💥Mains Ready By December. Smash Mains & Smash PYQ Admissions Open
Talk to Mentor

Civilsdaily

Login

GS Paper: GS2

  • Bogged down

    Bogged down

    Why in the News

    The tension is that the war’s declared objective and its actual battlefield no longer match, since the fighting now turns entirely on the Strait rather than on the nuclear programme.

    How did the war’s objective shift to the Strait?

    1. The stated aims have been displaced: The central focus of the war today is the Strait of Hormuz, not the nuclear facilities or the political order the campaign was launched to change.
    2. Iran chose the ground and Washington accepted it: Tehran forced the United States to fight over a problem it created rather than pursue Washington’s original objective, which is in itself a strategic victory for Iran.
    3. The chokehold has not been broken: Iran still maintains its control over the waterway, so the single condition the campaign now exists to remove remains in place.

    What has the escalation actually consisted of?

    1. Iran has crossed into attacks on military vessels: This is the first time in months that Iran has targeted United States warships, apparently seeking to break the naval blockade.
    2. The United States has crossed a red line in return: By striking Iranian oil tankers in retaliation, Washington extended the war to commercial shipping under Iranian flag.
    3. Six vessels struck in one round: The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran’s parallel armed force reporting to the Supreme Leader, announced that it had struck six vessels in the Gulf, three tankers and three United States-linked ships, in retaliation for the American attacks on oil tankers, and vowed to expand strikes against United States ships.
    4. The exchange has spread to land targets: The return to American strikes triggered Iranian attacks on United States bases in Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan.

    Why has economic warfare not changed Iran’s position?

    1. The policy shifted from strikes to pressure and then back: The United States President moved the focus of Iran policy to economic warfare last month, announcing new sanctions and tightening the United States Navy’s blockade of Iran’s ports. Unable to find a way out, Washington returned to strikes.
    2. The workaround was matched: The United States managed to get some oil tankers through the Strait via a southern route along the Omani coast, and Iran continued to target vessels taking that route.
    3. Economic pain has raised Iran’s risk appetite rather than lowered it: Iran has emerged more assertive despite its economic difficulties, and the more Washington seeks to trap it in an economic gridlock, the less risk-averse Tehran becomes.

    What does the absence of a theory of victory mean?

    1. Neither instrument has produced a change of position: Neither the military effort nor the economic warfare has forced Iran to alter its stance, and the Strait remains unsafe while the toll on the global economy mounts.
    2. Attrition has replaced strategy: The administration is ‘mowing the lawn’, a doctrine taken from the Israeli playbook that seeks to periodically degrade an adversary’s attack capability without attempting to defeat it.
    3. Iran is running its own attrition strategy: Tehran pursues ‘debasification’, pushing United States military presence away from its immediate periphery each time it retaliates.
    4. Both sides are chasing an outcome neither can reach: Each seeks escalation dominance, the ability to raise the level of force to a point the other cannot match, and the war therefore risks spiralling out of control.

    Challenges to reviving a negotiated framework

    1. The declared aim of regime change is incompatible with a negotiated outcome: No government negotiates the terms of its own removal, so the objective and the talks track cancel each other out. Eg. The talks channel collapsed within months of being opened while the military campaign continued.
      The Fix: Separate the nuclear file from the political objective and negotiate only the first, as the 2015 nuclear agreement did.
    2. Verification capacity has been destroyed along with the facilities: Strikes on nuclear sites remove the baseline against which any future inspection regime would measure compliance. Eg. Access for International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors has been the recurring breaking point since the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was agreed in 2015.
      The Fix: Restore inspector access as the first deliverable of any revived framework, before sanctions relief is discussed.
    3. American commitments carry a credibility discount: A negotiated framework abandoned once is harder to sell domestically in Tehran the second time. Eg. The United States withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2018 despite Iranian compliance being certified.
      The Fix: Anchor any revived understanding in a United Nations Security Council resolution rather than in an executive arrangement that a change of administration can reverse.
    4. A pause that leaves the blockade in place gives Iran no reason to stop: Iran’s attacks on shipping are its only instrument against the economic siege, so a ceasefire on attacks alone asks it to surrender the leverage. Eg. Iranian targeting of the southern route began after the blockade of its ports was tightened.
      The Fix: Pair a halt to attacks on shipping with a defined easing of the port blockade, so each side gives up an instrument simultaneously.
    5. The costs land on third-party importers with no say in the war: Energy importers absorb the freight, insurance and price consequences of an unsafe Strait without being party to the dispute. Eg. India draws a large share of its crude oil imports from West Asian suppliers whose cargoes transit the Strait.
      The Fix: Convene the major Asian importers as a bloc to press both sides on the narrow question of shipping safety, separately from the nuclear dispute.

    Conclusion

    Six months of strikes and sanctions have moved neither Iran’s position nor the safety of the waterway. The war has produced an unresolved tension rather than a stalemate that can simply be held: the party with overwhelming military superiority cannot convert it into an outcome, and the party under economic siege grows less cautious the tighter the siege becomes. The talks track collapsed once and remains the only route either side has actually attempted, which is why its revival, rather than the next round of retaliation, is the development to watch.

    Back2Basics

    1. Strait of Hormuz: The sea passage connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea, and the only maritime outlet for oil exported from the Gulf producers.
    2. Geography: It is about 33 km wide at its narrowest point, with inbound and outbound shipping lanes only a few kilometres wide, bounded by Iran on the northern shore and by Oman and the United Arab Emirates on the southern shore.
    3. Why it is a chokepoint: Roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil moves through it, and there is no alternative sea route out of the Gulf, so a threat to the lane transmits directly into global crude prices.
    4. Bypass capacity: Pipelines run by Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea and by the United Arab Emirates to Fujairah can carry only a fraction of the volume that normally transits the Strait.

    [2018, GS2, 15 marks] In what ways would the ongoing US-Iran Nuclear Pact Controversy affect the national interest of India? How should India respond to this situation?

  • Moscow-Kyiv to Delhi, connect the dots

    Moscow-Kyiv to Delhi, connect the dots

    Why in the News

    India has stepped up its diplomatic engagement on the Russia-Ukraine war, holding senior-level meetings in both Moscow and Kyiv. The engagement follows an American track that has produced contact without a settlement. Negotiators for the United States President met the Russian President over the weekend, and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) travelled secretly to Moscow two weeks earlier to press the Kremlin to cut a deal. Neither belligerent has changed position on the ground, since each of the two great powers supplies the other’s adversary in a separate conflict. The tension is that India now holds access to both capitals at a moment when the mediator with actual leverage is stretched across two theatres.

    What access has India actually acquired?

    1. A meeting at the level of the Russian presidency: The External Affairs Minister met the Russian President directly rather than through the standing bilateral machinery.
    2. The war raised at a multilateral summit: The Prime Minister took up the war with the Russian President at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, urging an end to it “for humanity’s sake”.
    3. A reciprocal opening in Kyiv: The External Affairs Minister travelled to Kyiv. The Ukrainian President thanked India for its “commitment to ending this unjust war”.

    Why has the American track not converted contact into a settlement?

    1. The intelligence channel has been reopened at the top: The last known visit to Russia by a serving CIA Director was nearly five years ago, made to warn the Kremlin that Washington knew of its plans to invade Ukraine. That deterrence effort failed, and the present visit was reportedly aimed at persuading Moscow to cut a deal.
    2. A reset announced more than a year ago has changed nothing: The two governments have talked since their summit at Anchorage and remain on opposing sides of two active conflicts.
    3. Each power arms the other’s adversary: The United States supplies Ukraine with intelligence to strike targets inside Russia. Russia does the same for Iran in the Gulf.

    What does the conduct of the war show about its direction?

