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  • Jharkhand SIR faceoff: BJP agents seek to delete voters, BLOs raise red flag

    Why in the News

    Booth Level Officers (BLOs) in at least four booths of Jharkhand’s Godda district have refused stacks of Form 7 applications seeking deletion of voters from the draft electoral roll, flagging them as not genuine or not procedurally sound. The applications were brought by Booth Level Agents (BLAs) of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and most of the names on them are from the minority community. The draft roll was published under the State’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR), and the claims and objections round on it is still open. The BJP has complained that the BLOs are at fault for refusing the forms. BLOs are State government employees, and the State is governed by a Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM)-Congress alliance, so the standoff has acquired a party colour and has reached the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO). The tension is that Form 7 requires no evidence and has no filing cap, so the only safeguard against targeted bulk deletion is the inquiry after intake, and the CEO and the local Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) disagree on whether a BLO may refuse a form at all.

    How is a Form 7 deletion supposed to work?

    1. The statutory power sits with the ERO: Section 22 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 lets the ERO correct or delete an entry on its own motion or on an application. In each case the ERO must hold an inquiry, give the elector time to respond and then pass an order.
    2. Only three grounds justify deletion: The ERO can remove an entry where the person has died, is no longer ordinarily resident in the constituency, or is ineligible because they are not a citizen or are under 18.
    3. Form 7 is the objection instrument: Under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, Form 7 carries an objection to a proposed inclusion or a deletion of a name in an existing roll. Any elector may use it to delete their own name or to object to another elector in the same constituency.
    4. The applicant proves nothing but signs a declaration: The form asks for one of five reasons, death, under age, absent or permanently shifted, already enrolled, or not Indian citizen, and needs no evidence. The applicant signs a declaration that a statement known to be false is punishable.

    Where does the online filing system leave the safeguard?

    1. Filing has moved online: The form can be downloaded from the voters’ portal and handed to the BLO, or filed on the portal or the ECINet app after the applicant links a phone number to their Electors Photo Identity Card (EPIC) number. Only a person registered in the same constituency can object to a name in it.
    2. The form identifies both parties: It carries the applicant’s name, EPIC number and phone number, and the name, EPIC number if available and address of the person objected to.
    3. Processing was centralised in 2018 but decisions were not: ERONet replaced the States’ own applications with one portal for EROs, and in 2025 the Election Commission of India (ECI) folded about 40 apps and portals into ECINet. Each form is still decided by the ERO concerned, not centrally.
    4. The portal verifies nothing at filing: No proof is required, and the system does not check that the EPIC number and phone number belong to the applicant.
    5. The inquiry is the safeguard, per the ECI: The ERO must issue a notice to the elector, allow seven days to respond, hold a hearing and pass an order, and the BLO must verify by a field visit. ECI officials say a deletion happens only after this ground inquiry.

    What did the investigation find in Godda’s booths?

    1. One BLA, 25 forms in one booth: At Booth No. 9 of Maheshtikri village a single BJP BLA filed Form 7s against 25 voters.
    2. The forms were not the official ones: The Maheshtikri BLO said the BLA brought forms that were not original, described them as covering voters absent from the village, and promised 50 more. Every form named a Muslim voter.
    3. She accepted the first batch and refused the rest: The BLO took the 25 forms, then declined further forms after the Block Development Officer (BDO) instructed BLOs that such documents were not official forms.
    4. A neighbouring BLA burned 75 forms: At Pachua Kita the BLO was handed around 75 Form 7s that differed from the forms the block office had issued. The BLA said he had been told they were for adding names, and he burned all of them when questioned.
    5. Almost every objected name was Muslim: At Pachua Kita almost all the names on the 75 forms were of Muslims, and at Maheshtikri all the forms carried Muslim voters.
    6. Complaints reached the ERO from four booths: The Basantrai BDO, acting as ERO, received complaints from Maheshtikri, Pachua Kita, Lochni and Baghakol. Villagers of Maheshtikri filed their own complaint against the mass objections in Booth No. 9.

    Why do the targeted voters say the objections cannot stand?

    1. The 2003 roll should protect them: Many of the targeted voters are verified in the 2003 intensive revision, and under the ECI’s own rules this eases their inclusion in the ongoing SIR. The BLOs said every objected voter at Maheshtikri and most at Pachua Kita were mapped to the 2003 roll.
    2. Residence runs back generations: The voters trace their families in the village across generations and hold the khatian, the land record used as proof of being Jharkhandi, along with Aadhaar cards and addresses in the State.
    3. Migration for work is the likely trigger: Several are labourers who work in Delhi, Ghaziabad or outside the State and return to vote in Jharkhand. One learned of the objection against him only from an anganwadi worker.
    4. The fear is benefits and citizenship, not only the vote: Eight voters spoken to feared disenfranchisement, loss of government scheme entitlements or being treated as non-citizens, and several said they were not educated enough to understand the consequences.
    5. Preliminary checks support them: The ERO said preliminary information shows some voters sought to be deleted are living at their registered addresses, and every deletion request will be field verified.

    How does the BJP defend the bulk filings?

    1. Objections are the BLA’s job: The former BJP MLA for Godda said filing objections is part of a BLA’s responsibility. BLAs are trained in Form 6 for new voters, Form 7 for objections and Form 8 for shifting or correction of entries.
    2. Duplicate registration is the stated ground: The party’s position is that a BLA can seek deletion where a name appears at two places, and that verifying the objection is the election authorities’ job.
    3. No cap exists on filings: There is no prescribed limit on the number of applications a BLA can submit, so a single BLA filing dozens breaks no rule.
    4. The BLO breached confidentiality, per the party: A BLO must keep the details of the objected person and of the BLA confidential, and disclosure can amount to a violation of the Representation of the People Act. The BJP says the Booth No. 9 BLO’s disclosure of its BLA’s identity caused pressure and threats against him.
    5. The complaint went to the Additional CEO: The BJP’s Jharkhand SIR convenor submitted a memorandum on discrepancies in the SIR, particularly in Sahibganj and Godda districts, accusing BLOs of two booths of refusing Form 7s from its BLAs.
    6. The BLAs describe a top down supply of forms: The Maheshtikri BLA said the former MLA gave him around 25 forms with the instruction to bring them back if the BLO refused, and some came back. The Pachua Kita BLA said he got the forms from party cadres, barely knew what they were, and thought they added names.

    Why have the ERO and the CEO split on what a BLO may do?

    1. The ERO told BLOs not to act: The BDO said BLOs were instructed not to act on the forms because the source of the forms was unknown, and that an inquiry report will follow field verification.
    2. The ERO wants a complaint route instead: In his view the BLAs should first have filed a written complaint with the Sub Divisional Officer (SDO) or the ERO asking for an investigation. Any objection should come from the family concerned or carry solid evidence.
    3. The CEO found no illegality: After speaking to the Godda Assistant ERO and the Deputy Commissioner, the Jharkhand CEO said objections were filed through Form 7 and can be submitted in bulk.
    4. The CEO holds that filing itself is legitimate: A BLA who believes a voter is registered in multiple States can object, and there is nothing wrong in filing objections.
    5. The CEO says BLOs cannot reject: The BLO must first inform the Assistant ERO (AERO), who decides what is to be done, and the BLO then records a recommendation in the observation report.

    Why has a roll revision become a party contest?

    1. The revision is large and the window is short: The SIR began in Jharkhand on June 30, and the draft roll published on August 5 removed 16.48 percent of voters, around 43 lakh. The claims and objections round closes on September 4.
    2. BLOs answer to a State government of the other side: The BJP frames the refusals as partisan because the BLOs are employees of a State run by its rivals.
    3. Godda is a marginal seat: The BJP candidate lost Godda in the 2024 Assembly election to the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) by more than 20,000 votes after winning it in 2020 by around 4,500.
    4. The ruling alliance calls it targeted deletion: The JMM’s local block president called the forms a BJP conspiracy to remove Muslim voters, and the Congress general secretary said the party is monitoring Form 7 deletions across the State. The RJD MLA for Godda said the BDO told him action is being taken.

