IBPS Weekly Current Affairs Quiz: 31 August – 6 September 2026

The correct answer is Bishkek. The release from the Prime Minister's Office says that the 26th meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation was held at Bishkek, the capital of the Kyrgyz Republic, and that the Prime Minister took part in it on 1 September 2026 after the meeting had opened on 31 August. Two further details in the release fix the venue in memory. The main outcome document is itself called the Bishkek Declaration, and the Prime Minister thanked President Sadyr Japarov of the Kyrgyz Republic for the welcome and the hospitality his country extended. Astana, Tashkent and Samarkand are well known cities of other member states of the grouping, and an aspirant may recall them from earlier editions, but this release names none of them. It names only Bishkek, so every other option is wrong here.

The correct answer is 7.8 per cent. Real GDP, that is GDP at constant prices, is estimated at ₹81.36 lakh crore for the first quarter of 2026-27, and that level represents growth of 7.8 per cent. The figure is the highest first-quarter growth recorded in the four years from 2023-24 onwards, and manufacturing and services carried it. Each wrong option is a real number from the same release, which is what makes them tempting. Option A is the growth rate of the first quarter of the previous year, so it is the base against which this quarter is compared. Option B is the Reserve Bank of India's projection for the quarter, which the outcome exceeded. Option D is the growth of real Gross Value Added, not of GDP; real GVA stood at ₹73.82 lakh crore. Keep the three apart: 7.0 was the forecast, 7.8 the GDP outcome and 8.2 the GVA outcome.

The correct answer is the 9th Foundation Day, observed as IPPB Day 2026. The arithmetic is easy to hold if the launch date is remembered: India Post Payments Bank was launched on 1 September 2018, so the same date in 2026 completes nine years of working. The release itself says the bank has emerged over the past nine years as an important platform connecting citizens with banking, digital payments and government benefits. The other options are near misses of the kind a paper setter likes, and each is wrong only by a year or two, so the safer method is to anchor the launch year and count forward rather than to memorise the ordinal alone. Note also that the bank is set up under the Department of Posts in the Ministry of Communications, with the whole of its equity held by the Government of India.

The correct answer is the fifth edition, written in official papers as SSSS v.5.0. The release says the campaign builds on its success over the last four years, which is the internal check an aspirant can apply: four earlier editions plus the one being launched makes this the fifth. Dr Jitendra Singh, Minister of State with Independent Charge for Earth Sciences, launched it, and the Ministry of Earth Sciences runs it. The week itself falls from 12 to 19 September 2026. Option B is the trap for anyone who counts only the completed editions and forgets to add the new one, and options A and D are placed on either side of the answer for the same reason. A safer way to hold the fact is through the official name: the campaign is styled 5.0, and the version number is the edition number.

The correct answer is ₹1 lakh crore. The release refers throughout to the ₹1 lakh crore Research, Development and Innovation Fund, and it is the size of that corpus that makes the Minister's appeal for outreach necessary: thousands of applications are arriving, some from applicants who do not appear to understand what the fund is for. He cautioned against treating it as merely another source of finance or as a conventional loan facility, and said its purpose is to support technology development and research in a manner that contributes to scientific progress and to the growth of the national economy. The wrong options are round figures of the kind that attach to individual schemes, but the number to remember for this fund is one lakh crore rupees. Note also that the fund extends support at a later stage, described as TRL4 level.

The correct answer is 2022-23. The backgrounder states that the updated series of annual and quarterly GDP estimates, released on 31 August 2026, takes 2022-23 as its base year. The same base year is used for the new output Producer Price Index and for the Banking Services Price Index that feed into the series. A base year supplies the reference prices against which real growth is measured, and it is revised from time to time so that relative prices keep describing the economy as it is. Option B, 2011-12, is the series that has now been replaced; the backgrounder uses it only to explain why an old estimate of Rs 86.05 lakh crore cannot be compared with a figure from the new series. Options A and D do not appear in the release at all. Candidates often confuse the year of release with the base year, so note that 2026 is when the series came out and 2022-23 is the base it rests on.

