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Type: Bills/Act/Laws

  • ID cards issued to transgender persons remain valid: Centre

    Why in the News

    The Union government assured a three judge Bench of the Supreme Court that transgender identity cards issued before the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026 came into force continue to remain valid. The assurance was given in a challenge arguing that the amendment, in force since 30 March, dismantles the right to self identification recognised in the National Legal Services Authority v Union of India (2014) line of cases. The dispute turns on whether gender identity is declared by the person or certified by the State.

    What is the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026?

    1. About: It amends the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, the statute that governs recognition of transgender identity and the certificate of identity issued to a transgender person.
    2. Commencement: It came into force on 30 March 2026.
    3. Core objection to it: Petitioners argue that it dismantles the right to self identification and gives the State unfettered authority to determine gender identity.
    4. Status of earlier cards: The Solicitor General assured the Court that identity cards issued before the amendment remain valid, and their validity is unaffected by the new law.
    5. Judicial position so far: The Court had already indicated in the previous hearing that the 2026 law should not operate retrospectively to invalidate cards issued under the earlier legislation.
    6. Forum: The challenge is before a three judge Bench headed by the Chief Justice of India.

    What is self identification of gender?

    1. About: Self identification is the principle that a person’s gender is determined by that person’s own declaration of identity, without any requirement of medical examination or third party certification.
    2. Legal origin in India: The Supreme Court recognised it in National Legal Services Authority v Union of India (2014), holding that the right to determine one’s gender is integral to dignity under Article 21.

    What is a transgender identity card?

    1. About: A certificate of identity issued to a transgender person that provides official recognition of the person’s self identified gender.
    2. Practical use: It is used to support changes to name and gender across official records, and the government’s transgender portal expressly enables such changes.

    What is the current status of gender identity recognition in India?

    1. Statutory basis: Recognition runs through the certificate of identity issued under the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 and the rules made under it.
    2. Application route: An application is made to the District Magistrate, who issues a certificate of identity as a transgender person and a revised certificate after gender affirming surgery.
    3. Third gender status: Transgender persons are recognised as a third gender for the purposes of state welfare and identity documents.
    4. Prohibition of discrimination: The 2019 Act bars discrimination in education, employment, healthcare, access to public goods and the right to residence.
    5. Reservation position: No reservation in education or public employment has been extended to transgender persons as a class, despite the direction in the 2014 judgment to treat them as socially and educationally backward.
    6. Position after the amendment: The 2026 Amendment Act is in force from 30 March 2026, and its validity is under challenge before a three judge Bench.
    7. Position of existing card holders: Cards issued before the amendment continue to remain valid on the government’s own assurance to the Court.

    Constitutional Provisions Related to gender identity

    1. Article 14: Guarantees equality before the law and equal protection of the laws to every person, not only to men and women.
    2. Article 15: Prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth, with sex read to include gender identity.
    3. Article 16: Guarantees equality of opportunity in matters of public employment and permits reservation for backward classes.
    4. Article 19(1)(a): Protects freedom of expression, which includes expression of gender identity through dress, speech and behaviour.
    5. Article 21: Guarantees life and personal liberty, read to include dignity, personal autonomy and the right to determine one’s gender.
    6. Article 15(4) and Article 16(4): Permit special provisions and reservation for socially and educationally backward classes, the route directed in the 2014 judgment.
    7. Article 32: Provides the remedy through which the present challenge to the amendment has been brought.
    8. Article 23: Prohibits trafficking and forced labour, relevant to the exploitation the community faces in the absence of livelihood options.

    What did the National Legal Services Authority judgment establish?

    1. Recognition of a third gender: The Supreme Court held in April 2014 that transgender persons must be recognised as a third gender for the purposes of law.
    2. Right to self identification: It held that the gender to which a person belongs is to be determined by that person’s own identification and not by biological or medical criteria.
    3. Constitutional grounding: It located the right in Articles 14, 15, 16, 19(1)(a) and 21, treating gender identity as an aspect of dignity and personal autonomy.
    4. Backward class direction: It directed the Centre and the States to treat transgender persons as socially and educationally backward for the purposes of reservation.
    5. Positive obligations: It directed provision of separate public toilets, medical facilities, welfare schemes and measures to address social stigma.
    6. The wider line of cases: Puttaswamy v Union of India (2017) recognised privacy and decisional autonomy, Navtej Singh Johar v Union of India (2018) decriminalised consensual same sex relations, and Arunkumar v Inspector General of Registration (2019) upheld the marriage rights of a transgender person.

    What do the petitioners argue against the 2026 amendment?

    1. Loss of self determination: The amendment allows the State unfettered authority to determine gender identity, displacing the person’s own declaration.
    2. Conflict with binding precedent: Self identification was recognised as a constitutional right in 2014, and a statute cannot narrow a right located in Article 21.
    3. Value of existing documents: The importance of transgender identity cards already issued cannot be trifled away, since name and gender across official records depend on them.
    4. Retrospective effect: Any reading that invalidates earlier cards would strip recognition already granted under a previous legislation.
    5. Who is before the Court: The petitioners include community members and activists, so the challenge is brought by the group the law regulates.

    Can the State certify gender identity without displacing the right to determine it?

    1. Two claims in tension: The State has an interest in a verifiable identity document, and the individual has a constitutional right to declare gender without external validation.
    2. Where certification becomes control: A certificate that records a declaration is administrative, and a certificate that decides the declaration is determinative of the right itself.
    3. Documentary dependence: Name and gender in every other official record follow from the certificate, so control over the certificate is control over legal personality.
    4. Precedent against statute: The right was recognised through Article 21 in 2014, and the amendment operates on the same subject through ordinary legislation.
    5. The retrospectivity carve out: Protecting existing cards resolves the immediate hardship of current holders and leaves the question of future applicants untouched.
    6. The unresolved core: The assurance settles who keeps a card already issued, not who will be entitled to one under the amended procedure.

    Major debates surrounding gender self identification

    1. Declaration against certification: Whether recognition should follow a self declaration or require screening by a district authority.
    2. Medicalisation of identity: Whether any surgical or medical requirement for a revised certificate is consistent with autonomy under Article 21.
    3. Appeal and remedy: Whether refusal of a certificate by a District Magistrate should carry a statutory appeal, which the 2019 Act was criticised for omitting.
    4. Reservation for transgender persons: Whether the 2014 direction to treat the community as socially and educationally backward requires a horizontal reservation across categories.
    5. Penalty asymmetry: Whether the lower punishment for sexual violence against transgender persons under the 2019 Act compared with the general criminal law is constitutionally sustainable.
    6. Family and residence: Whether the requirement to reside with the natal family or in a rehabilitation centre respects the autonomy of adults who leave hostile homes.
    7. Data and enumeration: Whether recognition can be operationalised at all without accurate population data, since the last enumeration of the community was in Census 2011.

    Challenges to the transgender rights framework

    1. Certification bottleneck: Recognition depends on a single district officer with no statutory appeal against refusal. e.g. applicants under the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Rules, 2020 have reported long delays in issue of the certificate of identity.
    2. Absence of reservation: The 2014 direction on backward class status has not been operationalised at the national level. e.g. Karnataka became the first State to provide a one per cent reservation in public employment in 2021, and most States have not followed.
    3. Weak penalty structure: Offences against transgender persons carry lower punishment than equivalent offences in the general criminal law. e.g. the 2019 Act prescribes six months to two years for sexual abuse of a transgender person.
    4. Healthcare exclusion: Gender affirming care and mental health support are unevenly available and rarely insured. e.g. Ayushman Bharat TG Plus was created precisely because transgender persons were excluded from mainstream health coverage.
    5. Livelihood and employment: Discrimination pushes the community towards begging and sex work despite a statutory bar on discrimination. e.g. the SMILE scheme’s livelihood component was designed to move persons out of begging.
    6. Documentation mismatch: Records in education certificates, bank accounts and property documents do not update automatically after a change in gender. e.g. the government’s transgender portal exists specifically to enable name and gender changes across records.
    7. Data invisibility: Policy runs on a 2011 count with no subsequent enumeration. e.g. Census 2011 recorded 4.88 lakh transgender persons, a figure widely regarded as an undercount.

    Conclusion

    The assurance protects existing card holders and leaves the constitutional question untouched, since the dispute is about whether gender identity is declared or certified. The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026 remains in force from 30 March 2026, and its validity is pending before a three judge Bench of the Supreme Court on a challenge grounded in the 2014 line of cases. The Court has recorded that the law should not operate retrospectively and the government has accepted that position on the record. The source names no next date for the hearing, so the stage reached is the government’s undertaking and the pending challenge.

    [2024] Under which of the following Articles of the Constitution of India, has the Supreme Court of India placed the Right to Privacy?
    (a) Article 15
    (b) Article 16
    (c) Article 19
    (d) Article 21

  • The Centre-states tussle over the Mines and Minerals Bill

    Why in the News

    Parliament passed the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026 last week, barring States from imposing specified levies on mineral rights and on mineral bearing land. The bar removes the very taxing power the Supreme Court had affirmed for States on 25 July 2024. Mineral bearing States say the change strips out a revenue stream they control fully, while the Centre says uncapped State levies raise the cost of minerals for the whole economy.

    What is the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026?

    1. About: It amends the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957, the parent law governing grant of mineral concessions and regulation of mines.
    2. Core bar: It restricts States from imposing specified levies on mineral rights and on mineral bearing land.
    3. Extinguishment of past dues: It wipes out unpaid or unrecovered dues arising from such levies imposed before the amendment comes into force.
    4. Scale of the dues: Estimates place outstanding dues of this kind across the mining sector at about Rs 2 lakh crore.
    5. Ceiling design: Mines Ministry officials state that about 14 levies in the mineral sector will survive, subject to a combined percentage ceiling.
    6. Stated purpose: The Centre frames the measure as fiscal certainty for mining companies over their total statutory burden.

    What is royalty on minerals?

    1. About: Royalty is the payment a lease holder makes to the State government for every unit of mineral extracted under a mining lease.
    2. Who fixes it: Rates are specified in the Schedules to the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957 and revised by the Union government, not by the State that receives the money.

    What is the District Mineral Foundation?

    1. About: A non profit trust set up in every mining affected district, funded by a statutory contribution from lease holders, created by the 2015 amendment.
    2. Use of funds: Money is spent on people and areas affected by mining under the Pradhan Mantri Khanij Kshetra Kalyan Yojana.

    What is the National Mineral Exploration Trust?

    1. About: A trust created by the 2015 amendment and funded by a contribution equal to 2 per cent of royalty paid by lease holders.
    2. Use of funds: It finances regional and detailed mineral exploration through accredited agencies.

    What is the current status of State powers to tax mineral rights in India?

    1. Judicial position: A nine judge Constitution Bench held on 25 July 2024 that States hold legislative competence to tax mineral rights and mineral bearing land.
    2. Precedent overruled: That ruling overruled India Cement Ltd v State of Tamil Nadu (1989), which had treated royalty as a tax and placed the subject beyond State competence.
    3. Statutory position now: The 2026 amendment bars the specified levies, so a power the Court restored stands narrowed by ordinary legislation.
    4. Levies that survive: About 14 levies continue, including environmental and pollution cesses, subject to a combined ceiling still to be fixed.
    5. Centrally fixed payments: Royalty, District Mineral Foundation contributions and National Mineral Exploration Trust contributions remain set under central law.
    6. Effect on accrued claims: Levies imposed before commencement lose their recoverability, so demands already raised become unenforceable.

    Constitutional Provisions Related to taxation of mineral rights

    1. Article 246: Distributes legislative power between Parliament and State legislatures through the three lists of the Seventh Schedule.
    2. Entry 54, Union List: Regulation of mines and mineral development to the extent Parliament declares expedient in the public interest.
    3. Entry 23, State List: Regulation of mines and mineral development, expressly subject to Entry 54 of the Union List.
    4. Entry 49, State List: Taxes on lands and buildings, the entry States have relied on for a mineral bearing land cess.
    5. Entry 50, State List: Taxes on mineral rights, subject to any limitations imposed by Parliament by law relating to mineral development.
    6. Article 265: Bars the levy or collection of any tax except by authority of law.
    7. Article 300A: Bars deprivation of property save by authority of law, the provision invoked when accrued statutory dues are extinguished.
    8. Article 39(b): Directs the State to ensure that ownership and control of material resources are distributed to subserve the common good.

    Why does the 25 July 2024 ruling sit at the centre of the dispute?

    1. What was decided: The Court upheld the power of States to tax mineral rights and mineral bearing land as a distinct field from royalty.
    2. What was overruled: The 1989 India Cement position, that royalty is itself a tax, had blocked States from taxing the same subject for 35 years.
    3. What States did next: Several mineral bearing States began framing fresh cesses on mineral bearing land after the judgment.
    4. What the Centre saw: Mines Ministry officials describe the resulting levies as excessive cesses stacked on top of existing statutory payments.
    5. How Parliament responded: The amendment uses the limitation power built into Entry 50 to restrict what the Court had permitted.

    Why do mineral bearing States say the Bill damages their finances?

    1. Dependence on mining: Mining revenue accounted for about 84.9 per cent of Jharkhand’s own non tax revenue in the 2024 to 2025 financial year.
    2. Forgone cess: The Mineral Bearing Land Cess was expected to yield about Rs 11,000 crore a year for Jharkhand alone.
    3. Dues written off: Outstanding dues across the mining sector estimated at about Rs 2 lakh crore cease to be recoverable.
    4. Fiscal capacity argument: The Jharkhand Chief Minister wrote to the Prime Minister that mineral revenues are a critical component of the State’s fiscal capacity and not marginal receipts.
    5. Federal objection: The Kerala Chief Minister has raised concerns over the implications of the amendment for India’s federal structure.
    6. Political response: Jharkhand has threatened protests against the amendments.

    What is the Centre’s case for restricting State levies?

    1. Cost of key minerals: Unchecked State levies raise mineral prices and feed into inflation and infrastructure costs.
    2. Predictability for industry: A single combined ceiling gives mining companies certainty over their total fiscal burden across States.
    3. Cumulative burden: Companies already pay royalty, District Mineral Foundation and National Mineral Exploration Trust contributions and environmental and pollution cesses.
    4. The largest single addition: Industry assessment identifies the mineral bearing land tax as the biggest additional burden of the recent levies.
    5. A ceiling, not abolition: About 14 levies survive, with the combined percentage to be fixed after consulting all States.
    6. Limited realised loss: Industry view holds that most of these levies were legally contested for decades, so little was actually collected.

    Does fiscal certainty for industry justify overriding a power the Court has just affirmed?

    1. Two legitimate claims: Investment certainty in a capital heavy sector sits against the fiscal autonomy of the States that hold the minerals.
    2. A judicial gain reversed: States won the power in 2024 and lost its practical use in 2026 without any change in the constitutional text.
    3. The retrospective element: Extinguishing accrued dues removes revenue already claimed, which goes further than limiting future levies.
    4. Sequence of consultation: The ceiling is to be fixed after the bar is enacted, so States negotiate the number after losing their leverage.
    5. Who gains and who pays: The saving accrues to mining companies and mineral consuming States, the loss falls on a small group of mineral bearing States.
    6. Cost borne locally: Land loss, displacement and pollution stay with the producing State even after its claim on the rent is narrowed.

    Major debates surrounding taxation of mineral rights

    1. Royalty as tax or as consideration: India Cement treated royalty as a tax, the 2024 ruling treated it as contractual consideration, and that classification decides State competence.
    2. Reach of the Entry 50 limitation: How far Parliament may hollow out a State taxing entry through a limitation clause remains legally contested.
    3. Recovery of past dues: The 2024 ruling allowed staggered recovery of past demands, the amendment extinguishes them outright.
    4. Producer against consumer States: Mineral bearing States argue they carry the ecological and social cost while value addition and tax revenue accrue elsewhere.
    5. Cooperative against unilateral federalism: The Centre frames the change as integration of a national market, States frame it as unilateral action on their own revenue base.
    6. Deepening vertical fiscal imbalance: Non tax mineral revenue is one of the few sources States control fully, so its removal raises dependence on central transfers.

