Current Affairs 9 September 2026: Today's GK & MCQs

The correct answer is Rs 10,021 crore. The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved five projects of the Ministry of Railways at this cost, spread over 17 districts of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Telangana, and adding about 540 km to the network. Option B, Rs 10,783 crore, is the cost of the other decision taken the same day, which covered three projects in West Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh; candidates who mix up the two packages pick it. Option C, Rs 12,540 crore, is not the cost of either decision and simply borrows the figure 540, which is the length in kilometres added by the southern package. Option D, Rs 9,656 crore, likewise plays on 656, the kilometres added by the eastern package. The safest way to remember the pair is that the smaller cost belongs to the larger number of projects: five projects at Rs 10,021 crore in the south, three projects at Rs 10,783 crore in the east.

The correct answer is 27 MTPA, that is 27 million tonnes per annum. The three projects in the eastern and central states are the Kharagpur to Jharsuguda fourth line, the Katni to Pendra Road fourth line and the Bilaspur to Pendra Road third line. They are essential routes for coal, cement, iron and steel, and the capacity added is put at 27 MTPA. Option A, 47 MTPA, is the extra freight capacity of the other package approved on the same day, the five projects in the southern states, so it is the classic trap in this question. Option C, 56 MTPA, borrows 56 lakh, which is the population of the villages the eastern projects will connect, not a freight figure at all. Option D, 14 MTPA, borrows the count of districts covered by the eastern package. Remember the pairing as five projects with 47 MTPA and three projects with 27 MTPA.

The correct answer is the PM-Gati Shakti National Master Plan. Both Cabinet decisions state that the projects were planned under this master plan, whose aim is to raise multi-modal connectivity and logistics efficiency through integrated planning and consultation with stakeholders. Option A, Bharatmala Pariyojana, is a highways programme of the road transport ministry, so it does not govern railway line capacity works, although it shares the goal of better connectivity. Option B, the Sagarmala Programme, is about ports and coastal shipping and is run by the shipping ministry, which again makes it a plausible but wrong choice for a rail decision. Option D, the Amrit Bharat Station Scheme, is indeed a railway scheme, but it deals with the redevelopment of stations rather than with laying third and fourth lines between them. For the examination, tie PM-Gati Shakti to every Cabinet note on new railway lines, because the phrase is repeated in each of them.

The correct answer is Mr Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the President of Sri Lanka, on whom the Raksha Mantri called in Colombo. In that meeting the President assured India that Sri Lankan territory would never be used for activities hostile to Indian security interests, and he thanked India for the relief provided under Operation Sagar Bandhu. Option B, Dr Harini Amarasuriya, is the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, and Rajnath Singh met her separately on the same day, describing her as a symbol of women's empowerment; she is the most tempting distractor because both meetings happened within hours of each other. Option C, Mr Aruna Jayasekara, is the Deputy Minister of Defence, who was present when the Raksha Mantri spoke at the Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence. Option D names a former Sri Lankan leader who holds no office in this release. Keep the pair fixed in memory: Dissanayake as President, Amarasuriya as Prime Minister.

The correct answer is the L70 air defence guns of the Sri Lankan Air Force. Six of these guns are to be upgraded under a grant from the Government of India, and the guns themselves had been supplied to Sri Lanka by India earlier, which is why the upgrade falls to India. The stated purpose is to strengthen the air defence architecture protecting critical assets in Sri Lanka. Option A, Dornier aircraft, and option C, offshore patrol vessels, are plausible because India has supplied maritime platforms to Sri Lanka in the past and maritime cooperation dominated the visit, but neither was the subject of an MoU that day. Option D, radar stations of the Army, mixes the right idea of air surveillance with the wrong service and the wrong equipment. The second MoU exchanged during the visit was on cooperation between the National Cadet Corps and the National Defence Colleges of the two countries, which is the other half of the answer examiners test.

The correct answer is Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions. Rajnath Singh used the expansion while speaking at the Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence, explaining that the words mutual and holistic carry the weight of the idea because they point to synergy, cooperation and collaboration between partners. He placed the India and Sri Lanka maritime partnership inside this vision of the Prime Minister. Options A, C and D are invented expansions built from familiar maritime words such as harbours, anchorage, shipping and routes, and each sounds convincing to a candidate who half remembers the acronym. That is exactly the trap: acronyms of this kind are asked precisely because the expansions are easy to approximate and hard to recall exactly. Learn it word by word, and pair it with the other phrase from the same speech, Vishwa Mitra, which the Raksha Mantri used to describe India's role in its shared neighbourhood.

