Assam, February 20: Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation Amit Shah on Thursday launched the ₹6,839 crore Vibrant Villages Programme–II (VVP–II) from Nathunpur village in Assam, describing it as a transformative step toward strengthening border infrastructure and national security.

The programme aims to ensure that villages located along India’s international borders receive the same level of infrastructure and welfare benefits as other parts of the country.

Addressing the gathering, which was attended by Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and senior officials, Shah said the government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has changed the narrative around border regions.

“Earlier, border villages were referred to as the last villages of the country. Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided that every border village is the first village of India,” he said.

Veteran Bengali author Mani Shankar Mukhopadhyay, popularly known as Shankar, passed away on Friday (February 20, 2026) at the age of 92. He had been undergoing treatment at a Kolkata hospital for the past 15 days for multiple age-related ailments. His family announces his demise on Friday (Frbruary 20) afternoon.

A towering figure in Bengali literature, Shankar authored several celebrated novels, including Chowringhee, Jana Aranya, and Seemabaddha. All three were made into films, with Chowringhee becoming particularly iconic. Jana Aranya and Seemabaddha were adapted for the screen by legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray.

In a significant boost to India’s global contribution to peace and disarmament efforts, the Indian Army is hosting the inaugural United Nations Fellowship Training Programme on Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) Control for the first time in Asia for the Asia-Pacific region.

The program is being held under the aegis of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) from February 16 to March 6, 2026, at the Military College of Materials Management in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, according to an official press release.

The prestigious three-week fellowship is being organised by the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) through its Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Asia and the Pacific (UNRCPD). The programme brings together delegates from 13 nations across the Asia-Pacific region.

Larsen & Toubro announced a partnership with NVIDIA on Wednesday at the India AI Summit in Mumbai to develop gigawatt-scale AI factory infrastructure in India, under the country’s IndiaAI Mission.

The venture will combine L&T’s engineering and infrastructure capabilities with NVIDIA’s hardware and software stack; including GPUs, CPUs, networking, storage platforms, and the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software suite.

The immediate plan involves scaling NVIDIA GPU cluster deployments at L&T’s Chennai data center to 30 MW capacity within its 300-acre campus, and at a new 40 MW data center in Mumbai currently under construction.

Mr. Subodh Gupta, CEO of Lord's Mark Microbiotech Pvt. Ltd., has been honoured with the prestigious 'CEO of the Year' award at the 24th edition of Business Leader of the Year, held on February 16, 2026 at Taj Lands End. The award was presented by Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, Founder & CEO, Fun and Joy at Work, in respect of his trademarks, namely the "Business Leader Of The Year," adding further distinction to the recognition.

Selected by an independent jury, the programme recognises leaders who combine business excellence with strong corporate governance, CSR commitment, and tangible contribution to national growth and welfare.

Air India and the Lufthansa Group recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to create a joint business partnership. This agreement establishes a framework for cooperation between Air India, its subsidiaries like Air India Express, and Lufthansa Group carriers, including Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, ITA Airways, Lufthansa, and SWISS.

With this agreement, the two companies aim to improve flight connections and travel experiences between India and Europe on a single ticket.

The partnership follows the recent completion of the India-European Union Free Trade Agreement. The airlines plan to work together on route planning, flight schedules, and marketing to make travel more convenient. They also intend to coordinate frequent flyer programs and IT systems.

IDFC FIRST Bank launches Hello Cashback Credit Card, a fixed-deposit-backed offering designed to make credit more accessible for digitally savvy customers, especially young adults aged 18+ with online-first and UPI-led spending habits. The card enables customers to begin building their credit history while benefiting from a strong and clearly differentiated cashback proposition on everyday digital payments.

Hello Cashback features a powerful tiered cashback structure, offering 5% cashback on online spends above ₹10,000, 3% cashback on online spends up to ₹10,000, and 1% cashback on in-store, contactless, and UPI transactions. Uniquely, the 1% cashback also extends to essential categories such as utilities, education, and insurance. The card is priced at a joining fee of ₹1,000 and an annual fee of ₹1,000, with the joining fee waived until March 31, 2026, and the annual fee waived on annual spends of ₹2,00,000 in the previous year, making it a compelling combination of rewards, access, and credit building.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on Wednesday unveiled VoicERA, an open-source, end-to-end Voice AI stack, at the India AI Impact Summit 2026, marking a major step forward in strengthening India’s Digital Public Infrastructure for multilingual voice technologies.

The launch was led by the Digital India BHASHINI Division under the Digital India Corporation, an entity of MeitY. Amitabh Nag, Chief Executive Officer of the Digital India BHASHINI Division, spearheaded the initiative in collaboration with the EkStep Foundation, the Centre for Open Source Software, IIIT Bengaluru, and AI4Bharat.

Deployed directly on the BHASHINI National Language Infrastructure, VoicERA establishes a national execution layer for multilingual Voice and Language AI. The platform has been designed to be open, modular, interoperable, cloud-deployable, and ready for on-premise use, enabling secure and scalable deployment across government agencies, research institutions, and innovation ecosystems. Its flexible architecture reduces duplication of effort while avoiding vendor lock-in, accelerating the development and adoption of inclusive voice-based digital services nationwide.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology launched the AI Impact Startup Book at the India Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi. The book captures the scale, diversity, and growing global footprint of India’s artificial intelligence and deep-tech startup ecosystem. Highlighting the objective behind the publication, Additional Secretary of the Ministry of MeitY, Abhishek Singh, said that the compendium provides a consolidated repository of AI solutions being developed in India, enabling ministries, states and institutions to assess their real-world performance and adopt them for population-scale deployment.

He underlined that the next phase of India’s AI journey will depend on systematically connecting solution providers with implementing agencies and moving from pilot-stage innovation to large-scale adoption across sectors. The publication presents insights from a large sample of startups and highlights emerging trends across sectors, technologies, and geographies. The study further notes the emergence of indigenous AI infrastructure, the growing integration of edge AI with hardware capabilities, and the transition of several startups from early-stage impact to global growth.

As the world progress is towards getting used to artificial intelligence in our day-to-day lives, the state of Bihar is also tightening its seat belts to walk hand-in-hand with AI.

Artificial intelligence is being used by the state of Bihar in several sectors. At AI Impact Summit 2026, NDTV took a glance of the Bihar pavilion and your present you, some of the highlights that reflects how Bihar is using artificial intelligence

In a major step toward digital democracy, the State Election Commission, Bihar has used Artificial Intelligence based E-Voting in the Urban Local Bodypolls and is now preparing to expand the model for the next Assembly elections in next term