Current Affairs Quiz 26 August 2026

Statements 1 and 3 are correct, while Statement 2 is wrong. The DGHC was created in 1988 following agitation by Subhas Ghising's GNLF, who coined the term "Gorkhaland," and the MHA constituted a high-level committee chaired by Pankaj Kumar Singh, former Deputy NSA and current interlocutor, after the Siliguri meeting on 22 August 2026. The GTA was actually established in 2011 through a tripartite Memorandum of Understanding between the Centre, the West Bengal government, and the GJM, not through a constitutional amendment, which means it rests on an executive arrangement rather than a Sixth Schedule or constitutional basis, making it more fragile than a constitutionally entrenched body. Whenever a sub-national body is described as created by "constitutional amendment," it is worth verifying, since many such bodies are actually executive creations.

Article 3 of the Constitution empowers Parliament to form a new state by separation of territory from any existing state, and the procedure requires the President to refer the bill to the concerned state legislature for expressing its views, but the state's consent is not required, since Parliament can override that view. Article 371 provides special provisions for specific northeastern and other states rather than a mechanism to create new ones, Article 244A specifically pertains to an autonomous state within Assam's Sixth Schedule areas, and the Sixth Schedule creates autonomous districts or regions with limited self-governance but does not form full states. Many aspirants confuse "consent," which is not required, with "view," which is required, of the state legislature under Article 3, and this distinction has been tested by UPSC before.

Statements 1 and 2 are correct, while Statement 3 is wrong. e-Shram was developed by the NIC and creates the NDUW, the country's first Aadhaar-authenticated national database of unorganised workers, and its UAN is a distinct 12-digit number for unorganised workers, separate from the EPFO's Universal Account Number used in the formal sector. Eligibility actually excludes EPFO or ESIC members, since the portal specifically targets workers outside the formal social security architecture, the opposite of what Statement 3 claims. e-Shram is for the un-organised, so if a worker is already covered under EPFO or ESIC, they fall outside its scope.

The e-Shram One-Stop Solution, launched on 21 October 2024, integrates four streams on one platform: welfare, covering 15 social security and welfare schemes, employment through the National Career Service portal, skilling via the Skill India Digital Hub and apprenticeship, and pension through PM-SYM. Option (b) is wrong because PM-SYM pension access is explicitly included, while options (c) and (d) are incorrect since they omit employment or skilling and add microfinance or credit, which are not part of e-Shram's scope. It helps to memorise the full set together: Welfare, Employment, Skilling, and Pension.

All three statements are correct. RRBs were established under the RRB Act, 1976, recommended by the Narasimham Working Group on Rural Credit, the 50:35:15 ownership pattern between the Centre, Sponsor Bank, and State is the statutory formula, and PIB confirmed a record net profit of ₹10,176 crore with total business crossing ₹13.5 lakh crore in FY 2025-26. RRBs have also been progressively consolidated from 196 at their peak to 43 currently. UPSC occasionally places all-correct questions to catch aspirants who assume "all three" is a default wrong answer, so it is worth verifying each statement independently before dismissing such an option.

The five elements of the NSB roadmap are fiscal reforms, assured cargo support such as right of first refusal on government cargo like fertilisers, coal, and food, access to competitive financing, regulatory streamlining, and ease of doing business. "Mandatory flag-of-origin requirement for all bilateral trade" is not part of the roadmap and is a fabricated element, since such mandates are extremely rare in modern trade law and would violate WTO principles, with the roadmap instead relying on incentives like assured cargo preference rather than mandatory requirements. For "which is NOT" questions, it helps to eliminate the three options that can be confirmed and treat the remainder as the answer.

Statements 1 and 3 are correct, while Statement 2 is wrong. CPI inflation rose to 4.45% year-on-year in July 2026, up from 4.38% in June, driven by food and beverages including meat, eggs, and spices, and merchandise exports grew at a four-month high within FY 2026-27. The RBI Bulletin actually stated that core inflation remained unchanged, confirming supply-side rather than demand-side price pressures, the opposite of Statement 2's claim. Rising headline inflation alongside stable core inflation signals a supply shock rather than demand overheating, a crucial monetary policy distinction, since it limits the RBI's ability to address the problem through rate hikes.

Statements 1 and 2 are correct, while Statement 3 is wrong. H1N1 pdm09 emerged in 2009, caused the pandemic WHO declared that June, and has since become endemic as a seasonal influenza virus, and ICMR confirmed India operates 73 sentinel hospitals tracking Influenza A (H1N1, H3N2), Influenza B, SARS-CoV-2, human metapneumovirus, adenovirus, and parainfluenza. H1N1 and H3N2 are actually subtypes of Influenza A, not Influenza B, since "H" and "N" stand for Haemagglutinin and Neuraminidase, the surface proteins that classify Influenza A subtypes, while Influenza B instead has lineages, Yamagata and Victoria, rather than H/N subtypes. Only Influenza A has subtypes ranging from H1-H18 and N1-N11, while Influenza B is classified by lineage instead.

