Current Affairs Quiz 25 August 2026

The Special Representatives mechanism was created in 2003 during Prime Minister Vajpayee’s Beijing visit, with Brajesh Mishra and Dai Bingguo as the first Special Representatives. India is represented by the National Security Adviser and China by its Foreign Minister.
Article VII of the 2005 Agreement safeguards settled populations in border areas, a provision India reads as protecting inhabited areas of Arunachal Pradesh. The wider confidence-building architecture comprises the 1993 Peace and Tranquillity Agreement, the 1996 Military CBMs Agreement, the 2005 Protocol on Modalities, the 2012 Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination and the 2013 Border Defence Cooperation Agreement.
The Line of Actual Control, as cited by India, runs approximately 3,488 km across three sectors: Western, Middle and Eastern.

The National Payments Corporation of India was incorporated in 2008 as a not-for-profit company, originally under Section 25 of the Companies Act, 1956 and now Section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013. It is headquartered in Mumbai and was promoted by the Reserve Bank of India and the Indian Banks’ Association as an umbrella organisation for retail payments.
UPI was piloted on 11 April 2016 by then Governor Dr Raghuram Rajan and rolled out publicly on 25 August 2016. It uses a Virtual Payment Address so that account numbers are never exposed, settles on the 24x7 IMPS backbone, and forms the payments layer of India Stack alongside Aadhaar e-KYC, eSign and DigiLocker.
Volume rose from 1.78 crore transactions in FY 2016-17 to over 24,162 crore in FY 2025-26.

The Defence Research and Development Organisation was established in 1958, is headquartered in New Delhi and functions under the Department of Defence Research and Development, Ministry of Defence, with the motto “Balasya Mulam Vigyanam”. India’s missile capability traces to the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme launched in 1983 under Dr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, covering Prithvi, Agni, Trishul, Akash and Nag, and formally closed in 2008.
BrahMos sits outside the IGMDP as an India-Russia joint venture established in 1998. DRDO transfers technology through a Licensing Agreement for Transfer of Technology, and has moved toward zero-cost transfer and multiple production partners.
The wider self-reliance architecture includes Positive Indigenisation Lists, Defence Industrial Corridors in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, iDEX, the SRIJAN portal, and an FDI cap of 74 per cent through the automatic route.

PRAGATI, or Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation, was launched on 25 March 2015. It integrates three technologies: digital data management, video-conferencing and geo-spatial technology, the last allowing claimed progress to be checked against satellite imagery.
The 53rd meeting on 25 August 2026 at Seva Teerth, New Delhi reviewed six railway, road and power projects across nine States worth over Rs 30,000 crore, along with the AgriStack rollout and cyber-fraud prevention. AgriStack is the farmer-centric digital public infrastructure of the Digital Agriculture Mission, anchored on a Farmer ID and built on three registries: the Farmers’ Registry, Geo-referenced Village Maps and the Crop Sown Registry.
Related platforms include the PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan and the National Infrastructure Pipeline.

The Gorkha demand dates to a 1907 memorandum by the Hillmen’s Association of Darjeeling, revived by the All India Gorkha League in 1943 and driven by the Gorkha National Liberation Front agitation under Subhash Ghisingh between 1986 and 1988. The tripartite accord of 22 August 1988 created the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council, and a 2011 tripartite agreement created the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration.
Crucially, the GTA is a body created by an Act of the West Bengal legislature and is not a Sixth Schedule Autonomous District Council; Sixth Schedule councils flow from Article 244(2) and apply to Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram. A parallel demand seeks Scheduled Tribe status under Article 342 for eleven Gorkha sub-communities, which would require an Act of Parliament.

CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories was established in 1959, moved to Bengaluru in 1960, and is India’s only civilian aerospace research laboratory, known for the HANSA-3 and HANSA-NG trainers, the SARAS light transport aircraft and the CNM-5. On 25 August 2026 it unveiled three indigenous gas turbine engines, the NJ-05 at 5 kgf, the NJ-50 at 50 kgf and the NJ-100 at 100 kgf, for UAVs, drone interceptors and compact missile systems.
Propulsion has been the hardest node in Indian aerospace self-reliance because of high-temperature materials, single-crystal blade casting, thermal barrier coatings and scarce altitude test infrastructure. DRDO’s Gas Turbine Research Establishment at Bengaluru developed the Kaveri engine, whose derivative is now aimed at the Ghatak unmanned combat aerial vehicle.
The Integrated Defence Staff, headed by the CISC, was created in 2001 following the Kargil Review Committee and the Group of Ministers report.

The National Conclave on Tribal Languages and Museums was held at Mysuru from 24 to 26 August 2026 with over 150 participants, organised by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs with the Central Institute of Indian Languages and the Karnataka State Tribal Research Institute, and inaugurated by Minister of State for Tribal Affairs Durgadas Uikey. A Mysuru Declaration on tribal languages was scheduled for adoption on 25 August.
CIIL is located at Mysuru, was established in 1969 under the Ministry of Education, and runs the Scheme for Protection and Preservation of Endangered Languages. Adi Vaani, the Ministry’s AI-based tribal language platform, initially covered Santali, Bhili, Mundari and Gondi and received an iOS app and five new languages in the August 2026 upgrade.
India has 705 notified Scheduled Tribes and an ST population of 10.43 crore, or 8.6 per cent, per Census 2011. The People’s Linguistic Survey of India (2010) identified around 780 languages, while UNESCO lists 197 Indian languages as endangered, the highest for any country.
The Eighth Schedule lists 22 languages.

The Indian Star Tortoise, Geochelone elegans, inhabits dry scrub, thorn forest and grassland across peninsular India, Sri Lanka and parts of Pakistan. It is Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, is listed in Schedule I of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, and was uplisted from CITES Appendix II to Appendix I at CoP18 in Geneva in 2019 on a proposal co-sponsored by India.
Appendix I prohibits commercial international trade, while Appendix II permits regulated trade with a permit. On 23 August 2026, 216 tortoises seized in Mumbai and Thane were released into Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve in Chandrapur district, Maharashtra, the State’s oldest national park, notified as such in 1955 and as a tiger reserve in 1993-94.
Project Tiger was launched on 1 April 1973, the NTCA became statutory in 2006, and the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau was established in 2007.

The correctness of the triple test was referred to a larger bench in State of Uttar Pradesh v. Jai Bir Singh, where it remained pending for over two decades. On 20 August 2026 a nine-judge Constitution Bench decided the reference, reported as 2026 INSC 897, with a plurality opinion by Chief Justice Surya Kant for himself and Justices Satish Chandra Sharma, Alok Aradhe and Vipul M. Pancholi, and separate opinions from Justices Nagarathna, Narasimha, Datta and Bagchi.
The Court divided 6:3 overall but was unanimous that the triple test governs pending 1947 Act disputes. The Court preserved the triple test for all disputes pending under the repealed Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, expressly leaving undisturbed judgments and settlements no longer open to challenge, while holding that “industry” under Section 2(p) of the Industrial Relations Code, 2020 must be construed entirely on its own text and scheme.
The four labour codes are the Code on Wages, 2019, the Industrial Relations Code, 2020, the Code on Social Security, 2020, and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020.

The Act follows Justice K. S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017), in which a nine-judge bench held the right to privacy to be a fundamental right under Article 21 and laid down a four-part proportionality test of legitimate aim, rational nexus, necessity and balancing. The legislative path ran through the Justice B. N. Srikrishna Committee, constituted in 2017 and reporting in 2018, and the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, which was withdrawn in August 2022.
The 2023 Act was enacted in August 2023 with Rules notified in 2025. It builds on the roles of Data Principal and Data Fiduciary, provides penalties up to Rs 250 crore, and applies to digital personal data, covering non-digital data only once digitised.
It contains wide exemptions for State instrumentalities and does not cover anonymised data.

