IBPS Current Affairs Quiz: 22 September 2026

The correct answer is 23 September 2018. AB PM-JAY was launched on that date to move India towards universal health coverage, and the PIB backgrounder of 22 September 2026 marks its eighth anniversary. It gives eligible families cashless hospital cover of up to ₹5 lakh a year for secondary and tertiary care through more than 38,000 empanelled hospitals.

The other dates are distractors around well-known days: 15 August is Independence Day, 2 October is Gandhi Jayanti and 1 April is the start of the financial year. Two later dates matter for this scheme and are worth keeping separate: March 2024, when about 37 lakh families of ASHAs and anganwadi workers were added, and 11 September 2024, when all senior citizens aged 70 and above were brought in through the Ayushman Vay Vandana card.

The correct answer is Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. TRAI, the sector's regulator, released the Thirteenth Amendment on 22 September 2026 after a draft issued on 7 April 2026 drew 1,132 responses and an open house discussion on 15 June 2026. The amendment obliges operators to offer voice-and-SMS-only special tariff vouchers for validities of 30 days and less, so that users who do not need data are not forced to buy bundled packs.

The Department of Telecommunications is the government department that makes policy and issues licences, not tariff regulations. The Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) hears appeals against TRAI's decisions rather than issuing regulations. The Ministry of Electronics and IT deals with electronics, IT and semiconductors. For telecom tariffs, quality of service and consumer protection, the regulator is always TRAI.

The correct answer is Hardeep Singh Puri. The meeting was co-chaired by Hardeep Singh Puri, India's Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas, and by the OPEC Secretary General. Since the dialogue is about oil markets, energy security and investment in the oil industry, the Indian co-chair is the minister who holds the petroleum portfolio, and that is the link to remember. Piyush Goyal is wrong because the commerce and industry portfolio is not the one that leads this dialogue. Nirmala Sitharaman is wrong because the finance ministry did not lead this engagement, even though energy prices affect the economy. Pralhad Joshi is wrong as the release names only the petroleum minister as the Indian co-chair. Questions on ministerial dialogues usually turn on matching the subject of the dialogue with the correct portfolio.

The correct answer is National Action for Mechanized Sanitation Ecosystem. The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment defines NAMASTE exactly this way, and describes its aim as ensuring the safety and dignity of sanitation workers by creating an enabling ecosystem that recognises their contribution to the operation and maintenance of sanitation infrastructure. Option B is wrong because the scheme is not framed as a mission for advanced sanitation technology, and the word mission does not appear in its name. Option C is wrong because it is not a municipal training agency and it is not confined to urban local bodies alone. Option D is wrong because NAMASTE is not an authority for sewerage treatment but a scheme centred on workers. Full forms of welfare schemes are frequently asked, so learn the expansion word for word.

The correct answer is Swachhata Mein Sahbhag, Swachh Bharat, Viksit Bharat. Both the Department of Food and Public Distribution and the Ministry of Textiles named this as the theme of the current campaign, and described it as an appeal to treat cleanliness as a collective effort and a festival of community involvement. Option B is wrong because that phrase is not the theme announced for this edition. Option C is wrong because although it sounds close to the language used in such campaigns, it is not the theme named in these releases. Option D is wrong because it is a general slogan and not the theme declared for this year. Themes of national campaigns change every year, so aspirants should always link the theme to the year and to the campaign name together.

The correct answer is Anant Nag. President Droupadi Murmu presented the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for 2024 to the veteran Kannada actor at the 72nd National Film Awards at Ekta Nagar, Kevadia, in Gujarat. Accepting it, Anant Nag spoke of a childhood in an ashram, a move to Mumbai where the stage gave him his first role, and a run of nearly 50 plays before he turned to cinema. He later worked with the director Shyam Benegal, chose Kannada films and made Bengaluru his karmabhoomi, and he had received the Padma Bhushan from the same President a year earlier. Mammootty is wrong because he shared the Best Actor award for Bramayugam. Sanjay Mishra is wrong because he was named Best Supporting Actor for Bhakshak. Randeep Hooda is wrong because he was praised for his first film as a director, Swatantrya Veer Savarkar, and not for a lifetime honour.

The correct answer is ₹5 lakh. AB PM-JAY provides cashless hospitalisation cover of up to ₹5 lakh per family per year, covering 1,961 procedures across 27 medical specialties at public and private empanelled hospitals. The cover is per family, not per person, and there is no cap on family size or age.

