Current Affairs Quiz 25 October 2026

The Air Quality Index reports pollution in six categories, from Good to Severe. The Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) ties curbs to Delhi’s AQI in four stages: Stage I Poor (201-300), Stage II Very Poor (301-400), Stage III Severe (401-450) and Stage IV Severe + (above 450).

Under the schedule revised in September 2026 it carries 48 actions, invoked in advance on forecasts; Stage III actions, for example, come on top of those of Stages I and II. The Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) is a statutory body set up under an Act of 2021; its five ex officio members are Chief Secretaries or Secretaries of Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

Mission Mausam was approved by the Union Cabinet in 2024 with an outlay of Rs 2,000 crore over two years. AATAL is linked to IITM’s AIRWISE system, whose forecasts are given at a resolution of 400 metres for the next 72 hours.

Under the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), launched in January 2019, source studies found road and construction and demolition dust to be major sources of PM10, almost 40-50 per cent in most cities, the government told Parliament in July 2025.

The Constitution’s electoral scheme rests on three Articles. Article 324 vests the superintendence, direction and control of electoral rolls, and of elections to Parliament, the State Legislatures and the offices of President and Vice-President, in the Election Commission.

Article 326 provides for adult suffrage, and Article 327 lets Parliament make laws on all matters relating to elections. Parliament legislated in two stages: the Representation of the People Act, 1950 mainly covered the preparation of electoral rolls and the delimitation of constituencies, and the Representation of the People Act, 1951, enacted in July 1951, covered the actual conduct of elections.

The Office of the Election Commission was set up on 25 January 1950, the date now marked as National Voters’ Day, and Sukumar Sen assumed charge as Chief Election Commissioner on 21 March 1950. The Commission’s report recorded 17,32,13,635 electors, excluding Jammu and Kashmir, about 45 per cent of them women, and an overall voting of 51.15 per cent in the elections to Parliament.

The elections were held under the First-Past-The-Post system. The Lok Sabha was duly constituted for the first time on 17 April 1952, and G.V. Mavalankar was its first Speaker.

The first General Election was administered at a scale no one had attempted before. The Commission’s Report on the First General Elections in India 1951-52, published in 1955, records 1,32,560 polling stations with 1,96,084 polling booths.

Parliamentary and Assembly constituencies polled in the same exercise. The first notifications were issued on 10 September 1951 for Himachal Pradesh; the last polling for the Parliamentary and Assembly constituencies ended in Uttar Pradesh on 21 February 1952, and the whole programme, up to the West Bengal Legislative Council election, ended on 4 June 1952.

In Himachal Pradesh, polling was spread over 37 days, with actual polling on only 17 days. Reservation was carried mostly through multi-member seats.

There were 314 single-member, 86 two-member and 1 three-member parliamentary constituencies; all 72 Scheduled Caste seats and 16 of the 26 Scheduled Tribe seats were in multi-member constituencies, and the other 10 Scheduled Tribe seats in single-member ones. North Bengal was the only three-member constituency.

The Commission’s book Leap of Faith sets the 120 days the 1951-52 poll took against the 19 days of the next General Election, in 1957. Shyam Saran Negi, a schoolteacher from Kalpa, is recognised as independent India’s first voter.

IMD grades a cyclonic disturbance by its wind speed, and each stage has its own band: a deep depression is 28-33 knots, a cyclonic storm 34-47 knots (62-88 kmph), and a very severe cyclonic storm 64-89 knots (118-166 kmph). The order of intensification runs from a low-pressure area to a depression, then a deep depression, a cyclonic storm, a severe cyclonic storm and a very severe cyclonic storm.

A name is given only at the cyclonic-storm stage, 34 knots, by RSMC New Delhi. Warnings are issued in steps: for the present system IMD has issued a Cyclone Alert, an Orange Message, for Andhra Pradesh and the adjoining south Odisha coasts, forecast extremely heavy rainfall at isolated places, and advised fishermen not to venture into the sea off the Andhra Pradesh-Odisha coasts on 27 and 28 October.

IMD has issued red alerts for 28 October in 12 Andhra Pradesh districts and five Odisha districts, and educational institutions in five Odisha districts will be closed on 28 and 29 October. For Mains, the chain from forecast to warning to State preparedness is the core of cyclone disaster management.

The Cauvery dispute shows how a tribunal award becomes a working arrangement. The Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal gave its decision, which the Supreme Court modified in its order of 16 February 2018; the verdict reduced the total normal-year delivery from Karnataka to Tamil Nadu, measured at Biligundlu, from 192 TMC to 177.25 TMC.

To give effect to it, the Union government constituted the Cauvery Water Management Authority and the Cauvery Water Regulation Committee by a gazette notification dated 1 June 2018. In the present case the CWRC issued a short-term flow direction and the CWMA upheld it: a direction of 3,000 cusecs at Biligundlu for 15 days, upheld at the CWMA’s 60th meeting after the CWRC’s 145th.