    Challenges to the Mines and Minerals Amendment Bill

    1. Litigation risk: States can challenge the bar and the extinguishment of accrued dues as a colourable exercise of legislative power. e.g. Jharkhand and Kerala both registered formal objections within days of the Bill’s passage in August 2026.
    2. Concentrated revenue shock: A small set of States carries almost the entire loss. e.g. Odisha and Jharkhand together account for the bulk of India’s iron ore and coal output.
    3. Undecided ceiling: The combined percentage is unfixed at the point of enactment, leaving States unable to plan budgets. e.g. the Mines Ministry states only that the figure will follow consultation with all States.
    4. Weak district level spending: Money already collected for mining affected areas is poorly used. e.g. audits have repeatedly flagged large unspent District Mineral Foundation balances in mining districts.
    5. Unpriced ecological damage: Removing land based levies weakens the price signal for land degradation. e.g. the Shah Commission findings preceded the suspension of iron ore mining in Goa in 2012.
    6. Certainty alone does not unlock supply: Fiscal predictability does not resolve clearance and land bottlenecks. e.g. several auctioned coal blocks remain unoperationalised for want of forest clearance.
    7. Weak consultation machinery: Resource disputes between the Union and States lack a standing forum for settlement. e.g. the Inter State Council has met only rarely since its creation in 1990.

    Conclusion

    The dispute is about who captures the rent from a fixed natural resource, not about the rate of any single cess. Parliament has passed the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026, and the measure now moves to Presidential assent and commencement. The next concrete step named by the Mines Ministry is fixing the combined percentage ceiling on the roughly 14 surviving levies after consulting all States. Until that ceiling is notified, mineral bearing States carry a quantified loss against an unquantified entitlement.

    “[2025, GS2, 15 marks] Examine the evolving pattern of Centre-State financial relations in the context of planned development in India. How far have the recent reforms impacted the fiscal federalism in India?”

  • Can SHANTI Act override court on compensation for nuclear disasters, asks SC

    Why in the News

    A three judge Bench of the Supreme Court issued notice to the Union government and the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) on whether the Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Act, 2025 can bar constitutional courts from awarding fair compensation to victims of a nuclear accident. The Act caps operator and government liability and exempts suppliers, which sets a statutory ceiling against the constitutional power to award damages for a legal wrong. The Bench also asked whether Section 17(4), which lets the government appoint the AERB Chairperson and Members, creates a conflict of interest.

    What is the SHANTI Act, 2025?

    1. About: The Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Act, 2025 is the statute that replaced the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010 as the law governing liability for nuclear damage in India.
    2. Core function: It fixes who pays for a nuclear accident, how much they pay, and the outer financial limit of that obligation.
    3. Operator ceiling: Liability of the largest plant operator in India is capped at Rs 3,000 crore.
    4. Government residual liability: The Union government’s residual liability is capped at 300 million Special Drawing Rights, stated in the proceedings as about Rs 4,500 crore.
    5. Supplier position: Suppliers, manufacturers and similar entities are exempted from liability under the Act.
    6. Regulatory provision: Section 17(4) vests in the government the power to appoint the Chairperson and Members of the AERB.

    What are Special Drawing Rights (SDRs)?

    1. About: Special Drawing Rights are an international reserve asset created by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), whose value is set by a basket of major currencies.
    2. Use here: Nuclear liability ceilings are expressed in SDRs because international nuclear liability conventions use the unit, which keeps the ceiling insulated from movement in any single national currency.

    What is the doctrine of absolute liability?

    1. About: Absolute liability holds an enterprise carrying on a hazardous activity fully liable for harm caused by that activity, with no exceptions and no ceiling on the amount.
    2. Origin: The Supreme Court laid it down in the oleum gas leak case, M.C. Mehta v Union of India (1987), rejecting the older English rule that allowed defences such as an act of a stranger.
    3. Relevance to the case: The petitioners argue that capping the liability of a nuclear operator directly contradicts this settled principle.

    What is channelling of liability?

    1. About: Channelling means directing all legal liability for a nuclear accident to one named party, the operator, so that victims sue a single identified entity instead of tracing fault across the supply chain.
    2. The trade off: Channelling gives victims a quick and certain defendant, and it simultaneously insulates equipment suppliers from any claim for a defective part.

    Who is the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB)?

    1. About: The AERB is the national regulator for radiation and nuclear safety, constituted in 1983 under the powers of the Atomic Energy Act, 1962.
    2. Mandate: It frames safety codes, licenses nuclear installations and enforces radiation safety across nuclear and non nuclear users of radioactive material.
    3. Structural feature: It is a body created by executive notification rather than by a standalone statute, and it reports to the Atomic Energy Commission.

    What exactly did the Supreme Court ask?

    1. The compensation question: The Bench asked whether the statutory thresholds in the SHANTI Act preclude constitutional courts from determining a fair and just compensation after a nuclear mishap.
    2. The reasoning offered: The Chief Justice of India observed that a constitutional court can always grant suitable compensation against a legal tort, and that a cap imposed by Parliament does not by itself bar the courts.
    3. The regulator question: The Bench separately asked whether the power under Section 17(4) to appoint the AERB Chairperson and Members creates a conflict of interest.
    4. Parties noticed: Notice was issued to the Union government and the AERB on both issues.
    5. The petition: The challenge is to the provisions limiting the liability of operators, suppliers and manufacturers of nuclear installations.

    Why do the petitioners say the caps are inadequate?

    1. The Chernobyl comparison: The loss from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster has been estimated at between $235 billion and $700 billion.
    2. The Fukushima comparison: Cleanup costs at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident of 2011 in Japan have been estimated at approximately $400 billion to $445 billion.
    3. The mismatch: Against these magnitudes, the Act caps the largest Indian operator’s liability at Rs 3,000 crore.
    4. The residual cap: The government’s residual liability of 300 million Special Drawing Rights was described as ensuring that victims of death, injury or property damage cannot recover even a small fraction of actual losses.
    5. The supplier exemption: Exempting suppliers from any liability is argued to encourage manufacturers and suppliers to maximise profit without bearing accident risk.

    How does a liability cap change operator behaviour?

    1. The moral hazard argument: A known ceiling converts an unlimited risk into a budgeted cost, so the incentive to spend beyond that ceiling on safety falls away.
    2. The submission made: Petitioners argued that unless the court states that the liability of operators, suppliers and the government will be judicially determined regardless of the cap, operators and suppliers will cut corners that endanger lives.
    3. The precedent invoked: Indian law has held that a person running a hazardous industry bears absolute and unlimited liability for an accident arising from it.
    4. The claimed violation: Petitioners submitted that this principle has been clearly violated by the statutory ceiling.
    5. Concentration of exposure: With suppliers exempt and the operator capped, the residual cost of a large accident falls on the exchequer and on victims.

    Why is the regulator’s independence in question?

    1. Appointment power: Section 17(4) gives the government the power to appoint the Chairperson and Members of the AERB, and the government is also the promoter of nuclear power in India.
    2. Operator and regulator overlap: The AERB itself has a role connected to nuclear plants while also playing a significant role in regulating them.
    3. International benchmark: Petitioners submitted that this arrangement violates the principle of independence of the regulatory body laid down in international conventions.
    4. Long standing criticism: The absence of a statutorily independent nuclear regulator has been flagged in India for over a decade, including by the Comptroller and Auditor General.
    5. Consequence: A regulator dependent on the promoter for appointments has weaker authority to halt or penalise a plant it supervises.

    Does a liability cap serve investment or does it shift risk to victims?

    1. The investment rationale: The court observed that the limit may exist only to make the nuclear project more attractive to foreign investors.
    2. The counter position: Petitioners argued that investment should not come at the cost of the safety of thousands of lives.
    3. The design logic of caps: Nuclear vendors demand a liability ceiling because unlimited exposure makes an insurance market for the risk impossible to build.
    4. The distributional effect: A cap does not reduce the cost of an accident, it decides who absorbs the part of the cost above the ceiling.
    5. The constitutional question this raises: The dispute is whether Parliament can, by fixing a financial ceiling, foreclose the remedy a constitutional court can grant under Article 32 or Article 226.

    What alternative did the petitioners place before the court?

    1. Solar potential: The government’s own assessment puts India’s solar power potential at 3,343 gigawatts (GW) using 6 per cent of wasteland.
    2. Scale comparison: That potential is 14 times India’s peak power demand of 256 GW.
    3. Build time: Solar capacity can be built in about three months, against the multi year construction cycle of a nuclear plant.
    4. Cost comparison: The per unit cost of solar power was stated as one fifth that of nuclear energy.
    5. Risk comparison: Solar generation carries no comparable accident hazard, so it raises no liability question at all.

    Challenges to the SHANTI Act, 2025 framework

    1. Insurance market depth: The Indian Nuclear Insurance Pool has limited capacity, so even the capped liability may not be fully insurable domestically. e.g. the pool set up in 2015 was capitalised at only about Rs 1,500 crore at inception.
    2. Supplier exemption and quality control: Removing supplier liability weakens the commercial incentive to guarantee component quality. e.g. the supplier recourse clause of the 2010 law was the reason foreign vendors stayed away from Jaitapur and Kovvada for over a decade.
    3. Claims administration capacity: A nuclear claims process needs medical registries and long term follow up that India has struggled to sustain. e.g. Bhopal gas leak claims took decades of adjudication and revision of the settlement figure.
    4. Absence of a statutory regulator: The AERB derives authority from executive notification rather than its own Act. e.g. the Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority Bill, 2011 lapsed and was never re enacted.
    5. Land acquisition and local consent: New reactor sites face sustained local opposition that liability caps do not address. e.g. the protests at Kudankulam delayed commissioning of the first unit by several years.
    6. Radioactive waste management: India has no operating deep geological repository for high level waste. e.g. spent fuel from operating reactors is stored on site in pools and in away from reactor storage facilities.
    7. Private entry and accountability: Opening the sector to private operators multiplies the number of entities whose safety culture the regulator must supervise. e.g. the sector so far has been run almost entirely by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited and its joint ventures.

    Conclusion

    The dispute is whether a statutory financial ceiling can displace the constitutional power of a court to award compensation for a legal wrong. The Act does not reduce the cost of a nuclear accident, it decides who bears the part of that cost above the ceiling, and at present that is the victim and the exchequer. The measure has reached the stage of an enacted and operating law facing a constitutional challenge, having already replaced the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010. The next milestone is the response of the Union government and the AERB to the notice issued on the compensation and Section 17(4) questions.

    Nuclear Energy in India

    1. About: Nuclear energy is generated by fission of heavy nuclei such as uranium 235 and plutonium 239, releasing heat that raises steam to drive a turbine.
    2. Three stage programme: India follows a three stage programme designed by the founder of its atomic energy programme, moving from pressurised heavy water reactors, to fast breeder reactors, to thorium based reactors.
    3. Resource logic: The design exists because India has modest uranium reserves and among the world’s largest thorium reserves, concentrated in the monazite sands of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Odisha.
    4. Installed base: India operates around 24 nuclear power reactors with an installed capacity of about 8.18 GW, contributing roughly 3 per cent of total electricity generation.
    5. Stated target: The government has set a target of 100 GW of nuclear capacity by 2047 as part of the energy transition plan.
    6. Institutional structure: The Department of Atomic Energy administers the sector, NPCIL builds and operates plants, and the AERB regulates safety.
    7. Global position: India is among the few countries operating a closed fuel cycle with reprocessing, and it operates outside the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty while holding a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

    Constitutional and Statutory Framework Governing Nuclear Liability

    1. Entry 6 of the Union List: Places atomic energy and mineral resources necessary for its production exclusively with Parliament.
    2. Article 21: Guarantees the right to life, read to include a right to compensation for violation caused by a hazardous activity.
    3. Article 32: Empowers the Supreme Court to issue writs and award compensation for violation of fundamental rights.
    4. Article 226: Gives High Courts a parallel and wider writ power, including the award of compensation in public law.
    5. Article 48A and Article 51A(g): Direct the State and citizens respectively to protect and improve the environment.
    6. Article 253: Enables Parliament to legislate to implement international conventions, the basis for aligning Indian liability law with the Convention on Supplementary Compensation.
    7. Article 246 with Entry 13 of the Union List: Covers participation in international conferences and implementation of decisions taken there.

    Laws and Rules Governing Nuclear Energy in India

    1. Atomic Energy Act, 1962: Gives the Union exclusive control over atomic minerals, production and use of atomic energy, and the licensing of nuclear installations.
    2. Atomic Energy (Radiation Protection) Rules, 2004: Set radiation dose limits and licensing conditions for radiation facilities.
    3. Atomic Energy (Factories) Rules, 1996: Govern safety in factories handling radioactive material.
    4. Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010: Created a no fault liability regime channelled to the operator, with a right of recourse against the supplier.
    5. Section 17(b): Allowed the operator recourse against a supplier for a patent or latent defect, the clause foreign vendors objected to.
    6. Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Act, 2025: Replaced the 2010 Act, capped operator and government liability and exempted suppliers.
    7. Draft rules under the Act: Released by the Department of Atomic Energy for public comment, with the comment window closing on 4 September 2026.
    8. Environment (Protection) Act, 1986: Provides the environmental clearance and pollution control regime applicable to nuclear installations.
    9. Disaster Management Act, 2005: Places nuclear and radiological emergencies within the national disaster response framework.
    10. Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage: Ratified by India in 2016, providing a tier of international funds after national compensation is exhausted.

    Back2Basics: Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB)

    1. Governing Act: Constituted under the powers conferred by the Atomic Energy Act, 1962.
    2. Year established: 1983, by an executive order of the Government of India.
    3. Headquarters: Mumbai.
    4. Reporting line: Reports to the Atomic Energy Commission, and its Chairperson is appointed by the government.
    5. Jurisdiction: Covers nuclear power plants, research reactors, fuel cycle facilities, and every industrial and medical user of radiation sources in India.
    6. Mandate: Frames safety codes and standards, grants consent at each stage from siting to decommissioning, conducts regulatory inspections and enforces compliance.
    7. Enforcement powers: Can suspend or cancel authorisation and direct shutdown of a facility that violates safety conditions.

    Government Initiatives in the Nuclear Sector

    1. Nuclear Energy Mission for Viksit Bharat: Announced with an outlay of about Rs 20,000 crore for research and development of small modular reactors, targeting five indigenously designed reactors by 2033.
    2. Bharat Small Reactors: Compact reactors planned for captive use by energy intensive industry, to be set up in partnership with private players on their own land.
    3. Three Stage Nuclear Programme: The long term plan to use natural uranium, then plutonium in fast breeder reactors, and finally the domestic thorium reserve.
    4. Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor at Kalpakkam: The stage two demonstration project built by Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Limited.
    5. Joint venture route: ASHVINI, the joint venture of NPCIL and NTPC, was created to add nuclear capacity using public sector balance sheets.
    6. Indian Nuclear Insurance Pool: Formed by general insurers with GIC Re to provide insurance cover for operator and supplier liability.
    7. Fleet mode construction: Bulk approval of ten pressurised heavy water reactors of 700 MW each to build in series and cut per unit cost.

    Key Facts about Nuclear Energy in India

    1. First reactor: Apsara, commissioned in 1956 at Trombay, was Asia’s first research reactor.
    2. First power station: The Tarapur Atomic Power Station in Maharashtra, commissioned in 1969, is India’s oldest nuclear power plant.
    3. Largest station: Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu, built with Russian cooperation, is India’s largest nuclear power station by capacity.
    4. Indigenous workhorse: The 700 MW pressurised heavy water reactor, first at Kakrapar in Gujarat, is the indigenous standard design.
    5. Fuel type: Indian pressurised heavy water reactors use natural uranium as fuel and heavy water as moderator and coolant.
    6. Safeguards status: India signed a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2009 after the civil nuclear cooperation waiver.
    7. Sector regulator: AERB, with the Directorate of Radiation Safety in some States handling medical radiation sources.

