Current Affairs Quiz — May 5, 2026

BJP won 206 of 294 seats in West Bengal — its first ever win in the state — ending more than 50 years of uninterrupted Left (1977–2011) and TMC (2011–2026) dominance. Mamata Banerjee lost the Bhabanipur constituency to Suvendu Adhikari.
Voter turnout was ~91.91–92.84% — the highest ever in West Bengal. Option A is wrong — Tamil Nadu had a hung assembly, with TVK (Vijay’s party) as single largest at 107/234 seats, well short of the 118-seat majority.
Option B is wrong — Pinarayi Vijayan resigned after LDF’s crushing defeat (LDF got only 35/140; UDF won 102). Option D is wrong — AIUDF collapsed from 16 seats (2021) to just 2 seats in Assam 2026.

With UDF winning 102 of 140 seats in Kerala and LDF reduced to just 35 seats, Pinarayi Vijayan resigned — and for the first time since 1977, no Left-led government exists anywhere in India. In 1977, following the Emergency, Left parties were voted out across states.
Kerala had been a consistent stronghold of the Left (CPI-M-led LDF) or the Congress-led UDF alternating in power. This result collapses the Left’s last major stronghold at state government level.
Option A is wrong — BJP won only 2–3 seats in Kerala; West Bengal is not a southern state. Option C is wrong — the 2021 LDF win was the second consecutive term (breaking the usual alternation), and 2026 reverses that.
Option D is factually incorrect as the “100+ seats” milestone for Congress UDF is accurate but that’s not the historically unique event here.

Operation Sindoor struck nine terror infrastructure sites including targets at Muridke (LeT headquarters) and Bahawalpur (JeM headquarters) — both deep inside Pakistan’s Punjab province. This was the first time India conducted strikes deep inside Pakistan Punjab since the 1971 war — marking a decisive break from India’s earlier doctrine of “strategic restraint.” The operation used Rafale jets firing SCALP cruise missiles and AASM HAMMER precision bombs — entirely conventional weapons.
Nuclear weapons were not involved (Option A false). India does not yet have operational hypersonic missiles in combat (Option C false).
Option D is not what made the operation historically significant — it was the geographical reach into Pakistani Punjab.

Placing the IWT in “abeyance” (suspension) is a legally distinct act from withdrawal or termination. India has not formally exited the treaty — it has suspended its obligations, conditioning restoration on Pakistan taking “credible and irreversible steps to end support for terrorism.” This preserves India’s coercive leverage: Pakistan faces water uncertainty without India having committed to permanent termination.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration noted that the IWT contains no provision for unilateral abeyance, but India disputes that jurisdiction. The World Bank remains nominal administrator (Option C is wrong).
Option D is the opposite of what happened. Option A mischaracterizes abeyance as permanent withdrawal.

OptoSAR = Optical sensor + Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) fused on a single satellite platform. The optical sensor provides 7-band multispectral imagery (colour, spectral) but cannot see through clouds or at night.
The SAR sensor emits microwave pulses and works day/night/all-weather, penetrating clouds and smoke. By combining both on one satellite (190 kg, India’s largest private satellite), Mission Drishti delivers ~1.8 metre resolution fused imagery with up to 3× more actionable intelligence than single-sensor satellites.
An NVIDIA Jetson Orin AI processor does real-time onboard fusion. It was incubated at IIT Madras and launched on SpaceX Falcon 9 from Vandenberg, California.
The Drishti Constellation plans 10 such satellites by 2029.

India’s position rests on two pillars: (1) The 1816 Sugauli Treaty defines Nepal’s western boundary as the Kali River — India contends the river’s source is further east, placing Lipulekh, Kalapani, and Limpiyadhura within India. (2) India has continuously administered Kalapani (including an ITBP post) since 1962 — long-standing effective administration. Nepal contends the Kali River begins at Limpiyadhura (northwest), which would make all three areas Nepali.
India inaugurated the Dharchula–Lipulekh road in May 2020 (Rajnath Singh), which triggered Nepal’s formal map revision showing all three areas within Nepal. The 1950 Treaty, UN arbitration, and Panchsheel are not relevant to this specific dispute (Options A, C, D are wrong).

The Planning Commission (1950–2014) controlled the allocation of central funds to states through Five-Year Plans and block grants — giving it enormous leverage over state policies. NITI Aayog (established January 1, 2015) is purely advisory and strategic — it has no fund allocation powers.
States interact with NITI Aayog as genuine partners in a cooperative federalism model rather than as supplicants for plan funds. Both the Planning Commission and NITI Aayog are non-constitutional executive bodies (created by Cabinet resolution, not by Parliament or the Constitution) — Option B is wrong.
Both are chaired by the PM, not the Finance Minister — Option D is wrong. Option A is the opposite of the truth.

The National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) was launched by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) in January 2019. Its revised target is a 40% reduction in PM10 concentrations (or achievement of the national standard of 60 µg/m³) by 2025–26, from a 2017 baseline.
It covers 131 “non-attainment cities” — cities that exceeded National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for five or more consecutive years. Implementation is tracked through the PRANA portal (Portal for Regulation of Air-pollution in Non-Attainment cities).
The NGT found southern states spent 86% of NCAP funds on road dust, only 6.6% on vehicular emissions — defeating the programme’s purpose. Bengaluru used only 13% of its ₹541.1 crore NCAP allocation by October 2024.