In deficit years the dispute turns on competing figures: Karnataka points to low inflows into its reservoirs and drought-affected taluks; Tamil Nadu to a claimed backlog. For Mains, the case is a study in water federalism: standing bodies that turn an award into short-term decisions.

Air Independent Propulsion, in PIB’s words, ‘boosts the underwater endurance of the diesel-electric submarines by reducing its dependence on atmospheric oxygen’. DRDO’s NMRL has developed a fuel cell-based AIP, which PIB described in 2021 as ‘unique as the hydrogen is generated onboard’.

Its land-based prototype was proven in March 2021, with L&T and Thermax as industry partners. In December 2024 a contract worth around Rs 1,990 crore was signed with Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDL) for the construction of the AIP plug and its integration.

The Setting to Work Phase-2 (STW-2) of the AIP Energy Module was inaugurated at L&T’s AM Naik Heavy Engineering Complex in Hazira, Gujarat, on 24 October 2026, PIB said. STW-2 is a test stage: the module will be energised for power production and tested rigorously as per the Indian Navy’s protocols before handover to MDL, with integration on a Kalvari-class submarine planned for early 2027.

For Mains, the AIP is an example of indigenisation in defence technology, with a DRDO laboratory designing it, L&T and Thermax as industry partners, and MDL to integrate it.

VAHAN and SARATHI are the national registers behind road transport services: VAHAN holds vehicle-registration records and SARATHI driving licences, while e-Challan records traffic violations and fines and PUCC manages pollution control certificates. Under the Ministry’s data-sharing policy, as The Hindu reports it, government bodies, including the police, may access all data fields, in accordance with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023; private entities may access only selected fields, with a daily cap; and all entities must hold a Security Audit Certificate from CERT-In.

Through an RTI request, the Internet Freedom Foundation found that 25,314 credentials had been issued to private entities, through which 1.708 crore queries were run over 33 months. Government agencies seeking data will now need the Transport Secretary’s approval, and officials ruled out suspending data sharing with private entities.

The trigger, The Hindu says, was vehicle information being sold through multiple apps and websites ‘for as little as ₹5’, according to an investigation by the security firm Cyderes. For Mains, these platforms show both the reach of digital public services and the risk when citizen data held by the State is shared with private users.

The Gaya cluster is being developed under the Amritsar Kolkata Industrial Corridor, as part of the National Industrial Corridor Development Programme. It covers 1,670 acres in Dobhi block of Gaya district and was approved by the Government of India on 28 August 2024 at a total cost of Rs 1,339 crore, including land.

It is expected to attract investments of about Rs 16,500 crore and to create jobs for around 1.10 lakh people; these are expectations, not results. The project is run by a special purpose vehicle, BIMCGL, in which the Bihar Industrial Area Development Authority and the National Industrial Corridor Development and Implementation Trust hold equal equity, incorporated on 6 January 2025.

Physical construction has begun, PIB says, and 12 MoUs covering about 300 acres, with proposed investments of around Rs 4,200 crore, were signed at the launch. For Mains, the SPV model puts a State authority and a national trust in one company with equal equity.

A constellation is a network of several of the same or similar satellites working together to provide continuous coverage; SpaceX’s Starlink constellation has more than 11,000 satellites in low-earth orbit, The Hindu says. International space law answers for such networks through the State.

Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty, 1967 makes each State internationally responsible for national activities in outer space, whether carried out by government agencies or by non-governmental entities, which need its authorisation and continuing supervision; Article VII makes the launching State liable for damage. But Article VI speaks of activities in outer space, not of the terms on which a company sells a service on the ground.

In India, satellite services are licensed as a GMPCS (Global Mobile Personal Communication by Satellite) authorisation under the Unified Licence, and, as the Minister of State for Communications told the Lok Sabha on 5 August 2026, security clearance to the licensees is ‘subject to successful demonstration of compliance with the stipulated security and technical conditions of license’. The Telecommunications Act, 2023 assigns spectrum by auction, except for the First Schedule entries, which are assigned by administrative process.

The DPDP Act, 2023 defines a personal data breach as any unauthorised processing of personal data, or its accidental disclosure, acquisition, sharing, use, alteration, destruction or loss of access, that compromises its confidentiality, integrity or availability. A Data Fiduciary has two duties: under section 8(5), to take reasonable security safeguards to prevent a breach, and under section 8(6), to intimate a breach to the Data Protection Board and to each affected Data Principal.

Rule 7 of the DPDP Rules, 2025 sets out the notice: to each affected person, without delay, a description of the breach, its likely consequences, the mitigation measures, the safety steps the person may take and a contact; to the Board, a detailed report within seventy-two hours. Penalties under the Schedule are imposed by the Board under section 33 after an inquiry.

These provisions are on a staggered commencement and start eighteen months after the Rules’ publication, so they are not yet in force. Until then the duties in force run to regulators: CERT-In, the national agency for cyber security under section 70B of the IT Act, 2000, must be told within 6 hours, and a listed company keeps the stock exchanges informed.

