Railway Current Affairs Quiz: 30 September 2026

The correct answer is the Ministry of Power. The new CAFE norms for passenger vehicles were notified by the Ministry of Power, which handles energy efficiency in the country and works through the Bureau of Energy Efficiency, the body that will administer the credit buyout window under the framework. The norms come into force on 1 April 2027 and run till 31 March 2032. Option A, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, frames vehicle safety and registration rules but did not issue this notification. Option B, the Ministry of Heavy Industries, deals with the automobile industry and electric mobility schemes, yet the fuel-economy norms are not notified by it. Option D, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, looks after fuel supply and blending programmes such as ethanol in petrol, and although the new framework recognises ethanol-blended petrol through the Carbon Neutrality Factor, the notification itself came from the Ministry of Power. Aspirants should link CAFE norms with the Ministry of Power and the Bureau of Energy Efficiency.

The correct answer is 1926. India’s first Public Service Commission was constituted on 1 October 1926 as an advisory body, and the Commission therefore dates its own history from that year and completes a hundred years on 1 October 2026. Option A, 1919, is the year of the Government of India Act that merely provided for such a Commission; it created the legal opening, not the body itself. Option B, 1924, is the year the Lee Commission recommended that a statutory Public Service Commission be established at once, which is again a recommendation and not the establishment. Option D, 1935, is the year of the Government of India Act that transferred the power of appointment to the Governor-General and provided for a Federal Public Service Commission with Provincial Commissions, a later stage in the same story. Only 1926 marks the actual constitution of the body.

The correct answer is Nausena Bhawan, New Delhi. The Ministry of Defence stated that the second edition of the conference commenced there, bringing together the senior leadership of the Indian Navy, including Operational and Area Commanders, for deliberations on operational preparedness, maritime security and future capability development. Options B, C and D name naval commands at Kochi, Mumbai and Visakhapatnam. Those are headquarters of the Navy’s commands and their commanders attended the conference, but none of them hosted this edition. The venue matters for the examination because the conference was held at the Navy’s headquarters building in the capital, where the Raksha Mantri, the Chief of the Defence Staff and the Chief of the Army Staff could address and interact with the naval leadership during the same three-day sitting.

The correct answer is Rs 35.72 crore. The Accelerator Programme gave this amount as grant-in-aid for ten technologies, with the stated objective of moving them from Technology Readiness Level 3 to Level 9, that is, from an early laboratory stage to a product ready for the market. Options A, C and D are not the figure attached to the Accelerator. The larger number to keep separate in your mind is the outlay of the parent scheme, the Scheme for Enhancement of Competitiveness in the Indian Capital Goods Sector Phase II, which stands at a far higher level and supports common technology development and services infrastructure across many projects. Examination questions often pair these two figures as distractors, so link the smaller one to the Accelerator and the larger one to the capital goods scheme.

The correct answer is Indore. The city set out to keep untreated wastewater out of the environment altogether, and that approach made it the first to be given Water+ certification; today no untreated wastewater flows through its rivers or its natural and man-made stormwater drains. Option A, Surat, took a different route, treating used water as a resource with economic value through tertiary treatment plants and large-scale non-potable reuse. Option C, Navi Mumbai, is notable as the only city in Maharashtra to hold a five-star rating together with Water+ certification, but it was not the first in the country. Option D, Tirupati, has also been declared Water Plus and is known for a revenue-earning plant, again not for being first. Indore’s model went on to encourage several smaller cities.

The correct answer is Reliance Jio, whose average download speed on the tested routes was 221.18 Mbps, the highest of the four operators. Option A, Airtel, came second at 116.11 Mbps, roughly half of that figure, though Airtel did lead on uploads with 21.09 Mbps against Reliance Jio’s 15.98 Mbps. Option D, Vodafone Idea, averaged 20.04 Mbps on downloads and 6.69 Mbps on uploads. Option B, BSNL, was last at 11.72 Mbps for downloads and 4.32 Mbps for uploads, and it also showed the weakest voice performance, dropping 301 of 476 established calls. The lesson for the examination is to separate the download leader from the upload leader, because the drive test put two different operators at the top of those two columns.

The correct answer is 2 to 31 October 2026. The Department of Food and Public Distribution stated that it is monitoring preparatory activities for the effective implementation of Special Campaign 6 during exactly this month-long window. Option A names the preparatory phase, not the campaign: during those two weeks the Department and its offices reviewed physical and electronic files and identified e-waste, scrap and unserviceable items for disposal. Options B and D give a shorter window and a later month, neither of which matches the announcement. For the examination, keep the two dates apart in your memory, because questions are often set on whether a given span is the preparation period or the campaign itself, and the campaign is the longer one that begins in the first week of October.

