Current Affairs Quiz 22 September 2026

Article 22 guards against arbitrary arrest. Clause (1) requires that an arrested person be informed, as soon as may be, of the grounds of arrest and not be denied the right to consult and be defended by a lawyer of their choice.
Clause (2) requires production before the nearest Magistrate within 24 hours, excluding journey time. Clause (3) removes these protections for enemy aliens and preventive detainees, whose safeguards lie in clauses (4) to (7): advisory board review beyond three months, communication of grounds and an opportunity to make a representation.
The Supreme Court has steadily hardened the grounds-of-arrest requirement: written grounds under the PMLA in Pankaj Bansal (October 2023), under the UAPA in Prabir Purkayastha (May 2024), arrest vitiated by the breach in Vihaan Kumar (February 2025), and written grounds for all offences in a language the person understands in Mihir Rajesh Shah (November 2025). The September 2026 ruling adds a remedy: re-arrest after a breach needs judicial sanction, the case moves to another officer, and a departmental inquiry follows.
Under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, Section 47 covers grounds of arrest and Section 58 the 24-hour limit.

The EIA Notification, 2006 replaced the 1994 notification and requires prior environmental clearance for listed new projects and for expansion, modernisation or capacity addition beyond thresholds. Category A projects are appraised at the Centre by the Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change; Category B projects by the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA), advised by the State-level Expert Appraisal Committee (SEAC).
The four stages are screening, scoping, public consultation and appraisal. The 2026 amendment covers ports, harbours, breakwaters and dredging (item 7(e) of the Schedule).
Validity rises from 10 years plus a one-year extension to 20 years, with a five-year extension after the EAC or SEAC re-examines the adequacy of safeguards, and a further five years where the project has not become operational. The draft of 20 May 2026 had proposed 15 plus 5 years, and the ports ministry had sought parity with mining.
Port projects in coastal areas also need clearance under the Coastal Regulation Zone Notification, 2019, issued under the same 1986 Act. Critics worry that baselines go stale over 20 to 30 years and that cumulative coastal impacts are rarely assessed.

India’s National Accounts are periodically rebased so that the weights and data sources reflect the current structure of the economy. The series with base year 2022-23, released on 27 February 2026 and updated on 31 August 2026 for the new Producer Price Index and Index of Industrial Production, replaced the 2011-12 base and is the eighth base-year revision.
It was guided by the Advisory Committee on National Accounts Statistics, set up on 27 June 2024 under Prof. B.N. Goldar.
In the old series only agriculture used double deflation. The two manufacturing categories still on single extrapolation are food processing (meat, fish, fruit, vegetables, oils and fats) and pharmaceuticals, where heavy use of imported inputs makes item-level price mapping difficult.
Other changes include direct estimation of the household sector from the Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises and the Periodic Labour Force Survey, the UN’s COICOP 2018 classification for private consumption, the Proportional Denton method for benchmarking quarterly GDP, and new methodology for Supply Use Tables and regional accounts. Critics still want a long back series linking the new base to earlier years.

The Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971 protects the National Flag, the Constitution and the National Anthem. Its 2026 amendment, which received assent in August 2026, extended Section 3 to the National Song, so that intentionally preventing its singing, or disturbing an assembly singing it, is punishable with up to three years, a fine or both.
Separate Home Ministry directions require the full six-stanza version at specified occasions. A petition by T.M. Krishna argues that stanzas three to six are devotional and that compelled singing violates Articles 14, 15(1), 19(1)(a), 21 and 25(1).
A Bench headed by CJI Surya Kant sought the Centre’s response within two weeks and observed that the State may decide what the National Song is, but conscientious objectors should not face prosecution. Bijoe Emmanuel (1986) involved three Jehovah’s Witness children; the Court held that the right to free expression includes the right to remain silent.
Vande Mataram was written by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and appeared in Anandamath (1882). In 1937 the Congress Working Committee resolved that its first two stanzas be sung at national gatherings.

