Jai Hind Defence Aspirants, Only 3 Days are left for the NDA 1 and CDS 1 Examinations. Now is the time to brush up on your syllabus and revision. If you have not completed your Current Affairs Section and still want to score more in the GS paper, SSBCrackExam brings you the most important Current Affairs for NDA and CDS exams. We are sure that we have covered all 18-20 questions which will be asked in the question paper. If you have covered every other subject, you can totally rely on this article for your Current Affairs Section.

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Most Important Current Affairs For NDA-1 And CDS-1 2023

• Best Original Song award: The song ‘Naatu Naatu’, from the wildly popular Telugu film RRR, made history at the 80th Golden Globes as it became the first Indian song to win the Best Original Song award. The history creating track from the director SS Rajamouli’s blockbuster movie is composed by MM Keeravani. The singers are Kaala Bhairava and Rahul Sipligunj. RRR has been nominated in Best Non English Language Film category but it could not win the Golden Globe award for the Best Non-English Language Film as the title went to Argentina’s Argentina, 1985. The Golden Globes are an important precursor to the Oscars.

• Golden Kailasha award: It is received by Rajasthani film, Naanera, directed by Deepankar Prakash for the best movie at the Ajanta-Ellora Film Festival.

• The most distinguished scientist of the year 2022 has been awarded to Scientist R. Vishnu Prassa at Indian Achievers Award 2022

• International Cricket Council’s (ICC) awards 2022:
  • Sir Garfield Sobers award & Men’s ODI Cricketer of the Year: Pakistan’s Babar Azam.
  • Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy & Women’s ODI Cricketer of the Year: England’s Nat Sciver .
  • Men’s Test Cricketer of the Year: England’s Ben Stokes.
  • Men’s T20 International Cricketer of the Year: India’s Suryakumar Yadav.
  • Women’s Emerging Cricketer of the Year: India’s Renuka Singh.
  • Men’s Emerging Cricketer of the Year: South Africa’s Marco Jansen.

• Henley Passport Index 2023: Japan continues to top the list of the world’s most powerful passports as it allows visa-free travel to 193 countries (85% of the world), i.e. a gateway to 98% of the global economy. Japan followed by Singapore and South Korea in 2 nd and 3rd rank respectively. Afghanistan is ranked last in the list of index. India’s passport on the 85th spot, moving it up two places from its position in 2022.

• Shri Nityanand Rai committee: The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in India has established a High Powered Committee (HPC) chaired by Shri Nityanand Rai, Minister of State for Home Affairs to address issues related to the protection of Ladakh’s culture, language, land, and employment opportunities.

• All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE), 2020-2021: The Union Ministry of Education released data from the AISHE 2020-2021, which showed a 7.5% increase in student enrolments across the country compared to 2019-20. Female enrolment in higher education programs had increased to 49% of total enrolments in 2020-21 compared to 45% in 2019-20. Gender Parity Index (GPI), the ratio of female GER to male GER, has increased from 1 in 2017-18 to 1.05 in 2020-21. Uttar Pradesh; Maharashtra; Tamil Nadu; Madhya Pradesh; Karnataka and Rajasthan are the top 6 States in terms of number of students enrolled.

• Global Firepower’s The Global Firepower Index/ /Military Strength Ranking 2022: Unites States topped the index followed by Russia (2nd), China (3rd), and India (4th Rank) based on their potential military strength.

• National Green Hydrogen Mission: The Union Cabinet approved the National Green Hydrogen Mission with an allocation of ₹19,744 crore, aimed at producing 5 million tonne of green hydrogen annually by 2030. The initial outlay for the Mission will be Rs.19,744 crore, including an outlay of Rs.17,490 crore for the SIGHT programme, Rs.1,466 crore for pilot projects, Rs.400 crore for R&D, and Rs. 388 crore towards other Mission components. The mission is aimed at making India a hub for both manufacturing and exports of green hydrogen. It will help the country achieve its target of becoming energy independent by 2047. Under the Strategic Interventions for Green Hydrogen Transition Programme (SIGHT), two distinct financial incentive mechanisms – targeting domestic manufacturing of electrolyzers and production of Green Hydrogen – will be provided under the Mission. Further, a public-private partnership framework for R&D (Strategic Hydrogen Innovation Partnership – SHIP) will be facilitated under the Mission.

