Current Affairs 12 September 2026: Today's GK & MCQs

The correct answer is two. A pair of commemorative postage stamps was released in New Delhi on the sidelines of the 18th BRICS Summit to mark the completion of two decades of the grouping. The two stamps do not carry the same design. The first depicts the rise of BRICS as a platform for dialogue and cooperation, resting on the spirit of mutual respect, understanding and solidarity. The second carries the logo of India's Chairship along with the vision of 'humanity first' and a 'people-centric' approach that guided the Chairship year. Option A is wrong because a single stamp could not have carried both designs described in the release. Options C and D name larger numbers that are not supported by the announcement. A useful way to fix the answer is to link the number two with the phrase 'two decades' that the stamps themselves carry in their inscription.

The correct answer is BRICS: Two Decades of Cooperation, 2006-2026. The stamps carry these words in English and the same inscription in Hindi. The year pair matters, because the first of the two years is the year in which the grouping itself began, and the second is the year of India's Chairship and of the Summit at which the stamps were released. The other options change the years and the wording. Option B shifts the span by one year at both ends and replaces cooperation with partnership. Option C uses years associated with later stages of the grouping and a phrase that does not appear on the stamps. Option D pushes the beginning far too early. Candidates should remember that an inscription question is really a date question in disguise: fix the pair of years first, and the wording will follow.

The correct answer is 'humanity first' and 'people-centric'. The release describes the second stamp as displaying the logo of India's BRICS Chairship together with these two ideas, which India placed at the heart of its year at the head of the grouping. The first stamp, by contrast, is described as embodying the emergence of BRICS as a platform carrying the spirit of mutual respect, understanding and solidarity. Both stamps also reflect the priorities of the Chairship under the theme 'Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability'. Options A, C and D pair words that sound like policy slogans but do not appear in the announcement about the stamps. A candidate who remembers that India described its Chairship as people-centric and humanity-first will be able to answer this question and several others on the same Summit, since the phrase recurs in the Prime Minister's remarks as well.

The correct answer is Eastern Naval Command, Visakhapatnam. The three-day exercise was held under the aegis of the Colombo Security Conclave and concluded at this command, with the opening address delivered by Rear Admiral Manoj Jha, Chief Staff Officer (Operations) of the same command. Option A names the Western Naval Command, whose headquarters is at Mumbai, and it did not host this drill. Option B names the Southern Naval Command at Kochi, which is the training command of the Indian Navy and again not the venue here. Option D names the tri-service Andaman and Nicobar Command at Port Blair, which was not involved in this exercise. Candidates should keep the three main naval commands and their headquarters ready in memory, since questions on exercises usually test the city and the command together. Here the useful pairing is Visakhapatnam with the Eastern Naval Command.

The correct answer is Coordinated Response to Illicit Maritime Activities in the Indian Ocean Region. The exercise was built around non-traditional security challenges rather than conventional naval combat. Delegations and maritime security experts from member states and observer nations of the Conclave worked through simulated operational scenarios for more than 72 hours, covering maritime terrorism, narcotics smuggling, human trafficking, and illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. Option A describes disaster relief, which is a common theme for naval drills but was not the stated subject of this one. Options C and D describe conventional warfighting tasks, anti-submarine operations and amphibious landings, which belong to a different category of exercise altogether. The distinction matters, because a table top exercise is conducted on maps, screens and discussion tables rather than at sea, and is therefore suited to planning and procedure rather than live warfighting drills.

The correct answer is Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions. The Ministry of Defence described the Colombo Security Conclave exercise as aligned with this vision, which frames India's approach to security and development cooperation with its maritime neighbours. The other three options are constructed to look convincing, because each expands the same acronym with words drawn from the vocabulary of maritime cooperation, and a candidate who has memorised only the word MAHASAGAR without its expansion can be caught. The exercise itself reinforced the practical side of that vision: participants reviewed existing Standard Operating Procedures and streamlined information-sharing arrangements to strengthen collective Maritime Domain Awareness in the Indian Ocean Region. Acronym expansions of this kind appear regularly in one-mark questions, so it is worth writing the full form out once and recalling the first letters of each word in order.

The correct answer is Pradhan Mantri Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission, shortened to PM-ABHIM. The Union Health Minister said the mission was framed after the COVID-19 pandemic, with the aim of strengthening the ability of the health system to answer future pandemics and public health emergencies while routine healthcare continues without disruption. Option A, the National Health Mission, is an older umbrella programme for health services and is not the scheme under which these blocks and laboratories were sanctioned. Option C, the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, deals with digital health records and identifiers rather than physical infrastructure. Option D, Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana, is the health assurance arm of Ayushman Bharat that pays for treatment, not the arm that builds critical care blocks. Candidates should keep the three Ayushman Bharat limbs apart in memory: insurance cover, digital records and health infrastructure.

