Daily Current Affairs 21 October 2026

The 21 October 2026 edition marks ten years of UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik), the Regional Connectivity Scheme, which completes a decade on 21 October 2026. A PIB backgrounder of 20 October 2026 puts the totals at a cumulative 687 routes and 95 aerodromes operationalised, 1.72 crore passengers flown and Rs 5,091.23 crore of Viability Gap Funding disbursed, while the CAG’s audit found that 52 per cent of the routes awarded up to UDAN-3 could not commence. The edition also covers the 25th meeting of the SCO Council of Heads of Government in Dushanbe on 20 October 2026, under Tajikistan’s chairmanship, where Defence Minister Rajnath Singh represented India and called on Member States, in the Ministry of Defence’s account, to make concerted efforts to dismantle the entire ecosystem of terrorism.

The roundup covers Police Commemoration Day, which is observed every year on 21 October in memory of the ten policemen killed in an ambush at Hot Springs, Ladakh, in 1959; the Union Home Minister is scheduled to pay homage at the National Police Memorial in New Delhi today. It also covers a Ministry of Power review with Saudi Arabia of the proposed India-Saudi Arabia electrical interconnection. Seven editorial analyses complete the edition: from The Hindu, the editorial on CERT-In’s advisory on AI agents and its exemption from the RTI Act, former High Court judge K. Kannan on how religious conversion affects reservation, and an op-ed on paddy-land conservation in Keralam; from The Indian Express, C. Raja Mohan on capital as a tool of diplomacy, Rajib Dasgupta on childhood obesity policy, Bharath Reddy on China’s draft AI export controls, and Roopa Kudva on who captures the value India’s developers create. A UPSC-pattern quiz closes the day.