Daily Current Affairs 8 October 2026: 20 Exam-Ready Facts
Daily Current Affairs 8 October 2026: 20 Exam-Ready Facts
The RBI did something on 7 October that most coaching notes were not prepared for. It raised the repo rate by 25 basis points to 5.5%, the first hike of this cycle, and Governor Sanjay Malhotra told the press that near-term cuts are off the table. If your Banking Awareness notebook still says 5.25%, correct it today.
Below are 20 facts from the last 24 hours, every one of them cross-checked against an official release or at least two independent reports. Each carries an exam tag so you know where it will actually be asked. One Bihar item is flagged (verify) because no official notice has come out yet, and you should treat it that way.
National
Three Cabinet-level and ministry-level items dominated the national desk. All three have scheme names, numbers and dates, which is exactly the shape SSC and Railway prelims like.
- The Union Cabinet approved the Integrated Transport and Logistics Authority (ITLA) on 6 October as a Special Purpose Vehicle that will act as the apex body for transport and logistics planning across 8 transport domains, prepare a National Transport Master Plan of 10 years or more, and technically appraise central projects costing ₹500 crore or above. Exam tag: SSC / Railway / All exams
- Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda launches JOSH (Joint Squad for Health) Teams nationally on 8 October at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, with the first phase covering 55 districts across 11 states to mobilise young volunteers for TB elimination. Exam tag: All exams
- The 10th India Mobile Congress (IMC 2026) opened on 7 October at Yashobhoomi, Dwarka, New Delhi, runs to 10 October on the theme "Scale Without Boundaries", and is organised by the Department of Telecommunications with the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI). Exam tag: SSC / Banking / All exams
Starlink used the IMC stage to say it has set up 20 gateway sites in India. Keep that number; satellite-broadband questions have started showing up in Railway GK.
Appointments in the news
International
- Oman, Egypt, Lebanon, Greece and Cyprus have formally expressed interest in joining the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), according to the French President's Special Envoy for IMEC, which would widen a corridor announced at the 2023 G20 Delhi summit. Exam tag: All exams
- At the 28th Session of the FAO Committee on Forestry (COFO 28) in Rome, held 28 September to 2 October, India reported forest and tree cover of 82.74 million hectares, which is 25.17% of its geographical area, while FAO's State of the World's Forests 2026 put globally degraded land at about 1.56 billion hectares. Exam tag: SSC / BPSC / All exams
One neighbourhood line to keep in the margin: Adani Power and Bhutan's Druk Green Power Corporation (DGPC) signed a shareholders agreement on 6 October for the 770 MW Chamkharchhu-I run-of-river hydro project in Zhemgang, on a 49:51 equity split and a 30-year BOOT concession.
Economy and Banking
This is the section to revise twice. Rate questions carry marks in IBPS, SBI and RBI Grade B, and a wrong repo figure in an interview answer is expensive.
- The RBI Monetary Policy Committee, after its 5 to 7 October meeting, raised the repo rate by 25 basis points to 5.5%, with the Standing Deposit Facility at 5.25% and the Marginal Standing Facility and Bank Rate at 5.75%. Exam tag: Banking / SSC / All exams
- In the same statement the RBI projected FY27 real GDP growth at 7.1% and CPI inflation at 5.2%, with Q3 inflation seen at 6%, which is above the upper tolerance band of the 4% (+/- 2%) target. Exam tag: Banking / BPSC / All exams
- The Union Cabinet cleared a ₹10,000 crore government commitment to the SME Growth Fund (SGF), structured as an Alternative Investment Fund under SEBI (AIF) Regulations, 2012, first announced in Para 28 of the Union Budget 2026-27, with the majority of money going to manufacturing SMEs in Tier-II and Tier-III clusters. Exam tag: Banking / SSC / BSSC
India in global indices
Sports
- The 20th Asian Games at Aichi-Nagoya, Japan closed on 4 October with India 4th on the medal table at 85 medals (21 gold, 27 silver, 37 bronze) from a contingent of 501 athletes across 36 disciplines, trap shooter Neeru Dhanda carrying the flag at the closing ceremony, and Doha set to host the 2030 edition. Exam tag: All exams
- Shreyas Iyer scored his maiden T20I century as India beat the West Indies by 8 wickets with 32 balls to spare in the first T20I of a five-match series at Ekana Stadium, Lucknow on 6 October, India's 10th straight win in the format. Exam tag: All exams
- Harmanpreet Kaur stepped down as captain of the India women's team across all three formats, announced after a BCCI review meeting in Guwahati. Exam tag: All exams
Event and winner
Awards
Nobel week gives you three guaranteed one-markers. Learn the laureate, the country and the reason, in that order.