The correct answer is A-. The agency moved both the long-term foreign currency issuer rating and the long-term local currency issuer rating up by exactly one notch, from BBB+ to A-, and kept the outlook at stable. Option A, A+, is two notches above the new rating and was not awarded; a single-notch move from BBB+ cannot reach it. Option C, AA-, is higher still and belongs to a different rating band altogether. Option D, BBB, is below the rating India already held, so it would have been a downgrade rather than an upgrade. Note also that the country ceiling, which is a separate measure, was raised by one notch to A, one step above the new sovereign rating. Candidates should hold the two apart: A- is the issuer rating and A is the ceiling that applies to borrowers inside the country.

The correct answer is USD 54.02 billion. That is the figure twenty IFSC Banking Units had sanctioned under the Reserve Bank's special swap facility for FCNR(B) deposits as on 31 August 2026, and about USD 52.82 billion of it had already been disbursed. Options A and B are real numbers from the same release but from earlier dates in the same month: sanctions stood at USD 28.60 billion on 14 August and USD 37.26 billion on 21 August. The question is a test of whether the candidate tracks the date attached to each figure, because the amount nearly doubled inside a fortnight. Option D does not appear in the release at all. A useful way to hold the story together is the pair of figures that bracket it: USD 54.02 billion sanctioned and USD 52.82 billion disbursed, the small gap between them being the part not yet drawn down.

The correct answer is 180 days. The Rules were notified by the Department of Consumer Affairs on 27 August 2026 and published in the Official Gazette on 29 August 2026, and the release states that they take effect 180 days from the date of that publication. The gap gives telecommunications networks, financial systems, power grids, transport operators, data centres and government information systems time to synchronise with a traceable source before the legal obligation begins. Options A, B and D are not mentioned anywhere in the release and are offered only as plausible commencement periods, since Indian rules are often brought into force after thirty or ninety days. Note the two dates carefully as well, because notification and Gazette publication fall two days apart, and the 180-day count runs from publication rather than from the day the Rules were signed.

The correct answer is Rs 15 lakh. The release states that every awardee receives three things: a statuette, a certificate and award money of Rs 15 lakh. Candidates should remember all three, because questions are sometimes framed around what a winner gets rather than how much. Options A, B and D are round figures that do not appear in the release and are offered only because prize amounts of this kind are commonly set at five, ten or twenty-five lakh rupees. The award for the year 2024 went to four people, so the total money involved comes to sixty lakh rupees. The President of India will confer the awards at Rashtrapati Bhavan along with the National Sports Awards for 2025, on a date that the Ministry said will be announced separately.

The correct answer is New Delhi. The three-day meeting was held there from 1 to 3 September 2026, hosted by the Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks, which functions under the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. India holds the BRICS Chairship in 2026, which is why the annual meeting came to the Indian capital, and the release describes the hosting as a matter of pride for the office. Options A, C and D name cities in other BRICS member countries, which makes them plausible, but none of them hosted this edition. Note that delegates from Russia, Iran and Ethiopia joined the proceedings online while the other member offices attended in person, so a country being a member does not mean its delegates were physically present.

The correct answer is IBCA and the Asian Development Bank. The two formalised their partnership through an MoU at the event, marking a step towards stronger collaboration in landscape conservation, sustainable development, capacity building, knowledge exchange and nature-positive financing initiatives. Option A substitutes a different multilateral lender, which is a natural confusion, but the release names the Asian Development Bank throughout and its Country Director for India, Mia Oka, spoke at the session. Options C and D put the National Tiger Conservation Authority in place of IBCA; NTCA was one of the three joint organisers of the workshop along with IBCA and ADB, but it was not a party to the agreement. Keep the roles separate: three organisers, two signatories.

