Current Affairs 8 November 2026: Top 20 Facts for SSC, Railway and Banking

Diwali morning, and the news still gave aspirants plenty to write down. The single biggest story for a general-awareness paper is the anti-cancer drug price cut: 1,031 formulations get cheaper from 9 November 2026, saving patients about Rs 3,502.31 crore a year. That is the kind of fact SSC and Banking papers like, because it pairs a scheme-style action with a clean number.

Below are 20 point-wise facts from the last 24 hours, grouped by section, each tagged with the exams it matters for. Figures here come from official releases where we could reach them (PIB, NPPA, the GST release, UNESCO) and from mainstream reporting where we could not. Where a source was thin, you will see a "(verify)" flag instead of a confident claim.

National

• The NPPA capped the trade margin on 137 non-scheduled anti-cancer medicines at 30 per cent of MRP, and revised prices for 1,031 formulations take effect on 9 November 2026, with estimated annual savings of Rs 3,502.31 crore. (All exams)
• The Centre notified the Bharatiya Vayuyan Niyam, 2026 under the Bharatiya Vayuyan Adhiniyam, 2024, carrying 220 rules across 8 chapters and 6 schedules, and replacing the Aircraft Rules, 1937 from 1 January 2027. (SSC / Railway)
• The Supreme Court held that the 24-hour limit on producing an arrested person before a magistrate, under Article 22(2), starts from the moment of actual detention and not from the time of formal arrest. (All exams)
• UNESCO inscribed manuscripts of the Mahabharata, Rajatarangini and Arthashastra on the Memory of the World Asia-Pacific Regional Register. (SSC / Railway)

Two more notifications are worth a line in your register. The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment launched the Vayo Samman Rashtriya Abhiyan in New Delhi on 4 November, an intergenerational campaign built around senior citizens. NITI Aayog launched the India Science and Technology (S and T) Scoreboard, an interactive tool that scores states on innovation, with Vice-Chairperson Ashok Kumar Lahiri associated with the release.

The aviation rulebook deserves a second look because it is the sort of thing examiners mine for a year. Operational airports in India went from 74 in 2014 to 166 in October 2026, and the new Niyam gives statutory footing to the Regional Air Connectivity Fund that pays for UDAN routes. It also sets 21 punishable offences with penalties running from Rs 10,000 to Rs 1 crore. Note the parent-law chain: Aircraft Act, 1934 to Bharatiya Vayuyan Adhiniyam, 2024, in force from 1 January 2025.

On the institutional side, the Supreme Court asked former Chief Justice of India Bhushan R. Gavai to head a committee scrutinising forest-rights orders in Tamil Nadu. The Election Commission, separately, begins a special summary revision of electoral rolls in Uttar Pradesh from 12 November. Also log CERT-In's new AI Security Auditing Guidelines, which sort AI systems into four risk tiers (Low, Moderate, High, Critical) across nine audit domains.

Appointments to remember

International

• India and the European Union concluded negotiations on India's association with Horizon Europe, the EU research and innovation programme worth EUR 93.5 billion, opening its funding to Indian researchers and startups. (All exams)
• Pedro Alliana was sworn in as President of Paraguay after the Senate removed Santiago Pena, and he will serve out the remainder of the term. (SSC / Banking)
• Japan announced an emergency package of about 10 billion yen to respond to cyberattacks and data breaches hitting businesses and government agencies, under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. (All exams)

Horizon Europe is the item most likely to show up in a paper this cycle, so hold three things: the programme name, the EUR 93.5 billion size, and the fact that negotiations concluded, which is not the same as the agreement being signed and ratified. Examiners have burned candidates on exactly that distinction before, with trade deals and climate pacts.

Elsewhere, the UN humanitarian affairs office recorded 377 settler attacks in the West Bank since September, during the olive harvest. Qatar's Prime Minister said talks between the United States and Iran continue under Qatari mediation. Iranian media reported two missiles falling on Qeshm Island, though officials have not confirmed damage, so treat that one as unsettled. (verify)

Economy & Banking

• Gross GST collection for October 2026 hit a record Rs 2,31,290 crore, up 22.9 per cent year-on-year, with net collection after refunds at Rs 2,03,356 crore (up 25.6 per cent). (Banking / SSC)
• NSE and BSE held the special Muhurat Trading session on 8 November 2026 from 2:20 pm to 3:30 pm, with a pre-open window from 2:05 pm, marking the start of Samvat 2083. (Banking)
• The Union Cabinet approved a Rs 2,814 crore capex support scheme for processing lithium and nickel, giving a 30 per cent capital subsidy for four plants over FY 2026-27 to 2030-31, with the Ministry of Mines as nodal. (All exams)

Break the GST number down, because that is where the follow-up question hides. IGST contributed Rs 1,37,015 crore (59.2 per cent of the gross), of which Rs 72,246 crore came from imports, growing 42.2 per cent. CGST was Rs 42,935 crore and SGST Rs 51,340 crore. Refunds for the month stood at Rs 27,934 crore.

