Current Affairs Quiz 21 August 2026

Statements 1, 2 and 4 are correct, while Statement 3 is wrong. The CAA inserted Section 6B into the Citizenship Act, 1955, reducing the naturalisation period from 11 years to 5 years for eligible Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who entered India on or before 31 December 2014, and citizenship is indeed a Union List subject under Entry 17 of List I. The Act does not apply uniformly, as it explicitly excludes the Sixth Schedule tribal areas of Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Tripura, as well as States covered by the Inner Line Permit system — Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Nagaland and Manipur. It is worth remembering that the Sixth Schedule under Article 244 governs Autonomous District Councils in these tribal areas, which sit outside the CAA's reach.

Assertion A is true — the Citizenship (Third Amendment) Rules, 2026 added a new sub-rule to Rule 11A, notifying District Collectors in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, West Bengal, Assam (except tribal areas), Tripura (except tribal areas), J&K and Ladakh as competent authorities, replacing the slower empowered committee mechanism. Reason R is false on both counts, since Article 243 deals with Panchayati Raj institutions rather than District Collectors, who are administrative officers under the executive government and not a constitutional creation of Article 243, and citizenship itself is governed by the Citizenship Act, 1955 under Parliament's power through Entry 17 of List I, not any exclusive constitutional jurisdiction of Collectors. A useful mapping to hold onto: Article 243 covers Panchayati Raj Institutions, Article 244 covers the Sixth Schedule, and Article 280 covers the Finance Commission.

Statements 1, 2 and 4 are correct, while Statement 3 is wrong. The BWSSB judgment was delivered by a seven-judge bench authored by Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, its Triple Test correctly requires systematic activity organised through employer-employee cooperation for producing or distributing goods or services regardless of profit motive, and a nine-judge Supreme Court bench has indeed held the 1978 definition inapplicable to Section 2(p) of the IRC, 2020. The IRC, 2020 actually subsumed the Industrial Disputes Act (1947), the Trade Unions Act (1926), and the Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act (1946) — not the Payment of Wages Act (1936), which was instead folded into the Code on Wages, 2019. It helps to remember the split: the IRC 2020 covers the IDA, Trade Unions Act, and Standing Orders Act, while the Code on Wages 2019 covers Minimum Wages, Payment of Wages, Payment of Bonus, and Equal Remuneration.

Section 295A was introduced by the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 1927, a colonial legislative response to communal tension surrounding religious publications in the 1920s, criminalising deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings by insulting a class's religion or beliefs, punishable with up to three years' imprisonment or fine or both. It is now reproduced as Section 299 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, which replaced the IPC from July 2024, and truth is notably no defence under this provision, as established in State of Mysore v Henry Rodrigues (1961). Options A, B, and D plant plausible-sounding decoy dates and Acts, but the provision's actual origin is specifically the 1927 colonial law.

Both statements are correct. Zonal Councils were established as statutory, not constitutional, bodies under the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, chaired by the Union Home Minister across all five councils — Northern, Southern, Eastern, Western and Central — and function purely in an advisory capacity, with recommendations that are not binding on any government. Article 262 of the Constitution specifically addresses inter-State river water disputes, empowering Parliament to legislate for their adjudication and to bar the Supreme Court's jurisdiction, a power Parliament exercised through the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956. It is worth distinguishing constitutional bodies like the Finance Commission (Article 280), Election Commission (Article 324) and CAG (Article 148) from statutory bodies like Zonal Councils, which have no mention in the Constitution itself.

Statements 1, 2 and 3 are correct, while Statement 4 reverses the actual legal sequence. India has 58 Tiger Reserves, the NTCA is a statutory body under Section 38L of the WPA, 1972, inserted by the 2006 amendment, and the 2022 census recorded 3,682 tigers, over 75% of the world's wild tiger population. Under the Forest Rights Act, 2006 and NTCA guidelines, forest rights of tribal and forest-dwelling communities must actually be settled first, with gram sabha consent obtained, before any relocation takes place — relocation without prior FRA settlement is itself a violation, not a permissible sequence. The correct order to remember is: settle forest rights, obtain gram sabha consent, then relocate with compensation.

