Cabinet clears 1,196 km of new railway track
New Delhi, 9 September : A goods train leaving the Bilaspur yard for Katni today waits its turn behind passenger traffic on a line that was laid for a smaller country. From 2029-30 it will not have to. The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by the Prime Minister, cleared eight railway multitracking projects on 9 September 2026 in two separate decisions — three in the east and five in the south — that together add about 1,196 kilometres of track to a network that has been carrying more than it was built for.
The eastern package, according to the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs release of 9 September 2026, costs ₹10,783 crore and covers fourteen districts of West Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. It comprises the Kharagpur–Jharsuguda (Bagdehi) fourth line, the Katni–Pendra Road fourth line and the Bilaspur (Uslapur)–Pendra Road third line, and adds roughly 656 kilometres. The southern package, cleared the same afternoon, costs ₹10,021 crore across seventeen districts of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Telangana, and adds about 540 kilometres: Arakkonam–Renigunta third and fourth lines over 77 km, Whitefield–Bangarpet third and fourth lines over 47 km, the Hosur–Omalur doubling over 147 km, the Salem–Karur–Dindigul doubling over 159 km, and 110 km of multitracking from Secunderabad (Ghatkesar) to Kazipet.
What the country gets is measurable in tonnes. The eastern works add 27 million tonnes of freight capacity a year and the southern works 47 million — 74 million tonnes together, on routes that carry coal, cement, iron and steel, containers, automobiles, grain, petroleum products and fertiliser. Both releases put the corridors inside the PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan, whose point is that a line, a port and a road are planned as one thing rather than three.
The reach is wider than the freight. The two releases together count about 6,911 villages with a combined population of roughly 1.08 crore that will get better connectivity — 4,790 villages and 56 lakh people in the east, 2,121 villages and 52 lakh in the south. Rail also reaches places people travel to rather than ship from: Bandhavgarh and Achanakmar tiger reserves, Amarkantak, the Taratarini temple, Ratanpur Mahamaya and the Malhar archaeological site in the east; Tirupati, Tiruchanoor, Kolar Gold Fields, Hogenakkal Falls, Mettur dam, Kodaikanal and Yadagirigutta in the south.
The environmental arithmetic is the part most easily skipped and most worth keeping. Between them the two packages are expected to cut oil imports by about 20 crore litres and carbon dioxide emissions by about 104 crore kilograms — which the Railways scores as the equivalent of planting 4.48 crore trees. Every tonne moved by rail rather than road is a tonne of diesel not bought abroad, and on the country’s logistics bill that is the quietest saving there is.
Briefing the media after the meeting in New Delhi, the Information and Broadcasting Minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, said that the Cabinet had additionally approved four-laning of seven high-density railway corridors, including Delhi–Mumbai, Mumbai–Chennai, Chennai–Kolkata and Kolkata–Delhi, which carry about forty per cent of the railways’ traffic, and that four-laning of about two thousand kilometres has already been completed — as reported by Akashvani News on 9 September 2026.
BLITZ DATA CARD
- THE RECORD: Eastern package — ₹10,783 crore · 656 km · 14 districts · 5 states · 27 MTPA freight added
- Southern package — ₹10,021 crore · 540 km · 17 districts · 4 states · 47 MTPA freight added
- Completion target — 2029-30 for both packages
- THE COMPARISON — TRACK ADDED, DRAWN TO SCALE: Eastern (656 km)
- Southern (540 km)
- Combined track: 656 km + 540 km = 1,196 km
- Cost per kilometre: ₹20,804 crore ÷ 1,196 km = ₹17.39 crore per km
- Combined freight added: 27 + 47 = 74 MTPA
- Combined villages: 4,790 + 2,121 = 6,911; population 56 lakh + 52 lakh = 1.08 crore
Oil import cut: 12 + 8 = 20 crore litres; CO₂ cut: 62 + 42 = 104 crore kg (4.48 crore trees equivalent).
WHAT INDIA GAINS Seventy-four million tonnes a year of additional freight capacity on the corridors that carry the country’s coal, steel and cement — bought at ₹17.39 crore a kilometre on land the railway already owns, and paid back partly in twenty crore litres of oil India will not need to import.
