Current Affairs Quiz 12 October 2026

The Forest Rights Act sets out a ladder for every claim. The Gram Sabha receives claims, consolidates and verifies them and prepares a map delineating the area of each recommended claim.

A person aggrieved by its resolution may petition the Sub-Divisional Level Committee within sixty days. That committee examines the resolution, prepares the record of forest rights and forwards it to the District Level Committee for a final decision; an appeal against the Sub-Divisional Level Committee also lies to the District Level Committee within sixty days.

The District Level Committee finally approves the record, and its decision is final and binding. The State Level Monitoring Committee only monitors the process and reports to the nodal agency.

Rule 12A(10) adds that every modification or rejection must give detailed reasons, and that no rejection of claims shall be merely on any technical or procedural grounds. At the review conference in Kolkata on 9 October 2026, the keynote gave the national position as on 31 August 2026: over 54 lakh claims received, about 25 lakh titles distributed, about 11 lakh claims pending and over 18 lakh rejected.

Census 2027 has two phases. Phase I, the House Listing and Housing Census (HLO), was scheduled during six months from April to September 2026, in a period of 30 days chosen by each State or UT, with an option of self-enumeration for 15 days just before it; it collects information on the condition of houses, household amenities and assets.

Phase II, Population Enumeration, will be conducted during February 2027; in Ladakh and the snow-bound non-synchronous areas of Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh it was scheduled for September 2026. Phase II collects demographic, socio-economic, education, migration and fertility details from each individual, and, as decided by the CCPA, castes.

The Government’s intent to conduct the Census was notified in the Gazette of India on 16 June 2025. In Mizoram, the State Home Minister told the Assembly that 38,213 refugees had been registered as of 20 August: 29,575 from Myanmar, 6,959 from Manipur and 1,679 from Bangladesh.

The State will now record them on a list separate from that of Indian citizens, The Hindu reported.

The National Human Rights Commission of India was established on 12 October 1993, so its foundation day falls on this edition’s date. Its statute is the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993, as amended by the Protection of Human Rights (Amendment) Act, 2019.

Section 2(1)(d) of the Act defines human rights as the rights relating to life, liberty, equality and dignity of the individual guaranteed by the Constitution or embodied in the International Covenants and enforceable by courts in India. So a right is covered either because the Constitution guarantees it, or because an International Covenant embodies it and courts in India can enforce it.

The Commission describes itself as in conformity with the Paris Principles. Those principles were adopted at the first International workshop on National Institutions for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, held in Paris in October 1991, and endorsed by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 20 December 1993 (48/134).

For Prelims, keep the order straight: a workshop in Paris first, the General Assembly’s endorsement two years later, and the NHRC itself was set up in between, on 12 October 1993.

TRISHNA, the Thermal Infra-Red Imaging Satellite for High-resolution Natural Resource Assessment, is an Indo-French satellite being developed by ISRO and the French space agency CNES. Jasvinder Singh Khoral, Director (Projects) at ISRO’s U.R. Rao Satellite Centre (URSC), said at the TRISHNA Water for Tomorrow workshop that it will be launched in the next 12 to 16 months.

He said the project had been around for a decade or so in its conceptualisation and formalisation and had now come to the realisation stage. It is the third satellite India and France are developing together, after Megha-Tropiques and SARAL, the Satellite with ARGOS and ALTIKA.

For Prelims, keep the three in order and read each expansion closely: TRISHNA’s own name tells you its job, imaging in the thermal infra-red at high resolution for natural resource assessment. Because it has not yet been launched, any statement that calls TRISHNA operational, or in orbit, is false.

Questions on joint satellites usually test the partner agency, the expansion and the sequence, so learn all three together.

India is drafting a National Plan of Action for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries (NPOA-SSF) through consultations with fishing communities. One was held at the ICAR-Central Institute of Fisheries Technology (ICAR-CIFT), Kochi, on 10 October 2026, to bring the views, concerns and priorities of fishing communities into the plan.

The process is spearheaded by the Department of Fisheries, and the Bay of Bengal Programme Inter-Governmental Organisation (BOBP-IGO) is facilitating and coordinating it. The plan follows the FAO Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries and India’s National Policy on Marine Fisheries, 2017.