The correct answer is Belgium. The joint statement records that Bart De Wever, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Belgium, was on an official visit to India at the invitation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It was his first visit to India after he assumed office in February 2025, and he was accompanied by Theo Francken, the Belgian Minister of Defence and Foreign Trade, together with officials and business leaders. The Netherlands and Luxembourg in options A and C are neighbours of Belgium and are often confused with it in the examination hall; Luxembourg is also part of the Belgium-Luxembourg Economic Union that the statement mentions, but its Prime Minister did not make this visit. Denmark in option D has no part in this release at all. A useful anchor is that the visitor laid a wreath at Rajghat before his talks with the Indian Prime Minister.

The correct answer is 4.07 million tonnes. The review records that NMDC mined that quantity of iron ore in August 2026, which is growth of 20.8 per cent over the same month a year earlier. Option B is the trap, and a well-made one: 3.58 million tonnes is NMDC's sales figure for the same month, up 5.6 per cent over the year. Production and sales are reported side by side in the release, so a candidate who reads only the first number he sees will answer wrongly. Options A and D do not appear in the release. Two further figures belong with this answer: for April to August of the financial year, production stood at 23.23 million tonnes and sales at 18.72 million tonnes. The release also notes that the Kirandul, Bacheli and Donimalai mines each recorded their highest August production so far, which is itself a likely question.

The correct answer is 86. The release calls the response encouraging and puts the number of nominations received from across the country at that figure. The split by category is worth carrying with it, since a question may ask for any one of the three: 27 nominations came in for Avenue Plantations, 36 for Median Plantations and 23 for Plantation in Land Parcels. After an initial screening, 15 nominations were shortlisted for the final assessment, five in each category. Options A, C and D are invented figures that appear nowhere in the release. Candidates should also note who could apply, because that too has been asked: NHAI field offices, concessionaires, contractors, government agencies, non-government organisations and private agencies working on plantation projects along National Highway projects, all through the NHAI online portal.

The correct answer is the Centre for Nano and Soft Matter Sciences, Bengaluru, an autonomous institute under the Department of Science and Technology. The release names it as the institute whose researchers took up peptides, and the work was led there by Dr Goutam Ghosh with his doctoral scholar Aparna Ramesh. Options B and C are the collaborating institutions and are therefore the sharpest distractors: IISER Kolkata and JNCASR Bengaluru both contributed, and researchers from both are credited, but neither led the study. Option D does not appear in the release at all. Candidates should carry the parent department with the institute, since a question is often set on which department funds or governs a research body in the news. Note also that the discovery was published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition, a journal name that has itself been asked.

The correct answer is 15 August 2020. The release states that the Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment launched the Nasha Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan on that date to combat the demand for drugs in the country, which is why the campaign is now marking its sixth anniversary with a National Mass Pledge Against Drug Abuse. Options A, C and D are national dates of the kind examiners attach to schemes to see whether a candidate has memorised the correct one; none of them appears in this release. The anniversary arithmetic is itself a favourite question, so keep the launch year and the ordinal number together. Two more facts belong with the answer: the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment is the nodal Ministry for the campaign, and the pledge aims to bring in more than 10 crore citizens through physical and online participation.

The correct answer is Community, Corporate Social Responsibility and Cost. The backgrounder states that the initiative is guided by the 3Cs and spells them out in exactly those words. The other options are built out of words that belong to the same subject and therefore feel right, which is how such questions are set: catchment, conservation, capacity, coordination and compliance all occur in water policy writing but are not the three Cs here. The definition is worth keeping with the rest of the initiative's design: Jal Sanchay Jan Bhagidari builds low-cost groundwater recharge and water storage structures, revives defunct borewells, and promotes scientifically designed but locally suitable solutions through a Whole-of-Government and Whole-of-Society approach. It was launched on 6 September 2024, and placing community partnership and ownership at the centre of water conservation is what the 3Cs express.

