Current Affairs Quiz 23 September 2026

SEBI is a statutory regulator under the SEBI Act, 1992. Its enforcement toolkit includes adjudication by an Adjudicating Officer (who can impose monetary penalties), directions by Whole Time Members under Sections 11 and 11B, and settlement.
Settlement was first run under a 2007 circular as “consent orders”; after legal doubts over its basis, Parliament inserted Section 15JB through the Securities Laws (Amendment) Act, 2014, and SEBI now runs the process under the Settlement Proceedings Regulations, 2018. An application goes first to an Internal Committee, then to a High Powered Advisory Committee chaired by a retired judge, and finally to a Panel of Whole Time Members.
Settlement saves time and recovers money quickly, but critics argue that low amounts and the absence of findings weaken deterrence and transparency. Some matters, such as serious fraud or market-wide harm, are ineligible for settlement.
In the Adani case the Supreme Court had in January 2024 (Vishal Tiwari v. Union of India) declined to order an SIT or CBI probe and left the investigation with SEBI.

Drug regulation in India is split. The Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940 and the Drugs Rules, 1945 govern quality and sale: CDSCO, under the Directorate General of Health Services, approves new drugs, clinical trials and imports, while State licensing authorities license manufacture and retail sale and inspect chemists.
Prescription drugs are grouped in schedules: Schedule H (prescription-only), Schedule H1 (mainly third- and fourth-generation antibiotics, anti-tuberculosis and some habit-forming drugs, with a red “Rx” and boxed warning and a separate register kept for three years) and Schedule X (narcotic and psychotropic drugs). Prices are governed separately by the DPCO, 2013: NPPA fixes ceiling prices for scheduled formulations in the National List of Essential Medicines (384 medicines in NLEM 2022) and limits annual MRP increases for non-scheduled drugs to 10 per cent.
In February 2019 NPPA capped trade margins on 42 non-scheduled anti-cancer drugs at 30 per cent. Antibiotic misuse drives antimicrobial resistance, the target of the National Action Plan on AMR (2017).

India’s National Highways are a Union responsibility: Entry 23 of List I covers highways declared national by Parliament, and the National Highways Act, 1956 is the declaring law. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways sets policy; NHAI, a statutory authority under the 1988 Act, develops, maintains and manages the highways entrusted to it, largely through contracts such as EPC, BOT (toll) and the Hybrid Annuity Model.
Other roads are State subjects. The new guidelines standardise design for 4- and 6-lane high-speed corridors: right of way of 60 metres for traffic up to 15,000 passenger car units and 70 metres above that, no at-grade intersections, a one-metre boundary wall against encroachment and stray cattle, advance exit gantries and provision for multi-lane free-flow tolling.
They sit within Bharatmala Pariyojana (Phase I approved in 2017), the PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan (2021) and the National Logistics Policy (2022). Design standards for Indian roads are largely set by the Indian Roads Congress, founded in 1934.

Groundwater is assessed jointly by the Central Ground Water Board and State agencies in the Dynamic Ground Water Resources Assessment. The 2025 assessment, released on 30 December 2025, put India’s stage of extraction at 60.63 per cent, with 730 of 6,762 assessment units over-exploited.
Over-exploitation is concentrated in the north-west (Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, western Uttar Pradesh), the west (Rajasthan, Gujarat) and parts of the south. Because water is a State subject, groundwater law is largely State law; the Centre acts through CGWA’s regulation of extraction, model bills, and schemes such as Atal Bhujal Yojana (launched 25 December 2019, in seven States that do not include Punjab).
In Punjab, assured procurement of paddy and wheat and free farm power have locked in a water-intensive rotation. Remedies include direct-seeded rice, crop diversification with market support, metered power with a free entitlement, and schemes such as Pani Bachao, Paisa Kamao that pay farmers for electricity saved.
Depletion is also regressive, since richer farmers can reach deeper water.

More than a million Indians served overseas in the First World War. The Imperial Service Troops were forces raised by princely States and placed at the Crown’s disposal.
In the Sinai and Palestine campaign, General Allenby’s forces broke through at Megiddo in September 1918, and the 15th (Imperial Service) Cavalry Brigade took Haifa on 23 September, opening the advance to Damascus. Major Dalpat Singh of the Jodhpur Lancers, killed in the charge, is remembered as the “Hero of Haifa”.
The Teen Murti memorial in New Delhi commemorates these units, and Teen Murti Chowk was renamed Teen Murti Haifa Chowk in January 2018 during the Israeli Prime Minister’s visit. The victory helped Britain secure Palestine, where it implemented the Balfour Declaration (2 November 1917) under a League of Nations Mandate until 1948.
India recognised Israel in 1950, established full diplomatic relations in 1992, recognised the State of Palestine in 1988, and supports a negotiated two-State solution.