    Challenges to the Form 7 objection mechanism

    1. The burden shifts to the objected elector: A voter must answer a notice within a week and attend a hearing, and a migrant worker away from home routinely misses both. Eg. In Lal Babu Hussein v Electoral Registration Officer (1995) the Supreme Court set aside deletions in Bombay where names had been struck off on suspicion of foreign nationality without a proper opportunity to be heard.
      The Fix: Serve the notice on the phone number linked to the elector’s EPIC and allow a response through the portal or a family member at the hearing.
    2. The objector’s identity is unverified: An objection can be filed under someone else’s EPIC number and phone number since nothing checks that they belong to the applicant. Eg. In Bengaluru in 2022, staff of a private firm, Chilume Enterprises, posed as Booth Level Officers and collected voter data door to door, showing how easily the intake layer is impersonated.
      The Fix: Require a one time password on the phone registered against the objector’s EPIC before the portal accepts a Form 7.
    3. False declarations carry no practical cost: Section 31 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 makes a false declaration punishable with imprisonment of up to one year, but prosecutions of objectors are rare, so bulk filing is free. Eg. In the Bihar SIR of 2025 the Supreme Court had to direct the ECI to publish booth wise lists of the about 65 lakh excluded names with reasons before any individual could contest an exclusion.
      The Fix: Track every rejected objection to its filer and prosecute repeat filers under Section 31.
    4. Party appointed agents drive the objection pipeline: BLAs are nominated by political parties, so the volume and targeting of objections follow party incentive rather than roll accuracy. Eg. The Bihar SIR of 2025 let each BLA submit up to 50 certified enumeration forms a day, formally placing party agents inside the roll’s verification chain.
      The Fix: Require the ERO to publish booth wise counts of objections by filer during the claims window so bulk targeting is visible before the roll is finalised.

    Conclusion

    The Godda dispute is about where the safeguard against targeted deletion sits, at the BLO’s counter or in the ERO’s inquiry. The CEO has ruled that intake cannot be refused, so every objection now goes to field verification. The marker to watch is the Basantrai ERO’s inquiry report and how many of the objections it upholds once the claims window closes.

    Back2Basics: Special Intensive Revision (SIR)

    1. Legal basis: Section 21 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 lets the Election Commission of India direct a special revision of the electoral roll for any constituency, in addition to the annual summary revision.
    2. What makes it intensive: BLOs visit every household with enumeration forms and the roll is rebuilt from those forms, rather than corrected entry by entry as in a summary revision.
    3. The current cycle: The nationwide exercise began with Bihar in June 2025 and has proceeded State by State in phases since.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[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?”

  • SC seeks Centre’s response on use of ‘totalisers’ in EVM vote counting

    SC seeks Centre’s response on use of ‘totalisers’ in EVM vote counting

    Why in the News

    The Supreme Court has sought the Centre’s response on the use of “totalisers”, machines that consolidate and count votes from multiple electronic voting machine (EVM) control units at once without revealing booth-wise voting trends, as a “fall-back option”. The order came on a petition arguing that totalisers would protect voters’ privacy by concealing booth-wise voting patterns and shield them from reprisals. The Election Commission (EC) had warned the Court against the move, saying that introducing a new and unregulated mechanism at a time when the integrity of EVMs is itself under frequent public questioning could give rise to fresh allegations and controversy. The tension is between the voter’s privacy at the booth level and the booth-wise, machine-wise trail that the EC calls the backbone of a self-verifying count.

    What is a totaliser?

    1. What it does: A totaliser consolidates and counts votes from multiple EVM control units simultaneously, so the result is declared for the group rather than for each booth.
    2. How it connects: It links a cluster of 14 control units, from 14 polling stations, via a cable.
    3. What it outputs: It provides a consolidated result for each candidate across that group of EVMs, with no booth-wise breakdown.

    Why does the petitioner want totalisers?

    1. Privacy of the individual voter: Booth-wise results reveal how a locality voted, and the petitioner argued that totalisers would safeguard the privacy of individual voters.
    2. Protection from reprisals: Political parties victimise voters at the local level after identifying voting patterns in particular polling booths, and concealing the pattern removes the target.
    3. A fall-back, not a replacement: The Court framed the question to the Centre as one of a “fall-back option”, not a wholesale change in counting.

    On what legal and political grounds does the Election Commission object?

    1. The climate is wrong: The EC told the Court that the functioning and integrity of EVMs are still a subject of frequent public questioning, and that a new and as yet unregulated mechanism would further complicate public confidence in an already sensitive area.
    2. There is no law for it: Neither the Representation of the People Act, 1951 nor the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961 nor any allied enactment contains a provision recognising, regulating or governing the use of a totaliser in counting.
    3. Amendments would be needed: Substantive amendments and a revision of the statutory procedure governing the counting of votes would have to be made to include totalisers.
    4. Parties have said no: Three of six national parties and 18 of 29 State parties opposed the idea, and only the Law Commission of India, in its 255th report, suggested their selective use.

    Why does the Election Commission say totalisers would reduce transparency?

    1. Counting is witnessed booth by booth: Polling and counting are conducted in the presence of candidates and their agents.
    2. Form 17C is the reconciliation tool: Candidates and agents use Form 17C to match the vote count at the end of polling and again after counting at every polling station, and those comparisons are used in adjudications before election tribunals and courts.
    3. The trail is the backbone: The one-to-one, booth-wise and EVM-wise correspondence under Form 17C is what the EC calls the backbone of the self-verifying and transparent character of counting, and that transparency gives credence to the outcome.
    4. Parties use the pattern legitimately: Knowledge of booth-level voting lets parties improve outreach in booths where they underperformed and make corrective organisational decisions.
    5. Aggregation hides faults: Totalisers would mask technical malfunction and human error in individual EVMs, since clubbed machines stand concealed within the aggregate figure and cannot be identified or independently verified by any party.
    6. The main worry: The EC’s chief concern is that totalisers would become fodder for further misapprehension about EVMs.

    Challenges to introducing totalisers

    1. Machine-level verification would lose its anchor: The Court-ordered paper trail check works per machine, and an aggregated result has no machine to check against. Eg. Association for Democratic Reforms v. Election Commission of India (2024) required Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips to be counted for five randomly selected EVMs per Assembly segment.
      The Fix: Keep the machine-wise VVPAT count and Form 17C reconciliation internal to the counting hall, and publish only the aggregated result.
    2. Small clusters still reveal patterns: In sparsely populated segments a cluster of 14 booths can map onto one or two villages, so aggregation does not conceal the locality’s vote. Eg. Hill and tribal constituencies routinely have polling stations serving a few hundred electors each.
      The Fix: Set the cluster size by elector count rather than by a fixed number of machines.
    3. The EC’s own position has moved: The Commission proposed totalisers to the Law Ministry in 2008 and the Law Commission endorsed selective use in 2015, so its present opposition invites the charge of inconsistency. Eg. The 255th report on electoral reforms cited the EC’s proposal when recommending the change.
      The Fix: Publish a reasoned position paper setting out what changed between the 2008 proposal and the present affidavit.

    Conclusion

    The Court has kept the question open and asked the Centre rather than deciding it. The next step is the Centre’s reply, and the source gives no date for it. The marker to watch is whether the Centre is willing to amend the election rules, since without that amendment the EC’s legal objection stands whatever the Court thinks of the privacy claim.

    Back2Basics: Form 17C

    1. What it is: The “Account of Votes Recorded” prepared by the presiding officer of each polling station under the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961.
    2. Part I: Records the identification numbers of the EVMs used, the total electors, the votes recorded in the machine and the number of tendered votes, and a copy goes to each polling agent at the close of poll.
    3. Part II: Records the result of counting for that machine, filled in at the counting centre and signed by the counting supervisor and candidates’ agents.
    4. Why it matters: It is the only document that lets a candidate compare votes polled at a booth with votes counted from that booth.

    [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?”

  • Distinguished jurist: The unused route to appoint an SC judge

    Why in the News

    A sitting Supreme Court judge has called the “distinguished jurist” route to the Supreme Court under Article 124(3) an “unused mandate” of the Constitution that “needs our serious attention”. The provision has existed since the Constitution came into force, and in more than seven decades no one has been appointed under it. The judge argued that a jurist on the Bench would “diversify the Bench” and would not be “constricted by narrow technicalities”, leaving the Court better placed on public law questions. The tension is that the text permits the appointment while the process, a collegium of judges recommending candidates and Bar rules that keep academics out of practice, has never produced one.

    What is the distinguished jurist route under Article 124(3)?

    1. Three routes to the Court: Article 124(3) allows the appointment of a citizen of India who has served as a High Court judge for five years, practised as an advocate for ten years, or “is, in the opinion of the President, a distinguished jurist”.
    2. Two routes have staffed it: Most judges have been elevated from the High Courts, and a smaller number of lawyers have been appointed directly from the Bar.
    3. The third has never been used: No distinguished jurist has been appointed to the Supreme Court since 1950.

    Where did the clause come from?

    1. A Constituent Assembly amendment: H.V. Kamath moved the clause on 24 May 1949, arguing that the pool of candidates should not be “necessarily confined to Judges or Advocates”.
    2. The case he made: India needed a way to bring in men or women “possessed of outstanding legal and juristic learning” even if they had never practised law, and judges of the International Court of Justice at The Hague are chosen on similar terms.
    3. Ambedkar’s only reservation: B.R. Ambedkar did not object to the idea, wondered whether “eminent” would fit better than “distinguished”, and left the wording to the Drafting Committee, after which the amendment went through.
    4. The High Court parallel was repealed: The Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976, enacted during the Emergency, added a distinguished jurist route for High Court judges under Article 217, and the Constitution (Forty-fourth Amendment) Act, 1978 removed it.

