Current affairs October 5 – October 11, 2026 for CUET

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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.