The correct answer is Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers Limited, a defence public sector undertaking, which designed, engineered and constructed the vessel at its Rishi Bankim Shipyard in Kolkata for the National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research. The minister praised the yard for completing the launch within two years of signing the contract. Option A, Cochin Shipyard, is the yard associated with the indigenous aircraft carrier, which makes it the most attractive wrong choice for anyone who remembers only that an Indian yard did something notable. Option B, Mazagon Dock, builds submarines and destroyers for the Navy at Mumbai, again a real and important yard but not this one. Option D, Hindustan Shipyard at Visakhapatnam, also builds and repairs ships for the government. Anchor the answer with the city: this launch took place at Kolkata, and the Kolkata yard is GRSE.

The correct answer is ORV Sagar Kanya. That vessel is 43 years old and was procured from Germany in 1983, and the new ship will take over its work step by step. The point matters because the replacement marks a shift from buying research platforms abroad to building them in India, which the Secretary of the Ministry of Earth Sciences highlighted at the ceremony. Option A, Sagar Nidhi, is a research vessel of the National Institute of Ocean Technology and is not the ship named for replacement here. Option C, INS Sandhayak, is a naval survey vessel, so it belongs to the Navy rather than to the Ministry of Earth Sciences. Option D, Sagar Sampada, is a fishery and oceanographic research vessel and shares the Sagar prefix, which is exactly why it is a tempting distractor. Remember the German origin and the year 1983 with the name Sagar Kanya.

The correct answer is the Deep Ocean Mission, about Rs 840 crore. More precisely, the ship was built under Vertical-4 of that mission, which deals with deep ocean survey and exploration, and it is an all-weather multidisciplinary platform engineered even for the Southern Ocean, with a projected service life of 30 years. Option B names Samudrayaan, which is the crewed submersible effort and is itself a part of the wider deep ocean effort rather than the programme named in this release, and its cost figure is invented. Option C, Blue Revolution, is a fisheries development scheme and has nothing to do with research vessels. Option D, O-SMART, is a real ocean services and technology scheme of the same ministry, which makes it the sharpest distractor, but the vessel is placed under the Deep Ocean Mission. Note also the dual class certification by the Indian Register of Shipping and the American Bureau of Shipping.

The correct answer is the Global Fintech Fest 2026, where the Unique Identification Authority of India released both the software development kit and the sandbox for Aadhaar face authentication. The venue matters because the audience was exactly the one the tools are meant for, the banking, financial services and insurance industry, which had long asked for a way to complete Aadhaar authentication inside its own apps. Option A, the India Mobile Congress, is a telecom event and is plausible because SIM activation through electronic know your customer is one of the services that uses face authentication. Option C, Digital India Week, is a government technology showcase and sounds right for any Aadhaar announcement, which is what makes it a good distractor. Option D, the World Economic Forum, is an international gathering and not the setting for this launch. Tie the launch to the fintech festival and to the ministry behind UIDAI, which is the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

The correct answer is 2021, over 500 crore transactions. UIDAI engineered the face authentication solution in India and launched it in that year, and it has since been adopted by nearly 200 entities, among them central ministries and departments, state governments, banks, non-banking financial companies, telecom operators, brokerage firms and certifying authorities. Options A and B move the launch a year or two earlier and lower the transaction count, which is the commonest way this question is set, because candidates recall the scale but not the exact pairing. Option D borrows 2023, a year that does appear in this news but for a different reason: that is the year of the Prime Minister's Award for Excellence in Public Administration that the technology received in the innovation category. Keep the three numbers together while revising, namely the launch year, the transaction total and the number of adopting entities.

The correct answer is that it is a controlled environment to test the full face authentication journey before going live. Developers and quality assurance teams can run user provisioning and consent, face capture, liveness checks, authentication, error handling and response validation in it, and they can do so without external biometric hardware. They can also rehearse failures such as invalid digital signatures, network interruptions, timeouts and spoofing attempts. Option B confuses the sandbox with enrolment infrastructure, which is a different part of the Aadhaar system altogether. Option C borrows the idea of a regulatory sandbox, which the Reserve Bank does operate for financial innovation, and that overlap is exactly why the option tempts candidates; the UIDAI sandbox is a technical testing space, not a regulatory concession. Option D describes biometric capture hardware, whereas the entire point of this launch is that no such hardware is needed.