    What would a jurist on the Bench change?

    1. Diversity of the Bench: The judge’s argument is that a jurist brings a background the Court’s present composition, drawn from High Courts and the Bar, does not.
    2. Public law capacity: A jurist would not remain constricted by narrow technicalities and would be in a stronger position to deal with public law issues.
    3. Academia’s influence on judging: The participation of legal academia and scholars would have a defining impact on the judicial functioning of the Supreme Court.

    Why has the route never been used?

    1. Two explanations from the judge: First, the central government and later the collegium took the view that Indian academia lacks the depth for elevation to the Supreme Court; second, neither the central government nor the collegium has seriously explored the provision.
    2. Who counts as a jurist: The term is generally understood to cover anyone engaged in serious work in the practice, teaching or research of law, including those without courtroom experience.
    3. The Bar rules shut the practice door: Bar Council rules generally prevent full-time law teachers from practising law, so an academic cannot accumulate the ten years at the Bar that the second route needs.
    4. The collegium is the gate: Appointments are initiated through the collegium (the Chief Justice of India and the senior-most judges who recommend names), so a jurist must first be recommended by the Supreme Court collegium before the appointment reaches the government.
    5. The one near miss: Upendra Baxi recalled in 2015 being addressed as “Judge Baxi” by a professor whom Justice P.N. Bhagwati had told that Baxi would be made a judge within months, an appointment that never materialised.
    6. Baxi’s verdict: “The Presidents of India have been looking with a telescope and have not found any jurist worth appointing”, which led him to call the route “a dead issue”.
    7. The Bar route still works: The most recent appointment from the Bar was Justice V. Mohana, recommended by the collegium in May 2026 and sworn in the following month.

    Challenges to using the distinguished jurist route

    1. The collegium evaluates what it knows: A body of judges assesses candidates on judgments written and cases argued, which an academic does not have. Eg. The Memorandum of Procedure for Supreme Court appointments sets out consultation for High Court judges and advocates and carries no chapter on jurists.
      The Fix: Add published criteria for the jurist route to the Memorandum of Procedure, covering scholarship, public law expertise and professional standing.
    2. The President’s “opinion” has no test: The clause leaves the standard undefined, so any appointment invites challenge as arbitrary. Eg. Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association v. Union of India (2015) struck down the National Judicial Appointments Commission, leaving no body outside the judiciary to frame such a test.
      The Fix: Let the collegium adopt and publish a reasoned selection note for any jurist it recommends, as it now does for some elevations.
    3. Tenure would be short: A scholar considered at the age judges are elevated would retire at 65 within a few years, which limits the institutional gain. Eg. Justice Indu Malhotra, appointed from the Bar in 2018, served three years.
      The Fix: Consider jurists in their early fifties, matching the age at which High Court judges are elevated.
    4. The depth objection is asserted, not tested: The claim that Indian academia lacks depth has never been tested against a shortlist, and other supreme courts have seated academics without judicial or Bar seniority. Eg. The United States Supreme Court seated Felix Frankfurter from Harvard Law School in 1939 and Elena Kagan, who had never been a judge, in 2010.
      The Fix: Have the collegium consider a named shortlist of jurists at least once, so the objection rests on an assessment rather than an assumption.

    Conclusion

    The route is alive in the text and dead in practice, and the reason is procedural rather than constitutional. The status is a public call from within the Court, with no proposal from the collegium or the government to act on it. The marker to watch is whether the collegium or the Memorandum of Procedure names any criterion for the route, since without one the clause stays a dead letter.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2024, GS2, 15 marks] Explain the reasons for the growth of public interest litigation in India. As a result of it, has the Indian Supreme Court emerged as the world’s most powerful judiciary?”

  • The south’s muted voice as political power shifts north

    Why in the News

    The five southern States failed to speak with one voice on delimitation at the recently concluded 31st meeting of the Southern Zonal Council. The Karnataka Chief Minister demanded that the 1971 Census remain the basis for delimitation for another 25 years, and no other Chief Minister matched that position. The south’s “political retreat” from its once-influential national role comes amid growing anxieties over representation and federalism. The tension is between a structural shift, a Lok Sabha that a few Hindi heartland States can dominate, and a self-inflicted one, southern Chief Ministers whose dependence on New Delhi for funds has turned them into supplicants.

    Why has national politics tilted north since Independence?

    1. The national movement itself was north-led: Gandhi, Nehru, Netaji and Patel were the tallest leaders, and C. Rajagopalachari of Madras, T. Prakasam of Andhra and E.M.S. Namboodiripad of Keralam never had comparable national presence.
    2. Southern resistance is not part of the national memory: The resistance movements and anti-British revolts of the south are not valorised across the country, least of all in northern India.
    3. The early Congress was still inclusive: A galaxy of southern leaders in its leadership ranks let the original Indian National Congress be seen as an all-inclusive umbrella party.
    4. Demographics and language did the rest: Blame demographics or the penchant for a “national” language, parliamentary politics has produced northern domination, and both the Congress and the Jana Sangh and its successor the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have been led from the north.
    5. Only one full-term southern Prime Minister: In nearly eight decades of independence, only one Prime Minister from the south completed a full term, and other southern Prime Ministers were seen as placeholders.
    6. Party structures reinforce it: The domination of the Nehru-Gandhi family in the Congress, and the ideological dominance of Hindi and political dominance of the Hindi heartland in the BJP, have overshadowed southern leadership.

    Where have southern leaders of stature come from, and why not from national parties?

    1. The Congress once had strong regional leaders: K. Kamaraj and C. Subramaniam in Tamil Nadu; Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, Kasu Brahmananda Reddy, Marri Chenna Reddy and Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy in Andhra Pradesh; S. Nijalingappa, Devaraj Urs and S.M. Krishna in Karnataka; and K. Karunakaran in Keralam.
    2. The BJP has none: The party has no south Indian leader of stature in its leadership ranks, and the one who rose from within, B.S. Yediyurappa, quickly faded.
    3. Distinction came from regional parties: M.G. Ramachandran and Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu, Namboodiripad in Keralam, N.T. Rama Rao in Andhra Pradesh, K. Chandrashekar Rao in Telangana, and H.D. Deve Gowda, Ramakrishna Hegde and Siddaramaiah in Karnataka all rose through regional parties or national parties with a markedly regional presence.
    4. National parties deny the space: They have rarely let southern leaders acquire a national profile, and P.V. Narasimha Rao, the first south Indian Prime Minister, owed the office largely to his Hindi-speaking skills and was denied his due place in the Congress pantheon.

    What did the Southern Zonal Council reveal about the south’s stand on delimitation?

    1. One strong intervention: The Karnataka Chief Minister also called for the Lok Sabha’s strength to be retained at the present 543 seats and for women’s reservation to be implemented.
    2. One tepid mention: The Keralam Chief Minister made only a passing reference to delimitation.
    3. One retreat: The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister revised his earlier strong opposition and sought only an assurance that States would not be denied their present proportional share of representation in the Lok Sabha.
    4. One absence: The Telangana Chief Minister missed the meeting and deputed the Deputy Chief Minister.
    5. The rest was administrative: The other demands concerned financial devolution, river water disputes and administrative issues, and the most politically consequential issue did not compel the five Chief Ministers onto a common platform.

    How has dependence on New Delhi muted the southern States?

    1. Supplication for funds: Varying degrees of dependence on the Centre make each southern State supplicate for funds and echo some of the BJP’s ideological obsessions.
    2. Andhra Pradesh as the sharpest case: The Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister have become more communal in their political articulation than some of the BJP’s allies in the National Democratic Alliance, and the Chief Minister’s need for central funds has diminished his stature as a representative of the Telugu people, a role his party, the Telugu Desam Party, once embodied.
    3. A Centre-State committee ignored: The committee on Centre-State relations chaired by Justice Kurian Joseph, appointed last year by the then Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government in Tamil Nadu, received little attention in the media or among the southern leadership, a silence that amounts to Chief Ministers abdicating their responsibility.
    4. Keralam’s leadership has weakened: The former Chief Minister from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) took a submissive approach to the Union government, and over two decades both the CPI(M)-led and Congress-led alliances have been unable to make their presence felt nationally.
    5. A silent forum, and silence about it: The National Development Council (NDC) has not met even once under the present Prime Minister, and hardly anyone across the political spectrum has expressed disquiet.

    What did an assertive south once extract from Delhi?