    Challenges in India’s Nuclear Energy Sector

    1. Slow capacity addition: Nuclear capacity has grown far slower than the targets repeatedly announced. e.g. installed capacity remains near 8 GW against a 2047 target of 100 GW.
    2. Fuel supply constraint: Domestic uranium is limited and of low grade, forcing dependence on imports. e.g. India imports uranium from Kazakhstan, Russia, Canada, France and Uzbekistan under bilateral agreements.
    3. Cost and time overruns: Long gestation and heavy civil works push project costs well beyond estimates. e.g. the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor at Kalpakkam has slipped many years past its original commissioning date.
    4. Public opposition and land acquisition: Communities near proposed sites resist acquisition and fear radiation exposure. e.g. the Jaitapur project in Maharashtra has faced sustained local opposition since 2010.
    5. Waste management gap: No permanent disposal route exists for high level radioactive waste. e.g. spent fuel remains in interim storage rather than a deep geological repository.
    6. Regulatory independence: The safety regulator lacks statutory autonomy from the promoter of the sector. e.g. the Comptroller and Auditor General flagged the AERB’s dependence on the Department of Atomic Energy in a 2012 performance audit.
    7. Liability and vendor hesitation: Uncertainty over the liability regime has stalled foreign built projects. e.g. the Kovvada and Jaitapur projects agreed with United States and French vendors have not reached financial close.
    8. Human resource pipeline: Reactor operations need specialised health physicists and reactor engineers trained over years. e.g. a fleet mode expansion to 100 GW would require a multiple of the current trained workforce.

    Way Forward

    1. Enact a statutory nuclear regulator: Replace the executive constituted AERB with an authority created by its own Act, with fixed tenure and financial autonomy.
    2. Index and review the liability ceiling: Provide a statutory mechanism to revise the operator and government caps periodically, so the figures do not lose meaning with inflation.
    3. Preserve judicial remedy expressly: Clarify that the statutory ceiling governs the no fault claim route and does not oust the writ jurisdiction of constitutional courts.
    4. Deepen the insurance pool: Expand the Indian Nuclear Insurance Pool with reinsurance support so the capped liability is genuinely backed by paid capacity.
    5. Build a claims administration system: Establish standing medical registries and a claims commissioner framework in advance rather than after an accident.
    6. Commit to a waste repository programme: Begin site characterisation for a deep geological repository with a published timeline.
    7. Balance the energy mix: Pair nuclear expansion with the far faster and cheaper solar build out, treating nuclear as firm baseload rather than the primary route to the clean energy target.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2018, GS3, 15 marks] With growing energy needs should India keep on expanding its nuclear energy programme? Discuss the facts and fears associated with nuclear energy.”

  • Bar Council of India faces no confidence demand over its withdrawn order barring NALSAR 2026 graduates from enrolment, raising Advocates Act and Article 19 questions

    Why in the News

    The Bar Council of India (BCI) directed State Bar Councils on 13 August 2026 not to enrol the 2026 graduates of NALSAR University of Law, after some students opposed the proposed participation of the Chief Justice of India in the university’s convocation, and withdrew the order the same day. Three lawyers’ collectives have since sought the chairman’s resignation and threatened a no confidence resolution. The episode tests whether a statutory regulator may use its power over entry into a profession as a sanction for dissent.

    What is the Bar Council of India?

    1. About: The Bar Council of India is the statutory body constituted under the Advocates Act, 1961 to regulate the legal profession and legal education in India.
    2. Composition: It is composed of members elected by each State Bar Council from among its own members, with the Attorney General for India and the Solicitor General of India as ex officio members.
    3. Core functions: It lays down standards of professional conduct, exercises disciplinary jurisdiction, recognises universities whose law degrees qualify for enrolment, and promotes legal education.
    4. Where enrolment happens: An advocate is enrolled on the roll of a State Bar Council, and the Bar Council of India exercises general supervision over those Councils.
    5. Why enrolment matters: Only an enrolled advocate may practise before courts, so an enrolment bar operates on livelihood, not merely on professional formality.

    What is the All India Bar Examination?

    1. About: The All India Bar Examination (AIBE) is an examination conducted by the Bar Council of India, which an enrolled law graduate must clear to obtain a Certificate of Practice.
    2. Legal basis: It was introduced in 2010 under the Council’s rule making power in Section 49 of the Advocates Act, 1961, and its validity was upheld in Bar Council of India v. Bonnie Foi Law College, 2023.

    What is the current status of the right to dissent in India?

    1. Scope of the guarantee: Article 19(1)(a) protects speech and expression for all citizens, including criticism of the government, of institutions and of individual office holders.
    2. Peaceful assembly: Article 19(1)(b) protects the right to assemble peaceably and without arms, which covers organised campus protest.
    3. Settled limits: A restriction must be reasonable and must fall within one of the eight grounds in Article 19(2), namely sovereignty and integrity of India, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, contempt of court, defamation and incitement to an offence.
    4. What is not a ground: Disagreement with the conduct, views or public actions of a constitutional office holder is not by itself a permitted ground of restriction.
    5. Standard of scrutiny: A restriction that is vague or overbroad fails even where its objective is legitimate, following Shreya Singhal v. Union of India, 2015.
    6. Students retain the right: A law student does not surrender constitutional freedoms merely by intending to become an advocate.

    Constitutional Provisions Related to Free Speech and Professional Regulation

    1. Article 19(1)(a): Guarantees freedom of speech and expression to all citizens.
    2. Article 19(1)(b): Guarantees the right to assemble peaceably and without arms.
    3. Article 19(1)(g): Guarantees the right to practise any profession or to carry on any occupation, trade or business.
    4. Article 19(2): Lists the exhaustive grounds on which speech may be restricted by law.
    5. Article 19(3): Permits reasonable restrictions on assembly in the interests of sovereignty, integrity and public order.
    6. Article 19(6): Permits reasonable restrictions on the right to practise a profession, including prescription of professional or technical qualifications.
    7. Article 14: Requires State action to be non arbitrary, which is the test a cohort wide sanction must satisfy.
    8. Article 21: Protects life and personal liberty, read to include the right to livelihood.
    9. Entry 26 of the Concurrent List: Places legal, medical and other professions in the Seventh Schedule’s Concurrent List, which is the source of Parliament’s power to enact the Advocates Act, 1961.
    10. Articles 32 and 226: Provide the writ remedies through which a regulator’s direction is challenged.

    What did the Bar Council of India order and then withdraw?

    1. The directive: On 13 August 2026 the Council directed State Bar Councils not to enrol NALSAR’s 2026 graduates until further orders.
    2. The trigger: The direction followed reports that some students had opposed the proposed participation of the Chief Justice of India in the university’s convocation.
    3. The inquiry demand: The Council sought details of the students who initiated or organised the campaign.
    4. The reversal: Later the same day the Council recorded that the vast majority were innocent and allowed all 2026 graduates to enrol with the State Bar Council of their choice.
    5. The apology: The Council’s chairman apologised to the law students on the following day.
    6. What survives the withdrawal: The order operated as a collective sanction on an entire graduating cohort, without any individual finding against any student.

    Why does a blanket enrolment bar fail the Article 19 test?

    1. The rights engaged: The bar responded to expression protected by Article 19(1)(a) and to campus organisation protected by Article 19(1)(b).
    2. No listed ground applies: Objection to a constitutional office holder’s participation in a convocation falls within none of the Article 19(2) grounds.
    3. Shreya Singhal v. Union of India, 2015: The Supreme Court struck down Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 because its vague and overbroad restrictions could not be justified under Article 19(2). It held that speech may not be suppressed for being inconvenient, unpopular or offensive to a person or authority.
    4. Ramlila Maidan Incident case, 2012: The Court described freedom of speech and peaceful assembly as basic features of a democratic system and warned against arbitrary State action that frustrates those freedoms.
    5. Overbreadth in application: Sanctioning every graduate for the acts of a few is an overbroad measure by definition, since it captures conduct the regulator itself found innocent.
    6. Livelihood consequence: Withholding enrolment blocks entry into practice altogether, which engages Article 19(1)(g) and makes the measure disproportionate to any professional interest asserted.

    What limits does the Advocates Act, 1961 place on the regulator?

    1. Source and boundary of power: The Advocates Act, 1961 sets out the functions of the Bar Council of India. It confers no general power to punish conduct the Council considers objectionable.
    2. Section 24: Prescribes the conditions of eligibility for admission as an advocate on a State roll, including the law degree requirement and the minimum age.
    3. Section 24A: Sets out the specific disqualifications for enrolment, such as conviction for an offence involving moral turpitude.
    4. No new disqualification by instruction: A regulator cannot create a fresh disqualification through an executive direction when Parliament has already prescribed the conditions for enrolment.
    5. Section 7: Requires the Council to safeguard the rights, privileges and interests of advocates, alongside protecting the standards and dignity of the profession.
    6. Individualised process required: Where particular students cross into misconduct, they must be identified individually and proceeded against under the appropriate mechanism.
    7. Sri S Basavaraj v. Bar Council of India, 2024: The Karnataka High Court held that general supervision and control over State Bar Councils does not by itself confer power to issue gag orders. A power that cannot silence enrolled advocates cannot be stretched further against students yet to enter the profession.

    Why are lawyers’ collectives seeking a no confidence motion?

    1. Who is demanding it: The All India Lawyers Association for Justice, the National Alliance for Justice Accountability and Rights and the Queer Lawyers Association, claiming over 700 members between them, have endorsed a letter seeking the chairman’s resignation.
    2. The escalation route: Failing resignation, the collectives intend to ask the other members of the Bar Council of India to pass a resolution of no confidence.
    3. The charge: The statement alleges a pattern of arbitrariness and a failure to uphold the interests and integrity of the Bar.
    4. The institutional claim: The independence, integrity and autonomy of the legal profession are asserted as preconditions for a functioning democracy.
    5. The historical argument: The Bar’s contribution to the freedom struggle rested on a capacity to protest against perceived injustice, and that capacity is described as having declined.
    6. The professional irony: Law schools train students to question authority and advocates are expected to challenge executive action, so treating disagreement as evidence of unfitness teaches the opposite lesson.

    Major debates surrounding the regulation of the legal profession

    1. Self regulation against public accountability: The Council is elected by the advocates it disciplines, which is defended as professional independence and criticised as a structural conflict of interest.
    2. Regulator of education or of practice: The Council both recognises law colleges and controls entry to practice, and one view holds that legal education belongs with a dedicated higher education regulator.
    3. Cost of entry: The Supreme Court in Gaurav Kumar v. Union of India, 2024 capped enrolment fees at 750 rupees for general category candidates and 125 rupees for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe candidates, holding higher State Bar Council levies unlawful.
    4. Entry of foreign lawyers: The Council’s rules permitting foreign lawyers and law firms to advise on foreign law in India on a reciprocal basis remain contested within the Bar.
    5. Right to strike: Ex Capt Harish Uppal v. Union of India, 2002 held that lawyers have no right to strike or boycott courts, and boycotts nonetheless recur.
    6. Statutory autonomy against government control: The Advocates (Amendment) Bill, 2025, which proposed to bar strikes and allow central nomination of members to the Council, was withdrawn after nationwide protests, leaving the balance unsettled.
    7. Dissent and professional discipline: The live question is whether expressing disagreement with a constitutional office holder can ever amount to professional misconduct.

    Challenges to the Bar Council of India

    1. Disciplinary backlog: Section 36B requires a State Bar Council to dispose of a complaint within one year, failing which it stands transferred to the Bar Council of India. e.g. transferred proceedings accumulate for years before the Council’s disciplinary committees, so a complaint’s remedy outlives the grievance.
    2. Quality control over legal education: Inspection and recognition run behind approval. e.g. more than 1,700 law institutions operate in India, and the Council has periodically derecognised colleges functioning without permanent faculty or a working library.
    3. Conflict of interest in an elected regulator: Members are elected by the advocates they must later discipline. e.g. State Bar Council election disputes have repeatedly reached High Courts, delaying the very committees that hear misconduct complaints.
    4. Verification of qualifications: Fraudulent degrees are hard to detect after enrolment. e.g. the verification drive under the Certificate of Practice and Renewal of Practice Rules, 2014 found a substantial number of enrolled persons unable to produce valid law degrees.
    5. Uneven capacity across State Bar Councils: Enrolment standards and grievance handling differ sharply between Councils. e.g. an advocate enrolled with a smaller State Bar Council faces materially different scrutiny from one enrolled in a large metropolitan Council.
    6. Weak protection for junior advocates: The Council prescribes no enforceable minimum stipend and no professional insurance. e.g. junior advocates in district courts commonly work several years on stipends below minimum wage levels.

    Conclusion

    The order has been withdrawn, so no NALSAR graduate now faces a bar on enrolment. The underlying question is unresolved, that a statutory regulator treated disagreement with a constitutional office holder as a reason to withhold entry into a profession, a ground the Advocates Act, 1961 does not contain and Article 19(2) does not permit. The next development to watch is whether the Council’s other members take up the no confidence demand, and whether a reasoned withdrawal is issued recording the limits of the Council’s own power.

    The Legal Profession in India

    1. About: The legal profession in India is a unified Bar, in which an advocate enrolled with any State Bar Council may practise before any court, tribunal or authority in the country.
    2. Regulatory architecture: A single statutory regulator governs both entry into practice and the standards of legal education, an arrangement uncommon among other regulated professions in India.
    3. Scale: Around 15 lakh advocates are on the rolls of the State Bar Councils, and more than 1,700 institutions offer law degrees.
    4. Entry route: A three year LLB after graduation or a five year integrated law degree from a recognised institution, followed by enrolment with a State Bar Council and the All India Bar Examination.
    5. National Law Universities: The model began with the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru in 1987, and admission to most such universities is through the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT).
    6. Institutional load: The profession serves the Supreme Court, 25 High Courts, the district judiciary and a large tribunal system, with pendency exceeding five crore cases across all levels.

    Constitutional Framework Governing the Judiciary and the Legal Profession

    1. Article 22(1): Guarantees an arrested person the right to consult and be defended by a legal practitioner of their choice.
    2. Article 39A: Directs the State to provide free legal aid so that justice is not denied for economic or other disability.
    3. Article 124 and Article 217: Govern appointment of judges to the Supreme Court and High Courts, with practice at the Bar as a qualifying route.
    4. Article 129 and Article 215: Make the Supreme Court and High Courts courts of record with power to punish for contempt, which sets the outer limit of permissible criticism.
    5. Article 145: Empowers the Supreme Court to frame rules regulating practice and procedure, including conditions for advocates practising before it.
    6. Articles 233 to 237: Govern appointments to the subordinate judiciary, for which practice as an advocate is a qualifying condition.
    7. Entry 26 of the Concurrent List: Places legal, medical and other professions within the competence of both Parliament and State legislatures.

    Laws and Rules Governing the Legal Profession

    1. Advocates Act, 1961: Consolidates the law relating to legal practitioners and creates a single class of practitioners called advocates.
    2. Section 4: Constitutes the Bar Council of India.
    3. Section 6: Sets out the functions of a State Bar Council, including admission and maintenance of the roll of advocates.
    4. Section 7: Sets out the functions of the Bar Council of India, including safeguarding the rights, privileges and interests of advocates.
    5. Section 24: Prescribes the eligibility conditions for enrolment.
    6. Section 24A: Prescribes the specific disqualifications for enrolment.
    7. Section 35: Provides disciplinary jurisdiction over professional misconduct.
    8. Section 49: Confers the general rule making power under which the All India Bar Examination was introduced.
    9. Bar Council of India Rules, 1975: Prescribe standards of professional conduct and etiquette, including duties to the court, the client and the opponent.
    10. Bar Council of India Legal Education Rules, 2008: Govern recognition of law institutions, curriculum and infrastructure requirements.
    11. Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987: Establishes the National Legal Services Authority and the Lok Adalat system.
    12. It created a statutory entitlement to free legal services for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, women, children, industrial workmen and persons in custody.
    13. Advocates (Amendment) Act, 2023: Repealed obsolete legal practitioner statutes and empowered High Courts to frame rules on touts.
    14. Contempt of Courts Act, 1971: Defines civil and criminal contempt and provides truth and fair criticism as defences.
    15. Advocates (Amendment) Bill, 2025: Proposed restrictions on strikes and central nomination to the Bar Council, and was withdrawn after protests by the Bar.

