October 2026 in current affairs: forty stories for CUET

The Indian Air Force marked its 94th anniversary on 8 October 2026 at Air Force Station Hindan, Ghaziabad, where the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal A.P. Singh, reviewed the Air Force Day Parade. The year's theme was 'Indian Air Force: Infallible, Impervious and Precise'. Three Mi-17 1V helicopters in 'Dhwaj' formation carried the National flag and the IAF flag, and Air Warriors received medals for gallantry and distinguished service.

On 7 October 2026, World Cotton Day, the Permanent Missions of India and Mali to the United Nations held a joint event at UN Headquarters in New York on the theme 'Cotton for Sustainability: Livelihoods, Value Addition and Partnership'. India's Permanent Representative, Ambassador Harish Parvathaneni, recalled Mahatma Gandhi's linking of cotton and the spinning wheel with self-reliance and the freedom struggle, and set out four priorities: producers' livelihoods, value addition and market access, sustainability, and technology and partnerships.

On 6 October 2026 the Union Cabinet approved a Special Purpose Vehicle, the Integrated Transport & Logistics Authority (ITLA), as the apex body for transport and logistics planning. It is to draw up a National Transport Master Plan looking ten years or more ahead across roads, railways, ports, civil aviation, inland waterways and urban mobility; carry out the technical appraisal of central projects costing ₹500 crore or more, and monitor them; and build a National Transport Data Repository from sources such as e-way bills, FASTag and Vahan.

On 6 October 2026 Defence Minister Rajnath Singh launched the first Fleet Support Ship, FSS-1, named 'Surya', at Hindustan Shipyard Limited (HSL), Visakhapatnam. He also laid the keel of the fifth, and opened an upgraded slipway and a 300-tonne Goliath crane. Fleet support ships replenish warships at sea, so the Navy can operate longer in distant waters. He recalled that 'Jala Usha', the first ship built in independent India, was launched at Visakhapatnam in 1948.

On 3 October 2026 the Ministry of Education approved five Centres of Excellence for studies in Classical Assamese, Bengali, Marathi, Pali and Prakrit, to support research, preservation, digitisation and wider reading of their literature. They will be at Tezpur University (Assamese), Visva-Bharati University (Bengali), Deccan College, Pune (Marathi), the Central University of Odisha (Pali) and the Central University of Gujarat (Prakrit).

The Union Public Service Commission completed a hundred years on 1 October 2026. Its history begins on 1 October 1926, when India's first Public Service Commission was constituted, as the Lee Commission of 1924 had recommended, under rules framed under the Government of India Act, 1919. Its first Chairman was Sir Ross Barker, and it sat at Metcalfe House, Delhi; its powers were limited, and its Chairman and Members were appointed by the Secretary of State in London.

The Constitution made it an independent constitutional body. The articles on the Union and State Public Service Commissions, moved in the Constituent Assembly by Dr B.R. Ambedkar on 22 August 1949, became Part XIV (Articles 315–323).

On 6 October 2026 the Union Cabinet approved a commitment of ₹10,000 crore towards an SME Growth Fund, announced in Para 28 of the Union Budget 2026-27. It is to put long-term growth equity into small and medium enterprises with proven, scalable businesses, a gap because most existing equity funds back early-stage and micro firms. Most of the money is to go to manufacturing SMEs, and firms in industrial clusters of Tier II and Tier III cities will also be considered.

The Ministry of Rural Development notified the Schedule of Permissible Works under the Viksit Bharat – Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, 2025: 375 works, 41% more than the 266 of the earlier framework. They fall under four pillars: Water Security (128 works, the most), Core Rural Infrastructure (111), Livelihood-related Infrastructure (98) and works for extreme weather and disaster preparedness (38). Every work is to come from the Viksit Gram Panchayat Plan approved by the Gram Sabha; newer items include ice-stupas and artificial glaciers.

India's National Telemedicine Service, eSanjeevani, crossed 50 crore teleconsultations on 15 September 2026, across all 36 States and Union Territories, the Health Ministry said on 6 October. Described as the world's largest telemedicine service in primary healthcare, it links more than 1.42 lakh Ayushman Arogya Mandir spokes with 19,473 hubs and 901 online OPDs, works in 15 languages and handles 2.5–3 lakh consultations a day. Women account for 57% of its use. It was built by C-DAC, Mohali.

