Current affairs — 20 September 2026

On 17 September 2026 the Election Commission of India (ECI) passed an interim order recording that “there are two rival groups in All India Trinamool Congress, one led by Ms. Mamata Banerjee and the other led by Shri Arup Roy, and each group is now claiming to be the party”. The Commission froze both the party name All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) and its reserved symbol Flowers & Grass for the coming by-elections, and allotted interim identities instead — Mamata All India Trinamool Congress with the Football Player symbol, and Democratic Trinamool Congress with the Envelope symbol.

On 18 September 2026, a Supreme Court bench of Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice K. Vinod Chandran, in M/S Balaji Formalin Pvt. Ltd. v. Union of India (2026 INSC 1009), struck down Rules 18A and 18B of the Maharashtra Poisons Rules, 1972 as violating Articles 14 and 19(1)(g). Those rules had required every seller of methanol to mix one gram of methylene carmine and four grams of denatonium saccharide into every 100 litres before selling to any buyer other than a certified drug manufacturer, and provided for confiscation of methanol held without a Form A licence.

On 19 September 2026 the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas announced that from 1 October 2026, Biometric Aadhaar Authentication (BAA) becomes mandatory for every domestic consumer who wants an LPG refill at the subsidised price. The Ministry reported that 27.43 crore consumers — 89.9% of active domestic LPG consumers — had already completed authentication as of that date and “do not need to do it again”.

The Union Ministry of Finance hosted the first Conference of Finance Ministers and Finance Secretaries of States and Union Territories with Legislature, on “Financing India's Journey towards Viksit Bharat”, in New Delhi on 18–19 September 2026, led by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. It ran three working sessions — on the macroeconomic outlook, on financing agricultural transformation and on financing the energy transition — alongside discussion of GST 2.0 and the role of private capital.

On 19 September 2026, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the two-day International Conference on “The Future of Environment and Climate Dynamics” at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi, hosted by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) and attended by judges from 17 countries along with UNEP and the Asian Development Bank. He also launched the NGT Mobile Application.

The High-Level Week of the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly opened on 18 September 2026 with the SDG Moment, and the General Debate runs from 22 to 28 September 2026 under the theme “Restoring Trust, Managing Transformation: A United Nations that Delivers for All.” The session itself opened earlier, on 8 September 2026, under President of the General Assembly H.E. Dr Khalilur Rahman of Bangladesh.

On 19 September 2026, Down To Earth marked twenty years since the International Astronomical Union (IAU) stripped Pluto of planetary status at its Prague General Assembly on 24 August 2006 — ending a 76-year run that began with its discovery in 1930. The anniversary lands in the middle of an American political campaign to reverse the decision.

On 19 September 2026, Down To Earth reported, on IMD data, that Meghalaya — whose name means “the abode of the clouds” and which contains the two wettest inhabited places on Earth — holds India's highest rainfall deficit of the 2026 monsoon, at 59% below normal as of 15 September 2026. The State has ranked worst among all States since 31 July.

On 18 September 2026, UN Women and UN News put a figure on who is dying in the world's only live Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). Dr Setcheme Mongbo, UN Women's Representative in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, told a Geneva briefing that more than 54% of confirmed Ebola patients in the DRC are women, that 86% of surveyed women-led organisations had received no Ebola response funding, and that nine in ten were excluded from response decision-making.

On 19 September 2026, the Ministry of Railways approved ₹252 crore to deploy Kavach 4.0 across 607.7 route kilometres of the Lucknow Division of North Eastern Railway, covering what the release calls the “identified balance sections of the division” — that is, the stretches not already covered. The release describes Kavach as “an indigenously developed Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system designed to enhance operational safety”, which prevents Signal Passing at Danger (SPAD), applies brakes automatically and monitors train operations.