Current Affairs Quiz 27 September 2026

The Security Council has five permanent members with the veto (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) and ten members elected for two-year terms, five each year, by a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly. Its composition reflects 1945 and was changed only once, when decolonisation had multiplied UN membership: the 1963 amendments, in force from 1965, raised elected seats from six to ten.

Reform is debated on five issues: categories of membership, the veto, regional representation, the size of an enlarged Council and its working methods, and the relationship with the General Assembly. The obstacle is procedural as much as political.

Article 108 requires a two-thirds vote in the Assembly and ratification by two-thirds of member states including all five permanent members, so any one of them can block a change. India has served eight terms as an elected member, the latest in 2021-22, and is a candidate for 2028-29.

It seeks a permanent seat with the G4 and, among developing countries, through the L.69 group.

Reform talks are shaped by blocs whose positions often cancel one another. The G4 seeks expansion in both the permanent and non-permanent categories and has offered to forgo the veto for a period after admission.

The L.69 group of developing countries, which includes India, broadly supports expansion in both categories with fair representation for Africa, Asia, Latin America and small island States. The African Union’s Committee of Ten negotiates on the basis of the Ezulwini Consensus and the Sirte Declaration (2005), which ask for two permanent and five non-permanent seats for Africa and the veto for new permanent members as long as it exists.

Uniting for Consensus, sometimes called the “Coffee Club”, argues that new permanent seats would entrench privilege and instead proposes longer-term, re-electable seats. Because Article 108 needs two-thirds of the membership, no bloc can succeed alone, and the permanent five, whose ratification is required, also differ: China has not backed India’s bid, while Russia now backs India and Brazil but opposes Germany and Japan.

UNCLOS, adopted in 1982 and in force since 1994, divides the sea into zones with different rights. In the territorial sea (up to 12 nautical miles), foreign ships enjoy innocent passage, which must not be prejudicial to peace, good order or security, and which the coastal State may temporarily suspend in specified areas for security.

Straits used for international navigation have a special regime: transit passage, which applies to ships and aircraft, including submarines in their normal mode, and cannot be suspended, because closing a strait would sever international routes. The Strait of Hormuz, between Iran and Oman, links the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and carries a large share of seaborne oil and LNG.

Iran has signed but not ratified UNCLOS and has argued that transit passage binds only parties, a view most States reject as contrary to customary law. For India, which imports most of its crude oil and much of its LNG through the Gulf, freedom of navigation in these straits is a core interest, which is why it pairs diplomacy with measures such as naval escort missions and a domestic war-risk insurance pool.

Marine insurance has three main parts. Hull and machinery (H&M) insurance covers damage to or loss of the vessel.

Cargo insurance protects the owners of goods. Protection and Indemnity (P&I) covers liabilities to others: pollution clean-up, collisions, damage to ports, wreck removal, and injury, illness or death of crew and passengers.

War-risk insurance is separate, covering losses from war, piracy, mines and seizure, and is often withdrawn or repriced when a conflict flares in a high-risk area. P&I is dominated by mutual clubs owned by shipowners; the 13 members of the International Group pool large claims and buy reinsurance together.

For a country like India, where 95 per cent of trade by value moves by sea, dependence on foreign clubs means an outflow of premiums (USD 45 to 60 million a year in P&I, according to the Government) and exposure to decisions taken abroad. The Bharat Maritime Insurance Pool was approved on 18 April 2026 and launched on 12 May 2026: policies are issued by domestic insurers, claims up to USD 100 million come from pool reserves, and larger claims draw on a sovereign guarantee.

Military exercises test interoperability, the ability of forces to plan and operate together, and signal political closeness. Air exercises are usually named by the host.

Garuda (with France) began in 2003, Cope India (with the US) in 2004, and the IAF has since taken part in multinational exercises abroad such as Red Flag (United States), Pitch Black (Australia) and Desert Knight. Tarang Shakti marked a shift: for the first time India hosted a large multinational air exercise, inviting partners to fly alongside the IAF.

The 2024 edition was held in two phases, at Sulur in Tamil Nadu (6-14 August) and at Jodhpur (29 August to 14 September). The 2026 edition, themed “Power in Partnership”, brings aircraft such as the F-35, Rafale, F-16, A400M and KC-30A, and adds a seminar and an industrial tour to showcase India’s aerospace and defence industry.

Such exercises also support defence diplomacy under India’s outreach to the Indo-Pacific and the Gulf.

ASEAN sits at the centre of several overlapping security forums, and Prelims regularly tests which is which. The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF, 1994) is a broad foreign-ministers-level dialogue with 27 participants.

The East Asia Summit (2005) is a leaders-led forum. The ADMM began in 2006 among ASEAN defence ministers; the ADMM-Plus, launched in 2010, extended it to eight dialogue partners and gave it a practical side through Experts’ Working Groups (EWGs), each co-chaired by an ASEAN member and a Plus country for a three-year cycle.