India launches own ocean research vessel
Kolkata, 9 September | India stopped buying its ocean science and started building it. ORV Sagar Manthan, the country’s first advanced ocean research vessel designed, engineered and built in India, was launched at the Rishi Bankim shipyard in Kolkata on 9 September 2026 by Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers, a defence public sector undertaking, for the National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research under the Ministry of Earth Sciences.
Built at a cost of about ₹840 crore under Vertical-4 of the Deep Ocean Mission, the all-weather vessel is designed for extreme seas including the Southern Ocean and is rated for a thirty-year service life. According to the Ministry of Earth Sciences release of 9 September 2026, it will progressively replace ORV Sagar Kanya, bought from Germany in 1983 and now forty-three years old. The Union Minister, Dr Jitendra Singh, who launched the vessel virtually, noted that the launch came within two years of contract signature and five months of keel laying.
The Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Dr T. Srinivasa Kumar, said the vessel will carry multibeam survey, geophysical profiling, atmospheric observation and water-column sampling capability at sea, and that building it at home places India among the few countries able to design such a platform. The gain is plain: a country with a 7,500-kilometre coastline and a tsunami warning obligation to its neighbours will no longer wait on a foreign yard for the ship that collects its data.
India joins twenty nations on 6G
New Delhi, 9 September : India has endorsed the Call to Action for 6G Leadership and Security, joining more than twenty like-minded governments committed to shaping the sixth generation of wireless on principles of openness, interoperability, security, resilience and innovation-led competition, the Ministry of Communications announced on 9 September 2026. The Department of Telecommunications will carry the commitment forward and coordinate with industry, academia and other agencies.
The release states India’s aim under the Prime Minister’s leadership: to contribute ten per cent of global 6G standards and patents. That single number is the whole point of the exercise. A country that only buys telecom equipment pays a licence fee on every handset sold in it; a country that holds standard-essential patents collects one. The endorsement was announced on the margins of the G20 Innovation Ministerial held in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on 1–2 September 2026, and among the governments named as having affirmed the Call to Action are Canada, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Norway, the Republic of Korea, Romania, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Under the phased commitments, each participating government must within one month name its 6G expert points of contact, designate the agency that will manage communication with the contact group, and draw up an initial list of industry and academic stakeholders.
Palghar firm to print bone grafts
New Delhi, 9 September : A bone graft cut to one patient’s anatomy is a manufacturing problem before it is a medical one, and India has largely imported the answer. The Technology Development Board, under the Department of Science and Technology, announced on 9 September 2026 that it has given financial support to Ceramat Private Limited of Palghar, Maharashtra, to commercialise standard and patient-specific calcium phosphate bone grafts made by 3D printing.
The company will use two complementary routes — digital light processing and extrusion-based 3D printing — with indigenously made bioceramic raw material: hydroxyapatite, beta-tricalcium phosphate, biphasic calcium phosphate and bioactive glass, all close in mineral composition to natural bone. According to the Technology Development Board release of 9 September 2026, a significant share of such advanced graft products available in India is currently imported. The Secretary of the Board, Shri Rajesh Kumar Pathak, said that to move from technology consumer to technology developer India needs indigenous capability in exactly these specialised, high-value corners of healthcare.
Palghar firm to print bone grafts
A bone graft cut to one patient’s anatomy is a manufacturing problem before it is a medical one, and India has largely imported the answer. The Technology Development Board, under the Department of Science and Technology, announced on 9 September 2026 that it has given financial support to Ceramat Private Limited of Palghar, Maharashtra, to commercialise standard and patient-specific calcium phosphate bone grafts made by 3D printing.
The company will use two complementary routes — digital light processing and extrusion-based 3D printing — with indigenously made bioceramic raw material: hydroxyapatite, beta-tricalcium phosphate, biphasic calcium phosphate and bioactive glass, all close in mineral composition to natural bone. According to the Technology Development Board release of 9 September 2026, a significant share of such advanced graft products available in India is currently imported. The Secretary of the Board, Shri Rajesh Kumar Pathak, said that to move from technology consumer to technology developer India needs indigenous capability in exactly these specialised, high-value corners of healthcare.