    Back2Basics: NALSAR University of Law

    1. A National Law University at Hyderabad, Telangana, established in 1998 by an Act of the then Andhra Pradesh legislature.
    2. The name stands for the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research.
    3. It was the second National Law University set up in India, after the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru.
    4. The Chief Justice of the High Court for the State of Telangana is its Chancellor, a pattern followed by most National Law Universities.
    5. Admission to its undergraduate and postgraduate law programmes is through the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT).
    6. Its degrees are recognised by the Bar Council of India under the Legal Education Rules, which is what makes its graduates eligible for enrolment.

    Government Initiatives

    1. National Legal Services Authority (NALSA): Provides free legal aid and organises Lok Adalats under the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987.
    2. Tele Law: Delivers pre litigation legal advice to rural citizens through Common Service Centres, connecting them to panel lawyers by video conference.
    3. Nyaya Bandhu: A pro bono legal services platform matching volunteer advocates with eligible litigants.
    4. e-Courts Mission Mode Project: Digitises case records and enables electronic filing and virtual hearings, now in its third phase.
    5. Legal Aid Defence Counsel System: Creates a full time salaried defence counsel office at the district level for criminal legal aid.
    6. Fast Track Special Courts: Dedicated courts for offences against women and children, including cases under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012.
    7. Nyaya Vikas and Gram Nyayalayas: Central assistance for judicial infrastructure and village level courts for affordable justice at the doorstep.

    Key Facts about the Legal Profession

    1. Constitution Day, also observed as Law Day, falls on 26 November, marking the adoption of the Constitution in 1949.
    2. National Legal Services Day is observed on 9 November, marking the commencement of the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987.
    3. The All India Bar Examination has been conducted since 2010 and is required for a Certificate of Practice.
    4. The National Law School of India University, Bengaluru was the first National Law University, established in 1987.
    5. The Advocates Act, 1961 created a unified Bar and abolished the earlier distinctions between vakils, pleaders, barristers and attorneys.
    6. The designation of Senior Advocate is conferred by the Supreme Court or a High Court under Section 16 of the Advocates Act, 1961, and the criteria were laid down in Indira Jaising v. Supreme Court of India, 2017.
    7. The Attorney General for India is appointed under Article 76 and is an ex officio member of the Bar Council of India.

    Challenges in the Legal Profession and Legal Education

    1. Uneven quality of legal education: A handful of national institutions coexist with a very large number of poorly resourced colleges. e.g. the Bar Council has issued show cause notices to affiliated colleges functioning without permanent faculty or a functional library.
    2. Barriers to entry for first generation lawyers: Practice begins with years of low or no income and no institutional support. e.g. junior advocates in district courts frequently earn below minimum wage in their first three to five years.
    3. Pendency shapes practice: Delay rewards adjournment driven litigation and erodes client confidence. e.g. pendency across all courts exceeds five crore cases, with the district judiciary carrying the largest share.
    4. Narrow pool for elevation and designation: Advancement draws disproportionately from established practices. e.g. the share of women among designated Senior Advocates and among High Court judges remains in the low double digits.
    5. Weak enforcement of professional discipline: Complaints against advocates are slow to reach a finding. e.g. complaints transferred under Section 36B accumulate for years before the Bar Council of India.
    6. Court boycotts and strikes: Work stoppages transfer the cost of professional grievances to litigants. e.g. district bar associations have suspended work for weeks over demands unconnected to any pending case, despite Ex Capt Harish Uppal.
    7. Access to justice for the poor: Legal aid is under used and under funded relative to the eligible population. e.g. a majority of undertrial prisoners are assigned legal aid counsel late in the proceedings.

    Way Forward

    1. Codify the limits of regulatory direction: Require the Bar Council to act only through the disqualifications Parliament has specified, with reasons recorded for any direction affecting enrolment.
    2. Provide an individualised misconduct procedure for students: Create a defined process with notice, hearing and appeal, so that no collective sanction can be imposed on a cohort.
    3. Separate legal education regulation from practice regulation: Vest curriculum and accreditation in a specialised body with academic representation, leaving practice standards with the Bar Council.
    4. Time bound disciplinary adjudication: Fix statutory outer limits for disposal of complaints and publish annual disposal data for every State Bar Council.
    5. Institutionalise a junior advocate stipend: Fund the first three years of practice so entry is not restricted to those with family support.
    6. Strengthen legal aid quality: Extend the Legal Aid Defence Counsel System to every district and link remuneration to case stages rather than a flat fee.
    7. Protect lawful criticism in professional standards: Amend the Bar Council of India Rules to state that lawful criticism of institutions or office holders does not by itself constitute professional misconduct.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2022] With reference to India, consider the following statements:
    1. Government law officers and legal firms are recognised as advocates, but corporate lawyers and patent attorneys are excluded from recognition as advocates.
    2. Bar Councils have the power to lay down the rules relating to legal education and recognition of law colleges.
    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
    Answer: (b)”

  • As Govt. mulls MDR on UPI, data shows cash usage quickening

    Why in the News

    The Taxation and Other Laws (Amendment) Act, 2026, passed in the concluded Monsoon Session, enables a Merchant Discount Rate on Unified Payments Interface and RuPay debit card transactions that are currently free. Data over the same period shows digital transaction growth decelerating while cash with the public rose to Rs 41.8 lakh crore. The tension is between making the payments system financially self sustaining and preserving the zero cost design that drove its adoption.

    What is the Merchant Discount Rate?

    1. About: The Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) is the charge a bank levies on a merchant for accepting a customer payment through a card or a digital payment instrument.
    2. How it is split: The charge is shared between the card issuing bank, the acquiring bank and the network operator.
    3. Current position in India: MDR on UPI and RuPay debit card transactions was set at zero in 2020, making the rails free at the point of acceptance.
    4. What the Act changes: The amendment enables the government to permit an MDR on these instruments, reversing the zero charge position.

    What do the payment and cash numbers actually show?

    1. UPI value growth, decelerating: Growth fell from 133 per cent in 2019-20 to 95 per cent in 2020-21, 105 per cent in 2021-22, 20.3 per cent in 2025-26 and 18.7 per cent so far in 2026-27.
    2. Cash growth, accelerating: Growth in cash with the public fell to about 4 per cent in 2023-24, then rose to 6.5 per cent in 2024-25, 12 per cent in 2025-26 and about 13 per cent in 2026-27.
    3. Absolute cash level: Cash with the public stood at Rs 41.8 lakh crore as on 31 July 2026.
    4. The anomaly: Digital payments and cash holdings are growing together, which contradicts the substitution assumption behind the zero MDR policy.

    Why are digital payments and cash rising together?

    1. Under counted inflation: If nominal transactions require more cash than measured inflation implies, the price index is understating actual price growth. Retail inflation was 4.45 per cent in July 2026 while wholesale inflation stood at 9.8 per cent.
    2. Real growth explanation: A rate of real growth above 7 per cent expands nominal transaction demand for both cash and digital instruments at once.
    3. Distress explanation: Rising cash holding is read as precautionary balances accumulating under high youth unemployment.
    4. Measurement gap: The wholesale and retail inflation series have diverged by more than five percentage points, which is itself the evidence the competing explanations turn on.

    What is contested about charging for UPI?

    1. Government position: The charge will not fall on the general public and will apply only to certain high value transactions.
    2. Opposition position: Merchants will pass the charge on to customers, so the incidence reaches the consumer regardless of who is billed.
    3. Underlying fiscal problem: Zero MDR shifted the cost of running the rails onto banks and the exchequer through incentive payments, which is not indefinitely sustainable.
    4. Adoption risk: Small merchants accepted UPI precisely because acceptance was costless, so a charge changes the acceptance calculation at the margin.

    Challenges to the digital payments system

    1. Cost recovery without an acceptance charge: Banks carry infrastructure costs with no transaction revenue on UPI. e.g. the annual incentive outlay the government has budgeted to compensate banks for zero MDR.
    2. Concentration risk: Two applications account for the overwhelming majority of UPI volume. e.g. the National Payments Corporation of India repeatedly deferring its 30 per cent market share cap.
    3. Fraud and mule accounts: Instant irreversible settlement makes recovery difficult once a payment is made. e.g. the rise in digital arrest and investment fraud cases routed through UPI collect requests.
    4. Outage exposure: A single operator running the rails concentrates systemic failure risk. e.g. the intermittent UPI outages that halted merchant acceptance across the country in 2025.
    5. Rural acceptance gap: Feature phone and low connectivity users remain outside the mainstream flow. e.g. limited uptake of UPI123Pay against smartphone based volumes.
    6. Cash persistence in the informal economy: Cash remains preferred where transactions are deliberately unrecorded. e.g. cash with the public rising to Rs 41.8 lakh crore alongside record digital volumes.

    Conclusion

    The amendment converts a policy question about who pays for the payments system into an operative legal power, and the answer will determine whether acceptance keeps widening. The simultaneous rise in cash is the more important signal, since it suggests digital adoption has been additive rather than substitutive. The next milestone is the notification specifying which transaction categories will attract the charge and at what rate.

    Back2Basics: National Payments Corporation of India

    1. Set up in 2008 as an umbrella organisation for retail payments and settlement systems in India.
    2. Incorporated as a not for profit company under Section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013, promoted by public and private sector banks.
    3. Operates under the regulatory authority of the Reserve Bank of India, which draws its powers from the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007.
    4. Runs UPI, RuPay, Immediate Payment Service, National Automated Clearing House, National Electronic Toll Collection and Bharat Bill Payment System.
    5. Established NPCI International Payments Limited in 2020 to take UPI and RuPay to overseas markets.

    Way Forward

    1. Define the threshold in the notification: State the transaction value above which the charge applies, so small merchant acceptance is not affected by ambiguity.
    2. Cap the pass through: Prohibit merchant surcharging on transactions below the threshold, since incidence rather than billing decides the consumer effect.
    3. Reconcile the inflation series: Investigate the divergence between retail and wholesale inflation before treating cash growth as evidence of either strength or distress.
    4. Enforce the market share cap: Implement the volume cap on individual UPI applications to reduce concentration risk.
    5. Fund the rails transparently: Publish the annual cost of running the zero charge system, so the trade off between an explicit charge and a budgetary subsidy is visible.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2018] Which one of the following best describes the term Merchant Discount Rate sometimes seen in news? (a) The incentive given by a bank to a merchant for accepting payments through debit cards pertaining to that bank. (b) The amount paid back by banks to their customers when they use debit cards for financial transactions for purchasing goods or services. (c) The charge to a merchant by a bank for accepting payments from his customers through the bank’s debit cards. (d) The incentive given by the Government to merchants for promoting digital payments by their customers through Point of Sale (PoS) machines and debit cards. Answer: (c)”

  • Why India needs more power for AI, chips and datacentres

    Why in the News

    The Department of Atomic Energy released draft rules covering private participation, captive generation, licensing, safety oversight and nuclear liability under the SHANTI Act. The rules follow a stated target of 100 GWe of nuclear capacity by 2047 against an operating base of 8.7 GWe. The tension is between opening a sector historically closed to private capital and retaining state control over fissile material, safety and liability.

    What is the SHANTI Act?

    1. About: The SHANTI Act is the legislation passed last year that opens nuclear power generation to private participation, ending the state monopoly on reactor operation.
    2. What it changes: It creates a licensing route for private operators and permits captive nuclear generation for industrial users.
    3. What it retains: Fuel cycle control, safety regulation and the liability framework stay with the state.
    4. Status: Draft rules under the Act have been released, so the operating framework is now in the consultation stage rather than in force.

    What is a Small Modular Reactor?

    1. About: A Small Modular Reactor (SMR) is a reactor of up to about 300 MWe built from factory fabricated modules rather than constructed entirely on site.
    2. Why it matters: Factory fabrication shortens construction time and lowers the upfront capital block that makes large reactors hard to finance.

    Where does India’s nuclear capacity actually stand?

    1. Operating fleet: 25 reactors in operation with a combined capacity of 8.7 GWe.
    2. Under construction: 10 reactors adding about 8 GWe.
    3. Pre project stage: 10 further reactors accounting for about 66 GWe, which is where most of the 100 GWe target sits.
    4. Commissioning plan: Five new reactors are to be commissioned this decade.
    5. Backbone technology: Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors remain the mainstay of the operating fleet.

    What is the indigenous small reactor programme?

    1. Bharat Small Modular Reactor: A 200 MWe design (BSMR-200) intended for grid and captive industrial supply.
    2. Compact variant: A 55 MWe small modular reactor for smaller loads and remote siting.
    3. High temperature design: A 5 MWt high temperature gas cooled reactor aimed at hydrogen production through a thermochemical process.
    4. Deployment target: At least five indigenous small modular reactors operational by 2033.
    5. Mission funding: The Nuclear Energy Mission carries an outlay of Rs 20,000 crore.
    6. Site reuse: Retiring thermal plant sites are being studied for repurposing, since they already carry grid connection and cooling water access.

    Why is demand growth driving the target now?

    1. Datacentre load: Artificial intelligence and datacentre expansion require firm, round the clock power that intermittent renewables cannot supply alone.
    2. Capacity addition: Operational datacentre stock stands at 1.8 GW of information technology load, with about 500 MW projected to be added in 2026.
    3. Industrial decarbonisation: Semiconductor fabrication and green hydrogen electrolysis both need continuous low carbon power.
    4. Grid character: Nuclear supplies baseload, which is the specific gap left by a renewables heavy addition profile.

    Where does foreign collaboration fit?

    1. Russia: The existing large light water reactor partnership at Kudankulam is the deepest supplier relationship.
    2. United States: Collaboration is expected to centre on small modular designs rather than large units.
    3. France: Large reactor negotiations have run for over a decade without financial closure.
    4. Design economics: Foreign collaboration is shifting toward small modular reactors because large light water reactors carry costs India has not been able to close on.

    Challenges to the 100 GWe nuclear target

    1. Liability deterrence: Supplier liability provisions have kept foreign vendors from signing commercial contracts. e.g. the Jaitapur project’s unresolved negotiation with the French supplier since 2010.
    2. Construction schedule slippage: Indian reactors have historically overrun their commissioning schedules by years. e.g. the Kudankulam units commissioned well past their original dates.
    3. Land acquisition and local resistance: Reactor siting has triggered sustained local opposition. e.g. the prolonged protests at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu.
    4. Fuel supply: Domestic uranium output is insufficient, leaving the fleet dependent on imported fuel under safeguards. e.g. supply agreements with Kazakhstan, Canada and Russia.
    5. Regulatory independence: The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board is not a statutory body independent of the Department of Atomic Energy. e.g. the Comptroller and Auditor General’s 2012 audit flagging this exact conflict.
    6. Cooling water availability: Reactor cooling depends on assured water, which climate stress is making less reliable. e.g. Hungary running the Paks plant at a quarter of capacity in 2026 because Danube levels fell.

    Conclusion

    The draft rules are the point at which the SHANTI Act stops being an enabling statute and becomes an operating framework, which is what private capital has been waiting for. The 100 GWe target is arithmetically dominated by reactors still at the pre project stage, so the binding question is licensing throughput rather than intent. The next milestone is the finalisation of the draft rules and the first private licence issued under them.

    Nuclear Energy in India

    1. Three stage programme: India’s programme runs from pressurised heavy water reactors using natural uranium, to fast breeder reactors using plutonium, to thorium based reactors exploiting India’s large thorium reserves.
    2. Thorium position: India holds among the world’s largest monazite bearing thorium reserves, concentrated in the beach sands of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Odisha.
    3. Share of generation: Nuclear supplies about 3 per cent of India’s electricity generation.
    4. Institutional structure: The Department of Atomic Energy reports directly to the Prime Minister, and the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited operates the commercial fleet.
    5. Safeguards status: India operates a separated civil and military nuclear programme, with civil facilities placed under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards after the 2008 waiver.

