A 180-question shape analysis of NDA Current Affairs across every paper from 2017 to 2026. CA is the highest-churn topic on the GAT — about 10 q per paper, 40 marks at most. This guide names the recurring question SHAPES so you can prep against THIS YEAR's facts, not the bank's historical answers.
Of every NDA Current Affairs question that mentions a year explicitly, 90% reference an event within 12 months of the paper. Specific exercises, schemes, and award winners almost never repeat across years — every paper asks about THIS YEAR's new content.
So the bank's role here is calibrating what GETS asked, not what to MEMORISE. The themes below are the recurring question shapes. Harvest the actual facts from a yearly current-affairs compendium of your choice.
What the bank gives you
Question shape calibration. 31 stable themes that recur across years even when specific facts rotate.
What you bring yourself
THIS YEAR's facts — fresh from a yearly compendium, ministry press releases, or a news app. Don't memorise the bank's historical answers.
How the 180 questions break down
Eight chapters across the 2017–2026 bank, sorted by question count. Two chapters tie at the top — International Affairs and Government Schemes each carry 18% of the bank. None of them is %HARD-heavy except National Events; this is mostly a high-volume recall section.
Chapter
Questions
Share
% HARD
What it tests
International Affairs and Relations
33
18.3%
15.2%
India ↔ partner-country agreements + UN / multilateral bodies + world leaders and elections + summit hosting. The densest recurring theme on the paper — bilateral relations alone carries ~3 q per paper when it appears.
Government Schemes, Policy and Governance
33
18.3%
6.1%
Recent scheme launches, governance and UT reform, Acts and policies, infrastructure connectivity projects. Lowest %HARD bank-wide — these are easy marks IF you've read the past year's scheme rollouts.
Defence and Military Exercises
29
16.1%
10.3%
Bilateral and multilateral exercises (2.6 q per paper when present), Indian Navy ship inductions and naval policy, defence procurement deals, gallantry awards and service appointments.
Sports
23
12.8%
8.7%
Cricket is the bank's most consistent CA theme (appears in 8 of 10 years). Non-cricket coverage skews to Olympic / Asian Games medallists and Khel Ratna recipients.
Science and Technology
18
10.0%
11.1%
Space technology + astronomy is the only S&T theme that clocks 1 q per year. DRDO / marine tech, IT safety systems (KAVACH), health tech and science awards round out the chapter.
Awards, Honours, Books and Culture
18
10.0%
16.7%
Civilian awards (Padma, Bharat Ratna, gallantry) + books and authors + Indian art and architecture + UNESCO recognitions. Recall-heavy but %HARD is on the higher side — distractors are well-engineered.
National Events, Persons and India General Knowledge
15
8.3%
20.0%
Indian economy / geography / resources reference + national days and observances + institutional milestones. Highest %HARD in CA — the obscure-fact-or-pair-swap zone.
Environment, Ecology and Energy
11
6.1%
18.2%
Ramsar sites and wetlands + climate change summits + environmental campaigns + wildlife conservation. Small bank, high %HARD — single-q themes mostly.
Anchor themes — 5+ year recurrence
86 q · ~15 q per paper
These eight themes have appeared on at least 5 of the last 10 papers. Each card names the recurring question SHAPE, then lists the categories of facts you should harvest from this year’s news — these are durable prep directives, not specific answers. The drill link practises the shape against the bank’s historical instances.
International Affairs and Relations
India ↔ partner-country agreements
15 q5/10 yrs~3.0 q/yr
Question shape. Variants of "In [month/year] India entered an agreement / scrapped a regime / hosted a visit with [country] to..." plus "[place in the news] is located in / borders [country]". The lever is always a specific recent India-↔-partner event — the question rotates with the news cycle.
Harvest from this year’s news
State visits by/to Indian leaders in the past 12 months
Major bilateral agreements or MoUs signed (defence, trade, connectivity, energy)
Question shape. Variants of "Who won the [tournament] in [recent year]?" / "Consider the following statements about [Indian cricketer]" / "Identify the cricketer who [recently retired / set a record / joined ICC Hall of Fame]". The most consistently-appearing CA theme — 8 of 10 years.
Harvest from this year’s news
ICC men's tournament winners in the past 24 months (T20 WC, ODI WC, Test Championship, Champions Trophy)
Question shape. Variants of "Exercise [name] is a joint exercise between India and..." / "[Edition] of [exercise] was held in [city / country]" / list-matching 4 exercise names to 4 countries. Specific exercises rotate every year — almost zero name-level repetition across papers — but the SHAPE recurs.
Question shape. Variants of "[Policy / Act / Bill / Amendment] is associated with..." / "Recently the Government of India announced..." / multi-statement T/F about a policy. Appears in 7 of 10 years — the most stable Govt-Schemes theme.
Harvest from this year’s news
Major Acts passed in the current Parliament session (PIB + Ministry of Law releases)
Recent Constitutional Amendments (104th onwards) and what each one does
Recent Supreme Court directives that reshaped policy
Recent Centrally-Sponsored vs Central-Sector scheme rebrandings / mergers
Recent administrative reforms — UT boundary changes, state special status, language / classical status grants
Question shape. Variants of "[Scheme name] is associated with [purpose / ministry]" / "[Tagline / motto] is the motto of which scheme?" / multi-statement T/F on a recently-launched scheme. Mottoes are tested directly — "Not me, but you", "Fitness ka dose, aadha ghanta roz", "Saansad Adarsh Gram".