India enters eleven new WorldSkills trades
New Delhi, 9 September : India will compete in eleven skill categories for the first time at the 48th WorldSkills Competition in Shanghai from 22 to 27 September 2026, the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship said on 9 September 2026. Team Skill India will enter 63 of the 64 skills with about seventy competitors — the country’s largest and most varied WorldSkills contingent.
The eleven new entries are dental prosthetics, digital interactive media design, intelligent security technology, landscape gardening, optoelectronic technology, retail sales, unmanned aerial systems, industrial mechanics, software testing, heavy vehicle technology and aircraft maintenance. Preparation is being run by the National Skill Development Corporation with training institutions and industry partners including the Government Tool Room and Training Centre in Karnataka, NAMTECH Gandhinagar, Bennett University, Titan Company Limited–Tanishq, Croma, Shoppers Stop, Reliance Trends and Sany Heavy Industry India.
The trajectory is worth reading as a line rather than a point. India stood 29th at WorldSkills in 2015 and 13th in 2024, took 8th place in Asia at WorldSkills Asia 2025 and won five medals at the Taipei Capital Cup 2026. The Secretary, Ms Debashree Mukherjee, said the new entries reflect an ecosystem growing towards future-facing and globally relevant capability.
Poshan Maah opens at Varanasi
Varanasi, 9 September The ninth Rashtriya Poshan Maah was launched on 9 September 2026 at the Rudraksh International Cooperation and Convention Centre in Varanasi, under the theme Hamari Anganwadi, Hamari Zimmedari, with the campaign turning on dietary diversity, adequate protein and freshly cooked food.
According to the Ministry of Women and Child Development release of 9 September 2026, more than 14 lakh anganwadi centres now reach over 7.5 crore children, 1.10 crore pregnant and lactating women and about 16 lakh adolescent girls. Two lakh centres are being upgraded as Saksham Anganwadis, of which about 24,000 have been sanctioned in Uttar Pradesh. The Union Minister, Smt Annpurna Devi, said the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana has completed ten years and has reached more than 4.65 crore mothers through direct benefit transfer.
The Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Shri Yogi Adityanath, said anganwadi centres have been turned into living community institutions with better infrastructure, that workers now have smartphones allowing real-time data entry and digital monitoring, and that centres provide hot cooked meals and take-home ration to eligible beneficiaries.
Colombo gets three Indian Bailey bridges
Colombo, 9 September : The Defence Minister, Shri Rajnath Singh, met the President of Sri Lanka, Shri Anura Kumara Dissanayake, in Colombo on 9 September 2026. The two sides virtually inaugurated three Bailey bridges built by the Indian defence forces, and exchanged memoranda of understanding on the upgrade of L70 guns for the Sri Lanka Air Force and on cooperation between the two countries’ National Cadet Corps and National Defence Colleges.
According to the Ministry of Defence release of 9 September 2026, the memorandum covers the upgrade of six L70 air defence guns under a Government of India grant; the guns had earlier been supplied by India to the Sri Lanka Air Force. President Dissanayake expressed appreciation for the relief India provided under Operation Sagar Bandhu during Cyclone Ditwah and for the rehabilitation package extended for reconstruction across the island, and reiterated that Sri Lanka would never allow its territory to be used for activities inimical to India’s security interests. Shri Rajnath Singh said that as Sri Lanka’s closest friend and neighbour, India had treated first assistance not as a favour but as a duty, and would continue to do so.
UPI now runs in eleven countries
Mumbai, 9 September : Inaugurating the Global Fintech Fest 2026 in Mumbai, which opened on 8 September 2026, the Prime Minister described the Unified Payments Interface as the undisputed champion of India’s fintech story and said UPI is now live in eleven countries. He put the volume at over 24 billion UPI transactions in the month of August, and quoted the President of France, Mr Emmanuel Macron, as having said that UPI is not just a tech story but a civilisational story — as reported by Akashvani News on 9 September 2026.
