Big events of 2024: current affairs for CUET

On Constitution Day, 26 November 2024, the President led the commemoration of 75 years since the Constituent Assembly adopted the Constitution on 26 November 1949, in the Central Hall of Samvidhan Sadan, with the Vice-President, the Prime Minister, the Speaker and members of Parliament. A commemorative coin and a postage stamp were released, and a year-long campaign began under the tagline 'Hamara Samvidhan, Hamara Swabhimaan'.

On 18 September 2024 the Union Cabinet accepted the recommendations of the High-Level Committee on Simultaneous Elections, chaired by former President Ram Nath Kovind — 'One Nation, One Election'. The committee proposed two steps: first, holding elections to the Lok Sabha and the State Assemblies together; then holding municipal and panchayat elections within 100 days of them. It also proposed a single electoral roll for all three tiers.

The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (BNS), the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS) and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (BSA) came into force on 1 July 2024. They replace the Indian Penal Code of 1860, the Code of Criminal Procedure of 1973 and the Indian Evidence Act of 1872. The three laws had been notified in the Gazette on 25 December 2023.

After the 2024 general election to the 18th Lok Sabha, Narendra Modi took the oath as Prime Minister for a third consecutive term on 9 June 2024, administered by President Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan, along with his council of ministers. Leaders of several neighbouring countries attended the ceremony.

On 11 March 2024 the government notified the Citizenship (Amendment) Rules, 2024, under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019. They set out how people of the Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Parsi and Christian communities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who entered India on or before 31 December 2014 can apply, through district-level committees and state-level empowered committees. The first certificates were issued in May 2024.

On 25 November 2024 the Union Cabinet approved One Nation One Subscription, with about ₹6,000 crore for the three calendar years 2025–2027, to give students, faculty and researchers in government higher education institutions and central R&D laboratories access to international scholarly journals. Nearly 13,000 e-journals were to be available to more than 6,300 institutions, through a subscription run by INFLIBNET, an inter-university centre of the UGC.

On 11 September 2024 the Union Cabinet extended Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY) to all senior citizens aged 70 and above, whatever their income: health cover of up to ₹5 lakh a year on a family basis, and a top-up of ₹5 lakh for those whose families were already covered. About 4.5 crore families were expected to benefit, and eligible seniors get a separate card.

On 24 August 2024 the Union Cabinet approved the Unified Pension Scheme (UPS) for central government employees under the National Pension System. It assures a pension of 50 per cent of the average basic pay of the last 12 months for 25 years of qualifying service (proportionately less for shorter service, down to 10 years), a family pension of 60 per cent, a minimum pension of ₹10,000 a month after 10 years, and inflation indexation. It took effect from 1 April 2025.

On 29 February 2024 the Union Cabinet approved PM-Surya Ghar: Muft Bijli Yojana, with an outlay of ₹75,021 crore, to install rooftop solar on one crore households and give them up to 300 units of electricity free every month. Central financial assistance covers 60 per cent of the cost of systems up to 2 kW and 40 per cent of the extra cost up to 3 kW. The Prime Minister had launched the scheme on 13 February 2024; it is run by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.

The 16th BRICS Summit was held at Kazan, Russia, on 23 October 2024 under Russia's chairship — the first meeting of the extended BRICS family after new members joined the group. The leaders discussed reformed multilateralism, countering terrorism, climate change and resilient supply chains, and adopted the Kazan Declaration, 'Strengthening Multilateralism for Just Global Development and Security'.

The sixth Quad Leaders' Summit was held at Wilmington, Delaware, on 21 September 2024, hosted by US President Joe Biden, with the Prime Ministers of India, Australia and Japan. The leaders adopted the Wilmington Declaration and announced the Quad Cancer Moonshot, a partnership against cervical cancer in the Indo-Pacific, and a first Quad-at-Sea Ship Observer Mission for 2025. They welcomed India's offer to host the next summit.

On 26 July 2024 'Moidams – the Mound-Burial System of the Ahom Dynasty' was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as India's 43rd property. The decision came at the 46th session of the World Heritage Committee, held at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi — the first session India had hosted. The Tai-Ahom built these royal burial mounds at Charaideo, in the foothills of the Patkai range in eastern Assam, for 600 years, from the 13th to the 19th century.

It is the first cultural site from the North East on the list, and Assam's third World Heritage site.

On 10 March 2024 India signed a Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement (TEPA) with the European Free Trade Association — Switzerland, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein. For the first time in any Indian trade agreement, the partners made a binding commitment to raise foreign direct investment in India by US$100 billion and to help create one million direct jobs over 15 years. Switzerland is India's largest trading partner in the group. The agreement came into force on 1 October 2025.

In September 2024 the Union Cabinet approved three ISRO projects. Chandrayaan-4 (₹2,104.06 crore) is to land on the Moon, collect samples and bring them back to Earth. The Venus Orbiter Mission (₹1,236 crore) is planned for launch in March 2028. And the Gaganyaan programme was expanded to build the first module of the Bharatiya Antariksh Station, BAS-1, by 2028, taking its funding to ₹20,193 crore; the aim is an operational station by 2035 and an Indian crewed Moon landing by 2040.

On 11 March 2024 DRDO carried out Mission Divyastra, the first flight test of the indigenously developed Agni-5 missile with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicle (MIRV) technology, from Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Island in Odisha. MIRV lets one missile carry several warheads to different targets. Telemetry and radar stations tracked the multiple re-entry vehicles, and the mission met its designed parameters.

