31 October 2026 Current Affairs: Headlines, GK & MCQs

The Chambal valley is the best-known Indian example of land destroyed by intensive gully erosion, which has carved it into deep ravines.

The Constitution (Thirty-sixth Amendment) Act, 1975 made Sikkim a full State of the Indian Union. Sikkim had been an Indian protectorate since 1950.

Voting in 1937 was limited by property and education, and the Congress won an absolute majority in five provinces, while statements 2 and 4 are false.

These were the four great needs of the people that the Guomindang set out to meet, following the ideas of Sun Yat-sen.

Temperate cyclones are carried from west to east by the westerlies, while tropical cyclones generally move from east to west with the trade winds.

Lord Wellesley founded the College of Fort William at Calcutta in 1800 to train young British civil servants of the East India Company.

Britain handed Hong Kong back to China on 1 July 1997, and it became a Special Administrative Region under the principle of one country, two systems.

The Arya Samaj drew its strength mainly from Punjab and western Uttar Pradesh and from the trading castes, and its social base was wider, not narrower, than that of the Brahmo Samaj.

Tokyo was called Edo until 1868, when it was renamed Tokyo, which means eastern capital.

The International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) has its headquarters at Yokohama in Japan. ITTO is an intergovernmental body set up under the International Tropical Timber Agreement of 1983 and working since 1986.

Bagchi used Francis Buchanan-Hamilton's survey figures for Gangetic Bihar to argue that India went through deindustrialization in the 19th century.

In the 14th Finance Commission's formula for sharing central taxes among the States, income distance carried a weight of 50 percent, the highest of all the criteria.

She wrote Stri Purush Tulana, A Comparison between Women and Men, in Marathi in 1882. Tarabai Shinde was born in Buldhana in Berar and was associated with Jyotirao Phule's Satyashodhak Samaj.

Silappadikaram was written by Ilango Adigal, a prince who became a Jaina monk, and Jaina ideas run through its story.

Humidity is the amount of water vapour present in the air. Air holds water as invisible vapour, and the amount it can hold rises with temperature.

The Scottish botanist secretly took tea plants, seeds and skilled tea workers out of China for the East India Company, which made large-scale tea growing in India possible.

The plan for 2017-2031 is India's third National Wildlife Action Plan and the first to deal with the impact of climate change on wildlife, but it has five components, not ten.

Under Article 109, the Rajya Sabha must return a Money Bill within 14 days, so it can hold the bill up for only about two weeks.

In 1609 Kepler showed that the planets move around the Sun in elliptical orbits, with the Sun at one focus of the ellipse.

The Rakshasa form, one of the eight forms of marriage described in the Dharmashastras, meant taking a bride away by force, often after defeating her relatives.

The Shompen are a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group who live in the forests of Great Nicobar Island. The Shompen are a semi-nomadic people who hunt, gather and grow a little food along the rivers of Great Nicobar's forested interior, and they have very little contact with outsiders.

Subhas Chandra Bose started Azad Hind Radio in Germany in 1942, broadcasting to India from Berlin. Bose escaped from house arrest in Calcutta in January 1941 and reached Berlin by way of Kabul and Moscow.

It protects civil servants of the Union and the States against arbitrary dismissal, removal or reduction in rank. Article 311 lays down two safeguards.

A survey of 1842 found that the average life span of workers in Manchester was only 17 years, far lower than that of any other social group.

Chile beat Argentina in the final of the 2016 Copa América Centenario to win the title. The 2016 tournament marked 100 years of the Copa América and was held in the United States, the first time it was played outside South America.

The League accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan on 6 June 1946, even though the plan had rejected the demand for a separate sovereign Pakistan.

The writ, whose name means to have the body, orders the person or authority holding someone to produce that person before the court, and the court sets the person free if the detention is illegal.

Alexander Kerensky led that government until the Bolsheviks overthrew it in October 1917. After the February Revolution of 1917 ended the rule of Tsar Nicholas II, a Provisional Government took power.

In Census 2011, Greater Mumbai was the most populous urban agglomeration of India, followed by Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai. Census 2011 counted about 18.4 million people in the Greater Mumbai urban agglomeration, about 16.3 million in Delhi, about 14.1 million in Kolkata and about 8.7 million in Chennai.

Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, the foremost peasant leader of Bihar, was elected President of the All India Kisan Sabha at its Vijayawada (Bezwada) session of 1944.

The Union Budget is always presented first in the Lok Sabha, and the money bills that give effect to it can begin only in that House.

The Sixth Schedule fixes the term in exactly these words. Autonomous District Councils are set up under the Sixth Schedule for the tribal areas of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram.

The line comes from Gandhi's writings on health, where he treats the body as a servant of the spirit. Gandhi wrote widely on diet, fasting, nature cure and self-control, most famously in his little book on health.

The National Commission for Women is a statutory body set up under the National Commission for Women Act, 1990. Parliament passed the Act in 1990, and the Commission was constituted in January 1992.

The UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) has its headquarters in Bangkok, Thailand. ESCAP is one of the five regional commissions of the UN Economic and Social Council.

The Ten Degree Channel, which runs along this latitude, separates the Andaman group from the Nicobar group. The Ten Degree Channel lies between Little Andaman in the north and Car Nicobar in the south, and it is about 150 km wide.

The Sixth Schedule says the accounts of the District and Regional Councils are audited in the manner the CAG thinks fit.

Gandhi founded the Phoenix Settlement near Durban, South Africa, in 1904. Gandhi set up the settlement after reading John Ruskin's Unto This Last, which convinced him that the life of labour, of the tiller and the craftsman, is the life worth living.

The Damanganga Reservoir Project is the main irrigation scheme of Dadra and Nagar Haveli, whose canal network of about 115 km of minor canals and distributaries serves the territory.

Under paragraph 15 of the Sixth Schedule, the Governor can annul or suspend any act or resolution of a District or Regional Council.

This massive stone platform in the royal enclosure at Hampi was where the Vijayanagara kings performed the rituals of the Mahanavami festival.

Lakshmidhara, a minister of the Gahadavala king Govindachandra of Kanauj, compiled the Kritya-kalpataru, the first great nibandha or digest of Dharmashastra, epic and Puranic texts.

Classical economists held that the economy always tends back to full employment, so any unemployment is short-lived. The classical theory rests on Say's Law, that supply creates its own demand, so there can be no general overproduction.

Article 151(1) says the CAG's reports relating to the accounts of the Union are submitted to the President, who causes them to be laid before each House of Parliament.

The idea of farr-i izadi, a light emanating from God, was first developed by the twelfth-century Iranian Sufi thinker Shihabuddin Suhrawardi.

Article 53 vests the executive power of the Union and the supreme command of the defence forces in the President, but it does not say the power is used only through subordinate officers.

Capital deepening means the stock of capital grows faster than the labour force, so each worker has more machines and tools to work with.

India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, made solidarity with the newly free nations of Asia and Africa a central pillar of India's foreign policy.

Unlike the President, the Governor of a state has no diplomatic or military powers. The Governor's powers are broadly similar to the President's in the executive, legislative and judicial fields, but defence and foreign affairs belong to the Union.

The Mahavamsa, the great Pali chronicle of Sri Lanka, gives a detailed account of Ashoka, his conversion to Buddhism and his missions abroad.