CSIR-NAL, the National Aerospace Laboratories, is located in Bengaluru and operates under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, which falls under the Ministry of Science and Technology, and it is best known for developing the Saras light transport aircraft, India's first domestically developed civil aircraft. It is not under the Ministry of Defence or the Department of Space, and is not located in Pune or Hyderabad. It helps to fix the full chain: NAL equals National Aerospace Laboratories equals Bengaluru equals CSIR equals the Ministry of Science and Technology, distinct from DRDO labs under the Ministry of Defence or ISRO centres under the Department of Space.

Statements 1 and 2 are correct, while Statement 3 flips the actual direction. Models predicted the 2026 El Niño during early spring and it evolved robustly by summer, broadly validating the forecasts, and El Niño predictability stands at roughly 80% while AIMR seasonal prediction accuracy is lower, at approximately 60%. June 2026 rainfall was actually 40% below normal, a deficit rather than a surplus, with July instead recovering to about 1% above normal, the key sub-seasonal volatility the source article analyses. The 2026 monsoon pattern worth remembering is a June collapse of roughly -40% followed by a July recovery of about +1%, showing that models struggled with the sub-seasonal test even though they got the broader El Niño call right.

UNCCD, adopted in 1994, is one of the three Rio Conventions alongside UNFCCC and the CBD, and its secretariat is located in Bonn, Germany, with India having ratified it in 1996. UNCCD was not adopted directly at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, as it was actually adopted separately in Paris in 1994 as an outcome of Rio, making the secretariat location in Geneva in option (b) also incorrect. CoP17 was actually held in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia in 2026, not Nairobi. A useful mnemonic for the Rio Conventions is UNFCCC for climate, CBD for biodiversity, and UNCCD for desertification, all linked to the 1992 Rio Summit conceptually but adopted or signed on different specific dates.

Statements 1 and 2 are correct, while Statement 3 uses an outdated classification. ICGS Ajit is a 51.43 m Fast Patrol Vessel with over 65% indigenous content, and it uses Controllable Pitch Propellers driven by twin marine diesel engines, explicitly described as a first-of-its-kind feature in this FPV class. Goa Shipyard Limited was actually upgraded from Schedule B to Schedule A Defence PSU status in early 2026, so it is no longer a Schedule B DPSU as Statement 3 claims. It is worth remembering that GSL is now a Schedule A DPSU following its 2026 upgrade, since UPSC tests current facts and outdated institutional classifications are a common trap in defence and PSU questions.

The Lokniti-CSDS data explicitly establishes that youth turnout varies sharply across states, low in Bihar at 41% and Uttar Pradesh at 51% among 18-21-year-olds, but high in West Bengal at 93% and Tamil Nadu at 90%, and young voters backed the losing Congress in Uttarakhand 2022 even though the BJP still won, showing that youth do not reliably back winners. The preferences of 18-21-year-olds and 22-25-year-olds often differ, as seen in Tamil Nadu 2026 where the TVK secured 69% support among 18-21-year-olds but noticeably less among older cohorts, meaning there is explicitly no uniform "youth vote." India's youth vote is diverse, volatile, and state-specific rather than a single monolithic category, and options (a), (b), and (d) each make sweeping generalisations the underlying data explicitly refutes.

All three statements are correct. PRAGATI, Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation, was launched in March 2015 and is chaired by the Prime Minister, the 53rd meeting reviewed six infrastructure projects in the Railway, Road, and Power sectors across nine states with a cumulative cost exceeding ₹30,000 crore, and PRAGATI integrates data from CPGRAMS, the grievance redressal system, and the Project Monitoring Group for real-time review. UPSC uses the all-correct pattern to penalise aspirants who assume such combinations must be traps, so each statement is worth verifying independently. It helps to fix PRAGATI's core facts together: launched March 2015, integrates CPGRAMS and PMG, and is a PM-chaired ICT review platform.

The Economics Letters study by Terzi and Nicoli found India's LEO launch cost at $13,302/kg in 2025, higher than China's $5,809/kg, higher than Japan, Russia, and Europe, higher than the United States' $3,225/kg, and well above the global average of $3,868/kg, making India costlier than every comparator listed. Option (a) wrongly states India is lower than the US when the opposite is true, by nearly four times, option (c) is likewise incorrect on direction, and option (d) overstates the claim, since the study compares specific nations rather than all spacefaring nations globally. The full ranking worth remembering is India at $13,302, then China at $5,809, then the global average at $3,868, then the USA at $3,225, with India's high cost partly explained by only 5 launches in 2025 against a projected 30.