India’s arbitration law, the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, covers domestic arbitration, international commercial arbitration seated in India (Part I) and enforcement of foreign awards under the New York and Geneva Conventions (Part II). Amendments in 2015, 2019 and 2021 set time limits, curbed court intervention and addressed stays of awards tainted by fraud.
The New Delhi International Arbitration Centre, set up by statute in 2019 as an institution of national importance, was renamed the India International Arbitration Centre in 2022. On the treaty side, investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) lets a foreign investor sue a host State before an international tribunal.
After adverse awards, starting with White Industries v. India (2011), India adopted a 2015 Model BIT with a narrower definition of investment, no most-favoured-nation clause and an exhaustion-of-local-remedies requirement, and terminated most older BITs. Its recent FTAs (EFTA, the UK, Oman, New Zealand) generally omit ISDS, while new BITs with the UAE, Uzbekistan and Israel follow the narrower model.

Article 20 gives three protections in respect of conviction for offences. Clause (1) embodies the principle of legality: nullum crimen sine lege (no crime without a law) and nulla poena sine lege (no punishment without a law), and bars ex post facto criminal laws; it does not bar retrospective civil or tax laws, or procedural changes.
Clause (2) bars prosecution and punishment for the same offence more than once, and applies to proceedings before a court or judicial tribunal, not departmental action. Clause (3) protects an accused from being compelled to be a witness against himself; Selvi v. State of Karnataka (2010) held that involuntary narco-analysis, polygraph and brain-mapping tests violate it.
The creation of offences is an essential legislative function that cannot be delegated (In re Delhi Laws Act, 1951), and vague penal laws can fall, as Section 66A of the IT Act did in Shreya Singhal (2015). The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 now defines organised crime in Section 111.

The farm share is the portion of the consumer’s food rupee that accrues to the farm; the rest goes to processing, transport, trade and food service. India’s share is high because households still buy mostly unprocessed, perishable foods, processing is dominated by low-margin milling, and eating out is only about 13 per cent of food consumption.
As diets shift to processed food and eating out, the overall farm share is likely to fall, which is normal as food systems modernise. The policy goal is therefore not to raise the share itself but to let farmers capture more of the value added after harvest.
Instruments include Farmer Producer Organisations (a Central Sector Scheme launched in February 2020 to form 10,000 FPOs), cooperatives on the Anand pattern (Amul grew from the Kaira union of 1946; Operation Flood began in 1970), the PM Formalisation of Micro Food Processing Enterprises scheme (2020), e-NAM (2016) and marketing reforms, agricultural markets being a State subject under Entry 28 of List II.

Student suicides have prompted a layered response. The Mental Healthcare Act, 2017 moved India to a rights-based framework and, through Section 115, effectively decriminalised attempted suicide; the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 has no general offence of attempted suicide, retaining only Section 226 on attempts to compel a public servant.
The National Suicide Prevention Strategy (2022), India’s first, aims to cut suicide mortality by 10 per cent by 2030, and the Tele-MANAS helpline (14416) was launched in October 2022. The Supreme Court has been central: in March 2025 it set up the National Task Force in Amit Kumar v. Union of India after deaths at IIT-Delhi, and in July 2025, in Sukdeb Saha, it issued fifteen guidelines applying to all educational institutions, including a ban on segregating students by performance and a requirement for trained counsellors.
Allegations of caste discrimination on campuses, from Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi onwards, have also led to regulation of equity in higher education.

India’s defence industrial policy has moved from nomination, in which orders went to public sector units, to competition. Key steps: the Defence Acquisition Procedure 2020, whose top-priority category is Buy (Indian-IDDM, Indigenously Designed, Developed and Manufactured); positive indigenisation lists that bar imports of notified items after set dates; FDI liberalisation; corporatisation of the Ordnance Factory Board; defence industrial corridors in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu; the Technology Development Fund executed by DRDO; and iDEX for start-ups and MSMEs, which funds prototypes through milestone-based grants while innovators keep their intellectual property.
Recent moves include the transfer of DRDO’s conventional missile technologies to industry and acquisition approvals sourced almost entirely from Indian firms. Official data put defence production at a record Rs 1.78 lakh crore in 2025-26.
The remaining constraints are finance and process: long working-capital cycles, delayed payments and the gap between a successful prototype and an assured order, which the draft DAP 2026 seeks to address with pilot and assured orders.