On 21 September 2026 the RBI issued the Minimum Capital Requirements for Market Risk Directions, 2026, adopting the Simplified Standardised Approach of the revised Basel III market-risk framework, effective 1 April 2027; transition scalars have applied since 1 April 2024 and the draft dated from 17 February 2023. The Basel accords are standards, not treaties, and each country adopts them through its regulator.
Basel I (1988) set a minimum capital ratio of 8 per cent against credit risk, with market risk added by a 1996 amendment. Basel II (2004) introduced three pillars: minimum capital, supervisory review and market discipline.
Basel III, from 2010, responded to the 2008 crisis with higher-quality capital, a capital conservation buffer, a leverage ratio and the Liquidity Coverage and Net Stable Funding ratios. The revised market-risk framework, the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book, was finalised in 2016 and revised in 2019; the simplified approach suits banks with modest trading books.
Market risk has four components: interest rate, equity, foreign exchange and commodity risk. For Indian banks, which hold large government securities portfolios, interest rate risk dominates.

RAPP-8 is the fourth of 16 indigenous 700 MWe Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors, after KAPP-3 and KAPP-4 at Kakrapar (commercial operation in 2023-24) and RAPP-7 (April 2025). Initial fuel loading began on 19 September 2026 after permission from the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board; the next step is the First Approach to Criticality.
PHWRs use natural uranium as fuel and heavy water as both moderator and coolant, forming Stage 1 of Homi Bhabha’s three-stage programme; fast breeder reactors form Stage 2 and thorium-based reactors Stage 3. In 2017 the Union Cabinet approved ten 700 MWe PHWRs to be built in fleet mode, a standard design built in series to cut cost and time.
Besides RAPP-8, NPCIL has eight reactors under construction: two at Gorakhpur (Haryana), two at Kaiga (Karnataka) and four at Kudankulam (Tamil Nadu), the last being Russian-designed VVERs that use enriched uranium. The government’s Nuclear Energy Mission targets 100 GW of nuclear capacity by 2047, against under 9 GW installed today, and the SHANTI Act, 2025 opened the sector to wider participation.

At UNGA-81 in New York on 21 September 2026, India held the first V4+India Foreign Ministers’ Meeting under Slovakia’s presidency of the Visegrad Group, where the V4 backed India’s permanent membership of the Security Council; the two sides agreed on annual ministerial meetings and a business forum. The V4 was founded in 1991 at Visegrad, Hungary, by Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland, and became four after Czechoslovakia split in 1993.
The same day, P4M (Partners for Multilateralism, International Law, Peace and Prosperity) was launched with seven co-sponsors: Australia, Barbados, Brazil, Canada, the EU, India and Kenya. India is seeking a non-permanent seat for 2028-29, in an election due in 2027, and Tajikistan is also a candidate; India has been elected eight times, most recently for 2021-22.
The Council has 15 members, five permanent and ten non-permanent elected for two-year terms by a two-thirds majority of the General Assembly; it was enlarged from 11 by an amendment adopted in 1963 and in force from 1965. The G4 (India, Brazil, Germany, Japan) back one another for permanent seats, while the Uniting for Consensus group opposes new permanent members.

The Hindu’s editorial of 22 September 2026 on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) cites the Election Commission’s counter-affidavit in the Supreme Court: in West Bengal, of more than 38 lakh appeals submitted to the SIR appellate tribunals, just over 1,22,000 had been disposed of by early September, a disposal rate of 3.2 per cent, and 1,13,943 electors were restored, nearly 93 per cent of decided appeals. It argues that this shows the verification stage wrongly declared many eligible electors ineligible, and that making electors prove eligibility against rolls from the early 2000s manufactures discrepancies.
The constitutional frame: Article 324 (Election Commission), Article 325 (one general roll per constituency, no exclusion on grounds only of religion, race, caste or sex), Article 326 (adult suffrage). The voting age was lowered from 21 to 18 by the 61st Amendment Act, 1988.
Under the Representation of the People Act, 1950, Section 16 lists disqualifications, Section 21(3) lets the Commission order a special revision, and Section 24 provides appeals against the Electoral Registration Officer. Four qualifying dates a year were introduced by the Election Laws (Amendment) Act, 2021.

