Current Affairs 18 September 2026: Today's GK & MCQs

The correct answer is the Centre for Joint Warfare Studies, commonly abbreviated as CENJOWS. According to the Ministry of Defence, the Combined Operational Review and Evaluation Programme 2026 was organised by Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff and conducted by CENJOWS, concluding at the Manekshaw Centre in New Delhi. Candidates should keep the two roles distinct, because questions often test which body organised an event against which body conducted it.

The other options name institutions that the release does not connect with this programme. The National Defence College, the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses and the Defence Research and Development Organisation are all well known in the defence sphere, which is precisely what makes them effective distractors here, but none of them is mentioned in the Ministry's statement on the CORE Programme. Fix the pairing in memory as HQ IDS organised, CENJOWS conducted, Manekshaw Centre hosted.

The correct answer is Defence, External Affairs and Home Affairs. The release states that the five-day programme brought together senior officers from the three Services along with officials from the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Home Affairs, for deliberations on contemporary and emerging national security challenges.

The combination matters because the programme's stated purpose was to strengthen inter-departmental coordination and inter-agency jointness, and these are the three ministries whose remits meet on national security: military, diplomatic and internal. The other options each swap in a ministry the release does not mention, such as Finance, Commerce or Science and Technology. Note alongside this the phrase the deliberations reinforced, a Whole-of-Nation approach to national security, which is the kind of formulation examiners like to quote directly.

The correct answer is 1936. According to the Ministry of Culture, the Kalakshetra Foundation was established in 1936 by Rukmini Devi Arundale, and it has since played a significant role in the preservation, practice and dissemination of Indian classical arts. It is the Foundation that organises the Kathakali Festival, the seventeenth edition of which was inaugurated at the Bharata Kalakshetra Auditorium in Thiruvanmiyur, Chennai.

The remaining options give years that the release does not associate with the Foundation at all. Candidates should pair the founding year with the founder's name, because questions on this institution almost always test the two together, and occasionally test the city as well. A useful way to hold it is as a single line: Kalakshetra Foundation, 1936, Rukmini Devi Arundale, Chennai, now functioning under the Ministry of Culture.

The correct answer is Kadha Rasa Sangama - Confluence of Essence of Stories. The Ministry of Culture describes the three-day festival as being held on this theme, bringing together three prominent Kathakali institutions, namely Sadanam Academy, Kerala Kalamandalam and Margi Theatre, each of which presents one distinctive production.

The other three options are plausible-sounding titles that the release does not mention anywhere, and none of them is connected with this festival. The theme is worth memorising alongside the three productions it frames: Mandodari from Sadanam Academy, drawn from the Ramayana; The Old Man and the Sea from Kerala Kalamandalam, adapted from Ernest Hemingway's novel; and Rugmangada Charitham from Margi Theatre, on the devotion of King Rugmangada and his observance of Ekadasi.

The answer is two. At the Bengaluru ceremony the Air Force received five aircraft in total, and the split is what the question turns on: two Tejas twin-seat trainers at Final Operational Clearance standard, plus three HTT 40 basic trainers. Candidates who remember only the total of five will get this wrong.

The fourth number in the story belongs elsewhere. Four Dhruv helicopters of the Next Generation variant went to Pawan Hans Limited, a civil operator, not to the Air Force. That is also why two ministers attended, one holding Defence and the other Civil Aviation. A clean way to hold all of it is as three pairs: two Tejas trainers, three HTT 40 trainers, four Dhruv NG helicopters, with the first two going to the Air Force and the third to Pawan Hans.

The answer is Pawan Hans Limited. The ceremony had two recipients, and separating them is the whole point of the question. Military trainers, the Tejas twin-seaters and the HTT 40s, went to the Indian Air Force. The four Dhruv helicopters of the Next Generation variant went instead to Pawan Hans Limited, which runs civil helicopter operations.

That division explains the guest list. Raksha Mantri Shri Rajnath Singh attended for the defence side and Shri K Rammohan Naidu, the Minister of Civil Aviation, for the civil side. The other options name forces that do operate rotary-wing fleets, which makes them plausible, but none of them figures in this handover. Remember the recipient alongside the aircraft type and the question becomes straightforward.

The answer is Bengaluru, in Karnataka, where the ceremony took place on 18 September 2026. Hindustan Aeronautics Limited operates from several locations across the country, which is exactly why a question of this kind works as a test: the candidate has to recall the specific venue rather than a general association.

Speaking there, Raksha Mantri Shri Rajnath Singh framed the handover as a milestone towards building aerospace capability within the country and towards the technological self-confidence that goes with it. He also pressed for closer work between public sector undertakings and private firms, and asked young scientists and engineers to pursue transformative technologies. Pair the city with the date and the two ministers, and the full set of testable details is covered.

The answer is Justice V. Ramasubramanian, who chairs the National Human Rights Commission of India and closed the programme. His theme was cooperation between human rights institutions across the Global South, and his argument was that these bodies improve by sharing experience openly, naming the problems they run into and treating their own mistakes as something to learn from.

The other options are drawn from offices that sound plausible for a human rights event but had no role here. The Ministry of External Affairs did partner on the programme, which makes option D the strongest distractor, but the valedictory address came from the Commission's own Chairperson. Present at the session were Joint Secretaries Shri Samir Kumar and Smt. Saidingpuii Chhakchhuak. Remember the Chairperson's name; it is the single most reusable fact here.

The answer is fourteen. Two numbers travel together in this item and are easy to swap: thirty-eight senior functionaries attended, and they came from fourteen national human rights institutions. The institutions are the smaller figure, the people the larger one.

The countries represented were Algeria, Chile, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Oman, Samoa, South Africa, Tajikistan and Zimbabwe, which spans Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific. That spread matters for the framing of the programme, which is built on the idea that institutions doing similar work in different legal systems have a good deal to teach each other. Hold the pair as thirty-eight from fourteen and neither figure will slip.

Note the shape of the programme alongside the figures. It was the fifth edition, it ran six days from 14 September 2026 in New Delhi, and the sessions were interactive rather than lecture-led, covering civil and political rights as well as socio-economic and cultural ones.

The answer is the Ministry of External Affairs. That pairing is not incidental: the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation programme is a foreign policy instrument, used to offer training and expertise to officials of other developing countries, so a course aimed at human rights institutions abroad naturally runs through External Affairs.

The other ministries listed all have some connection to human rights work within India, which is what makes them usable as distractors, but none of them is named as the partner here. For the examination, treat ITEC and the Ministry of External Affairs as a fixed pair, and note that this was the fifth edition of the programme, held over six days in New Delhi from 14 September 2026.