Defence Exams (NDA, CDS, CAPF) Current Affairs – March 2026

International

2 one-liners

2 International — Defence Exams (NDA, CDS, CAPF) Current Affairs – March 2026.

• Iran hit back with missile and drone attacks on US and allied military bases in several places across West Asia, and tension rose near the Strait of Hormuz, a route that carries a large share of the world's oil.
• At MC14, talks to cut harmful fishing subsidies will continue towards MC15. India and African countries again asked for a permanent solution on public stockholding (PSH) for food security.

Economy & Banking

2 one-liners

2 Economy & Banking — Defence Exams (NDA, CDS, CAPF) Current Affairs – March 2026.

• A Small Hydro Development Scheme worth ₹2,584.60 crore will run from 2026-27 to 2030-31. It targets about 500 MW of small hydro projects (up to 25 MW each), with higher support for the North-East and border states.
• The ₹7,280 crore government scheme behind the rare earth magnet plant aims to make India self-reliant for electric vehicles, defence and energy, with a target of 6,000 tonnes of yearly capacity.

Science & Technology

2 one-liners

2 Science & Technology — Defence Exams (NDA, CDS, CAPF) Current Affairs – March 2026.

• ISRO held a successful 65-second hot test of the CE20 cryogenic engine at its Mahendragiri propulsion facility (IPRC) in Tamil Nadu. The engine will strengthen the LVM3 rocket and has had 20 successful hot tests.
• A Kerala start-up handed its Akasha300 3D printer to ISRO's Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC), Valiamala; its dual-extrusion head prints two materials together, and it withstands 350 degrees C, with 500 degrees C planned.

Defence & Security

12 one-liners

12 Defence & Security — Defence Exams (NDA, CDS, CAPF) Current Affairs – March 2026.

• Defence Minister Rajnath Singh released Defence Forces Vision 2047, prepared by Integrated Defence Staff Headquarters. It aims at modern, tech-driven, joint armed forces and more use of AI and cyber security.
• The stealth frigate INS Taragiri (F41) joined the Indian Navy. It is over 75% indigenous, uses CODOG propulsion, and has supersonic missiles, medium-range air-defence missiles and strong anti-submarine ability.
• Vayu Baan is an indigenous Indian Air Force project by its Directorate of Aerospace Design. A drone is launched from a flying helicopter, flies over 50 km for about 30 minutes, streams live video and works even if GPS is jammed.
• DRDO and the Navy successfully tested the ADC-150 air-droppable container from a P-8 aircraft off Goa. It can drop up to 150 kg of supplies and emergency medical aid to ships at sea.
• Start-up AquaAirX built AVATAAR, India's first amphibious surveillance drone, which can fly in the air and dive underwater. It has sonar, a camera, AI navigation and underwater communication.
• The Defence Ministry signed deals worth about ₹5,083 crore: 6 ALH Mk-III helicopters for the Coast Guard (about ₹2,901 crore) and the VL-Shtil missile system for the Navy (about ₹2,182 crore).
• The SIPRI report says India was the world's second-largest arms importer in 2021-2025, with an 8.2% share of global imports.
• SIPRI also found India remained the biggest buyer of French arms exports (24%) and the biggest destination of Russian arms exports (48%).
• Amid US-Israel tension with Iran, India began Operation Urja Suraksha to protect its crude oil, LPG and LNG ships in the Strait of Hormuz. More than 15 warships were deployed in the Gulf of Oman.
• INS Nilgiri, the Indian Navy's newest stealth frigate, took part in Exercise Kakadu 2026 in Australia, a multinational naval exercise held every two years by the Royal Australian Navy since 1993 to build maritime cooperation in the Indo-Pacific.
• INS Nilgiri, first of the indigenous Project 17A frigates, was launched in September 2019 and commissioned in 2025; it fights on the surface, against submarines and in the air.
• The other six Project 17A frigates are Himgiri, Udaygiri, Taragiri, Dunagiri, Vindhyagiri and Mahendragiri, being built at Mazagon Dock (Mumbai) and Garden Reach Shipbuilders (Kolkata).

Summits, Agreements & Exercises

5 one-liners

5 Summits, Agreements & Exercises — 9 Mar – 27 Mar.

• NATO's exercise Cold Response 2026 was held in Norway and Finland with about 25,000 troops from 14 countries, to build military strength in the Arctic.
• India, the USA, Japan, Australia and New Zealand took part in the US-led Sea Dragon 2026 at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, to train in anti-submarine warfare.
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi became the first Indian PM to address Israel's parliament, the Knesset, and received its highest honour, the Speaker of the Knesset Medal; talks covered defence, technology, peaceful nuclear energy, space and a free trade agreement.
• 9 Mar — India and Seychelles held the joint exercise LAMITIYE-2026 from 9 to 20 March at the Seychelles Defence Academy, Victoria. For the first time the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force all took part, with INS Trikand and a C-130.
• 27 Mar — The Indian Navy held IMEX TTX 2026 at Kochi on 27 March. It was the third meeting of the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) and India chairs IONS for 2026-2028.