    1. Neither side will back down under escalation: Russia has intensified drone and missile strikes on Ukraine. Ukraine has relentlessly targeted Russian energy infrastructure.
    2. The damage has reached Russian domestic supply: The disruption has been severe enough for Moscow to turn to India for petrol imports, and restrictions on fuel sales have been imposed across Russia.
    3. The war is leaking into third countries: A series of suspected acts of sabotage across Europe is being investigated for possible links to Russia. Any loss of life on European soil raises the risk of the conflict spilling further into the continent.

    What would a realistic first step look like?

    1. A ceasefire basis before a settlement: The immediate requirement is to bring Moscow and Kyiv back to the table and establish a basis for a ceasefire, rather than to open with terms neither will accept.
    2. A narrow opening ask rather than a comprehensive one: Protection of energy and civilian infrastructure, along with commercial shipping lanes in the Black Sea, is available as a first step because it serves both belligerents’ own interests.
    3. A collective call rather than an Indian one: New Delhi can use the BRICS summit it hosts, with the Russian and Chinese Presidents expected to attend, to build a collective call for confidence-building measures instead of a solitary appeal.

    Challenges to an Indian mediation role

    1. India is an interested party in the war’s economics: Discounted Russian crude has made Russia India’s largest oil supplier since 2022, so any Indian proposal is read in Kyiv and Brussels through the trade relationship. Eg. Moscow’s turn to India for refined petrol deepens the same commercial dependence.
      The Fix: Separate the commercial track from the diplomatic one by routing the peace effort through a designated special envoy rather than through the ministries that handle energy trade.
    2. No leverage exists over the party financing Ukraine’s defence: The war’s outcome turns on American intelligence and weapons supply, and India holds no instrument that touches that flow. Eg. Strike intelligence for targets inside Russia is supplied by Washington, not by any BRICS member.
      The Fix: Aim at a humanitarian and infrastructure truce that neither capital needs American consent to accept, rather than at a comprehensive settlement.
    3. BRICS is not a conflict-resolution forum: The grouping has no mediation machinery, no secretariat with a political mandate and no record of brokering a ceasefire. Eg. It issued no collective position when the war began in 2022.
      The Fix: Seek a narrow chair’s statement on infrastructure and shipping protection rather than a group position on the war itself.
    4. Both belligerents currently believe escalation still pays: A mediator arrives with nothing to offer when neither side has reached the point of exhaustion. Eg. Ukraine’s strikes on Russian energy infrastructure and Russia’s intensified missile campaign both increased through the current phase.
      The Fix: Hold an offer of monitoring and verification capacity in reserve, so India has something concrete to supply once a pause becomes attractive to both.
    5. India’s own track record is regional, not extra-regional: New Delhi has not brokered a ceasefire between two states outside its immediate neighbourhood, so its convening power rests on access rather than on precedent. Eg. Its wartime role so far has been the delivery of humanitarian consignments and the evacuation of students.
      The Fix: Build the role incrementally through technical facilitation, beginning with grain, nuclear-plant safety and prisoner exchange files.

    Conclusion

    Access to both capitals is a diplomatic asset that decays if it is not converted into a specific ask. The two governments that can end the war are simultaneously arming opposite sides of a second one, which is the ceiling any external mediator runs into. The concrete thing to watch is the BRICS summit in New Delhi from 11 to 13 September, and specifically whether its outcome document names infrastructure and shipping protection at all.

    Back2Basics

    1. Confidence-building measures: Reciprocal steps taken by adversaries to reduce the risk of accidental escalation and to make each side’s intentions readable, adopted without either side conceding its political position.
    2. Typical forms: Advance notification of military exercises, hotlines between commands, limits on deployments in a defined zone, and agreed exclusions of a category of target from attack.
    3. Why they precede a ceasefire: They require no agreement on the disputed issue itself, so they can be adopted while the war’s causes remain unresolved.
    4. Precedent in this war: The Black Sea Grain Initiative of 2022 allowed Ukrainian grain exports to resume under an inspection arrangement without either belligerent altering its war aims.

    [2019, GS2, 15 marks] “The long-sustained image of India as a leader of the oppressed and marginalised Nations has disappeared on account of its new found role in the emerging global order”. Elaborate.”

  • Failing at ABC

    Why in the News

    An investigation across Tamil Nadu and Puducherry into the outsourced Animal Birth Control (ABC) programme, under which local bodies contract organisations to sterilise and vaccinate community dogs, records starved animals, botched mass surgeries, broken vaccine cold chains and fabricated organ counts.

    What do the Animal Birth Control Rules, 2023 require?

    1. Humane capture and return to the same place: Capture with nets, feeder outreach before capture, and geotagging of both capture and release at the same location.
    2. Surgical and shelter standards: Closed circuit cameras in the operation theatre, pre-operative and post-operative care, clean and spacious kennels, food twice a day and water at all times.
    3. Verification tied to billing: Organ inspection committees are to be constituted to count organs against billing claims.
    4. Disposal after the count: Organs are to be destroyed immediately by deep burial or incineration.

    What did the investigation find at the centres?

    1. Oulgaret, Puducherry: An internal municipal dossier recorded 50 emaciated dogs released from an ABC centre in late 2025, 20 dog deaths and 50 complaints against the veterinarian. The animals were released hastily just before an inspection, with sutures falling apart.
    2. Velankanni, Nagapattinam district: On 23 July dogs were found alive with loose sutures and no post-operative care, and carcasses were found in garbage with bloody sutures and with wires and ropes around their necks, both banned in the catching process. The District Animal Welfare Officer’s report recorded 70 dogs, 64 males and six females, sterilised in three days by two veterinarians.
    3. Mannargudi, Tiruvarur district: On 2 September a female dog was found alive with its intestines spilling out after sterilisation at the centre there.
    4. Pollachi: At a board-run centre the post-operative care unit sits 2 km away from the surgery centre, and a female dog died of evisceration after surgery.
    5. Relocation instead of return: Dogs picked up for sterilisation are extensively relocated in violation of the Rules, and a healthy dog returned to its own locality is the community’s only real-time audit of the money spent.

    Why do the surgeries fail?

    1. Suturing is rushed: The distance between two suture bites should be under half a centimetre, which takes time. Centres press young veterinarians to complete more surgeries instead.
    2. Pain relief is skipped to cut cost: Multi-modal analgesia is omitted, so the animal licks the surgical site and opens the sutures.
    3. Suture material is reused: Leftover material causes surgical site infections.
    4. The faster male technique is the unsuitable one: The on-scrotal method leaves gaps between sutures for fluid drainage and raises infection risk on unhygienic shelter floors. A veterinarian left an organisation that insisted on more on-scrotal procedures.

    How does the payment design create the incentive?

    1. The rate is fixed per dog: Rs 1,650 is allocated per dog, including Rs 450 for sterilisation and vaccination and Rs 200 for catching and release.
    2. Payment follows projected numbers, not outcomes: Local bodies reward claimed counts rather than verified results, which turns sterilisation into assembly-line work at scale.
    3. Catchers are paid per catch: Pups, lactating dogs, pregnant dogs and already sterilised dogs are picked up to raise the count.
    4. Ethical care is affordable and skipped anyway: Factoring in economies of scale, a centre can make about Rs 66,000 in profit while still meeting ethical standards of care.

    What is the state of verification?

    1. Bills clear on the contractor’s own evidence: Payment rests on the organisation’s claims, photographs of surgery, photographs of dogs and occasional organ counts by municipal sanitation officers.
    2. The organ count is gamed: A bucket of organs stored at the Oulgaret centre was transported to Neyveli township in Cuddalore district in 2025 to supply an organ counting committee inspection, with the same veterinarian performing surgeries at Neyveli.
    3. The committees arrive after the money: In Tiruppur the organ counting committee was constituted only after more than 9,000 surgeries had been billed.
    4. The audit questions went unanswered: The Director of Municipal Administration did not answer whether time-tagged photographs, videos of the organ count and destruction of organs were audited for each batch of sterilisation bills, or what the targets were.
    5. The corrective is administrative and recent: Corporations have withheld payment on bills raised over the last three months, and a member of the State Monitoring Committee has written to the Municipal Administration Department to withhold bills and constitute panels. Activists have asked instead that community animals be brought under an animal management framework of the Animal Husbandry Department.