    1. A Commission from a slogan: N.T. Rama Rao’s declaration that “The Centre is a conceptual myth”, alongside other Opposition Chief Ministers, prompted the Prime Minister to appoint the Sarkaria Commission on Centre-State relations in June 1983, and its report was widely reported and discussed.
    2. A funding formula from a coalition of States: In 1968-69, Namboodiripad mobilised the Chief Ministers of Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan to get the NDC to endorse the Gadgil Formula (the population-weighted formula for distributing Plan assistance among States).
    3. Earlier national leaderships listened: The Congress, the Janata Party and the Janata Parivar coalitions were not dismissive of southern concerns on language, Centre-State relations, allocation of funds or railway lines, and policy direction was less Hindi-heartland-centric.
    4. Those parties had a southern base: They had a consequential presence in the southern States and included influential leaders from the region, so the south did not feel its voice was stifled whatever the outcome.

    Is the south’s muted voice a product of arithmetic or of abdication?

    1. The arithmetic is already against the south: Peninsular India’s political presence in the federation is weak even under the present distribution of Lok Sabha seats.
    2. A few States can decide: The entire southern region could be rendered politically inconsequential by the strength of two and a half to three Hindi heartland States in the Lok Sabha.
    3. The delimitation design will sharpen the fear: If such scenarios enter southern political discourse, the delimitation design the Union government is pushing will only heighten political anxieties in the region.
    4. Anxiety will outrun the supplicants: Those anxieties will overwhelm the present crop of supplicant Chief Ministers, the point at which abdication stops being an option.

    Challenges to the south’s voice in national politics

    1. The seat freeze has a sunset: The freeze on Lok Sabha seat allocation lasts only until the first Census after 2026, after which a population-based readjustment reallocates seats northward. Eg. Tamil Nadu’s share of the House could fall from 7.1 percent to 6.3 percent under a population-based expansion.
      The Fix: Fix each State’s share of the Lok Sabha rather than its seat count, so any expansion preserves present proportions.
    2. Fiscal transfers also weight population: Finance Commission formulas that weight 2011 population reduce the share of States that controlled fertility early. Eg. Karnataka’s share of the divisible pool fell from 4.713 percent under the Fourteenth Finance Commission to 3.647 percent under the Fifteenth.
      The Fix: Raise the weight for demographic performance in the devolution formula so fertility decline is rewarded, not penalised.
    3. The Rajya Sabha does not protect States: Seats in the Council of States are allotted by population under the Fourth Schedule, so the second chamber replicates rather than offsets the north’s numerical weight. Eg. Uttar Pradesh holds 31 Rajya Sabha seats against Keralam’s 9.
      The Fix: Give State governments a weighted vote on Bills affecting Centre-State relations, on the model of Germany’s Bundesrat.
    4. Language policy is set centrally: Central education policy carries a language design southern States have resisted for six decades, and funds are tied to its adoption. Eg. Tamil Nadu’s two-language policy against the three-language formula of the National Education Policy, 2020, with Samagra Shiksha funds withheld over the dispute.
      The Fix: Delink scheme funding from acceptance of the language formula and leave the choice to the State, as the Constitution’s State List entry on education once did.

    Conclusion

    The south’s weakness has two sources and both are real. The seat arithmetic is beyond any Chief Minister’s control, but the failure to build a common platform is not. What to watch is whether the five southern Chief Ministers table a joint position on the basis for delimitation before the Union government’s design is legislated. Until they do, the region’s anxiety over representation has no political vehicle.

    What is the current status of Centre-State relations in India?

    1. Two commissions frame the agenda: The Sarkaria Commission, appointed in 1983 and reporting in 1988, and the Punchhi Commission of 2010 remain the reference points for reform of Centre-State relations.
    2. Plan bargaining has ended: The Planning Commission was replaced by NITI Aayog in 2015, and the NDC, the forum where States once negotiated Plan funds, has fallen dormant.
    3. Devolution stands at 41 percent: The Sixteenth Finance Commission retained the States’ share of the divisible pool at 41 percent.
    4. A delimitation design is on the table: The Constitution (One Hundred and Thirty-first Amendment) Bill, 2026 proposed expanding the Lok Sabha from 543 to 850 seats (815 for States, 35 for Union Territories) on 2011 Census data, linked the 33 percent women’s quota to that exercise, and would shift the Lok Sabha to Rajya Sabha ratio from 2.2:1 to 3.3:1.

    Constitutional Provisions Related to Centre-State Relations

    1. Article 3: Parliament may form, merge or alter States and their names without the consent of the State concerned.
    2. Article 80 and the Fourth Schedule: Rajya Sabha seats are allotted to States by population, not equally.
    3. Article 81: Fixes the composition of the Lok Sabha and the proportionality of seats to population across States.
    4. Article 82: Requires readjustment of seats after every Census by a law of Parliament.
    5. Article 263: Empowers the President to establish an Inter-State Council to inquire into and advise on inter-State disputes and common interests.
    6. Article 280: Constitutes the Finance Commission to recommend the distribution of tax proceeds between the Union and the States.
    7. Article 356: Allows President’s Rule where a State’s constitutional machinery fails.

    Laws and Rules Governing Centre-State Relations

    1. States Reorganisation Act, 1956: Creates the five Zonal Councils (Northern, Central, Eastern, Western and Southern), statutory advisory bodies chaired by the Union Home Minister with State Chief Ministers as rotating Vice-Chairpersons.
    2. Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956: Lets a State request the Centre to refer a water dispute to a tribunal whose award, once gazetted, has the force of a Supreme Court order.
    3. Inter-State Council Order, 1990: Constituted the Inter-State Council under Article 263 on the Sarkaria Commission’s recommendation.
    4. Delimitation Act, 2002: Governed the last readjustment of constituency boundaries, which was done without altering any State’s seat total.

    Challenges in Centre-State Relations

    1. Politicisation of the Governor’s office: Governors from the ruling party at the Centre have withheld assent to State Bills for years. Eg. Tamil Nadu and Kerala took their Governors to the Supreme Court over delayed assent.
      The Fix: Adopt the Punchhi Commission’s fixed five-year tenure for Governors, with appointment after consulting the Chief Minister.
    2. A dormant coordination forum: The Inter-State Council has no binding authority and meets rarely, so Centre-State disputes go to court instead of to dialogue. Eg. The Council has met only 11 times since 1990, most recently in 2016.
      The Fix: Implement the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution’s recommendation of at least three Council meetings a year, with a dedicated secretariat.
    3. Centralisation through the fiscal channel: The Centre raises revenue through cesses and surcharges that are not shared, and delays transfers that are owed. Eg. GST compensation cess payments to States were delayed between 2019 and 2022.
      The Fix: Cap cesses and surcharges at 10 percent of gross tax revenue so the divisible pool is not artificially shrunk.
    4. Rigid Centrally Sponsored Schemes: Uniform scheme parameters ignore geographic and ecological variation across States. Eg. Recent changes to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme’s funding shifted burden onto States.
      The Fix: Allow States to customise 25 to 30 percent of scheme parameters to local needs.

    [2026, GS2, 15 marks] How far has the Indian federal framework been successful in accommodating regional and cultural diversities? Highlight the role of asymmetric federalism and suggest measures to make dispute resolution mechanisms more effective.”

  • Majority of India’s gig workers remain out of govt’s reach

    Majority of India’s gig workers remain out of govt’s reach

    Why in the News

    Only 8.58 lakh gig workers stood registered on the e-Shram portal as of the Ministry of Labour and Employment’s reply in the Rajya Sabha in January 2026, the latest publicly available figure.

    How far has the Budget’s health cover promise actually reached?

    1. Registration against the promise: The Budget’s beneficiary figure of over one crore compares with 8.58 lakh registrations on e-Shram, the figure the Ministry gave Parliament in January 2026.
    2. The optimistic case still falls short: A doubling of registrations since January would still cover only around 15 percent of the estimated gig workforce.
    3. The promise itself drove enrolment: Registrations of gig workers on e-Shram rose sharply from 2025, and the health cover announcement is the visible cause of that surge.
    4. Registration is the gate to every benefit: Registration on e-Shram is a prerequisite for availing benefits, so an unregistered gig worker is invisible to the scheme by design.

    Why does the government not know how many gig workers India has?

    1. One source for every estimate: The figure of over one crore gig workers, quoted in many government replies in Parliament last year, comes from a single document, the NITI Aayog report “India’s Booming Gig and Platform Economy” released in June 2022.
    2. What that report estimated: It put the gig workforce at around 77 lakh in 2020-21 and projected 1.27 crore in 2024-25 and 1.43 crore in the year after.
    3. No dedicated measurement effort exists: In the absence of any effort to measure the gig workforce, official estimates rely solely on this NITI Aayog report.
    4. The national labour survey does not count them: The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) reports do not capture gig workers as a distinct category, even though the estimated gig workforce is about 2 percent of India’s total workforce of 61.6 crore as cited by the 2025 PLFS report.