The correct answer is 631. The Union Health Minister said that under PM-ABHIM the Government of India has sanctioned this many Critical Care Blocks across the States and Union Territories, creating a nationwide network of critical-care capacity. He contrasted this with an older way of thinking in which a hospital was measured only by its number of beds, and said a resilient health system needs critical-care capacity, oxygen and medical-gas systems, isolation facilities, trained staff, laboratory capacity and early outbreak detection. The other options are close neighbours of the right figure and are the sort of distractors a paper setter uses when the answer is a round-sounding number. For Andhra Pradesh in particular, 24 Critical Care Blocks have been sanctioned at an estimated investment of about Rs 606 crore, and 10 of them were inaugurated on the day of this announcement.

The correct answer is Andhra Pradesh, 41 parameters. Speaking at the inauguration of the new health facilities in the state, the Union Health Minister praised the Sanjeevani programme for carrying healthcare to people's doorsteps and making testing available for this many health parameters. He appreciated the state's approach of bringing screening closer to communities, said such initiatives are valuable models for strengthening primary healthcare, and expressed interest in examining whether the model could be replicated at the national level. Options A, C and D pair a neighbouring state with a different count of parameters, and each is plausible enough to catch a candidate who remembers the name of the programme but not the state or the number. The safe way to hold this fact is to attach Sanjeevani to Andhra Pradesh, the same state where the Critical Care Blocks and laboratories were opened on the same day.

The correct answer is 43.4 per cent. The Minister cited the decline in out-of-pocket expenditure as an indicator of the growing financial protection available to citizens, and listed it alongside other outcomes of the health-system transformation. Out-of-pocket expenditure is the share of health spending that a household pays directly from its own pocket at the time of treatment, rather than through insurance or government funding, so a falling share signals that public schemes are absorbing more of the cost. In the same address he noted that institutional deliveries have crossed ninety per cent, that more than 1.75 lakh Ayushman Arogya Mandirs are working across the country, and that 16 new AIIMS have been set up in twelve years, taking the total to 23. The other options are nearby percentages of the kind used as distractors, and only the exact figure earns the mark.

The correct answer is Raigarh, Chhattisgarh. The record road runs 1.85 km and was pursued jointly by the CSIR-Central Road Research Institute of New Delhi and Jindal Steel Limited, with the record conferred at an event addressed by Dr Jitendra Singh. Option A, Angul in Odisha, is a genuine part of the story but belongs to the next stage: CSIR-CRRI has received a work order for a 40-km road in Odisha from the Jindal Steel plant there, which is meant to take the technology well beyond the present record. Option C, Hazira in Gujarat, is where the technology was first demonstrated on a six-lane road to the port, and a 1.1-km slag road was later laid inside Hazira Port itself, but neither is the record stretch. Option D, Bhilai, is a well-known steel town used here only as a distractor. Keep the record with Raigarh and the future project with Angul.

The correct answer is 40 per cent. The Minister said the technology can cut construction cost by around this share while delivering four times the strength of a conventional road, and can stretch the maintenance cycle so that major maintenance is needed only after about fifteen years in suitable applications. He described the result as a breakthrough not only for road engineering but for the wider infrastructure economy, since it saves money and conserves natural aggregates obtained through mining and quarrying at the same time. The other options are simply higher or lower shares offered to test whether the candidate has the exact figure. The three claims travel together in question papers, so it is worth memorising them as a set: about forty per cent cheaper, four times stronger, and maintenance pushed to about fifteen years.

The correct answer is CSIR-CRRI and Jindal Steel Limited. The CSIR-Central Road Research Institute in New Delhi supplied the scientific guidelines, processing protocols and quality-control framework, while the steel company supplied the processed slag and the site. At the same programme the road was inaugurated virtually, a scientific documentary was released, the Steel Grit brand was launched and the Technology Transfer Agreement between the two was signed. Dr N. Kalaiselvi, Secretary of DSIR and Director General of CSIR, said the achievement comes as the organisation enters its eighty-fifth year, and announced the work order for a 40-km road in Odisha from the company's Angul plant. Options B, C and D pair real research bodies and steel producers that were not the partners in this record, and are included precisely because each combination sounds plausible to a candidate who recalls only that a laboratory and a steel firm were involved.

The correct answer is Uttarakhand. Badri cattle are described as an important indigenous cattle genetic resource of that state and are recognised as its state animal, which is why the conservation of the breed carries both a scientific and a symbolic weight there. The work was carried out jointly by the ICAR-National Dairy Research Institute at Karnal and G. B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology at Pantnagar, which is itself in Uttarakhand, with financial support from the Uttarakhand Biotechnology Council at Haldi. Options A, C and D name other Himalayan states, each of which has its own recognised state animal, and they are offered here because a candidate may remember only that the breed belongs to the hills. Linking the breed name Badri with Uttarakhand, and remembering that the semen was supplied through the Uttarakhand Livestock Development Board, fixes the answer securely.