    Why does blacklisting fail to remove a contractor?

    1. Recognition is scarce and contracting is not: Only six organisations hold recognition for ABC procedures in the State, against about 15 contractor organisations operating in the space.
    2. A blacklisted operator is re-engaged elsewhere: Pranimitran’s contract was terminated by the Hosur Corporation over animal mutilation, botched surgeries and non-disclosure, and it was blacklisted by the Animal Welfare Board of India. The Tiruppur Corporation engaged it anyway, stating that no replacement contractor could be found.
    3. Others continue in place: Jeeva Karunyam of Nagercoil and Rajeshwari Goshala of Tirunelveli continue to work for their local bodies, and two First Information Reports were filed against International Peace Trust at Avadi in Chennai.
    4. A criminal case does not interrupt a contract: A First Information Report was filed against Pranimitran over the death of two pups in Tiruppur, and in April 2026 an already sterilised six-year-old dog with a notched ear was found anaesthetised at its centre.

    What does the broken cold chain mean for rabies control?

    1. Refrigeration is missing: A large majority of centres lack refrigerators capable of holding anti-rabies vaccine at 2 degrees Celsius.
    2. Vaccination is simply skipped: A doctor who worked at the Hosur centre states that no vaccines were administered across an average of 650 surgeries a month, with power cuts, no generator and no fresh vaccine batches supplied.
    3. Responsibility is contested: The organisation’s position is that the cold chain is supplied and inspected by the Corporation, and that ineffective vaccines would have produced a rabies outbreak.
    4. Half the programme then disappears: Sterilisation without a viable vaccine delivers population control alone, and leaves the rabies control purpose of the programme unmet.

    Conclusion

    The programme’s failure is not a supervision gap that better inspection would close. Payment attaches to a number the contractor supplies, the committee that would verify the number is constituted late or supplied with borrowed evidence, and the certificate that would screen the contractor has been made optional. Blacklisting is therefore a label rather than a disqualification, and a contractor removed in one district is hired in the next. Until money moves against a verified sterilisation and a verified vaccination rather than against a claimed count, no participant in the chain carries a cost for the outcome.

    Back2Basics: Animal Welfare Board of India

    1. Statutory origin: Established in 1962 under Section 4 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, as the first national animal welfare body of its kind.
    2. Function: It advises the Government of India on animal welfare laws and on measures to prevent unnecessary pain to animals, and its recommendations are advisory.
    3. Role in this programme: It issues Project Recognition Certificates to organisations conducting Animal Birth Control work, and can blacklist an organisation for violations.
    4. Administrative location: It works under the Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying, and its headquarters moved from Chennai to Ballabhgarh in Haryana.

    [2014] Consider the following statements:

    1. Animal Welfare Board of India is established under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986.

    2. National Tiger Conservation Authority is a statutory body.

    3. National Ganga River Basin Authority is chaired by the Prime Minister.

    Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

    (a) 1 only

    (b) 2 and 3 only

    (c) 2 only

    (d) 1, 2 and 3

  • 1.85 lakh names out of Manipur, Sikkim poll rolls after SIR

    Why in the News

    The Election Commission of India has published the final photo electoral rolls of Manipur and Sikkim following the Special Intensive Revision. The revision removed 1,32,456 names in Manipur and 52,614 in Sikkim, 1.85 lakh in all, amounting to 6.3 per cent of the Manipur roll and 11.2 per cent of the Sikkim roll. The bulk of the removals were not adjudicated findings of ineligibility. They followed from enumeration forms that were never received in Manipur and from electors who could not be matched to an earlier roll in Sikkim. Kuki-Zo groups have said that community members displaced by the ethnic conflict that erupted on 3 May 2023 stand to be struck off, and the government has sought to dispel that apprehension.

    What is the Special Intensive Revision?

    1. The roll is rebuilt rather than carried forward: An intensive revision generates an enumeration form for every existing elector and requires it back, in place of the summary practice of amending the previous roll.
    2. A form not returned means a name not carried: An elector whose form is not received is excluded from the draft roll at the outset, before any question of eligibility is examined.
    3. Claims and objections follow the draft: The draft roll is published, claims and objections are filed and processed within a fixed window, and the final photo electoral roll issues after that.

    What do the Manipur numbers show?

    1. The roll shrank by 1,32,456: Manipur held 20,93,076 electors before the revision and holds 19,60,620 after it.
    2. The draft did the deleting: The draft roll published on 5 July carried 19,34,399 electors, against 1,58,677 whose enumeration forms were not received and who were excluded at that stage.
    3. The exclusion heads: Of those excluded, 72,473 were identified as shifted, 43,000 as deceased, 34,740 as absent, 7,394 as duplicate entries and 1,070 under other categories.
    4. The claims stage added more than it removed: 96,985 claims and objections were processed, 56,871 electors were included and 30,650 were deleted from the draft roll.

    What do the Sikkim numbers show?

    1. The roll shrank by 52,614: Sikkim held 4,71,081 electors before the revision and holds 4,18,467 after it.
    2. Mapping decided who was questioned: Of the 4,33,294 electors in the July draft, 3,61,159 or 83.35 per cent were mapped to their own or their parents’ details in a previous qualifying roll or the last revision. The remaining 72,135, or 16.65 per cent, could not be mapped.
    3. A digital flag added a second category: Among the mapped electors the Election Commission’s system identified 52,384 as carrying “logical discrepancies”.
    4. Notices ran far ahead of findings: 1,24,519 electors from the unmapped and discrepancy categories were issued notices for hearings, and 16,485 were found ineligible after verification.
    5. A separate deletion route: Another 324 electors were deleted through Form 7 on grounds including death or shifting, taking deletions during claims and objections to 16,809.

    Why do the Kuki-Zo objections matter to these figures?

    1. Displacement and shifting look identical on the roll: The largest single exclusion head in Manipur is 72,473 electors recorded as shifted, and internal displacement is precisely what produces an elector who is not found at a registered address.
    2. The instrument has no displaced category: A person living in a relief camp is neither a resident at the registered address nor an elector anywhere else, and the enumeration exercise offers no third classification.
    3. The apprehension preceded the exercise: Kuki-Zo groups raised the fear both before and during the revision, and the assurance offered was administrative rather than a change in the classification rules.

    What does the composition of the final rolls show?

    1. Manipur’s roll is majority women: 10,06,962 women electors against 9,53,350 men, a ratio of 1,056 women for every 1,000 men, alongside 308 third gender electors.
    2. Sikkim’s roll runs the other way: 2,12,534 men against 2,05,931 women, with two third gender electors.

    Challenges to the Special Intensive Revision

    1. The burden of proof moves onto the elector: A person already on the roll must re-establish entitlement rather than have it presumed. Eg. In the Bihar revision of 2025, Aadhaar did not figure among the documents initially listed for establishing eligibility.
      The Fix: Fix the admissible document list before the enumeration begins and bar additions or subtractions to it mid-exercise.
    2. Migrant and displaced electors are structurally disadvantaged: Enumeration works from a fixed address, and a seasonal migrant or a person in a relief camp has none for the reference period. Eg. An elector sheltering after the 2023 Manipur conflict cannot register at the camp and cannot be enumerated at home.
      The Fix: Recognise a relief camp or worksite address as ordinary residence for the duration of the revision.
    3. Deletion takes effect before an appeal is decided: A name goes off the roll on the officer’s finding, and the appeal runs afterwards. Eg. Appeals against inclusion or exclusion lie to the District Magistrate and then the Chief Electoral Officer under Section 24 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950.
      The Fix: Suspend the deletion until the statutory appeal window closes, so the roll reflects a final decision.
    4. A deleted elector has no automatic route back: Restoration is a fresh application rather than a correction of the same file. Eg. An elector deleted as absent must apply again under Form 6 to be re-enrolled.
      The Fix: Restore a name automatically on production of proof within the same revision cycle, without a fresh application.

