The Union Government is preparing to launch two new schemes for persons with disabilities, aimed at training them for “dignified livelihood opportunities” and providing them with “timely access” to assistive devices by setting up “modern retail-style” Assistive Technology Marts across the country.

Even as Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the two new schemes — the Divyangjan Kaushal Yojana and Divyang Sahara Yojana — as part of the government’s push for empowering persons with disabilities, rights organisation National Platform for the Rights of the Disabled (NPRD) has said the Budget “continues the exclusionary trajectory of the Modi government in its third term”, saying that it “violates disability rights and entrenches inequality”.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, during her Budget speech, announced seven high-speed rail corridors, which will connect five South Indian states among others, and will be developed at a total cost of ₹16 lakh crore.

Calling them “growth connectors”, the FM said the corridors will link Mumbai- Pune, Pune-Hyderabad, Hyderabad-Bengaluru, Hyderabad-Chennai, Chennai-Bengaluru, Delhi-Varanasi, and Varanasi-Siliguri.

Read: Union Budget 2026 LIVE updates

The corridors will reduce travel time between Chennai to Bengaluru to 1.5 hours, Bengaluru to Hyderabad to 2 hours, Hyderabad to Chennai to 2 hours and 55 minutes. The travel duration between Pune and Hyderabad will reduce to 1 hour 55 minutes; and between Pune to Mumbai it will reduce to 45 minutes.

At a press conference, Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw explained that with five South Indian States interlinked, the announcement will serve as a growth multiplier for them.

The Delhi-Varanasi corridor will bring down travel time to 3 hour 50 minutes. Varanasi to Siliguri via Patna will be covered in 2 hour 55 minutes.

These corridors will be of 4000 km in length, and be developed at an outlay of ₹16 lakh crore.

The FM also announced a new dedicated freight corridor connecting Dankuni in West Bengal to Surat in Gujarat.

WATCH | Seven high-speed rail corridors to promote environment friendly transport: FM

A total outlay of ₹2,78,030 crore has been set aside for the Ministry of Railways in the Union Budget 2026-27 as compared to ₹2,55,466 lakh in the revised estimate of Financial Year 2025-2026, indicating a hike of 10.8%. The total capital expenditure for railways is at ₹2,93,030 crore.

Rail Minister said a sum of ₹1,20,000 crore has been earmarked on safety related measures such as track maintenance, locomotives, coaches as rapid installation of Kavach ( indigenously developed Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system) and overhead electricals.

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has been granted a total capital expenditure of ₹3.09 lakh crore for financial year 2026-27 as compared to ₹2.87 lakh in the revised estimate of the current fiscal, a hike of 10.7%.

Allocation to state-owned National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has been increased to ₹1.87 lakh crore from last year’s ₹1.70 lakh crore.

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday (February 1, 2026) earmarked ₹20,000 crore in the Budget towards Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) – a nascent, esoteric stream of research globally, but mooted as necessary to countries’ quest for a zero-carbon future.

CCUS refers to a suite of technologies that capture carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from large point sources – such as power plants, steel, cement, chemicals, and refineries – and either use CO₂ as an input for products or permanently store it in geological formations.

Union Budget 2026 LIVE: Govt provides ₹1.4 lakh crore as tax devolution to states in FY27: FM Sitharaman

Under the aegis of the Principal Scientific Advisor, an expert committee of the Department of Science and Technology (DST) had submitted a report in December 2025 to analyse what India needed to do regarding CCUS to aid meeting its net-zero goals for 2070. Net zero refers to no net carbon emissions.

The road map

The DST road map positions CCUS as essential for India’s “hard-to-abate” sectors (for instance, iron and steel industries) where deep emissions reductions are difficult through efficiency or renewable substitution alone. Reducing carbon emissions from these sectors has acquired urgency in the light of measures by the European Union to impose indirect tariffs on imports from countries that use higher carbon than its domestic manufacturers to forge iron and steel products.

India’s approach, as outlined by the DST, is explicitly research and development-led rather than deployment first. The road map proposes a three-phase programme focused on pushing CCUS technologies from laboratory scale to pilot and demonstration projects, and eventually to commercial readiness. It prioritises point-source capture – especially from cement, steel, fertilisers, and power generation – and emphasises indigenous technology development, centres of excellence, and shared transport and storage infrastructure. Integration of CCUS into existing industrial facilities – rather than greenfield plants – is a central design principle.

The anticipated costs, according to this estimate, would be around ₹4,500 crore over the next two years. Another tranche of ₹2,000 crore would be needed for demonstration products and geological storage would cost another ₹3,000 crore, the document notes.

An initial allotment of ₹500 crore has been made to the Ministry of Power to commence the research programme.

Move welcomed

Independent experts broadly welcomed the stress on CCUS in the Budget. “The ₹20,000-crore commitment over five years for CCUS, continued support for the National Green Hydrogen Mission, and the introduction of new financial mechanisms for battery energy storage systems and pumped storage together signal a pragmatic approach to addressing emissions from hard-to-abate sectors,” said Arunabha Ghosh, CEO, Council for Energy, Environment and Water.

According to the International Energy Agency, around 45 commercial facilities are already in operation applying CCUS to industrial processes, fuel transformation, and power generation. 

CCUS deployment has trailed behind expectations in the past, but momentum has grown substantially in recent years, with over 700 projects in various stages of development across the CCUS value chain.

In 2023, announced capture capacity for 2030 increased by 35%, while announced storage capacity rose by 70%. This brings the total amount of CO₂ that could be captured in 2030 to around 435 million tonnes (MT) per year and announced storage capacity to around 615 MT of CO₂ per year.