The other amounts are distractors. The scale of use is worth remembering: by its eighth anniversary the scheme had funded about 13.25 crore hospital admissions worth ₹2.03 lakh crore, and over 48.51 crore people, about 33% of the population, held Ayushman cards. The Union Budget for 2026-27 provides ₹9,500 crore for it. A typical example in the backgrounder is a 65-year-old woman from Haryana whose hip surgery costing ₹44,140 was done free under the scheme.

The correct answer is Voice-and-SMS-only vouchers for validities of 30 days and less. Under the amendment, wherever an operator offers a voice-SMS-data special tariff voucher with a validity of 30 days or less, it must also offer a voice-and-SMS-only voucher of the same validity at an appropriately reduced price. Operators must also offer a pack that renews on the same date every month, falling back to the last day in shorter months, and at least one longer voice-and-SMS pack.

The other options invent products that the regulation does not cover. TRAI's concern, after the Twelfth Amendment of 2024, was that operators had listed only a handful of voice-SMS packs, concentrated on long validities, so low-income users who rely on a basic phone or a second SIM could not buy a cheap short pack. The new rule targets exactly that gap.

The correct answer is Vienna. The release records that both sides agreed to hold the Eighth High-Level Meeting of the OPEC-India Energy Dialogue in Vienna, Austria, on a mutually convenient date. Vienna is also where the OPEC Secretariat is based, which makes the choice easy to recall. New Delhi is wrong because it hosted the seventh meeting and also the launch of the dialogue, not the next edition. Riyadh is wrong because although Saudi Arabia is a major OPEC member, the capital named for the next round is not Riyadh. Abu Dhabi is wrong for the same reason. Aspirants should keep two venues separate in memory here: New Delhi for the meeting just concluded, and Vienna for the one to come.

The correct answer is 90,186. The Ministry's Secretary stated that the sewer and septic tank workers component now covers all 36 States and Union Territories, and that this many workers have been validated. The validated workforce is made up of 86,468 men, 3,713 women and five transgender persons, and these sub-totals add up to the figure in the correct option, which is a quick way to verify the answer. Options A and C are wrong because they do not match any figure reported for this component. Option D is a deliberate trap, because that number belongs to the separate waste picker component, where the profiled count covers 34 States and Union Territories rather than 36. Keeping the two components apart is the key to answering this question correctly.

The correct answer is the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation under the Ministry of Jal Shakti. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting release states plainly that the campaign is being organised jointly by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and that department, which together cover urban and rural sanitation. Option A is wrong because rural development is a separate department and was not named as an organiser. Option C is wrong because the environment ministry has no stated role in running this campaign. Option D is wrong because health and family welfare is not among the organisers, even though health camps are held for Safai Mitras during the campaign. The urban plus rural pairing is the logic to remember, since a national cleanliness campaign must reach both kinds of settlement.

The correct answer is Ekta Nagar, Kevadia. The 72nd National Film Awards were conferred there, in Gujarat, and it was the first time the ceremony had been taken out of the national capital. The site was chosen for its association with Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and with national unity, and the President said the choice suited a ceremony that celebrates the cultural and national unity of the country. The Governor of Gujarat, Acharya Devvrat, and Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel both described hosting the event as a matter of pride for the state. New Delhi is wrong because this edition deliberately moved away from Delhi, where earlier ceremonies were held. Mumbai is wrong because, although it is the centre of the Hindi film industry, it did not host this ceremony. Gandhinagar is wrong because it is the capital of Gujarat, while the awards were given at Ekta Nagar in Kevadia.

The correct answer is Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) 2011. Rural families qualify under six deprivation criteria of the SECC 2011, such as households with only one kucha room, no adult member between 16 and 59, female-headed households without an adult male, households with a disabled member, SC/ST households and landless households dependent on casual manual labour. Urban families qualify under 11 occupational categories, from rag pickers and domestic workers to construction workers and drivers.

Census 2011 is the tempting wrong answer: the SECC was a separate exercise from the population census. The National Family Health Survey is a health survey, not an eligibility list, and Aadhaar is an identity number, not a poverty database. Families once covered under the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana are included too.