EWGs run tabletop and field exercises, such as the maritime security activity in the Philippines, where navies practised search and rescue, casualty evacuation and assistance to grounded vessels. India has co-chaired EWGs, including on humanitarian mine action and military medicine.

For India, the ADMM-Plus supports the Act East Policy and MAHASAGAR, the maritime vision announced in Mauritius in March 2025, and offers a setting where it works alongside both the United States and China.

Natural gas is a cleaner-burning fossil fuel than diesel: it emits less carbon dioxide per unit of energy and almost no sulphur oxides or particulates. Its problem as a transport fuel is bulk.

It can be stored as CNG, compressed in heavy cylinders to about 200-250 bar, which works for cars, buses and autorickshaws on short urban routes, or as LNG, cooled into a liquid in insulated cryogenic tanks, which suits trucks, ships and trains that must run long distances. India imports LNG through terminals such as Dahej and Hazira in Gujarat.

Indian Railways ran its first CNG-diesel dual-fuel DEMU on the Rewari-Rohtak section in 2015; the LNG-diesel version in Gujarat uses two converted 1,400 HP driving power cars. Dual-fuel engines inject a small amount of diesel to ignite a gas-air mixture, so they can fall back to diesel when gas runs out.

The Railways’ main decarbonisation path remains electrification and a target of becoming a net-zero carbon emitter by 2030, with gas and hydrogen serving non-electrified or special routes.

Dugongs survive in India in a few pockets: the Gulf of Mannar and Palk Bay in Tamil Nadu, the Gulf of Kachchh in Gujarat, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. They depend entirely on seagrass meadows, which are damaged by bottom trawling, siltation and coastal development, and they drown when caught in gill nets.

Their slow breeding, a single calf every few years, makes even small losses serious. Tamil Nadu notified the Dugong Conservation Reserve in Palk Bay, covering about 448 sq km, in 2022.

Other marine mammals in Indian waters include the Irrawaddy dolphin (Chilika lake), the Indo-Pacific finless porpoise, the Indian Ocean humpback dolphin and large whales such as the blue whale. India’s national aquatic animal, the Gangetic river dolphin, lives in freshwater.

Conservation now focuses on bycatch reduction devices and gear changes, stranding networks that rescue and record animals, and citizen science, such as the BNHS app Jalchar, which lets fishers report sightings with GPS locations.

The Modhera Sun Temple stands on the bank of the Pushpavati river in Mehsana district. It has three parts on one axis: the Gudhamandapa, the shrine hall with the sanctum; the Sabhamandapa, an open assembly hall with richly carved pillars; and the Surya Kund, a stepped tank lined with small shrines.

It is a fine example of the Maru-Gurjara (Solanki) style, which also produced Rani ki Vav at Patan. The temple was planned so that the rising sun lit the sanctum at the equinoxes.

An inscription dated Vikram Samvat 1083 (1026-27 CE), set upside down in a wall of the sanctum, is read by historians as evidence of destruction and rebuilding soon after Mahmud of Ghazni’s raid on Gujarat in 1026. India’s other great Sun temples are Konark in Odisha (Eastern Ganga, 13th century) and Martand in Kashmir (8th century, Lalitaditya Muktapida of the Karkota dynasty).

Modhera was declared India’s first round-the-clock solar-powered village in 2022.

Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833), often called the father of the Indian Renaissance, combined a critique of idolatry and ritual, drawn from the Upanishads and a rationalist reading of religion, with social reform. He campaigned against sati, supporting Lord William Bentinck’s Bengal Sati Regulation of 1829, and against polygamy, and argued for women’s property rights.

He supported English and scientific education, backing the Hindu College (1817) and founding the Vedanta College. He opposed the 1823 press ordinance restricting newspapers, an early defence of press freedom.

The Mughal emperor Akbar II gave him the title “Raja” and sent him to England to seek a higher allowance; there he also testified on Indian affairs before parliamentary bodies. After his death, the Brahmo movement was carried forward by Debendranath Tagore, whose Tattvabodhini Sabha and journal Tattvabodhini Patrika revived it, and later by Keshab Chandra Sen, whose break in 1866 led to the Brahmo Samaj of India.

The Aravallis run about 670 km from near Palanpur in Gujarat through Rajasthan and Haryana to the Delhi Ridge. They check the eastward spread of the Thar, recharge groundwater, and form wildlife corridors for leopards, hyenas and sloth bears.

Mining has been restricted in parts of the range since the Environment Ministry’s 1992 notification for Alwar and Gurgaon and a long series of Supreme Court orders in M.C. Mehta v. Union of India. In November 2025 the Court accepted a height-based definition of an Aravalli hill (100 metres above local relief), but after protests that it would exclude much of the range, it kept that judgment in abeyance on 29 December 2025 and ordered a fresh expert committee, which must now report by 30 November 2026.

