UPSC Weekly Current Affairs Quiz: 21–27 September 2026

The meeting was co-chaired by Hardeep Singh Puri, India's Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas, and by the OPEC Secretary General.

On 21 September 2026, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal and New Zealand's Trade and Investment Minister Todd McClay announced that the agreement would come into force on that day, which is Dussehra–Vijayadashami.

Swachh Sagar Surakshit Sagar 5.0 was conducted from 12 to 19 September 2026, and its coastal clean-up covered 231 locations across 13 States/UTs.

The money raised by the PM Mementos e-Auction supports Namami Gange, the national mission dedicated to the conservation, rejuvenation and protection of the River Ganga and its ecosystem.

At the seminar in New Delhi, the Union Ministers launched this paper, which outlines a strategic framework for strengthening critical mineral recycling in India.

At its virtual conference on 21 September 2026, the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation briefed States on the two pathways of the Nal Jal Mitra programme: a 510-hour Short-Term Training course for new entrants, and a 120-hour Recognition of Prior Learning pathway for people who already work on rural…

I-STEM, the Indian Science Technology and Engineering facilities Map, was conceived and supported by the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser and launched by the Prime Minister in January 2020.

The Government marks Ayurveda Day every year on 23 September, which is close to the autumnal equinox, when day and night are almost equal; the date was chosen to reflect the idea of natural balance at the heart of Ayurveda.

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.

The fifth edition of SEMICON India ran there for three days, from 17 to 19 September 2026, on the theme "Silicon to Systems: Building the Ecosystem", with more than 600 exhibiting companies, a Start-up Pavilion, a Workforce Development Pavilion, country and State pavilions and a hackathon.

The 9th India International Water Week, organised by the Ministry of Jal Shakti at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, from 22 to 26 September 2026, is centred on this theme.

The Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting said the National Film Awards are being taken to India's best tourist destinations, inspired by the Prime Minister's approach of holding national events beyond conventional venues, much as G20 meetings were spread across States.

NFDC, which works under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, runs the India Cine Hub as a digital single-window portal where domestic and international creators apply for filming permissions, film visas and co-production approvals.

The Ministry of Defence stated that the bilateral air exercise between the Indian Air Force and the Japan Air Self Defense Force concluded at Air Force Station Jodhpur, and it was also at Jodhpur that the two air chiefs came for Distinguished Visitor's Day and flew the indigenous Tejas.

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.

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.

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.

The Ministry of Railways said that Version 4.0 of the train protection system was put into service for the first time on this zone, on the Malkajgiri-Kamareddi section of the Hyderabad Division.

In his anniversary message the Prime Minister said that more than sixty crore beneficiaries now have access to an annual health cover of this amount, and that the reach of the cover is what makes the initiative the largest healthcare scheme in the world.

The backgrounder names him as the moderator of the session, which brought senior representatives of the leading industry associations together to discuss how deeper cooperation could speed up the country's semiconductor and electronics plans.

The International Mobile Equipment Identity is described as a unique number of that length which identifies a mobile device on a telecom network, and the first eight of those digits make up the Type Allocation Code that identifies the model or type of the handset.

The first WAVES Summit in Mumbai is wrong, and is the most tempting distractor because the summit carries the same name: it was held later, in May of the following year, and the streaming platform already existed by then.

The Ministry of Home Affairs is a participant, not the organiser, and its role is to run the campaign within its own divisions, attached offices and field formations.

The second option is wrong; it is built from plausible words but does not match the expansion, and in particular it drops the idea of resilience, which is central to the programme's purpose.

SLINEX is the bilateral maritime exercise held between the Indian Navy and the Sri Lanka Navy, and its name itself is formed from the two countries.

He won the bronze medal in the men's individual event in soft tennis and thereby became the first Indian ever to win an Asian Games medal in that sport.

The Technology Development Board, which functions under the Department of Science and Technology, approved that amount for Ubifly Technologies Private Limited of Chennai out of the Research Development and Innovation Fund, for its indigenous ePlane advanced air mobility solution.

Mera Yuva Bharat, or MY Bharat, is the national youth engagement platform of the Department of Youth Affairs within that ministry, and it has now gone past 3 crore registered youth in under three years.

She attended the 75th annual convocation ceremony of the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda at Vadodara in Gujarat and addressed the graduating students, telling them that education will be meaningful only if the country and society benefit from it.

Under the earlier design of the scheme a placement counted only when the trained candidate held continuous employment for at least three months, so option A states the old rule and not the present one.