Current Affairs 22 October 2026: 20 Exam-Ready Facts, Point by Point

Three stories dominate today's paper. The RBI published the minutes of its 63rd MPC meeting on 21 October, confirming a 6-0 vote behind the repo rate hike to 5.50%. India's core sector grew 7.9% in September, its best reading in twelve months. And at Nagoya, India crossed 62 medals at the Asian Para Games with two days of competition still left.

Everything below is drawn from the last 24 hours and cross-checked against PIB, RBI, WIPO, UNEP and ministry releases. Each fact carries the exam it matters most for, so you can skip what your syllabus does not touch. One caveat before you start: the para-sport medal count moves every few hours, so treat the tally as a Day-3 snapshot, not a final figure.

National

• Police Commemoration Day was observed on 21 October. Home Minister Amit Shah laid a wreath at the National Police Memorial in New Delhi, which honours 36,852 police personnel. The day marks the 1959 ambush at Hot Springs in Ladakh, where 10 CRPF men were killed by Chinese troops. Exam tag: All exams
• The PM-SETU National Steering Committee cleared five Strategic Investment Plans worth ₹1,194.92 crore to upgrade ITI clusters in Maharashtra, Odisha and Jammu & Kashmir. Exam tag: SSC / Railway / All exams
• A nationwide financial inclusion saturation campaign runs from 21 October to 31 December 2026 across roughly 2.70 lakh Gram Panchayats and urban local bodies. It covers PMJDY, PMJJBY, PMSBY, Atal Pension Yojana and pending re-KYC. Exam tag: Banking / SSC

Two more items worth a line each: the 23rd Law Commission holds its national conference on co-operative federalism at Vigyan Bhawan on 22 October, inaugurated by Vice-President C P Radhakrishnan, and Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan launched Khet Bachao Abhiyan (Rabi 2026) at Karnal, Haryana, running 22 October to 30 November.

International

• The India-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement entered into force on 20 October 2026. It was signed in New Delhi on 27 April 2026 by Piyush Goyal and Todd McClay. New Zealand drops duties on all Indian exports; India removes tariffs on about 95% of New Zealand's. Exam tag: All exams / Banking
• Defence Minister Rajnath Singh represented India at the 25th SCO Council of Heads of Government in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. He called for dismantling the infrastructure of terrorism with no double standards and backed the SCO trade and economic action plan for 2026-2030. Exam tag: All exams
• UNEP released the Emissions Gap Report 2026, titled "The Point of Return". Current policies put the world on a 2.8°C warming path, and the report asks for cuts of 18%, 45% and 69% by 2030, 2035 and 2040 against 2025 levels. Exam tag: All exams

Economy & Banking

• The RBI published minutes of the 63rd MPC meeting on 21 October. The repo rate was raised 25 basis points to 5.50% by a unanimous 6-0 vote, with the stance shifted to calibrated tightening. SDF stands at 5.25%, MSF and Bank Rate at 5.75%. FY27 projections: GDP 7.1%, CPI inflation 5.2%, with a Q3 inflation peak of 6.0%. Governor: Sanjay Malhotra. Exam tag: Banking / All exams
• The Index of Eight Core Industries grew 7.9% year-on-year in September 2026, a twelve-month high. Iron ore led at 18.4%. April to September growth stood at 5.1%, and August was revised up to 5.9%. Exam tag: Banking / SSC
• RBI placed Puducherry Co-operative Urban Bank under directions using Section 35A read with Section 56 of the Banking Regulation Act. Withdrawals are capped at ₹5,000 per depositor, while DICGC insurance cover remains ₹5 lakh. Exam tag: Banking

Also on the tape: the Jio Platforms IPO of ₹30,213 crore was fully subscribed in roughly 100 minutes at a price band of ₹1,065 to ₹1,119, and the rupee closed at a provisional ₹94.43 to the dollar, up 48 paise and at a six-week high.

Sports

The 2026 Asian Para Games are being held at Nagoya in Japan's Aichi Prefecture from 18 to 24 October. India sat fifth with 62 medals (14 gold, 21 silver, 27 bronze) at the close of Day 3 on 21 October. China led with 226.

• Deepthi Jeevanji of Telangana took her second successive Asian Para Games gold in the women's 400m T20 with a Games record of 56.36 seconds. The T20 class is for athletes with intellectual impairment. Exam tag: All exams
• Arshi Gupta, aged 10 and from Faridabad, became the world's youngest driver to win a Rotax MAX Challenge Mini title, taking the Mini Max category of the FMSCI RMC India National Karting Championship 2026 at Bengaluru. She holds the FIA President's Medal. Exam tag: All exams
• Pragyan Ojha took over as chairman of the BCCI senior men's selection committee, succeeding Ajit Agarkar, and Ramesh Powar joined the five-member panel alongside Shiv Sundar Das, RP Singh and Ajay Ratra. Exam tag: All exams

Awards

• President Droupadi Murmu presented the Lalit Kala Akademi awards of the 65th National Exhibition of Art and felicitated the winners of the 3rd Print Biennale India 2026. Exam tag: All exams

One more for the one-liner list: SUVIKALP, a tool built by the Coal Controller Organisation to select mine-repurposing projects, won the SKOCH Gold Award 2026 in the Digital Operational Efficiency category.

