Current Affairs Quiz 24 September 2026

Article 324 vests the superintendence, direction and control of elections to Parliament, State legislatures and the offices of President and Vice-President in the Election Commission. For four decades the Commission had only a CEC; two Election Commissioners were appointed in October 1989, the posts were abolished in January 1990, and the Commission has been multi-member since 1 October 1993.

In T.N. Seshan v. Union of India (1995) the Supreme Court upheld this and held that the CEC is first among equals. Article 324(2) left appointments to a law of Parliament, which was not made until 2023.

In Anoop Baranwal v. Union of India (March 2023), a Constitution Bench ordered that, until such a law, appointments be made on the advice of the Prime Minister, the Leader of Opposition and the Chief Justice. The 2023 Act replaced the Chief Justice with a Cabinet Minister, giving the government two of three votes.

Members hold office for six years or until 65; the CEC can be removed only like a Supreme Court judge, and an EC only on the CEC’s recommendation.

The anti-defection law was enacted after the “Aaya Ram, Gaya Ram” politics of the late 1960s. A member of a House is disqualified if he voluntarily gives up membership of his party, or votes or abstains contrary to its whip without permission (unless condoned within fifteen days).

An independent member who joins a party, and a nominated member who joins one after six months, are also disqualified. Paragraph 4 protects members only if at least two-thirds of the legislature party agree to a merger.

Paragraph 6 makes the Speaker or Chairman the deciding authority. In Kihoto Hollohan (1992) the Supreme Court upheld the Schedule but held the presiding officer’s decision subject to judicial review, and struck down Paragraph 7, which had barred the courts.

In Keisham Meghachandra Singh (2020) it said petitions should ordinarily be decided within three months. The 91st Amendment also inserted Article 361B (no remunerative political post for a disqualified member) and capped the size of ministries at 15 per cent of the House.

India imports more than half of the edible oil it consumes: palm oil mainly from Indonesia and Malaysia, soybean oil from Argentina and Brazil and sunflower oil from Russia and Ukraine. Customs duty is therefore the government’s quickest lever on prices.

Duty is levied under the Customs Act, 1962 at rates in the Customs Tariff Act, 1975, with exemption notifications setting effective rates; crude edible oils also bear the Agriculture Infrastructure and Development Cess, and a Social Welfare Surcharge applies on duty. Lower duty helps consumers and eases food inflation but depresses prices of domestic oilseeds such as soybean, groundnut and mustard, hurting farmers, especially near the kharif harvest.

The long-term strategy is to raise domestic output: the National Mission on Edible Oils (Oil Palm), launched in 2021, and the National Mission on Edible Oils (Oilseeds), approved in 2024 for 2024-25 to 2030-31 with an outlay of Rs 10,103 crore, aim to raise primary oilseed output to 69.7 million tonnes by 2030-31.

The National Sample Survey began in 1950 as a system of large household surveys in “rounds”, each covering subjects such as consumption, health, education or tourism. In 2019 the government merged the Central Statistics Office (national accounts, price indices, industrial statistics) and the National Sample Survey Office into the National Statistics Office under MoSPI.

The Periodic Labour Force Survey, launched in 2017, is the main source of employment data; from January 2025 its sample design was revised to produce monthly and quarterly estimates and to shift to a calendar year, which also allowed the first district-level estimates. The Domestic Tourism Expenditure Survey (July 2025 to June 2026) covered 2,46,113 households and found that 48 per cent of overnight trips over a year were for pilgrimage, that health trips were the costliest of those year-long trips, and that Uttar Pradesh received the largest share of visitor-trips.

Such surveys feed the Tourism Satellite Account, which estimates tourism’s contribution to GDP and jobs.

RCEP was signed in November 2020 and entered into force in 2022. It is the world’s largest trading bloc by population and output.

India had negotiated for seven years but walked out in 2019, largely because of its trade deficit with China and the absence of an automatic safeguard against import surges. Since then India has preferred bilateral agreements with economies that complement its own: the UAE CEPA and the Australia ECTA (2022), the India-EFTA Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement (signed March 2024, in force October 2025), the India-UK Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (signed July 2025) and agreements with Oman and New Zealand.

Free trade areas are permitted under Article XXIV of GATT as an exception to most-favoured-nation treatment, provided they cover substantially all trade. The India-New Zealand FTA makes all of India’s exports duty-free in New Zealand, while India excludes dairy, sugar and edible oils and uses tariff rate quotas with a minimum import price for apples, kiwifruit and Manuka honey.

Quality Control Orders are India’s main technical regulations. Once a QCO takes effect, an uncertified product cannot be made, imported, stored or sold, whether domestic or foreign.

