Governance

With this latest approval, the total number of houses sanctioned under PMAY-Urban 2.0 has crossed 16.13 lakh. The newly approved houses cover 16 states, with around 1.89 lakh houses under the Beneficiary-Led Construction vertical and more than 23,000 houses under the Affordable Housing in Partnership vertical.

The Face Challenge was won by Innovatrics of Slovakia, followed by IDBio from the United States and Neurotechnology of Lithuania. In the Iris Challenge, IDBio secured the first position, followed by Neurotechnology and Innovatrics. The result shows that UIDAI’s benchmarking platform attracted high-quality international participation while also giving Indian companies and institutions a chance to test their capabilities against global systems.

The IP Catalyst initiative is being implemented by CDAC Pune with support from MeitY. Its purpose is to create a comprehensive digital ecosystem that supports the complete innovation lifecycle — from research and IP creation to technology transfer, commercialisation and market deployment. According to the official release, the initiative is designed to bridge the gap between publicly funded R&D and industry adoption by improving collaboration among MeitY organisations, startups, MSMEs, academia and industry.

APT 2.0 is aimed at changing how postal branches function on the ground. Instead of depending only on manual reporting and delayed administrative feedback, branch offices can now use digital insights to study local demand, track service performance and respond more quickly to customer needs. This gives India Post a more data-driven operating model, especially in rural and semi-urban areas where postal services remain a critical public interface.