    Conclusion

    The revision has produced a smaller and internally consistent roll, and it has not produced a finding that 1.85 lakh people were ineligible to vote. Two different tests are being reported as one: a documentary test of whether a form came back or a record could be matched, and a substantive test of citizenship, age and residence. The exercise is now closed in both States and the appeal machinery is the only route left for a person struck off. Whether that machinery can absorb objections at this scale, in a State where a section of the electorate has been displaced for three years, is the open question.

    Back2Basics: Revision of electoral rolls under the Representation of the People Act, 1950

    1. Statutory basis: Section 21 empowers the Election Commission to prepare and revise electoral rolls, either as a matter of course before an election or by special direction.
    2. Two modes of revision: An intensive revision prepares the roll afresh through house-to-house enumeration. A summary revision carries the existing roll forward and invites claims and objections against it.
    3. The forms: Form 6 seeks inclusion of a name, Form 7 objects to an inclusion or seeks a deletion, and Form 8 covers correction of particulars and transposition within a constituency.
    4. Qualifying dates: Eligibility is tested with reference to 1 January, with 1 April, 1 July and 1 October added as further qualifying dates from 2022.

    [2026, GS2, 10 marks] Is the right to vote a fundamental right? Discuss the position of the Election Commission of India while undertaking the revision of electoral rolls. Can it also examine the question of citizenship of voters?”

  • Why does India’s food safety system need a Clint Eastwood?

    Why does India’s food safety system need a Clint Eastwood?

    Why in the News

    India’s food safety regulation fails at disclosure and enforcement rather than at data collection. Between May and July a Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration drive led by a 2005 batch Indian Administrative Service officer inspected 3,137 restaurants, issued 764 improvement notices and shut 165 eateries.

    What is FoSCoS?

    1. The regulator’s integrated digital platform: The Food Safety Compliance System (FoSCoS) is the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India’s single platform for licensing, inspections, laboratory results and penalties, with the compliance chain digitised and connected.
    2. The designed sequence: A violation is found, a laboratory test is ordered, results are analysed, an audit is conducted, adjudication follows, a penalty issues and the establishment is closed.
    3. The record is held, never published: The platform accumulates violation data that never reaches the person choosing where to eat.

    Why does the enforcement chain stall?

    1. The design is a series of checkpoints: A violation sits in audit, then in adjudication, then in enforcement.
    2. No step carries a closing clock: Each checkpoint can hold a file indefinitely, so a violation is never formally disposed of.
    3. The system has more blockers than doers: The count of officers who can stop a file exceeds the count who can conclude one, so enforcement resumes only when a senior officer personally drives it.

    What did the Maharashtra drive actually demonstrate?

    1. A crackdown is not a system: The drive produced closures at a scale the routine machinery had not, using powers the routine machinery already held.
    2. A folk hero is evidence of failure: Celebrating an enforcement officer amounts to conceding that the enforcement design does not work without one.
    3. The output is not durable: An enforcement wave attached to one officer’s posting ends with that posting, and the platform returns to recording violations nobody acts on.

    What do the disclosure regimes elsewhere show?

    1. Singapore publishes the result where the customer stands: Inspections and rules resemble India’s. A failed inspection produces a rating displayed on the storefront and online.
    2. The pressure that works is commercial: The owner fears customers who see a failed grade and walk away, not the inspector or the fine. Revenue falls the same week and the problem is fixed at once.
    3. Denmark and Australia publish within days: Violations become public within days and the media carries them.
    4. Publication also disciplines the regulator: A lenient district looks bad against a neighbouring district’s published record, so an official cannot let files sit unseen.

    Why would publication work where inspection has not?

    1. The system is built for the wrong user: The compliance chain is designed for the convenience of the regulator, and the customer, who bears the risk, sees none of its output.
    2. Automatic publication is the specific proposal: Violation data should go public online within 48 hours, in food delivery apps and in restaurant windows, so a customer knows before ordering.
    3. A working regulator is invisible: Countries with published hygiene ratings generate no news coverage of their food safety enforcers, because enforcement there is routine rather than exceptional.

    Where else would published regulatory data change behaviour?

    1. Real estate: Buyers cannot tell whether a building was flagged for structural problems. Municipal violation history displayed in property listings would move demand away from flagged buildings and force developers to remedy them.
    2. Television channels: Official data exists on complaints against news channels for fake news, hate speech and bias, and never appears at the point where a viewer chooses a channel.
    3. Schools: Education departments inspect schools and record violations that parents never see while comparing institutions.
    4. Hospitals: Data on doctor complaints, disciplinary action and malpractice cases is held and withheld, so a patient chooses on reputation alone.

    Challenges to the food safety regulator’s enforcement design

    1. Testing capacity and procedure are the weak link: An enforcement order stands only if the sampling and laboratory chain behind it survives challenge. Eg. The 2015 national recall order on Maggi noodles was set aside by the Bombay High Court in August 2015, partly over how the samples had been tested.
      The Fix: Accredit a referral laboratory for every zone and publish its sample turnaround time against a fixed standard.
    2. Penalties are capped in absolute rupees: A ceiling fixed in the statute does not scale with the turnover of the business penalised. Eg. Section 52 of the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 caps the penalty for sub-standard food at Rs 5 lakh.
      The Fix: Link the penalty for a repeat violation to declared annual turnover rather than to a flat statutory ceiling.
    3. Most food businesses are registered rather than licensed: Small operators below a turnover threshold need only registration, which carries a lighter inspection and record obligation. Eg. Street food vendors and small eateries fall almost entirely into the registration category.
      The Fix: Extend a simplified published hygiene grade to registered outlets, so the lighter compliance route still produces a visible signal.
    4. The regulator sets standards and does not enforce them: Designated officers and food safety officers are appointed and paid by State commissioners, so the national platform records violations that no national authority can act on. Eg. An enforcement drive in one State changes nothing about a chain’s outlets in the next State.
      The Fix: Publish State-wise enforcement counts and pendency on the platform, so a State’s inaction is visible against its neighbours.

    Conclusion

    The instrument that would change behaviour is already built and already loaded, and it is pointed at the regulator instead of at the customer. Disclosure converts a compliance record into a commercial consequence, which is the one pressure a restaurant answers within the week. What is worth watching is whether any State food safety commissioner makes publication automatic and time-bound rather than discretionary, since the platform holding the data is national and the decision to open it is not.

    Laws and Rules Governing Food Safety Regulation

    1. Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006: Consolidated the earlier food laws into a single statute and created the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India as the standard-setting regulator.
    2. It repealed the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act, 1954, which had governed food adulteration for five decades.
    3. Food Safety and Standards (Licensing and Registration of Food Businesses) Regulations, 2011: Split food businesses into registration and licensing categories by turnover and scale of operation.
    4. Food Safety and Standards (Labelling and Display) Regulations, 2020: Fixed the mandatory declarations and the display obligations for food service establishments.
    5. Consumer Protection Act, 2019: Created the Central Consumer Protection Authority, which acts against misleading advertisements and unsafe goods independently of the food regulator.

    Government Initiatives for Food Safety

    1. Eat Right India: The regulator’s national movement combining regulatory measures, industry self-compliance and consumer awareness on safe and healthy food.
    2. Food Safety Training and Certification (FoSTaC): Mandatory training and certification of food safety supervisors for licensed food businesses.
    3. Clean Street Food Hub and Eat Right Station certification: Audited hygiene certification for street food clusters and railway stations.
    4. BHOG, Blissful Hygienic Offering to God: Hygiene certification programme for places of worship that prepare and distribute prasad.

    [2018] Consider the following statements:

    1. The Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 replaced the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act, 1954.