Paddy is a kharif crop in Punjab and wheat a rabi crop, and farmers burn paddy stubble to clear fields for the rabi sowing. The Punjab Preservation of Subsoil Water Act, 2009 was passed to save groundwater by delaying paddy: it bars a paddy nursery before 10 May (or a notified date) and transplanting before a date the State notifies, with a penalty of Rs 10,000 for every month or part of a month, per hectare.

Fires are tracked by satellite under the standard protocol developed by ISRO in consultation with State Remote Sensing Centres and IARI, and issued by CAQM in August 2021; the counts are fire events, not the area burnt or the smoke that reached Delhi. CAQM’s figure for the 2025 season was 5,114 fire events in Punjab.

Under the CAQM Act, 2021 (No. 29 of 2021), the proviso to section 14 keeps farmers out of that section for stubble burning or mismanagement of agricultural residue, and section 15 lets the Commission collect environmental compensation from them instead. In situ management (Happy Seeder, Super Seeder) handles straw in the field; ex situ management takes it out, often as bales, for use as fuel or livestock feed.

Punjab is broadly divided into three regions. Majha, in the northwest, lies between the Beas and the Ravi; its four districts in Indian Punjab are Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Gurdaspur and Pathankot.

Doaba, in the northeast, lies between the Beas and the Sutlej: the Beas separates it from Majha and the Sutlej from Malwa. Malwa, the southern region, lies south of the Sutlej; Bathinda, Faridkot, Muktsar and Firozpur make up its Lakhi Jungle tract, and Sangrur and Patiala are also in Malwa.

Amritsar and Tarn Taran are border districts: Amritsar lies along the India-Pakistan border, and Tarn Taran has Pakistan to its west. Farm fires usually peak in early November, but Majha burns early because its short-duration paddy and Basmati varieties free the fields in September, and green peas, a 60-day crop, fit between the paddy harvest and wheat sowing.

Tarn Taran recorded the most fires of any district in the 2025 season.

A refinery first separates crude oil by boiling point in a distillation unit: heavy fractions at the bottom, light ones at the top. Every refinery has an atmospheric distillation unit; more complex ones add vacuum distillation.

Conversion units then turn heavy, low-value fractions into lighter, high-value products such as petrol, and cracking is the most widely used method. Complexity rises with this secondary conversion capacity; the Nelson Complexity Index is one measure.

Crude grades differ: density runs from light to heavy, and sulphur content makes a crude sweet (low sulphur) or sour. Light, sweet grades need far less sophisticated refineries, while heavy, sour crude needs complex ones.

India’s installed refining capacity was 267.1 MMTPA on 1 April 2026, by PPAC’s count, and PPAC’s Ready Reckoner ranks India fourth largest globally and second-largest in Asia; in 2025-26 its refineries processed 272.0 MMT of crude (provisional), at an average capacity utilisation of 106 per cent as PPAC reports it; the Ready Reckoner gives nameplate capacity as 258.1 MMTPA. Reliance calls Jamnagar the ‘largest and most complex single-site refinery in the world’; that is the company’s own claim.

Gujarat has four refineries at three sites: Reliance’s two at Jamnagar (68.2 MMTPA together), Nayara Energy’s at Vadinar (20.0 MMTPA) and Indian Oil’s at Koyali, together more than a third of India’s capacity. Assam has four: Digboi, Guwahati and Bongaigaon (Indian Oil) and Numaligarh (NRL).

Digboi, commissioned in December 1901, is India’s first refinery; well No. 1 there was drilled in September 1889. On the east coast, Paradip in Odisha (Indian Oil, 15.0 MMTPA) and Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh (HPCL) are major refineries.

The HPCL Rajasthan Refinery at Pachpadra, Barmer, a 9 MMTPA joint venture of HPCL (74%) and the Rajasthan government (26%), was dedicated to the nation by the Prime Minister on 4 July 2026. Numaligarh is expanding from 3 to 9 MMTPA with a new refinery that will run on imported crude brought from Paradip.

PPAC’s list of crude pipelines includes the Salaya-Mathura, Mundra-Panipat, Mundra-Bathinda and Vadinar-Bina pipelines; each name ends in a refinery town.

CERT-In, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, is the national agency for cyber security under section 70B of the Information Technology Act, 2000, and may call for information and give directions to service providers, intermediaries, data centres and body corporates. Its Directions of 28 April 2022 require cyber incidents to be reported to it ‘within 6 hours of noticing such incidents or being brought to notice about such incidents’, and the list of reportable incidents includes ‘Data Breach’ and ‘Data Leak’.

That duty runs to CERT-In, not to the person whose data were exposed; a listed bank must also keep the stock exchanges informed under SEBI’s disclosure norms. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 adds a duty owed to people: under section 8(6), a Data Fiduciary must intimate a breach to the Data Protection Board and to each affected Data Principal.

But section 8, section 33 and Rule 7 of the DPDP Rules, 2025 start eighteen months after the Rules’ Gazette of 13 November 2025, which works out to 13 May 2027. For Mains, the two laws show the difference between incident reporting for national cyber security and breach notice for individual privacy.