International

25 one-liners

25 International — 8 Mar – 26 Mar.

International — 25 one-liners

Summits, Agreements & Exercises

10 one-liners

10 Summits, Agreements & Exercises — 4 Mar – 26 Mar.

• India and Uzbekistan launched a Pharma-Nutraceutical Corridor to give Indian firms easier access to CIS and Eurasian markets. Business in Tashkent will formally start in May 2026.
• Romania became a full member of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) by formally approving its framework agreement, which it had signed in 2023.
• The ISA was formed on India-France initiative at COP-21 in Paris in 2015. Its headquarters is in Gurugram; India is president and France co-president. It promotes solar energy, mainly in countries between the Tropics.
• Modi is among the few world leaders who have received top honours from both Israel and Palestine, showing how India balances ties with both sides in West Asia.
• The Raisina Dialogue, India's biggest international conference on geopolitics and geo-economics, is organised by the Ministry of External Affairs together with the Observer Research Foundation (ORF).
• The WTO meeting produced a first draft called the Yaounde Package. It has a trade-and-health declaration and steps to help small economies, and its final approval will be given later in Geneva, Switzerland.
• 4 Mar — Finnish President Alexander Stubb visited India from 4 to 7 March 2026. India and Finland raised ties to a strategic partnership, focusing on digital technology, AI, quantum computing, green hydrogen and 6G.
• 5 Mar — Raisina Dialogue 2026 was held in New Delhi from 5 to 7 March, with the Finnish President as chief guest. The MEA and Observer Research Foundation host it; the theme was "Samskara: Assertion, Accommodation, Advancement".
• 26 Mar — The 14th WTO Ministerial Conference, the highest decision-making body of the World Trade Organization, was held in Yaounde, Cameroon, from 26 to 29 March 2026. It must meet at least once every two years.
• 26 Mar — Union Minister Piyush Goyal led India at the WTO conference in Yaounde. The main issues were WTO reform, fisheries subsidies, e-commerce and agriculture.

Science & Technology

21 one-liners

21 Science & Technology — Defence Exams (NDA, CDS, CAPF) Current Affairs – March 2026.

• The Rajasthan Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy University, Ajmer Bill, 2026 was passed. A separate university in Ajmer will offer higher education and research in these systems.
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the first nationwide HPV vaccination campaign for adolescent girls from Rajasthan, to protect them from cervical cancer later in life.
• The HPV campaign gives a single dose of the Gardasil-4 vaccine to girls aged 9 to 14 years, and aims to reach about 1.5 crore girls every year.
• HPV vaccine doses are given at district hospitals, community health centres, government medical colleges and Ayushman Arogya Mandirs (primary health centres), and only with the consent of the girl's parents or guardian.
• Cervical cancer, which affects the cervix (neck of the womb), is a major health concern for women in India, so the HPV campaign is seen as an important public-health step.
• Under the National Quantum Mission, the government approved turning 23 educational institutions into quantum technology labs, to boost teaching, research and skills.
• Chennai start-up Agnikul Cosmos tested Agnite, the world's first fully 3D-printed booster rocket engine. It uses a motor-driven pump system and is made of the nickel superalloy Inconel.
• The Agnite engine is about 1 metre long and is the first of its kind to be tested with a motor-driven pump system.
• Ahmedabad start-up Omspace launched a single-stage sub-orbital sounding rocket from Bavaliyari village near Dholera. Gujarat became the first state to launch a sounding rocket from its soil.
• The Gujarat sounding rocket carried a mini-satellite to collect weather data. It was built under Make in India using carbon fibre and advanced materials.
• India's first rare earth magnet pilot plant was set up at ARCI, Hyderabad (Telangana). It will make neodymium-iron-boron (Nd-Fe-B) magnets to cut dependence on China.
• The Ministry of Earth Sciences and NIOT are building India's first Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) plant at Kavaratti, Lakshadweep. It will use sea temperature differences to make power and drinking water.
• Chile became the first country in the Americas that WHO confirmed to have eliminated leprosy (Hansen's disease) as a public-health problem, through long surveillance, early detection and free multidrug therapy (MDT).
• India's first OTEC (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion) project is being built at Kavaratti, the capital of Lakshadweep, by NIOT (National Institute of Ocean Technology); Minister of State for Science Jitendra Singh inspected it.
• OTEC makes power from the temperature gap between warm surface water (about 29 degrees C) and cold water at about 1,000 m depth; the plant should give 60-65 kW of electricity and about 1 lakh litres of drinking water daily.
• India's first hydrogen train completed its oscillation trial, run by RDSO; built at the Integral Coach Factory, Chennai, the 10-coach, about 2,400 kW trainset is called the world's longest hydrogen train.
• The hydrogen train will run between Jind and Sonipat in Haryana, with a dedicated hydrogen plant at Jind; it has zero carbon emissions and releases only water vapour.
• The GARBH-INi programme of the Department of Biotechnology builds AI and genomics models to predict the risk of premature birth, tracking thousands of women in India's largest pregnancy cohort study; a data-sharing platform, GARBH-INi-DRISHTI, was also created.
• Denmark became the first European Union country confirmed by WHO to have ended mother-to-child transmission of both HIV and syphilis, and is moving towards 'triple elimination' by adding hepatitis B.
• Over 20 countries, including Botswana, Malaysia and Cuba, had already earned WHO's elimination status for mother-to-child transmission before Denmark.
• WHO treats leprosy as eliminated as a public-health problem when cases fall below 1 per 10,000 people.