• Supreme Court expands Article 19 ambit: The Constitution Bench under the 4-1 majority ruled that a citizen can seek enforcement of the fundamental rights to freedom of speech not just against the state but extended the ground for seeking these rights against other citizens. A fundamental right under Article 19 and Article 21 can be enforced even against persons other than the State or its instrumentalities. The case heard in view that the right of free speech and expression guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a) cannot be curbed by any additional grounds other than those already laid down in Article 19(2).

• The Centre has named the new Integrated Food Security Scheme as Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Ann Yojana (PMGKAY). Earlier, the Union Cabinet had approved new integrated food security scheme for providing free foodgrains to Antodaya Ann Yojna (AAY) and Primary Household (PHH) beneficiaries. Implementation of the new scheme has started from 1st of January this year, benefiting more than 80 crore poor and poorest of poor people. The Central Government will spend more than Rs 2 lakh crore in 2023 as food subsidy under National Food Security Act (NFSA) and other welfare schemes, to remove the financial burden of the poor and the poorest of the poor.

• The Union Cabinet gave the approval to rename the National Centre for Drinking Water, Sanitation and Quality in Kolkata as Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee National Institute of Water and Sanitation (SPM-NIWAS). The Institute was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in December 2022. The institute is envisaged as a premier institute to develop capacities in states/UTs in the field of public health engineering, drinking water, and sanitation.

• RAMP Portal: Union Minister for MSME Narayan Rane along with the CM of Tripura, Prof.(Dr.) Manik Saha virtually launched the Raising and Accelerating MSME Performance (RAMP) Portal to scale up the implementation capacity and coverage of The Ministry of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in the country.

• 26th National Youth Festival: The Union Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, in collaboration with the Government of Karnataka, is organizing the 26th National Youth Festival from January 12th to 16th in Hubballi-Dharwad, Karnataka. The theme of this year’s festival is “Viksit Yuva Viksit Bharat,” which aims to empower the youth of India and promote their active participation in shaping the country’s future.

• The Union Cabinet chaired by Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has given ex-post facto approval for the naming of Greenfield International Airport Mopa, Goa as ‘Manohar International Airport – Mopa, Goa’, as a mark of tribute to Late Shri Manohar Parrikar, Ex-Defence Minister and Four-time Goa Chief Minister.

• The India-US Trade Policy Forum (TPF): It is a forum to resolve trade and investment issues between the two countries, and will hold a meeting in Washington. The TPF has five focus groups — Agriculture, Investment, Innovation, and Creativity (intellectual property rights), Services, and tariffs, and Non-Tariff Barriers. The meeting will be co-chaired by Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal and US Trade Representative Katherine Tai.

• NTPC Limited and Gujarat Gas Limited (GGL) have commissioned India’s first green hydrogen blending project in the piped natural gas (PNG) network of NTPC Kawas township, Surat.

• Union Health and Family Welfare and Chemicals and Fertilizers Minister Dr. Mansukh Mandaviya announced that India’s first-ever coal gasification-based Talcher Fertilizer Plant in Odisha will be ready to be dedicated to the nation by October 2024.

• K9-Vajra howitzers: The Indian Army has deployed the first K9-Vajra self-propelled howitzer regiment in the forward areas in Ladakh along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China. It weighs 50 tonnes and can strike enemy targets 50 kilometers away. The K9 Vajra is a 155 mm, 52-caliber tracked self-propelled howitzer (a short gun for firing shells on high trajectories at low velocities) built by Larsen and Toubro (L&T) in Gujarat with technology transferred from South Korean defence Major Hanwha Defense based on its K9 Thunder. The K9 Vajra was mainly bought for use in deserts, but the standoff with China on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) prompted them to be deployed in the mountains as well.

