
India to Restore UPI Merchant Fees, PhonePe Gains Most
India's government plans to amend the Payment and Settlement Systems Act to restore UPI merchant discount rates, ending the zero-MDR regime in place since January 2020.
Key Takeaways
May 4, 2026 · 2 min read · By Rishabh Bhardwaj
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Gaurav Gogoi, president of the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee and sitting MP from Jorhat, has lost his Lok Sabha seat to BJP's Biplab Kumar Deb-backed candidate in the 2024 general election results. Gogoi polled 46,257 votes against his opponent Topon Kumar Goswami, who secured 69,439 votes, a winning margin of over 23,000 votes.
Goswami's victory marks the BJP's third consecutive hold on Jorhat, one of Assam's politically significant constituencies. The scale of the margin suggests the seat has moved from competitive to relatively safe BJP territory over successive election cycles.
For the Congress, the defeat is more than a single seat loss. Gogoi is not just a senior parliamentarian but the state party president, which means his personal defeat carries organizational weight. Losing the top state leader at the ballot box weakens the party's standing ahead of any future state-level mobilization in Assam.
Assam has been a difficult state for Congress since the BJP swept to power in the 2016 assembly elections. The party has struggled to rebuild since then, and Gogoi's loss removes one of its more visible national-level faces from direct electoral representation. His role bridging state and national Congress politics now faces a credibility test.
The vote gap, roughly 23,000 votes, also signals that Jorhat's electorate did not shift meaningfully toward the opposition despite national-level INDIA alliance momentum in other parts of the country. Whether Congress restructures its Assam leadership following this result is the key question to watch.

India's government plans to amend the Payment and Settlement Systems Act to restore UPI merchant discount rates, ending the zero-MDR regime in place since January 2020.
India's government has introduced the Taxation and Other Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026, proposing changes to payments regulation, income tax, and the Finance Act to attract FDI and support Make in India. The Bill's final shape will depend on parliamentary debate and committee review.
The government's Taxation and Other Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026, proposes to replace the blanket UPI MDR ban with a system allowing the Centre to notify which payment modes stay fee-free.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Rs 5,000 crore Bhogapuram greenfield airport in Andhra Pradesh, built under a public-private partnership model. He also laid foundation stones for infrastructure projects worth nearly Rs 18,000 crore in the state, signalling a broad investment push for the region.