Current Affairs Quiz 13 September 2026

FACT: The 18th BRICS Summit at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi (12 to 13 September 2026) adopted the New Delhi Declaration on 12 September 2026 under India’s Chairship. Its title is “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability”, the same as the summit theme.
It is approximately 140 paragraphs long. ANALYSIS: The declaration is a consensus text negotiated by eleven diverse members and phrased for wide adoptability rather than for provocation.

FACT: The declaration explicitly condemned the Pahalgam attack, called for a Gaza ceasefire with a two-state solution, and backed UNSC reform with greater roles for India and Brazil, with China and Russia recorded as supporting that ambition. It did NOT endorse mBridge as the official BRICS payments platform.
The declaration is careful not to elevate any single technical stack to a “BRICS” branding; the payments work is framed as interoperability of national fast-payment systems. mBridge is a Bank for International Settlements (BIS)-designed multi-CBDC platform handed to the participating central banks in October 2024. ANALYSIS: The declaration also opposes unilateral tariffs, secondary sanctions and WTO-incompatible carbon border adjustments (a reference to the EU CBAM).

FACT: Xi Jinping’s last in-person visit to India was the second Modi-Xi informal summit at Mamallapuram (11 to 12 October 2019), near Chennai. His September 2026 visit for BRICS ends a gap of nearly seven years.
ANALYSIS: (a) is wrong because Wuhan was in China, not India. (d) is wrong because Kazan is in Russia and the Modi-Xi Kazan meeting of 23 October 2024 was on the sidelines of Russia’s BRICS presidency. (b) is wrong because Xi attended Goa in 2016, and Mamallapuram (2019) is later.

FACT: The 25th round of Special Representatives talks (NSA Ajit Doval and Foreign Minister Wang Yi) was held in Beijing on 25 August 2026, and the first Corps Commander-level talks in Arunachal Pradesh were held at Wacha and Damai on 6 and 7 September 2026. These are existing mechanisms, not new ones announced at the summit.
ANALYSIS: The leaders did NOT announce a fresh institutional dialogue mechanism; the relationship continues to run through existing tracks, by design.

FACT: In his Day Two intervention on 13 September 2026, the Prime Minister warned against the weaponisation of critical minerals and supply chains for geopolitical ends, a formulation widely read as a veiled reference to China’s export-licensing practices on rare earths and processed critical minerals, without naming any country. ANALYSIS: The intervention doubles as intellectual scaffolding for India’s own National Critical Mineral Mission (2025, Rs 34,300 crore over seven years) and for diversified supply chains through partners such as Australia, Chile and the Gulf.

FACT: The programme is a collaboration between ICAR-National Dairy Research Institute (ICAR-NDRI), Karnal, and Govind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture and Technology (GBPUAT), Pantnagar, funded by the Uttarakhand Biotechnology Council (Haldi). The calf was born at the Academic Dairy Farm of GBPUAT. ANALYSIS: The donor was a Badri cow, the sire semen was from a Badri bull, and the recipient was a Sahiwal cow.
The calf inherits Badri genetics, not the recipient’s genetics.

FACT: Statements 2 and 3 are correct. Statement 1 is wrong: Uttarakhand’s state animal is the Alpine musk deer, not the Badri cow.
Badri was registered by the National Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources (NBAGR) at Karnal in 2016 as Uttarakhand’s first indigenous cattle breed, and its lactation milk yield is between 547 and 657 kg, with average milk fat of about 4 per cent. ANALYSIS: Badri is a hill breed, small-sized with long legs, well-adapted to steep terrain and low-quality feed, and is native to hill districts including Chamoli, Rudraprayag, Tehri, Almora, Pithoragarh, Bageshwar and Pauri.

FACT: The Rs 1 crore penalty was imposed on IndusInd Bank in its capacity as a Corporate Agent for the distribution of insurance products, under Regulation 20(1) of the IRDAI (Registration of Corporate Agents) Regulations, 2015, for failing to maintain a dedicated, policyholder-facing insurance grievance mechanism. Renewal-notice and disclosure lapses drew only a caution and advisory.
ANALYSIS: A bancassurance corporate agent may represent up to three insurers in each of life, general and health under the current framework.

FACT: Bima Bharosa (formerly the Integrated Grievance Management System, IGMS) is IRDAI’s online grievance-redressal portal, at bimabharosa.irdai.gov.in. ANALYSIS: The other three are distinct IRDAI initiatives: Bima Sugam is a unified digital marketplace for insurance products; Bima Vistaar is a bundled low-premium product covering life, personal accident, disability and property; Bima Vahak is a dedicated last-mile distribution force for village-level insurance sales.

FACT: Solomon Pappaiah was the most-recognised moderator of the Pattimandram televised Tamil debate format for over three decades, moderating more than 12,000 debates. He taught at The American College, Madurai, from 1961 to 1994, rising to Head of the Department of Tamil.
He was awarded the Kalaimamani in 2000 and the Padma Shri in 2021. ANALYSIS: The other options list other genuine Tamil cultural forms (Kaniyan Koothu, Villuppattu, Katha Kalakshepam) but with fictional institutional and career assignments.

FACT: The Thirukkural has 1,330 couplets (kural) organised into 133 chapters (adhikaram) of 10 couplets each, and is grouped into three books: aram (dharma or virtue), porul (artha or wealth and governance) and inbam (kama or love). It is attributed to the Tamil poet-philosopher Thiruvalluvar.
ANALYSIS: Each kural is a two-line couplet of seven metrical feet (cir), four in the first line and three in the second. It is estimated to date from between the 3rd century BCE and the 5th century CE.

FACT: The service resumes on 21 September 2026 as flights CZ359 (Guangzhou-Delhi) and CZ360 (Delhi-Guangzhou), initially five days a week on a Boeing 737-8 (four business, 170 economy), and turns daily from 26 October 2026 with the northern winter schedule, aligned with the 140th Canton Fair in October-November 2026. ANALYSIS: China Southern is the third Chinese carrier back on India routes, after China Eastern (Shanghai-Delhi, November 2025) and Air China (Beijing-Delhi, April 2026).

FACT: China Eastern Airlines was the first Chinese carrier to restart direct passenger flights to India after the 2020 shutdown, with Shanghai-Delhi in November 2025; it later added Kunming-Kolkata in April 2026. Air China followed with Beijing-Delhi in April 2026, and China Southern’s Guangzhou-Delhi service from 21 September 2026 makes it the third.
ANALYSIS: On the Indian side, IndiGo was first back, with Kolkata-Guangzhou in October 2025 and Delhi-Guangzhou in November 2025; Air India has signalled resumption.

FACT: SEBI’s primary option is a Blended VWAP combining trades from the final 30 minutes of continuous trading and a subsequent 10-minute Closing Auction Session (CAS). The alternative is to continue the existing VWAP of the last 30 minutes of continuous trading.
Comments are open until 3 October 2026. ANALYSIS: The objective is to dampen expiry-day volatility spikes in the derivatives segment.
CAS has been live in the equity cash segment since 3 August 2026 (15:15 to 15:35).

FACT: Statement (c) is INCORRECT. OPU-IVF is sexual reproduction: oocytes from the donor are fertilised in vitro with sire semen, and the resulting blastocyst is transferred to a recipient. The calf’s genome is a new combination of donor and sire, not a copy of the donor.
Somatic-cell nuclear transfer (cloning) is a distinct technique in which a somatic cell nucleus is inserted into an enucleated oocyte, and the calf is a genetic copy of the donor. ANALYSIS: The other three statements are correct.