Current affairs relevant to GS3.
At an ITU roundtable during India Mobile Congress 2026, India welcomed ITU's proposal for joint trials to verify caller identity across borders. The MoS said C-DOT's ASTR tool has cut over 82 lakh fraudulent connections, Sanchar Saathi has about 25 million downloads, and the Financial Fraud Risk Indicator prevented suspected losses above ₹5,000 crore in 15 months.
9 Oct 2026
The National Statistics Office has released a draft guideline for States and UTs to estimate Gross State Domestic Product from the expenditure side, with base year 2022-23. Today some States compile government consumption and capital formation, but none estimates private consumption. Comments are invited till 28 October 2026.
9 Oct 2026
Mangrol, the third Anti-Submarine Warfare Shallow Water Craft built by Cochin Shipyard, was set for commissioning on 12 October 2026 at Naval Dockyard, Mumbai. It has over 80% indigenous content, carries the Abhay hull-mounted sonar and Maareech torpedo decoy, and uses waterjet propulsion for shallow coastal waters.
9 Oct 2026
The 57th GST Council meeting on 8 October 2026 focused on process reform rather than rates. It recommended removing arrest powers under GST, raising the prosecution threshold from ₹1 crore to ₹5 crore, cutting the general penalty from ₹25,000 to ₹10,000, no notices below ₹10,000 tax, wider input tax credit and refunds, and limits on interception of goods in transit.
8 Oct 2026
On 8 October 2026 the Department of Telecommunications rejected a social media claim that satellite internet licensing is discriminatory. Three licences for Global Mobile Personal Communication by Satellite services using non-geostationary satellites have been issued; all three are going through security assessment, after which each can seek spectrum.
8 Oct 2026
NHAI released a document on wildlife mitigation measures during National Wildlife Week (2-8 October 2026). It records over 2,150 wildlife crossing structures built or proposed on national highways and about ₹19,700 crore spent in five years on such measures, from animal underpasses and overpasses to viaducts, tunnels and canopy crossings.
8 Oct 2026
At the Pre-COP31 meeting in Nadi, Fiji, India's Environment Minister asked for flexibility, pragmatism and mutual respect so that COP31 gives an ambitious and balanced result. India said higher ambition must come with climate finance, technology and capacity building, and that each country's path must be respected. COP31 is in Antalya, Türkiye, in November.
8 Oct 2026
Scientists from S.N. Bose Centre Kolkata, INST Mohali and SRM University Amaravati made a metal-free porous organic catalyst, TTT-DHTD, for the oxygen reduction reaction in zinc-air batteries. It reached about 96% of commercial platinum's performance and stayed stable for 120 hours. Replacing platinum could cut the cost of zinc-air batteries and fuel cells.
7 Oct 2026
MoSPI released the Strategy for Environmental-Economic Accounts in India 2026-2030 on 7 October 2026. It extends the 2022-26 strategy to cover forests, minerals, soil, land, water, carbon stock, biodiversity and more, using the UN's System of Environmental-Economic Accounting. The idea is to show how the economy uses and depletes nature.
7 Oct 2026
A study coordinated by ARIES, Nainital, with 106 scientists from 18 countries, tracked the blazar OJ 287 from 2015 to 2025. OJ 287, about 4 billion light years away, has two supermassive black holes in a 12-year orbit. The study estimated the central black hole at no less than 3.89 billion solar masses.
6 Oct 2026