On 7 March 2024 the Union Cabinet approved the IndiaAI Mission with an outlay of ₹10,371.92 crore. Its pillars include building shared AI computing capacity, an IndiaAI Innovation Centre to develop indigenous foundational models, a datasets platform, FutureSkills for AI education, financing for AI start-ups and tools for safe and trusted AI. It is implemented by the IndiaAI independent business division under Digital India Corporation.

Aditya-L1, India's first solar observatory in space, was placed in its halo orbit around the Sun–Earth Lagrange point L1 at about 4 pm IST on 6 January 2024, after a cruise of about 110 days from its launch on 2 September 2023. The orbit lies roughly 1.5 million km from Earth on the Sun–Earth line and takes about 177.86 days to go round; it was chosen for a five-year mission with an unobstructed view of the Sun.

On 1 January 2024 ISRO's PSLV-C58 placed XPoSat, the X-ray Polarimeter Satellite, in a low-inclination orbit. It is ISRO's first dedicated scientific satellite for measuring the polarisation of X-rays from celestial sources, and carries two payloads, POLIX and XSPECT. After releasing it, the rocket's fourth stage was lowered to a 350 km orbit to run the POEM-3 experiments.

The UN Climate Change Conference COP29 closed in Baku, Azerbaijan, on 24 November 2024 with a New Collective Quantified Goal on climate finance. Developed countries are to lead in providing at least US$300 billion a year to developing countries by 2035, three times the earlier US$100 billion goal, and all actors are to work to scale finance from public and private sources to US$1.3 trillion a year by 2035.

On 12 December 2024 in Singapore, 18-year-old Gukesh D of India beat the defending champion, Ding Liren of China, 7.5–6.5 in their fourteen-game match to become the 18th world chess champion and the youngest ever. He is the second Indian to hold the title, after Viswanathan Anand. The Prime Minister called the feat historic and exemplary.

At the 45th FIDE Chess Olympiad in Budapest, Hungary, India won both the open and the women's events on 22 September 2024. The open team won ten of its eleven matches and beat Slovenia 3.5–0.5 in the last round; Gukesh D and Arjun Erigaisi won individual golds. The women's team beat Azerbaijan 3.5–0.5 in the final round to finish first alone.

At the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, held from 28 August to 8 September, India won a record 29 medals — 7 gold, 9 silver and 13 bronze — and finished 18th in the medal table. It was the country's most successful Paralympics, beating the 19 medals won at Tokyo 2020, and India sent its largest contingent yet.

India ended the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, which closed on 11 August, with six medals: one silver and five bronze. Neeraj Chopra won silver in the javelin. Shooting brought three bronzes — Manu Bhaker in the 10 m air pistol, Manu Bhaker and Sarabjot Singh in the mixed team event, and Swapnil Kusale in the 50 m rifle three positions. Aman Sehrawat won bronze in wrestling, and the men's hockey team retained the bronze it had won at Tokyo.

India won the ICC Men's T20 World Cup on 29 June 2024, beating South Africa by seven runs in the final at the Kensington Oval, Barbados. Both teams came to the final unbeaten. Virat Kohli's 76 lifted India to 176 for 7. It was India's second T20 world title, after the first edition in 2007, and its first ICC trophy in over a decade. The tournament was co-hosted by the West Indies and the United States.

Sanjay Malhotra, an IAS officer of the 1990 batch, Rajasthan cadre, took charge as the 26th Governor of the Reserve Bank of India on 11 December 2024, for three years. He had been Secretary, Department of Revenue, in the Finance Ministry, and before that Secretary, Department of Financial Services. He succeeded Shaktikanta Das.

The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics went to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton for foundational work on machine learning with artificial neural networks. Chemistry went to David Baker for computational protein design and to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper for predicting protein structures; Medicine to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for discovering microRNA; Literature to the South Korean writer Han Kang; and Economics to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson, for work on how institutions shape prosperity. On 11 October the Peace Prize went to Nihon Hidankyo, the Japanese movement of atomic-bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for its work for a world free of nuclear weapons.

On 30 September 2024 the Information and Broadcasting Minister announced that Mithun Chakraborty would receive the Dadasaheb Phalke Lifetime Achievement Award for 2022, to be presented at the 70th National Film Awards on 8 October 2024. Born Gourang Chakraborty in Kolkata in 1950 and trained at the Film and Television Institute of India, he won the National Award for Best Actor for his very first film, Mrigayaa (1976), and two more for Tahader Katha and Swami Vivekananda. Disco Dancer (1982) made him a household name; he has acted in more than 350 films.

Five people were named for the Bharat Ratna in 2024. On 30 March 2024 President Droupadi Murmu conferred it posthumously on former Prime Ministers P. V. Narasimha Rao and Chaudhary Charan Singh, the agricultural scientist M. S. Swaminathan and former Bihar Chief Minister Karpoori Thakur; members of their families received it. On 31 March she conferred it on L. K. Advani at his residence in New Delhi.

On 25 January 2024 the government announced 132 Padma Awards for the year: 5 Padma Vibhushan, 17 Padma Bhushan and 110 Padma Shri, with 30 women and 9 posthumous awardees among them. The Padma Vibhushan went to the dancer and actor Vyjayantimala Bali, the actor Chiranjeevi, former Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu, the dancer Padma Subrahmanyam, and — posthumously — Sulabh founder Bindeshwar Pathak.