BIS certifies through Scheme-I (product certification with the Standard Mark, the ISI mark) and Scheme-II (the Compulsory Registration Scheme, used mainly for electronics and IT goods, where screen protectors will be added from April 2027). The number of products under QCOs rose from 88 in 2019 to 765 by December 2024.

Since late 2025 the government has revoked or suspended several QCOs on intermediate goods, and in June 2026 it notified a transition facilitation order for some sectors. WTO rules allow technical regulations for legitimate objectives such as safety, health and the environment, but they must not be more trade-restrictive than necessary; food safety and plant and animal health fall under the separate Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures.

Trading partners raised QCOs as non-tariff barriers during India’s Trade Policy Review.

Homi J. Bhabha designed India’s three-stage programme to use its modest uranium and large thorium reserves: pressurised heavy water reactors (stage one), fast breeder reactors on plutonium (stage two) and thorium-based reactors (stage three). The Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor at Kalpakkam attained first criticality on 6 April 2026.

Because stage two needs plutonium, spent fuel has always been treated as a resource and reprocessed. Reprocessing reduces the volume of high-level waste but does not remove radioactivity; the resulting streams include reusable fuel, high-level waste, contaminated equipment and cladding.

The Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Act, 2025 replaced the Atomic Energy Act, 1962 and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010, allowed private companies to build and operate nuclear plants and gave the AERB statutory status. A deep geological repository isolates high-level waste permanently; Finland has built the first for spent fuel, while the United States project at Yucca Mountain stalled.

Article 324(5) gives the Chief Election Commissioner the same security of tenure as a Supreme Court judge: removal only by an address of both Houses of Parliament on grounds of proved misbehaviour or incapacity, and no variation of service conditions to his disadvantage after appointment. Other Election Commissioners have a lesser protection: they can be removed only on the CEC’s recommendation.

Critics argue this asymmetry makes Election Commissioners dependent on the CEC, and the Law Commission and others have proposed equal protection. Since 1993 the Commission has been multi-member, and in T.N. Seshan v. Union of India (1995) the Supreme Court held that the CEC is first among equals, the Commission deciding as a body and by majority where members differ.

The law governing the Commission’s business says decisions should be unanimous as far as possible and otherwise by majority. The Election Commission conducts elections to Parliament, State legislatures and the offices of President and Vice-President; State Election Commissions (Articles 243K and 243ZA) conduct panchayat and municipal polls.

Technical standards (4G, 5G, Wi-Fi, video codecs) are set by bodies such as ETSI, IEEE and the ITU, and India’s telecom standards body is TSDSI. Patents essential to a standard give their holders leverage, so they commit to license on FRAND terms.

Two risks follow: hold-up, where a patent holder demands excessive royalties, and hold-out, where an implementer delays paying. Courts have developed rules: Huawei v. ZTE (Court of Justice of the European Union, 2015) set negotiation steps before an injunction, and Unwired Planet v. Huawei (UK Supreme Court, 2020) allowed courts to set global FRAND terms.

In India, the Delhi High Court held in July 2023 that the Patents Act is a complete code on patent licensing abuse and prevails over the Competition Act; the Supreme Court declined to interfere in September 2025, noting that the original informants had settled, and kept the questions of law open. Philips v. Rajesh Bansal (2018) was India’s first post-trial SEP judgment.

India’s R&D spending remains below 1 per cent of GDP.

Shipping moves marine species in two ways: in ballast water, pumped in to stabilise a ship and discharged at the next port, and as biofouling, organisms such as algae, barnacles and mussels that grow on hulls and other submerged surfaces. The risk rises when ships stay idle for long periods.

Ballast water is governed by a binding convention that requires ships to manage and treat ballast; biofouling is governed only by voluntary IMO guidelines, first adopted in 2011 and revised in 2023. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), set up in 2012, found in its 2023 assessment that invasive alien species are a major factor in about 60 per cent of recorded global extinctions and that prevention is the most cost-effective response.

In India, the Wild Life (Protection) Amendment Act, 2022 empowered the Centre to regulate or prohibit invasive alien species. Marine invasions are especially hard to reverse because the ocean is vast and connected.

AI governance is developing on several tracks. The summit series began at Bletchley Park (2023), with a declaration on frontier AI risks, and continued at Seoul (2024), Paris (2025) and New Delhi (2026), the first in the Global South.

At the United Nations, the General Assembly set up a scientific panel and a global dialogue in 2025. Great powers also negotiate directly: in November 2024 the US and Chinese leaders affirmed the need to keep human control over decisions to use nuclear weapons.

Their strategies differ: the United States relies on export controls on advanced chips and restricted access to frontier models, while China promotes low-cost open models and uses its dominance of rare earth processing as leverage. India’s interests include access to computing capacity, secure supplies of critical minerals, a voice in standards, and room for its own ecosystem under the IndiaAI Mission, approved in March 2024 with an outlay of about Rs 10,372 crore.