The correct answer is the G20 Innovation Ministerial at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, which was held in the United States under its presidency of the G20. The endorsement was marked there by a handshake between Jitin Prasada, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry and for Electronics and Information Technology, and Howard Lutnick, the United States Secretary of Commerce. Option B names a real conference of the International Telecommunication Union, which is why it attracts candidates who associate any telecom commitment with Geneva. Option C is invented, though it borrows the plausible shape of a BRICS digital meeting. Option D names a grouping that does work on critical and emerging technology, making it another reasonable guess for a 6G announcement. Tie the story to the G20 and to the American presidency, and remember that the Department of Telecommunications is the body that will carry India's engagement forward.

The correct answer is 10 per cent. That is the target India has set for its contribution to global 6G standards and patents, and it sits behind the larger ambition of moving the country from being an adopter of technology to being a setter of standards, an emphasis credited to the Minister of State for Communications. Option A halves the figure and appeals to candidates who think the target must be modest. Option C doubles it and is tempting because the same news mentions that India joined over 20 like-minded governments, so the number 20 is floating in the passage and gets attached to the wrong idea. Option D is simply a larger round figure. When revising, separate the two numbers deliberately: over 20 is the count of governments that have affirmed the Call to Action, while 10 per cent is India's own target share of standards and patents.

The correct answer is the National Quantum Mission. The endorsement rests on three domestic foundations that are named explicitly, namely the Bharat 6G Vision, the Bharat 6G Alliance and the indigenous fourth and fifth generation technology stack, and the engagement is aligned with Atmanirbhar Bharat and the goal of Viksit Bharat 2047. The quantum mission is a genuine national programme, which is why it works so well as a distractor in a question about advanced technology, but it is not among the foundations cited here. Options A, B and C are each drawn directly from the announcement and are therefore wrong answers to a question framed in the negative. Candidates lose marks on such questions by reading quickly and picking the first familiar name, so train yourself to notice the word NOT and to check every option against the three foundations before answering.

The correct answer is the 9th edition. It was co-chaired by the Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, and the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture of the Philippines, Francisco P. Tiu Laurel, and it reaffirmed the shared commitment of India and the grouping to a food secure and resilient agricultural future. Options A and B simply move the count backwards and catch candidates who remember the meeting but not its number. Option D, the tenth, is the sharpest trap of the four, and for two separate reasons: the working group meeting held in New Delhi the previous day was indeed the tenth of its kind, and the ministers also agreed that the tenth ministerial meeting itself will be convened after this one. So two numbers travel together in this story and must be kept apart, namely the ninth ministerial and the tenth working group that fed into it.

The correct answer is 45 delegates from 11 ASEAN member states. The working group met a day before the ministerial and was co-chaired by India and the Philippines, with Dr M.L. Jat, Secretary of the Department of Agricultural Research and Education and Director General of ICAR, leading the Indian delegation. Option A reverses the two numbers, which is the most common error when a question pairs a delegate count with a country count, so read such options slowly. Option C changes both figures and lowers the number of member states, which may seem right to a candidate who recalls the older membership count of the grouping. Option D invents a smaller delegation and a larger membership. Keep the pair fixed as 45 and 11, and remember that the working group is numbered tenth while the ministerial it fed into was the ninth.

The correct answer is the India-ASEAN Friendship Spike for Agriculture and Forestry, described as a symbol of the enduring partnership and the shared commitment of the two sides to cooperation in agriculture and forestry. Option B, a green fund, is invented but plausible because climate-resilient agriculture was among the priorities the ministers named. Option C, a rice research centre, is equally invented and attractive because low-emission rice was listed as an area for practical cooperation, so a candidate may connect the two. Option D, a digital agriculture mission, plays on another named priority, namely digital agriculture that uses artificial intelligence. The lesson for the examination hall is that the priorities of a summit and its deliverables are different things, and only the Friendship Spike was actually unveiled at this meeting.

