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Type: States

Many questions regarding developments in specific states are asked in both prelims and mains. These Newscards correspond to such developments.

  • Punjab’s decade-long journey towards a formal sacrilege law

    Why in the News

    Punjab brought a stringent sacrilege law into force in April 2026 by amending an existing State statute on the ceremonial custody of the Guru Granth Sahib, avoiding the Presidential assent that had defeated three earlier attempts. The route exposes a conflict between a State's determination to legislate on religious sentiment and the constitutional limits set by secularism, equality, proportionality and the division of legislative competence. A challenge to the Act is pending before the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

    What does Punjab's 2026 sacrilege law do?

    1. What it penalises: It punishes sacrilege committed against the Guru Granth Sahib, and covers no other religious scripture.
    2. The sentence it carries: Its most serious provisions carry a mandatory minimum sentence extending to life imprisonment, leaving no room for a judge to calibrate punishment to the facts of a case.
    3. The statute it amends: It amends a pre existing State law concerned specifically with the ceremonial custody of the Guru Granth Sahib, rather than the central penal code.
    4. How it was brought into force: Because the State argued the amendment falls within its own legislative competence, it claimed no Presidential assent was needed, and the Governor's signature brought it into force in April 2026.

    What is the current status of sacrilege law in India?

    1. The central provision: Insulting religion or religious beliefs with deliberate and malicious intent is an offence under Section 299 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, the successor to Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code, 1860.
    2. The settled constitutional position: Section 295A was upheld in Ramji Lal Modi, and the Supreme Court has not revisited that ruling in almost sixty years.
    3. The intent requirement on paper: Conviction requires proof of deliberate and malicious intent, a threshold the court reads into the provision.
    4. Where the practical harm falls: Indian criminal procedure allows a First Information Report to be lodged and an accused arrested well before any court examines whether that intent was present, so the chilling effect operates at the point of complaint, not at the point of conviction.
    5. No standalone national sacrilege statute: There is no separate central law on sacrilege beyond the religious offence provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, which is why Punjab has repeatedly attempted a State law.

    Constitutional Provisions Related to Sacrilege, Speech and Secularism

    1. Article 14: Guarantees equality before the law, and permits classification only where an intelligible differentia bears a rational nexus to the law's stated purpose.
    2. Article 19(1)(a): Guarantees freedom of speech and expression to all citizens.
    3. Article 19(2): Permits reasonable restrictions on that freedom in the interests of public order, decency or morality, among other grounds.
    4. Article 21: Guarantees life and personal liberty, which the Supreme Court has read as requiring a just, fair and reasonable procedure.
    5. Article 25: Guarantees freedom of conscience and the free profession, practice and propagation of religion, subject to public order, morality and health, and permits the State to legislate for social welfare and reform even where this cuts against religious custom.
    6. Entry 1, Concurrent List, Seventh Schedule: Places criminal law within the legislative competence of both Parliament and the State legislatures.
    7. Article 254: Provides that a State law repugnant to a central enactment on the same Concurrent List subject is void to that extent.
    8. Article 254(2): Saves such a State law only where it has been reserved for and has received the assent of the President.

    How did Punjab arrive at this law across a decade?

    1. 2016, the first attempt: The then Akali Dal and Bharatiya Janata Party government passed a bill imposing life imprisonment for sacrilege committed specifically against the Guru Granth Sahib. The Centre returned it, objecting that a law protecting only one religion's scripture could not sit easily with India's secular Constitution.
    2. 2018, the second attempt: The succeeding Congress government extended the same life sentence to the Guru Granth Sahib, the Bhagavad Gita, the Quran and the Bible, through a new Section 295AA of the penal code. That Bill was also returned without Presidential assent.
    3. July 2025, the third attempt: The Aam Aadmi Party government introduced the Punjab Prevention of Offences Against Holy Scripture(s) Bill, again covering all four texts, with sentences ranging from ten years to life. It was sent to a select committee and has since been effectively shelved.
    4. April 2026, the successful route: The State abandoned the amendment of the central penal code and instead amended an existing State statute on the ceremonial custody of the Guru Granth Sahib, bringing the law into force on the Governor's signature alone.
    5. The pattern the sequence shows: A State legislature has persistently tried, by one route or another, to entrench a sacrilege code of ever increasing severity, undeterred by repeated constitutional rebuffs.

    Why does a religion specific penal law run into the equality guarantee?

    1. The classification test it must pass: A provision drawing a line between one community's sacred text and every other's needs an intelligible differentia bearing a rational nexus to its stated purpose, the test the Supreme Court set out in State of West Bengal versus Anwar Ali Sarkar.
    2. Why the classification fails on its own terms: The Act's stated purpose is communal harmony, framed in terms of all communities, and singling out one faith's scripture does not serve a purpose framed in terms of all of them.
    3. The objection is not new: By protecting only the Guru Granth Sahib, the 2026 Act revives precisely the objection that sank the 2016 attempt.
    4. The pending litigation: In May 2026, the Anglican Church of India, through its Amritsar bishop, petitioned the Punjab and Haryana High Court arguing that the Act creates a religion specific penal regime violating equality before law, and sought both the quashing of the Act and a stay on its implementation.
    5. The standing wrinkle: The Bench reportedly questioned how a church whose own scripture the Act does not touch could claim to be aggrieved by it, a question that demonstrates the very defect alleged, since a law can discriminate in structure while leaving those it excludes without the conventional standing to challenge it. The petition remains pending.