Harvest from this year’s news
Top 5 NEW schemes from each major ministry in past 12 months — Health & Family Welfare, Education, Women & Child Dev, Rural Dev, Skill Dev, Tribal Affairs
Recent scheme rebrandings, mergers, or platform integrations (e.g. eSanjeevani with Ayushman Bharat)
Mottoes and taglines of major schemes (these ARE asked directly)
Operating ministry of each flagship scheme — confusion between Centre-implemented vs State-run is a common distractor
Recent expansions of coverage (district count, beneficiary count, age bracket changes)
International organisations and multilateral bodies
8 q6/10 yrs~1.3 q/yr
Question shape. Variants of "The headquarters of [organisation] is located at..." / "Which one is NOT a member of [group]?" / "[Recently-appointed head] is associated with..." / structural-fact statements about UN agencies, BRICS, NATO etc.
Harvest from this year’s news
Latest appointments at major UN bodies — Secretary-General, WHO DG, IMF MD, WB President, UNCTAD, WTO DG
Recent NATO + EU + ASEAN membership shifts (e.g. ASEAN's 11th member in 2025)
Latest BRICS / G20 / G7 / SCO / SAARC / BIMSTEC / QUAD / I2U2 outcomes and member shifts
Latest UNESCO World Heritage / Creative City / Intangible Cultural Heritage additions
Latest IMF / World Bank index rankings (Ease of Doing Business, Logistics Performance, etc.)
Anchors that stay still
UN agency HQs — WHO (Geneva), UNESCO (Paris), ILO (Geneva), WMO (Geneva), FAO (Rome), IMF + WB (Washington DC), UNICEF (NY), IAEA (Vienna)
G7 nations: USA, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan (the EU is a non-enumerated participant)
UN Security Council permanent members: USA, UK, France, Russia, China (the P5)
BRICS expanded 2024–25 with Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, UAE (Saudi Arabia membership status was under negotiation)
Question shape. Variants of "[ISRO mission name] is associated with..." / "Which one is the [launch vehicle / orbiter / lander]?" / identification of a recent mission's scientific objective. Clockwork ~1 q every year — never skipped.
Harvest from this year’s news
ISRO missions launched in the past 12 months + planned next-6-month launches
Major foreign space milestones — NASA Artemis cycle, ESA / JAXA / CNSA major missions
Notable astronomical phenomena visible from India (eclipses, conjunctions, comet apparitions)
Private Indian space-launch milestones — Skyroot, Agnikul, Pixxel
Question shape. Variants of "Who won the [non-cricket sport event]?" / "[Person] is associated with which sport?" / identification of medallists at recent Olympic / Asian / Commonwealth Games.
Harvest from this year’s news
Recent Olympic / Asian Games / Commonwealth Games medal-tally + Indian medallists by event
Recent Khel Ratna / Arjuna / Dronacharya / Major Dhyan Chand award recipients
Sixteen themes that appear regularly but not every year. Light prep — track recent additions / appointments / award rounds in each, then drill the bank for shape.
Theme
Chapter
Q
Years
Shape
Civilian awards, honours and educational institutions
Awards, Honours, Books and Culture
7
4
Recent Padma / Bharat Ratna / gallantry-award recipients · new IIT / IIIT / AIIMS / Central University announcements
Seven themes with thin bank coverage and inconsistent appearance. Drill once for awareness; don’t deep-prep — these are the ~20 q of year-specific noise that age out fastest.
Attempt ~7 of 10 with confidence. If you've harvested this year's facts against the 8 anchor themes, you'll recognise the shape of ~7 questions per paper. Attempt those.
Skip 3 you've never seen. Niche-person obituaries, obscure book titles, single-event observances are the year-specific noise — ~30 q (17% of bank) live in 1–2 year occasional themes. Don't guess.
Time budget: ~1 minute per question. CA is a 10-minute block in a 150-minute GAT. Don't let an unfamiliar stem pull time from the larger PART A sections (Geography 76, History 56, Polity 20 max marks).
Watch the multi-statement trap. About 20% of CA stems are 'Consider the following statements about X' with 2–4 sub-claims. Judge each independently and use elimination — partial credit / universal-claim distractors are common.
Drill the bank for shape
One pass through all 180 questions gives you the shape calibration — the kinds of stems, the multi-statement traps, the partial-credit distractor patterns. Don’t memorise the answers; they’re historical.
The other NDA guides on this site are 10–22 indexable pages each — strategy, playbooks, references, trends, traps — because each subject has bank shape that’s genuinely durable. NDA Current Affairs doesn’t.
Building a 5-section guide here would teach you 2019 facts and call it strategy. The honest stance is to name the half-life (90% of questions reference events within 12 months of paper), name the recurring shapes (the eight anchor themes), and point you at this year’s news — not at the bank’s historical answers.
The bank still pulls its weight. It calibrates question SHAPE so you know what kinds of facts to harvest, and it lets you drill the shapes (multi-statement traps, named-pair swaps, date-anchored stems). That’s real prep value — just not the kind that lives in fact tables.
Data snapshot: 19 May 2026. Numbers refresh as new papers land.