Where a strait is narrower than 24 nautical miles, two 12-nautical-mile territorial seas meet and no high-seas corridor remains, so the legal regime decides who may pass. In the territorial sea the general rule is innocent passage (Articles 17 to 19): the coastal State may temporarily suspend it in specified areas for security (Article 25(3)), submarines must navigate on the surface (Article 20), and there is no right of overflight.
Transit passage, created by Part III (Articles 34 to 45) for straits used for international navigation, permits continuous and expeditious transit by all ships and aircraft and cannot be suspended. The Hindu op-ed of 22 September 2026 recalls how the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, bordered by Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, were settled during the UNCLOS negotiations: Indonesia accepted transit passage in exchange for recognition of archipelagic States (Part IV), and a 2007 Cooperative Mechanism created a user-funded Aids to Navigation Fund with no tolls, based on Article 43.
UNCLOS was adopted in 1982 and entered into force in 1994; India is a party. The Strait of Hormuz is about 21 nautical miles wide at its narrowest.

An Indian Express column by Anup Surendranath of The Square Circle Clinic, NALSAR University of Law, argues that trial courts are ignoring these safeguards. An Additional District and Sessions Judge in Muzaffarnagar imposed 23 death sentences in about five months in nine judgments, reasoning almost wholly from the crime.
Of 216 cases in which trial courts imposed death sentences between 2023 and 2025, only eight complied with the Supreme Court’s requirements. In Vasanta Sampat Dupare v. Union of India (August 2025), the Court held that imposing death without the Manoj safeguards violates fundamental rights.
Related cases: Jagmohan Singh (1973) upheld the death penalty before the doctrine; Machhi Singh (1983) set out categories to apply the rarest-of-rare test; Mithu (1983) struck down mandatory death under Section 303 of the former Indian Penal Code. A death sentence by a Sessions Court must be confirmed by the High Court.
The President may pardon under Article 72, which expressly covers every case of a death sentence; the Governor’s power is under Article 161. The Law Commission’s 262nd Report (2015) recommended abolition except for terrorism-related offences and waging war.

An Indian Express editorial of 22 September 2026 argues that the energy crisis from the conflicts in West Asia and Russia-Ukraine is different because drone and missile strikes have knocked out refining capacity, so shortages are in diesel, jet fuel and sulphur more than crude. Brent crude was about 102 dollars a barrel, nearly 55 per cent above a year earlier, but below the peaks of 147.5 dollars (July 2008) and 139.1 dollars (March 2022).
Sulphur, recovered when refineries and gas plants make low-sulphur fuels, rose from 200 dollars a tonne or less to 1,000 dollars or more. India produced 284.9 million tonnes of refined products in 2025-26 against consumption of 243.2 million tonnes, which is why fuel outlets have not run dry, but its phosphatic fertiliser chain depends on imported rock phosphate, phosphoric acid and sulphur.
Di-ammonium phosphate is graded 18-46-0 (nitrogen, P2O5, K2O). The Nutrient Based Subsidy scheme has been in force since 1 April 2010.
India moved to Bharat Stage VI fuel, with sulphur capped at 10 ppm, on 1 April 2020. Sulphur is often called the fourth major plant nutrient after nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

An Indian Express editorial of 22 September 2026 argues that the deal between the United States, Denmark and Greenland, announced on Friday 18 September, adds little to the 1951 Greenland Defence Agreement, which already gave the US broad rights to build and operate military facilities and access to Greenland’s airspace and waters. The new deal may expand the US military presence and give Washington a veto over third-party military activity and certain sensitive investments.
Its real cost, the editorial says, is trust within NATO: about nine months earlier, Denmark and other allies had deployed troops to Greenland in response to President Trump’s threat of a takeover. Diversification is the natural response, as seen in Canada’s move towards some form of associate membership of the EU. Greenland is the world’s largest island, about 2.16 million sq km, with about 56,000 people; its capital is Nuuk.
NATO was founded in 1949 under the Washington Treaty, with Denmark a founding member; Article 5, the collective defence clause, has been invoked once, after 11 September 2001. India released its Arctic Policy in 2022, and its research station Himadri at Ny-Alesund, Svalbard, was set up in 2008.