Environment & Ecology

4 one-liners

4 Environment & Ecology — Defence Exams (NDA, CDS, CAPF) Current Affairs – March 2026.

• India's revised climate target for 2031-2035 is to cut the emission intensity of GDP by 47% from 2005 levels by 2035, and to raise non-fossil power capacity from 52% to 60%.
• Lt Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena launched the Indus River Green Corridor at Spituk, Leh, planting about 1,000 oleaster and sea-buckthorn saplings on the river bank and 1,000 cherry-blossom and apricot saplings in Leh, to expand forest cover in two years.
• The IQAir World Air Quality Report 2025 found India's average PM2.5 at 48.9 micrograms per cubic metre, about ten times the WHO limit; 66 of the 100 most polluted cities were Indian, and New Delhi was the most polluted capital for the eighth year.
• Of 143 countries in the IQAir report, about 130 (91%) exceeded the WHO annual air-quality guideline, and Pakistan and Bangladesh were among the world's most polluted countries.

Sports

11 one-liners

11 Sports — 8 Mar – 28 Mar.

• Lokesh Sathyanathan became the first Indian to jump over 8 metres in indoor long jump, at the Tyson Invitational in the USA. He finished eighth; American Cordell Tinch won with 8.29 m.
• An Assam player, Mayank Chakraborty, became India's 94th Grandmaster after getting his last norm in Stockholm and crossing the 2500 FIDE rating. He is the first Grandmaster from North-East India.
• Jammu and Kashmir won the Ranji Trophy 2025-26, its first title, by beating Karnataka on first-innings lead in the final at Hubballi. Auqib Nabi (62 wickets) was Player of the Tournament.
• The world's first franchise-based Cycling League of India is being launched, with 8 franchise teams of 10 cyclists each, including junior and international riders.
• The first National Indoor Athletics Championship was held over two days at Kalinga Stadium, Bhubaneswar, by the Athletics Federation of India (founded 1946); Bhubaneswar will also host the 2028 World Indoor Athletics.
• Lionel Messi scored his 900th career goal for Inter Miami CF in his 1,142nd match. Only Cristiano Ronaldo (965 goals in 1,236 matches) had reached 900 before.
• In Formula One 2026, George Russell (Mercedes) won the opening Australian Grand Prix, his sixth GP win. At the Chinese GP in Shanghai, Italy's Kimi Antonelli won his first F1 race, with Russell second and Hamilton third.
• India topped the World Para Athletics Grand Prix in New Delhi with a record 208 medals (75 gold, 69 silver, 64 bronze) and its biggest squad of 279 athletes; Preeti Pal and Sumit Antil won golds.
• 8 Mar — India won its third T20 World Cup title by beating New Zealand in the final at the Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad, on 8 March 2026, retaining the trophy; India and Sri Lanka co-hosted the event.
• 8 Mar — In the 2026 T20 World Cup, Suryakumar Yadav captained India, Sanju Samson was Player of the Tournament with 327 runs, and Jasprit Bumrah was Man of the Match in the final.
• 28 Mar — IPL 2026 began on 28 March, with Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) playing as defending champions; RCB is now valued at about $269 million, among the most valuable IPL franchises.

Awards & Honours

18 one-liners

18 Awards & Honours — 18 Mar – 31 Mar.

Appointments

16 one-liners

16 Appointments — 3 Mar – 27 Mar.