    What has the government built for gig workers, and what has not arrived?

    1. e-Shram as the single register: The portal, launched in 2021, is conceptualised as an Aadhaar-seeded National Database of Unorganised Workers (NDUW) and has become the unified platform for tracking the unorganised workforce, including gig workers.
    2. A legal definition came only in 2020: The government officially defined a gig worker only in the Code on Social Security, 2020, which came into force last year.
    3. The Code’s promises remain largely on paper: The Code promised accident insurance, maternity benefits and a dedicated social security fund for gig workers, and most of these are yet to materialise.

    Where are the registered gig workers, by State and by sector?

    1. Registrations are uneven across States: The ten States with the most registered gig workers as of January 2026 are led by West Bengal (54,734), Delhi (49,479), Andhra Pradesh (39,212), Rajasthan (38,205), Karnataka (37,871), Gujarat (34,756) and Madhya Pradesh (34,351), with Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar completing the list.
    2. Urbanised southern States are missing from the top ten: Tamil Nadu (31,654), Telangana (29,951) and Keralam (11,219) are not among the ten States with the highest registrations, despite their high urbanisation.
    3. Twenty one sectors on paper, three in practice: NITI Aayog’s 2022 report listed 21 sectors with gig workers, including agriculture, healthcare, education and retail, but e-Shram registrations concentrate in the food industry, transportation, and domestic and household work.
    4. The sector shares are lopsided: The largest single sector accounts for 32.8 percent of registered gig workers, and construction (3.6 percent) and agriculture (3.4 percent) are the smallest of the top five sectors.

    Challenges to e-Shram as the gateway for gig worker welfare

    1. Enrolment depends on the worker, not the platform: e-Shram is a self-registration portal, and no aggregator is obliged to enrol the workers it engages. Eg. The Rajasthan Platform Based Gig Workers (Registration and Welfare) Act, 2023 instead makes aggregators register their workers with a State welfare board.
      The Fix: Require aggregators to push worker data into e-Shram at onboarding under the Code on Social Security, 2020, so registration stops depending on individual initiative.
    2. No survey category means no target to measure against: Without a gig work module in the labour survey, the government cannot say what share of the workforce any scheme covers. Eg. The Ministry’s January 2026 reply to Parliament could cite portal registrations but no survey count.
      The Fix: Add a platform and gig work classification to the PLFS questionnaire so coverage is measured against a surveyed denominator.
    3. The funding source has not been built: The Code provides for aggregator contributions of 1 to 2 percent of annual turnover, capped at 5 percent of payments to workers, and the fund those contributions were to feed has not materialised. Eg. Karnataka’s Platform Based Gig Workers (Social Security and Welfare) Act, 2025 levies its own transaction fee because no central fund is flowing.
      The Fix: Notify the contribution rules and the social security fund so central benefits do not depend on Budget-by-Budget announcements.
    4. State schemes fragment portability: State-level gig worker boards create separate registrations and benefits for a workforce that moves across State lines. Eg. A delivery worker registered in Rajasthan gains nothing from Karnataka’s fund on relocating.
      The Fix: Make e-Shram the single identifier that State boards read from, so benefits follow the worker across States.

    Conclusion

    The health cover promise has produced registrations faster than any earlier measure, but the register still holds a fraction of the workforce the promise was made for. The deeper problem is a denominator the state has never measured. The next e-Shram registration figure released to Parliament, and whether the Code’s social security fund is finally notified, are the two markers to watch.

    Back2Basics: Gig worker and platform worker under the Code on Social Security, 2020

    1. Gig worker: A person who performs work or participates in a work arrangement and earns from such activities outside the traditional employer-employee relationship.
    2. Platform worker: A person in platform work, meaning work arranged through an online platform that connects organisations or individuals with workers to provide specific services for payment.
    3. Aggregator: A digital intermediary or marketplace through which a buyer or user connects with a seller or service provider, the entity the Code identifies for contributions.
    4. Why the definitions matter: They are the first statutory recognition of gig work in India, and eligibility for the Code’s social security schemes is tied to them.

    [2024, GS3, 15 marks] Discuss the merits and demerits of the four ‘Labour Codes’ in the context of labour market reforms in India. What has been the progress so far in this regard?”

  • Foreign Assets Disclosure Scheme: Concerns rise over high fee on ESOPs, small investments

    Why in the News

    The Foreign Assets of Small Taxpayers – Disclosure Scheme (FAST-DS), launched on 16 August, charges a flat Rs 1 lakh fee to disclose a foreign asset that was already taxed or acquired as a non-resident but was not declared in the income tax return. Salaried employees holding unreported employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) and restricted stock units (RSUs) (shares granted by an employer as part of pay, vesting over time) must pay the fee even where they made no gain. The scheme was proposed in this year’s Budget to address the “practical issues of small taxpayers like students, young professionals, tech employees, relocated NRIs”. The tension is between a fee designed as a low-cost route to compliance and a flat amount that exceeds the value of many of the assets it is meant to regularise.

    What are the two categories under FAST-DS?

    1. Where the complaints sit: The dispute is entirely about Category (ii), where the asset was never untaxed and the only lapse is non-disclosure in the return.
    2. The alternative the Act blocks: The Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets) and Imposition of Tax Act, 2015 does not recognise an updated return for income that was never taxed or disclosed, so an updated return does not cure the lapse.

    Why does a flat fee fall hardest on the smallest disclosers?

    1. Fee exceeding the asset: A salaried individual who invested Rs 90,000 in United States-listed stocks, now trading at a loss, must pay Rs 1 lakh upfront to disclose the loss-making holding. The transfer already appeared in the Annual Information Statement (AIS) of his return; only the separate Schedule FA entry was missing.
    2. Fee on salary already reported: An employee of a foreign company operating in India had the vesting details of his ESOPs in his salary but not in Schedule FA. He must pay Rs 1 lakh as a disclosure charge on income that was already part of his taxed pay.
    3. The employee’s objection: ESOPs are part of salary, and Rs 1 lakh for disclosure alone is too high a price for a reporting omission.
    4. The materiality test: Materiality is the maximum error allowed in financial statements before they are considered wrong. Where the amounts fall below any reasonable materiality threshold, a Rs 1 lakh penalty is disproportionate to the error.

    Why are ESOPs and residency status at the centre of the dispute?

    1. Non-residents who became residents: Many employees received ESOPs from their global companies as non-resident Indians (NRIs) and were later deputed to India, becoming residents. They did not disclose the old grants earlier and are disclosing them now.
    2. Disclosure invites a notice: After disclosure, the discloser receives a notice asking how the asset was acquired. The position put to the authorities is that the change from non-resident to resident status must be recorded before such notices issue.
    3. ESOPs as a mainstream pay component: ESOPs are a key salary component in the technology sector, startups and foreign companies. The scale shows in the Balance of Payments (BoP) line for “financial derivatives (other than reserves) and employee stock options”.
    4. The outflow figures: Net outflows under that BoP line stood at just under $24 billion in 2025-26, up 8 per cent from about $22 billion in 2024-25. The 2024-25 figure had itself almost tripled from nearly $8 billion in 2023-24.

    Is the updated return a way around the scheme?

    1. What employees are considering: Many employees are weighing an updated return for such anomalies instead of disclosing under the scheme, with greater scrutiny after disclosure the key concern.
    2. The tax department’s position: Even if an updated return is filed, the discloser remains liable to tax and penalty under the Black Money Act, because the Act does not recognise updated returns for income never taxed or disclosed. Disclosure under FAST-DS is therefore the safer route, and the department states there is no intention of additional scrutiny of such declarations.

    Challenges to FAST-DS

    1. A flat fee suppresses uptake: A disclosure window succeeds only if the cost of using it is below the cost of staying hidden, and a fee larger than the asset inverts that calculation for small holders. Eg. The 90-day compliance window under the Black Money Act in 2015 drew only 644 declarations totalling Rs 4,164 crore.
      The Fix: Slab the Category (ii) fee by asset value, with a nominal fee below a stated threshold.
    2. The department already holds the data: For many disclosers the asset is visible in the AIS or through automatic exchange of financial account information, so the fee is charged for reporting what the department can see. Eg. India receives account data on residents’ foreign holdings under the Common Reporting Standard, with exchanges running since 2017.
      The Fix: Pre-fill Schedule FA from AIS and exchanged data and treat a confirmed pre-filled entry as compliance without a separate fee.
    3. Post-disclosure notices deter the target group: Relocated professionals who disclose and then receive an acquisition notice signal to others that disclosure invites inquiry. Eg. Notices asking how an ESOP grant was acquired reach employees whose grant date predates their residency.
      The Fix: Issue a standing instruction that Category (ii) disclosures carrying non-resident acquisition dates close without notice unless a third-party data mismatch exists.