The correct answer is the National Cooperative Development Corporation. The backgrounder names it as the implementing agency, supported by coordination at the national, state and district levels through an Inter-Ministerial Committee, a National Level Coordination Committee, and State and District Cooperative Development Committees. The other three options all appear in the same document with different roles, which is what makes them good distractors. The Food Corporation of India has been authorised to provide assured hiring of eligible godowns created under the Plan. NABARD is the subsidy-channelizing agency under the Agricultural Marketing Infrastructure scheme and provides a special refinance facility. The Warehousing Development and Regulatory Authority supplies the norms that storage structures must comply with. Candidates should learn the role attached to each name, since questions are set both ways round.

The correct answer is Security, Connectivity and Opportunity. In his statement at Bishkek the Prime Minister recalled that at the previous summit he had set out three main pillars of India's thinking on the grouping, and that their initials spell the organisation's own short name: S for Security, C for Connectivity and O for Opportunity. He then asked that the three be carried beyond vision into concrete outcomes. Under security he sought the dismantling of the funding, recruitment, radicalisation and safe havens behind terror, with no double standards. Under connectivity he backed projects that join markets and widen trade while respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of nations. Under opportunity he said the test is how many openings young people, entrepreneurs and farmers gain. The other three options use words that sound plausible but appear nowhere as the formula in the release.

The correct answer is the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, usually shortened to MoSPI. Every table in the release, whether the expenditure components, the sector-wise Gross Value Added or the revised annual estimates, is sourced to that ministry. MoSPI also carried out the upward revision of real GDP growth for the three earlier years and moved the estimates to new price and production indices with base year 2022-23, among them an Output Producer Price Index and a Banking Services Price Index. Option C is wrong but close to the fact: the Reserve Bank of India had projected 7.0 per cent growth for this quarter, a forecast rather than the estimate itself, and the actual outcome was higher. NITI Aayog and the Department of Economic Affairs are not named in the release as the source of these national accounts figures at all.

The correct answer is the DakPay Sound Box. The release describes it as a launch for merchants, designed to simplify and strengthen the acceptance of everyday digital payments at their end. The other three options are real products of the bank, which is what makes this question worth attempting carefully. The Digital Mutual Fund Platform and the Digital Insurance Technology Platform were indeed launched on the same Foundation Day, but both are meant for customers rather than merchants: one opens a digital route to investment, the other connects customers to life, health and general insurance. The Surakshit Savings Account belongs to an earlier set of three account variants rolled out during the year, along with the SHG Savings Account and the Sampoorna Savings Account, and it carries cyber insurance of ₹25,000 against phishing, spoofing and SIM jacking.

The correct answer is the Ministry of Earth Sciences. The campaign is spearheaded by that ministry, and the minister who launched it, Dr Jitendra Singh, holds Earth Sciences as Minister of State with Independent Charge. The three wrong options are all ministries whose work touches the sea, the coast or cleanliness in some way, which is exactly why a candidate can be led astray; but none of them is named here. Two further links are worth carrying into the examination hall. The campaign draws on the Swachh Bharat vision for its cleanliness idea, and it draws on the Deep Ocean Mission, launched by the Prime Minister, for its ocean science idea. The ministry brings citizens, students, youth, coastal communities and volunteer organisations together for the drive under the banner of Jan Bhagidari, or public participation.

The correct answer is the Technology Development Board, usually shortened to TDB, whose 30th Foundation Day was the occasion for the address. The board was created so that technologies would not remain confined to laboratories but would be translated into products, solutions and enterprises that bring ease of living, provide livelihoods and add to the economy of the country. The Minister praised its record in carrying work from laboratory to market, and named Skyroot and BotLab as examples of firms it has supported beyond narrowly defined domains. He also said TDB was the first to roll out proposals under the RDI Fund, and that it should now support technology development in the early phase as well as at the later stage. The other options are genuine institutions in the science ecosystem but none is named in this release as the host of the event.