    2. The Food Safety and Standard Authority of India (FSSAI) is under the charge of Director General of Health Services in the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

    Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

    (a) 1 only

    (b) 2 only

    (c) Both 1 and 2

    (d) Neither 1 nor 2

  • The political cost of UCT schemes

    Why in the News

    Unconditional cash transfer schemes aimed at women have become a standard electoral instrument in India since 2020, and the argument now is that they carry a political cost their designers cannot remove.

    What is an unconditional cash transfer scheme?

    1. Cash paid without a behavioural condition: The transfer reaches an identified beneficiary on eligibility alone, with no requirement to enrol a child, attend a clinic or perform work.
    2. The named State schemes: Kalaignar Magalir Urimai Thittam in Tamil Nadu, Lakshmir Bhandar in West Bengal and Gruha Lakshmi Yojana in Karnataka are the principal instances.
    3. The stated welfare purpose: The schemes provide financial support to women, and partially advance Sustainable Development Goal 5.4 (recognition and valuation of women’s unpaid domestic and care work).

    Why can beneficiary targeting not be made accurate?

    1. Incomes are not observable: Governments cannot directly observe the incomes of most workers in the informal sector.
    2. Proxies stand in for income: Eligibility is inferred from land ownership, electricity consumption or household assets.
    3. Both errors follow from the proxy: Inclusion errors send benefits to ineligible households. Exclusion errors leave eligible households out.

    What does the Kalaignar Magalir Urimai Thittam experience show?

    1. The promise was universal: Rs 1,000 a month was promised to all women-headed households before the 2021 election.
    2. The launch was restricted: Fiscal constraints produced eligibility limits on income, land ownership and other criteria at launch in September 2023, covering about 1.13 crore women.
    3. Expansion followed complaints, not review: Another 16.94 lakh beneficiaries were added in December 2025 after widespread complaints from women who believed they met the criteria. The scheme cost Rs 13,807 crore in 2025-26.
    4. The expansion did not settle the grievance: Women who considered themselves unfairly excluded became more aggrieved when beneficiaries received an advance of three months’ entitlement along with a special summer relief payment.

    Why does a perceived error cost as much as a real one?

    1. Belief drives grievance, not eligibility: An individual who fails the official criteria may still believe the treatment was unfair, and votes on that belief.
    2. Qualifying households attract resentment: A household that legally qualifies may be regarded as undeserving where it appears relatively affluent.
    3. The two logics pull in opposite directions: Economics favours targeting so that scarce public resources reach those most in need. Politics rewards broader inclusion, because voters weigh benefits they believe were unfairly denied to them.
    4. Small shifts decide outcomes: The precise electoral impact cannot be measured, and modest shifts in voter preference decide closely contested constituencies.

    What is the fiscal case against unconditional transfers?

    1. The national bill: States are expected to spend about $18 billion on unconditional cash transfers in 2025-26, according to the latest Economic Survey.
    2. The money is switched rather than raised: Financing requires expenditure switching or a larger fiscal deficit.
    3. Productive spending is displaced: Resources available for employment generation and self-employment programmes fall.
    4. Withdrawal is not an option once dependence sets in: Parties escalate the amount instead of ending the transfer, which produces competitive welfarism.

    Does a conditional design perform better?

    1. The benefit is tied to an outcome: Conditional and incentive-linked transfers link payment to a socially desirable behaviour, so the money buys a developmental gain alongside relief.
    2. Self-selection replaces verification: Participation in Tamil Nadu’s Midday Meal Scheme depends on school enrolment, so beneficiaries select themselves and grievances fall.
    3. The political cost falls with the targeting burden: A programme tied to education or another desirable behaviour needs no proxy means test, so it generates no perceived exclusion error.

    Challenges to unconditional cash transfers

    1. There is no current income record to target on: Welfare lists rest on a deprivation ranking that ages faster than household circumstances change. Eg. The Socio-Economic and Caste Census of 2011 remains the base for several central and State beneficiary lists.
      The Fix: Re-run the deprivation survey on a fixed cycle and publish the ranking rules, so exclusion can be contested against a stated test.
    2. Exclusion falls hardest on those without documents: Authentication failure removes a household that is eligible on every substantive criterion. Eg. Aadhaar authentication failures in ration distribution in Jharkhand’s Simdega district were linked to a starvation death in 2017.
      The Fix: Mandate an offline exception route at every disbursement point, with the exception count published monthly.
    3. The transfer amount is fixed in nominal terms and erodes: Inflation cuts the real value of a flat monthly figure that no rule revises. Eg. The maternity benefit under the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana has stayed at Rs 5,000 since 2017.
      The Fix: Index the transfer to the consumer price index with an automatic annual revision.
    4. Cash cannot substitute for a service that does not exist: A transfer lets a household buy a service only where a provider is present. Eg. A cash benefit cannot purchase schooling or primary care in a block that has neither a functioning school nor a health centre.
      The Fix: Pair every new transfer with a published service-availability audit for the districts it covers.

    Conclusion

    Targeting error is not an implementation defect in an unconditional cash transfer. It is a property of paying cash on an inferred income in an economy where income cannot be observed. The design therefore buys relief at a political price the government cannot negotiate down, and raising the amount does not buy it down either. The alternative on offer is not universality but conditionality: tie the payment to a behaviour the household chooses, and the household sorts itself.

    Cash Transfer Based Welfare in India

    1. About: Benefit is paid in cash directly into a beneficiary’s bank account in place of a subsidised good, a price support or an in-kind entitlement.
    2. The delivery rails: The Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile combination supplies the account, the identity and the confirmation, and the Public Financial Management System routes the payment.
    3. Where it began at scale: Cooking gas subsidy transfer under the PAHAL scheme in 2014-15 was the first large national rollout.
    4. Present spread: Direct Benefit Transfer now runs across more than 300 central schemes in addition to State transfers.

    Government Initiatives for Cash Transfer Based Welfare

    1. Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi: Rs 6,000 a year in three instalments to landholding farmer families, run by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare.
    2. National Social Assistance Programme: Old age, widow and disability pensions to below poverty line households, run by the Ministry of Rural Development.
    3. Direct Benefit Transfer Mission: Housed in the Cabinet Secretariat, it coordinates transfer implementation across ministries and maintains the scheme-wise public dashboard.

    [2022, GS2, 10 marks] Reforming the government delivery system through the Direct Benefit Transfer Scheme is a progressive step, but it has its limitations too. Comment.

  • State consent not taken, put HC Chief Justice appointment on hold: Punjab Govt

    Why in the News

    The Punjab Cabinet has passed a resolution demanding that the appointment of Justice Ashwani Kumar Mishra as Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court be put on hold. The resolution states that the Centre notified the appointment without obtaining the State government’s views, as the Memorandum of Procedure for the appointment of High Court judges requires. The Supreme Court Collegium had recommended four High Court Chief Justices on 6 August. The Centre sought the views of the Chief Ministers and Governors of the four States on 12 August, and notified the appointments on 5 September. The contest is over a document that gives a State a consultative role, sets no period within which the State must use it, and creates no right the State can enforce.

    What is the Memorandum of Procedure?

    1. A working document, not a statute: The Memorandum of Procedure sets out the steps by which judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts are recommended, consulted on and appointed. It carries no statutory force and confers no enforceable right on any party.
    2. It came out of the Judges cases: The Supreme Court’s Second Judges case (1993) and Third Judges case (1998) placed primacy in a Collegium of senior judges. The Memorandum was drawn up afterwards to record how the Collegium and the executive would process an appointment.
    3. The State enters as a consultee: For a High Court appointment the Centre seeks the views of the Chief Minister and the Governor of the State before the recommendation is processed for notification.

    What has Punjab demanded, and on what ground?

    1. A hold on the appointment and the oath: The Cabinet resolved at an emergency meeting that the appointment and the administration of oath be put on hold until Punjab’s views are obtained and duly considered.
    2. The stated ground is procedural bypass: The Cabinet described the appointment as “yet another instance” of the Centre bypassing Punjab’s constitutional rights and established procedure.
    3. The objection was escalated to the constitutional heads: The Chief Minister wrote to the President, the Prime Minister and the Governor, enclosing the resolution. The Chief Minister is not expected to attend the oath ceremony.
    4. The Bar has framed it as executive overreach: The Punjab and Haryana High Court Bar Association has read the notification as the executive acting past a procedural safeguard rather than as a routine posting.