According to the Department of Fisheries, the livelihoods of approximately 30 million people in India are linked to fisheries and allied activities, which also make a significant contribution to the country’s food and nutritional security. The timeline is a plan, not an outcome: the draft is targeted for release on World Fisheries Day, 21 November 2026, followed by public review, finalisation and official notification in 2027.

A statement that calls the plan notified, or in force, is testing exactly that difference.

The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (No. 22 of 2023) received assent on 11 August 2023. Section 18 provides for a Data Protection Board of India, established from a date the Central Government notifies; G.S.R. 844(E) of 13 November 2025 established it, with its head office in the National Capital Region.

The Board consists of a Chairperson and such other Members as the Government may notify, at least one of them an expert in the field of law; they hold office for two years and are eligible for re-appointment; and the Board must function as an independent body. Appeals against its orders lie to the Appellate Tribunal.

In a public interest litigation on passenger data collected at airports through systems such as Digi Yatra, the Kerala High Court found that ‘the privacy of citizens is being compromised’. The Union’s counsel told the Bench the Board ‘has been constituted but has not made functional’.

As LiveLaw reported on 10 October 2026, the court said: ‘we expect that the Board will be made functional within a period of eight weeks from date.’ Establishing a body on paper is not the same as making it work.

Article 324(1) vests the superintendence, direction and control of the preparation of electoral rolls for, and the conduct of, elections to Parliament, the State Legislatures and the offices of President and Vice-President in the Election Commission. Clause (2) says the Commission shall consist of the Chief Election Commissioner and such number of other Election Commissioners, if any, as the President may from time to time fix, so the Constitution does not fix the size of the Commission.

Clause (3) makes the Chief Election Commissioner the Chairman when other Election Commissioners are appointed. Clause (5) protects tenure: the Chief Election Commissioner can be removed only in like manner and on the like grounds as a Judge of the Supreme Court, and any other Election Commissioner only on the recommendation of the Chief Election Commissioner.

The Article does not mention Deputy Election Commissioners. Prakash Rajpurohit, a 2010-batch IAS officer of the Rajasthan cadre, has been appointed Deputy Election Commissioner for a tenure up to 8 April 2030, cleared by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet, The Hindu reported.

Target 13 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework is about the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilisation of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge; Target 19 is about resource mobilisation. India’s access and benefit-sharing (ABS) framework supports both and implements the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 and the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) 2024-2030.

The NBA’s latest release, of Rs 2.02 crore, came from the utilisation of agricultural biological resources including rice, eggplant, cauliflower, cucumber, hot pepper, bottle gourd, bitter gourd, tomato and okra, with contributions from seven seed companies. It went to 27 State Biodiversity Boards and 3 Union Territory Biodiversity Councils, and the top 10 States accounted for Rs 1.43 crore.

Such disbursements support Biodiversity Management Committees, People’s Biodiversity Registers, the conservation of traditional crop varieties and medicinal plants, and the restoration of habitats. India is preparing to participate in COP 17 of the Convention on Biological Diversity, commencing on 19 October 2026 in Yerevan, Armenia.

Two naval deployments are in the news. INS Trishul, a guided missile stealth frigate, arrived at Plymouth for KONKAN-26 with the Royal Navy, conducted off Plymouth in two phases from 8 to 15 October 2026; the release says the exercise has grown significantly in scale and complexity over the past two decades.

INS Sahyadri arrived at Vladivostok on 10 October 2026 for INDRA 2026, scheduled from 13 to 18 October 2026. The release placed the deployment in consonance with the Government of India’s vision of MAHASAGAR (Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions) and said it would carry forward the momentum generated during the 23rd India-Russia Annual Summit held on 4 and 5 December 2025.

Separately, the Next Generation Offshore Patrol Vessel Shreyas was launched at GRSE, Kolkata, on 10 October 2026; NGOPVs, indigenously designed and built, are under construction at two shipyards, GSL in Goa and GRSE in Kolkata. Learn the partner and the format of each exercise, and the full form of MAHASAGAR, rather than the dates.