Both A and R are true, and R correctly explains A. ISRO chose the ablative TPS because it is proven and robust for a single-use mission philosophy, handles fluctuating heat loads better, and because radiative systems are less forgiving, with any design error risking dangerous overheating. R accurately describes both the ablative mechanism — chemical decomposition into char and vapours that carry heat away while insulating the boundary layer — and why the radiative alternative was passed over, and since Gaganyaan is a single-use crew module rather than a reusable vehicle, the cost advantage of ablative TPS further favours this choice. It is worth remembering that Gaganyaan's single-use nature favours ablative TPS, while a reusable vehicle like the Space Shuttle instead used radiative ceramic tiles.

Statements 1, 2 and 3 are correct, while Statement 4 misstates the penalty tier. COTPA, 2003 prohibits both direct and indirect tobacco advertising, the CCPA under Section 21 of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 can penalise misleading endorsers up to ₹10 lakh, and FSSAI was indeed established under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006. For a first contravention, the CCPA can actually ban a celebrity endorser from endorsing any product for up to one year, not three years, with the three-year ban applying only to subsequent contraventions. The full escalation pattern worth remembering: a first offence carries up to ₹10 lakh and a one-year ban, while a repeat offence carries up to ₹50 lakh and a three-year ban.

Statements 1, 3 and 4 are correct, while Statement 2 states the exact opposite of what the Court held. The judgment firmly reiterates that prior EC is mandatory and cannot be overridden by an administrative Office Memorandum, the EIA Notification, 2006 was issued under Section 3 of the EPA, 1986, and the Court drew a clear distinction between administrative OMs, legally unsustainable for regularisation, and statutory notifications under EPA Section 3, which remain a permissible legislative option. The Court explicitly recognised that the central government retains statutory power under Section 3 of EPA, 1986 to frame a fresh statutory mechanism for violation cases if considered necessary in the larger public interest, so it did not close this window but merely clarified that the correct instrument is a statutory notification rather than an OM.

Option D correctly states the Q1 FY2026-27 data points: Gross Tax Revenue grew at only 3.7%, GST contracted by 11% as rate rationalisation from 2025-26 continued to weigh on collections, Union excise duty contracted by 22.4% due to fuel duty cuts made in response to West Asian crisis-driven oil price rises, and capital expenditure grew by 23.7% through deliberate front-loading. The zero PIT buoyancy figure actually applies to the full year 2025-26 rather than Q1 FY27, where PIT instead grew by 6.8%, and the other options mix up these figures across categories, such as Option B swapping the GTR and PIT growth rates. The sequence worth memorising is GTR 3.7%, GST −11%, Excise −22.4%, Capex +23.7%, with PIT's 6.8% growth belonging specifically to Q1.

Both statements are correct. SRE-1, launched in January 2007, was India's first successful orbital re-entry and recovery experiment, with the capsule spending about 12 days in orbit before re-entering and demonstrating ablative TPS performance under real re-entry conditions. The CARE mission, flying on GSLV Mk III (now LVM-3) in December 2014, successfully demonstrated crew-module-scale re-entry from around 126 km altitude with parachute recovery in the Bay of Bengal, validating the thermal protection system architecture now being scaled for Gaganyaan. A useful pairing to remember: SRE-1 (2007) was ISRO's first re-entry mission, and CARE (2014) specifically validated the TPS for Gaganyaan, with both relying on ablative systems.

Statements 1, 2 and 4 are correct, while Statement 3 overgeneralises. The EPA, 1986 was enacted following the Stockholm Conference of 1972 and the Bhopal Gas Tragedy of 1984, Category A projects are appraised by MoEFCC's Expert Appraisal Committee while Category B projects go to the SEIAA/SEAC at the State level, and the Subhash Kumar v State of Bihar judgment of 1991 was the landmark case expanding Article 21 to encompass the right to a pollution-free environment. Public consultation is actually mandatory only for Category A and Category B1 projects, not Category B2 projects, which require only scrutiny rather than a full EIA with public hearing, making the blanket claim in Statement 3 incorrect. It is worth fixing the rule that public hearings apply to Category A and B1, while Category B2 is exempted.