UPSC Weekly Current Affairs Quiz: 19–25 October 2026

The four notified coldwater fisheries clusters are Pithoragarh in Uttarakhand, Kullu in Himachal Pradesh, Anantnag in Jammu and Kashmir, and Kargil in Ladakh.

The memorandum concerning the electronic exchange of origin data on trade in goods was signed by the CBIC on behalf of India and by the New Zealand Customs Service on the other side, with CBIC Chairman Vivek Chaturvedi and NZCS Comptroller and Chief Executive Christine Stevenson putting their names to…

Vice-President C. P. Radhakrishnan inaugurated the conference at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi, on 22 October 2026, and in his address he asked States to clear outdated laws from their statute books and described legal reform as a condition for Viksit Bharat @2047.

He is Secretary of the Department of Agricultural Research and Education and Director General of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, and he addressed the roundtable virtually, speaking in his capacity as President of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, India.

Stage-I of the Graded Response Action Plan is the stage meant for poor air, and it was invoked across the National Capital Region after Delhi's daily average index was recorded at 244 at 2 PM and then at 245 by 4 PM, both of which sit inside that band.

The Ministry of Tribal Affairs convened the third and concluding conference of the regional review series in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, where senior officials of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Rajasthan and the host Union Territory reviewed progress under the Act.

The correct answer is Piyush Goyal, the Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, who completed a two-day official visit to Germany with a series of engagements in Berlin on 23 October 2026.

India’s access and benefit-sharing framework is governed by this Act, as amended in 2023, along with the Biological Diversity Rules, 2024, and the Access and Benefit-Sharing Regulations, 2025.

Addressing the closing session of the 2nd National Urban Conclave, Rajiv Gauba, Member of NITI Aayog, said that nearly half of all Indians are expected to be living in urban areas by 2050, and that the urban population would therefore climb from roughly 50 crore at present to 85 crore.

The Used Water Marketplace opened on the concluding day of the conclave is a digital platform set up under AMRUT 2.0, and it connects urban local bodies with users and investors in the treated used water ecosystem.

Surveys have marked 320 pumped storage sites in India whose capacities add up to that figure, spread over all five regions of the country and at every stage of development, including schemes already running.

India will host the 61st CIML Meeting from 26 to 28 October 2026, the first time the country has been given this meeting, and the Department of Consumer Affairs is organising it with the International Organization of Legal Metrology.

Under the agreement every one of the Ministry's premier research institutes has been recognised as an AcSIR Associated Research Institute, and all of them are already taking part in the academy's current PhD enrolment cycle.

It ran the online quiz with MyGov from 1 September to 10 October 2026 in the run-up to its own Foundation Day, and announced the ten winners on 19 October 2026.

She won the gold medal in the women's 10m air rifle standing SH1 event at the Asian Para Games 2026, and the outstanding score she shot also set a new Asian Para Games record in that event.

Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare and Rural Development Shivraj Singh Chouhan formally launched this revamped portal on the Navami day of Navratri, so that scheme information, financial assistance and farming advice reach farmers directly on their mobile phones instead of through visits to offices or through intermediaries.

Under the first pillar of the Swachhata Hi Seva 2026 campaign, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas and its organisations transformed 9,845 cleanliness target units, and 99,548 people took part in that effort.

The seven online marketplaces together furnished the details of that many sellers and listing entries offering regulated explosive substances, and all of those entries were taken down from the platforms.

Amphetamine is a psychotropic substance and cocaine is a narcotic drug, so all three consignments, the one recovered at the Bengaluru airport, the one taken from a backpack near Nagpur and the one found at Terminal 3 of the Delhi airport, were seized under this Act and the arrests were…

Gold brought into the country without declaration and without payment of duty is smuggled goods, so the three arrests in this case, which covered dealings in 13.017 kg of foreign-origin gold valued at about Rs 19.41 crore, were made under that Act.

On 21 October 1959 an Indian police patrol was ambushed there by heavily armed Chinese troops and ten policemen were killed.

The fifth edition of Swavlamban, the Navy's annual NIIO seminar on innovation and indigenisation, is scheduled there on 26 and 27 October 2026, as announced at the curtain raiser press conference chaired by Vice Admiral Ajay Kochhar, Vice Chief of the Naval Staff.

That is the amount earned through the disposal of scrap under Special Swachhata Campaign 6.0 up to 19 October 2026, as reported at the mid-campaign review taken by Dr Jitendra Singh.

The National Highways Authority of India has added the Toll Plaza Feedback option to this mobile app so that users of national highways can report their experience at a toll plaza.

MY Bharat held that many programmes on 17 October 2026, spread over 36 states and union territories, in the fifth week of the 100 Weeks Campaign under the Nasha Mukt Yuva for Viksit Bharat Abhiyan.

The National Fellowship for Scheduled Caste Students, or NFSC, is that ministry's scheme and gives financial assistance to eligible Scheduled Caste students pursuing advanced education and research.

The commerce ministers of the two countries announced jointly that the trade pact would take effect on this date, which fell on Vijay Dashmi, a day read as a mark of victory and fresh beginnings.

AUSTRAHIND is the joint military exercise of the Indian Army and the Australian Army, and its name joins the two countries.

The Department of Financial Services fixed this window for the countrywide drive, which reaches every gram panchayat and urban local body and asks banks to hold camps through the period.

BIS is the national standards body of India, responsible for standardisation and conformity assessment, and its AYUSH department organised the seminar at Belagavi in Karnataka as well as a parallel session on Sowa-Rigpa at Leh.