    Why does the mandatory life sentence raise a proportionality problem?

    1. What the Act does: Its most serious provisions carry a mandatory minimum sentence extending to life imprisonment, removing all sentencing discretion from the trial judge.
    2. The controlling precedent: In Mithu versus State of Punjab, the Supreme Court struck down a different mandatory sentencing provision precisely because it stripped courts of discretion.
    3. The standard applied: Mithu applied the requirement of a just, fair and reasonable procedure that Maneka Gandhi versus Union of India had read into Article 21.
    4. The parallel is close: The earlier case also arose out of Punjab, which makes the comparison with the 2026 Act direct rather than analogical.
    5. Why proportionality matters here: Sacrilege covers conduct ranging from a deliberate desecration to an inadvertent act, and a single fixed maximum sentence prevents a court from distinguishing between them.

    Does the State have the legislative competence to enact this law?

    1. Where the subject sits: Criminal law sits on the Concurrent List, so both Parliament and the State legislature may legislate on it.
    2. The repugnancy rule: Article 254 makes a State law repugnant to a central enactment on the same subject void to that extent, and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 carries its own provisions on sacrilege and on outraging religious feeling.
    3. The only saving route: Article 254(2) saves such a State law only where it has received Presidential assent, which is the requirement that defeated the 2016 and 2018 Bills.
    4. How Punjab avoided it: The State amended a pre existing, ostensibly ceremonial statute rather than the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita directly, and argued that no assent was therefore needed.
    5. The challenge to that route: A petition before the Punjab and Haryana High Court argues that a life sentence is a matter of criminal law and cannot dodge central scrutiny merely by changing which statute book it sits in.

    Why does the free speech objection survive despite Ramji Lal Modi?

    1. The vagueness of the operative terms: Section 295A and its successor in the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 rest on terms such as outrage, insult and religious feelings, policed after the fact by whichever officer receives the complaint.
    2. The precedent that should apply: In Shreya Singhal versus Union of India in 2015, the court struck down Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 in its entirety, holding that criminalising online messages using undefined terms such as offensive and menacing left the provision impermissibly vague, invited arbitrary enforcement and chilled protected speech in violation of Article 19(1)(a).
    3. The terms are no more precise: The words on which the religious offence provisions rest are as undefined as the words the court found fatal in Shreya Singhal.
    4. What the court has not done: It has never brought the Shreya Singhal reasoning to bear on Section 295A, whose constitutionality it settled in Ramji Lal Modi almost sixty years earlier and has not revisited since.
    5. The reason for the gap: The inconsistency reads as reluctance rather than principle, since it is easier to strike down a recent statute governing an unfamiliar medium than to unsettle an eighty year old precedent with a long and emotionally fraught history behind it.
    6. What the vagueness enables: A cartoon, a novel, a documentary or a stray remark on social media can all be made to fit the language of insult without any accompanying threat of actual disorder.

    Major debates surrounding sacrilege law

    1. Secularism as an unamendable limit: Secularism was declared part of the Constitution's unamendable basic structure in S.R. Bommai versus Union of India, precisely so that the State could neither favour a religion nor punish disrespect towards one, and a sacrilege law does the second.
    2. Religious freedom against religious reform: Article 25 protects the practice of religion and at the same time preserves the space for social reformers, sceptics and atheists to challenge religious practice, since the right is subject to public order, morality and health and the State may legislate for reform.
    3. Public order as a threshold or a label: One position requires an actual threat of disorder before speech may be punished, the other treats the giving of offence as itself a disturbance of public order.
    4. Ramji Lal Modi against Shreya Singhal: Two lines of authority now sit in tension, one upholding a vague religious offence provision and the other striking down a vague online speech provision on the same reasoning.
    5. Federal competence against local sentiment: A State legislature responding to local religious sentiment collides with a national criminal code and the Article 254 assent requirement designed to keep criminal law uniform.
    6. Deterrence against chilling effect: Severe sentences are defended as deterrence against desecration, and are opposed on the ground that the harm is inflicted at the stage of arrest, long before any court weighs intent.

    Challenges to enforcing a sacrilege law

    1. Undefined operative terms: Insult and outrage are not statutorily defined, so the same conduct produces prosecution in one district and none in another. e.g. Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 was struck down in Shreya Singhal in 2015 for exactly this defect.
    2. Arrest precedes adjudication of intent: A First Information Report can be registered and an accused arrested before any court tests the deliberate and malicious intent the offence requires. e.g. the 2026 Punjab Act's life sentence attaches to a charge that a magistrate never has to evaluate before custody begins.
    3. Selective protection invites litigation: Protecting one scripture and not others invites an equality challenge that can stall the law for years. e.g. the Anglican Church of India's May 2026 petition before the Punjab and Haryana High Court, still pending.
    4. No sentencing discretion: A mandatory minimum forces the same punishment on a deliberate desecration and an inadvertent act. e.g. Mithu versus State of Punjab struck down a mandatory sentencing provision for removing exactly this discretion.
    5. Repugnancy risk to the whole statute: A State criminal law that overlaps a central enactment is void to the extent of repugnancy unless it carries Presidential assent, so the entire Act can fall on a procedural ground. e.g. the 2016 and 2018 Punjab Bills were both returned without assent.
    6. Incentive for mob complaint: A severe penalty attached to a subjective standard makes the police complaint itself a weapon against critics, writers and artists. e.g. the returned 2018 Bill would have extended a life sentence to insult of four separate scriptures, multiplying the categories of complainant.
    7. Standing gap for excluded groups: A community whose scripture the law does not cover may be told it is not aggrieved, so the discrimination cannot be tested. e.g. the Punjab and Haryana High Court's question to the Amritsar bishop in the pending petition.