The Prime Minister’s next demand of the industry was specific: integrate UPI with the domestic payment systems of partner countries as has already been done with Singapore, and do it wherever large Indian populations live or substantial trade occurs. The reason he gave is the one that matters to households rather than to platforms — India sends home more remittances than any other country, and every basis point shaved off transaction cost stays with the family receiving the money.
Amino acid brightens green hydrogen route
Bengaluru, 9 September : Splitting water with sunlight is the cleanest way to make hydrogen and the most expensive, because almost every practical photocatalyst leans on an inorganic semiconductor or a precious metal. A team at the Centre for Nano and Soft Matter Sciences, Bengaluru — an autonomous institution under the Department of Science and Technology — has taken the metal out.
According to the Department of Science and Technology release of 9 September 2026, the researchers attached a naturally occurring amino acid, aspartic acid, to a light-absorbing organic molecule, perylene diimide, and let the result organise itself in water through supramolecular self-assembly into highly ordered two-dimensional nanosheets. The amino acid end drives strong and extended hydrogen bonding; the perylene diimide chromophore drives π–π stacking and light absorption. Between them they set how the material arranges, and the arrangement sets what it can do.
The measured result is modest and honest: without any change to the molecule’s chemical structure, the self-assembled material produced about eighteen per cent more photocurrent than its bulk form during solar-driven water splitting, having widened its light absorption range, improved charge separation, reduced energy losses and increased the surface area available for catalysis. Electrochemical measurement and density functional theory calculations attribute this to better charge transport, with the amino acid raising the molecular dipole moment so that light-generated charges separate effectively.
The work was led by Dr Gautam Ghosh and Dr Ashutosh K. Singh with Shri Sourav Moyra, Shri Kumar Shubham and Ms Athira Chandran M., and is published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A of the Royal Society of Chemistry (https://doi.org/10.1039/d6ta04378j). It is a laboratory result on a photocurrent measurement, not a hydrogen plant: what it establishes is a design principle — that a cheap natural amino acid can act as a regulator of supramolecular organisation and photocatalytic performance, not merely as a building block. What India gains, if the principle scales, is a route to solar fuel that does not run through the platinum and iridium markets, in which the country holds no position at all.
NHAI ties completion to surviving saplings
New Delhi, 9 September : Roadside plantation has always been a contractual obligation on national highway projects. What it has not always been is a condition of getting paid. The National Highways Authority of India closed that gap on 9 September 2026 with comprehensive guidelines making median and avenue plantation an integral part of highway development and of project completion itself.
The Authority’s own finding is stated in the release: plantation along medians and avenues, though a contractual obligation, was often not given due weight when provisional completion certificates were issued. The revised guidelines fix a measurable threshold in its place. Plantation will be treated as compliant for a provisional completion certificate or provisional commercial operation date only when at least eighty per cent of the right of way earmarked for plantation has actually been planted and the survival rate of planted saplings is at least ninety per cent at the time of inspection. Any shortfall must be flagged with a specific timeline, and financial deductions under the relevant contract or concession agreement apply until the remaining plantation is complete.
The requirement does not lapse at completion. Release of operation-and-maintenance or annuity payments in EPC, hybrid annuity and BOT-annuity projects, and the assessment of maintenance compliance in BOT-toll projects, will depend on maintaining a minimum ninety per cent survival rate through the O&M period. Dead saplings must be replaced with plants of similar age and growth so that the corridor’s plantation stays uniform, and NHAI will take technical assistance from an appointed environment and plantation expert to verify compliance in the field before certifying maintenance or processing annuity.
The framework the guidelines invoke is not new — the Green Highways Policy of 2015 and IRC:SP:21-2009 already required the planting. What the Authority has added is the number at which a certificate is withheld, and that is the difference between a policy and a control. For the citizen the gain is measured in shade and dust: a corridor where ninety per cent of saplings are alive four years on is a different road to drive and to live beside than one where the planting was recorded and not kept.