Science & Defence

• The Army Commanders' Conference opened in New Delhi on 21 October and runs to 23 October. Rajnath Singh is to release the Indian Army's Land Warfare Doctrine there. Exam tag: Defence / All exams
• Exercise AUSTRAHIND 2026, the fifth India-Australia joint military exercise, began on 19 October at the Foreign Training Node in Thiruvananthapuram and ends 1 November. About 120 personnel take part from each side, with the Garhwal Rifles leading the Indian contingent and Australia's 13 Brigade on the other. A New Zealand observer delegation is attending for the first time. The theme is joint sub-conventional operations in island and coastal environments under Chapter VII of the UN mandate. Exam tag: Defence / SSC / All exams
• The Ministry of Defence signed a ₹770 crore contract with Bharat Electronics Limited for Low Level Light Weight Radar (LLLR-I), in the presence of Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh. Exam tag: Defence / SSC

On the space and astronomy side, scientists at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics used the VELC payload on Aditya-L1 to produce Doppler velocity images of the solar corona, published in the Astrophysical Journal. A Raman Research Institute team led by Kinjal Roy also detected an accretion disk around Centaurus X-3, a high-mass X-ray binary roughly 24,000 light-years away.

Bihar-Jharkhand Special

If you are writing BPSC, BSSC, Bihar Police, JSSC or JPSC, this is the section that decides your GK marks. Two teacher-recruitment deadlines fall this week.

• BPSC TRE 4.0 vacancies were revised upward from 32,388 to 33,320, and the application and fee deadline is 26 October 2026, four days from today. Within the same drive, the Bihar Secondary Teacher count for Classes 9 and 10 rose to 4,370 after 493 posts were added in Bengali, Maithili, Arabic, Persian, Fine Arts, Dance and Music. That window opened 25 September. Eligibility is graduation plus CTET Paper 2, BTET Paper 2 or STET Paper 1. Exam tag: BPSC / BTET / TET
• BPSSC is recruiting 150 Bihar Police Sub-Inspector posts under Advertisement 09/2026, at Pay Level 6 (₹35,400 to ₹1,12,400). Selection runs prelims, then mains, then the physical tests. Exam tag: Bihar Police / BSSC
• In Jharkhand, the two-month ultimatum that JPSC-JSSC aspirants gave the state government on 19 August has now run out. The government had cancelled 22 recruitment exams, ordered probes into 23 more conducted since 2014, and set up a reform committee under senior IAS officer Amitabh Kaushal with a two-month reporting deadline. The committee's findings had not been made public as of this morning. (verify) Exam tag: JSSC / JPSC / JTET

Important Days

Index and Rankings

• India is 38th of 139 economies in the Global Innovation Index 2026 and leads the Central and Southern Asia region. Switzerland is first, followed by Sweden, the United States, the Republic of Korea and Singapore. Exam tag: All exams

The World Bank's World Development Report 2026, "The Promise of Artificial Intelligence", was launched in New Delhi on 8 October by Ashwini Vaishnaw. It recommends an adopt, adapt and advance sequence, and notes that about 4% of Indian jobs face immediate automation risk against more than a third in advanced economies.

Bihar's Chief Minister, for the static-GK column, is Samrat Choudhary, in office since 15 April 2026, with Vijay Kumar Chaudhary and Bijendra Prasad Yadav as his deputies.

What to Revise Tonight

Four numbers decide most of today's scoring: 5.50% repo, 7.9% core sector, 38th in the Global Innovation Index, and 2.8°C from the UNEP report. Write them on a single card and test yourself tomorrow morning.

Once the card is written, go and attempt today's 15-question quiz on the platform. It is built from these same facts, pitched a notch above the real paper, and every question carries a one-line explanation, so a wrong answer still teaches you something.

One honest caution. The Asian Para Games tally in this post is a snapshot from the evening of 21 October, and the Games run to 24 October, so expect the gold count to climb. If a question in your mock quotes a different total, check the date attached to it before you mark yourself wrong. Also note that the Jharkhand reform-committee item is flagged for verification: the ultimatum has lapsed, but no official report had been published when this went out.

If you are in Patna or Ranchi and sitting TRE 4.0, stop revising at some point today and finish the form. The BPSC portal slows to a crawl on 25 and 26 October every single cycle, and a GK score cannot rescue a missed application.

Aaj ka full CA quiz: ExamAtlas.com