• Defence Research and Development Organisation, (DRDO), successfully carried out a training launch of a Short-Range Ballistic Missile, Prithvi-II from the Integrated Test Range, Chandipur off the Odisha coast.
  • About Prithvi-II Missile:
  • It is an indigenously developed Surface-to-Surface Missile Short-Range Ballistic Missile (SRBM), which has a range of around 350km and can carry a one-tonne payload.
  • It is a single-stage liquid-fueled missile that has a warhead mounting capability of 500 kg-1000kg.
  • It is developed by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) under its
    Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP).

• AMPHEX: It is a tri-service amphibious (on land & sea) exercise (the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force) held in Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh.

• Exercise Varuna: The 21st Edition of the Bilateral Naval Exercise between India and France, commenced on the Western Seaboard of India. This edition will witness the participation of indigenous guided missile stealth destroyer INS Chennai, the guided missile frigate INS Teg, maritime patrol aircraft P-8I and Dornier, integral helicopters, and MiG29K fighter aircraft. The bilateral Varuna exercise between the two navies was initiated in 1993; it was christened as ‘VARUNA’ in 2001.

• Exercise Pralay: Amidst the ongoing standoff with China, the Indian Air Force is going to conduct a Pralay exercise in Northeast India. The exercise will be conducted in preparation for another Air Force exercise named ‘Eastern Akash’, an annual command-level exercise. Exercise Pralay will take place at a time when the Indian Air Force has deployed and turned on the S-400 air defense squadron in the region which is capable of intercepting any hostile missile or aircraft from up to 400 kilometers away. Several Air Force combat assets, including the fighter jets Su-30 and Rafale, as well as transport and other aircraft, would be activated during the exercise

• “Ops Alert” Exercise: The Border Security Force has started an “Ops Alert” exercise to enhance security along the India-Pakistan border in Sir Creek (marshy area) to the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat and Barmer in Rajasthan in view of the upcoming Republic Day celebrations. The BSF will carry out special operations in forward and depth areas as well as creeks and ‘Harami Nalla’ as part of the exercise.

• INS Vagir: Indian Navy’s commissioned the fifth diesel-electric Kalvari-class submarine INS Vagir at the Naval Dockyard Mumbai. It is among the six submarines being built by the Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDL), Mumbai, in collaboration with the French M/s Naval Group under Project 75.
  • About INS Vagir:
  • It gets its name from the erstwhile Vagir, a submarine that served the Navy between 1973 and 2001.
  • It is also known as Sand Shark, a predatory marine species.
  • It is a Kalvari-class submarine, which includes other vessels, such as the INS Kalvari, INS Khanderi, INS Karanj, INS Vela, and INS Vagsheer (to be inducted in 2023).

• Recently, a new swallowtail butterfly (Noble Helen) was spotted in Arunachal Pradesh.

• India will sign a “Comprehensive Migration and Mobility Partnership Agreement” (MMPA) with Austria. The agreement is now a useful tool to combat illegal migration together, as it enables the swift return of illegal migrants. It will regulate multiple entry visas for professionals and student exchange programs and will be reviewed regularly by a Joint Working Group (JWG). India has similar mobility agreements with France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Finland.

• Mosi Exercise: South Africa unveils joint naval drills with Russia and China. The exercises dubbed “Mosi”, which translates to “smoke” in the local Tswana language, are scheduled for February 17 to 27, off the port city of Durban and Richards Bay. South Africa recently assumed the chairmanship of the BRICS, a grouping that also includes Brazil, Russia, India, and China to challenge the dominant US- and European-led global governance structures.

• Kilauea volcano: It is one of the world’s most active volcanoes in Hawaii erupted again. It last erupted for 16 months starting in September 2021.

• ULTRASAT: NASA is collaborating with Israel in the Ultraviolet Transient Astronomy Satellite (ULTRASAT) project, an Israeli ultraviolet astrophysics mission with a 200-square-degree field of view and rapid target-of-opportunity response time. The mission is currently being developed by Israel Space Agency and Germany.

• The European Space Agency (ESA) is ready to launch the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE), an extraterrestrial spacecraft, with Airbus Defence and Space serving as the lead contractor. The satellite was developed by Germany and tested by France. The mission will focus on three of Jupiter’s Galilean moons: Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa.