Activities within an eco-sensitive zone fall into three categories: prohibited, such as commercial mining and polluting industry; regulated, such as construction, tree felling and commercial establishments; and permitted, such as ongoing agriculture. The Supreme Court directed a minimum one-kilometre ESZ around every protected area in June 2022, then modified that position in April 2023 to permit flexibility where a rigid uniform buffer would harm settled villages.
At Kaziranga the buffer performs a specific corridor function: the park lies on the Brahmaputra floodplain, is inundated annually, and its large mammals move south across National Highway 715, formerly NH-37, through designated animal corridors to the higher ground of the Karbi Anglong hills. Kaziranga was a reserve forest in 1905, a national park in 1974, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985 and a Tiger Reserve in 2006, and holds roughly two-thirds of the world’s greater one-horned rhinoceros population.

The National Security Guard was raised in 1984 following Operation Blue Star and given statutory form by the National Security Guard Act, 1986. It functions under the Ministry of Home Affairs, is headquartered in New Delhi, and carries the motto “Sarvatra Sarvottam Suraksha”; its personnel are known as Black Cats.
Regional hubs at Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Gandhinagar were created after the 26/11 attacks. On 24 August 2026 the NSG Training Academy at Manesar, Haryana began India’s first Mahila Commando Conversion Course, a 12-week programme for a first batch of 25 women constables from the 5th Battalion of the Rajasthan Armed Constabulary, under the tagline “She Who Dares, Leads”.
India has seven Central Armed Police Forces: CRPF, BSF, CISF, ITBP, SSB, NSG and Assam Rifles.

India permits only Bt cotton as a commercially cultivated genetically modified crop. GM mustard, DMH-11, received GEAC approval for environmental release in October 2022 but remains sub judice following a Supreme Court split verdict in July 2024.
Against this policy deadlock, the launch on 24 August 2026 of India’s first non-GMO high-expansion popcorn maize hybrids, Krisna459 and Godari234, by Vice-President C. P. Radhakrishnan at Musunuru in Eluru district, Andhra Pradesh, demonstrates that conventional hybrid breeding retains substantial headroom. The hybrids came out of a long-running private breeding programme at the Gourmet Popcornica facility, screening American and Indian lines through trials in 2023-24, in partnership with Indian maize research institutions.
Popcorn maize is Zea mays var. everta, and its commercial quality metric is the expansion ratio, the ratio of popped to unpopped kernel volume. Maize is India’s third most important cereal after rice and wheat.

The Intelligence Bureau was founded in 1887 and is India’s oldest intelligence organisation, functioning under the Ministry of Home Affairs. It organised the 9th National Security Strategies Conference-2026, inaugurated by Union Home Minister Amit Shah in New Delhi on 24 August 2026 in hybrid format with over 850 participants; the NSS series began in 2018.
Directions issued included intensifying anti-infiltration measures and applying AI-based analysis to MAC data. Two structural gaps deserve mention: MAC still lacks a statutory data-sharing mandate and operates on executive convention, and India has no dedicated surveillance-oversight statute, leaving the Puttaswamy (2017) proportionality standard alongside DPDP Act exemptions for State agencies.
Police and public order are State subjects under List II, Entries 2 and 1 respectively, so Centre-led standard operating procedures depend on State buy-in.

Reservation benefits are accessed through caste certificates issued by revenue authorities under State-specific procedures involving documentary and community verification, a process entirely separate from the Census. Empirically, National Sample Survey rounds from 1999-2000 to 2017-18 recorded the OBC population share within a broadly stable band of roughly 41 to 44 per cent despite reservation benefits being available throughout.
The last full caste enumeration in the decennial Census was in 1931; the Socio Economic and Caste Census of 2011 was an executive exercise outside the Census Act, and its caste data were never fully released in usable form. The Mandal Commission was constituted in 1979 and reported in 1980, with 27 per cent OBC reservation implemented in 1990 and upheld in Indra Sawhney v. Union of India (1992), which also capped total reservation at 50 per cent and mandated exclusion of the creamy layer.
The Rohini Commission of 2017 examined sub-categorisation of OBCs.