    Why did the appointment proceed without Punjab’s response?

    1. The document fixes no time period: Nothing in the Memorandum states how long a State may take to send its views.
    2. Convention supplies the missing clock: Consent for a Chief Justice is conventionally dealt with immediately, and inputs from a Chief Minister on a High Court judge take four to six weeks.
    3. Silence is read as assent: After a certain period the Law Ministry deems that the State government had no objection to the recommendation.
    4. Three other States had already replied: Bihar, West Bengal and Maharashtra sent their inputs immediately. The delay by Punjab held up those three appointments as well.

    Where does this leave the wider appointments cycle?

    1. Every High Court now has a regular Chief Justice: Eight appointments were notified on Collegium recommendations of 6 August and 31 August, filling all 25 High Courts. The Chhattisgarh appointment followed separately after its sitting Chief Justice retired on 4 September.
    2. The Collegium’s attention shifts to the top court: Four vacancies remain in the Supreme Court, which trace to the Supreme Court (Number of Judges) Amendment Ordinance, 2026 raising the sanctioned strength in May. The Court currently sits at 34 judges.
    3. The window is narrow: A fifth seat falls vacant on 29 November on a retirement, and the Chief Justice of India retires on 9 February 2027. These are the last recommendations the present Collegium can make.

    Challenges to the Memorandum of Procedure

    1. The revised document has stayed unsettled for a decade: After the Supreme Court struck down the National Judicial Appointments Commission in Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association v. Union of India (2015), a five judge Constitution Bench directed the government to finalise a revised Memorandum. Eg. Successive drafts have moved between the Collegium and the Law Ministry without agreement on a national security exception or on a permanent secretariat.
      The Fix: Settle the revised document against a dated deadline set by the Court, so that the operative rulebook is a published text rather than a decade of correspondence.
    2. No clause binds the executive to notify within a period: A recommendation the Collegium reiterates is binding in substance, and nothing fixes when the notification must issue. Eg. Justice K M Joseph’s elevation was recommended in January 2018, returned by the government, reiterated in July 2018 and notified only in August 2018.
      The Fix: Write a fixed outer limit for notification into the revised Memorandum, with the recommendation taking effect on its expiry.
    3. The criteria for selecting a Chief Justice are unpublished: Seniority combined with suitability operates as a convention rather than as a stated test, so a comparative assessment cannot be examined. Eg. Collegium resolutions record the name recommended without the assessment that produced it.
      The Fix: Publish the criteria and an anonymised comparative note with each Chief Justice recommendation.
    4. A State’s view has no remedy attached to it: The Memorandum creates no right, so a State that believes it was not consulted has no forum that can stay the appointment. Eg. Punjab’s objection could travel to the President and the Prime Minister and to no authority able to halt the oath.
      The Fix: Record the State’s response, or its absence, on the file as a dated entry that the notification must recite.

    Conclusion

    The dispute is not about the individual appointed. It sets a State’s claim to be consulted against a document that binds nobody and can be satisfied by the passage of time. A State that responds late has its silence converted into consent, and a State that objects afterwards has nowhere to take the objection. Until the Memorandum of Procedure is itself settled, a State’s dissent on a judicial appointment will keep arriving as a political resolution rather than as a step in the appointment process.

    Back2Basics: The Collegium system

    1. What it is: A body of the senior most judges of the Supreme Court that recommends appointments and transfers of judges to the Supreme Court and the High Courts.
    2. Composition: The Chief Justice of India and the four senior most judges of the Supreme Court for Supreme Court appointments. A smaller collegium of the Chief Justice of India and two senior most judges handles High Court recommendations.
    3. Source of authority: It is a judicial creation, not a constitutional provision. Articles 124 and 217 speak only of consultation with the judiciary.
    4. The executive’s residual role: The government may return a recommendation once with its objections. A reiterated recommendation is binding on it.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2025, GS2, 15 marks] Discuss the evolution of collegium system in India. Critically examine the advantages and disadvantages of the system on appointment of the Judges of the Supreme Court of India and that of the USA.”

  • Judicial integrity – a case the Court cannot ignore

    Why in the News

    A sitting judge of the Supreme Court of India, Justice Sandeep Mehta, wrote three letters to the Chief Justice of India (CJI) on 2, 10 and 17 August seeking the immediate transfer of the Acting Chief Justice of the Rajasthan High Court, Justice Sanjeev Prakash Sharma. The letters allege victimisation of judges, maladministration, improper shifting of cases to his own Bench, and nepotism in appointments to the Permanent Lok Adalat. The last of the three records concern at the CJI’s inaction, with Justice Sharma due to retire on 26 September. The stated response is that allegations cannot be treated as findings and must be dealt with strictly through the established institutional mechanism. The tension is that the established mechanism is precisely what has not worked, since the appointment system carries no published criteria and the removal machinery has never removed a judge.

    What is the “master of the roster” power?

    1. What the power is: The Chief Justice of a court holds the exclusive administrative authority to constitute Benches and to assign cases among them.
    2. Where it comes from: It rests on convention and on the Supreme Court’s own rulings treating the Chief Justice as first among equals for administrative purposes, not on any statutory provision.
    3. Its reach in this case: The power covers roster allocation for the whole court, and it is exercised by the Acting Chief Justice wherever the office of Chief Justice is vacant.

    What do the letters allege?

    1. Interference with the roster: Cases were allegedly shifted improperly to the Acting Chief Justice’s own Bench, in misuse of the master of the roster power.
    2. Pressure on colleagues: Judges were allegedly intimidated with the threat of retributive measures including transfers, on the basis of claimed proximity to the CJI.
    3. Favouritism at the Bar: The letters refer to specific instances of alleged favouritism towards a chosen few among the lawyers.
    4. Appointments outside the court: Nepotism is alleged in appointments to the Permanent Lok Adalat, the statutory body that decides disputes relating to public utility services and whose award is final and binding.
    5. The state of the record: There has been no official denial of the reports concerning the contents of the letters, and Justice Sharma has publicly denied the accusations as baseless.

    What is the record behind the appointment itself?

    1. A long acting tenure: The High Court functioned under an Acting Chief Justice for about 11 months, which is not a sound institutional arrangement for a court of that size.
    2. An earlier transfer out: Justice Sharma was transferred to the Patna High Court in 2022.
    3. A rejected repatriation: His request to return to the Rajasthan High Court was rejected by the Collegium in 2023, which instead proposed his transfer to the Punjab and Haryana High Court.
    4. A reversal without a stated reason: He was nonetheless retransferred to the Rajasthan High Court in 2025 and then allowed to function as Acting Chief Justice with wide administrative and judicial powers.

    How did the institution respond?

    1. The Bar acted first: Lawyers staged a sit-in protest on the High Court premises, following which Justice Sharma opted out from hearing cases.
    2. The Collegium moved on the vacancy: On 31 August the Supreme Court Collegium recommended the appointment of Justice Sanjay Agrawal as the new Chief Justice of the Rajasthan High Court, and that appointment has since been made.
    3. The complaint itself drew no step: For several weeks no cogent step was initiated on the letters, with the retirement date approaching.
    4. The trust cost is measurable: Transparency International’s 2002 report, based on a household survey, identified the judiciary as the second-most corrupt institution in certain South Asian countries including India.

    Why does the appointment system produce this?

    1. There are no criteria at all: The selection of judges proceeds without published standards against which a candidate can be assessed or a rejection explained.
    2. The Collegium and the Executive must collaborate: The unavoidable joint working of the Collegium and the Union Executive under the present system makes appointments partisan, opaque and often arbitrary.
    3. The filter cannot do the job asked of it: A process built this way is incapable of identifying the cleanest and most meritorious candidates.
    4. The link to corruption is direct: Corruption in the judiciary is inseparable from the method of selecting candidates for judicial office, so the accountability problem starts at entry rather than at removal.

