12 April 2026

The 7th BIMSTEC Summit concluded in Dhaka with member states adopting the Bay of Bengal Connectivity Charter 2030, emphasising maritime, digital, and transport interlinkages. India pledged USD 500 million for the BIMSTEC Master Plan on Transport Connectivity and offered its International Solar Alliance framework for joint solar projects across Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.

The annual mass-nesting (arribada) of Olive Ridley turtles at Gahirmatha Marine Sanctuary in Odisha concluded with a record 6.93 lakh nestings, up from 5.48 lakh in 2025. The Forest Department credits year-round Turtle Excluder Device enforcement for fishermen and a 20-km no-fishing buffer during nesting. Gahirmatha is the world's largest Olive Ridley rookery.

The Indian Coast Guard inducted the first HAL-built ALH Mk-III utility helicopter in a ceremony at Chennai Regional Headquarters. The upgraded Dhruv features a glass cockpit, Shakti engines, SAR winch with 272 kg capacity, and integrated Shakti FLIR surveillance. Nine more units will follow under a Rs 3,887 crore contract signed in 2023, boosting maritime SAR capabilities.

On International Day of Human Space Flight (April 12 — anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's 1961 flight), ISRO unveiled the life-support equipped crew module for Gaganyaan H1 mission at VSSC, Thiruvananthapuram. The module has six-seat capacity (three for H1 plus three backup), closed-loop environmental control, and is designed for seven-day orbital endurance at 400 km altitude.

The Ministry of Labour and Employment announced that e-Shram — the National Database of Unorganised Workers — crossed 31 crore registrations, with women constituting 56% and over 94% enrolment from SC/ST/OBC households. Integration with 14 welfare schemes including Ayushman Bharat, PM-SYM, PMJJBY, and Mahila Samman Bachat Patra has been completed.

The Delhi High Court directed the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to notify Deepfake Regulations under the IT Rules 2021 within 90 days, following a PIL that cited 412 reported cases of AI-generated impersonation in 2025. The Court held that content-agnostic platforms must deploy watermarking and provenance-tracking (C2PA standard) to retain safe-harbour protections.

SEBI notified tighter disclosure norms for Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and Infrastructure Investment Trusts (InvITs), mandating quarterly property valuations by two independent valuers, occupancy disclosure in Net Asset Value computation, and unit-holder voting thresholds revised from 75% to 66.67% for related-party transactions. The amendments take effect October 1, 2026.

The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet extended the tenure of Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri until April 2028, providing continuity in India's G20 Troika presidency and the India-EU FTA negotiations. A 1989-batch IFS officer, Misri previously served as Deputy NSA, Ambassador to China and Myanmar, and High Commissioner to Spain.

The National Remote Sensing Centre, ISRO, released the 7th cycle Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) dataset for 2025-26 on the Bhuvan geoportal. The update uses Resourcesat-2A LISS-III imagery at 23.5-metre resolution and shows a 1.2% annual increase in built-up area nationally, with urban expansion most rapid in the Chennai, Hyderabad, and Surat peri-urban zones.

The Ministry of Culture received 157 antiquities repatriated from the United States under the 2024 India-US Cultural Property Agreement. The collection includes 12th-century Chola bronzes, Pala period manuscripts, and Gandhara stone sculptures — most smuggled during 1980s-2000s. Total antiquities repatriated since 2014 now exceeds 650 items.