2 November 2026 Current Affairs: India-EU Talks, JanHIT

He travelled to Brussels and met three Directors-General of the European Commission, and the talks were about trade facilitation, market access, supply chain resilience, customs cooperation and the groundwork for the India-EU Free Trade Agreement.

In the meeting with him the two sides took up customs cooperation, trade facilitation and the preparations needed before the India-EU Free Trade Agreement can be put into effect, and both accepted that efficient, transparent and digitally enabled customs procedures help business by lowering transaction costs and letting genuine trade…

India and Belgium have identified gems and jewellery as an important field for closer cooperation, and Antwerp, Mumbai and Surat are recognised as the major diamond centres.

The Commerce Secretary took part in a BusinessEurope roundtable with European industry representatives, co-hosted with the Embassy of India in Brussels, and the Indian Ambassador, Shri Pranay Verma, also addressed it on 30 October 2026.

The holy relics of Shakyamuni Buddha were brought from the National Museum in the capital for public veneration in Arunachal Pradesh, and they are scheduled to go back to the same museum once the exposition ends.

The relics were ceremonially received at Tawang by the Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh, and the traditional religious reception at the historic Gaden Namgyal Lhatse, or Tawang Monastery, took place in the presence of the Union Minister of Culture and Tourism, Shri Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, along with venerable Buddhist monks…

Piprahwa is an archaeological site in Uttar Pradesh associated with ancient Kapilavastu and with the Shakya tradition into which Lord Buddha was born, and the relics recovered there are preserved at the National Museum in New Delhi.

The relics are being taken to three important centres of Buddhist faith in the state.

Projects and initiatives of this value are being inaugurated and launched in the Gangtok and Mangan districts of Sikkim to strengthen dairy development and livestock infrastructure, and they include a microbiology laboratory for the Sikkim Milk Union, new dairy cooperative societies, a traceability initiative for Churpi cheese and the promotion…

Initiatives for the establishment of 57 new Dairy Cooperative Societies are being launched in Sikkim under White Revolution 2.0, and registration certificates are being given to five societies that have just been registered.

A special project worth Rs 2,763.92 lakh has been sanctioned for the development and conservation of the indigenous Siri cattle breed in Sikkim, which comes on top of the Rs 7,093.99 lakh released for the state under the Rashtriya Gokul Mission since 2014.

Sikkim recorded milk production of roughly 89.35 thousand metric tonnes during 2024-25, and per capita milk availability in the state worked out to around 352 grams per day, which is why Sikkim is described as having played a significant part in dairy development in the North Eastern Region.

The order for eight Next Generation Corvettes has been shared between two government-owned shipyards, and GRSE takes the larger share of five ships.

The distinguishing feature of this programme is that the design work for the corvettes has been done within the Indian Navy itself, while the construction has gone to defence public sector undertakings that were picked through competition rather than simply nominated.

The two contracts for the eight corvettes were inked at Kartavya Bhawan-2 in New Delhi, and the Defence Secretary, Rajesh Kumar Singh, was present on the occasion.

That is the production reported from captive and commercial mines for October 2026.

The Lohari coal mine lies in Jharkhand and secured its Mine Opening Permission during October 2026 after waiting several years to start work, a clearance the Ministry of Coal attributes to its ease of doing business reforms.

Over the April to October period, production from captive and commercial mines moved up from 105.33 MT to 117.23 MT, which is a growth of 11.30 per cent.

The rules draw a clear line between two stages. The enquiry has to be wrapped up within seven working days of receipt, and the grievance itself has to be settled within 15 days of receipt.

The rules place district level supervision of grievance redressal on this officer, who must ensure that complaints are handled through the designated machinery and through the Digital Public Infrastructure meant for the purpose.

The rules are explicit that registration of a grievance cannot be refused on the ground of its format, the language used, the manner in which it was submitted, or any procedural deficiency.

That is the window for the rabi edition of the campaign, which carries soil health and sustainable agriculture as its subject and the tagline Swasth Dhara, Samriddh Kisan.

The campaign reaches thirty four States and Union Territories, along with more than seven hundred districts and fifty thousand villages, and aims to touch about fifty lakh farmers through coordinated field activity.

Under balanced nutrient management, the campaign promotes General Fertiliser Recommendations together with the 4R principle, which means applying fertiliser from the right source, at the right rate, at the right time and in the right place, so that the nutrient supply matches what the rabi crop needs.

The two-day orientation was held there, and it was inaugurated in the auditorium of the same venue.

The programme was organised under this initiative of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, in collaboration with ICMR-NIHR, Bhubaneswar, and it was the first of its kind in the country.

The first phase of the orientation drew roughly five hundred and fifty tribal healers, each nominated by the tribal welfare department of their state, and they came from nine States and Union Territories: Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli.

It is the nodal department for the Special Campaign exercise, and DPIIT carried out Special Campaign 6 on its guidance along with its attached and subordinate offices.

This was the strongest of the department's numbers under the campaign, showing that almost every public grievance on its books had been disposed of.

The campaign had two clear stages, and this was the implementation stage, during which offices actually identified and disposed of pending references and closed electronic files.