    Conclusion

    Punjab's 2026 Act carries three distinct constitutional infirmities at once: an equality defect under the Anwar Ali Sarkar test, a proportionality defect under Mithu, and a legislative competence defect under Article 254. Each of these is separate from the broader secularism objection that a State may neither favour a religion nor punish disrespect towards one. The petitions challenging the Act remain pending before the Punjab and Haryana High Court, and the next milestone is that court's decision on the quashing and stay applications.

    What is Secularism as a Constitutional Doctrine?

    1. About: Indian secularism requires the State to maintain equal distance from all religions, neither establishing nor favouring one, while retaining the power to regulate the secular aspects of religious practice.
    2. Rationale: It exists to secure equal citizenship in a society of multiple faiths, so that a citizen's legal standing does not vary with religious affiliation.
    3. Its constitutional status: It was declared part of the Constitution's unamendable basic structure in S.R. Bommai versus Union of India, and was written into the Preamble by the Forty second Amendment in 1976.
    4. Its distinguishing feature: Unlike a strict wall of separation, the Indian model allows positive State intervention in religion for social welfare and reform, which Article 25(2) expressly authorises.
    5. Where it is enforced: Articles 25 to 28 supply the operative provisions, and Article 15 and Article 16 bar religious discrimination by the State.

    Key Concerns Regarding Constitutional Secularism

    1. State regulation shading into State preference: The power to reform religious practice can be exercised unevenly across communities, converting regulation into favour.
    2. Religious offence provisions in a secular code: Criminal provisions protecting religious feelings require the State to adjudicate what counts as an insult to faith, a task secularism was meant to keep it out of.
    3. Uneven codification of personal law: Some communities' family law is codified and reviewable while others' is not, producing different legal protection for identically placed citizens.
    4. The essential religious practices test: Courts must decide what is essential to a religion before they may regulate it, drawing judges into theological determination.
    5. Local majoritarian legislation: State legislatures respond to locally dominant religious sentiment, so a nationally uniform standard fragments at the State level.
    6. Enforcement discretion at the police station: Where the offence turns on a subjective standard, the identity of the complainant rather than the conduct determines whether the law is invoked.

    Laws and Rules Governing Speech Restrictions in India

    Source: Backgrounder, Limits on Speech.docx

    1. Constitutional provision: Article 19(1)(a) guarantees free speech and Article 19(2) permits enumerated reasonable restrictions.
    2. Constitutional anchors for hate speech regulation: Article 14 on equality, Article 15 on non discrimination, Article 21 on dignity, Article 51A on the fundamental duty of harmony, and the Preambular value of fraternity.
    3. Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023: Section 196 on promoting enmity between groups, Section 197 on imputations prejudicial to national integration, Section 299 on outraging religious feelings, and Section 356 on defamation.
    4. Section 152, effective from 1 July 2024, replaced Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 and criminalises acts exciting secession, armed rebellion, subversive activities, separatist feelings or endangering sovereignty, unity and integrity, with punishment extending to life imprisonment.
    5. Representation of the People Act, 1951: Section 123(4) prohibits false statements about candidates during elections, and the Act carries the electoral speech restrictions.
    6. Information Technology Act, 2000 and the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021: Govern online content, intermediary due diligence and takedown obligations.
    7. Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995: Prohibits misleading and prohibited broadcast content under its Programme Code.
    8. Cinematograph Act, 1952: Governs film certification and censorship.
    9. Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986: Restricts indecent depiction of women in publications and advertisements.
    10. Kedar Nath Singh versus State of Bihar (1962): Sedition requires both a tendency to create disorder and incitement to violence, and vigorous criticism of government measures is protected.
    11. Shreya Singhal versus Union of India (2015): Distinguishes discussion, advocacy and incitement, protects discussion and advocacy even where unpopular, and holds that vague terms such as annoyance or inconvenience cannot be the basis for restricting speech.
    12. Amish Devgan versus Union of India (2020): Applies a three part contextual test of content, intent of the speaker and harm caused or likely to be caused, with public figures held to a higher standard.
    13. Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay versus Union of India (29 April 2026): The Supreme Court dismissed a batch of petitions seeking new hate speech laws, holding that creating criminal offences belongs exclusively to the legislature and that the existing framework is adequate, the real problem being an enforcement deficit.

    Back2Basics: S.R. Bommai versus Union of India

    1. What it is: A Supreme Court ruling of 1994 delivered by a nine judge bench, arising out of the dismissal of State governments and the imposition of President's Rule under Article 356.
    2. Its holding on federalism: It made the exercise of Article 356 justiciable, requiring the proclamation to rest on relevant material and permitting courts to restore a dismissed government.
    3. Its holding on secularism: It declared secularism a part of the Constitution's basic structure, and therefore beyond the amending power under Article 368.
    4. The consequence for State action: A State government acting against secularism can itself be a ground for action under Article 356.
    5. Why it governs this item: It is the authority for the proposition that the State may neither favour a religion nor punish disrespect towards one, which is the core objection to a scripture specific penal law.
    6. Its broader effect: It sharply reduced the routine use of President's Rule, which had been invoked over a hundred times before the ruling.