Hippos are “ecosystem engineers” — species that physically modify their environment. In Africa, their dung transfers massive amounts of carbon and nutrients (up to 750 kg per hippo annually) from grasslands into rivers, fertilising aquatic food webs in a way native ecosystems are adapted to.
When translocated to Colombia’s Magdalena River (which evolved without hippos), this nutrient loading disrupts water chemistry, depletes dissolved oxygen (killing fish), creates sediment-filled channels that destroy nursery habitats, and threatens native species like the Amazon river dolphin and West Indian manatee. There are no hippo predators in South America — the population has grown from 4 (1981) to ~160–200 (2026) at ~9.6%/year.
Colombia announced a cull of ~80 hippos (April 2026); Vantara (Anant Ambani, Jamnagar, Gujarat) offered to relocate all 80.

In RBI’s Flexible Inflation Targeting (FIT) framework, the “stance” communicates the MPC’s forward bias. A “neutral” stance means the committee is balanced — it neither signals an upcoming cut (as “accommodative” would) nor an upcoming hike.
It is purely data-dependent: if growth slows or inflation falls, it could cut; if inflation picks up, it could hold or hike. The neutral stance replaced the “withdrawal of accommodation” stance as the rate-cut cycle began in February 2025.
The MPC currently projects CPI inflation at 4.6% (within the 2–6% target band, near the 4% midpoint) and real GDP growth at 6.9% for FY 2026–27. The 5.25% repo represents 125 bps of cumulative easing from the cycle peak of 6.50% (reached February 2023).
Note: The April 2026 MPC (April 6–8) took this decision — there is no May MPC meeting (MPC meets bi-monthly).

India’s 283.46 GW non-fossil capacity (as of March 31, 2026) breaks down as: Solar 150.26 GW (largest, ~53%); Wind 56.09 GW; Large Hydro 51.41 GW; Bio Energy 11.75 GW; Small Hydro 5.17 GW; Nuclear 8.78 GW. Solar is by far the largest component — India crossed 100 GW solar for the first time in FY 2024–25 and reached 150 GW in FY 2025–26. India added a record 55.3 GW of non-fossil capacity in FY 2025–26 — the highest ever single-year addition.
India ranks 3rd globally, behind China (1st) and USA (2nd), having surpassed Brazil. India’s NDC target: 500 GW non-fossil capacity by 2030 — currently at ~57% of target.

Ocean acidification is caused by the ocean’s absorption of excess atmospheric CO₂ from fossil fuel burning and deforestation. When CO₂ dissolves in seawater, it reacts to form carbonic acid (H₂CO₃), which dissociates to release hydrogen ions (H⁺), reducing the ocean’s pH. Since industrialisation, ocean pH has dropped ~0.1 units (from 8.2 to ~8.1) — a seemingly small change, but because pH is logarithmic, this represents a 26–30% increase in acidity (some sources use “30–40%” accounting for future projections).
This threatens: coral reefs (CaCO₃ shells dissolve in acid), shellfish, pteropods (tiny sea snails that form the base of polar food chains), and marine biodiversity broadly. The CSE SOE 2026 report noted ocean acidification became the 7th planetary boundary to be breached.
The 99% extreme weather figure in the report covers January–November 2025 (331 of 334 days), not the full calendar year.

Cell broadcast technology sends a single message simultaneously to all mobile devices active in a defined geographic cell area — it does not require individual addressing (unlike SMS, which sends to each number separately). Crucially, cell broadcast uses a dedicated broadcast channel in the mobile network that is separate from the voice/SMS traffic channels, so it remains operational even when networks are congested during emergencies.
This is the core advantage over SMS: SMS networks get jammed during disasters precisely when alerts are most needed. SACHET was developed by C-DOT (Centre for Development of Telematics, est. 1984) under DoT, in partnership with NDMA and MHA. It is operational across all 36 States and UTs and uses the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) — an ITU-recommended open XML standard for emergency alerts.
Nationwide test: May 2, 2026.

OSOWOG stands for “One Sun One World One Grid” — India’s ambitious proposal to interconnect global solar energy grids so that as the sun moves across time zones, countries in daylight can supply solar power to those in darkness or cloudy conditions, effectively using the globe as one giant solar grid. It was launched by PM Modi at the inaugural session of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) in October 2018, and was jointly announced by India and the UK at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow in November 2021, through the Green Grids Initiative–One Sun One World One Grid (GGI-OSOWOG).
ADB’s Pan-Asia Power Grid ($50 billion for cross-border renewable energy transmission in Asia-Pacific) directly complements this vision for regional interconnection. ADB has 69 members (Israel joined September 27, 2024 as 69th member); India’s shareholding is ~6.3% (4th largest; Japan and USA each ~15.6%, China ~6.4%).

BRICS has 11 full members as of 2026. The expansion history: Original BRIC (2006) → South Africa joined 2010 (became BRICS) → Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, UAE joined January 2024 → Indonesia joined January 6, 2025 (10th member) → Saudi Arabia joined July 2025 (11th member).
The 18th BRICS Summit is scheduled for September 12–13, 2026 in New Delhi under India’s presidency. India’s theme is “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability” — with B-R-I-C-S spelled out by the key words.
Option D gives the wrong theme expansion. The BRICS New Development Bank (NDB), established 2014 and headquartered in Shanghai, provides development finance to member and non-member countries.