Current Affairs 3 November 2026: 20 Exam-Ready Facts

Three things dominated the last 24 hours. PM Narendra Modi opened the Bharat Renewable Energy Summit and Expo 2026 at Bharat Mandapam, gross GST for October crossed ₹2.31 lakh crore, and Indian badminton picked up a rare double at the Hylo Open in Saarbrucken.

Below are 20 facts from 2 and 3 November 2026, each with the exams it actually matters for. The Bihar and Jharkhand section is separate because BPSC, BSSC, Bihar Police, JSSC and JPSC all ask state-specific questions that a national digest will never cover. The matching 15-question quiz sits on the platform.

National

• 1. PM Narendra Modi inaugurated the Bharat Renewable Energy Summit and Expo 2026 on 2 November at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi. It runs till 5 November on the theme "Invest. Innovate. Inspire." Over 130 countries and more than 40 ministers are expected, with nine Country Partners: Australia, Denmark, the European Union, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Exam tag: All exams
• 2. EPFO marked its 74th Foundation Day on 1 November at the Dr Ambedkar International Centre, New Delhi, with Union Labour and Employment Minister Dr Mansukh Mandaviya presenting the Bhavishya Nidhi Awards 2026. Three announcements landed: automatic settlement of eligible inoperative EPF accounts holding up to ₹1,000, EPFO services over WhatsApp, and a wider auto-settlement limit of ₹5 lakh. EPFO had 7.98 crore contributing members as of 16 September 2026 and roughly 82 lakh pensioners. Exam tag: SSC / Banking / All exams
• 3. A Northern Bullet Train Corridor of about 1,500 km from Delhi to Guwahati has been cleared, routed through Agra, Kanpur, Lucknow, Ayodhya, Varanasi, Prayagraj, Patna and Siliguri. Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced it in Varanasi while flagging off the Varanasi to New Delhi Vande Bharat Sleeper Express. Budget 2026-27 had announced seven new high-speed corridors; Mumbai to Ahmedabad (508 km) remains the only one under construction. Exam tag: Railway / SSC / BPSC

International

• 4. Iliana Iotova, former Vice President and Acting President, won Bulgaria's presidential runoff on 1 November with 57.58% of the vote against former caretaker PM Andrey Gyurov's 39.47%. She becomes Bulgaria's first democratically elected woman president. Exam tag: All exams
• 5. India stands 38th out of 139 economies in the Global Innovation Index 2026 (verify), published by WIPO in its 19th edition. Switzerland tops the table, followed by Sweden and the United States. India is first among 36 lower-middle-income economies and first among the 11 economies of Central and Southern Asia. Bengaluru ranks 25th and Delhi 27th among the world's innovation clusters. Exam tag: SSC / Banking / All exams

Economy and Banking

• 6. Gross GST collection for October 2026 rose 23% to over ₹2.31 lakh crore, the second-highest monthly figure on record and the second straight month above ₹2 lakh crore. CGST was ₹42,935 crore, SGST ₹51,340 crore and IGST over ₹1.37 lakh crore. Refunds grew 6.5% to ₹27,934 crore, so net collection climbed 26% to more than ₹2.03 lakh crore. Domestic sales were up 16%, imports up 42% at ₹72,246 crore. April to October gross collection reached ₹14.77 lakh crore, a 13.2% rise. Festive demand and GST 2.0 rate rationalisation drove the jump. Exam tag: Banking / SSC / BPSC
• 7. The RBI's 63rd Monetary Policy Committee meeting (5 to 7 October 2026) raised the repo rate by 25 basis points to 5.50% and shifted the stance from neutral to calibrated tightening. The rate vote was unanimous; the stance vote was 4 to 2. SDF now stands at 5.25%, while MSF and the Bank Rate are at 5.75%. CRR stays at 3% and SLR at 18%. FY2026-27 real GDP growth is projected at 7.1% and CPI inflation at 5.2%. Governor Sanjay Malhotra chairs the MPC, which meets next from 2 to 4 December 2026. Exam tag: Banking / SSC

Worth pairing with that: the World Bank's India Poverty and Equity Brief of October 2026 records extreme poverty falling from 27.1% in 2011 to 2.6% in 2023, with 496 million people crossing the USD 4.20 a day lower-middle-income line.

Sports

• 8. India swept both singles titles at the Hylo Open 2026 in Saarbrucken, Germany on 1 November. Lakshya Sen beat defending champion Jonatan Christie of Indonesia 21-17, 21-10 for his second Hylo Open crown and first BWF title of the year. PV Sindhu beat Denmark's Line Kjaersfeldt 21-12, 21-14. Exam tag: All exams
• 9. India beat Malaysia 4-2 in a league match of the Men's Hockey Asian Champions Trophy 2026 at the Olympian Surjit Singh Hockey Stadium, Jalandhar, on 1 November. Captain Harmanpreet Singh scored a hat-trick (3rd, 33rd and 58th minute) and Sukhjeet Singh added the fourth in the 43rd. India lead the standings with 12 points from four matches and a goal difference of plus 21. Exam tag: All exams
• 10. Manisha Bhanwala won India's first ever women's freestyle gold at the Senior World Wrestling Championships, held at the Barys Arena in Astana, Kazakhstan from 24 October to 1 November. It is only India's second world title after Sushil Kumar's 66 kg gold in 2010. India finished with four medals, one gold, two silver and one bronze, all in women's freestyle. The USA and Iran topped the table with 15 medals each. Exam tag: All exams

