Current Affairs Quiz 27 October 2026

The EIA Notification, 2006 (S.O. 1533(E), issued on 14 September 2006) sets the route by which a project that needs prior environmental clearance is examined. Its four stages run ‘in sequential order’: screening (for Category B projects only), scoping, public consultation and appraisal.

All Category A and Category B1 projects must hold public consultation, with a few exceptions such as the modernisation of irrigation projects. Consultation is the process by which ‘the concerns of local affected persons and others who have plausible stake in the environmental impacts’ of a project are ascertained.

It has two parts: a public hearing at or near the site, district-wise, for local affected persons, and written responses from others with a plausible stake. A hearing may not be postponed ‘unless some untoward emergency situation occurs’, and then only on the District Magistrate’s recommendation (Appendix IV, para 3.3).

Where the agency reports that a hearing cannot be held in a way that lets local views be ‘freely expressed’, the regulatory authority may decide that consultation need not include it. For local people, the hearing is the legal channel for consent, and its record is what the expert committee later relies on.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was signed by 150 government leaders at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. It has three objectives: the conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of its components, and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources.

COP-17 in Yerevan runs alongside the 12th meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol and the sixth meeting of the Parties to the Nagoya Protocol. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) was adopted on 19 December 2022.

Its Target 3 asks that at least 30 per cent of terrestrial and inland water areas, and of marine and coastal areas, be effectively conserved by 2030 through protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs). Goal C seeks the fair sharing of benefits from genetic resources, DSI and associated traditional knowledge; Goal D seeks adequate means of implementation and names a biodiversity finance gap of $700 billion per year.

In India, the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 (amended in 2023) works through three tiers: the National Biodiversity Authority (a statutory body set up in 2003, based in Chennai), State Biodiversity Boards and local Biodiversity Management Committees.

Article 324(5) carries two safeguards of different strength. The first proviso gives the Chief Election Commissioner the protection of a Supreme Court judge: he ‘shall not be removed from his office except in like manner and on the like grounds as a Judge of the Supreme Court’.

A further proviso protects the other Election Commissioners and the Regional Commissioners in another way: they ‘shall not be removed from office except on the recommendation of the Chief Election Commissioner’. The CEC’s tenure is thus secured directly by the Constitution, while the removal of the other Commissioners turns in part on the CEC’s recommendation.

The appointment, conditions of service and term of office of the Commissioners are the subject of the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act, 2023. In the case now before the Supreme Court, the petitioners allege that decisions on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls were taken without the concurrence of the other two Commissioners; the ECI says all such decisions were unanimous and that Form 6, used to include names in electoral rolls, was not amended.

The right to privacy became the constitutional base for India’s data law through Justice K S Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India (24 August 2017), in which the Supreme Court held privacy to be protected as an intrinsic part of the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (Act No. 22 of 2023, dated 11 August 2023) is the statute that followed.

Section 18 establishes the Data Protection Board of India. Section 44(3) reaches into another law: it substitutes clause (j) of Section 8(1) of the RTI Act, 2005 with ‘information which relates to personal information’.

The DNPA’s petition argues, among other grounds, that the Act has no exemption for journalism, that the Centre’s power to call for information under Section 36 lacks judicial oversight, and that the new Section 8(1)(j) is a blanket restriction on disclosure. The Court has issued notice only.

For a Mains answer, the case sets two rights against each other: a person’s control over personal data, and a citizen’s right to information. The Chief Justice of India said a balance has to be struck between the rights of citizens and those of the media.

The National Medical Commission Act, 2019 replaced the Medical Council of India with a Commission and four autonomous boards under its overall supervision (Section 16). The Under-Graduate and Post-Graduate Medical Education Boards set standards and curricula and specify norms for compulsory annual disclosures by medical institutions.

The Medical Assessment and Rating Board assesses and rates institutions, grants permissions and, under Section 26, can warn, fine, reduce intake, stop admissions and recommend withdrawal of recognition; it must also publish the assessment and ratings of medical institutions at regular intervals. The Ethics and Medical Registration Board keeps the National Register and oversees professional ethics.

The Act also provides two national tests: NEET for admission and the National Exit Test, NExT. Regulations are made by the Commission under Section 57.

A person aggrieved by a board’s decision may appeal to the Commission within sixty days (Section 22(3)); under the MARB Regulations, 2023, an appeal against a MARB order lies within fifteen days, with a further appeal to the Central Government within thirty days. The Annual Disclosure Report continues under Sections 24(i) and 25(h) of the Act even after the MSMER’s withdrawal.