India sits in both the BRICS and G7-outreach camps.

India’s drug-control framework rests on the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985, which gives effect to the three UN drug conventions (1961, 1971 and 1988), and on the Prevention of Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1988. The Narcotics Control Bureau coordinates enforcement across central and State agencies, while the Central Bureau of Narcotics licenses legal opium cultivation.

Because police is a State subject, enforcement on the ground depends on State police; the Centre has encouraged every State and UT to set up a dedicated Anti-Narcotics Task Force and uses the multi-level NCORD mechanism for coordination. India lies between the “Golden Crescent” (Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan) and the “Golden Triangle” (Myanmar, Laos, Thailand), the two largest illicit opium-producing regions, which makes Punjab and the North-East especially vulnerable.

The Nasha Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan, launched in 2020 by the Ministry of Social Justice, addresses demand reduction.

The Communal Award of 1932, which followed the Round Table Conferences, gave separate electorates to Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and others and extended them to the depressed classes. Gandhi, then in Yerwada jail, began a fast unto death on 20 September 1932 against separating the depressed classes from the Hindu electorate.

The Poona Pact, negotiated with B.R. Ambedkar and signed on 24 September 1932 by Ambedkar, Madan Mohan Malaviya and others (Gandhi himself did not sign; he ended his fast on 26 September), gave the depressed classes 148 reserved seats in provincial legislatures and 18 per cent of the general seats in the central legislature, with candidates first chosen through a primary election. The principle of reserved constituencies within a common electorate survives in Articles 330 and 332 of the Constitution.

Bhikaji Cama, born in Bombay in 1861, worked from Europe for Indian independence with the Paris Indian Society and published the journal Bande Mataram; the Stuttgart flag is one of the earliest versions of an Indian national flag raised abroad.

The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme, set up in 1990, is the custodian of global data for the Sustainable Development Goal targets on drinking water (6.1) and sanitation and hygiene (6.2), and it also reports on schools (linked to SDG 4.a) and health-care facilities. It classifies services on a ladder, from no service through limited to basic, so a school that has a toilet which is locked, broken or shared by boys and girls does not count as basic.

The 2015-2025 schools report found India has the largest number of schoolchildren with no sanitation service (about 50 million), though it is on track for universal basic drinking water in schools by 2030. Globally, basic sanitation in schools rose from 67 to 77 per cent over the decade.

India’s Swachh Vidyalaya campaign (2014) built toilets in government schools; the challenge now is water supply, maintenance and menstrual hygiene facilities, which strongly affect the attendance of adolescent girls.

India’s defence exercises with France span all three services: Varuna (navy), Shakti (army) and Garuda (air force), reflecting a strategic partnership that dates from 1998 and includes the Rafale aircraft and Scorpene submarines. With the United States, India holds Yudh Abhyas (army), Vajra Prahar (special forces), Cope India (air) and Malabar, which began as a bilateral naval exercise in 1992 and now includes Japan and Australia.

With the United Kingdom, India holds Ajeya Warrior (army) and Konkan (navy). With Sri Lanka, SLINEX (navy) and Mitra Shakti (army).

Exercises test interoperability, build familiarity between forces and signal strategic intent; in the Indian Ocean they also support India’s MAHASAGAR vision of security and growth across regions. Toulon, on France’s Mediterranean coast, is the French Navy’s main base.

The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s most important chokepoints: before the present crisis about a fifth of global oil consumption and a large share of liquefied natural gas trade passed through it, and roughly 130 commercial vessels transited daily. India imports much of its crude oil and LPG from Gulf producers such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar, so any disruption raises its import bill and threatens supply.

Other chokepoints in India’s neighbourhood include the Bab-el-Mandeb (between Yemen and Djibouti, linking the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden), the Strait of Malacca (between Malaysia and Indonesia’s Sumatra) and the Suez Canal. India’s responses include strategic petroleum reserves at Visakhapatnam, Mangaluru and Padur, diversification of suppliers, and naval deployments to protect shipping in the Arabian Sea.

BRICS began as BRIC in 2006, with the first summit in Yekaterinburg in 2009; South Africa joined in 2010. At the Johannesburg summit of 2023, six countries were invited: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the UAE joined from 2024, Argentina declined, and Saudi Arabia has not formally confirmed membership. Indonesia became a full member in January 2025.

A separate category of partner countries was created at the Kazan summit in 2024. BRICS institutions include the New Development Bank, headquartered in Shanghai, and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement.

India chairs BRICS in 2026 and hosted the 18th summit in New Delhi. Its tax track produced two India-led working groups, on international taxation and transfer pricing and on revenue statistics, and backed the negotiations on a UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, which developing countries favour as a more inclusive forum than the OECD.