The wage ceiling defines who must join the EPF and the wage on which contributions are calculated. It was raised from Rs 6,500 to Rs 15,000 in September 2014 and to Rs 25,000 with effect from 17 September 2026.
Employees contribute 12 per cent of wages; of the employer’s 12 per cent, 8.33 per cent (on wages up to the ceiling) goes to the pension scheme, to which the Centre adds 1.16 per cent. The EPFO has about 79.8 million contributing members and over Rs 25 trillion under management, and a 2025 RBI review flagged gaps in its accounting, risk and portfolio management.
The 1952 Act is among the laws subsumed in the Code on Social Security, 2020, while the Code on Wages, 2019 requires that basic pay and dearness allowance make up at least half of pay for statutory purposes, which raised contributions even before the ceiling moved. The EPFO works under the Ministry of Labour and Employment; PFRDA works under the Finance Ministry.

India’s enterprise statistics come in layers. The Annual Survey of Industries covers the organised, registered manufacturing sector.
The unincorporated sector, small proprietary and partnership units outside the company form, is captured by ASUSE, which since 2021-22 has run as an annual survey and, in its 2025 round, published estimates for 757 districts for the first time. ASUSE counts both own-account establishments, run without hired workers, and establishments with hired workers.
The district data show that value added is more concentrated than enterprises or jobs, that pay per hired worker varies several-fold (about Rs 4.64 lakh in Dehradun against around Rs 80,000 in parts of Bihar and Jharkhand), and that women are at least a third of the workforce in 237 districts. ASUSE also feeds the household-sector estimates of the new GDP series with base year 2022-23, together with the Periodic Labour Force Survey.
Formalisation tools include the Udyam registration and Udyam Assist Platform for micro enterprises.

India adopted flexible inflation targeting through the Finance Act, 2016, which amended the RBI Act, 1934. Under Section 45ZA the Central Government, in consultation with the RBI, sets the target every five years; it has been 4 per cent CPI (combined) inflation with a band of 2 to 6 per cent.
A six-member Monetary Policy Committee, three RBI members including the Governor (who chairs and has a casting vote) and three external members appointed by the Centre for four years, sets the repo rate. If average inflation stays outside the band for three consecutive quarters, the RBI must report the reasons and remedial action to the government.
The Urjit Patel committee (January 2014) recommended the 4 per cent target and noted that trading-partner inflation matters. The RBI’s operating target is the weighted average call money rate, so surplus liquidity can blunt a rate hike unless drained through open market operations.
A higher target would imply looser monetary and tighter fiscal policy.

The SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 lists atrocities against members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, provides for Special Courts and exclusive Special Courts, and bars anticipatory bail (Section 18). In Subhash Kashinath Mahajan v. State of Maharashtra (March 2018), the Supreme Court, citing misuse, allowed anticipatory bail where no prima facie case existed and required a preliminary enquiry and prior approval before arrest.
Parliament responded with the 2018 amendment inserting Section 18A to undo those directions. In Prathvi Raj Chauhan v. Union of India (February 2020) the Court upheld Section 18A, while observing that a court may still quash an FIR, or grant anticipatory bail in an exceptional case, where no prima facie case is made out.
The Act draws on Articles 15, 17 and 46 of the Constitution; Article 17 abolishes untouchability, and the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955 punishes its practice. The 2015 amendment added new offences and victim rights.

The Seventh Schedule separates taxing powers: the Union List carries taxes on non-agricultural income (Entry 82), customs (83) and corporation tax (85), while the State List carries taxes on agricultural income (46), land revenue (45), and, after GST, a narrowed Entry 54 on sales of petroleum products and alcohol for human consumption. Taxation entries are distinct from general legislative entries, and a State cannot tax under a regulatory entry.
The pending reference asks whether a surcharge or additional tax calculated on turnover or on sales tax already levied, such as Section 5A of the Odisha Sales Tax Act, 1947, is a tax on sale within Entry 54 or trespasses on a Union field. S. Kodar (a five-judge ruling) and Hoechst Pharmaceuticals (1983) upheld such levies, while India Cement (1989), a seven-judge ruling, struck down a cess on royalty as beyond the State’s field; its holding that royalty is a tax was overruled in Mineral Area Development Authority (2024).
The answer will shape States’ residual taxing space in the GST era.