The correct answer is 2028. The ministers meeting in New Delhi agreed that the next edition of the ministerial, the tenth, will be convened in that year, which keeps the gathering on a two-year cycle. Option A, 2027, is the sort of answer a candidate picks by assuming an annual meeting, and it is worth noting that the working group meets more often than the ministers do. Option C, 2029, has no basis in the decision. Option D, 2030, is the most tempting wrong choice of the three, because the year appears elsewhere in the same news for a different reason: both the ASEAN Food, Agriculture and Forestry Sectoral Plan and the ASEAN-India Medium-Term Plan of Action run over the period from 2026 to 2030. Separate the two while revising, because one is a planning horizon and the other is the date of the next meeting.

The correct answer is Varanasi, where the Ministry of Women and Child Development launched the campaign at the Rudraksh International Cooperation and Convention Centre. The Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, the Union Minister for Women and Child Development, the Minister of State in that ministry and the state minister for women welfare were all present. Option A, New Delhi, is the natural guess for any national campaign launch and therefore the strongest distractor. Option B, Lucknow, is the capital of Uttar Pradesh, so a candidate who correctly recalls the state but not the city will choose it. Option D, Prayagraj, is another well known city of the same state. The safest anchor is the venue itself, the Rudraksh centre, which is in Varanasi, and questions on this campaign very often ask for the venue together with the theme.

The correct answer is Hamari Anganwadi, Hamari Jimmedari, which places the responsibility for the Anganwadi Centre on the community itself. The month-long campaign built around it asks households to work on dietary diversity, adequate protein intake and fresh hot cooked meals, along with sanitation and early childhood development. Option B borrows two real slogans of the nutrition effort, since a well nourished and capable India is the stated goal, and that makes it the closest wrong answer. Option C names a real component of the wider Poshan programme that links nutrition with early learning at Anganwadi Centres, so it is easy to mistake for the theme. Option D is a familiar nutrition slogan from earlier campaigns. For the examination, always pair the edition number, the year and the theme of Poshan Maah, because a question usually supplies two of the three and asks for the last.

The correct answer is more than Rs 21,000 crore to over 4.65 crore mothers, paid through direct benefit transfer. The Union Minister announced the figure while noting that the scheme has completed ten years of implementation, and a film marking the decade was screened at the launch in Varanasi. Options A, C and D move both numbers up or down in step, which is how such questions are usually built, because a candidate who remembers only the rough scale cannot separate them. Anchor the pair by remembering that the rupee figure in thousands of crore is roughly four to five times the number of crore of beneficiaries. Two more figures from the same speech are worth carrying with it: more than 14 lakh Anganwadi Centres are working, and 2 lakh of them are being upgraded into Saksham Anganwadis, of which about 24,000 have been approved in Uttar Pradesh.

The correct answer is Shri Bhagwat Prasad Makwana, who took charge as Chairperson of the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis on that date, having been appointed by the Government of India a few days earlier. On assuming office he spoke of protecting the rights and dignity of safai karamcharis and of strengthening the Commission's work for their welfare and empowerment. Option B names a serving secretary in another ministry and is the kind of name that sounds official enough to tempt a hurried candidate. Option C and option D name Union ministers, and ministers are never appointed as chairpersons of such commissions, which is the reasoning a candidate should use to eliminate them immediately. For appointments questions, always attach three things to the name: the exact post, the body concerned and the date, because the same name can appear in the news again in a different role.

The correct answer is the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013. Makwana served as a member of the Central Monitoring Committee constituted under that Act before taking charge of the national commission, and this experience sits alongside his tenure in the Uttarakhand commission and his time as an Independent Director on the Board of NHPC. Option A names the earlier law of 1993 on the same subject, which is the strongest distractor because both statutes deal with manual scavenging and candidates often remember only the theme. Option C, the atrocities law of 1989, and option D, the civil rights law of 1955, are genuine statutes that protect Scheduled Caste communities, so they look plausible in a question about a leader with that background, but neither sets up the committee referred to here. Fix the year 2013 with the word rehabilitation.

The correct answer is the Safai Karamchari Commission of the Government of Uttarakhand, where he held both the office of Vice-Chairman and later that of Chairman. This is the strand of his record that connects most directly to the national post he now holds, since the state body does at the level of one state what the national commission does for the country. Options B, C and D name other states that also run welfare machinery for sanitation workers, and each is plausible precisely because such commissions are not unique to one state. The way to hold the answer is to pair the state with the person, because in appointment questions examiners frequently swap the state while keeping the rest of the description accurate. Remember alongside it that he holds a Master's degree in Economics and has worked extensively on the welfare of Scheduled Caste communities.