    Conclusion

    The scheme’s design assumes the small taxpayer’s problem is fear of the Black Money Act, when for ESOP holders the problem is a fee unrelated to the size of the lapse. That mismatch is unresolved and no revision of the fee has been announced. The scheme is open and the source states no closing date. What to watch is whether the Central Board of Direct Taxes slabs the Category (ii) fee or clarifies the treatment of grants acquired as a non-resident.

    Back2Basics

    1. Schedule FA: Schedule FA (Foreign Assets) is the part of the income tax return in which a resident and ordinarily resident taxpayer must list every foreign asset held at any time in the year, including shares, ESOPs, bank accounts and immovable property, whether or not it produced income.
    2. Who must file it: The obligation applies to residents only, so a non-resident who acquired an asset abroad first becomes liable to report it in the year he becomes resident.
    3. The penalty it carries: Failure to report attracts a penalty of Rs 10 lakh under the Black Money Act, relaxed from 2024 for movable foreign assets, other than immovable property, of up to Rs 20 lakh in aggregate.

    [2026] Which one of the following best describes the ‘Crowding Out Effect’ in the context of fiscal policy?

    (a) A situation where private investment increases due to increased Government spending

    (b) A situation where Government borrowing leads to higher interest rates, which reduces private investment

    (c) A situation where an increase in taxes leads to increased private sector investment

    (d) A situation where Government spending has no impact on aggregate demand

  • India’s data centre boom is colliding with its climate reality

    Why in the News

    India’s data centre capacity is set to grow from about 1.5 gigawatts (GW) today to 6.5 GW by 2030, a fourfold expansion in four years, on investment the government estimates at nearly $200 billion over the coming decade. Google, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft have committed billions to build facilities, and States are competing for them with tax exemptions, cheap land and duty waivers. No policy document at the Central or State level has assessed what guaranteed power costs a grid already strained under 45 degree Celsius heat, where cooling water will come from, or what the thermal load of thousands of servers does to regions already near dangerous temperatures. The tension is that the facilities are clustering in exactly the regions where water and grid stress are most acute, and State policies attach almost no conditions to the incentives they offer.

    Why is the scale of the build-out itself the problem?

    1. A fourfold expansion in four years: Capacity nearly tripled from 520 megawatts (MW) in 2020 to nearly 1.5 GW today. The 6.5 GW projected for 2030 compresses the next round of growth into four years.
    2. Electricity demand more than quadruples: Demand from data centres is expected to rise from about 13 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2024 to roughly 57 TWh by 2030. The Union Ministry of Power estimates that artificial intelligence alone will add 26.3 GW of new demand by 2031-32.
    3. States compete on incentives, not conditions: Maharashtra wants to be the data centre capital. Telangana has declared data centres “essential services”. Karnataka is reviewing its policy to attract more, and Rajasthan is offering tax exemptions and cheap land.

    Why does data centre water use collide with groundwater stress?

    1. The volume per facility: A 100 MW data centre consumes about 2 million litres of water daily, equal to the daily use of roughly 6,500 households. India’s data centres consumed an estimated 150 billion litres in 2024-25, projected to more than double to 358 billion litres annually by 2030.
    2. Clustering in the most stressed regions: Rajasthan extracts 147.11 per cent of its annual groundwater recharge, the second highest rate in the country. Several groundwater assessment units in Maharashtra are classified as semi-critical. Telangana’s Irrigation Minister confirmed in May 2026 that 16 districts were under groundwater stress.
    3. Cities already rationing: Hyderabad’s surface water supply dropped 20 per cent in the summer of 2024 on poor monsoon recharge, forcing the water board to ration supply. Mumbai’s reservoirs stood at 44.5 per cent of capacity in March 2026.
    4. Unaccounted in every State policy: No State policy requires public disclosure of daily water consumption. None requires a hydrogeological assessment before approval. None mandates that water sourcing must not compete with agriculture or municipal supply.

    Why can the grid not deliver the power the boom needs?

    1. Record peaks and interconnection queues: Maharashtra’s peak demand hit 27,230 MW in April 2026, the highest ever handled by the State utility. Two-year waits for 220 kV grid interconnections across the country are lengthening project timelines.
    2. Renewable power is being thrown away: India curtailed 300 gigawatt-hours of renewable energy in the first quarter of 2026 alone because the grid could not carry it, per an Ember Energy analysis of Central Electricity Authority data. Over five years India has met only about 80 per cent of its annual transmission targets, one in four major transmission schemes runs a year or more behind schedule, and 20 GW of renewable capacity faces connectivity delays of more than four months.
    3. Wires lag panels: Rajasthan and Gujarat house the bulk of utility-scale solar and wind. Both face the longest queues at pooling stations (substations where several renewable plants aggregate output before it enters the transmission grid). Solar projects are being built faster than the lines to carry their power.
    4. The coal default: Data centres need reliable, uninterrupted electricity. If renewable power cannot reach them, the power comes from coal, adding to the emissions India is trying to curtail.

    How do data centres make their surroundings hotter?

    1. The satellite evidence: A March 2026 University of Cambridge study of 20 years of NASA satellite data found that data centres raise land surface temperatures by an average of 2 degree Celsius within a 10 km radius, with extreme cases reaching 9.1 degree Celsius. About 340 million people globally live within these affected zones.
    2. Indian cities are already at the edge: Mumbai’s land surface temperature rose from 40.9 degree Celsius in 2003 to 47.3 degree Celsius in 2023, driven largely by urbanisation and heat-trapping infrastructure. Hyderabad’s urban heat island intensity ranges from 5.74 to 6.82 degree Celsius, its urban area doubled between 2001 and 2020, and it recorded temperatures above 43 degree Celsius in the summer of 2024.
    3. The feedback loop: Data centres generate heat, and that heat raises ambient temperature. Higher ambient temperature increases cooling demand. Higher cooling demand raises electricity consumption. Unless that electricity is fully renewable, emissions rise and feed the climate change that is making India hotter.

    Do State policies ask for anything in return for their incentives?

    1. Generous on incentives: State policies offer electricity duty exemptions, transmission charge waivers, stamp duty relief and fast-track clearances.
    2. Silent on conditions: None of the major State policies requires a grid impact assessment before commissioning, mandatory renewable energy sourcing, or a thermal load assessment for surrounding communities.
    3. Telangana guarantees power in a stressed State: The “essential services” classification guarantees data centres uninterrupted power even during shortages, in a State where 16 districts face groundwater stress and temperatures have reached 47 degree Celsius.
    4. Maharashtra diluted its own mandate: The State’s policy originally required 100 per cent renewable energy for core operations. In June 2026 it cut the requirement to 51 per cent, framed as improving project viability.
    5. The exceptions, and their limit: Gujarat’s Data Centre Policy 2026-29 mandates at least 51 per cent green energy sourcing. Karnataka’s IT Minister told the Assembly in March 2026 that the State was reviewing its policy over water and energy concerns, and Tamil Nadu has linked incentives to renewable compliance. Even where mandates exist, enforcement and verification remain weak.

    Why is the constraint market design rather than generation capacity?

    1. Capacity is not the bottleneck: The Union Ministry of Power holds that India’s generation pipeline can absorb the additional demand from data centres. The constraint is market design and transmission infrastructure.
    2. Price grid services separately: The Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) argues for climate-intelligent power markets in which short-term markets pay separately for ramping, storage and demand response.
    3. Storage at the pooling station: Ember calculates that roughly 3 to 4 GW of two-hour battery storage at renewable pooling stations could have absorbed most of the generation curtailed in early 2026. The technical pieces exist; the gap is regulatory and commercial.

    What should a national sustainability framework contain?

    1. Enforceable use standards: CEEW proposes phased power and water use standards with enforceable benchmarks, and a national AI Energy Star rating that lets buyers and regulators compare how energy efficient a facility or model actually is.
    2. Who pays for the grid: The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) warns that a significant part of the associated infrastructure cost could be socialised. Where wider grid infrastructure is required, government support or dedicated financing should stop the cost being passed to consumers through higher tariffs.
    3. Siting away from stressed hubs: IEEFA points to coastal locations. These offer proximity to near-shore wind and solar, and seawater cooling without desalination. Most facilities instead cluster around Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and the National Capital Region, where water and grid stress are most acute.
    4. Four minimum standards: A national framework would set minimum standards for renewable energy sourcing, water consumption disclosure, grid impact assessment and thermal load evaluation. It would give investors one set of expectations and consumers one set of protections, on the premise that environmental constraints are economic constraints.