The Index of Core Industries measures output in the core infrastructure industries and is released earlier than the IIP, so it is watched as a leading indicator of industrial activity. In the series with base year 2022-23 it covers nine industries: coal, natural gas, crude oil, refinery products, fertilisers, steel, cement, electricity and iron ore.
The older series with base 2011-12 had eight industries, without iron ore, and carried a combined weight of about 40 per cent in the IIP of that base. In August 2026 cement (12.5 per cent) and electricity (11.6 per cent) grew fastest, and electricity, with the largest weight, contributed most to overall growth, while coal, natural gas, crude oil and fertilisers contracted.
July’s growth was revised from 5.4 to 5.0 per cent. The IIP, the broader monthly index of industrial output, is released separately by the NSO. DPIIT’s Office of the Economic Adviser also compiles the Wholesale Price Index, which is why the two are often confused with MoSPI’s CPI and IIP.

The seasons arise because the Earth’s axis is tilted at about 23.5 degrees to the perpendicular of its orbital plane. As the Earth revolves, the latitude at which the noon Sun is overhead moves between the Tropic of Cancer (23.5 degrees north, around 21 June) and the Tropic of Capricorn (23.5 degrees south, around 22 December).
Twice a year, around 21 March and 23 September, the Sun is overhead at the Equator: these are the equinoxes, when day and night are nearly equal everywhere and the circle of illumination passes through both poles. The March equinox is the vernal equinox of the Northern Hemisphere, the September one its autumnal equinox; the reverse holds in the Southern Hemisphere.
The dates shift by a day between years because the calendar year does not match the solar year exactly, which leap years correct. At the poles, the equinox marks sunrise or sunset for a six-month day or night.
Ayurveda Day is now fixed on 23 September.

Sign languages are full natural languages with their own grammar, not gestures that transcribe spoken language. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006), which India ratified in 2007, recognises sign languages and requires States to promote them.
In India, the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 obliges the government to promote the use of sign language, and the Indian Sign Language Research and Training Centre, set up in 2015 under the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, develops dictionaries, trains interpreters and standardises Indian Sign Language. The National Education Policy 2020 calls for standardising ISL across the country and developing national and State curriculum materials in it.
Interpreter shortages remain acute, which limits deaf people’s access to courts, hospitals and classrooms. The World Federation of the Deaf, founded in Rome, represents national associations of deaf people around the world.

Ramdhari Singh “Dinkar” (1908-1974), called Rashtrakavi, was one of the leading Hindi poets of the nationalist era, known for poetry of heroism and protest (vir ras) and later for philosophical works. His major works include Renuka, Hunkar, Kurukshetra, Rashmirathi, Parashuram ki Pratiksha and Urvashi, and the prose history Sanskriti ke Char Adhyay, which traces Indian culture through four stages of synthesis.
He received the Sahitya Akademi Award (1959) for that work, the Padma Bhushan (1959) and the Jnanpith Award (1972) for Urvashi, and served in the Rajya Sabha from 1952 to 1964. The Jnanpith Award, instituted in 1961 by the Bharatiya Jnanpith trust and first given in 1965 (to G. Sankara Kurup), is India’s highest literary award for Indian-language writers.
The Sahitya Akademi, the national academy of letters, was set up by the Government of India in 1954. Dinkar’s poem “Singhasan Khali Karo Ki Janata Aati Hai” was recited by Jayaprakash Narayan at the Ramlila Maidan rally in 1975, on the eve of the Emergency.

EFTA was founded in 1960 by the Stockholm Convention as a free trade bloc for European countries that did not join the European Economic Community; its founding members included the United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Austria and Portugal. Most later left to join the European Union, leaving four members today: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.
Three of them (not Switzerland) take part in the European Economic Area, which gives them access to the EU single market; Switzerland relies on bilateral agreements with the EU. The India-EFTA Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement (TEPA), signed on 10 March 2024, was India’s first FTA with a group of developed European economies and is notable for a commitment by EFTA to aim for 100 billion dollars of investment in India and one million direct jobs over 15 years. Like India’s other recent FTAs, with the United Kingdom, Oman and New Zealand, it does not include investor-State dispute settlement.
The India-EU FTA is a separate agreement.