On the critical-minerals scheme, the per-beneficiary caps are worth a note: Rs 500 crore for a lithium unit and Rs 900 crore for a nickel unit, with two winners per mineral chosen on a least-cost basis. Minimum plant capacity is 30 kt for lithium and 50 kt for nickel. Place it alongside the National Critical Mineral Mission of January 2025 and the 30 critical minerals the Ministry of Mines identified in June 2023.

Index watch

Sports

• India beat New Zealand by 4 runs on DLS in the rain-hit 2nd ODI at Hnry Stadium, Wellington on 7 November, taking a 2-0 lead in the three-match series. (All exams)
• Mohammed Shami retired from Test cricket on 6 November 2026 after 64 Tests and 229 wickets at an average of 27.71, including six five-wicket hauls. (All exams)
• Lakshya Sen won the men's singles title at the Hylo Open 2026, beating Indonesia's Jonatan Christie in the final. (All exams)

Shami's career has a neat symmetry that makes a good question: he debuted against the West Indies at Eden Gardens on 6 November 2013, took 9 wickets for 118 runs in that match, and announced his Test retirement on exactly the same calendar date 13 years later. His last Test was the 2023 World Test Championship final at The Oval. He continues in white-ball cricket.

Awards

• The Ministry of Railways won the PM Surya Ghar Excellence Award 2026 for its rooftop solar performance. (Railway / SSC)
• France conferred the Knight (Chevalier) of the National Order of Merit on Dr Devi Prasad Shetty, founder and chairman of Narayana Health. (All exams)
• Nirmala Lakshman won the Sharjah Award for Best International Non-Fiction Book. (All exams)

Two supporting awards from the same week: Edmund Richardson took the 2026 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction for a biography of Alexander the Great, and Prashant Chaudhary won the 5th Rohini Nayyar Prize for Rural Development. For the France honour, remember the order was set up on 3 December 1963 by Charles de Gaulle and sits second to the Legion d'honneur, with five classes from Chevalier up to Grand-Croix.

Science & Defence

• DRDO flight-tested the Pralay quasi-ballistic surface-to-surface missile, a canisterised road-mobile system with a 150 to 500 km strike range and a conventional warhead of 500 to 1,000 kg. (Defence / SSC)
• GRSE, Kolkata delivered Amini, an Anti-Submarine Warfare Shallow Water Craft of the Arnala class, to the Indian Navy, built to replace the ageing Abhay-class corvettes. (Defence / Railway)

Pralay is developed by Research Centre Imarat (RCI), Hyderabad with Bharat Dynamics Limited as the production partner, and uses ring-laser-gyro inertial navigation with satellite aiding. It fills the Army's gap between Pinaka rockets and longer-range missiles. Tie it to the Prithvi Defence Vehicle and Prahaar lineage if a question asks about its origin.

On the science side, INCOIS, Hyderabad issued a marine heatwave alert covering the Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean, with sea surface temperatures running up to 1 degree Celsius above normal. The threshold definition is useful: a marine heatwave means sea surface temperature above the 90th percentile of the regional climatological value for at least five straight days. Swell waves above 1 metre were forecast for 11 coastal states and union territories.

Important Days

• 7 November is National Cancer Awareness Day in India, which landed well this year next to the anti-cancer drug price cut. (All exams)
• 8 November is World Radiography Day, marking the discovery of X-rays by Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen in 1895. (All exams)

A small honesty note on important days: aggregator sites publish "themes" for Indian observances that the sponsoring ministry never actually announced. We have left those two themes as focus areas rather than quoting a theme we could not trace to an official release. If you are revising for a paper that asks themes verbatim, stick to UN-designated days, where the theme is published.

Where are today's 15 questions?

They are not in this post. The 15 MCQs built from exactly these facts live in a separate daily quiz set on ExamAtlas, and that split is deliberate.

Reading and testing use different muscles. When the question sits three lines below the fact, your eye has already stored the answer and you score 14 out of 15 without learning anything. Pull the questions into a separate attempt and your brain has to retrieve the fact cold, which is what the exam hall asks of you. Retrieval practice is also what builds the kind of memory that survives a two-month gap between revision and the paper.

So use this page as the input, close it, then attempt the quiz. If you drop marks on an item, come back here and reread that one bullet. That loop is worth more than three passes of the same page.

Final word

If you only revise five things from today, make them the NPPA 30 per cent trade-margin cap, the Rs 2,31,290 crore October GST figure, Horizon Europe's EUR 93.5 billion, Shami's 229 Test wickets and Article 22(2) running from actual detention. Those five have the clean number or the clean name that a one-mark question needs.

One caution before you file this away. A few items here, including the Qeshm Island missile report and the reported grid-storage viability gap funding figure, came from single-source reporting that we could not match against a PIB or ministry release. Treat the flagged ones as provisional and check them in tomorrow's digest. Accuracy beats volume in current affairs, every time.

Aaj ka full CA quiz: ExamAtlas.com