The correct answer is 3.3273 litres per 100 km. Under the new framework the fleet benchmark for fuel consumption begins at 3.996 litres per 100 km in 2027-28 and is tightened year after year until it reaches 3.3273 litres per 100 km in 2031-32. Taken together, that is an improvement of roughly 16.7 per cent in fuel efficiency across the five-year block. Option A, 3.996 litres per 100 km, is the starting figure for the first year of the block and not the end point, so it is wrong. Option C is higher than the opening benchmark, which would mean vehicles burning more fuel rather than less, the opposite of what the norms intend. Option D is far below the notified figure and does not appear in the framework. The safe way to remember it is the pair of figures: the block opens at 3.996 and closes at 3.3273 litres per 100 km.

The correct answer is Part XIV, Articles 315 to 323. Dr B. R. Ambedkar moved these draft articles in the Constituent Assembly in 1949, and they became the constitutional charter of the Public Service Commissions. Article 315 provides for a Commission for the Union and one for each State, Article 316 leaves the appointment of the chairman and members to the President, Article 317 allows removal only by the President after an inquiry by the Supreme Court, Article 320 lists the functions, and Article 322 charges the expenses on the Consolidated Fund of India. Option A, Part XII with Articles 264 to 300, covers finance, property and contracts. Option B, Part XIII with Articles 301 to 307, covers trade, commerce and intercourse within India. Option D, Part XV with Articles 324 to 329, covers elections and the Election Commission, not the service commissions.

The correct answer is Operation Urja Suraksha. Referring to the situation in West Asia, Raksha Mantri Rajnath Singh highlighted the Navy’s conduct of this operation and its contribution to safeguarding India’s energy security, in an address that also stressed Aatmanirbharta, indigenous capability development and technology absorption. Option A, Operation Sankalp, and option D, Operation Sagar Rakshak, were not named in this address. Option B, Operation Samudra Setu, is associated with the evacuation of Indian citizens by sea and not with energy security. For the examination, the point to carry away is the pairing of the operation’s name with its purpose: protecting the sea lanes that carry India’s energy supplies, which the Raksha Mantri tied to his wider argument that secure seas are integral to a secure and developed nation.

The correct answer is TRL-3 to TRL-9. The objective of the grant-in-aid was to support the progression of ten technologies from Technology Readiness Level 3, an early stage where a concept has been proved in the laboratory, to Level 9, where a technology is proven in its operating environment and can be sold. The Minister described this in plain terms as a movement from early-stage prototypes towards commercially viable products, in fields such as electric powertrains, high-voltage motor control and energy storage. Options A, B and D describe shorter journeys that stop well short of a market-ready product, and none of them matches the stated design of the programme. The full span up to the highest level is what made the Accelerator notable.

The correct answer is 4,900 MLD, or million litres per day. Projects approved under Swachh Bharat Mission 2.0 for setting up sewage treatment plants in small cities are expected to add exactly this much capacity, and the money behind them runs into several thousand crore rupees. Options A, B and D do not match the approved figure. For the examination, keep the pair together: the amount of money approved and the capacity it buys, both of which relate to small cities rather than the metros. Note also that this capacity sits alongside the Water Plus certification framework and the ODF++ protocols, which judge whether sewage, faecal sludge and septage are safely managed, so capacity alone is not the whole measure of a city’s performance.

The correct answer is the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, the sector regulator, which conducts Independent Drive Tests through an appointed agency and publishes the findings for the information of telecom consumers. The purpose is to verify in real time the quality of voice and data services supplied by the telecom service providers, and to push those providers to improve. Option B, the Bureau of Indian Standards, is the national standards body and does not test mobile networks. Option C, the Department of Posts, runs postal services. Option D, the Centre for Development of Telematics, is a telecom research and development organisation that designs technology rather than auditing operators. Under TRAI the tests cover coverage, call setup success, dropped calls, call silence, speech quality and data throughput on live networks.

The correct answer is the collection, segregation and disposal of e-waste. The Department said that this year special focus is being given to electronic waste, along with the standing objectives of cleanliness, disposal of pending matters and better use of office space, and it identified a specific number of e-waste items for disposal during the preparatory phase. Option B is wrong because nodal officers were not recruited for the drive; they already exist and are being used to review progress in regular meetings. Option C is wrong because building warehouses is not part of this administrative drive, even though warehousing organisations are participating in it. Option D concerns agricultural price policy, which has nothing to do with a campaign on pendency, record management and waste disposal.

