook is published by the IMF, not the World Economic Forum. Pair 3 is correct, as the Human Development Report, with the Human Development Index, is published by UNDP. Pair 4 is incorrect — the Global Risks Report is published by the World Economic Forum, not the IMF. The word "Economic" in both "World Economic Outlook" and "World Economic Forum" is the bait; learn the IMF pair as WEO plus the Global Financial Stability Report, and the WEF pair as Global Risks plus Global Gender Gap.

Statement 1 is incorrect — the SEEA Central Framework (2012) was adopted by the UN Statistical Commission as an international statistical standard, and was prepared jointly by the UN, the European Commission, FAO, IMF, OECD and the World Bank, so no single agency owns it; SEEA Ecosystem Accounting followed in 2021. Statement 2 is incorrect — the accounts are compiled by the National Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), which has released the Strategy for Environmental-Economic Accounts in India, 2026–2030 and publishes EnviStats India. The trap is an agency swap twice over: the subject is "environment", so MoEFCC feels natural, and the method is "accounts", so the World Bank feels natural. Statistics standards belong to the UN Statistical Commission, and India's official statistics to MoSPI.

Statement 1 is correct — the Sarus (Antigone antigone), about 1.5 m tall and the world's tallest flying bird, is India's only resident breeding crane, while Demoiselle and Common cranes are winter migrants. Statement 2 is correct — it is Vulnerable (IUCN), in CITES Appendix II and Schedule I of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972. Statement 3 is correct — it is the State bird of Uttar Pradesh, which reported nearly 20,000 Sarus in its 2024 State count, and BNHS is coordinating the first synchronised All-India Sarus Crane Survey (10–11 October 2026). After a run of alarming decline figures, aspirants expect "Endangered", but here every statement is true; when each survives independent checking, trust "all three" and do not invent an error.

Statement 1 is correct — the Greenwich meridian (0°) crosses Ghana's coast close to the port of Tema, with territory west of it in the Western Hemisphere and the strip to its east in the Eastern Hemisphere. Statement 2 is incorrect — Ghana borders Côte d'Ivoire (west), Burkina Faso (north) and Togo (east), and Togo and Benin lie between Ghana and Nigeria. Statement 3 is correct — Lake Volta, one of the world's largest artificial reservoirs by area, was created by the Akosombo Dam on the Volta River. Statement 4 is incorrect — the Equator passes south of Ghana, through the Gulf of Guinea, where the Prime Meridian and the Equator meet at sea. Ghana is close to both the Equator and Nigeria, so both feel right, but the 0°/0° point lies offshore and two countries separate Ghana from Nigeria. AfCFTA is headquartered in Accra.