The correct answer is 2015. At the seventh meeting the OPEC Secretary General said that the OPEC-India Energy Dialogue is eleven years strong, having been launched in New Delhi in 2015. That single sentence gives both the launch year and the launch city, so it is worth remembering as a pair. Option A is wrong because the dialogue did not exist that early. Option C is wrong because by that year the dialogue had already been running for some time. Option D is wrong for the same reason. A useful cross-check in the examination hall is the arithmetic: a dialogue described as eleven years strong in the current year must have begun in the year given in option B, so the wording of the statement itself confirms the answer.

The correct answer is Rs 34.16 crore. Under the capital subsidy intervention for mechanisation, routed through the Swachhta Udyami Yojana, the Ministry reported that 983 beneficiaries have been supported with this amount. The purpose of the subsidy is to help sanitation workers acquire machines so that hazardous manual work is replaced by mechanised cleaning, which is the central idea of the NAMASTE Scheme. The other three options are wrong simply because no such amount is reported for this intervention; they are plausible looking figures placed to test whether the aspirant recalls the exact number. A useful habit is to memorise the amount together with the beneficiary count, since examiners often pair the two in a single statement and change only one of them.

The correct answer is 17 September to 2 October. The Ministry of Textiles stated that the campaign is being celebrated across all its organisations over this period, and the activities reported by other departments, such as the Swachhata pledge taken on the opening day, fit the same window. The closing date is easy to remember because it falls on Gandhi Jayanti, the day the Swachh Bharat Mission itself is associated with. Option A is wrong because the campaign does not begin at the start of the month. Option B is wrong because that window belongs to a different period altogether and does not match the reported pledge dates. Option D is wrong because the campaign ends, rather than begins, in the first days of October. Fixing the start and close dates together is the safest way to answer such questions.

The correct answer is Article 370. The film was judged the Best Feature Film at the 72nd National Film Awards, and Yami Gautam won the Best Actress in a Leading Role award for the same film, which made it the evening's biggest winner. Chandu Champion is wrong because Kartik Aaryan won a share of the Best Actor award for it, while the film itself did not take the top feature prize. Kalki 2898 AD is wrong because it was named the Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment, a separate category meant for mainstream entertainers. Amaran is wrong because Rajkumar Periasamy won the Best Direction award for it, again a different category. Aspirants should also note Captain Miller, honoured as the best feature promoting national, social and environmental values, and that the Best Actor award this year was shared between Mammootty for Bramayugam and Kartik Aaryan.

The correct answer is All senior citizens aged 70 and above. On 11 September 2024 the Government extended AB PM-JAY to everyone aged 70 and above, regardless of income, covering about 6 crore senior citizens. They receive the Ayushman Vay Vandana card, and more than 1.36 crore such cards had been issued by 21 September 2026.

ASHA workers are the distractor: about 37 lakh families of ASHAs, anganwadi workers and helpers were indeed added, but earlier, in March 2024, and through a separate decision. Construction workers join through the Building and Other Construction Workers boards, and students are not a category at all. The name is easy to place: "Vay" refers to age, so the Vay Vandana card is the one for the elderly.

The correct answer is NSKFDC, the National Safai Karamcharis Finance and Development Corporation. The Secretary of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment said the scheme promotes sustainable livelihoods, capacity building, access to safety gear and mechanisation through interventions implemented by this corporation. The name itself carries the clue, because Safai Karamcharis are the very workers the scheme is built around. Option A is wrong because that corporation works for scheduled caste beneficiaries in general and is not named as the implementing body here. Option C is wrong because it serves backward classes and has no role stated in this release. Option D is wrong because it works for minority communities. Matching a scheme with its implementing corporation is a standard question pattern in general awareness papers.

The correct answer is Rajkumar Periasamy, who won the Best Direction award for Amaran at the 72nd National Film Awards. Randeep Hooda is wrong because he was praised for stepping behind the camera for the first time with Swatantrya Veer Savarkar, but the direction prize did not go to him. Shivadhwaj Shetty is wrong because he directed IMBU, which was honoured as the Best Tulu Film, one of the awards that brought languages outside the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution onto the national stage. Dinesh P. Bhonsle is wrong because he directed Dholi, chosen as the Best Garhwali Film. A related fact worth remembering is that the Best Debut Film of a Director went to Angen, a Santhali film directed by Ravi Raj Murmu. The Secretary of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Chanchal Kumar, said the edition drew 400 feature films in 34 languages and 161 non-feature films in 24 languages.