Current Affairs Quiz 23 September 2026

Statement-I is correct — a three-judge Bench headed by the Chief Justice of India observed that while the democratically elected State may decide what the National Song is and whether it runs to two stanzas or four, it cannot infract Articles 25 and 26 or expose a conscientious objector to criminal prosecution, affirming that Bijoe Emmanuel v. State of Kerala (1986) still holds. Statement-II is incorrect, since only its first half is right — the National Anthem IS mentioned in the Constitution, in Article 51A(a), which makes it a Fundamental Duty to respect the National Anthem, the Flag and the Constitution; Vande Mataram has no such mention, its status resting instead on Rajendra Prasad's statement in the Constituent Assembly on 24 January 1950. This is a half-true composite trap, where one limb of the statement is correct and the other is not.

Statements 1 and 3 are correct. NSWS was launched on 22 September 2021 and is implemented by DPIIT, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, completing five years in 2026, and the platform uses PAN as the Single Business ID, with authentication through Digital Signature Certificate and, for sole proprietors, DigiLocker. Statement 2 is incorrect — NSWS is a digital facilitation platform, NOT a statutory clearance authority: it receives the application once and routes it electronically to the competent Ministry, Department or State Government, which continues to grant or refuse approval under its own law. This is a power-transfer trap, where a single interface is mis-described as a single approving authority.

Option (a) is correct — the WHO's ICD-11 carries a traditional medicine module, so clinicians can record ASU (Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani) diagnoses in standard codes, aiding uniform interpretation, insurance processing and research. Option (b) is incorrect — the National Ayush Mission is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme implemented through States and Union Territories, not a Central Sector Scheme, and received over ₹6,406.99 crore between 2014-15 and 2025-26. Option (c) is incorrect — Ayurvedic medicines are regulated under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940 and Rules, 1945, with FSSAI's role limited to Ayurveda Aahara, the food category. Option (d) is incorrect, as the WHO Global Traditional Medicine Centre is at Jamnagar, Gujarat, not Thiruvananthapuram. This combines a scheme-type swap, a statute swap, and a location swap in the three wrong options.

Statements 1 and 3 are correct. The Bab el-Mandeb links the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and is the southern approach to the Suez route, and Perim (Mayun) Island, seized by the Houthis, splits it into the Large and Small Straits. Statement 2 is incorrect — the African side of the strait itself is formed by Djibouti alone; Eritrea lies further north along the Red Sea coast and does not front the strait, while the Asian side is Yemen. This is a neighbour-creep trap, placing a correctly regional country at the wrong specific chokepoint.

Pairs 1, 2 and 3 are correctly matched. Nomadic Elephant is the India–Mongolia platoon-level army exercise whose 18th edition began at the Foreign Training Node, Pithoragarh, on 21 September 2026; Khaan Quest is the multinational UN peacekeeping exercise hosted by Mongolia; Mitra Shakti is with Sri Lanka. Pair 4 is incorrect — Garuda Shakti is actually with Indonesia, not Japan; the India–Japan army exercise is Dharma Guardian, while Garuda is the India–France air exercise. This is a partner-swap trap using two exercises whose names both begin with "Garuda."

Statements 1 and 3 are correct. The first 1 MW canal-top system came up over the Narmada Canal at Mehsana, Gujarat, in 2012, reported to save close to 9 million litres of water a year while generating about 1.6 million units of electricity, and shading the water surface indeed cuts evaporation, which matters in water-stressed regions, while the water beneath also cools the panels and aids output. Statement 2 is incorrect — CTPV is actually more expensive than ground-mounted solar, since elevated structures spanning a canal need additional structural steel, foundations, wind-resistant design and maintenance access, making system cost rather than land the primary bottleneck to scaling. This is a plausible-inference trap, assuming that saving land automatically means saving money.

Statements 1 and 2 are correct. The reserve straddles Keralam and Tamil Nadu at the southern extremity of the Western Ghats, and a new JNTBGRI checklist recording 3,261 species across 1,139 genera and 190 families found a strong Sri Lankan affinity, with 347 taxa shared, attributed to historical land connections, shared Gondwanan history and climatic similarity. Statement 3 is incorrect, since Agasthyamalai is NOT the only southern entrant in the UNESCO network — the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve (India's first, 1986), the Gulf of Mannar, and the Seshachalam Hills are also included, giving southern India four biosphere reserves in total. This is an exclusivity trap, where "the only" is an overreach beyond the actual facts.

Pairs 1 and 2 are correctly matched — the International Solar Alliance was announced with France at COP-21, Paris, in 2015 and is headquartered at Gurugram, and Mission LiFE (Lifestyle for Environment) was launched in 2022. Pair 3 is incorrect — the Global Biofuels Alliance was actually launched at the G-20 New Delhi Summit in 2023, with the United States and Brazil as founding partners, not in 2019. The International Big Cat Alliance is a fourth such initiative covering seven big cat species. This is a date-shift trap, moving the launch year to one that merely sounds plausible.

All three statements are correct. Statement 1 reproduces the text of Article 44, and Statement 2 holds since it sits in Part IV, with Article 37 making the Directive Principles fundamental to governance but non-justiciable. Statement 3 is also correct — replying to Syed Hussain Imam during the debate on draft Article 35 on 23 November 1948, Ambedkar noted that India already had a uniform criminal code and that marriage and succession were the one corner civil law had not entered, raising the possibility of a future Parliament "feeling the ground" by making adherence purely voluntary; Goa retains a common civil code from the Portuguese Civil Code, 1867, and Uttarakhand's State code came into force in 2025. This is an all-true discomfort trap, where a very specific-sounding fact (statement 3) tempts candidates to reject it as fabricated.

Statement-I is correct — 55 of the 100 fastest-growing cities are Indian, while the best-placed Indian city overall is Delhi at rank 268 with a score of 57.6, followed by Bengaluru (311) and Mumbai (330). Statement-II is incorrect, since the overall ranking does NOT rest on GDP growth alone — it combines five groups of indicators: economics, human capital, quality of life, environment and governance, a composition that precisely explains Delhi's split profile of 13th on human capital but 116th on economics, 415th on governance, 781st on quality of life and 915th on environment. New York, London and Paris hold the top three places. This is a single-driver trap, reducing a composite index to just one pillar.