Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has told SEBI to treat AI-powered cyber threats as a top-level risk, warning that a single successful breach could disrupt markets across the entire country. She made the remarks at a SEBI event, urging the regulator to stay well ahead of fast-moving threats rather than simply reacting to them. Sitharaman specifically flagged deepfake technology as a growing tool for investment fraud. Deepfakes are AI-generated audio or video that impersonate real people convincingly enough to mislead investors, and their use in financial scams is rising. The concern is not theoretical: regulators globally have already seen fraudsters use synthetic media to impersonate executives and market figures. For SEBI, the warning carries operational weight. As the regulator overseeing equities, derivatives, and mutual funds, a cyber attack on its systems or on market infrastructure could freeze trading, corrupt data, or trigger panic across interconnected platforms. Watch for SEBI to tighten its cybersecurity framework and possibly issue new compliance rules for brokers and exchanges around AI-related threat detection and deepfake verification protocols.
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.