- The 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, announced on 7 October, went to Henri B. Kagan of France and Kenso Soai of Japan for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis. Exam tag: All exams
- The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics, announced on 6 October, went to Francis Halzen of the University of Wisconsin-Madison for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin. Exam tag: All exams
- Mahesh Kakde, professor at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, won the Ramanujan Prize 2026 for his work in algebraic number theory, a $10,000 award administered jointly by ICTP and the International Mathematical Union. Exam tag: SSC / BPSC / All exams
The Medicine prize, announced 5 October, went to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for light-gated ion channels and optogenetics, with the prize money at 12 million SEK. Literature is due 8 October and Peace on 9 October, so keep two blank lines in your notebook.
Science and Defence
- Defence Minister Rajnath Singh launched Surya, the first indigenous Fleet Support Ship (FSS-1), at Hindustan Shipyard Limited, Visakhapatnam on 6 October, part of a ₹19,000 crore order for five such ships, each 225 m long and 32 m wide, and he also laid the keel of FSS-5 and inaugurated a 300-tonne Goliath crane. Exam tag: SSC / Railway / All exams
- DRDO's Aerial Delivery Research and Development Establishment (ADRDE), Agra carried out the maiden live jump of the Advanced High-Altitude Parachute (AHAP) at Nyoma, Ladakh, a static-line system designed for mass paratrooper drops at altitudes up to 18,000 feet. Exam tag: SSC / Railway / All exams
- Exercise Mountain Guardian 2026, the first India-UAE joint bilateral military exercise, began at Chaubatia, Uttarakhand and runs 5 to 18 October with 92 personnel, drawn from the Indian Army's Bhairav Battalion and the UAE Army's Mountain Infantry Battalion. Exam tag: SSC / Railway / All exams
Two smaller defence lines worth a margin note: Kochi-based EyeROV delivered two TROUT underwater remotely operated vehicle systems to the Indian Navy on 7 October, the first of five, and GE Aerospace shipped four F404-IN20 engines to HAL for the LCA Mk-1A programme.
Bihar and Jharkhand Special
If you are sitting for BPSC, BSSC, Bihar Police, JSSC, JPSC or a state TET, this is your highest-return section. State commissions ask their own recruitment news back to you.
- BPSC TRE 4.0 teacher vacancies were revised upward to 33,320 posts from the earlier 32,388, with the application and fee-payment deadline set at 26 October 2026. Exam tag: BPSC / BTET / TET
- The Jharkhand Academic Council (JAC), Ranchi has fixed 1 November 2026 as the JTET 2026 exam date in two shifts, Upper Primary (Classes 6 to 8) from 9:30 am to 12:00 noon and Primary (Classes 1 to 5) from 2:00 pm to 4:30 pm, with admit cards due on 15 October 2026. Exam tag: JTET / JSSC / TET
Two more state items you should track rather than memorise. The BPSC 72nd Combined Competitive Examination preliminary test set for 25 October 2026 has reportedly been cancelled for about 1,189 posts, with no fresh date announced, but the Commission has not put out an official notice, so treat this as (verify) until bpsc.bih.nic.in confirms it. Separately, Jharkhand has roughly 23,610 posts in the pipeline across JPSC (1,645) and JSSC (21,965), with a high-level committee chaired by the Development Commissioner examining a shift to computer-based testing and multi-stage prelims, which was reported in September 2026 and is (verify) for any final decision.
An honest caveat on the Bihar items: aggregator sites moved faster than the Commission here, and that gap has burned candidates before. Do not change your study plan for the 72nd PT until the official notice lands.
Important Days
- 8 October is the 94th Indian Air Force Day, marking the IAF's raising on 8 October 1932, with the 2026 theme "Indian Air Force: Infallible, Impervious and Precise", the ceremonial parade at Hindon Air Force Station, Ghaziabad and the main aerial display at Jodhpur, under Chief of Air Staff Air Chief Marshal A.P. Singh. Exam tag: SSC / Railway / All exams
Day and theme
Where to practise today's 15 questions
The 15 MCQs built from these facts no longer sit on this page. They are in the ExamAtlas daily quiz, with answers, a one-line explanation each, and a note on the trap behind every wrong option. Difficulty is pitched a notch above the real paper.
Attempt it the same day you read the facts. A 24-hour gap is the difference between recall and recognition, and only one of those pays in the exam hall.
What to do with this before tomorrow
Write only the numbers in a single-page sheet: 5.5, 500, 10,000, 85, 33,320, 94, 38. Numbers are what the paper tests, and they are the first thing you forget by Sunday.
One warning from last cycle. In BPSC 70th prelims, several current-affairs questions came from state-government decisions, not national headlines, so the Bihar and Jharkhand section above deserves a second reading even if it feels smaller than the national one.
Aaj ka full CA quiz: ExamAtlas.com