Awards

• 11. Union Home Minister Amit Shah presented the President's Colour to Chandigarh Police on its 60th Raising Day at Police Lines, Chandigarh. The force of over 6,000 personnel won 145 medals at the All India Police Duty Meet (35 gold, 38 silver, 72 bronze) and has added 2,152 AI-enabled cameras and 141 vehicles. Shah set 31 December 2029 as the target date for a drug-free India. Exam tag: SSC / All exams
• 12. Nongmaithem Nandakumar Singh of Prasar Bharati won the ABU Broadcast Engineering Excellence Award 2026 for the DDPlayout and DDSlowMo innovations. The 63rd ABU General Assembly ran in Colombo, Sri Lanka, from 30 October to 3 November on the theme "Media for Peace and Humanity: Truth, Trust, and Transformation." Exam tag: All exams

Science and Defence

• 13. ISRO launched NVS-03 aboard GSLV-F18 on 30 October from the Second Launch Pad at SDSC SHAR, Sriharikota. This was the 20th GSLV flight. The 2,250 kg satellite reached geosynchronous transfer orbit in about 18 minutes and restores NavIC to a minimum operational configuration of four satellites. Thomas Kurian served as Project and Mission Director. Exam tag: All exams
• 14. The Defence Acquisition Council, chaired by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, gave in-principle approval to Project 18A for next-generation stealth guided-missile destroyers at roughly ₹80,000 crore. Indigenous content is pegged near 75%, the design comes from the Navy's Warship Design Bureau, and delivery is expected 5 to 10 years after the contract is signed. Exam tag: Defence / SSC / All exams
• 15. The first BIMSTEC Maritime Security Exercise is being hosted by the Andaman and Nicobar Command at Sri Vijaya Puram from 30 October to 3 November, with all seven members taking part: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Theme: "Shared Seas, Shared Security and Shared Prosperity." Ships involved include SLNS Gajabahu and UMS King Aung Zeya. Exam tag: Defence / All exams

Bihar and Jharkhand Special

Both states carry a heavy exam calendar, so treat this section as compulsory reading rather than optional state GK. One obituary belongs here too: Ravindra Kishore Sinha, former Rajya Sabha MP from Bihar (2014 to April 2020), died at 75 in Noida. Born on 22 September 1951 in Bahiyara village, Bhojpur district, he covered the 1971 India-Pakistan war as a correspondent and founded Security and Intelligence Services (SIS) in 1974.

• 16. Bihar Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary met Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari in Delhi on 2 November to push national highway and expressway work in Bihar and to start stalled projects early. Choudhary has been the state's 24th Chief Minister since 15 April 2026, taking over from Nitish Kumar, who resigned on 14 April to contest the Rajya Sabha election. Exam tag: BPSC / BSSC / Bihar Police
• 17. Paperless land registration is spreading across Nalanda district, where the Bihar Sharif, Hilsa and Rajgir registry offices now average 110 documents a day. Buyers get the original deed plus a secure PDF by SMS and WhatsApp, with a QR code for later download. This is a clean revenue-administration example for BPSC Mains answers on e-governance. Exam tag: BPSC / BSSC / TET
• 18. The Jharkhand Cabinet, chaired by Chief Minister Hemant Soren, cleared 62 proposals on 27 October and called a two-day special Assembly session for 25 and 26 November on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and the amended MMDR Act. Key approvals: about ₹545.38 crore for a 500-bed hospital building at MGM Medical College, Jamshedpur; about ₹284.17 crore for the 5,000-bed Jharkhand Medico City in Ranchi; the Jharkhand Mineral Exploration and Block Development Policy, 2026; health units at state universities with 2% of annual budgets earmarked for healthcare; polytechnic internships at government tool rooms in Ranchi, Dumka and Ramgarh; 7,890 handpumps; and CCTV at police stations. Exam tag: JSSC / JPSC / JTET

One more line for BPSC and JPSC essay answers: a Decent Work Index analysis published on 2 November puts Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh at the bottom on decent-work creation, with Goa, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Haryana at the top. Employment quality, not just the unemployment rate.

Important Days

• 19. 2 November was the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, observed at UNESCO headquarters in Paris on the 2026 theme "Threats Evolve. Impunity Endures." It comes from UN General Assembly Resolution A/RES/68/163 of 18 December 2013 and marks the killing of journalists Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon in Kidal, Mali, on 2 November 2013. First observed in 2014. Exam tag: All exams
• 20. 31 October was Rashtriya Ekta Diwas, the 151st birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, with the main event at the Statue of Unity in Ekta Nagar, Gujarat. The day was first observed in 2014. 1 November was World Vegan Day, started in 1994 by Louise Wallis; Donald Watson coined the word "vegan" in November 1944. Exam tag: All exams

Today's 15 objective questions are not in this post. They ship as a separate daily quiz on the platform, with answers, one-line explanations and the same exam tags, so you attempt them cold instead of reading the answer two lines below the question.

One honest caveat before you file this away. A few of the figures above, the GII rank in particular, come from coaching aggregators rather than the primary release, which is why that one carries a verify tag. Check the WIPO and PIB pages before you quote a number in a Mains answer. The GST, EPFO, ISRO and RBI figures here match official releases.

Revise these 20 points tonight, take the quiz, then revise again on Sunday. Current affairs sticks through spaced repetition, not through one careful read. ExamAtlas has free exam-specific mocks with AI analytics that show your topic-wise accuracy, so you can see whether it is economy or sports that keeps leaking marks.

Aaj ka full CA quiz: ExamAtlas.com