Events in the year 2001 in the Republic of India.
Incumbents President of India – K. R. Narayanan Prime Minister of India – Atal Bihari Vajpayee Vice President of India – Krishna Kant Chief Justice of India – Adarsh Sein Anand until 10 January, Sam Piroj Bharucha
Governors Andhra Pradesh – C. Rangarajan Arunachal Pradesh – Arvind Dave Assam – Srinivas Kumar Sinha Bihar – V. C. Pande Chhattisgarh – D. N. Sahay Goa – Mohammed Fazal Gujarat – Sunder Singh Bhandari Haryana – Babu Parmanand Himachal Pradesh – Suraj Bhan Jharkhand – Prabhat Kumar Jammu and Kashmir – Girish Chandra Saxena Karnataka – V. S. Ramadevi Kerala – Sukhdev Singh Kang Madhya Pradesh – Bhai Mahavir Maharashtra – P.C. Alexander Manipur – Ved Marwah Meghalaya – M.M. Jacob Mizoram – Ved Marwah (until 17 May), Amolak Rattan Kohli (starting 17 May) Nagaland – Om Prakash Sharma Odisha – M. M. Rajendran Punjab – J. F. R. Jacob Rajasthan – Anshuman Singh Sikkim – Chaudhary Randhir Singh (until 17 May), Kidar Nath Sahani (starting 17 May) Tamil Nadu – M. Fathima Beevi (until 2 July), C. Rangarajan (starting 2 July) Tripura – Krishna Mohan Seth Uttar Pradesh – Vishnu Kant Shastri Uttarakhand – Surjit Singh Barnala West Bengal – Viren J. Shah
Events National income - 23,152,430 million
January 1 January – Calcutta officially becomes Kolkata, reverting to its precolonial name. 1 January Dr. Leo Rebello's Encyclopedia of Letters Pen Power and All India Letter Writers Association is entered as a World Record in the Limca Book of Records. 2 January – Power cuts leave huge swathes of northern India in darkness for two days starting early on 2 January. A minor fault in Uttar Pradesh leads to a breakdown in the regional grid across Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Kashmir, Punjab, and Rajasthan. Early January – The government announces that it aims to double the number of aircraft operated by Air India in the next five to seven years as well as to sell off a 60% share in the company. Air India's stock of aging craft is thought to have dulled the company's competitive edge in recent years. Early January – The president of the Indian Science Congress, R.S. Paroda, warns a conference of 3,000 Indian scientists that the country could face a severe food shortage in 2020 as the population size outstrips the country's level of supplies. 4 January – The government tests its first homemade jet fighter, the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA). The plane, originally scheduled to take its maiden flight in 1991, has taken 17 years to develop and will not be ready for service until 2010. 9 January-21 February – More than 100 million people – almost 2% of the world's population – attend the Maha Kumbh Mela festival in Allahabad, making it the largest gathering of human beings in history. On the festival's most important day an estimated 20 million Hindu pilgrims bathe in the sacred waters of the three rivers which meet near the town. The festival is held every 12 years. 15 January – Voters in Indian-administered Kashmir are able to participate in the first local elections in 23 years. The polls decide positions on some 125 village councils. Islamic militants have urged a boycott of the vote, which they say will undermine the separatist movement. 15 January – In a sign of improving relations, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee meets with the visiting chairman of China's National People's Congress, Li Peng. Both leaders say they have made substantial progress in discussing their two countries' disputed borders. 16 January- 11 people are killed when six members of the Kashmiri separatist guerrilla group Lashkar-e-Toiba attempt to storm Srinagar's civilian airport. Mid-January – The government announces that it is willing to meet the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) for open negotiations on ending the 20-year insurgency in the northeastern state. Mid-January – The eastern state of Orissa urges further government assistance in the face of a major drought. Officials estimate that the state has lost around $150.7 million in failed rice crops alone. It is thought that deforestation has played a major part in the drought. 17 January – Pakistan reacts angrily to news that the Indian military has successfully test-fired an improved Agni-II intermediate ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to anywhere in Pakistan. Mid-January – Researchers reveal that unusually high sea temperatures caused by the extreme weather effect known as El Niño have irreversibly damaged coral reefs off India's western coast. Late January – 150 million children across India are immunized against polio in one of the largest vaccination projects ever undertaken. Late January – The government extends its ceasefire in Kashmir for another month despite continuing separatist violence. 26 January – The 7.7 Gujarat earthquake shakes Western India with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme), leaving 13,805–20,023 dead and about 166,800 injured. Late January – The UK-based human rights group Amnesty International urges the government to crack down on the widespread use of torture by police. Late January- Researchers in Bangalore announce that the common antibiotic Triclosan has significant effects against the malaria parasite. Malaria is thought to kill around 1 million people every year worldwide.