    Challenges to a national data centre framework

    1. Split jurisdiction: Water is a State List subject and electricity sits on the Concurrent List, so a Central standard on water sourcing or grid impact binds no State unless the State adopts it. Eg. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology’s draft National Data Centre Policy of 2020 addressed infrastructure status and single-window clearance, not resource standards.
      The Fix: Route the standards through the Central Electricity Authority’s technical standards and the Bureau of Energy Efficiency, which already bind connected consumers, and tie Central incentive money to State adoption.
    2. Mandates without metering: A renewable sourcing mandate is only as good as the verification behind it, and discoms already miss the obligations they carry. Eg. State distribution companies have missed Renewable Purchase Obligation targets for years, forcing the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy to renotify trajectories.
      The Fix: Require third-party audited reporting of power usage effectiveness and water usage effectiveness (ratios of total facility energy and water to that used by computing equipment) as a condition of every incentive.
    3. Cooling technology is a trade-off, not a free fix: Liquid and immersion cooling cut water use but raise capital cost and still dump heat locally. Eg. Evaporative cooling, the cheapest option at 45 degree Celsius, is also the most water intensive.
      The Fix: Set the water standard by climate zone rather than one national number, so a coastal seawater-cooled site and an inland Rajasthan site face different limits.

    Conclusion

    The data centres will be built, and the only open question is on whose terms. The unresolved tension is between States competing on incentives and a resource base that no State policy has been made to account for. What to watch is whether the Centre converts the four standards, renewable sourcing, water disclosure, grid impact and thermal load, into an enforceable national framework before the projected capacity is locked in. The nearer marker is whether Karnataka’s policy review produces conditions or only more incentives.

    Back2Basics

    1. Urban heat island: An urban heat island is the difference in temperature between a built-up city and its rural surroundings, caused by concrete, asphalt and roofs absorbing and re-emitting heat that vegetation and soil would have released through evaporation.
    2. Intensity: Its intensity is that temperature gap in degrees, so Hyderabad’s 5.74 to 6.82 degree Celsius means the city runs that much hotter than its surroundings at the same hour.
    3. Why data centres add to it: Servers convert almost all the electricity they draw into heat, and cooling systems reject that heat into the surrounding air or water, so a large facility acts as a fixed heat source inside the island.

    “[2026] Which of the following statements with regard to Green Hydrogen is/are correct?

    1. It is decarbonized hydrogen obtained from natural gas reforming combined with carbon capture and storage (CCS).

    2. It is produced using electrolysis of water with electricity generated by renewable energy.

    3. National Green Hydrogen Mission of India aims for abatement of nearly 50 MMT of annual greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

    (a) 1 only (b) 2 and 3 only (c) 2 only (d) 1, 2 and 3

  • Economy is resilient, the road ahead will be less forgiving

    Why in the News

    India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew 7.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2026-27, beating expectations for yet another quarter. The print exceeded the 6.8 per cent median forecast of professional forecasters and the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) revised projection of 7 per cent. The outperformance came from domestic drivers holding up in a global environment marked by conflict in West Asia and weather uncertainty. The tension is that the conditions that produced this print are turning. Crisil expects the growth-inflation mix to worsen through 2026-27, with growth moderating to 7 per cent and inflation rising to 5.1 per cent, and the balance of risks has shifted from rate cuts towards possible rate hikes.

    What is the growth-inflation mix?

    1. About: The growth-inflation mix is the combination of real output growth and the inflation rate an economy records in the same period. A favourable mix pairs high growth with inflation inside the RBI’s target band of 4 per cent, with a tolerance of 2 percentage points either side.
    2. Why it matters for policy: The RBI sets the policy rate against this mix. Rising inflation alongside slowing growth forces a choice between tightening to contain prices and holding rates to protect activity.

    What drove the first quarter outperformance?

    1. Broad based domestic momentum: Robust industrial activity, healthy consumption and strong goods exports combined with accelerating government investment to drive growth. High-frequency indicators had signalled this momentum in advance.
    2. Residual policy support and transfers: Policy measures introduced last fiscal continued to feed through, and direct benefit transfers expanded steadily. 17 States now provide cash transfers, primarily to women.
    3. Goods and Services Tax (GST) rate cuts, visible in automobiles: Dealer discounts and higher disposable incomes from income-tax relief added to the effect of GST rate cuts. Eg. The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) reported first quarter sales growth of 26 per cent for passenger vehicles, 20.3 per cent for commercial vehicles and 18.3 per cent for two-wheelers.
    4. Retail credit funding consumption: Other personal loans, a proxy for short-term consumption, grew 14.2 per cent.
    5. Households shielded from crude: The government and oil companies absorbed most of the sharp rise in crude prices, particularly in the initial phase of the West Asia conflict, so household budgets did not take the hit.

    Why will the growth-inflation mix turn less favourable in 2026-27?

    1. Four sources of moderation: Growth will slow on disruptions from the West Asia conflict, unresolved tariff issues with the United States, weather-related risks and a strong base effect in the second half of the year.
    2. Last year’s two tailwinds are gone: Low crude oil prices and a normal monsoon were the two exogenous factors that worked in India’s favour last year. Neither is expected to provide similar support this year.
    3. The conflict’s cost channel: The West Asia conflict has disrupted supply chains and raised insurance, freight and input costs. This weighs on global and domestic growth at the same time.

    Does a deficient monsoon still translate into food inflation?

    1. The El Nino signal: El Nino conditions (a periodic warming of the equatorial Pacific that weakens the Indian monsoon) are intensifying. Over the past 25 years, five of the six El Nino years produced below-normal rainfall.
    2. The deficit so far: Cumulative rainfall stood 14 per cent below the long-period average (LPA) at the end of August. July was 1 per cent above the LPA, and August recorded a deficit of 16 per cent. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has signalled below-normal rainfall in September.
    3. Irrigation has widened the cushion: India’s net irrigated area has risen by 10 percentage points to 59 per cent over the past decade, improving resilience to rainfall shocks.
    4. Stocks exceed buffer norms: The country holds ample rice and wheat stocks. Foodgrain stocks currently stand at more than twice the buffer norms. That cushion contains price spikes.
    5. Non-crop agriculture now carries the sector: Crop gross value added contracted by an average 0.5 per cent annually in the five years to 2023-24. Non-crop agriculture, now nearly 40 per cent of agricultural gross value added, expanded 6.5 per cent annually over the same period.
    6. The historical record is not linear: Deficient monsoons have not always led to higher food inflation.
    7. The vulnerability that remains: Crops without buffer stocks and perishable vegetables stay exposed to adverse weather. A weak monsoon also hurts rabi production by reducing soil moisture and lowering reservoir levels, so agricultural output and food inflation remain the key variables to watch.

    Why does benign core inflation understate the price risk?

    1. Headline eased, risks did not: Headline inflation eased in July and core inflation remained benign. Upside risks persist on three fronts, crude, input costs and demand.
    2. The crude assumption: Crisil’s base case assumes Brent crude averaging $82 to 87 per barrel this fiscal, with the unresolved West Asia conflict keeping prices volatile. Higher crude translates into slower growth, higher inflation and a wider current account deficit.
    3. Wholesale pressure is being passed on: Core inflation, a gauge of underlying demand pressure, appears deceptively low. Strong demand, rising fuel costs and other input pressures show up in near-double-digit wholesale price inflation, and are gradually being passed through to consumers.
    4. Automobiles show the pass-through: Vehicle prices are set to rise as manufacturers protect margins and dealer discounts are withdrawn. Combined with a high base effect, this moderates automobile growth in the second half.
    5. The rate cycle may reverse: Unlike last year, the balance of risks points towards possible interest rate hikes. Persistent inflationary pressure, the unresolved conflict and weather risk together bring monetary tightening back into consideration.

    What still supports activity through the moderation?

    1. External buffers: Foreign exchange reserves cover more than nine months of imports.
    2. Balance sheet strength: Corporate and banking-sector balance sheets are in robust health.
    3. Fiscal and wage support: Tax relief and public investment continue to support activity. The Pay Commission’s recommendations will add a further boost to consumption when implemented.
    4. The structural condition: Beyond cyclical tailwinds, sustained progress on structural reforms that enhance competitiveness is the condition for maintaining growth momentum.

