Current affairs August 31 – September 6, 2026 for CUET

The National Statistics Office estimates that real GDP grew 7.8% in April to June 2026, against 6.9% in the same quarter of 2025-26. Nominal GDP, before prices are stripped out, grew 10.3%. Real GVA grew 8.2%. The tertiary sector led with 10.0%, and gross fixed capital formation, the investment figure, grew 11.9%.

These are the first quarterly numbers since the new series of GDP estimates, with base year 2022-23, was released on 27 February 2026. Four growth rates sit in one press note, and a question usually turns on which one it asks for: real or nominal, GDP or GVA.

The 26th meeting of the SCO Council of Heads of State was held in Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic, from 31 August to 1 September 2026. It fell in the organisation's 25th anniversary year. Besides the Bishkek Declaration, four MoUs and over twenty decisions and statements were adopted.

Several items India had backed went into the Declaration: English in the SCO Charter as an official language, a Civilisation Dialogue Forum, a Young Scientist Forum and a Young Author's Conclave. The Prime Minister said India would host the first edition of the SCO Civilisation Dialogue Forum later in 2026.

On 1 September 2026 Air Vice Marshal Shakti Sharma became the first woman officer outside the medical services in India's defence forces to reach the rank of Air Vice Marshal or its equivalent, and took over as Assistant Chief of the Air Staff (Education) at Air Headquarters. Commissioned into the IAF's Education Branch on 18 June 1994, she was earlier the first woman officer from the three services to command a Sainik School, as Principal of Sainik School, Kapurthala.

The Sports Ministry announced the Tenzing Norgay National Adventure Awards for 2024 on 2 September 2026: Baljeet Kaur and Skalzang Rigzin for land adventure, Rimo Saha for water adventure, and Shiv Prasad Chamoli for lifetime achievement. Each receives a statuette, a certificate and ₹15 lakh from the President, together with the National Sports Awards 2025.

The Department of Consumer Affairs notified the Legal Metrology (Indian Standard Time) Rules, 2026 on 27 August 2026, published in the Gazette on 29 August, towards 'One Nation, One Time': IST becomes the common, legally recognised time reference for telecom, payments, power grids and other critical systems. The rules take effect 180 days after publication. CSIR-National Physical Laboratory, India's National Metrology Institute, keeps IST traceable to within a few nanoseconds of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), backed by secondary timescales at five regional laboratories in Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar, Faridabad and Guwahati.

On 2 September 2026 the Japan Credit Rating Agency (JCR) upgraded India's long-term foreign- and local-currency issuer ratings by one notch, from 'BBB+' to 'A-', with a Stable outlook, and raised India's country ceiling to 'A'. JCR cited strong growth — real GDP grew 7.8 per cent in 2025-26 and again in the first quarter of 2026-27 — better quality of spending, and a fall in the Centre's fiscal deficit from 4.7 per cent of GDP in 2024-25 to 4.4 per cent in 2025-26.

Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever made an official visit to India from 2 to 4 September 2026, his first since taking office in February 2025. The leaders recalled the more than 9,000 Indian soldiers who died in Flanders in the First World War, and that Belgium was among the first European countries to establish diplomatic relations with India, in 1947. They welcomed the first India–Belgium Strategic Dialogue, held in Brussels on 15 July 2026.

GSLV-F17 flew on 4 September 2026 from the Second Launch Pad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre, SHAR, and placed EOS-05 into a sub-geosynchronous transfer orbit. It was the nineteenth flight of the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle.

ISRO describes EOS-05 as India's first imaging satellite from geosynchronous orbit. Height is the point of it: a camera that holds station over the same longitude can watch one region continuously, where a satellite in a low polar orbit has to come round again before it sees the same ground.

Dr Vinaya Prakash Singh, an Indian Postal Service officer, was re-elected unopposed as Secretary-General of the Asian-Pacific Postal Union (APPU) at its 14th Congress in Bangkok on 4 September 2026, for a second four-year term from January 2027 to December 2030. The APPU, headquartered in Bangkok, has 32 member countries and is a regional union of the Universal Postal Union (UPU).