UPSC Current Affairs Quiz: 28 September 2026

The correct answer is the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. PM-AJAY is the umbrella scheme for the Scheduled Castes and it is carried out by that ministry, which handles the welfare of Scheduled Castes, backward classes, senior citizens and persons with disabilities. The scheme is fully funded by the Centre, began in FY 2021-22, and works through the Adarsh Gram component, grants-in-aid for state and district projects, and hostels for Scheduled Caste students. The Ministry of Rural Development is wrong: it runs rural roads, employment and housing programmes, not this scheme, although Adarsh Gram work happens in villages. The Ministry of Tribal Affairs is wrong because it looks after Scheduled Tribes, a separate group, while PM-AJAY is meant for Scheduled Castes, who make up 16.6% of the population. The Ministry of Panchayati Raj is wrong as well; it strengthens panchayats as institutions and does not implement PM-AJAY. Aspirants should also remember that the scheme merged three earlier schemes, PMAGY, SCA to SCSP and BJRCY.

The correct answer is Kazakhstan. KAZIND takes its name from the two partners, Kazakhstan and India, and the ninth edition of the exercise is being held at Oskemen in Kazakhstan from 28 September to 11 October 2026. A 60-member Indian Armed Forces contingent, drawn mainly from a battalion of the Garhwal Rifles together with Indian Air Force personnel, departed for it on 28 September 2026, and the host is fielding a contingent of matching strength drawn largely from its Land Forces. Uzbekistan is wrong: India holds a separate exercise with that country and it is not the partner in KAZIND. Kyrgyzstan is wrong for the same reason, as the India-Kyrgyzstan drill goes by a different name. Tajikistan is wrong as well; India works closely with it on regional security but not through this exercise. The giveaway is in the title itself, since KAZ stands for the host and IND for India.

The correct answer is 40%. Component 1-B of PM-MKSSY meets the cost barrier by paying an eligible aquaculture farmer a one-time incentive of up to 40% of the insurance premium for one crop cycle, transferred directly to the bank account through the National Fisheries Digital Platform. For pond based aquaculture the payment is limited to Rs 25,000 per hectare of water spread area with a ceiling of Rs 1,00,000 for up to four hectares, and for advanced systems such as cage culture, recirculatory aquaculture systems, biofloc and raceways the same share applies with a unit size limit of 1,800 cubic metres. The options of 25%, 50% and 75% are wrong because no such share is provided under the scheme; the only additional relief is an extra 10% of the payable incentive for Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and women beneficiaries. Remember the 40% figure along with the two ceilings, since questions often mix the share with the money limits.

The correct answer is the Capacity Building Commission. The Commission is running Sadhana Shrinkhla 2026, a nationwide series of regional consultative engagements meant to carry the transformation of government Training Institutes under Mission Karmayogi into competency-driven Capacity Building Institutions. NITI Aayog is wrong; it is the government policy think tank and does not run this series, though it works on many governance questions. The Union Public Service Commission is wrong because it conducts recruitment examinations and has no role in training institute transformation of this kind. The National Skill Development Corporation is wrong as well, since it works on skilling in industry and the wider workforce rather than on the capacity of government officials. Candidates should tie the Capacity Building Commission to Mission Karmayogi, to the Karmayogi Quality Framework and to the UNNATI portal, which links more than 900 training institutions on a single platform.

The correct answer is PM E-DRIVE, the PM Electric Drive Revolution in Innovative Vehicle Enhancement scheme of the Ministry of Heavy Industries. GARC, which works under the National Automotive Board, is modernising its laboratories with funds from this scheme, and it has been allotted Rs 221.13 crore for the purpose. The scheme carries an outlay of Rs 10,900 crore and stays operational up to 31 March 2028, with Rs 780 crore of that amount kept aside for testing agencies alone. Option A, FAME India Phase II, is an earlier programme for electric mobility and is not the scheme named here. Option C, PM-KUSUM, deals with solar pumps for farmers and has nothing to do with automotive testing. Option D, the production-linked incentive scheme for advanced chemistry cell batteries, supports manufacturing capacity rather than the upgrading of testing agencies, so it too is wrong.

The correct answer is Swachhata Mein Sahbhag; Swachh Bharat, Viksit Bharat. That is the theme of the 10th edition of Swachhata Hi Seva, which is being observed from 17 September to 2 October 2026 and was launched jointly by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation. The campaign follows a Whole of Government and a Whole of Society approach. Option B is a general slogan and not the theme announced for this edition. Option C recalls the wording used for an earlier edition of the campaign, which is exactly the sort of distractor a paper setter likes, but it is not the theme now in force. Option D borrows from Swachhata se Samriddhi, the pillar that deals with the circular economy and Waste-to-Wealth work; a pillar is not the theme, so it is wrong.