    Way Forward

    1. Legislate through the correct route: A State that wishes to create a criminal offence on a Concurrent List subject should reserve the Bill for Presidential assent under Article 254(2) rather than route it through a ceremonial statute.
    2. Protect all scriptures equally or none: A provision framed around communal harmony must apply uniformly across faiths to satisfy the intelligible differentia and rational nexus test.
    3. Restore sentencing discretion: Replacing the mandatory minimum with a graded range lets courts distinguish deliberate desecration from an inadvertent act, meeting the Mithu standard.
    4. Define the operative terms: Statutory definitions of insult and religious feelings, and an express requirement of proximate incitement, would reduce the vagueness Shreya Singhal identified as fatal.
    5. Insert a pre registration safeguard: Requiring a preliminary inquiry or prior sanction before a First Information Report is registered addresses the chilling effect that operates at the point of complaint.
    6. Refer Ramji Lal Modi for reconsideration: A larger bench revisiting the 1957 ruling in the light of Shreya Singhal would settle the doctrinal inconsistency that now runs through religious offence law.

    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?”

  • Telangana’s 94 Lakh Electors Face SIR Scrutiny

    Why in the News

    The Telangana Chief Electoral Officer’s office records that only 78.3 percent of enumeration forms in the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls have been digitised, with the remaining 21.7 percent classified as uncollectable. Together with nearly 20 lakh technically inconsistent or unmapped entries, close to 94 lakh electors now face scrutiny, exposing a conflict between the Election Commission’s duty to purify the roll and the elector’s burden of proving continued existence at a particular address.

    What is the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls?

    1. Nature of the exercise: SIR is a house to house re-verification of the entire electoral roll ordered by the Election Commission of India, distinct from the routine annual summary revision that only adds and deletes at the margin.
    2. Core method: Every existing elector is served an enumeration form and must return it with supporting particulars, so continued enrolment depends on a fresh positive response rather than on the presumption of an existing entry.
    3. Statutory anchor: The revision is conducted under the Representation of the People Act, 1950, read with the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, which govern preparation and revision of rolls.
    4. Output of the exercise: The Commission publishes a draft roll, invites claims and objections, disposes of them, and then publishes the final roll that governs the next election.
    5. Stated purpose: The exercise removes deceased, shifted, duplicate and ineligible entries and is intended to produce a roll free of multiple enrolment across constituencies.

    What is a Booth Level Officer (BLO)?

    1. Who they are: A Booth Level Officer is a local government functionary, usually a schoolteacher, anganwadi worker or panchayat employee, appointed by the Electoral Registration Officer for one polling station area.
    2. Core duty: The BLO conducts door to door verification, distributes and collects enumeration forms and reports additions, deletions and corrections for that booth.

    What is a Booth Level Agent (BLA)?

    1. Who they are: A Booth Level Agent is a party appointed representative attached to a polling station, authorised to submit claims and objections in bulk on behalf of a recognised political party.
    2. Function in a revision: The BLA is the party’s only institutional means of tracking who is being added to or removed from the roll while the revision is still under way.

    What is the claims and objections phase?

    1. What it is: After the draft roll is published, any person may file a claim for inclusion or correction, and any elector may file an objection to another person’s entry, within a notified window.
    2. Why it matters here: An elector whose form is missing, uncollected or found to contain discrepancies must use this window to restore the entry, which shifts the burden of proof onto the individual.

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

    1. Who holds the right: Every citizen of India not less than 18 years of age on the qualifying date, ordinarily resident in a constituency and not otherwise disqualified, is entitled to be registered as an elector.
    2. Nature of the right: The right to vote is a statutory right conferred by the Representation of the People Act, 1950 and 1951, not a fundamental right, though the Supreme Court has treated the act of voting as an expression of choice touching Article 19(1)(a).
    3. Age threshold: The voting age was lowered from 21 to 18 years by the Sixty first Constitutional Amendment Act, 1988.
    4. Bar on discrimination: No person may be excluded from a roll on grounds only of religion, race, caste or sex, and separate electorates stand abolished.
    5. Grounds of disqualification: Non citizenship, unsoundness of mind declared by a competent court, and corrupt practices or electoral offences under the Representation of the People Act, 1951 disqualify a person from registration.
    6. Practical precondition: Enrolment requires ordinary residence in the constituency, which is the exact test that a migration heavy electorate such as Telangana’s strains.

    Which constitutional provisions govern electoral rolls and the franchise?

    1. Article 324: Vests superintendence, direction and control of the preparation of the electoral rolls and the conduct of all elections to Parliament, State legislatures, the office of President and the office of Vice President in the Election Commission of India.
    2. Article 325: Provides for a single general electoral roll for every territorial constituency and bars exclusion on grounds only of religion, race, caste or sex.
    3. Article 326: Establishes adult suffrage as the basis of elections to the Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assemblies, with non residence, unsoundness of mind, crime, corrupt practice or illegal practice as the only permitted disqualifications.
    4. Article 327: Empowers Parliament to make law on all matters relating to elections, including the preparation of electoral rolls.
    5. Article 328: Empowers a State legislature to legislate on election matters for that State where Parliament has not occupied the field.
    6. Article 329: Bars courts from questioning the delimitation of constituencies and confines challenges to an election to an election petition filed under law.