The IT Act, 2000 builds a layered shield for critical information infrastructure. Under Section 70, the appropriate Government may, by notification in the Official Gazette, declare a computer resource that affects CII to be a protected system; unauthorised access to it is punishable with up to ten years’ imprisonment and a fine, and its security practices are set by the IT (Information Security Practices and Procedures for Protected Systems) Rules, 2018.

Section 70A provides for a national nodal agency for CII protection, and the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre was set up under it. Section 70B makes CERT-In the national agency for responding to cyber security incidents; not complying with its directions can bring up to one year in prison, or a fine up to ₹1 lakh, or both (Section 70B(7)).

CERT-In’s Directions of 28 April 2022 took effect 60 days after issue. Kudankulam has been here before: NPCIL said CERT-In told it on 4 September 2019 of malware on a PC in its administrative network; researchers identified it as Dtrack, reportedly developed by the Lazarus group.

The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 is a personal-data law; it is not a law on critical infrastructure.

The National Human Rights Commission works under the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993, which carries the number Act No. 10 of 1994. Section 12 of the Act lists the Commission’s functions.

One of them is to ‘review the safeguards provided by or under the Constitution or any law for the time being in force for the protection of human rights and recommend measures for their effective implementation’. That function is advisory in character: the Commission reviews and recommends, and an advisory carries recommendations; it is not a court order.

The latest advisory, on ‘Women’s Safety at Work and Public Spaces’, went to the Secretaries of Union Ministries, among them Women and Child Development, Education, Home Affairs, Labour and Employment, and Health and Family Welfare, to the Chairperson of the Railway Board, and to the Chief Secretaries and Administrators of all States and Union Territories. It covers eight areas: awareness on women’s safety and sexual harassment, infrastructure, bystander intervention, the role of the police, survivor support, cybercrime against women, long-term reforms and other measures.

The Commission has asked the authorities to implement its recommendations and furnish an Action Taken Report within two months.

The fifth National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5, 2019-21) is the most recent NFHS round with anaemia figures. It counts a child aged 6-59 months or a pregnant woman as anaemic below 11.0 g/dl of haemoglobin, a non-pregnant woman below 12.0 g/dl and a man below 13.0 g/dl.

Every group was more anaemic than in NFHS-4: children 67.1 per cent (58.6), all women aged 15-49 57.0 per cent (53.1), pregnant women 52.2 per cent (50.4) and men 25.0 per cent (22.7). Rural rates ran above urban ones: among children, 68.3 per cent against 64.2 per cent.

The policy response is Anemia Mukt Bharat, the Union Health Ministry’s programme launched in 2018 with a 6x6x6 strategy: six interventions for six beneficiary groups, through six institutional mechanisms. The Anemia Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan Operational Guidelines, released at the 16th meeting of the Central Council of Health and Family Welfare, move to 7x7x7: they add LBW babies (0-6 months), the ‘Eating Right’ approach and a monitoring and evaluation framework for digital tracking, and turn T3 (Test, Treat, Talk) into T4 (Test, Treat, Talk, Track).

Haemoglobin records are to be mapped through the JANANI, RBSK and U-WIN portals into a unified Anemia Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan Portal.

The Maldives lies south of India’s Lakshadweep islands, across a maritime boundary in the Arabian Sea fixed by the agreement of 28 December 1976; Minicoy is the Indian territory closest to the boundary’s western segment. Two episodes anchor the relationship in an answer.

In 1988, Operation Cactus showed India answering a neighbour’s call for help: within hours, the Indian Air Force flew paratroopers from Agra over 2,000 km to Male, where they landed at Hulhule airport. Today the anchor is economic support.

The Reserve Bank of India’s swap agreement with the Maldives Monetary Authority sits within the Framework on Currency Swap Arrangement for SAARC Countries, 2024-2027, a framework first introduced in 2012; RBI swap support to the Maldives since then exceeds USD 1.1 billion, PTI reported. A USD 400 million swap drawn in October 2024 has been settled, and the Rs 4,850 crore line of credit announced in July 2025 is the first line of credit to the Maldives denominated in Indian rupees.

Security cooperation runs through the Colombo Security Conclave. Muizzu’s visit to Pakistan, the first by a Maldivian president in 11 years, raises the question of whether such support should come with conditions.

India’s power problem has moved from how much capacity to which hour. The Central Electricity Authority’s table as on 30 September 2026 gives a total installed capacity of 558,896.39 MW: thermal 250,869.87 MW, large hydro 52,064.66 MW, renewable energy sources (excluding large hydro) 247,181.87 MW, of which solar 171,051.47 MW, and nuclear 8,780.00 MW.