On 4 October 2026 Rural Development Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan released the first instalment for 3 lakh houses in Andhra Pradesh, worth ₹3,600 crore, under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana–Gramin 2.0, at Burripalem in Guntur district. He also laid the foundation stone of the country's first pilot housing project using 3D concrete printing: 177 houses, at a cost of ₹14 crore. The State's allocation had been raised from 76,000 houses to 3 lakh at the Chief Minister's request.

The 57th meeting of the GST Council, chaired by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, was held in New Delhi on 8 October 2026. Where the 56th meeting had rationalised and cut rates, this one turned to process: registration, returns, refunds and adjudication. It recommended a simplified registration route for small sellers on e-commerce platforms and steps to ease the export of services, and gave in-principle approval to an optional scheme for small consumer-facing businesses with a turnover of up to ₹5 crore.

The fifth Kautilya Economic Conclave was held in New Delhi from 3 to 5 October 2026 on the theme 'Resilience in an Age of Flux', with more than 180 policymakers, economists and experts, over 80 of them from about 30 countries. The conclave is run by the Institute of Economic Growth (IEG), founded by V.K.R.V. Rao in 1952, with the Finance Ministry. It began in 2022; earlier themes were 'Redefining the Future' (2022), 'Navigating a World on Fire' (2023), 'The Indian Era' (2024) and 'Seeking Prosperity in Turbulent Times' (2025).

The second edition of Exercise Tarang Shakti, the multinational air exercise hosted by the Indian Air Force, ran at Air Force Station Jodhpur from 26 September to 12 October 2026. Air forces from seven countries took part: Australia, Bangladesh, France, Germany, Sri Lanka, the UAE and the USA, with 32 more nations as observers. Addressing the participants on 10 October, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said future military power would be decided less by the number of platforms than by the speed of sensing, understanding, deciding and acting.

INS Sahyadri arrived at Vladivostok, Russia, on 10 October 2026 for Exercise INDRA 2026, the bilateral exercise between the Indian Navy and the Russian Federation Navy, scheduled from 13 to 18 October. A harbour phase is to be followed by coordinated operations at sea. The Ministry of Defence placed the deployment within India's MAHASAGAR vision (Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions) and the momentum of the 23rd India–Russia Annual Summit of 4–5 December 2025.

On 8 October 2026 Electronics and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw launched the World Bank Group's World Development Report 2026: The Promise of Artificial Intelligence in New Delhi, at an event organised by the IndiaAI Mission with the World Bank. The report looks at what AI offers developing economies, and the risks, and sets out a framework of adoption, adaptation and advancement. It finds that the gains, in medical screening, farm decisions and education, rest on foundations such as reliable power and connectivity, computing, quality data, skills and capable institutions.

The India–UK annual bilateral naval exercise KONKAN-26 is held off Plymouth, in the United Kingdom, in two phases from 8 to 15 October 2026, with the guided-missile stealth frigate INS Trishul representing the Indian Navy. The harbour phase covers professional exchanges, cross-deck visits and sport; the sea phase includes air-defence and anti-submarine drills and cross-deck landings. The Ministry of Defence tied the exercise to the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership set out in the India-UK Vision 2035.

President Droupadi Murmu received the President of the Swiss Confederation, Guy Parmelin, at Rashtrapati Bhavan on 5 October 2026 and hosted a banquet in his honour. Agreements on migration and mobility, research, and technology transfer were signed during the visit. The President said the India–EFTA Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement, now in force, had opened more room for trade and investment, and noted that Swiss firms are prominent in building India's roads, railway bridges and tunnels.

On 5 October 2026 a barge carrying 540 tonnes of methanol left Bogibeel Terminal at Dibrugarh for Dhaka, the first cargo shipped from upper Assam to a foreign port since 1947. The methanol, made by Assam Petro-Chemicals at Namrup, goes about 768 km down National Waterway-2 on the Brahmaputra to the Bangladesh border, then along the Indo-Bangladesh Protocol Route, some 1,300 km in all. New customs and immigration posts at Bogibeel and Dhubri made the voyage possible.