• Hydrogen urban train: It is launched by China’s CRRC Corporation Ltd. It is the first in Asia and the second in the world after Germany’s green train.

• AzaadiSAT-2: Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is set to launch the Space Kidz India satellite made by 750 school girls studying in government schools. AzaadiSAT-2 satellite, the brainchild of Chennai-based start-up SpaceKidz India is built by 750 girl students from 75 schools across India. The eight-kg satellite has 75 Femto experiments, selfie cameras to click pictures of its own solar panels, and long-range communication transponders. The mission life of the satellite is six months. This is the first-of-its-kind space mission with an all-women concept to promote women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) as this year’s UN theme is ‘Women in Space’. ISRO has developed the SSLV launch vehicle to put in low earth orbit satellites weighing less than 500 kg.

• iNCOVACC vaccine: Union Health Minister Dr. Mansukh Mandaviya and Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh launched India’s first made a nasal vaccine against Covid-19. The world’s first made-in-India intranasal vaccine has been made by Bharat Biotech. “iNCOVACC is a recombinant replication-deficient adenovirus vectored vaccine with a pre-fusion-stabilized SARSCoV-2 spike protein.

• The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is planning to launch the Aditya-L1 mission by June or July this year. Aditya-L1 is the first Indian space mission to observe the Sun and the solar corona. The Aditya-L1 mission will be launched by ISRO to the L1 orbit (which is the first Lagrangian point of the Sun-Earth system). L1 orbit allows Aditya-L1 to look at the Sun continuously. In total Aditya-L1 have seven payloads, of which the primary payload is the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC), designed and fabricated by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru.

• BharOS: Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) has developed BharOS – an indigenous mobile operating system for mobile phone users in the country. BharOS has been developed by JandK Operations Private Limited (JandKops) – a non-profit organization established by IIT Madras Pravartak Technologies Foundation.

• Skyhawk: Startup firm IG Drones, which was born out of the Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology (VSSUT) campus in Odisha’s Sambalpur has developed India’s first 5G-enabled drone that is capable of vertical take-off and landing. It can be used in defence and medical applications. The drone can carry a 10 kg payload and has an endurance of around five hours. As it’s a VTOL (Vertical Take-off and Landing), it can be operated from any terrain without the need for a conventional runway.

• Captain Shiva Chouhan, an officer from the Corps of Electronics and Mechanical Engineers, became the first woman officer to be operationally deployed at Kumar Post in the Siachen Glacier, which is located at an altitude of 15,632 feet. Capt. Chouhan from Rajasthan is a Bengal Sapper Officer commissioned in May 2021.

• In Jammu and Kashmir, Raksha Mantri Rajnath Singh virtually inaugurated the Bailey Suspension Bridge over river Chenab in the Ramban district of the Jammu division. A 240 feet high Bailey Suspension Bridge has been completed by the Border Roads Organisation (BRO).

• The Chhattisgarh government has begun road construction work in Pudaang village which will connect it with the rest of the state for the first time since India’s Independence.

• The world’s first museum of palm leaf manuscripts was established in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. The museum has 187 manuscripts, based on primary sources. The museum houses a collection of popular tales of Travancore, the first kingdom in Asia to defeat European powers on Indian soil.

• Kerala was declared the first State to enable digital banking in all eligible accounts. The State now has at least one product in 3.76 crore accounts enabled digitally, according to the State-Level Bankers’ Committee (SLBC). In 2021, Thrissur become the first district in the State to implement digital banking under the ‘‘Expanding and Deepening of Digital Payments Ecosystem’ scheme of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

• Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel celebrates the traditional Cherchera festival at Dudhadhari Math in the state capital Raipur. The traditional Cherchera festival is celebrated on the full moon night of the ‘Paush’ Hindu calendar month in the happiness of taking the crops to their homes after cultivation.

• Rajasthan has become the first state in India to implement a policy for blindness control with the objective of ensuring the “right to sight” for its citizens.

• The Kerala government has announced that it would grant menstrual leave to female students above the age of 18 years studying in all state universities coming under the Department of Higher Education.

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Also read: Most Important Current Affairs For NDA CDS 2023 Part-1