    Why does the removal machinery not work?

    1. The inquiry statute is dormant: The Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968 is inadequate to tackle judicial corruption and has for all practical purposes become defunct.
    2. A criminal investigation cannot begin: In K. Veeraswami vs Union of India (1991) the Supreme Court held that the permission of the CJI is a necessary precondition for registering a First Information Report against a judge of the higher judiciary. The requirement is circular in practice, because the police will not seek permission without clinching evidence and cannot obtain that evidence without investigating.
    3. Impeachment has failed as a route: Removal on the ground of proved misbehaviour or incapacity, as provided by Articles 124(4) and 217(1)(b) of the Constitution, has not worked in practice.
    4. The internal route has no teeth: The in-house mechanism adopted by the Supreme Court in 1999 has not proved fault-free or effective.
    5. The legislative fix lapsed: The Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill passed the Lok Sabha in 2012 and lapsed with the dissolution of the 15th Lok Sabha in 2014, and the later effort to revive it with changes remained a non-starter.

    What do other systems do differently?

    1. Canada invites applications: Candidates apply for judicial office rather than being identified privately, so the pool and the criteria are both visible before a selection is made.
    2. The United Kingdom uses an independent body: Judicial selection is conducted by a body separate from both the judiciary and the executive, which breaks the circularity of judges choosing judges.
    3. Neither is currently available in India: Both arrangements remain unthinkable in the Indian setting, which is why the accountability argument keeps returning to the removal stage rather than the entry stage.

    How have earlier Chief Justices responded to comparable situations?

    1. The 1990 precedent, advice to step back: When an inquiry was underway against Justice V. Ramaswami for alleged misconduct, the then CJI advised him to take leave and keep away from judicial work.
    2. The 1993 precedent, work withheld after a failed motion: The impeachment motion against him failed in Parliament following the Congress party’s strategic abstention. He attempted to resume judicial work with about nine months of tenure remaining, and the then CJI refused to allocate any cases to him for hearing.
    3. The recent precedent, immediate transfer: After partly burnt currency notes were reportedly found at the Delhi residence of Justice Yashwant Varma, the then CJI quickly transferred him to the Allahabad High Court, where he was practically not allocated judicial work.
    4. The Court’s own statement of the duty: In XXX vs Union of India (2025) the Supreme Court emphasised the responsibility of the CJI in matters relating to judicial integrity and allegations of corrupt practices.

    Challenges to judicial accountability in India

    1. Asset declaration rests on resolution rather than statute: Judges of the higher judiciary declare their assets under an internal resolution, so a failure to declare carries no legal consequence. Eg. Publication of the declarations on the Supreme Court’s website began only in 2025.
      The Fix: Place the declaration requirement in statute, with an annual filing deadline and a public register maintained by an authority outside the court.
    2. The selection record stays outside disclosure: The reasons recorded for an elevation, a rejection or a transfer are not published, so a questionable appointment cannot be traced to a reasoning. Eg. The 2023 rejection of a repatriation and the 2025 reversal of that position were never explained on the record.
      The Fix: Publish the Collegium’s recorded reasons for every recommendation and every transfer at the time the decision is communicated.
    3. The in-house procedure runs to no timeline: An internal inquiry proceeds at the discretion of the CJI, with no fixed stage limits and no published outcome. Eg. The procedure can end in advice to resign, leaving no finding on the record at all.
      The Fix: Fix statutory timelines for each stage of the inquiry and require publication of the finding, with reasons, on completion.
    4. Removal depends on parliamentary arithmetic: The final step turns on the numbers in both Houses rather than on the inquiry’s finding, so a party decision can defeat a proved case. Eg. No judge of the higher judiciary has ever been removed under the constitutional procedure.
      The Fix: Make an adverse inquiry finding trigger the automatic withdrawal of judicial work, so the consequence does not wait on a vote.

    Conclusion

    Two failures are operating at once and neither can substitute for the other. Entry into the higher judiciary is decided without published criteria, and exit from it is governed by a statute that has never produced a removal, which leaves everything in between resting on how quickly one officeholder chooses to act. That is not accountability but discretion, and discretion is what the present controversy has tested. The measure of what follows is whether a complaint carrying verifiable material now generates a recorded step with a date attached to it, rather than a retirement that closes the file.

    Back2Basics: The Collegium system

    1. What it is: The mechanism through which the higher judiciary selects its own judges, evolved through the Supreme Court’s judgments rather than from the text of the Constitution.
    2. Its origin: The Second Judges Case (1993) and the Third Judges Case (1998) read the word “consultation” in Articles 124 and 217 as requiring the concurrence of the CJI, and fixed the collegium’s composition.
    3. Its composition: The CJI and the four senior most judges of the Supreme Court decide Supreme Court appointments; the CJI and the two senior most judges decide High Court appointments and transfers.
    4. The failed replacement: The National Judicial Appointments Commission, created by the 99th Constitutional Amendment, was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2015 as violating judicial independence, leaving the collegium in place.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2019] Consider the following statements: 1. The- motion to impeach a Judge of the Supreme Court of India cannot be rejected by the Speaker of the Lok Sabha as per the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968. 2. The Constitution of India defines and gives details of what Constitutes ‘incapacity and proved misbehaviour’ of the Judges of the Supreme Court of India. 3. The details of the process of impeachment of the Judges of the Supreme Court of India are given in the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968. 4. If the motion for the impeachment of a Judge is taken up for voting, the law requires the motion to be backed by each House of the Parliament and supported by a majority of total membership of that House and by not less than two-thirds of total members of that House present and voting. Which of the statements given above is/are correct? (a) 1 and 2 (b) 3 only (c) 3 and 4 only (d) 1, 3 and 4 (c)”

  • India votes in favour of UNGA resolution on new world map

    Why in the News

    India has voted in favour of a United Nations General Assembly resolution aimed at correcting the world map to promote a “more accurate representation” of continental landmasses. The 193-member Assembly adopted the resolution “Correct the map: rebalancing global cartographic representation and promoting equitable representation of the world’s regions, particularly Africa”, which was sponsored by Togo. It encourages governments and institutions around the world to replace the traditional Mercator map with the Equal Earth projection, which “shows locations more accurately”. The resolution carried 164 votes in favour, with a lone vote against from the United States. The question the vote raises is whether a projection designed in the sixteenth century for navigation should continue to set how the world’s regions are seen.

    What is a map projection, and what does the Mercator do to area?

    1. The underlying problem: A projection is the rule for transferring a curved surface onto a flat sheet, and no flat map can preserve shape, area, distance and direction at the same time. Every projection therefore chooses which property to keep and which to sacrifice.
    2. What the Mercator keeps: It preserves angles, so a line of constant compass bearing plots as a straight line. That property is what made it a navigator’s map.
    3. What it sacrifices: Scale grows with distance from the equator, so landmasses near the poles are inflated and those near the equator are compressed. Eg. Greenland reads as roughly the size of Africa, though Africa is about 14 times larger.
    4. What Equal Earth does instead: It is an equal-area projection, so every region occupies its true share of the map’s surface. The cost is a controlled distortion of shape rather than of size.

    What did the Assembly actually adopt?

    1. The instrument is a recommendation: The resolution encourages governments and institutions to switch projection. A General Assembly resolution of this kind carries no binding force on any member state.
    2. The sponsor and the stated purpose: Togo sponsored the text, and its stated aim is the equitable representation of the world’s regions, and of Africa in particular.
    3. The campaign behind it: It carries forward an African Union-backed campaign to limit use of the Mercator map on the ground that visual under-representation reinforces a perception of the continent as peripheral.
    4. India’s vote: India voted in favour, placing it with the large majority rather than with the abstaining or dissenting group.