Solar helps only by day. On 21 May 2026, peak demand met reached 270.8 GW at 3:45 pm; an EAC-PM working paper drawing on Grid-India’s SCADA data traces how an evening rise pushed demand back up to a second peak of about 252 GW near 10:45 pm.

As the paper puts it, ‘In the dark, solar contributes nothing, and the net load (demand minus solar) is simply equal to total load.’ Storage shifts daytime energy to the night. The CEA’s National Electricity Plan 2023 projects an energy storage requirement of 82.37 GWh in 2026-27 (47.65 GWh pumped storage, 34.72 GWh battery), rising to 411.4 GWh in 2031-32 (175.18 GWh pumped storage, 236.22 GWh battery).

Food fortification means adding nutrients to staple foods people already eat. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) notified the Food Safety and Standards (Fortification of Foods) Regulations in 2018 for five staples.

Wheat flour and rice are fortified with iron, folic acid and vitamin B12; edible oil and milk with vitamins A and D; and double fortified salt with iodine and iron. Fortified products carry the +F logo.

Salt already has a wide reach: NFHS-5 found 94.3 per cent of households using iodised salt. Fortification is one strand of the response to anaemia.

The other is Anemia Mukt Bharat, the Union Health Ministry’s programme launched in 2018 with a 6x6x6 strategy and now revised into a 7x7x7 strategy that adds the ‘Eating Right’ approach and low birth weight babies as a beneficiary group. The revised guidelines extend the programme ‘beyond supplementation to encompass testing, therapeutic management, eating right and community involvement’ and aim to shift anaemia management ‘from prophylactic care to therapeutic care’.

For a Mains answer, fortification is a preventive, population-wide measure, while testing and treatment reach those already anaemic.

Lalita Kumari v. Government of Uttar Pradesh (Constitution Bench, 12 November 2013) held that registering an FIR is mandatory if the information discloses a cognizable offence. It was decided under Section 154 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.

Its successor, Section 173 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) lets the officer in charge, with the prior permission of an officer not below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police, hold a preliminary enquiry for an offence ‘punishable for three years or more but less than seven years’, within fourteen days (Section 173(3)). If the police refuse an FIR, the complainant may write to the Superintendent of Police and, if the SP does not act, apply to the Magistrate (Section 173(4)).

In Ashok Kumar Jain v. The State of Gujarat (2025 INSC 614), the Supreme Court quoted the rule that ‘Mere breach of contract cannot give rise to criminal prosecution for cheating unless fraudulent or dishonest intention is shown right at the beginning of the transaction’, and held that continuing an FIR that gave a civil dispute the colour of cheating was an abuse of the process of law.

The Brahmaputra rises in the Kailash ranges of the Himalayas at about 5,150 m and flows about 2,900 km through Tibet (China), India and Bangladesh before joining the Ganga, according to the Central Water Commission. In Tibet it is the Yarlung Tsangpo.

It enters Arunachal Pradesh as the Siang, also called the Dihang, and meets the Dibang and the Lohit to form the Brahmaputra. The CWC lists its principal tributaries in India as the Dibang, the Lohit, the Subansiri, the Manas, the Tista, the Dhansiri and the Champamati.

A 2013 study for the CWC describes the Siang basin in India as bounded by the eastern Himalaya on the north, the Subansiri basin on the west and the Dibang basin on the east. The same study put the Siang sub-basin’s hydropower potential at over 18,000 MW, to be harnessed through 44 projects.

Both valleys now carry large dam proposals, and the EIA public hearing is the legal channel for consulting local people. For a Mains answer on the North-East, the river links physical geography, energy and the consent of the people who live along it.

Kudankulam, in Radhapuram taluk of Tirunelveli district, Tamil Nadu, is run by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL). Two 1,000 MWe pressurised water reactors (PWRs) operate there: Unit 1 has been in commercial operation since 31 December 2014 and Unit 2 since 31 March 2017.

NPCIL’s project pages describe Units 3 and 4 and Units 5 and 6, each pair of 2 x 1,000 MW, as under construction with technical cooperation from the Russian Federation; six such units make 6,000 MW. Map questions on nuclear sites test exactly this kind of placing: the plant, its State and district, its operator and its reactor type.

The plant has also become a case study in cyber security. In 2019, NPCIL said, CERT-In alerted it to malware on a PC in the internet-connected administrative network, which NPCIL said is isolated from the critical internal network; researchers identified the malware as Dtrack.

On the 2026 leak, Khyati Singh’s column argues that once project information passes to a contractor, its protection depends largely on contractual arrangements. Under the IT Act, 2000, the appropriate Government may notify a computer resource affecting critical information infrastructure as a protected system.