The correct answer is twelve. The earlier framework recognised four fuel-conservation technologies; the new norms widen that list to twelve, giving manufacturers far more room to earn credit for fuel-saving hardware. Solar reflective paint, advanced glazing and high-efficiency air-conditioning are among the technologies now recognised. Each eligible technology brings a concession of 1 g CO2/km, and the concession a maker can claim in total is capped at 9.0 g CO2/km, so the benefit is real but bounded. Options A, B and D name counts that the framework does not use; only the jump from four to twelve is notified. Candidates should note the pair of numbers together, the old count of four and the new count of twelve, along with the per-technology concession and its ceiling, since questions are often framed on the increase rather than the absolute figure.

The correct answer is Rose Millian Bathew Kharbuli, who headed the Commission in 1992 and was the first woman to do so. Option A, Kiran Bedi, is linked to the Commission in a different way: she was the first woman it selected for the Indian Police Service, in 1972, and was the only woman among the vacancies filled that year, but she never chaired the body. Option C, Pratibha Devisingh Patil, was the President who inaugurated the Commission’s Foundation Day Lecture series on governance and public service, and she is remembered as the first woman President of India, not as a UPSC chairperson. Option D, Suman Sharma, is one of the eight Members serving under the present Chairman, Dr Ajay Kumar, three of whom are women, but she is a Member and not the first woman head.

The correct answer is Admiral Krishna Swaminathan, the Chief of the Naval Staff, who opened the conference by reviewing the prevailing maritime security environment and the Indian Navy’s operational posture, and who underlined combat readiness, agility, responsiveness and faster technology absorption. Option A, General NS Raja Subramani, is the Chief of the Defence Staff; he addressed the commanders separately and called the Navy a strategic force multiplier. Option C, General Dhiraj Seth, is the Chief of the Army Staff, who interacted with the naval commanders on tri-service synergy, interoperability and integrated responses. Option D, Shri Rajnath Singh, is the Raksha Mantri, who addressed the commanders on India’s growing maritime responsibilities. Only the Chief of the Naval Staff delivered the inaugural address.

The correct answer is ARAI, the Automotive Research Association of India. Speaking at the event, H. D. Kumaraswamy underlined the role of institutions such as ARAI in bridging the gap between developing a technology, validating it and getting industry to adopt it, a role that fits naturally with the mobility focus of the supported technologies. Option B, CSIR, is the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, a general scientific research network and not the body named here. Option C, DRDO, works on defence research and development. Option D, ICAR, is the apex body for agricultural research and education. The Minister also framed the ecosystem in terms of complementary roles for government, industry, academia and start-ups, with ARAI supplying the validation link.

The correct answer is Jaipur. The Dehlawas plant was built over 22.50 hectares during 2020-23 and has the highest sewage treatment capacity in Rajasthan, at 215 MLD. It is fully automated through a SCADA system and uses a Sequencing Batch Reactor, in which wastewater passes through a Parshall flume, a primary clarifier and a basin before the chlorine tank. Treated water is reused for irrigation and industry, part of it goes to a nearby colony for gardening, and the rest is discharged into the Dravyavati river, with more than 30,000 plants raised around the site. Options A, B and C name other large Rajasthan cities, Jodhpur, Udaipur and Kota, none of which hosts this plant. Link the plant name, the city and the capacity together.

The correct answer is Assam. The drive test was carried out across parts of Sonitpur district, which falls in the Assam Licensed Service Area, and it was supervised by the TRAI Regional Office at Kolkata. Licensed Service Areas are the units into which telecom licensing is organised in India, and they usually follow state boundaries, which is why the report refers to the Assam LSA throughout. Options A, C and D name Meghalaya, Tripura and Manipur, which are other north-eastern states with their own service areas and were not part of this exercise. Remember the pairing of the district with its state and with the supervising regional office, since drive test questions are usually set on the place, the period and the operator that came out on top.

The correct answer is the Food Corporation of India. The Department said that its attached and subordinate offices and public sector undertakings are taking part, and it named the Food Corporation of India, the Central Warehousing Corporation and the Warehousing Development and Regulatory Authority among them. All three work in the field of foodgrain procurement, storage and warehousing regulation, which is why they sit under this Department. Option A, the National Highways Authority of India, works under the road transport ministry. Option C, the Airports Authority of India, comes under civil aviation. Option D, the Indian Space Research Organisation, is the national space agency under the Department of Space. None of these three falls within the food and public distribution portfolio, so they are not part of this departmental drive.

The correct answer is MIDC and WLTP. Reporting under the new CAFE framework will be done on both the Modified Indian Driving Cycle and the Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicles Test Procedure. Using the two together lets India keep its own established cycle while moving step by step towards the testing practice followed globally, which is why the notification calls it a dual approach. Option B pairs the Indian cycle with an older cycle that the framework does not mention. Option C leaves out the Indian cycle altogether, and option D names procedures that are not part of this notification. For the examination hall, remember both full forms, Modified Indian Driving Cycle for MIDC and Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicles Test Procedure for WLTP, and remember that the new norms use them side by side rather than replacing one with the other.