    What does the Telangana revision’s own arithmetic show?

    1. Total electorate: The Chief Electoral Officer’s office records a total electorate of 3,38,26,448 in Telangana.
    2. Forms digitised: 2,64,86,214 enumeration forms have been digitised, a completion rate of 78.3 percent.
    3. Forms uncollectable: The remaining 21.7 percent stand classified as uncollectable, the category at the centre of the dispute.
    4. Additional problem entries: Nearly 20 lakh entries have been identified as technically inconsistent or unmapped, which is separate from the uncollectable set.
    5. Aggregate exposure: The two categories together account for nearly 94 lakh electors who may face scrutiny during the revision.
    6. Political reading of the figure: The State’s Chief Minister has warned party colleagues that a potential reduction of 21 percent in voter numbers would carry serious consequences.

    What exactly does the uncollectable category contain?

    1. Deceased: 9,22,230 electors are recorded as deceased.
    2. Absent or untraceable: 11,25,546 electors are marked absent or untraceable.
    3. Permanently shifted: 45,18,961 electors are listed as permanently shifted, the single largest component of the set.
    4. Enrolled elsewhere: 6,70,203 electors are shown as enrolled elsewhere.
    5. Other categories: 1,02,294 electors fall under residual other categories.

    Why has the uncollectable count risen so far?

    1. Verification substituted, not performed: Overburdened Booth Level Officers allegedly skipped mandatory door to door verification in several areas and worked instead from centralised collection points.
    2. Consequence of that substitution: Persons who could not travel to those collection centres were marked unavailable, so an administrative shortcut is recorded as an elector’s absence.
    3. Geographic concentration: The problem is concentrated in districts around Hyderabad, specifically the erstwhile districts of Ranga Reddy, Medak, Mahabubnagar and Nalgonda, which have seen substantial migration to the capital region.
    4. The dual voter imbalance: People who moved to Hyderabad retained their votes in their native places, producing low local enrolment across the 28 Assembly segments falling under the Hyderabad, Secunderabad, Chevella and Malkajgiri Lok Sabha constituencies.
    5. Interstate migration: Migrant workers from Bihar, Chhattisgarh and other States also vote in their home States rather than registering locally, which leaves them unavailable at the Telangana address on record.
    6. Absence of party level checks: The ruling party did not deploy adequate Booth Level Agents during field verification, so lapses in the revision went unchallenged while opposition parties monitored enrolment patterns closely.

    Why does a roll cleaning exercise carry a disenfranchisement risk?

    1. Both claims are legitimate: A roll carrying deceased and duplicate entries is a genuine integrity problem, and a revision that deletes a living elector is a genuine rights problem, and the same exercise produces both outcomes.
    2. The burden inverts: Once an entry is classed uncollectable, the elector must affirmatively reclaim it during claims and objections, so the cost of an official’s failure falls on the individual.
    3. Incidence is not neutral: Deletions concentrate among minorities, low income households and socio economically weaker groups, precisely the electors least able to navigate a documentary appeal.
    4. Loss extends beyond the vote: Losing an entry can also affect access to welfare linked identity systems and government benefits, since the roll functions as a residence proof in practice.
    5. Scale defeats remedy: A claims window designed for marginal correction cannot realistically process nearly 94 lakh contested entries within a normal revision calendar.
    6. Comparative anxiety: The concern is framed against roll controversies in other States where large scale deletions are alleged to have altered electoral outcomes.

    What are the major debates surrounding electoral roll revision?

    1. Purity versus inclusion: One position treats a bloated roll as the primary threat to a fair election, the other treats wrongful deletion as the graver harm, and the Commission has no settled test for choosing between them.
    2. Ordinary residence versus migration: The ordinary residence requirement of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 assumes a settled population, which sits badly with an economy built on circular and long distance internal migration.
    3. Burden of proof: Whether the State must prove ineligibility before deletion, or the elector must prove eligibility to retain an entry, remains the central unresolved question of every intensive revision.
    4. Documentary thresholds: Any documentary requirement beyond the existing roll risks excluding electors who lack birth records, which raises a question of proportionality under Article 14.
    5. Aadhaar linkage: The voluntary linking of Aadhaar with the elector photo identity card, permitted after 2021, is contested on the ground that a residence and identity database is being used to test citizenship linked entitlement.
    6. Data and audit gap: No independent audit of deletion accuracy is published, so the actual error rate of any revision is unknown to both parties in the dispute.
    7. Migrant voting rights: The absence of a working remote voting mechanism means an internal migrant must choose between a vote at origin and residence at destination.