    Laws and Rules Governing Nuclear Energy

    1. Atomic Energy Act, 1962: Vests control of atomic minerals, fissile material and reactor operation in the central government. Reserved commercial nuclear generation to public sector entities until the SHANTI Act.
    2. Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010: Channels liability to the operator and creates a right of recourse against the supplier. Section 17(b) is the specific provision that foreign suppliers have objected to.
    3. Atomic Energy (Radiation Protection) Rules, 2004: Govern radiation safety, licensing of radiation installations and occupational exposure limits.
    4. SHANTI Act: Opens generation to private participation and provides for captive nuclear generation. Draft rules covering licensing, captive generation, safety oversight and liability were released on 14 August 2026.

    Government Initiatives

    1. Nuclear Energy Mission: Carries an outlay of Rs 20,000 crore for research and deployment of small modular reactors.
    2. Bharat Small Modular Reactor programme: Develops a 200 MWe indigenous design for grid and captive industrial supply.
    3. Nuclear Power Corporation of India fleet mode procurement: Approves multiple pressurised heavy water reactors together to compress procurement and construction timelines.
    4. India based Neutrino Observatory and allied research: Supports the domestic research base underpinning the three stage programme.

    Way Forward

    1. Finalise the liability rules: Settle supplier recourse in the notified rules so vendor contracts can reach financial closure.
    2. Make the regulator statutory: Give the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board statutory independence from the Department of Atomic Energy.
    3. Standardise the small reactor design: Freeze one design for repeat build so factory fabrication delivers its cost advantage.
    4. Use retiring thermal sites: Convert closed thermal plant land, which already has grid and water access, into small reactor sites.
    5. Publish a licensing timeline: Give applicants a defined statutory clock for licence decisions, since 66 GWe of the target sits in reactors not yet approved.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2018, GS3, 15 marks] With growing energy needs should India keep on expanding its nuclear energy programme? Discuss the facts and fears associated with nuclear energy.”

  • Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act as a takedown route that bypasses judicial scrutiny

    The Union government summoned senior staff of Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, and reprimanded them over the brief removal in India of a video message by the Prime Minister. The confrontation exposed a takedown route under Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act, 2000, which allows an agency to declare content unlawful without a court ever examining the claim. Content from the Jantar Mantar protests has already been erased or suppressed through a barrage of such notices.

    What is Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act, 2000?

    1. About: Section 79 grants an intermediary immunity from liability for content that its users post, and Section 79(3)(b) is the condition on which that immunity is lost.
    2. How it operates: The immunity ends if the intermediary fails to remove the content expeditiously after receiving actual knowledge or a notification from the appropriate government or its agency.
    3. What the notice contains: It records only that the reporting agency considers the content referred to it illegal.
    4. No judicial step: No court order and no reasoned adjudication is required before such a notice is issued.
    5. The incentive it creates: An intermediary that refuses risks losing safe harbour across its entire platform, so compliance is cheaper than contest.
    6. Distinction from Section 69A: Section 69A is a formal blocking power with a designated committee and recorded reasons, while Section 79(3)(b) carries none of that structure.

    What is an intermediary under the Information Technology Act, 2000?

    1. Definition: Any person who receives, stores or transmits an electronic record on behalf of another person, or provides any service in relation to that record.
    2. Coverage: The term includes telecom and network service providers, search engines, online marketplaces, payment sites, cyber cafes and social media platforms.

    What is safe harbour?

    1. About: It is a statutory immunity that protects a platform from liability for third party content that it did not create, initiate or modify.
    2. Conditions: The platform must remain a passive conduit, must not select the receiver or alter the transmission, and must observe the due diligence and removal requirements the law imposes.

    What is Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000?

    1. About: It empowers the Central Government to direct any agency or intermediary to block public access to information through any computer resource.
    2. Grounds and safeguards: Blocking is confined to the grounds in Article 19(2), the reasons must be recorded in writing, and the procedure is set by the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009.

    What did the Supreme Court hold in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India (2015)?

    1. Section 66A struck down: The provision punishing grossly offensive or menacing online messages was held void for vagueness and for travelling beyond Article 19(2).
    2. Section 79(3)(b) read down: Actual knowledge was confined to a court order or a government notification, so a private complaint alone cannot trigger a takedown obligation.
    3. Section 69A upheld: The blocking power survived because it is tied to the Article 19(2) grounds and requires written reasons.
    4. The governing test: A restriction on speech must have a proximate connection to public order, and advocacy or discussion remains protected.

    What is the current status of free speech online in India?

    1. The right: Article 19(1)(a) covers online expression, and Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India (2020) held that expression and trade through the Internet are constitutionally protected.
    2. The limits: A restriction must fall within the eight grounds in Article 19(2) and must satisfy the proportionality test.
    3. The blocking regime: Section 69A survives with recorded reasons and a review committee, and blocking orders are treated as confidential under the 2009 Rules.
    4. The takedown regime: Section 79(3)(b) as read down requires a court order or a government notification, which agencies now issue at scale.
    5. The compliance layer: The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 require removal within 36 hours of a court order or government notice, and significant platforms must appoint a chief compliance officer, a nodal contact person and a resident grievance officer.
    6. The live dispute: The Karnataka High Court in 2025 rejected a platform’s challenge to the Sahyog portal, which lets authorised officers across States issue takedown notices, and the question remains under appeal.

    Which constitutional provisions govern freedom of speech and its restriction?

    1. Article 19(1)(a): Guarantees freedom of speech and expression to citizens.
    2. Article 19(2): Permits reasonable restrictions only on the grounds of sovereignty and integrity of India, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency, morality, contempt of court, defamation and incitement to an offence.
    3. Articles 19(1)(g) and 19(6): Protect the right to carry on a business, which platforms invoke against arbitrary compliance burdens.
    4. Article 21: Covers privacy and the right to receive information, recognised in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017).
    5. Article 14: Requires that any classification of content or of speakers be reasonable and not arbitrary.
    6. Article 13(2): Voids any law that abridges a fundamental right, which is the basis on which takedown provisions are challenged.
    7. Articles 32 and 226: Provide the remedy against an unconstitutional restriction on speech.

    What triggered the confrontation between the government and the platform?

    1. The summons: The Union government called in senior staff of Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, and reprimanded them.
    2. The stated reason: The brief removal in India of a video message by the Prime Minister.
    3. The unstated objective: Pressure on the platform to suppress posts from protests such as the demonstration at Jantar Mantar.
    4. The scale of removal: A barrage of takedown notices has already erased or suppressed the more emblematic forms of those protests.
    5. Why the platform matters: Instagram Reels shows users automatically recommended posts from creators they do not follow, which has made it one of the most influential mass media formats in the country.

    Why does Section 79(3)(b) work as a censorship route without judicial scrutiny?

    1. The notice is an assertion, not a finding: It merely records that the reporting agency feels the content referred to is illegal.
    2. No court tests it: Posts taken down under this section almost never go to court, so the assertion is never examined.
    3. The platform bears the risk: Refusal exposes the intermediary’s safe harbour, while compliance costs it nothing.
    4. Volume replaces reasoning: A route that requires no order can be used at a scale that a blocking committee could never process.
    5. The speaker is not heard: The user whose content is removed is not a party to the notice and receives no reasons.
    6. No precedent is built: Because nothing is adjudicated, the boundary of lawful online speech is never judicially clarified.

    What do the Pakistani and Chinese examples show about where this path leads?

    1. Pakistan: TikTok was banned for a period in 2021 and restored only after the platform agreed to control content described as immoral or indecent, which made market access conditional on an editorial concession.
    2. China: A single party system with a stated ideological commitment to centralised control wipes out nearly all dissent within minutes of posting.
    3. The Chinese precondition: The conditions that enabled that level of censorship were fostered over the decades preceding the Internet’s growth, not built after it.
    4. What the comparison establishes: Seeking suppression of political speech on a recommendation driven platform would place India in the company of these two systems rather than that of open democracies.
    5. The limit of the comparison: Neither example carries a constitutional court that can strike down a restriction, which is the one structural difference India retains.

    Is the platform a target of state pressure or a participant in censorship?

    1. The case for target: The company was summoned and given a dressing down, and its safe harbour is the leverage being used against it.
    2. The case for participant: For months it has taken down every post referred to it under Section 79(3)(b) without contesting a single one.
    3. Compliance as a choice: The section requires expeditious removal on a valid notification, not uniform removal of everything referred.
    4. What the pattern created: Consistent automatic compliance established that pressure works, which set the stage for the current arm twisting.
    5. The central site problem: The platform was also the main venue for the mobilisations, so its compliance decisions determined what the protests looked like in public memory.
    6. The unresolved point: A platform that never litigates a takedown converts a contestable statutory condition into an unreviewable administrative power.

    Why does the absence of Chinese preconditions not make Indian speech safe?

    1. The structural argument: Without decades of conditioning before the Internet grew, and without a single party system committed to centralising control, the Internet cannot be tamed.
    2. The capacity gap: What currently limits Indian censorship is the inability to check posts in real time, which is a capacity constraint and not a legal safeguard.
    3. The technology that closes the gap: Automated screening supplies exactly the real time capacity that is missing, which makes it a destructive solution to that gap.
    4. The cultural harm: Warping the public’s cultural self perception damages society regardless of whether full control is ever achieved.
    5. The successor problem: A draconian power created without checks passes intact to every government that follows.
    6. The wrong lesson: Mass mobilisation is being treated as an aberration to be prevented, when it is the lifeblood of a democracy.

    What are the major debates surrounding online speech regulation in India?

    1. Actual knowledge after Shreya Singhal: Whether an executive notification under Section 79(3)(b) can carry the same force as a court order.
    2. Formal against informal blocking: Section 69A carries safeguards and Section 79(3)(b) carries none, and agencies prefer the route without safeguards.
    3. Confidentiality of blocking orders: Rule 16 of the 2009 Rules keeps blocking orders secret, which prevents the affected user from challenging them.
    4. Traceability and encryption: Rule 4(2) of the 2021 Rules requires significant messaging platforms to identify the first originator of a message, which is challenged as incompatible with end to end encryption and privacy.
    5. The Sahyog portal: Whether large numbers of authorised officers across States may issue takedown notices without a central record or a reasoned order.
    6. Government fact checking: The Bombay High Court struck down the 2023 amendment creating a government fact check unit for online content about government business in Kunal Kamra v. Union of India (2024).
    7. Proportionality in practice: Whether the least restrictive means test laid down in Anuradha Bhasin is actually applied to content removal.
    8. The future of safe harbour: Whether narrowing or removing intermediary immunity would increase platform accountability or simply increase over removal.

    Challenges to the Section 79(3)(b) takedown framework

    1. Absence of a reasoned order: The notice states a conclusion without disclosing the legal ground, e.g. the removal of posts and reels documenting the Jantar Mantar protests, where users were given no ground for takedown.
    2. No hearing for the speaker: The person whose content is removed is never a party, e.g. Rule 16 of the 2009 Blocking Rules keeps orders confidential, so users blocked during the 2021 farm protest removals were never served the reasons.
    3. Over removal by platforms: The safe harbour risk pushes a platform to remove first and assess later, e.g. Meta’s uniform compliance with every referral made to it under this section over recent months.
    4. Decentralised issuing authority: A large number of officers can issue notices without a common standard, e.g. the Sahyog portal, whose challenge by X Corp was rejected by the Karnataka High Court in 2025.
    5. Automation risk: Machine screening at scale extends removal to lawful speech without human review, e.g. algorithmic suppression of Reels cuts reach without a formal takedown, leaving nothing for the user to challenge.
    6. Chilling effect on creators: Repeat removals lower a creator’s distribution, so creators censor themselves, e.g. accounts covering the protests reduced posting after the most emblematic footage was suppressed.
    7. Misuse after invalidation: An unchecked power outlives the government and even the statute that created it, e.g. arrests under Section 66A continued for years after it was struck down in 2015, until the Supreme Court issued fresh directions in People’s Union for Civil Liberties v. Union of India (2021).

    Conclusion

    Section 79(3)(b) has become the preferred route for removing online speech precisely because it needs no court, no reasons and no hearing, and a platform that complies with every referral has converted a contestable statutory condition into an unreviewable administrative power. The outcome is not Chinese style control, which India lacks the political architecture to build, but a censorship practice that is invisible, unaccounted and inheritable by every future government. What must change is the trigger itself: a notification under this section must carry a reasoned order, a record open to the user, and a route of appeal.

    What is Intermediary Liability?

    1. About: It is the legal question of when a platform is answerable for content that its users create and publish.
    2. Rationale: Platforms cannot screen the volume of user content in advance, so the law exempts them from liability in exchange for cooperation with lawful removal.
    3. Conditional immunity: The exemption applies only while the platform remains a passive conduit and acts on a qualifying notice.
    4. Notice and takedown: The standard model requires removal on receipt of a qualifying notice, and jurisdictions differ on who may issue that notice.
    5. Due diligence obligations: The platform must publish rules, appoint officers, run a grievance process and file compliance reports to retain the immunity.
    6. Significant platforms: Larger platforms carry heavier obligations, which in India begin above a threshold of 50 lakh registered users.

    Key Concerns Regarding Intermediary Liability

    1. Privatised adjudication: A company decides what is unlawful, without the procedure and reasoning a court would apply.
    2. Asymmetric incentives: The cost of wrongful removal falls on the user, while the cost of wrongful retention falls on the platform, so removal is always the safer choice.
    3. Opaque enforcement: Neither the volume nor the grounds of removals are systematically disclosed to the public.
    4. Immunity as leverage: The threat of losing safe harbour can be used to obtain compliance on matters unconnected to the notice.
    5. Automated moderation: Scale forces machine decisions on speech whose legality depends entirely on context.
    6. Jurisdictional conflict: A global platform faces contradictory removal orders from different countries over the same content.

    Constitutional and Statutory Framework Governing Online Speech

    1. Article 19(1)(a): Guarantees freedom of speech and expression, which extends to expression on the Internet.
    2. Article 19(2): Permits reasonable restrictions on that freedom only on the eight enumerated grounds.
    3. Section 69, Information Technology Act, 2000: Allows interception, monitoring and decryption of information through a computer resource in specified circumstances.
    4. Section 69A, Information Technology Act, 2000: Empowers the Central Government to block public access to information, with reasons recorded in writing.
    5. Section 79, Information Technology Act, 2000: Grants intermediaries immunity from liability for third party content.
    6. Section 79(3)(b), Information Technology Act, 2000: Withdraws that immunity if the intermediary does not expeditiously remove content after actual knowledge or a government notification.
    7. Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021: Prescribe due diligence, a 36 hour removal timeline, grievance officers and a traceability requirement for significant messaging platforms.
    8. Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009: Set the committee procedure, the hearing stage and the confidentiality of blocking orders.

    Laws, Acts and Rules Governing Online Content Regulation in India

    1. Information Technology Act, 2000: The parent statute covering electronic records, cyber offences, intermediary liability and blocking of information.
    2. Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008: Inserted Section 66A, Section 69A and the present safe harbour scheme in Section 79.
    3. Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021: Created the due diligence, grievance redress and digital media ethics framework for intermediaries and online publishers.
    4. Information Technology Amendment Rules, 2023: Created a government fact check unit for content about government business, struck down by the Bombay High Court in 2024.
    5. Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009: Govern the process for orders under Section 69A.
    6. Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023: Regulates processing of digital personal data and creates the Data Protection Board of India.
    7. Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023: Replaced the Indian Penal Code and carries the offences of promoting enmity between groups and of statements prejudicial to national integration that are routinely invoked against online speech.
    8. Telecommunications Act, 2023: Allows suspension of telecom services and interception of messages on public emergency grounds, replacing the corresponding power in the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885.
    9. Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995 and the Cinematograph Act, 1952: The older content regulation model on which the digital ethics code was patterned.