The correct answer is 18,093. The PIB backgrounder of 28 September 2026 states that this many villages had been declared Adarsh Grams as on 8 September 2026, a mark of how far the component has gone in lifting basic services in Scheduled Caste majority villages. The other choices are all real figures from the same scheme, which is why the question is worth care. 47,243 is the number of villages taken up under the Adarsh Gram component, benefiting more than 47.79 lakh citizens, and not the number declared. 46,944 is the count of development works completed under the component, a count of works and not of villages. 27,032 is the number of Village Development Plans prepared, the planning step that comes before the works are built. Only 18,093 answers what was asked, and a village is declared an Adarsh Gram once its residents have access to the basic services the scheme lists.

The correct answer is the ninth edition. The Ministry of Defence described KAZIND-2026 as the ninth edition of the joint military exercise between the two countries, conducted at Oskemen in Kazakhstan from 28 September to 11 October 2026. Questions on defence exercises very often turn on the edition number and the venue, so both are worth memorising together. The seventh and eighth editions are wrong because those rounds were held in earlier years and the announcement of 28 September 2026 is clear that this round is the ninth. The tenth is wrong because that edition is still to come, and it will be held in the next cycle of the exercise. Along with the edition, remember that the Indian contingent numbered 60 personnel, was built around a Garhwal Rifles battalion with Indian Air Force personnel, and that the training is aimed at joint counter-terrorism operations under a United Nations mandate.

The correct answer is 30 days. The claim process begins when the insured farmer informs the insurance company of the peril and submits the documents the policy requires; the insurer then appoints a loss assessor, the damage is evaluated and payment is made on that report, with status updates shown on the insurer portal. The settlement has to be completed within 30 days where the crop is shrimp and within 45 days for other aquaculture activities. So 45 days is wrong for shrimp, being the window meant for the remaining activities, and aspirants often swap the two. The choice of 15 days is wrong because no such short window is laid down, and 60 days is wrong because it is longer than either limit in the scheme. Four insurers are operational at present, namely OICL, AICL, NIAL and UIIC, and private insurers are being brought on board to widen the market.

The correct answer is Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh, which hosts the Southern Region workshop on 29-30 September 2026 and opens the series. The Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, N. Chandrababu Naidu, graces the inaugural event in the presence of the Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Dr Jitendra Singh, and officials and training institutes from Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry take part. Guwahati is wrong as the first venue; the Northeastern Region workshop is held there on 9-10 October 2026. Lucknow is wrong because the Northern Region round comes later, on 23-24 October 2026. Pune is wrong as well, since the Western Region workshop is planned for 16-17 November 2026 and is still to be confirmed. Each of the four workshops runs for a day and a half and is graced by the Chief Minister of the host state.

The correct answer is Rs 10,900 crore. That is the total outlay of the PM Electric Drive Revolution in Innovative Vehicle Enhancement scheme, and within it Rs 780 crore has been earmarked for upgrading the testing agencies that certify vehicles in India. The scheme is operational up to 31 March 2028. Option A confuses the reader with a figure close to the Rs 780 crore set aside for testing agencies, but that is only one component and not the whole outlay. Option C is simply not the figure stated by the Ministry of Heavy Industries. Option D echoes the Rs 221.13 crore allotted to the Global Automotive Research Centre at Oragadam, Chennai; that is one centre's share of the testing component, not the size of the entire scheme. Aspirants should keep the three amounts apart: the scheme total, the testing-agency component and one agency's allocation.

The correct answer is the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation, the urban and the rural arms of the sanitation effort respectively, which launched this edition together. Option C names the wrong pair: the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances runs Special Campaign 6, the separate office-cleanliness and pendency drive held from 2 October to 31 October 2026, while the Department of Consumer Affairs is one of the many participants rather than a launching body. Option A names bodies that have no announced role in launching this campaign. Option D is also incorrect, although the Bureau of Indian Standards is taking part in the drive along with the National Test House, the NCCF, the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission and the Regional Reference Standards Laboratories.

The correct answer is 40%. For the infrastructure development side of PM-AJAY, a village qualifies for a grant when its Scheduled Caste population is 40% or more and its total population is 500 or above, so both a share test and a size test have to be met. The figure of 25% is wrong; no such threshold is used by the scheme, and setting the bar that low would spread the money too thin to turn a village into an Adarsh Gram. 50% is wrong, though it is a tempting answer because the component is described as working in Scheduled Caste majority villages; the written eligibility mark is 40%, not a simple majority. 60% is wrong as well and is higher than anything the guidelines lay down. Remember alongside this that under grants-in-aid, households earning up to Rs 2.50 lakh a year get priority, and that up to 50% of the outlay goes to gap filling in selected Adarsh Gram villages.