February Early February – Authorities and aid workers in Gujarat warn that disease is now the biggest problem threatening the 1 million people made homeless by the January earthquake. Fears of a major epidemic are increased as the thousands of corpses still trapped beneath fallen buildings begin to decompose. Early February – The government grants refugee status to Ogyen Trinley Dorje, a controversial claimant to the 17th Karmapa title. The Karmapa was in India since escaping Tibet in early 2000. 2 February – An unprecedented telephone conversation between Prime Minister Vajpayee and Pakistani military leader General Pervez Musharraf is hailed as a major step in relations between the two countries. Musharraf contacts his Indian counterpart to offer further emergency aid for the survivors of the Gujarat earthquake. Early February – The drug manufacturer Cipla, based in Mumbai, announces that it plans to offer anti-AIDS drugs at very low prices. The three-drug cocktail used to help AIDS victims currently costs around $12,000 per patient per year. Cipla says it will offer a three-tier pricing structure with wholesalers paying $1,200, governments $600, and the French charity Médecins sans Frontières just $350 per patient per year. Mid-February – In a sign of thawing relations, Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh begins an official visit to Myanmar. He is the first Indian minister to go to the country since the military junta came to power there in 1988. Mid-February – Violent protests by Kashmiri separatists in Srinagar intensify. Five Indian policemen are killed on 19 February alone in riots sparked by the death of four stone-throwing demonstrators killed by police in Haigam, 40 km north of Srinagar, four days earlier. 21 February – A study conducted by Centre for Science and Environment in Enmakaje, Kasaragod district, Kerala brings out Endosulfan tragedy in Kerala. Late February – The government extends its ceasefire in separatist Kashmir for an extra three months. Late February – A unilateral 15-day ceasefire is declared by the government in the far northeastern separatist state of Manipur. The cessation of hostilities will begin on 1 March to coincide with the start of the local Yaosang festival.
March 1 March - As per 2001 Census of India, India becomes the second nation in the world to register one billion people in its population. The first was China in 1979. 13 March - Tehelka broke its sting operation story of Operation West End. 15 March – Defense Minister George Fernandes resigns in a bribery scandal which threatens to bring down the government. The leader of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Bangaru Laxman, has already left his position, but the departures fail to calm opposition parties, who continue to stall the workings of parliament for a third day on 16 March. Journalists released secretly filmed footage on the Internet, showing government members from the defense ministry and other senior figures accepting bribes from bogus arms dealers. 23 March - Madhavpura Mercantile Cooperative Bank - Ketan Parekh scam. 28 March – A counter-insurgency Special Operations Group (SOG) patrol claims to have killed Salaudin Ayubi, the Pakistani-based Lashkar-e-Toiba's leader in the Kashmir valley, in a shootout near Srinagar. There has been a spate of attacks by militants in Srinagar in recent months, although the ceasefire announced by the Indian government in November remains nominally in place.
April Beginning of April – Widespread strike action by private owners of buses, taxis, and motorized rickshaws contributes to chaotic traffic conditions in Delhi, as new rules come into force requiring a switch from diesel fuel to compressed natural gas in a bid to combat urban air pollution. Early April – Customs and excise chief B.P. Verma is arrested on charges of corruption. 2 April-4 April – A conference in Delhi, organized under the UN Environment Programme's Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), brings together for the first time the members of a new task force on the future of tigers in the wild – thought to number 5,000–7,000 in total. Early April – In a bold attempt to hasten an end to violence in separatist Kashmir, the government offers unconditional peace talks to Kashmiri militants. However, with no invitation to the Pakistani authorities it is not likely to attract much response from the separatists. Early April – The Tibetan spiritual leader, the 14th Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso, welcomes news that tens of thousands of Dalits (lower-caste Hindus) are to convert to Buddhism on 14 October. Early April – Tea production in the northeastern region of Darjeeling is adversely affected by an indefinite general strike called by the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) over the government's failure to identify the perpetrators of an attack on their leader, Subhas Ghising. Mid-April – Extra troops are dispatched to the Bangladeshi border after 18 soldiers are killed in escalating shooting incidents. Tension in the region has mounted over a disputed section of the border south of Assam. Mid-April – Opposition parties recommence the disruption of parliament in an attempt to force the government to launch an investigation into an allegedly corrupt arms deal. 18 April – The country's space program is brought into a new era with the successful test launch of its geostationary satellite launch vehicle, the GSLV-D1, at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh. The program had caused embarrassment for the country's space agency in late March when the first test launch, broadcast live on television, was aborted as flames burst from the craft on ignition. Communications satellites launched in India have hitherto been propelled by Arianespace or Russian rockets, and the GSLV-D1 is planned as a less costly alternative. 22 April – The U.S.-based current affairs magazine TIME apologizes emphatically for the offense caused by the printing of a depiction of Muhammad – considered a blasphemy in Islam – which had sparked large riots in Kashmir the previous day. 22 April – The government is outraged when medical reports suggest that many of the 16 soldiers killed by Bangladeshi forces in border skirmishes were mutilated and tortured before being murdered.
May 1 May – The number of Tibetan children under the age of 13 crossing the Himalayas to enter India doubled to 1,500 in the first four months of the year according to the Reception Centre for Tibetan Refugees.