Current Affairs Quiz 31 October 2026

NavIC offers two services: a Standard Position Service for civilian users and a Restricted Service for strategic users. A receiver finds its position from how long each satellite’s signal takes to arrive, so every satellite carries atomic clocks, and clock failures have been NavIC’s main weakness: IRNSS-1F’s procured clock stopped in March 2026, days after its 10-year design life ended.

The second generation, NVS-01 to NVS-05, adds an indigenous atomic clock alongside procured ones and a new civilian L1 signal (1575.42 MHz), interoperable with other GNSS signals, on top of the existing L5 and S signals. NVS-01, launched by GSLV-F12 in May 2023, flew the first indigenous atomic clock.

The GSLV in its F18 form has three stages: an S139 solid core with four L40H liquid strap-ons, the GL40HT second stage and the CUS15 cryogenic upper stage. ISRO says the GSLV can launch communication satellites of up to the 2 tonne class, while the LVM3 handles the 4 tonne class.

A geostationary satellite flies at about 35,786 km above the equator; it is first placed in an elongated transfer orbit and then raised from apogee.

PAVAN-I3C is described as a single-window digital nerve centre. It integrates more than 30 APIs and data streams, data from 111 Continuous Ambient Air Quality Monitoring Stations (CAAQMS) in Delhi-NCR, over 2,300 industries and more than 3,200 active construction sites, and works on the principle of ‘Detect, Analyse, Act’: a deviation from norms or Statutory Directions triggers an alert and escalation to the agency concerned.

Its modules draw on OCEMS emission data from industry, satellite data on crop-residue burning from IARI, ISRO and FIRMS, landfill feeds, VAHAN data and citizen complaints through the Green Delhi and SAMEER apps, with a State Action Plan module for Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Alongside it sits the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP): four stages, each added on top of the lower ones.

GRAP Stage I was invoked across the NCR on 21 October 2026, and the revised schedule of September 2026 has 48 actions (25, 8, 10 and 5 across the four stages). NCAP was launched by the Environment Ministry in January 2019 for 131 non-attainment and million-plus cities.

Priority sector lending obliges banks to lend a set share of credit to sectors such as agriculture and micro enterprises. For domestic commercial banks the sub-targets are agriculture 18% (14% for non-corporate farmers, of which 10% for small and marginal farmers), micro enterprises 7.5% and weaker sections 12%.

The current Master Directions are dated 24 March 2025 and came into effect on 1 April 2025. The Lead Bank Scheme followed the Gadgil Study Group (October 1969) and the Nariman Committee (November 1969): the RBI designates a commercial bank as the Lead Bank in each district to coordinate banks, government and NABARD so that credit reaches the priority sectors.

As on 31 March 2025, 12 public sector banks and two private sector banks were lead banks in 782 districts, and the RBI issued revised guidelines on 19 June 2026. The new committee, chaired by former Central Vigilance Commissioner Suresh N. Patel with a six-month tenure, was proposed in paragraph 42 of the Budget speech of 1 February 2026; its terms also cover prudential norms, capital needs, the cost of capital and AI in banking.

Article 21 provides that no person shall be deprived of life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law, and a death at the hands of the police tests it directly, because the state is both the party that fired and the agency that investigates. In PUCL v State of Maharashtra (23 September 2014), a Bench of Chief Justice R.M. Lodha and Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman laid down sixteen requirements: an FIR forwarded to the court, an independent investigation, a magisterial inquiry in every death in police firing, information to the NHRC or the State Human Rights Commission without delay, compensation, and no out-of-turn promotion or instant gallantry reward.

The NHRC, set up on 12 October 1993 under the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993, has required since May 2010, under its guidelines (first issued in 2003 and modified on 12 May 2010), that every death in police action be reported to it within 48 hours. In Arif Md.

Yeasin Jwadder v State of Assam (2025), the Court entrusted the inquiry into alleged encounters in Assam to the Assam Human Rights Commission. Prakash Singh v Union of India (2006) ordered structural reform, including State Security Commissions and a minimum two-year tenure for the DGP.

The boundary between India and China is not settled. Under the agreement signed at Beijing on 7 September 1993, the two sides ‘shall strictly respect and observe the line of actual control’ pending an ultimate solution, and references to the LAC ‘do not prejudice their respective positions on the boundary question’.

The 1996 agreement on confidence-building measures in the military field followed, signed on 29 November 1996. The Special Representatives mechanism on the boundary question was established in 2003 and has held 25 rounds, the latest in Beijing on 25 August 2026.

The Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination (WMCC) came from an agreement at the 15th round of SR talks in January 2012 and has held 36 meetings, the latest in New Delhi on 6 August 2026. Ties were set back by incidents in Eastern Ladakh in April-May 2020 and the violence at Galwan on 15 June 2020, in which 20 Indian military personnel lost their lives; an agreement on patrolling arrangements in October 2024 led to disengagement from all the friction points of 2020.

India’s position stands: Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh are integral parts of India.

The Centre’s receipts in the monthly accounts have three parts: tax revenue net to the Centre, non-tax revenue and non-debt capital receipts. Up to September 2026 these were ₹12,76,088 crore, ₹4,80,732 crore and ₹78,602 crore, adding up to ₹18,35,422 crore.

Expenditure is split between the revenue account (₹18,95,288 crore) and the capital account (₹6,54,547 crore). Revenue expenditure creates no assets and includes the two largest committed items, interest payments and major subsidies; capital expenditure is the spending that builds assets, which is why its share of total spending is watched as a measure of the quality of expenditure.

Tax devolution is the transfer of the States’ share of central taxes, ₹67,658 crore more in the first half of 2026-27 than a year earlier. The gap between what the Centre spends and what it receives without borrowing is the fiscal deficit.

TRAI released the draft Guidelines on Responsible Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Telecommunication Networks and Provision of Telecommunication Services for stakeholders’ comments through Press Release No. 145 of 2026. The draft builds on the India AI Governance Guidelines of February 2026, whose seven guiding sutras are: Trust is the Foundation; People First; Innovation over Restraint; Fairness & Equity; Accountability; Understandable by Design; and Safety, Resilience & Sustainability.

The order matters for the exam: the national framework puts innovation ahead of restraint, so the sector guidelines translate broad principles into consistent practice rather than add a separate licensing regime. A draft open for comments is the consultative stage of regulation: the regulator publishes, stakeholders respond, and only the final instrument binds.

The same distinction, draft against final, runs through the day’s news, from TRAI’s guidelines to mediation in the courts.

The Nagapattinam finds, as The Hindu reported, are bronze alloy idols of Lord Nataraja and Goddess Sivagami, unearthed with their pedestals during ongoing excavations by the Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology. Nataraja, Shiva as the lord of dance, is shown here in the Ananda Tandava posture with four arms; Sivagami, his consort, stands in the Tribhanga posture with two arms.

Both are assigned to the Chola period and estimated to date to the 12th century AD, on the evidence of their physical structure, iconography, ornaments and pedestals. For the exam, three habits help with such items: tie the posture name to the deity it describes, note who excavated (a State department of archaeology or the ASI), and see how a date is reached, here from iconography and style rather than an inscription or a record.

Bronze icons of this kind are among the best-known achievements of Chola art.

Places in the day’s news run across India. In Arunachal Pradesh, the Ministry of Culture, with the State government, the International Buddhist Confederation and the National Museum, is holding an exposition of the Holy Relics of Shakyamuni Buddha at Tawang (1 to 7 November), Bomdila (8 to 13 November) and Namsai (14 to 20 November); the relics are to return to the National Museum on 21 November.

In Uttarakhand, the crash near Joshimath killed all six on board a helicopter flying from Badrinath towards the Sahastradhara helipad in Dehradun, The Hindu reported, and the State’s civil aviation authority, UCADA, grounded the operator’s fleet. In West Bengal, Gaighata (North 24 Parganas) and Dhuliyan (Murshidabad) were, news reports said, the sites of the two deaths in police firing that the Indian Express editorial discusses.

In Tamil Nadu, the State Department of Archaeology found the Nataraja and Sivagami bronzes at Nagapattinam. Marking such places on a blank outline map, with their districts, is the best preparation for the map questions Prelims asks.

Rashtriya Ekta Diwas (National Unity Day) falls on 31 October, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s birth anniversary; 2026 marks the 151st. PIB, in a release of the Legislative Department, explains the day by Patel’s part in nation-building: he ‘played a central role in the integration of the princely states into the Union of India’, and is remembered as the ‘Iron Man of India’.

The integration of the princely states is a core theme of post-independence consolidation in GS1 Modern Indian History: at independence a large part of the subcontinent lay under princely rulers, and bringing those territories into the Union was among the first tasks of the new state. Observances on the day include the Ekta Parade; an earlier edition reported a police motorcycle rally, ‘Fight Against Drugs’, set to join it this year.

For the exam, link the day to its person and the person to the process: Ekta Diwas, Patel, integration.