April 2026 in current affairs: eleven stories for CUET

On 8 April 2026 the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved two hydroelectric projects in Arunachal Pradesh. Kalai-II, 1,200 MW on the Lohit river in Anjaw district, costs ₹14,105.83 crore and is the first hydro project in the Lohit basin; it will be built by a joint venture of THDC India and the state. Kamala, 1,720 MW in Kamle, Kra Daadi and Kurung Kumey districts, costs ₹26,069.50 crore, will be built by a joint venture of NHPC and the state, and will also moderate floods in the Brahmaputra valley. The state gets 12 per cent free power from each, plus 1 per cent for local area development.

On 8 April 2026 the Cabinet approved Jaipur Metro Phase 2, a 41 km north–south corridor from Prahladpura to Todi Mod with 36 stations, at a cost of ₹13,037.66 crore. It will be built by Rajasthan Metro Rail Corporation, a 50:50 joint venture of the Government of India and the Government of Rajasthan, and will link the airport, Sitapura Industrial Area and SMS Hospital. Phase 1 is an 11.64 km corridor.

On 1 April 2026 the Income-tax Act, 2025 came into force, replacing the Income-tax Act, 1961. Parliament had passed it on 12 August 2025 and the President assented on 21 August 2025; the Central Board of Direct Taxes notified the Income-tax Rules, 2026 on 20 March 2026.

The Act rewrites the law in simpler language without changing tax policy. Its best-known change is the single 'tax year', which replaces the old pair of 'previous year' and 'assessment year'.

Phase I of Census 2027 — the Houselisting and Housing Census — began on 1 April 2026. The year in the name is the year of the population count; the field work starts well before it, which is the distinction a question is most likely to turn on.

This is India's first census with digital data capture and a self-enumeration facility: enumerators submit through a mobile app, and a household may fill in its own details rather than wait to be visited. President Droupadi Murmu was the first to self-enumerate, followed by Vice-President C.P. Radhakrishnan, the Prime Minister and the Home Minister. About 55,000 households used the facility on the day it opened, in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Goa, Karnataka, Lakshadweep, Mizoram, Odisha, Sikkim and parts of Delhi.

The data is collected under the Census Act, 1948, which makes the individual record strictly confidential — the provision that makes an honest answer safe to give.

On 18 April 2026 the Union Cabinet approved a domestic insurance pool, the Bharat Maritime Insurance Pool, with a sovereign guarantee of ₹12,980 crore, so that ships carrying cargo to and from Indian ports stay insured even through volatile sea routes. It covers hull and machinery, cargo, protection and indemnity (P&I) and war risk.

Indian vessels had depended heavily on the International Group of P&I Clubs for third-party liability cover, which can be withdrawn under sanctions or geopolitical tension. The pool was launched on 12 May 2026.

On 18 April 2026 the Cabinet approved continuing Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana-III beyond March 2025 up to March 2028, with the outlay revised to ₹83,977 crore from ₹80,250 crore. PMGSY-III consolidates through routes and major rural links that connect habitations to rural agricultural markets (GrAMs), higher secondary schools and hospitals. Bridges in hilly areas get until March 2029, and 161 long-span bridges were cleared. The scheme is run by the Ministry of Rural Development.

On 8 April 2026 the Cabinet fixed the Nutrient Based Subsidy rates on phosphatic and potassic fertilisers, including DAP, for the kharif season 2026 (1 April to 30 September 2026). The requirement is about ₹41,533.81 crore, around ₹4,317 crore more than kharif 2025. The scheme, in force since 1 April 2010, covers 28 grades of P&K fertilisers; urea is outside it. It is run by the Department of Fertilizers.

The Monetary Policy Committee's 60th meeting, from 6 to 8 April 2026 — the first of 2026-27 — unanimously kept the repo rate at 5.25 per cent with a neutral stance.

The Reserve Bank projected growth for 2026-27 at 6.9 per cent and CPI inflation at 4.6 per cent, higher than in 2025-26, citing energy prices and supply disruption from the conflict in West Asia, and possible El Niño conditions, as upside risks to inflation. On the new CPI series, inflation had risen to 3.2 per cent in February 2026.

In April 2026 the Department of Telecommunications and the National Disaster Management Authority began pan-India testing of an indigenous Cell Broadcast system for disaster alerts, built by C-DOT. Cell Broadcast sends an alert to every phone in a defined area at the same moment, which matters for tsunamis, earthquakes, lightning and gas leaks.

It adds to SACHET, the Integrated Alert System also built by C-DOT, which runs in all 36 states and union territories on the ITU's Common Alerting Protocol and has sent over 134 billion geo-targeted SMS alerts in more than 19 languages.

At the 15th European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad (EGMO), held in Bordeaux, France, from 9 to 15 April 2026, India's four-member team won one gold, one silver and one bronze. Shreya Shantanu Mundhada of Mumbai won India's first-ever EGMO gold, and the team placed 6th of 67 countries, its best since its debut in 2015.

Earth Day, 22 April, was marked in 2026 on the global theme 'Our Power, Our Planet'. The Ministry of Earth Sciences held its observance at Prithvi Bhavan, New Delhi, with a call for climate justice and equitable sustainability.