    Back2Basics: Information Technology Act, 2000

    1. Enacted: 2000, modelled on the UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Commerce, 1996.
    2. Purpose: Gave legal recognition to electronic records and digital signatures and created a framework for cyber offences.
    3. Major amendment: The 2008 amendment, brought after the Mumbai attacks, added Sections 66A and 69A and rewrote the safe harbour provision.
    4. Bodies under it: The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) under Section 70B and the Controller of Certifying Authorities.
    5. Appellate route: The Cyber Appellate Tribunal’s functions were merged into the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal in 2017.
    6. Judicial history: Section 66A was struck down in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India (2015).
    7. Extraterritorial reach: Section 75 applies the Act to offences committed outside India where a computer or computer network located in India is involved.

    Government Initiatives for Digital Content and Cyber Governance

    1. Sahyog portal: A central platform through which authorised officers of States and central agencies issue notices to intermediaries under Section 79(3)(b).
    2. Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C): Coordinates action against cybercrime across States and runs the national cybercrime reporting portal and helpline 1930.
    3. Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In): The national agency for cyber incident response, advisories and coordination under Section 70B.
    4. Grievance Appellate Committees: Constituted in 2023 under the 2021 Rules to hear user appeals against a platform’s content decision.
    5. Information Security Education and Awareness programme: Builds capacity and public awareness on safe digital practices.
    6. Digital India programme: The umbrella mission for digital infrastructure, services and literacy under which the intermediary framework operates.

    Key Facts about Online Speech Regulation in India

    1. Significant social media intermediary: A platform with more than 50 lakh registered users in India, which carries the additional obligations under the 2021 Rules.
    2. Removal timelines: 36 hours for a court order or government notice, 24 hours for non consensual intimate imagery, and 72 hours for information sought by an authorised agency.
    3. Compliance officers: A chief compliance officer, a nodal contact person and a resident grievance officer must be appointed by significant platforms.
    4. Landmark ruling: Shreya Singhal v. Union of India (2015) struck down Section 66A and read down Section 79(3)(b).
    5. Follow up ruling: People’s Union for Civil Liberties v. Union of India (2021) directed States to stop registering cases under the struck down Section 66A.
    6. Internet shutdowns: India records among the highest numbers of Internet shutdowns in the world, and Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India (2020) required shutdown orders to be published and periodically reviewed.
    7. Fact check unit: The government fact check unit under the 2023 amendment was struck down by the Bombay High Court in 2024.

    Challenges in Regulating Online Speech in India

    1. No independent oversight of removals: The executive is the issuing authority, the reviewing authority and the beneficiary of a takedown, e.g. review committees under the 2009 Blocking Rules are composed entirely of government officers.
    2. Scale of misinformation: Removal cannot keep pace with coordinated falsehood on closed messaging groups, e.g. the lynchings triggered by forwarded rumours in 2018, after which a limit on message forwards was introduced.
    3. Vague statutory grounds: Terms such as public order and decency are applied without a defined test, e.g. Section 66A was struck down in 2015 precisely for that vagueness, yet similar phrasing survives in the 2021 Rules.
    4. Encryption against traceability: A traceability mandate cannot be met without weakening security for every user, e.g. the challenge by WhatsApp to Rule 4(2) of the 2021 Rules pending before the Delhi High Court.
    5. Capacity of enforcement agencies: Police and prosecutors lack the technical training to distinguish unlawful speech from lawful criticism, e.g. arrests for social media posts continued under Section 66A for six years after it ceased to exist.
    6. Economic dependence of platforms: A large user market gives the state leverage that no legal safeguard offsets, e.g. TikTok’s restoration in Pakistan in 2021 only after it accepted content conditions.
    7. Absence of transparency data: Neither the number nor the grounds of Section 79(3)(b) notices are published, e.g. platform transparency reports record aggregate requests without disclosing the legal basis of each.

    Way Forward

    1. Require a reasoned order: Mandate that every notification under Section 79(3)(b) record the specific Article 19(2) ground and the material relied on.
    2. Notify the user: Require the intermediary to serve the ground of removal on the person who posted the content, so that a challenge becomes possible.
    3. Publish takedown statistics: Require the government and platforms to publish the number, source and legal ground of takedown notices at fixed intervals.
    4. Independent review: Reconstitute the review committee under the blocking rules with non official members, including a retired judge and a technical expert.
    5. Centralise issuing authority: Restrict the power to issue notices to a designated senior officer, ending the dispersal created by portal based issuance.
    6. Statutory appeal: Provide a time bound appeal against a takedown to a tribunal, rather than leaving writ jurisdiction as the only route.
    7. Codify proportionality: Write the least restrictive means test from Anuradha Bhasin into the rules, so that suspension of reach or a geographic block is preferred to full removal.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2013, GS2, 10 marks] Discuss Section 66A of IT Act, with reference to its alleged violation of Article 19 of the Constitution.”

  • Bar Council of India’s blanket enrolment bar on a law school batch tests the limits of the Advocates Act

    The Bar Council of India directed every State Bar Council to stop enrolling the 2026 graduating batch of the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research, after about 450 of its students objected to the Chief Justice of India attending their convocation as chief guest. The directive was withdrawn within a day, but it had already treated a peaceful protest as a bar on entry to a profession, a ground the Advocates Act, 1961 does not recognise. The Supreme Court barred coercive action against the students and gave the Council two weeks to explain itself.

    What is the Bar Council of India?

    1. About: It is a statutory body established under the Advocates Act, 1961 to regulate the legal profession and legal education in India.
    2. Composition: The Attorney General of India and the Solicitor General of India are ex officio members, and each State Bar Council elects one member to it.
    3. Core functions: It lays down standards of professional conduct and etiquette for advocates, exercises disciplinary jurisdiction, and recognises universities whose law degrees qualify a person for enrolment.
    4. Supervisory role: Section 7(1)(g) gives it general supervision and control over State Bar Councils.
    5. What it cannot do: No provision of the Advocates Act, 1961 gives it the power to enrol a person as an advocate.

    What is the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR)?

    1. About: It is a national law university at Hyderabad, created by a State Act in 1998, and among the earliest institutions built on the five year integrated law degree model.
    2. Relevance here: Its 2026 graduating batch was the subject of the enrolment freeze directed at all State Bar Councils.

    What is moral turpitude?

    1. About: It refers to conduct that is inherently base or depraved and contrary to accepted standards of honesty and justice, judged by the nature of the act rather than the length of the sentence.
    2. Statutory use: Section 24A of the Advocates Act, 1961 bars enrolment of a person convicted of an offence involving moral turpitude.

    What is a chilling effect?

    1. About: It is the deterrent effect a threatened penalty has on lawful speech, where a person stays silent to avoid risk rather than because the speech is unlawful.
    2. Why withdrawal does not cure it: The deterrent operates from the moment the threat is made, so revoking the order does not restore the confidence it removed.

    What is the current status of the right to practise a profession in India?

    1. The right: Article 19(1)(g) guarantees every citizen the right to practise any profession or to carry on any occupation, trade or business.
    2. Permissible limits: Article 19(6) allows reasonable restrictions in the public interest, including professional or technical qualifications prescribed by law.
    3. Entry to the Bar: Section 24 of the Advocates Act, 1961 fixes the qualifications for enrolment, which include Indian citizenship, completion of 21 years of age and a law degree from a recognised university.
    4. The only bars: Section 24A lists the disqualifications, and each of them lapses two years after the disqualifying event.
    5. The gatekeeper: Enrolment is granted by a State Bar Council under Section 6(1)(a), not by the Bar Council of India.
    6. The added filter: The All India Bar Examination must be cleared for a certificate of practice after enrolment.

    Which constitutional provisions govern free expression and entry to a profession?

    1. Article 19(1)(a): Guarantees freedom of speech and expression, which includes the right to protest peacefully.
    2. Article 19(1)(b): Guarantees the right to assemble peaceably and without arms.
    3. Article 19(1)(c): Guarantees the right to form associations, which covers student bodies and campus collectives.
    4. Article 19(1)(g): Guarantees the right to practise a profession.
    5. Article 19(2): Permits restrictions on speech only on eight enumerated grounds, and every restriction must be reasonable.
    6. Article 19(6): Permits reasonable restrictions on the right to a profession, including prescribed qualifications.
    7. Article 14: Bars arbitrary state action, which reaches a statutory body imposing a collective penalty.
    8. Articles 32 and 226: Provide direct recourse to the Supreme Court and the High Courts against the action of a statutory body.

    What exactly did the Bar Council of India direct, and how did it unravel?

    1. The first letter: The Council’s chairperson wrote to the NALSAR Vice Chancellor seeking a report identifying the persons who initiated, organised, coordinated or mobilised the campaign against the Chief Justice of India.
    2. The enrolment bar: The same letter prohibited State Bar Councils from enrolling any 2026 passed out student of NALSAR until further orders.
    3. The two hour reversal: A second communication issued within two hours declared the vast majority of NALSAR students innocent, while retaining the direction to hold an inquiry and submit a report.
    4. The university’s response: NALSAR stated that it would have to examine the constitutionality of such an inquiry.
    5. Full withdrawal: The Council withdrew both letters entirely the following day and closed the proceedings.
    6. The stated reason: The Council accepted that it was not proceeding under Section 24A, and argued that enrolment during a pending inquiry would create a fait accompli.

    Why does the power to enrol sit with State Bar Councils and not the Bar Council of India?

    1. Two tier design: Section 3 creates State Bar Councils and Section 4 creates the Bar Council of India, with distinct functions assigned to each.
    2. The enrolling authority: Section 6(1)(a) makes the admission of persons as advocates on its roll a function of the State Bar Council.
    3. The apex body’s list: Section 7 confines the Bar Council of India to professional standards, supervision of State Bar Councils, promotion of legal education and recognition of universities.
    4. No enrolment power: None of those provisions gives the Bar Council of India the power to enrol a person as an advocate.
    5. Individual assessment: Every application has to be dealt with independently, and an applicant who meets the statutory requirements is entitled to be enrolled.
    6. Limits of supervision: Section 48B permits directions to State Bar Councils, but a direction cannot create a bar that the Act itself does not contain.

    What are the only statutory grounds on which enrolment can be denied?

    1. Conviction for moral turpitude: Section 24A bars a person convicted of an offence involving moral turpitude.
    2. Untouchability offences: A conviction under the Untouchability (Offences) Act, 1955 is a separate statutory bar.
    3. Dismissal from service: Dismissal or removal from government employment on a charge involving moral turpitude disqualifies a person.
    4. Time limit: The disqualification lapses two years after the release, dismissal or removal.
    5. Nothing on dissent: The list contains no ground relating to protest, opinion or a campus campaign.
    6. Conduct before enrolment: Such conduct becomes relevant only when it attracts a statutory disqualification, and a peaceful protest or an expression of opinion does not.

    Where does the Bar Council of India legitimately enter the enrolment process?

    1. The carve out: Section 26 requires a State Bar Council’s enrolment committee that proposes to reject an application to refer the matter to the Bar Council of India with a statement of the grounds of refusal.
    2. Binding opinion: Section 26(3) requires the State Bar Council to dispose of the application in conformity with the opinion of the Bar Council of India.
    3. Reasons in writing: Section 26(2) requires the State Bar Council to record its grounds for refusing enrolment in writing.
    4. Only after a proposed refusal: The referral arises only once a State Bar Council has decided to reject an individual application.
    5. No advance freeze: Section 26 does not contemplate a blanket bar on an entire graduating class before any application has been filed.
    6. Removal from the roll: Where a name already on the roll is to be removed for fraud or misrepresentation, the person must first be given a hearing.

    Why do the Council’s disciplinary powers not reach a law graduate?

    1. Chapter V: It deals with disciplinary proceedings, and Sections 35 to 37 cover misconduct by advocates, the powers of the disciplinary committee and appeals from disciplinary orders.
    2. Whom they bind: Those provisions apply only to persons already enrolled on a State roll.
    3. Status of a graduate: A law graduate who has not yet been enrolled is not an advocate.
    4. Consequence: The disciplinary framework does not extend to a student, so a campus protest cannot be treated as professional misconduct.
    5. Effect of the letters: They attempted to add the expression of dissent as a fresh ground of disqualification for enrolment.

    What did the Supreme Court settle when the Council last created a disqualification?

    1. The case: Indian Council of Legal Aid and Advice v. Bar Council of India (1995).
    2. The rule struck down: The Court invalidated a Bar Council of India rule barring persons above 45 years of age from enrolment.
    3. The reasoning: Rule making power under Section 49 cannot be used to create an additional disqualification that the Advocates Act does not provide.
    4. The jurisdictional holding: Admission of persons to the roll and removal of their names lie within the exclusive domain of the State Bar Councils.
    5. The parallel: The age bar and the batch bar both add a disqualification by executive direction rather than by statute.

    How did the Court and the legal community respond this time?

    1. Interim protection: A three judge Bench barred the Council from taking coercive action against NALSAR students, faculty and administrators on the basis of the incidents named in the letters.
    2. Explanation sought: The Council was given two weeks to file an affidavit explaining its actions.
    3. The Court’s position: The fundamental right to a profession cannot be threatened for expressing dissent, and students have the right to protest.
    4. Jurisdictional rebuke: The Chief Justice of India described the Council’s intervention as unnecessary interference in a dialogue between the students and himself.
    5. The petitioners’ case: Neither the Advocates Act, 1961 nor the Rules of Legal Education permits the Council to regulate students’ conduct or to direct universities to inquire against them.
    6. Institutional criticism: The university’s alumni called the letters arbitrary and high handed, and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad asked the Council to act only on facts, due process and a fair inquiry.
    7. Editorial demand: The episode was described as a misuse of statutory power for which the chairperson’s exit is the minimum course correction.

    Does the withdrawal of the directive settle the question it raised?

    1. The case for closure: The letters stand withdrawn, the proceedings are closed, and the 2026 graduates may now seek enrolment in the ordinary course.
    2. The case against closure: A regulator has demonstrated that it will use enrolment as leverage over student speech, and that demonstration survives the withdrawal.
    3. Speed as the problem: The bar was imposed and lifted without any meeting of the full Council, using interim powers meant for supervisory emergencies.
    4. The absent remedy: No accountability attaches to a direction withdrawn before it is tested, so the cost of issuing it is zero.
    5. The deterrent that remains: A student weighing a future campus campaign now knows that entry to the profession can be made the subject of an inquiry.
    6. The unresolved question: Whether a supervisory power over State Bar Councils can ever be used to suspend a statutory function that those councils alone hold.

    What are the major debates surrounding regulatory control over entry to the legal profession?

    1. Supervision against exclusivity: Section 7(1)(g) and Section 48B give the Council supervisory control, while Section 6(1)(a) gives State Bar Councils exclusive power over enrolment.
    2. Rule making against statute: The 1995 ruling confines Section 49 rules to what the Act permits, and successive Council rules have tested that boundary.
    3. The Bar examination question: Bar Council of India v. Bonnie Foi Law College (2023) upheld the All India Bar Examination as a valid precondition for practice, unsettling the earlier view that only Parliament could add entry conditions.
    4. An elected regulator: The Council is elected by practising advocates, which makes independent enforcement of discipline against advocates contested.
    5. Education and practice in one body: The Council both recognises law degrees and regulates practitioners, concentrating academic and professional gatekeeping in a single institution.
    6. Speech of future professionals: How far a professional regulator may police the political expression of persons not yet within its jurisdiction remains untested.
    7. Opening the profession: The 2023 rules permitting foreign lawyers in non litigious matters reopened the question of who defines the boundaries of the profession.

    Challenges to the Bar Council of India

    1. Jurisdictional overreach: The Council repeatedly claims powers that the Advocates Act, 1961 does not confer, e.g. the rule barring entrants above 45 years of age, struck down in Indian Council of Legal Aid and Advice v. Bar Council of India (1995).
    2. Decisions by individual direction: Rule 18 interim powers of the chairperson allow directions of general effect without a Council meeting, e.g. the enrolment bar on the 2026 NALSAR batch, issued and withdrawn within a day in August 2026.
    3. Disciplinary delay: Section 36B transfers a misconduct case to the Council if a State disciplinary committee does not conclude it within a year, which pushes complaints further from the complainant, e.g. the Law Commission’s 266th Report (2017) recorded that this one year limit is routinely missed.
    4. Unverified enrolments: State rolls carry names that cannot be matched to verified degrees, e.g. the verification drive under the Certificate and Place of Practice Verification Rules, 2015 found large numbers of enrolled advocates who never filed verification papers.
    5. Strikes by the Bar: Court boycotts continue despite a binding ruling against them, e.g. the boycott by advocates in Delhi district courts after the Tis Hazari clash in 2019, which stalled hearings for several days.
    6. Legal education oversight: Approvals of law colleges have outpaced inspection capacity, e.g. the Council imposed a moratorium on approving new law colleges after approvals crossed well over a thousand institutions.
    7. Collision with university autonomy: The education mandate is used to direct internal university action, e.g. the letter requiring NALSAR to inquire into and report on the students behind a campus campaign, which the university said raised constitutional questions.

