October 2025 in current affairs: eleven stories for CUET

Rashtriya Ekta Diwas — National Unity Day — is observed every 31 October, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's birth anniversary. It was first celebrated in 2014; 2025 marked Patel's 150th birth anniversary, and the main celebration was a parade at Ekta Nagar, Kevadia, in Gujarat's Narmada district, the site of the Statue of Unity.

On the same day in 2015 the Prime Minister announced Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat, which pairs states for cultural exchange. The Run for Unity is the day's recurring public event.

On 11 October 2025, at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in New Delhi, the Prime Minister launched two farm schemes with a combined outlay of ₹35,440 crore. The larger is the PM Dhan-Dhaanya Krishi Yojana, at ₹24,000 crore.

The scheme picks 100 districts with low crop productivity and brings 36 existing sub-schemes of 11 ministries together in them — it is a convergence scheme rather than a new pot of money for one ministry. Its aims are higher productivity, crop diversification, storage at panchayat and block level, better irrigation, and easier long- and short-term credit.

The date was chosen: 11 October is the birth anniversary of both Jayaprakash Narayan and Nanaji Deshmukh.

The second scheme launched on 11 October 2025 is the Mission for Aatmanirbharta in Pulses, with ₹11,440 crore for 2025-26 to 2030-31. India is the world's largest producer, consumer and importer of pulses; the mission sets out to cut the imports.

Its targets for 2030-31 are production of 350 lakh tonnes from 310 lakh hectares. It promises 100 per cent procurement of tur, urad and masoor at the minimum support price for four years, and the distribution of 88 lakh free seed kits and 126 lakh quintals of certified seed. About 2 crore farmers are expected to benefit.

The Monetary Policy Committee's 57th meeting, from 29 September to 1 October 2025, left the repo rate unchanged at 5.50 per cent and kept the stance neutral.

The Reserve Bank raised its growth forecast for 2025-26 to 6.8 per cent, from 6.5 per cent, and cut its CPI inflation forecast to 2.6 per cent, from 3.1 per cent. It named the GST rate cuts of September 2025 among the reasons demand would hold up. The current account deficit had narrowed to 0.2 per cent of GDP in April–June 2025, from 0.9 per cent a year earlier.

At the 47th ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, 26–28 October 2025, the leaders welcomed Timor-Leste as the 11th member state of ASEAN — the first enlargement since Cambodia joined in 1999. Timor-Leste had applied in 2011 and was admitted in principle, with observer status, in 2022.

Malaysia held the chair in 2025, under the theme 'Inclusivity and Sustainability'. The Philippines takes the chair for 2026.

The UK Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, made his first official visit to India on 8–9 October 2025, with 125 business, university and cultural leaders. The talks were held in Mumbai, where both prime ministers also addressed the Global Fintech Fest.

The visit followed Prime Minister Modi's trip to the UK on 23–24 July 2025, when the two countries signed the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and adopted the India–UK Vision 2035. In Mumbai the leaders looked forward to ratifying CETA and reset the Joint Economic and Trade Committee (JETCO) to oversee it.

Wildlife Week runs from 2 to 8 October each year. The 2025 theme was 'Human–Wildlife Coexistence', and at the main event in Dehradun on 6 October the Environment Minister launched five national projects: Project Dolphin (Phase II) for river and marine cetaceans; a national framework for Project Sloth Bear; an action plan for Project Gharial; a Centre of Excellence for Human–Wildlife Conflict Management at SACON, Coimbatore; and 'Tigers Outside Tiger Reserves', which deals with conflict beyond protected areas.

The projects follow announcements made at the 7th meeting of the National Board for Wildlife.

New Delhi hosted the World Para Athletics Championships from 27 September to 5 October 2025 at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium — the first time India had hosted the event. More than 2,200 athletes from over 100 countries competed for 186 medal events.

India won a record 22 medals — 6 gold, 9 silver and 7 bronze — and finished 10th. Its tallies at the three previous editions were 9 (Dubai 2019), 10 (Paris 2023) and 17 (Kobe 2024).

On 30 October 2025 the President appointed Justice Surya Kant, a judge of the Supreme Court, as Chief Justice of India with effect from 24 November 2025. He succeeds Justice B.R. Gavai.

Born in Petwar village of Hisar district, Haryana, on 10 February 1962, he took his law degree from Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak, in 1984. In 2000 he became the youngest Advocate General of Haryana; he was a judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court from 2004, Chief Justice of the Himachal Pradesh High Court from October 2018, and a Supreme Court judge from 24 May 2019.

The Literature prize went to the Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai, for work that 'in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art'. The Peace Prize went to María Corina Machado of Venezuela, for her work for democratic rights and a peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.

The prize in economic sciences went half to Joel Mokyr, for identifying the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress, and half jointly to Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt, for the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction.

The 2025 Nobel Prizes were announced from 6 to 13 October. Physiology or Medicine went to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi for discoveries on peripheral immune tolerance — the regulatory T cells that stop the immune system attacking the body.

Physics went to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis for showing macroscopic quantum tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit. Chemistry went to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi for developing metal–organic frameworks, porous structures that can pull water from desert air or capture carbon dioxide.