    What does the voting pattern show?

    1. The scale of support: 164 of the 193 members voted in favour, which is an overwhelming margin for a text with a contested premise.
    2. The single dissent: The United States cast the lone vote against.
    3. The abstentions: Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine abstained.
    4. What a wide margin does not settle: Adoption records agreement on a principle. It creates no obligation on any national mapping agency, publisher or platform to change what it prints.

    Challenges to replacing the Mercator projection

    1. No projection is politically neutral, and equal-area maps distort in their own way: Preserving area forces a distortion of shape, so a switch trades one visual misrepresentation for another. Eg. The Gall-Peters projection was promoted on the same equity argument in the 1970s and 1980s, and it stretched Africa vertically enough that seven North American geographic bodies passed a joint resolution in 1989 against rectangular projections of that kind.
      The Fix: Pair any recommendation with published guidance on which projection suits which purpose, so a navigation chart and a thematic world map are not held to one standard.
    2. The digital map layer is locked into Mercator by design: Web mapping tiles use a Mercator variant because it keeps north upward and shapes locally correct at every zoom level, which is what makes seamless zooming possible. Eg. Web Mercator underlies the standard tile schemes of the major online mapping services.
      The Fix: Require default map interfaces to switch to an equal-area view at continental and global zoom levels, where the distortion is largest and the navigation property is not being used.
    3. The change has to travel through textbooks and curricula, which move slowly: School atlases, examination material and classroom wall maps are procured on multi-year cycles, so a resolution adopted in one year reaches a classroom several later. Eg. Boston’s public school district switched its classroom maps to an equal-area projection in 2017, and the change stayed confined to that district.
      The Fix: Route the recommendation through national survey agencies and curriculum bodies, which specify the base maps that textbook publishers are obliged to reproduce.

    Conclusion

    The vote settles a question of principle that was never seriously contested and leaves the operative one untouched. What people actually see is set by the default projection of a handful of digital mapping services and by the atlases that education departments procure, and none of them is bound by this text. The measure of the resolution is therefore not the margin it passed by. It is whether a national mapping agency or a major platform changes its default in the year that follows.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “With reference to the United Nations General Assembly, consider the following statements : 1. The UN General Assembly can grant observer status to the non-member States. 2. Inter-governmental organisations can seek observer status in the UN General Assembly. 3. Permanent Observers in the UN General Assembly can maintain missions at the UN headquarters. Which of the statements given above are correct ? (a) 1 and 2 only (b) 2 and 3 only (c) 1 and 3 only (d) 1, 2 and 3”

  • 128 countries agree text on lethal autonomous weapons

    Why in the News

    Nearly 130 countries have agreed on a text defining lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS), called “killer robots” by their critics. The agreement, announced by 128 countries at Geneva, is a first step towards talks on a possible international treaty to regulate them. The text agreed upon has not yet been made public. Campaign groups following the talks say the definition and the measures meant to reduce harm to civilians were watered down before agreement was reached. The contest is between a definition that now exists on paper and a negotiating mandate that several of the largest military powers are resisting.

    What is a lethal autonomous weapons system?

    1. The defining capability: It is a weapon capable of selecting targets and using force against them without human intervention.
    2. The name its critics use: Campaign groups call these systems “killer robots”, and that label has framed the public argument around them.
    3. The category is not hypothetical: Countries are already developing and using weapons with this capability, which is why the definition is being written now rather than ahead of deployment.

    What was agreed at Geneva, and what was left open?

    1. Who agreed: The Dutch Foreign Minister announced the agreement by 128 countries, and the Netherlands has been overseeing the talks.
    2. What the text does: It defines the category of weapon and sets out measures to reduce the possible harmful effects of such weapons on civilians.
    3. What it does not do: It creates no obligation on any state, and it is described only as a first step towards talks on a possible treaty.
    4. Where the decision sits: UN member states will decide at the November talks of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) whether to move towards a treaty regulating such weapons.

    Why do campaign groups say the outcome is already weakened?

    1. The substance was diluted: One rights group said the text’s definition of an autonomous weapon, and the measures to reduce their possible harmful effects on civilians, appeared to have been watered down.
    2. The named obstruction: The executive director of Stop Killer Robots, an international alliance of campaign groups, accused the United States, Russia and their allies of trying to weaken the agreed text.
    3. The named opponents: Lex International, a Geneva-based philanthropic group that funds work on key policy issues, said the U.S., Russia, India and Israel are among the key opponents of negotiations.
    4. The named sponsors: The same group said the governments of Brazil, Ireland and Norway are leading efforts to get such negotiations started in November.

    What do humanitarian bodies want instead?

    1. The stated warning: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said the unconstrained development and use of autonomous weapon systems pose serious legal, ethical and humanitarian challenges.
    2. The demand: The ICRC and several campaigning groups have called for international legally binding rules to restrict and regulate the use of these weapons.
    3. Why a definition alone will not deliver that: The CCW works by consensus, so a single state party can block the opening of treaty negotiations whatever the size of the majority behind them.

    Challenges to regulating lethal autonomous weapons

    1. Nobody is clearly answerable when the machine chooses wrongly: Responsibility for an unlawful strike is split between the commander, the operator, the programmer and the manufacturer, and no existing rule allocates it. Eg. Article 36 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, 1977 requires a state to legally review every new weapon, and there is no shared standard for reviewing software whose behaviour changes after deployment.
      The Fix: Require states to publish the methodology of their Article 36 reviews for autonomous systems, so the review becomes checkable rather than declaratory.
    2. States do not agree on how much human control is enough: The negotiations have run for a decade on competing formulations, and a treaty cannot be drafted around a threshold nobody has fixed. Eg. “Meaningful human control”, “appropriate human judgement” and “human-machine interaction” have all been advanced as the operative test at the Group of Governmental Experts on LAWS.
      The Fix: Settle one operative term in the agreed text before the negotiating mandate is voted on, rather than after.
    3. Verification cannot see software: Arms control regimes are built to count and inspect physical objects, and autonomy is a line of code that can be loaded or removed before an inspection. Eg. The Chemical Weapons Convention, 1993 verifies a declared substance at a declared facility, and the same inspection tells an inspector nothing about a targeting algorithm.
      The Fix: Shift verification onto declared doctrine, test logs and procurement records, which are documentary and can be audited.
    4. The technology diffuses through civilian supply chains: Autonomy rides on commercial drones, cameras and machine vision software that no arms control list covers. Eg. Commercially available quadcopters have been modified for strike use at scale in the Russia-Ukraine war.
      The Fix: Add autonomous targeting software and machine vision payloads to the dual-use control lists of the Wassenaar Arrangement, so transfers are licensed rather than untracked.

    Conclusion

    A definition is the cheapest thing a negotiation can produce, and it has taken a decade to produce this one. The states that field the most advanced autonomous systems are the ones resisting a mandate to negotiate, which means the majority behind the text does not translate into a treaty. The next meeting of the Convention’s states parties is where that gap is either closed or carried forward. Whether the agreed definition survives publication intact is the first thing to check when the text is released.

    Back2Basics: Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons

    1. What it is: The Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects was adopted at Geneva in 1980 and entered into force in 1983.
    2. How it is structured: It is a framework convention that carries no prohibitions itself, and the substantive bans sit in protocols that states join separately.
    3. The protocols: Five protocols cover non-detectable fragments, mines and booby-traps, incendiary weapons, blinding laser weapons and explosive remnants of war.
    4. India’s position: India is a party to the Convention, and the LAWS discussion has been conducted within its Group of Governmental Experts rather than in a separate forum.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “With reference to ‘Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)’, consider the following statements: 1. It is an organization of European Union in working relation with NATO and WHO. 2. It monitors chemical industry to prevent new weapons from emerging. 3. It provides assistance and protection to States (Parties) against chemical weapons threats. Which of the statements given above is/are correct? (a) 1 only (b) 2 and 3 only (c) 1 and 3 only (d) 1, 2 and 3”