    Conclusion

    The Bar Council of India used a supervisory power over State Bar Councils to suspend a function that only those councils hold, and it did so to penalise speech that the Advocates Act, 1961 does not recognise as a disqualification. The withdrawal closed the file without answering the question, because the deterrent created by a regulator that can threaten entry to a profession does not lapse with the letter. What must change is the source of the power: a disqualification can come only from statute, and an interim supervisory order cannot be used to manufacture one.

    Regulation of the Legal Profession in India

    1. About: The legal profession is a statutory self regulating profession governed by the Advocates Act, 1961, which created a single unified Bar for the whole country.
    2. Structure: State Bar Councils enrol and discipline advocates, and the Bar Council of India supervises them and sets professional standards.
    3. Scale: India has more than 15 lakh enrolled advocates and over 1,700 approved law colleges, among the largest legal professions in the world.
    4. Entry route: A five year integrated law degree after school or a three year degree after graduation, followed by enrolment with a State Bar Council and the All India Bar Examination.
    5. Single class of practitioners: The Act abolished the earlier categories of vakils, pleaders and attorneys, leaving advocates as the only recognised class, divided into senior advocates and other advocates.
    6. National law universities: The model began with the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru in 1987 and now covers more than 25 such universities.

    Statutory Framework Governing Enrolment of Advocates

    1. Section 3: Constitutes a Bar Council for each State and sets its composition and term.
    2. Section 4: Constitutes the Bar Council of India, with the Attorney General and the Solicitor General as ex officio members.
    3. Section 6: Lists the functions of a State Bar Council, including the admission of persons as advocates on its roll under Section 6(1)(a).
    4. Section 7: Lists the functions of the Bar Council of India, including professional standards, supervision of State Bar Councils under Section 7(1)(g), promotion of legal education and recognition of universities.
    5. Section 24: Prescribes the qualifications for admission as an advocate on a State roll.
    6. Section 24A: Prescribes the disqualifications for enrolment and the two year period after which they lapse.
    7. Section 25: Names the authority to which an application for enrolment must be made.
    8. Section 26: Governs disposal of applications, reference of a proposed refusal to the Bar Council of India, and removal of a name obtained by misrepresentation.
    9. Sections 35 to 37: Govern punishment of advocates for professional misconduct, the powers of disciplinary committees and appeals to the Bar Council of India.
    10. Section 48AA: Allows the Bar Council of India or its committees, other than a disciplinary committee, to review any order within sixty days.
    11. Section 48B: Allows the Bar Council of India to give directions to a State Bar Council in exercise of its general supervision.
    12. Section 49: Confers general rule making power on the Bar Council of India to discharge its functions.

    Laws, Acts and Rules Governing the Legal Profession in India

    1. Advocates Act, 1961: Created a unified national Bar, established the Bar Council of India and State Bar Councils, and consolidated the law on legal practitioners.
    2. Advocates Act, 1961, landmark change: It abolished the earlier categories of vakils, pleaders, attorneys and revenue agents, leaving a single class of advocates with an all India right to practise under Section 30.
    3. Bar Council of India Rules: Framed under Section 49, covering standards of professional conduct and etiquette, legal education and the internal working of the Council.
    4. Bar Council of India Rules, key provisions: Rule 15 gives the chairperson general control and supervision over the Council’s affairs, and Rule 18 allows interim orders in revisional and supervisory matters.
    5. Bar Council of India Rules of Legal Education, 2008: Govern recognition of law degrees, the five year and three year course structures, and inspection of colleges.
    6. All India Bar Examination Rules, 2010: Made the examination a condition for the certificate of practice for advocates enrolled after 2009.
    7. Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987: Created the National, State and District Legal Services Authorities and the Lok Adalat mechanism for free legal aid.
    8. Contempt of Courts Act, 1971: Defines civil and criminal contempt and governs the conduct of advocates before courts.
    9. Untouchability (Offences) Act, 1955, renamed the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955: A conviction under it is a statutory disqualification for enrolment under Section 24A.
    10. Bar Council of India Rules for Registration of Foreign Lawyers and Foreign Law Firms, 2022, amended in 2023: Permit foreign lawyers to advise on foreign law and international arbitration in non litigious matters.
    11. Advocates (Amendment) Act, 2023: Repealed the Legal Practitioners Act, 1879 and inserted provisions empowering courts to frame and act against lists of touts.

    Back2Basics: Advocates Act, 1961

    1. Enacted: 1961, on the recommendations of the All India Bar Committee, 1953 and the Fourteenth Report of the Law Commission of India.
    2. Purpose: Consolidated the law relating to legal practitioners and created a single class of advocates for the whole country.
    3. Bodies created: State Bar Councils under Section 3 and the Bar Council of India under Section 4.
    4. Right to practise: Section 30 gives an advocate on a State roll the right to practise before all courts, tribunals and authorities in India.
    5. Senior advocates: Section 16 divides advocates into senior advocates and other advocates, with designation by the Supreme Court or a High Court.
    6. Discipline: Chapter V provides for disciplinary committees, punishment for professional misconduct, and appeals to the Bar Council of India and then to the Supreme Court.
    7. Autonomy: The Bar Council of India is an independent statutory authority and not a department of government.

    Government Initiatives for Legal Education and Access to Justice

    1. National Legal Services Authority (NALSA): Provides free legal aid to eligible persons under the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987 and organises Lok Adalats for settlement of pending and pre litigation disputes.
    2. Tele-Law: Connects citizens in rural areas to panel lawyers through Common Service Centres for free advice before litigation begins.
    3. Nyaya Bandhu: A pro bono legal services programme that links volunteer advocates with litigants who cannot afford representation.
    4. Legal Aid Defense Counsel System: Provides full time defence counsel at the district level for accused persons who cannot afford a lawyer.
    5. e-Courts Mission Mode Project: Digitises case records, enables virtual hearings and publishes case status through the National Judicial Data Grid.
    6. Nyaya Vikas: Centrally sponsored scheme funding court halls and residential units for judicial officers of district and subordinate courts.
    7. Pan India Legal Awareness and Outreach Campaign: A village level drive by NALSA to inform citizens of their legal entitlements and aid options.

    Key Facts about the Bar Council of India

    1. Established: 1961 under the Advocates Act, 1961, with its headquarters in New Delhi.
    2. Ex officio members: The Attorney General of India and the Solicitor General of India.
    3. Elected members: One member elected by each State Bar Council from among its own members.
    4. Office bearers: The chairperson and the vice chairperson are elected by the Council for a term of two years.
    5. All India Bar Examination: Introduced in 2010 and required for the certificate of practice.
    6. First national law university: National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, established in 1987.
    7. Landmark ruling on enrolment: Indian Council of Legal Aid and Advice v. Bar Council of India (1995).
    8. Landmark ruling on strikes: Ex-Captain Harish Uppal v. Union of India (2003) held that advocates have no right to strike or boycott courts.

    Challenges in Regulating Legal Education and the Legal Profession in India

    1. Uneven quality of law colleges: Approvals have expanded faster than inspection capacity, so degree standards vary sharply, e.g. the moratorium the Council imposed on approving new law colleges after approvals crossed well over a thousand institutions.
    2. Fake and unverified degrees: Rolls carry entries that cannot be matched to a verified degree, e.g. the verification exercise under the Certificate and Place of Practice Verification Rules, 2015, in which lakhs of advocates did not submit verification papers.
    3. Cost of entry: Enrolment fees, examination costs and unpaid junior years restrict first generation entrants, e.g. the Supreme Court in Gaurav Kumar v. Union of India (2024) capped State Bar Council enrolment fees at ₹750 for general category candidates and ₹125 for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe candidates.
    4. Under representation of women: Women form a small share of the senior Bar, e.g. women constitute about 3.4 per cent of senior advocates in India.
    5. Court boycotts and strikes: Work withdrawal continues despite a binding ruling against it, e.g. the Delhi district courts boycott after the Tis Hazari clash in 2019.
    6. Case backlog and delay: Adjournment practice by the Bar contributes directly to pendency, e.g. more than five crore cases were pending across Indian courts as recorded on the National Judicial Data Grid.
    7. Regulatory overlap: Legal education is governed simultaneously by the Council and the University Grants Commission, e.g. the Law Commission’s 266th Report (2017) recommended a separate body for legal education to end the overlap.

    Way Forward

    1. Codify the limits of supervisory power: Amend Section 48B to state that a direction to a State Bar Council cannot suspend a function that Section 6(1)(a) confers on it.
    2. Require a Council resolution for general directions: Confine Rule 18 interim orders to individual revisional matters and require a full Council decision for any direction of general effect.
    3. Separate legal education from professional regulation: Create a distinct legal education council with academic membership, as recommended by the Law Commission’s 266th Report.
    4. Enforce time bound discipline: Make the one year limit in Section 36B operational through mandatory public reporting of pending complaints and their age.
    5. Publish enrolment data: Require every State Bar Council to publish the number of applications received, decided and refused, with the recorded grounds of refusal.
    6. Protect lawful student expression: Frame a rule under Section 49 stating that lawful expression before enrolment is neither a ground for refusal nor a basis for inquiry.
    7. Create an appellate route: Provide a statutory appeal against general directions of the Bar Council of India, so that every affected person is not forced to approach the Supreme Court.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2022] With reference to India, consider the following statements :
    1. Government law officers and legal firms are recognised as advocates, but corporate lawyers and patent attorneys are excluded from recognition as advocates.
    2. Bar Councils have the power to lay down the rules relating to legal education and recognition of law colleges.
    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

    Answer: (b)”

  • Mines and Minerals Amendment Bill 2026 curbs State taxing powers over mineral rights

    Why in the News

    Parliament passed the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026 on 13 August 2026, restricting the power of States to levy taxes on mineral rights and mineral bearing lands. The measure reverses in statute the fiscal gain that a nine judge Bench of the Supreme Court gave mineral rich States in 2024, and it has united ruling and opposition parties in Kerala, Odisha and Jharkhand against it.

    What is the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957?

    1. About: The Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957 is the central law regulating the grant of mineral concessions and the development of mines in India.
    2. The declaration it carries: Section 2 declares it expedient in the public interest that the Union take control of the regulation of mines and mineral development, which activates Entry 54 of the Union List.
    3. Royalty setting: Section 9 empowers the Central Government to fix and revise royalty rates, and revision is permitted not more than once every three years.
    4. Concession route: Since the 2015 amendment, mineral concessions are granted by States through competitive auction rather than by discretionary allotment.
    5. Local sharing: Section 9B requires a District Mineral Foundation in every district affected by mining, funded by a contribution linked to royalty.

    What is a royalty on minerals?

    1. Definition: Royalty is the payment a lessee makes to the owner of the mineral for the privilege of extracting and removing it, calculated on the quantity or value produced.
    2. Legal character: The Supreme Court has held royalty to be a contractual consideration flowing from the mining lease, not a tax levied by the state.

    What is a cess?

    1. Definition: A cess is a levy imposed for a specified purpose, with its proceeds earmarked for that purpose rather than merged into general revenue.
    2. Why it matters here: Mineral bearing States had imposed cesses on royalty and on mineral bearing land, and it is this class of levy that the amendment restricts.

    What is the District Mineral Foundation (DMF)?

    1. Definition: The District Mineral Foundation is a non profit trust established in every mining affected district to work for the benefit of persons and areas affected by mining.
    2. Funding: Lessees contribute a share of royalty to the Foundation, and the money is spent through the Pradhan Mantri Khanij Kshetra Kalyan Yojana on health, education, drinking water and livelihood in mining affected areas.

    What is the current status of State taxing power over mineral rights in India?

    1. Constitutional entry: Entry 50 of the State List gives States the power to tax mineral rights, expressly subject to any limitations imposed by Parliament by law relating to mineral development.
    2. Judicial position since 2024: A nine judge Bench held that royalty is not a tax and that States retain legislative competence to tax mineral rights and mineral bearing land.
    3. Retrospective effect: The Court permitted recovery of dues from 1 April 2005, to be paid in staggered instalments over twelve years beginning 1 April 2026, without interest or penalty for the earlier period.
    4. State levies in force: Mineral rich States including Odisha, Jharkhand and West Bengal had enacted or revived levies on mineral rights in reliance on that ruling.
    5. The new limitation: The 2026 amendment now exercises the limitation power in Entry 50 to restrict those levies and vests sole authority to frame rules in the Centre.
    6. Central levies unaffected: Royalty under Section 9, the District Mineral Foundation contribution and the National Mineral Exploration Trust contribution of 2 per cent of royalty continue to be fixed centrally.

    Constitutional Provisions Related to Mineral Rights and State Taxation

    1. Article 246: Distributes legislative power between Parliament and State legislatures through the three lists of the Seventh Schedule.
    2. Entry 54, Union List: Gives Parliament power over the regulation of mines and mineral development to the extent that such control is declared by law to be expedient in the public interest.
    3. Entry 23, State List: Gives States power over the regulation of mines and mineral development, expressly subject to Entry 54 of the Union List.
    4. Entry 18, State List: Places land, including rights in land and land tenures, within the exclusive competence of the States.
    5. Entry 49, State List: Gives States the power to tax lands and buildings, which covers mineral bearing land as a class of land.
    6. Entry 50, State List: Gives States the power to tax mineral rights, subject to limitations imposed by Parliament by law relating to mineral development.
    7. Article 265: Provides that no tax shall be levied or collected except by authority of law.
    8. Article 254: Governs repugnancy between a central and a State law on a concurrent subject, and gives the central law primacy.

    What does the 2026 amendment actually change?

    1. Restriction on State taxes: The Bill restricts the power of States to levy taxes on mineral rights and on mineral bearing lands.
    2. Restriction on cesses: The restriction extends to cesses and other levies imposed on the same subject matter.
    3. Rule making centralised: An amendment grants sole authority over the framing of rules to the Centre.
    4. The Centre’s stated purpose: The government has argued that the amendment will promote mineral production, ensure mineral security and create a more uniform regulatory framework.
    5. Passage: The Bill was cleared by the Rajya Sabha and passed by Parliament on 13 August 2026 amid Opposition protests.

    How did the 2024 nine judge ruling set up this legislative response?

    1. The question referred: Whether royalty under the 1957 Act is a tax, and whether States retain independent power to tax mineral rights and mineral bearing land.
    2. The holding: By a majority of eight to one the Court held that royalty is not a tax, and that State competence under Entry 50 survives.
    3. The precedent overruled: The 1990 ruling that had treated royalty as a tax, and had thereby denied States a separate taxing field, was overturned.
    4. The fiscal consequence: Mineral rich States became entitled to arrears accumulated since 2005, an amount running into more than a lakh crore rupees across States.
    5. The opening the Court left: The judgment expressly preserved Parliament’s power under Entry 50 to impose limitations on State taxation of mineral rights, and the 2026 amendment uses exactly that power.

    Why do mineral rich States say the Bill strips their revenue base?

