1. NABARD and the India Meteorological Department signed an MoU to supply agro-meteorological data to the DiCRA platform. What does the acronym DiCRA expand to?
Answer: C. DiCRA stands for Data in Climate Resilient Agriculture. Under the MoU, IMD feeds forecasts, crop advisories, station readings and extreme-event alerts into a weather portal on it, available through APIs that banks, insurers and agri-tech firms can plug into.
2. NABARD backs the open-source DiCRA platform together with which international organisation?
Answer: A. DiCRA, supported by NABARD and the UNDP, already underpinned the National Climate Stack Innovation Challenge, where firms built village-level climate risk tools. IMD data makes it a live weather service useful for crop insurance pricing and resilient lending.
3. Which ministry runs the 5th edition of Swachh Sagar, Surakshit Sagar, the campaign that added a National Ocean Olympiad?
Answer: E. Dr Jitendra Singh launched the fifth edition of this ocean conservation drive, which now lasts a week. It started in 2022 as a 75-day clean-up across 75 beaches linked to Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav.
4. The Public Insurance Registry proposed by IRDAI is envisaged as Digital Public Infrastructure under which law?
Answer: B. The consultation paper describes the registry as a large-scale, interoperable exchange layer instead of a central data warehouse. Data stays with the institution that holds it and moves only on authorised request, similar to the Account Aggregator idea.
5. To put the Public Insurance Registry into practice, which existing body is proposed to become a wholly owned, not-for-profit IRDAI subsidiary?
Answer: E. The Insurance Information Bureau would be converted into the IRDAI subsidiary running the registry. Insurers, reinsurers, intermediaries, policyholders and government departments would take part, linked to vehicle, health, weather and court databases.
6. Zerodha Corporate Advisors received a Category-I merchant banking licence from SEBI. What minimum net worth must a Category-I merchant banker hold?
Answer: C. SEBI sharply raised the Category-I requirement from Rs 5 crore to Rs 50 crore, while Category-II bankers need Rs 10 crore. Only Category-I bankers can manage and underwrite main-board IPOs, so this licence lets Zerodha enter equity capital markets.
7. SEBI's norms limit a Category-I merchant banker's business to how many multiples of its liquid net worth?
Answer: A. The limit of 20 times liquid net worth keeps underwriting exposure in line with capital available to absorb losses. Zerodha's advisory arm plans to start with IPOs, follow-on public offers and issuer advisory.
8. For which bank did the RBI approve Carol Kripanayana Furtado as interim MD and CEO?
Answer: D. She will serve for three months or until a permanent chief is chosen, after Sanjeev Nautiyal resigned on 31 August 2026. Banks need prior RBI approval for interim CEOs, and Furtado had earlier led Ujjivan Financial Services.
9. At the 26th SCO Council of Heads of State meeting in Bishkek, which country took over the SCO presidency for 2026-2027?
Answer: B. Pakistan received the rotating presidency at the Bishkek summit, which Kyrgyzstan's President Sadyr Japarov chaired. The Bishkek Declaration condemned cross-border terrorism and backed national-currency trade and talks on an SCO Development Bank.
10. In which city is the SCO's Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) headquartered?
Answer: E. RATS operates from Tashkent, while the SCO Secretariat is in Beijing, a pairing often mixed up. The SCO was founded in 2001 at Shanghai and now has ten members after India and Pakistan (2017), Iran (2023) and Belarus (2024) joined.
11. MeitY notified the operational framework for Semicon 2.0. How large is the programme's total outlay?
Answer: D. The outlay of Rs 1,27,500 crore, about Rs 1.27 lakh crore, is well above that of the first semiconductor mission. It spans chip design, wafer fabrication, packaging, equipment, materials and talent, aiming at Indian-owned intellectual property.
12. Into how many pillars and categories is Semicon 2.0 organised, respectively?
Answer: A. The scheme has 6 pillars and 10 categories, run by the India Semiconductor Mission under MeitY with C-DAC as technical partner. Category-wise incentives let the government support weak links like specialty chemicals and materials, not only fabrication.
13. Which launch vehicle will carry ISRO's EOS-05 earth observation satellite, earlier called GISAT-1A?
Answer: D. EOS-05 will go up on GSLV-F17 from the Second Launch Pad at Sriharikota and sit in geosynchronous orbit near 35,786 km. That orbit gives near-continuous coverage for disasters, farming and border monitoring, and the satellite replaces the lost GISAT-1.
14. The 4th Indo-German Environment Forum saw India and Germany sign a Joint Declaration of Intent on wetland conservation. In which year was the IGEF set up?
Answer: B. The forum, established in 2008, is the top bilateral environmental policy platform between the two countries. The new declaration widens cooperation to biodiversity, forests, mountains, climate resilience, circular economy and green skills.
15. The September 2026 NABARD-IMD MoU adds weather data to which platform?
Answer: B. The MoU integrates agro-meteorological data into DiCRA.