Minor minerals such as building stone are regulated by the States, which is why illegal stone quarrying is primarily a State enforcement problem. Wollastonite, a calcium silicate used in ceramics, paints and plastics, is one of Rajasthan’s distinctive minerals; the State also produces zinc and lead from Zawar and rock phosphate from Jhamar Kotra.

The Third Schedule sets out forms of oaths or affirmations for Union Ministers (office and secrecy), candidates for Parliament, Members of Parliament, judges of the Supreme Court and the Comptroller and Auditor-General, State Ministers (office and secrecy), candidates for and members of State legislatures, and High Court judges. The oaths of the President (Article 60), the Vice-President (Article 69) and the Governor (Article 159) are in those Articles, not in the Schedule.

The Ministers’ oath of office includes the promise to “do right to all manner of people in accordance with the Constitution and the law, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will”, which judges also swear. Civil servants do not take a Third Schedule oath; their duty of confidentiality comes from laws and service rules, such as the Official Secrets Act, 1923 and the conduct rules, while the Whistle Blowers Protection Act, 2014 provides a statutory route for public-interest disclosures.

In ethics answers, the distinction matters: a constitutional oath binds a Minister personally, while a civil servant’s obligations flow from statute and rules.

Maharashtra’s Employment Guarantee Scheme grew out of the drought of 1970-73, when three failed monsoons left most rural households without work. The idea, credited to V.S. Page, Chairman of the Legislative Council, was that the State would guarantee unskilled manual work on public works to any rural adult who asked for it, self-targeting the needy and building assets such as bunds, wells, tanks and roads.

It was funded partly by special levies, including a professions tax. The 1977 Act made the guarantee a legal right in the State.

Its design shaped the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005, which offered 100 days of work per rural household a year, with Gram Sabha planning and social audits; it was renamed MGNREGA in 2009. In 2025 Parliament passed the VB-G RAM G Act, which replaced MGNREGA from 1 July 2026, raised the guarantee to 125 days, and changed the Centre-State funding pattern for most States to 60:40.

In drought years, States typically relax work norms and add labour-intensive water conservation works under the guarantee.

Article 324 vests the superintendence, direction and control of elections in the Election Commission, consisting of the Chief Election Commissioner and such number of other Election Commissioners as the President may fix. The Commission was single-member for most of its history; two Election Commissioners were appointed in October 1989 and removed in January 1990, and the multi-member Commission became permanent in October 1993.

When T.N. Seshan, then CEC, challenged the arrangement, the Supreme Court in 1995 upheld it, holding that the CEC and the Election Commissioners have similar powers and conditions of service and that decisions are taken unanimously as far as possible and otherwise by majority. The CEC’s special position lies in removal: under Article 324(5), the CEC can be removed only like a Supreme Court judge, while other Election Commissioners can be removed only on the CEC’s recommendation.

A recorded dissent is therefore part of the design of a collegial body. Appointments are now governed by the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act, 2023.

Nikolai Vavilov (1887-1943) mapped where crops were first domesticated by collecting varieties and wild relatives across the world. His centres grew in number as his work advanced: five in the 1926 paper, eight in the scheme of the mid-1930s that textbooks use (Chinese; Indian with an Indo-Malayan sub-centre; Central Asian; Near Eastern; Mediterranean; Abyssinian; South Mexican and Central American; South American with Chiloe and Brazilian-Paraguayan sub-centres).

The idea underpins the modern conservation of plant genetic resources. Diversity is conserved in situ, on farms and in protected areas, and ex situ in gene banks such as India’s National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources in New Delhi and the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, opened in 2008.

The FAO’s International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (2001) creates a Multilateral System of access and benefit-sharing for key crops and recognises farmers’ rights in Article 9. India’s Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, 2001 is unusual in protecting both breeders and farmers, including the farmer’s right to register a farmers’ variety.

Security of tenure and immunity are different protections. Tenure decides who can remove a Commissioner and how: the CEC shares the Supreme Court judge’s procedure, in which the Speaker or Chairman may admit a notice, a three-member committee (a Supreme Court judge, a High Court Chief Justice and a distinguished jurist) inquires, and both Houses must pass the address by special majority in the same session before the President orders removal.

No CEC has been removed this way. Election Commissioners have weaker protection, since their removal depends on the CEC’s recommendation; in 2009 CEC N. Gopalaswami recommended the removal of Election Commissioner Navin Chawla, and the Government did not act on it.

The Law Commission’s 255th Report (2015) recommended equal protection for all Commissioners. Immunity is a separate question: Section 16 of the 2023 Act shields official acts from court proceedings, covering former Commissioners too, but it is tied to official duty.

Appointments under the same Act are made by the President on the recommendation of a Selection Committee of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and a Cabinet Minister.