The India–UAE joint military exercise Mountain Guardian 2026 began on 5 October 2026 at the Foreign Training Node, Chaubatia, in Uttarakhand, and runs to 18 October. Its focus is mountain warfare. The 92 personnel are drawn equally from the two armies, a Bhairav Battalion from India and a Mountain Infantry Battalion from the UAE, with women officers and soldiers of both sides in specialist roles. The drills include joint planning, surveillance grids, drone operations and rock climbing.

An Indian parliamentary delegation led by Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman Harivansh left on 3 October 2026 for the 153rd Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), held in Arusha, Tanzania, from 5 to 9 October. The Assembly's theme was 'Enhancing good governance and empowering communities through inclusivity, trust and opportunities for all'. Harivansh was to take part in the Governing Council, the General Debate and the hearing of candidates for the post of IPU President.

The G20 Trade Ministers' Meeting opened in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on 1 October 2026, under the United States G20 Presidency. At the session on food and trade, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said food must never be used as an instrument of pressure against any country, and that the Global South is among the hardest hit by the food, fuel and fertiliser crises that conflicts cause. He noted that more than 800 million people in India receive foodgrains free of cost.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the 10th India Mobile Congress (IMC 2026) at Yashobhoomi, New Delhi, on 8 October 2026. Organised by the Department of Telecommunications and the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) on the theme 'Scale Without Boundaries', it is billed as Asia's leading digital technology forum. The Prime Minister said 5G, launched from the IMC platform in 2022, now reaches every district through 5,50,000 5G base stations, and that mobile internet speeds have risen tenfold since 2022. Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia set the aim of 1 billion 5G users by 2030.

QNu Labs, with the Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geo-informatics (BISAG-N) and IIT Gandhinagar, has demonstrated India's first free-space Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) link, over 5.56 km, the Electronics and IT Ministry said on 3 October 2026. In a field trial on the night of 27–28 September, the link between BISAG-N and IIT Gandhinagar kept the quantum bit error rate below 5 per cent and produced secure keys at 230–260 bits a second, which were used to encrypt and decrypt test messages. Free-space means the signal crossed open air rather than optical fibre — a step towards satellite-based quantum communication.

Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav led India's delegation at the UNFCCC's Pre-COP31 meetings, co-hosted by Australia, Fiji and Tuvalu. Addressing the Leaders' Plenary in Fiji on 6 October 2026, he called for equal attention to adaptation, mitigation and the means of implementation, and said the principles of Equity and Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC) must be upheld in letter and spirit. He offered to share India's coastal-resilience and space-based expertise, such as shoreline monitoring and cyclone early warning, with Pacific Island countries.

On 5 October 2026 KJP21, a 32-month-old female cheetah born in India, gave birth to five cubs at Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh. Their father is a male from Botswana, so the litter begins a Botswanan lineage among India's cheetahs and adds a new genetic line. KJP21 is the third India-born female to give birth, after Mukhi and KGP12.

The births took India's cheetah population to 60, of which 41 were born in India.

On 4 October 2026 Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav released two captive-bred male Great Indian Bustards into the wild at Sam, in the Desert National Park near Jaisalmer, Rajasthan. The release marks the programme's move from building a conservation-breeding population of the critically endangered bird to returning it to the wild. The breeding centres at Sam and Ramdevra hold 97 birds, 57 of them bred in captivity, and 11 have been earmarked for release. The Bustard Recovery Programme is run by the Environment Ministry, the Rajasthan Forest Department and the Wildlife Institute of India.

On 2 October 2026, at the start of Wildlife Week, a tigress was released in Buxa Tiger Reserve in North Bengal, beginning a phased Tiger Reintroduction Programme to restore a self-sustaining tiger population there. The tigress, T138, was brought from Valmiki Tiger Reserve in Bihar. Buxa, declared a Tiger Reserve in 1983, had long been without a stable resident tiger population after habitat loss and a fall in prey. Since 2018 more than 800 chital have been released and about 380 hectares of grassland restored to prepare for the tiger's return.

The 20th Asian Games closed at Aichi-Nagoya, Japan, on 4 October 2026, after 16 days, 43 sports and 469 events. India's 501-athlete contingent, across 36 disciplines and with more than 300 athletes making their Asian Games debut, finished with 85 medals: 21 gold, 27 silver and 37 bronze.