Union Jal Shakti Minister C.R. Patil, writing in the Hindustan Times on 22 September 2026, framed the 9th India International Water Week (New Delhi, 22 to 26 September 2026, theme “Climate Resilient Water Management”) around Jan Bhagidari, or people’s participation. By the ministry’s count, the Jal Jeevan Mission, launched on 15 August 2019, has taken tap connections in rural homes from 3.23 crore to more than 15.9 crore; its service norm is 55 litres per capita per day, and the Union Budget 2025-26 extended it to 2028.
Jal Jeevan Mission 2.0 aims to turn connections into reliable service, with Gram Panchayats and Village Water and Sanitation Committees acting as local micro-utilities and Jal Seva Aankalan assessing the regularity, adequacy, quality and sustainability of supply. Swachh Bharat Mission-Grameen, launched on 2 October 2014, has built more than 12 crore rural toilets, and its second phase targets solid and liquid waste management.
The Catch the Rain campaign was launched on World Water Day, 22 March 2021. The Ministry of Jal Shakti was formed in 2019.
Critics note that functionality, groundwater stress and water quality, not connections, are now the binding constraints.

The India Meteorological Department said withdrawal began from parts of west Rajasthan on 19 September 2026, two days after the normal date of 17 September, with the line passing through Ramgarh, Mohangarh, Phalodi and Khajuwala. Country-wide rainfall up to 19 September was 15 per cent below normal, at 695.6 mm; rainfall was below normal in June, August and September and only about 1 per cent above normal in July.
Among the worst-hit States were Meghalaya (-59 per cent), Andhra Pradesh (-43 per cent), Arunachal Pradesh (-41 per cent) and Bihar (-36 per cent). In IMD’s all-India classification, a season below 90 per cent of the long period average is “deficient”, 90 to 95 per cent is “below normal” and 96 to 104 per cent is “normal”.
The monsoon’s onset over Kerala is normally around 1 June. The retreat of the monsoon trough and the build-up of high pressure over north-west India mark the transition to the post-monsoon season, when the northeast monsoon brings most of the annual rain to Tamil Nadu.
A deficient season with a late withdrawal stresses reservoirs, groundwater and rabi sowing.

Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and New Zealand’s Trade Minister Todd McClay announced on 21 September 2026 that the India-New Zealand FTA will enter into force on 20 October 2026, Vijayadashami. The agreement was signed on 27 April 2026, and New Zealand’s Parliament passed the implementing legislation on 16 September.
Every tariff line covering India’s exports to New Zealand becomes duty-free, removing peak tariffs of up to 10 per cent on textiles, leather, gems and jewellery, engineering goods and processed foods. India kept dairy, animal meat (except sheep), key agricultural commodities, sugar and edible oils out of its tariff concessions, which matters because New Zealand is a leading dairy exporter.
New Zealand committed to facilitate 20 billion US dollars of investment in India, and the agreement offers 5,000 Temporary Employment Entry visas and 1,000 Working Holiday visas a year, with post-study work rights of up to three years for STEM graduates and four years for doctoral scholars. New Zealand will also accept inspection approvals from the US FDA, the European Medicines Agency, the UK MHRA and Health Canada for Indian pharmaceuticals.
The two countries upgraded ties to a Strategic Partnership in July 2026.

The Global Gender Gap Index measures the gap between women and men, not absolute levels of development, across four sub-indices: Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment. Scores run from 0 to 1 (or 0 to 100 per cent), where 1 means full parity.
In the 2026 edition India kept its rank of 131 out of 145 countries with an overall parity score of 64.5 per cent. Its educational attainment parity was high, at 96.6 per cent, but economic participation parity was only 41.2 per cent, reflecting low female labour force participation and wage gaps; political empowerment is also weak, with women’s share in Parliament and ministerial posts far below parity.
Iceland topped the index, followed by Finland and Norway. The UNDP’s Gender Inequality Index, by contrast, measures reproductive health, empowerment and labour market participation, and its Gender Development Index compares female and male Human Development Index values.
For Mains, the index gives a quick frame for the gap between India’s gains in schooling and its weak conversion of education into paid work, which links to care burdens, safety, mobility and the structure of available jobs.