The correct answer is output and intermediate consumption. Double deflation is a production-side technique: gross output is deflated with one price index and intermediate consumption with another, and real Gross Value Added is what remains after subtracting the second from the first. India now applies it to industries in the manufacturing sector, and the IMF describes it as the preferred method for measuring GDP in volume terms. Option B is wrong because exports and imports belong to the expenditure side of the accounts and are not what this method separates. Option C is wrong because wages and profits are components of the income approach, not quantities that are deflated in this exercise. Option D is wrong for the same reason as B: private final consumption expenditure is a measure of final demand, and the backgrounder says plainly that double deflation does not enter its calculation because final demand has no intermediate consumption to subtract.

The correct answer is 4.4 per cent. JCR noted that the Centre's fiscal deficit came down from 4.7 per cent in FY25 to 4.4 per cent in FY26, and that this happened while capital spending was kept high, with infrastructure investment given particular weight. That combination, a smaller deficit without cutting productive spending, is what the agency described as an improvement in the quality of fiscal expenditure. Option C, 4.7 per cent, is the figure for the earlier year, FY25, and is the most common trap in this question. Options A and B do not appear in the release at all. It is worth remembering the growth figure alongside the deficit: real GDP grew 7.8 per cent in FY26 and held the same pace in the first quarter of FY27, so the deficit fell in a year when the economy was also expanding strongly.

The correct answer is the IFSCA Act, 2019. The release describes IFSCA as the unified regulatory authority set up by the Government of India under an Act of Parliament for the development and regulation of financial products, financial services and financial institutions in India's International Financial Services Centres. Its Chairperson is K. Rajaraman. Option A, the SEBI Act, created the securities market regulator and is not the statute behind IFSCA, although securities business inside an IFSC does fall within IFSCA's remit. Option C, the Banking Regulation Act, governs banking companies in the domestic market and is administered with the Reserve Bank of India. Option D, the Foreign Exchange Management Act, deals with foreign exchange transactions generally. Only the IFSCA Act is the founding law, and its year, 2019, is the detail most often asked.

The correct answer is CSIR-National Physical Laboratory. It is India's National Metrology Institute, mandated to set up primary national standards and to disseminate them. It maintains the national atomic time scale, generating IST from an ensemble of atomic clocks together with a primary frequency standard, and keeps that scale traceable to within a few nanoseconds of Coordinated Universal Time, which the International Bureau of Weights and Measures maintains. Under the new Rules the Legal Metrology Department is the regulator and enforcer while CSIR-NPL provides the scientific foundation, so the two roles should be held apart. Options B, C and D are all real national scientific bodies, dealing with astronomy, mapping and weather respectively, but none of them is named in the release and none maintains the national time scale.

The correct answer is Polar Adventure. The award has exactly four categories and that is not one of them. Three of the four are defined by where the feat takes place, namely Land Adventure, Water Adventure and Air Adventure, and the fourth is Lifetime Achievement, which recognises a career rather than a single exploit. For the year 2024, two awards were given in Land Adventure, to Baljeet Kaur and Skalzang Rigzin, one in Water Adventure, to Rimo Saha, and one for Lifetime Achievement, to Shiv Prasad Chamoli. Note that no name was approved in the Air Adventure category this time, which is a detail worth holding on to, because a question may ask which category went unawarded. Options A, B and C are all genuine categories of the award.

The correct answer is the Updated Operational Guidelines. The release names their adoption as a major outcome of the deliberations, and explains their purpose: to guide result-oriented cooperation among the member offices, to promote cross-border innovation, and to strengthen joint efforts in shaping global intellectual property standards. Options A and C are invented documents that sound plausible because international meetings frequently produce declarations and charters, but neither appears in the release. Option D is wrong and is worth understanding rather than merely eliminating: the meeting worked on cooperation between existing offices, including a study on reinforced patent examination cooperation meant to streamline processes, cut backlogs and improve the exchange of search results, but it did not create any single BRICS patent office.