5th Swachh Vayu Sarvekshan Awards Given on Swachh Vayu Diwas 2026

The correct answer is 130 cities, spread across 24 States and Union Territories. The release repeats this figure three times, once for the coverage of the programme, once for the cities that took part in the ranking exercise, and once for the cities whose air quality management is tracked on the PRANA portal, so it is the single number a candidate must carry away. These cities have together received a performance linked grant of Rs 16,425 crore as critical gap funding for measures against air pollution. The other options give round or near-round counts that the release does not use, and a question of this kind rewards the candidate who has fixed the exact figure rather than an approximate one. Note also that ranking put the cities in three population groups, below three lakh, three to ten lakh, and above ten lakh, before ten best performers were picked.

The correct answer is the International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies, on which the ministry held Swachh Vayu Diwas and gave away the fifth round of Swachh Vayu Sarvekshan awards. Option A names World Environment Day, the best known environmental observance and therefore the most tempting wrong answer, but it falls in June and is not tied to this event. Option B names World Ozone Day, which marks the Montreal Protocol and concerns ozone depleting substances rather than ambient air quality. Option D names World Meteorological Day, which belongs to the weather and climate services community. The link to remember is simple: clean air day, clean air survey, clean air programme. The chief guest at this edition was Justice Prakash Shrivastava, Chairperson of the National Green Tribunal, who called clean air a fundamental need rather than a luxury.

The correct answer is 14. The ministry set out the record on PM10 for the year 2025-26 against the base of the financial year 2017-18 in four steps, and every one of those steps appears among the options here, which is what makes the question worth practising. Option D gives 108, the number of cities that showed any improvement in PM10 levels. Option C gives 72, the cities where the fall in PM10 concentration crossed 20 per cent. Option B gives 26, the cities where the fall crossed 40 per cent. Only 14 cities actually met the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, which is the strictest of the four tests, and that is the answer. Learn the chain in descending order, 108 then 72 then 26 then 14, because the harder the test the smaller the count.

The correct answer is the PRANA portal. The Secretary of the ministry explained that the National Clean Air Programme gives every city a framework within which it works out its own strategy for clean air, while this portal follows the various parameters of air quality management for the cities under the programme. Option A names a portal associated with air quality information for the public, option C names the environmental clearance platform of the ministry, and option D names a scheme in the sanitation sector; none of these is what the release credits with the tracking work. Remember the trio together for revision: the programme is NCAP, the survey that ranks the cities is the Swachh Vayu Sarvekshan, now in its fifth round, and the portal that keeps the score through the year is PRANA.