A formulary is a guidance document for prescribers on the rational and safe use of medicines. NFI 2026, the seventh edition, has 34 chapters, 20 appendices and 653 drugs, including 42 fixed-dose combinations and 30 immunologicals, with monographs aligned to the National List of Essential Medicines and National Health Programmes; it is available in print and online.
It was released alongside government approval of the Biovigilance Programme of India, which extends safety monitoring to transplant procedures, and the ADR-PvPI 2.0 mobile app for reporting adverse drug reactions. India’s safety surveillance now has three strands: pharmacovigilance for medicines, materiovigilance for medical devices, and biovigilance.
India has risen to 8th in contributions to the WHO patient-safety database, from 123rd in 2009-14. The Indian Pharmacopoeia, by contrast, sets legally binding standards of identity, purity and strength for drugs under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940, while the NPPA, set up in 1997, enforces the Drugs (Prices Control) Order.
The 2026 Pharmacovigilance Week theme was “Promoting Rational Use of Medicines through Pharmacovigilance: A Step Towards Safer Healthcare”.

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (1838-1894), among the first graduates of the University of Calcutta, was a deputy magistrate in the colonial service and a leading figure of the Bengal Renaissance; he also edited the journal Bangadarshan. Vande Mataram, written in a Sanskritised Bengali, was later included in Anandamath, whose story draws on the Sannyasi rebellion against East India Company rule.
Rabindranath Tagore sang the song at the 1896 Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress, and it became the rallying cry of the Swadeshi movement after the Partition of Bengal in 1905. In 1937 the Congress Working Committee resolved that only its first two stanzas would be sung at national gatherings, a position that bears directly on the petition now before the Supreme Court, which asks that only the first two stanzas be recognised as the National Song.
On 24 January 1950 the Constituent Assembly, in a statement read by Dr Rajendra Prasad, gave Vande Mataram equal honour with Jana Gana Mana. The 2026 amendment extended Section 3 of the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971 to the National Song.

The Straits of Malacca and Singapore are among the busiest shipping lanes in the world, carrying a large share of the oil and trade moving between the Indian Ocean and East Asia, which is why China’s dependence on them is often called the “Malacca dilemma”. The littoral States are Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.
At their narrowest the straits are well under 24 nautical miles wide, so the territorial seas of the littoral States meet and ships pass under the regime of transit passage created by Part III of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, 1982. In 2007 the littoral States and user States agreed a Cooperative Mechanism with an Aids to Navigation Fund financed by voluntary contributions, with no tolls on transit.
India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands lie close to the western approach; the Six Degree Channel separates Great Nicobar from Sumatra. Alternatives to Malacca include the Sunda Strait between Sumatra and Java, and the Lombok Strait between Bali and Lombok, which deep-draught vessels use.
The Hindu op-ed argues that Hormuz differs because its dispute is about Iran’s security, not navigational safety.

India holds about 80 per cent of the world’s greater one-horned rhinos, most of them in Assam, and Kaziranga National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985, alone holds about two-thirds of the global population. Other Indian habitats include Orang, Pobitora and Manas in Assam, Jaldapara and Gorumara in West Bengal, and Dudhwa in Uttar Pradesh; Nepal’s Chitwan and Bardia also hold significant populations.
The species is listed in Schedule I of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, as amended in 2022, and in Appendix I of CITES, which bans commercial international trade. Its main threats are poaching for horn, habitat loss, and floods in the Brahmaputra floodplain.
India has pursued its recovery through the Indian Rhino Vision 2020 translocations and the National Rhino Conservation Strategy of 2019. Of the five rhino species in the world, three are Asian (greater one-horned, Javan and Sumatran) and two African (white and black).
World Rhino Day, first observed in 2010, draws attention to all five. Assam recorded no rhino poaching in several recent years, a result credited to armed protection and community vigilance.