The correct answer is Oskemen. The Indian Armed Forces contingent departed on 28 September 2026 for Oskemen in Kazakhstan, where the ninth edition of KAZIND is being conducted till 11 October 2026. The training there is set in semi-urban and mountainous terrain and covers raids, search-and-destroy missions, cordon-and-search operations, the securing of helipads and landing sites, and Special Heliborne Operations, with a Joint Command Post and an Intelligence and Surveillance Centre established for coordinated planning. Almaty is wrong; it is the largest city of Kazakhstan but is not the venue named for this exercise. Astana is wrong although it is the capital of Kazakhstan, and candidates who answer from general knowledge alone often pick it. Aktau is wrong as well, being a port on the Caspian Sea and no part of this announcement. Note also that the drill closes with a validation exercise against a simulated terrorist threat.

The correct answer is second. India is the second largest fish producing nation in the world with a share of about 8%, and its annual production touched a record 19.8 million tonnes in 2024-25. Aquaculture, which covers pond culture of freshwater carps, brackish water shrimp and prawn farming, cage culture and a widening range of cold water and marine species, now accounts for about 74% of that output. First is wrong, since China leads world fish production by a wide margin. Third and fourth are wrong because India moved well past that position as output rose from 9.6 million tonnes in 2013-14 to 19.8 million tonnes in 2024-25, a rise of more than 106%. Inland production alone reached 14.74 million tonnes in 2024-25. It is worth remembering with this that marine product exports stood at USD 8.46 billion in 2025-26 and that frozen shrimp brings nearly two-thirds of seafood export earnings.

The correct answer is 900. UNNATI, the Unified New-Age National Training Initiative portal, brings more than 900 training institutions on to a single platform, and the implementation of the transformation framework is anchored there. It gives institutes visibility, supports cooperation between them and allows continuous, data-informed improvement, while its exchange, called UXchange, lets them share training courses, faculty and infrastructure across the network. The choices of 500 and 700 are wrong because the announcement of 28 September 2026 clearly puts the number above 900, and they understate the reach of the platform. The figure of 1,200 is wrong as it overstates it. Remember along with this that the insights from the Sadhana Shrinkhla workshops will feed into the Training Institution Transformation Framework, and that Mission Karmayogi covers officials at every level, from ASHA workers to secretaries, on the path to Viksit Bharat @2047.

The correct answer is Oragadam, Chennai. The Global Automotive Research Centre sits at Oragadam on the outskirts of Chennai and works under the National Automotive Board of the Ministry of Heavy Industries. It is an authorised testing agency under Rule 126 of the Central Motor Vehicles Rules, which permits it to test vehicles and components and to carry out homologation and certification. Its new and upgraded facilities cover electric vehicle and battery testing to the AIS-156 standard, EMI and EMC testing under AIS-004 Part 3 Rev.1, heavy commercial vehicle testing, an improved powertrain laboratory, advanced passive safety testing and ADAS testing. Options A, C and D name places associated with other automotive testing and research establishments in the country, but none of them is the site of GARC, so each is incorrect here.

The correct answer is 2 October, observed as Swachh Bharat Diwas. The campaign began on 17 September 2026 and closes on 2 October 2026 with Shramdaan across the country, honouring the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi and carrying forward the aim of making cleanliness a way of life. Option A names the date on which the preparatory phase of Special Campaign 6 started, not the closing day of Swachhata Hi Seva. Option B names the opening day of the campaign rather than its final day, so it inverts the fact being tested. Option D names the day on which Special Campaign 6 ends; that campaign, run by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances, only begins when Swachhata Hi Seva closes, so the two dates must not be mixed up.

The correct answer is 8 February 2024. The government approved PM-MKSSY on that date as a sub-scheme meant to formalise the fisheries sector and to manage the risks its farmers carry, and the aquaculture insurance push described on 28 September 2026 is its Component 1-B. Delivery runs through the National Fisheries Digital Platform so that the incentive reaches the farmer by direct benefit transfer. The date of 10 September 2020 is wrong; it belongs to the launch of the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana, the larger fisheries scheme under which average aquaculture productivity is being pushed towards the target of five tonnes per hectare from 4.77 tonnes now. The choice of 1 April 2021 is wrong, as no approval of this scheme took place then, and 15 August 2023 is wrong as well. Keep the two fisheries schemes apart, since examiners like to swap their launch dates.