Archery led India's golds with five, shooting and boxing gave three each, and cricket, hockey and kabaddi two each, the men's and women's teams both winning. Wrestling added two golds, and athletics and golf one each. Athletics won the most medals of any sport, 24, though only one was gold. Japan was hosting the Games for the third time, after Tokyo (1958) and Hiroshima (1994).

India's men's hockey team retained the Asian Games gold on 3 October 2026 with a commanding win in the final. It was their first back-to-back Asian Games title and their fifth gold overall. With the women's team having won the day before, India won both hockey golds at the same Asian Games for the first time.

India's men's cricket team retained its Asian Games gold medal on 3 October 2026. The Prime Minister called it a joyous occasion for the nation and wished the players well.

Kumkum Anil Mohod became the first Indian woman to win the recurve individual gold at the Asian Games, on 3 October 2026, settling the final in a shoot-off. A day earlier she had been part of the team that won India's first women's recurve team gold.

Pranavi Sharath Urs won India's first-ever gold in women's individual golf at the Asian Games, on 3 October 2026. The Prime Minister called it a sporting moment to remember and hoped the win would draw more young Indians to the game.

Aman Sehrawat won India's first-ever Asian Games gold in men's 57 kg freestyle wrestling, on 3 October 2026. He had won bronze at the previous Asian Games, and the Prime Minister praised his tenacity in going from bronze to the top of the podium.

India's women's hockey team won the gold medal at the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya on 2 October 2026, their first Asian Games title in more than four decades. The Prime Minister credited outstanding skill and teamwork, and hoped the win would add to hockey's popularity across the country.

Ankita Bhakat, Kumkum Anil Mohod and Kirti won India's first-ever gold medal in the women's recurve team event at the Asian Games on 2 October 2026, in a closely fought final. The Prime Minister said the landmark win would inspire young archers across the country.

India's men's quadrant team won bronze in sepaktakraw at the Asian Games on 2 October 2026 — India's first-ever medal in the men's quadrant event. The Prime Minister hoped it would give the sport further momentum in the country.

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2026, announced on 8 October, went to the Canadian author Anne Carson, 'for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature'.

The Nobel Peace Prize, announced on 9 October, went to Navanethem 'Navi' Pillay for her efforts to promote peace and international law. Born into a family of Indian Tamil origin in Durban, South Africa, under apartheid, she defended Nelson Mandela and other opponents of apartheid, served as a judge of South Africa's High Court, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Court, and was the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. She now sits as a judge of the International Court of Justice in the case in which Myanmar is accused of genocide.

The 2026 science Nobels were announced from 5 to 7 October. Physiology or Medicine went to Karl Deisseroth of Stanford University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Peter Hegemann of Humboldt University of Berlin and Georg Nagel of the University of Würzburg, for discovering light-gated ion channels and founding optogenetics, a way to switch nerve cells on and off with light using proteins first found in light-seeking algae.

Physics went to Francis Halzen of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a cubic kilometre of ice at the South Pole fitted with light sensors, and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos from space. Chemistry went to Henri B. Kagan of Université Paris-Sud and Kenso Soai of the Tokyo University of Science, for discovering non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis, a clue to why living things use only one of the two mirror-image forms of molecules such as amino acids.

On 6 October 2026 the Government appointed Air Marshal Ashutosh Dixit, the Vice Chief of the Air Staff, as the 29th Chief of the Air Staff, in the rank of Air Chief Marshal, from the afternoon of 31 October 2026, when Air Chief Marshal Amar Preet Singh retires. Commissioned into the IAF's fighter stream on 6 December 1986, he is an experimental test pilot with more than 3,500 flying hours on aircraft including the Mirage-2000, Jaguar and Tejas. He has earlier been Chief of Integrated Defence Staff to the Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee, and head of the Central Air Command.

On 5 October 2026 the President appointed three High Court Chief Justices as judges of the Supreme Court: Justice Sunita Agarwal, Chief Justice of the Gujarat High Court; Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya, Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court; and Justice Aparesh Kumar Singh, Chief Justice of the Telangana High Court. Justices Agarwal and Upadhyaya came originally from the Allahabad High Court, and Justice Singh from the Jharkhand High Court.