    1. Encroachment on land: The Kerala Chief Minister described the legislation as a serious encroachment on the State’s constitutional powers over land and a grave threat to India’s federal structure, and said the State would mount political and, if necessary, legal opposition.
    2. Land is a State subject: The Leader of the Opposition in Kerala argued that land falls under Entry 18 of the State List and that taxation of land is also a State subject, so the restriction enters the States’ constitutional domain.
    3. Disproportionate impact: Odisha’s former Chief Minister wrote that the provisions would disproportionately impact mineral rich States and cause massive revenue losses that would stifle the State’s developmental agenda.
    4. What the revenue funds: He stated that mining revenue finances healthcare, education, welfare schemes and infrastructure development across the State, and demanded a special Assembly session and a unanimous resolution.
    5. Fiscal autonomy claim: He described fiscal autonomy as a constitutional principle built into the federal system, and said stripping States of the power to tax their own mineral bearing lands strikes at cooperative federalism.
    6. Protest in Jharkhand: The Jharkhand Chief Minister called it a black Bill and warned of protests in every district, block, panchayat and town of the State.
    7. The privatisation charge: The Kerala Opposition alleged that the larger objective was to weaken the public sector and create opportunities for corporates to earn windfall profits.

    How was the Bill carried through Parliament?

    1. Passage amid protest: The Bill was passed while the Opposition was protesting, and the concerns raised about federalism were not addressed on the floor.
    2. Rights of affected people: The legislation overlooks the rights of those living on resource rich land, who are the first to bear the cost of expanded extraction.
    3. A pattern, not an exception: The amendment follows an established pattern of hurried lawmaking and continuing expansion of central powers at the cost of States and local communities.
    4. Session context: The monsoon session that began on 20 July 2026 passed several Bills with inadequate deliberation.
    5. What deliberation would have required: An all party meeting, circulation of the draft and consultation with State Chief Ministers were available and were not used.

    Can a Bill be constitutionally valid and still weaken federalism?

    1. The text supports the Centre: Entry 50 has always made State taxation of mineral rights subject to limitations imposed by Parliament, so the amendment uses a power the Constitution itself confers.
    2. The Court anticipated it: The 2024 judgment recognised that parliamentary limitation was available, so the amendment is a legislative answer within the space the ruling left open.
    3. The effect side: A limitation that removes the entire field converts a qualified State power into no power at all, which is a different thing from regulating its exercise.
    4. Who bears the loss: The States that lose most are the poorest resource States, whose own tax base is narrow and whose transfers do not compensate for mineral revenue.
    5. The federal principle at stake: Fiscal autonomy is not merely a revenue question, because a State that cannot tax its own resource base cannot plan expenditure independently of central transfers.
    6. The objection is not uniformly principled: The Kerala Opposition itself pointed out that the State government’s Revised Budget and White Paper on State finances proposed full privatisation of beach sand mining, which is the same direction it attacks in the Centre.

    Major Debates Surrounding Mineral Taxation and Federalism

    1. Royalty as tax or consideration: The 1990 ruling treated royalty as a tax, the 2004 five judge ruling read that as a drafting error, and the 2024 nine judge ruling settled it as a contractual consideration.
    2. How far a limitation may go: Whether Parliament’s power to impose limitations under Entry 50 extends to extinguishing the State’s taxing field altogether remains contested.
    3. Retrospective recovery burden: The staggered recovery of arrears from 2005 falls heavily on public sector miners and steel producers, and industry has argued it will be passed into input costs.
    4. Uniformity against autonomy: The Centre’s case for a single national regulatory framework for mineral security runs directly against the States’ claim to price their own resource endowment.
    5. Resource curse: Mineral rich States record among the highest poverty rates despite the highest extraction, which raises whether royalty and District Mineral Foundation flows compensate the host population at all.
    6. Community consent: The rights of Scheduled Area residents under the Fifth Schedule and the 1996 Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas Act sit uneasily with a centralised concession regime, as the Samatha and Niyamgiri rulings demonstrated.
    7. District Mineral Foundation utilisation: Large unspent balances and expenditure outside mining affected areas have raised the question whether local sharing works in practice.

    Challenges to the Mineral Taxation Framework after the Amendment

    1. Revenue substitution gap: No mechanism replaces the levies the States lose, e.g. Odisha’s mining revenue funds a large share of its own tax receipts and no equivalent central transfer has been announced.
    2. Litigation risk: The amendment invites a fresh constitutional challenge, e.g. the Kerala Chief Minister has already said the State will consider legal opposition to the Act.
    3. Investment uncertainty: Repeated changes to the fiscal regime deter long lead mining investment, e.g. bidders in mineral auctions price in future levy changes through lower premium bids.
    4. Local community exclusion: Centralised rule making distances the decision from those displaced, e.g. Niyamgiri in Odisha showed that consent of gram sabhas can defeat a project cleared at higher levels.
    5. Auction premium distortion: High auction premiums already compress operating margins, e.g. several iron ore blocks won at premiums above 100 per cent of sale value have remained unoperated.
    6. Enforcement of illegal mining controls: Restricting State fiscal powers does not address extraction outside the legal framework, e.g. illegal sand and iron ore mining continues to be reported across multiple States despite the auction regime.
    7. Environmental cost transfer: The framework does not price ecological damage into the concession, e.g. mining in the Aravallis and in central Indian forest belts has continued alongside contested clearances.

    Conclusion

    Entry 50 always made State taxation of mineral rights subject to limitation by Parliament, so the amendment uses a power the Constitution grants. Its effect is to reverse in statute the fiscal gain that a nine judge Bench gave mineral rich States in 2024. What remains unresolved is whether a formally valid limitation that removes an entire revenue base is compatible with fiscal federalism, and that question is now headed back to the courts.

    What is Fiscal Federalism?

    1. About: Fiscal federalism is the division of taxation powers, expenditure responsibilities and transfer mechanisms between the Union and the States in a federal system.
    2. Rationale: Revenue raising capacity is concentrated at the centre while service delivery responsibility sits with the States, so a transfer system is required to close the gap.
    3. Vertical fiscal imbalance: The mismatch between the Union’s revenue powers and the States’ expenditure responsibilities, corrected through tax devolution.
    4. Horizontal fiscal imbalance: The mismatch between States of differing income and need, corrected through the Finance Commission’s inter se distribution formula.
    5. Third tier imbalance: The mismatch at the level of panchayats and municipalities, whose own revenue is minimal and whose transfers depend on State Finance Commissions.

    Key Concerns Regarding Fiscal Federalism

    1. Shrinking divisible pool: Cesses and surcharges are not shared with States, so a growing share of central revenue sits outside the devolution formula.
    2. Loss of taxation autonomy under GST: States surrendered most of their independent indirect taxing power, leaving mineral rights and land among the few residual fields.
    3. Conditional transfers: Centrally sponsored schemes come with matching share and design conditions that constrain State expenditure choices.
    4. Weak third tier finance: Local bodies remain dependent on State transfers because property tax and user charge collection is under exploited.
    5. Borrowing limits: State borrowing under Article 293 requires central consent where the State is indebted to the Union, which constrains counter cyclical spending.

    Constitutional Framework Governing Mineral Rights and State Taxation

    1. Article 246: Distributes legislative competence between the Union and the States through the Seventh Schedule.
    2. Seventh Schedule: Contains the Union List, the State List and the Concurrent List that operationalise Article 246.
    3. Entry 54, Union List: Regulation of mines and mineral development to the extent declared by Parliament by law to be expedient in the public interest.
    4. Entry 23, State List: Regulation of mines and mineral development, subject to Entry 54 of the Union List.
    5. Entry 18, State List: Land, rights in land, land tenures and the relation of landlord and tenant.
    6. Entry 49, State List: Taxes on lands and buildings.
    7. Entry 50, State List: Taxes on mineral rights, subject to any limitations imposed by Parliament by law relating to mineral development.
    8. Article 265: No tax shall be levied or collected except by authority of law.
    9. The Mineral Area Development Authority line of cases: India Cement in 1990 treated royalty as a tax, Kesoram Industries in 2004 read that as a drafting error, and Mineral Area Development Authority in 2024 held by eight to one that royalty is not a tax and that Entry 50 competence survives.

    Laws and Rules Governing Mining in India

    1. Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957: The parent statute for mineral concessions; its Section 2 declaration is what brings mineral regulation under Union control.
    2. MMDR Amendment Act, 2015: Introduced auction as the only route for granting mineral concessions and created the District Mineral Foundation and the National Mineral Exploration Trust.
    3. MMDR Amendment Act, 2021: Removed the distinction between captive and merchant mines and allowed transfer of statutory clearances with the lease.
    4. MMDR Amendment Act, 2023: Created the exploration licence and moved twelve critical and deep seated minerals, including lithium and beryllium, to central auction under a new Part D.
    5. Mines Act, 1952: Governs worker safety, working hours and welfare in mines, enforced through the Directorate General of Mines Safety.
    6. Offshore Areas Mineral (Development and Regulation) Act, 2002: Governs mineral rights in territorial waters and the exclusive economic zone, amended in 2023 to introduce auctions.
    7. Mineral Conservation and Development Rules, 2017: Prescribe scientific mining, mine closure and conservation obligations for lessees.
    8. Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 and Forest Rights Act, 2006: Govern diversion of forest land and require settlement of individual and community forest rights before diversion.
    9. Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 (PESA): Requires consultation with the gram sabha before granting a mineral concession in a Scheduled Area.

    Back2Basics: Mineral Area Development Authority v. Steel Authority of India (2024)

    1. Bench strength: It was decided by a nine judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, the largest bench to sit on the question.
    2. Majority: The ruling was by a majority of eight to one.
    3. Core holding: Royalty payable under Section 9 of the 1957 Act is a contractual consideration and not a tax.
    4. Competence upheld: States retain legislative competence under Entry 50 of the State List to tax mineral rights, and under Entry 49 to tax mineral bearing land.
    5. Precedent overruled: It overruled India Cement Limited v. State of Tamil Nadu (1990), which had treated royalty as a tax.
    6. Limitation preserved: The Court recorded that Parliament may impose limitations on the Entry 50 power through a law relating to mineral development.
    7. Prospectivity ruling: In a separate order the Court allowed recovery of dues from 1 April 2005 in instalments over twelve years starting 1 April 2026, and waived interest and penalty for the period before the judgment.

    Government Initiatives for the Mineral Sector

    1. National Mineral Policy, 2019: Sets the policy framework for sustainable mining, exploration expansion and a right of first refusal in auctions for existing lessees.
    2. National Critical Mineral Mission: Launched to secure supply of critical minerals, targeting 1,200 domestic exploration projects by 2030 to 2031, production of 15 critical minerals and acquisition of 50 overseas assets.
    3. Khanij Bidesh India Limited (KABIL): A joint venture of three public sector undertakings to acquire mineral assets abroad, including lithium acreage in Argentina.
    4. Pradhan Mantri Khanij Kshetra Kalyan Yojana: Spends District Mineral Foundation funds on drinking water, health, education, sanitation and livelihoods in mining affected areas.
    5. National Mineral Exploration Trust: Funded by a levy of 2 per cent of royalty, it finances regional and detailed exploration by notified agencies.
    6. Mining Tenement System and Star Rating of Mines: Digitise concession records and grade operating mines on sustainable development performance.

    Key Facts about India’s Mineral Sector

    1. Production base: India produces 95 minerals, comprising fuel, metallic, non metallic, atomic and minor mineral categories.
    2. Global standing: India is the world’s second largest producer of coal and among the largest producers of iron ore and crude steel.
    3. Leading States: Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka and Rajasthan account for the bulk of the value of mineral production.
    4. Critical minerals list: India notified a list of 30 critical minerals in 2023, of which twelve were moved to central auction under the 2023 amendment.
    5. Foundation contribution: Lessees contribute 10 per cent of royalty to the District Mineral Foundation for auctioned leases and 30 per cent for older leases.
    6. Sector share: Mining and quarrying contribute roughly 2 to 3 per cent of gross value added, well below the share in comparable resource economies.

    Challenges in India’s Mining Sector

    1. Exploration deficit: Only a small fraction of the obvious geological potential area has been explored in detail, e.g. India still imports the bulk of its lithium, cobalt and rare earth requirement despite favourable geology.
    2. Land and forest clearance delays: Concession holders wait years for statutory clearances, e.g. blocks auctioned in central India have remained unoperated pending forest diversion approval.
    3. Displacement and rehabilitation: Mining displaces tribal populations without durable resettlement, e.g. the Niyamgiri hills case turned on the Dongria Kondh community’s rights over the proposed bauxite site.
    4. Illegal mining: Extraction outside the legal framework persists in high value and low value minerals alike, e.g. river sand mining continues to be reported across States despite auction and monitoring rules.
    5. Environmental damage: Overburden, dust and water table impact are inadequately priced, e.g. coal mining in the Singrauli belt has produced sustained air and water contamination.
    6. Occupational safety: Accident rates in mines remain high, e.g. rat hole coal mining in Meghalaya has caused repeated fatal flooding incidents despite prohibition.
    7. Value addition gap: India exports ore and imports processed metal, e.g. iron ore fines have historically been exported while high grade steel inputs are imported.

    Way Forward

    1. Compensate the fiscal loss: Route a defined share of central mineral levies back to producing States to replace the revenue the amendment removes.
    2. Legislate the limitation narrowly: Define the scope of the Entry 50 limitation in the statute so that the residual State field is stated rather than left to litigation.
    3. Institutionalise consultation: Refer contested federal legislation to a Joint Parliamentary Committee and consult State Chief Ministers before introduction.
    4. Strengthen local sharing: Audit District Mineral Foundation spending and restrict it to a defined radius around mining affected habitations.
    5. Expand exploration: Use the exploration licence route to bring private and junior exploration capital into deep seated and critical mineral search.
    6. Build processing capacity: Support domestic refining and separation of critical minerals so that concession reform translates into value addition rather than ore export.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2025, GS2, 15 marks] Examine the evolving pattern of Centre-State financial relations in the context of planned development in India. How far have the recent reforms impacted the fiscal federalism in India?”

  • Draft rules under the SHANTI Act open nuclear power to captive industrial use and a composite licence

    Why in the News

    The Department of Atomic Energy released draft rules under the Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Act on 14 August 2026, opening nuclear power generation to private and captive users. Comments are invited until 4 September 2026.

    What is the SHANTI Act?

    • Replaces the earlier state monopoly framework with a licensing regime for non-government operators.
    • Covers private participation, captive generation, foreign reactor technology, safety and nuclear liability.
    • Provides a single composite licence for building, owning, operating and decommissioning a reactor.

    Key Provisions

    1. Captive nuclear power: Industries can generate nuclear electricity mainly for their own consumption.
    2. In-principle approval: Allows land acquisition and vendor negotiations before final licensing.
    3. Foreign technology: Imported designs must be certified by the regulator in the country of origin and already operational.
    4. Nuclear liability: Operators must maintain insurance or financial security; a Nuclear Liability Fund is proposed.
    5. Eligible users: Aluminium, cement, data centres, semiconductor fabs and Artificial Intelligence (AI) facilities.

    Key Concern

    • The country-of-origin certification may speed up safety approval but restrict technology sourcing to a few countries. Requiring continued support and retaining Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) with foreign developers could also limit technology transfer and indigenous reactor design.

    India’s Nuclear Programme

    • Stage 1: Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs) using natural uranium.
    • Stage 2: Fast Breeder Reactors (FBRs) using plutonium.
    • Stage 3: Thorium-based reactors using Uranium-233 (U-233).
    • Target: 100 GW nuclear capacity by 2047.

    Challenges

    • Supplier liability concerns
    • Limited regulatory independence
    • Land and public acceptance
    • Uranium and fuel constraints
    • Nuclear waste management
    • High project costs and long construction timelines

    Prelims Pointers

    • DAE: Department of Atomic Energy
    • AERB: Atomic Energy Regulatory Board
    • NPCIL: Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited
    • BHAVINI: Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Limited
    • NPT: Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
    • NSG: Nuclear Suppliers Group
    • India is not a signatory to NPT and received an NSG waiver in 2008.

    [2018, GS3, 15 marks] With growing energy needs should India keep on expanding its nuclear energy programme? Discuss the facts and fears associated with nuclear energy.”

    [2020]  In India, why are some nuclear reactors kept under “IAEA safeguards” while others are not ?

    a) Some use uranium and others use thorium
    b) Some use imported uranium and others use domestic supplies
    c) Some are operated by foreign enterprises and others are operated by domestic enterprises
    d) Some are State-owned and others are privately-owned