    Challenges to the Special Intensive Revision

    1. Field capacity deficit: A single Booth Level Officer handling more than a thousand electors alongside a regular government job cannot complete genuine door to door verification within a compressed calendar, e.g. Telangana’s revision saw officers operating from centralised collection points instead of visiting households.
    2. Migration blindness of the roll: The roll’s design assumes a fixed address, so circular migrants appear as absent rather than as electors resident elsewhere, e.g. 45,18,961 Telangana entries classed as permanently shifted with no corresponding transfer of registration.
    3. Asymmetric political capacity: Parties with dense booth level networks can protect their electors during verification while weaker parties cannot, e.g. Telangana’s ruling party admitted it failed to deploy adequate Booth Level Agents during field verification.
    4. Documentary exclusion of the poorest: Reclaiming a deleted entry requires paperwork that landless, informal and displaced households frequently lack, e.g. the 46 lakh distinct caste strings thrown up by the 2011 Socio Economic and Caste Census illustrate how weakly self reported records map onto official categories.
    5. Compressed appeal window: The claims and objections period is calibrated for marginal correction, not for mass restoration, e.g. nearly 94 lakh Telangana entries now require individual disposal inside a single revision cycle.
    6. Absence of a deletion audit: No independent verification of deletion accuracy is published before the final roll, e.g. neither the 11,25,546 absent or untraceable entries nor the nearly 20 lakh unmapped entries in Telangana have been sample audited.
    7. Federal friction over process: State governments read a centrally ordered intensive revision as an intrusion into a politically sensitive process, e.g. the Telangana Cabinet was alerted that a 21 percent reduction in voter numbers would carry serious consequences.

    Conclusion

    The Telangana revision has converted an administrative failure of verification into a question of individual entitlement, because an elector missed at the doorstep is recorded as an elector who does not exist. Nearly 94 lakh entries now stand exposed at the claims and objections phase, and the burden of correcting an officer’s shortcut has passed to the elector. The revision will only be defensible if field verification is genuinely completed and deletions are audited before the final roll is published.

  • Why Adivasis are resisting the Ken-Betwa river-linking project

    Why in the News

    Construction on the Daudhan dam across the Ken river in Madhya Pradesh’s Bundelkhand region is advancing while 22 villages in Panna and Chhatarpur districts face displacement. The project is designed to move water to 13 water stressed districts, and the households paying for that transfer are largely Gond Adivasi families whose forest based livelihoods and absence of recorded land title place them outside the compensation package built for the transfer. A protest movement led by Adivasi women has been running since 2022 and drew national attention in April and July 2026.

    What is the Ken Betwa river linking project?

    1. What it does: It transfers water described as surplus from the Ken river to the Betwa river through a canal, for irrigation and drinking water in Bundelkhand.
    2. Approval: The Union Cabinet approved the interlink in 2021.
    3. The canal: A 231 km long canal carries the transferred water between the two rivers.
    4. The dam: The Daudhan dam, built across the Ken inside the Panna landscape, is the main structure of the project.
    5. The beneficiary area: Water stressed districts of Bundelkhand, a region spanning 13 districts across Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.
    6. Its status in policy: It is the first link to be taken up for implementation under the national river interlinking programme.

    What is a patta?

    1. What it is: A document of recorded title or of a recognised right over land, issued by the revenue or forest administration.
    2. Why it decides everything here: Compensation for acquired land is paid per acre of titled land, so a family cultivating or using land without a patta has no claim to that component.

    What is the Forest Advisory Committee?

    1. What it is: The statutory committee under the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 that advises the Union government on proposals to divert forest land for non forest use.
    2. Its role here: Its 2017 record carries the detailed project report’s estimate of the tree felling the project requires.

    What is the Chita Aandolan?

    1. What it is: A symbolic pyre protest in which affected villagers lie on funeral pyres to signal that displacement amounts to the end of their life in the place.
    2. Who leads it: It has been led by Adivasi women of the affected villages and has run since 2022.

    What is minor forest produce?

    1. What it is: Non timber produce of plant origin gathered from forests, including mahua flowers, tendu leaves, fruits, resins and seeds.
    2. Why it is the livelihood question: Households in the affected villages meet their cash and food needs by collecting charwa, mahua, tendu leaves and guli golanda, none of which is valued in a land based compensation formula.

    What are the numbers behind the displacement?

    1. Villages submerged: 10 villages, including Daudhan, will be submerged by the reservoir.
    2. Villages displaced for compensatory forest: Because the project falls within the Panna Tiger Reserve, the people of another 12 villages will be displaced to offset the loss of forest area.
    3. Total affected: 22 villages across Panna and Chhatarpur districts in all.
    4. Population at the dam site: Around 700 people live in Daudhan village, next to which construction is under way.
    5. A village outside the submergence zone: Narauli, home to around 300 people and inhabited mostly by the Gond community, sits on a hill outside the submergence zone and faces the same loss of forest access.
    6. Cash compensation: Villagers who were 18 years or older in February 2024 are eligible for Rs 12.5 lakh each.
    7. Land compensation: Rs 5 lakh per acre of acquired land, payable only against titled land.
    8. Tree felling: A 2017 Forest Advisory Committee record carries the detailed project report estimate that 23 lakh trees will be felled. Some experts hold this to be an underestimate.
    9. Forest area submerged: The Daudhan dam submerges about 4,141 hectares of Panna Tiger Reserve land, within a wider rehabilitation process affecting about 1,913 families.

    How has the resistance developed?

    1. Start of the movement: The Chita Aandolan, or symbolic pyre protest, has been running since 2022.
    2. Preventive detention: The leader of the movement was placed under preventive detention in February 2026.
    3. Gathering at the magistrate’s office: About 200 villagers assembled at the sub divisional magistrate’s office demanding his immediate release.
    4. Police account of the escalation: The Superintendent of Police, Chhatarpur, stated that villagers later locked the office and threw stones at revenue officials and at a marriage procession, after which the police used minimum limited force.
    5. April protest: Affected Adivasi families staged a pyre protest in Chhatarpur on 10 April 2026, which brought the movement national attention.
    6. July protest: Villagers again lay on symbolic pyres and began a hunger strike at the Barnar river, with a protest on the banks on 18 July.
    7. Clearance of the site: After 15 days, the police cleared the protest site.
    8. Dialogue that did not occur: The movement’s leader stated that the administration had promised a dialogue with representatives of the Centre, and that no such conversation took place.