The correct answer is Sahiwal. Under the programme, oocytes were collected from genetically valuable Badri donor cows through ultrasound-guided ovum pick-up, matured and fertilised in the laboratory with semen from a genetically superior Badri bull, and grown as embryos under controlled conditions. One such Badri embryo was placed in a synchronised Sahiwal recipient cow, which then gave birth to the healthy Badri female calf. The recipient cow simply carries the pregnancy, so the calf keeps the genetics of the Badri donor and bull rather than those of the animal that bears it. Options A, B and D name other well-known indigenous cattle breeds of India, and any of them could have served as a recipient in principle, which is exactly what makes them useful distractors. Another synchronised crossbred recipient cow was also expected to deliver a Badri calf soon after.

The correct answer is ICAR-NDRI, Karnal and G. B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar. The programme was a collaboration between the two, with financial support from the Uttarakhand Biotechnology Council at Haldi. It was begun in 2023 on the initiative of Dr M. S. Chauhan, then Vice-Chancellor of the university, and over the following three years the teams established ovum pick-up, embryo production and embryo transfer procedures for this breed. Dr Dheer Singh, Director of ICAR-NDRI, said such advanced reproductive technologies can multiply elite female germplasm faster and support structured breed-improvement programmes. The other options mix genuine agricultural research bodies and universities of the region that were not partners in this work, and they test whether the candidate remembers the exact pair rather than a general sense that a dairy institute and a state agricultural university were involved.

The correct answer is Ministry of Earth Sciences. The drive at Digha in East Midnapore was organised by this ministry, and the campaign was coordinated across the country by the National Institute of Ocean Technology at Chennai, which is an institute under the same ministry. The programme was inaugurated by Sreenivasa Rao Gangi Reddy, Joint Secretary in the ministry, at the Marine Aquarium and Regional Centre. Option A, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, handles forests, wildlife and pollution control and is a natural guess, but it was not named here. Option C, the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, deals with ports and shipping rather than beach cleanup campaigns. Option D, the Ministry of Jal Shakti, works on rivers, drinking water and sanitation rather than marine litter. Candidates should attach the ocean-related institutes, namely NIOT and INCOIS, to the Ministry of Earth Sciences.

The correct answer is 19 September. The cleanup drive at Digha was described as a prelude to International Coastal Cleanup Day, to be observed on 19 September 2026, and the objective was to build wider awareness about marine pollution and to encourage practices that protect coastal and marine ecosystems. Option A, 5 June, is World Environment Day, and option B, 8 June, is World Oceans Day; both belong to the same broad family of environmental observances and are therefore the strongest distractors here. Option D is a nearby date offered to test precision. A useful way to keep the three days apart is to remember that June carries the two global environment and ocean days, while September carries the day devoted specifically to cleaning up coasts, which is why a cleanup drive was organised in the week leading up to it.

The correct answer is National Institute of Ocean Technology, Chennai. The drive at Digha was organised by the Ministry of Earth Sciences and coordinated nationwide by this institute, whose officials also joined the inaugural ceremony at the Marine Aquarium and Regional Centre. Option A, the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services, did take part in the drive through its officials, but it was a participant rather than the coordinating body, which makes it the sharpest distractor in the set. Option C, the National Centre for Coastal Research, and option D, the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, are genuine marine research bodies that were not named in this announcement. Around 100 people joined the drive in all, among them college students and officials of the participating bodies, the India Meteorological Department and the Indian Coast Guard.

The correct answer is Mumbai. The two-day conference was organised by the Ministry of Labour and Employment in collaboration with the Government of Maharashtra and concluded in the city on the second day. It brought together representatives of the Union Government, the State and Union Territory governments, the BOCW Welfare Boards and other stakeholders to discuss welfare, skilling, employment and social protection for construction workers. Option A, New Delhi, is the default guess for a national conference and is therefore the most tempting wrong answer. Options C and D name other cities of Maharashtra, which is the partner state, and they test whether the candidate has the city right rather than only the state. A reliable way to hold the fact is to pair the host state with its capital here, since the state government was the partner in organising the conference.

The correct answer is Rajasthan. In the session on the roles and responsibilities of BOCW Welfare Boards in the light of the new labour codes, several States and Union Territories presented their own initiatives. Rajasthan spoke about its Digital Labour Chowks, which take the traditional gathering point where daily wage workers wait for work and give it a digital form so that workers and employers can find each other more easily. Option A, Uttar Pradesh, presented its work on skill development of building workers. Option B, Bihar, highlighted the Shram Seva Suvidha Kendras. Option D, Assam, presented the Nirman Sakhi Portal. All four are genuine presentations from the same session, which is exactly why this question is worth preparing as a matching set rather than as a single fact.

The correct answer is Mansukh Mandaviya, the Union Minister of Labour and Employment and of Youth Affairs and Sports, who chaired the first day of the conference. Option A, Shobha Karandlaje, is the Minister of State for Labour and Employment and for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, and she was present at the same session but did not chair it, which makes her the closest distractor. Option C, Dr Chandra Bhushan Kumar, is the Secretary in the Ministry of Labour and Employment, and he delivered the opening remarks on the second day, where he spoke about the skill ecosystem, the dignity of labour, worker mobility across states and borders, occupational health and the greater use of actuarial analysis in designing welfare measures. Option D names a minister holding a different portfolio. Keeping the minister, the minister of state and the secretary apart is the whole point of a question like this.