    Challenges to sustaining the growth momentum

    1. Export exposure to United States tariff policy: Unresolved tariff issues leave goods exporters unable to price contracts beyond a quarter. Eg. In August 2025 the United States raised tariffs on Indian goods to 50 per cent, half of it as a penalty tied to Russian oil purchases.
      The Fix: Conclude the bilateral trade agreement under negotiation and operationalise the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with the United Kingdom signed in 2025, so exposure to one market falls.
    2. Crude dependence transmits every West Asian shock: India imports over 85 per cent of its crude, so a supply disruption raises the import bill, the fiscal cost of absorbing it and consumer prices together. Eg. About 40 per cent of India’s crude imports normally transit the Strait of Hormuz, and a large part of that supply has been offline since the disruptions of March 2026.
      The Fix: Widen the import slate to African, North American and South American barrels under term contracts and expand strategic petroleum reserve capacity beyond the present three sites.
    3. Consumption leaning on one-off boosts: Income-tax relief, GST rate cuts and a Pay Commission award lift spending once, and the base effect then turns against growth. Eg. The HSBC India Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index fell to a five-year low of 52.8 in August 2026, with the survey recording job losses for the first time in over two years.
      The Fix: Tie the next round of support to employment, through the Employment Linked Incentive scheme, so that income growth rather than tax relief carries consumption.
    4. State cash transfers stretch State finances: A cash transfer to women is a recurring commitment that a State cannot withdraw without political cost. Eg. States’ aggregate fiscal deficit rose to 3.2 per cent of GDP in 2024-25, and only 11 States recorded a revenue surplus.
      The Fix: Ring-fence State capital expenditure under the Finance Commission’s fiscal roadmap so transfers do not crowd out investment.
    5. A rate hike would hit credit-led consumption first: Retail borrowing has been funding short-term consumption, and it is the most rate sensitive part of demand. Eg. The RBI raised risk weights on unsecured consumer credit in November 2023 to slow exactly this segment.
      The Fix: Use targeted macroprudential tools on unsecured lending before resorting to a policy rate hike that would also raise the cost of investment.

    Conclusion

    India enters 2026-27 with a strong quarter behind it and a weaker mix ahead. The thing that cannot be settled yet is whether inflation will rise faster than growth slows, because that decides whether the RBI tightens into a moderating economy. The Monetary Policy Committee’s October meeting is the first decision point. The monsoon’s September outcome and the rabi sowing that follows will decide the food inflation half of the equation.

    Key Facts about GDP Measurement

    1. New base year: The GDP base was revised from 2011-12 to 2022-23, with the new series released on 27 February 2026. The Consumer Price Index base moved to 2024 and the Index of Industrial Production base to 2022-23 alongside it.
    2. New data sources: GST data, the Public Financial Management System for central government accounts, e-Vahan for transport spending, and the Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises and the Periodic Labour Force Survey replaced proxy indicators.
    3. Refined deflation: Double deflation (deflating output and inputs separately) now applies in manufacturing and agriculture, and single deflation has been discontinued.
    4. Global alignment: The series aligns with the System of National Accounts 2008 and prepares for the transition to SNA 2025 by 2029-30.

    Challenges in GDP Growth

    1. Weak private investment: Capacity expansion depends on private capital formation, which has stayed subdued. Eg. Gross Fixed Capital Formation is around 30 per cent of GDP.
      The Fix: Scale the Production Linked Incentive scheme’s second phase and adopt Vietnam’s plug-and-play industrial park model to cut the time from approval to production.
    2. Skill mismatch: Skills produced by the education system do not match what industry demands, so rising participation adds less output. Eg. Only about half of graduates are employable.
      The Fix: Expand Industry 4.0 training and emulate Germany’s dual education and apprenticeship system.
    3. Participation gap: A large share of working-age women stays outside the labour force, capping the demographic dividend. Eg. The labour force participation rate is 59.3 per cent (2025), but the female rate is 40.0 per cent.
      The Fix: Deploy working women’s hostels and subsidised childcare on the model of Japan’s Womenomics.
    4. Jobless growth: Output growth is concentrated in sectors that employ few people. Eg. Services contribute about 55 per cent of GDP but employ under 30 per cent of the workforce.
      The Fix: Implement Employment Linked Incentives and study China’s township and village enterprises for rural labour absorption.
    5. Regulatory cost: Contract enforcement, clearance times and regulatory instability keep the cost of doing business above competitors. Eg. Logistics cost is near 8 per cent of GDP.
      The Fix: Emulate Singapore’s TradeNet single-window system to slash clearance times.

    [2021, GS3, 10 marks] Explain the difference between computing methodology of India’s Gross Domestic Product(GDP) before the year 2015 and after the year 2015.”

  • National Biodiversity Authority disburses Rs. 5.68 Crore in Access and Benefit Sharing funds

    National Biodiversity Authority disburses Rs. 5.68 Crore in Access and Benefit Sharing funds

    Why in the News

    The National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) disbursed Rs. 5.68 crore in Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) funds.

    Core facts

    1. Disbursing body: The National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) released the funds.
    2. Amount: The verified headline figure is Rs. 5.68 crore, drawn from the release title.
    3. Mechanism: ABS returns a share of the commercial gains from biological resources to the communities and institutions that conserve them.
    4. Unverified detail: The recipient states, institutions and the per beneficiary split stated in the release body could not be verified this run. PRID 2304759.

    Static Context

    1. Biological Diversity Act, 2002: It gives effect to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). It created a three tier structure.
    2. Three tier structure: The National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) sits at the national level. State Biodiversity Boards (SBBs) sit at the state level. Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs) sit at the local body level.
    3. Access and Benefit Sharing: The principle flows from the Nagoya Protocol of 2010, a supplementary agreement to the CBD on fair and equitable sharing of benefits from genetic resources.
    4. Biopiracy check: The NBA regulates access to Indian biological resources by foreign entities. It clears Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) applications based on Indian biological material.
    5. 2023 amendment: The Biological Diversity (Amendment) Act, 2023 eased compliance for codified traditional knowledge and registered practitioners of Indian systems of medicine.

    Prelims angle

    The three tier NBA, SBB and BMC structure, the BMC role in ABS and the levy of collection fees, the Nagoya Protocol link, and the NBA gatekeeping of IPR applications are the testable static hooks.

    Mains angle

    GS Paper 3 (conservation, biodiversity governance). A question can assess whether the ABS mechanism delivers real incentives for community level conservation.

    “[2023] Consider the following statements:

    1. In India, the Biodiversity Management Committees are key to the realization of the objectives of the Nagoya Protocol.

    2. The Biodiversity Management Committees have important functions in determining access and benefit sharing, including the power to levy collection fees on the access of biological resources within its jurisdiction.

    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

    “[2012] How does the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) help in protecting the Indian agriculture?

    1. NBA checks the biopiracy and protects the indigenous and traditional genetic resources.

    2. NBA directly monitors and supervises the scientific research on genetic modification of crop plants.

    3. Application for Intellectual Property Rights related to genetic/biological resources cannot be made without approval of NBA.

    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

  • India and Uzbekistan issue Joint Statement during Prime Minister’s State Visit

    India and Uzbekistan issue Joint Statement during Prime Minister’s State Visit

    Why in the News

    India and Uzbekistan issued a Joint Statement during the State Visit of the Prime Minister to Uzbekistan.

    Core facts

    1. Event: A bilateral State Visit produced a Joint Statement, a List of Outcomes, and official talks. PRIDs 2304718, 2304704, 2304715.
    2. Track record: The relationship is a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.
    3. Unverified detail: The specific agreements, Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) and quantified deliverables listed in the release body could not be verified this run. The signed outcomes should be confirmed once PIB pages resolve.

    Static Context

    1. Uzbekistan: It is a double landlocked country in Central Asia. It borders Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.
    2. Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO): Both India and Uzbekistan are members. India became a full member in 2017. Tashkent is an early SCO capital in the grouping’s history.
    3. Connectivity: India reaches Central Asia through the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC) and the Chabahar Port in Iran. These routes bypass Pakistan.
    4. Ashgabat Agreement, 2018: India joined this transport and transit corridor connecting Central Asia with Iran and Oman.
    5. India Central Asia format: India engages the five Central Asian Republics (CARs) through a dedicated summit and dialogue mechanism.

    Prelims angle

    Uzbekistan’s Central Asian geography, its SCO membership, the INSTC end points, and the Ashgabat Agreement are the testable static hooks.

    Mains angle

    GS Paper 2 (India and its neighbourhood, bilateral and regional groupings). A question can assess India’s strategic and connectivity interests in Central Asia against the entrenchment of outside powers.

    “[2024, GS Paper 2, 15 marks] Critically analyse India’s evolving diplomatic, economic and strategic relations with the Central Asian Republics (CARs) highlighting their increasing significance in regional and global geopolitics.”

    “[2025] India is one of the founding members of the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), a multimodal transportation corridor, which will connect

    (a) India to Central Asia to Europe via Iran

    (b) India to Central Asia via China

    (c) India to South-East Asia through Bangladesh and Myanmar

    (d) India to Europe through Azerbaijan

    “[2022] Consider the following countries :

    1. Armenia

    2. Azerbaijan

    3. Croatia

    4. Romania

    5. Uzbekistan

    Which of the above are members of the Organization of Turkic States ?

    (a) 1, 2 and 4

    (b) 1 and 3

    (c) 2 and 5

    (d) 3, 4 and 5

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