    Why was the project approved?

    1. The surplus framing: The Ken is treated as carrying water beyond its basin’s need, and the Betwa basin as deficient, which is the premise the transfer rests on.
    2. The regional case: Bundelkhand is among India’s driest and most impoverished regions and has a long record of drought and distress migration.
    3. The stated purpose: Irrigation and drinking water for the water stressed districts of the region.
    4. The two rivers: The Ken rises in the Vindhyan plateau, flows mainly through Madhya Pradesh and joins the Yamuna at Banda in Uttar Pradesh. The Betwa also rises in the Vindhyas, flows mainly through Uttar Pradesh and meets the Yamuna at Hamirpur.
    5. Why both matter locally: Both rivers run through the same region, so the transfer moves water within Bundelkhand rather than out of it.
    6. The contested premise: The surplus classification is an assessment of basin yield, and it is the step that decides how much displacement is treated as justified.

    Why does monetary compensation fail to reach the affected?

    1. The title requirement: Most Adivasi families in the affected villages do not hold patta land, so the per acre component does not apply to them.
    2. The cut off date: Eligibility for the cash component is fixed by age as on February 2024, which excludes those who reached adulthood after that date.
    3. Forest income is unvalued: Livelihoods built on mahua, charwa, tendu leaves and other forest produce are not converted into any head of compensation.
    4. Non submergence villages: Narauli is not in the submergence zone yet loses the forest that sustains it, a loss the acquisition framework does not recognise.
    5. Standing assets: Trees planted over a lifetime, including mango, ber, kaitha and teak, are counted as forest loss for the project and not as household assets.
    6. Process complaints: Houses in some villages were demolished without adequate notice or compensation, according to the movement’s leader.

    What is being lost beyond land and houses?

    1. Community: Households state that relocation breaks the kinship network in which they live, so the social relations of the village do not travel with the compensation.
    2. Language: Villagers raise the loss of their own dialect in a new settlement as a distinct concern.
    3. Sacred geography: Village deities and sites of worship are tied to the specific location and cannot be relocated with the households.
    4. Birthplace claim: Residents describe the land along the Ken as their janam bhoomi, or place of birth, and treat that as an independent ground of refusal.
    5. Forest as an economy: The forest edge supplies food, cash income and fuel, so its loss is an income shock and not only a cultural one.
    6. The collective demand: The stated position is a forest for their forest, land for their land, water for their water and a village for their village.

    Where does the water security case collide with the displacement cost?

    1. Two legitimate claims: Drinking water and irrigation for 13 water stressed districts is a genuine public purpose. So is the security of tenure of the households inside the submergence zone.
    2. Same region, different people: The transfer moves water within Bundelkhand, so the beneficiaries and the displaced belong to the same drought affected region.
    3. The forest multiplier: Because the reservoir sits inside a tiger reserve, forest loss must be offset, which displaces a second set of 12 villages that the dam itself would not have touched.
    4. Compensation without capacity: A cash package can settle a title based claim. It cannot replace a forest based livelihood or a functioning village.
    5. The dialogue gap: Even where the project moves ahead, an immediate and structured negotiation on resettlement and rehabilitation with an organised community is missing, as the organiser of the Narmada Bachao Andolan has recorded.
    6. Deferred rather than resolved: Building the dam settles the water question and shifts the livelihood question to a resettlement site that has not been defined.

    What has the administrative response been?

    1. Claim of redressal: The District Magistrate of Chhatarpur in April stated that most of the demands raised during the April protests had been addressed.
    2. Silence since: The current District Magistrate and the Chief Executive Officer of the Zila Panchayat did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
    3. Revenue department: An email to the Principal Secretary of the Madhya Pradesh Revenue Department, which oversees land acquisition, drew no reply.
    4. Policing of protest: Villagers who went to Chhatarpur and Bijawar to press their demands state that the police responded with lathis.
    5. Official account of force: The Superintendent of Police stated that minimum limited force was used after the office was locked and stones were thrown.
    6. Field level messaging: Households report being told by the village revenue official that their land is going to submerge and that no further claim arises.

    What are the villagers demanding?

    1. April demands, first: A joint survey of land and houses by the administration and the affected families.
    2. April demands, second: Rs 25 lakh in compensation per individual.
    3. April demands, third: Four times the value of the land in compensation.
    4. April demands, fourth: A deadline of April 2026 for settlement of these claims.
    5. July demands, first: Three acres of land granted jointly in the names of the male and the female head of each family.
    6. July demands, second: A village for the displaced village, so that the community is resettled together rather than scattered.
    7. July demands, third: The same April 2026 deadline carried forward.
    8. The organising principle: The shift from cash amounts in April to land and village in July reflects a demand for restitution in kind rather than a higher price.

    Challenges to the Ken Betwa river linking project

    1. Contested surplus assessment: The classification of a river as surplus rests on basin yield estimates that independent hydrologists dispute. e.g. objections filed before the Supreme Court’s Central Empowered Committee on the Ken’s assessed surplus.
    2. Loss inside a protected area: The reservoir submerges core tiger habitat, which no compensatory afforestation reproduces. e.g. about 4,141 hectares of Panna Tiger Reserve land under submergence.
    3. Cumulative pressure on the same landscape: Further projects are cleared in the same corridor while the dam is under construction. e.g. the 1,800 MW Panari pumped storage project cleared on about 411 hectares in the Panna Ranipur corridor in August 2026.
    4. Compensatory afforestation cannot replace old growth: Plantations take decades to deliver the produce and habitat value of a felled forest. e.g. an estimated 23 lakh trees to be felled under the detailed project report.
    5. Forest rights not settled before acquisition: Individual and community claims under forest rights law are often unsettled when land is taken. e.g. Gond families in the affected villages without patta land.
    6. Resettlement site quality: Displaced households are commonly resettled on land without water, forest access or common grazing. e.g. the long unresolved rehabilitation record of the Sardar Sarovar oustees.
    7. Cost and time escalation: Long gestation interlinking works overrun both budget and schedule, which pushes rehabilitation spending to the end. e.g. an approved cost of about Rs 44,605 crore in 2021 with an eight year completion schedule.
    8. Downstream and interstate obligations: Water sharing commitments between Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh determine actual delivery, not the design capacity. e.g. the interstate memorandum of agreement signed on 22 March 2021.

    Conclusion

    The Ken Betwa link moves water within Bundelkhand, and it moves the entire cost of that transfer onto Adivasi households whose form of landholding and forest based income the compensation framework does not recognise. The design question is not the amount of the package but its unit: the villages are asking for land, forest and a resettled village, and the State is offering a per head cash sum against titled acres most of them do not hold. Until forest rights are settled and a defined resettlement site is negotiated with the community as a unit, construction will continue to run ahead of rehabilitation.

    Interlinking of Rivers in India

    1. The idea: Transferring water from basins assessed as surplus to basins assessed as deficient, through a network of storage dams and link canals.
    2. The plan: The National Perspective Plan of 1980 of the Ministry of Irrigation set out the framework for such transfers.
    3. The agency: The National Water Development Agency, set up in 1982, prepares feasibility and detailed project reports for the links.
    4. The scale: The plan identifies 30 links, comprising 16 under the peninsular component and 14 under the Himalayan component.
    5. The judicial push: The Supreme Court in 2012 directed the Union government to implement the interlinking programme in a time bound manner and to constitute a special committee.
    6. The first link: The Ken Betwa link is the first project taken up for implementation under the plan, with a dedicated authority created for it in 2021.
    7. The claimed benefit: Drought proofing, flood moderation, additional irrigated area and hydropower, drawn from moving water between basins with different rainfall regimes.

    Constitutional Framework Governing Water, Land and Forest Rights

    1. Seventh Schedule, State List Entry 17: Places water supply, irrigation, canals, drainage, embankments and water storage with the States, subject to Entry 56.
    2. Seventh Schedule, Union List Entry 56: Allows Parliament to regulate and develop interstate rivers and river valleys in the public interest.
    3. Seventh Schedule, Concurrent List Entry 17A and 17B: Place forests, and the protection of wild animals and birds, on the Concurrent List after the 42nd Amendment.
    4. Article 262: Empowers Parliament to provide for adjudication of interstate river water disputes and to bar the jurisdiction of courts in them.
    5. Article 21: Protects life and personal liberty, read to include the right to livelihood and to a healthy environment.
    6. Article 48A and Article 51A(g): Direct the State to protect the environment and forests, and place a corresponding fundamental duty on every citizen.
    7. Article 244 and the Fifth Schedule: Provide for the administration of Scheduled Areas and the protection of tribal interests, including through the Tribes Advisory Council.
    8. Article 243ZD read with Part IX: Places village level planning with the Panchayats, which is the base for consultation requirements in Scheduled Areas.

    Laws and Rules Governing Displacement, Forests and River Projects

    1. Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013: Governs acquisition, compensation and the rehabilitation entitlements of affected families.
    2. Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980: Requires prior central approval for diversion of forest land to non forest use, with compensatory afforestation and net present value payments.
    3. Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006: Recognises individual and community rights over forest land and produce for forest dwelling communities.
    4. Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972: Governs protected areas, and provides for tiger reserves, critical tiger habitats and the National Tiger Conservation Authority.
    5. Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 and the Environment Impact Assessment Notification, 2006: Provide the environmental clearance process, including public hearing and appraisal for river valley projects.
    6. Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996: Requires consultation with the Gram Sabha before land acquisition and resettlement in Scheduled Areas.
    7. Inter State River Water Disputes Act, 1956: Provides the tribunal mechanism for adjudicating disputes over interstate river waters.

    Back2Basics: Panna Tiger Reserve

    1. Designation: A tiger reserve, listed in the Places in News record as the protected area within which the Daudhan dam is being built.
    2. Location: Panna and Chhatarpur districts of Madhya Pradesh, on the Vindhyan range in the Bundelkhand region.
    3. Constitution: Panna National Park was notified in 1981 and the area was declared a tiger reserve in 1994 under Project Tiger.
    4. River: The Ken river flows through the reserve and supports its gorges, waterfalls and riverine habitat.
    5. International recognition: It was designated a biosphere reserve and was added to the UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves in 2020.
    6. Conservation record: Tigers became locally extinct in the reserve by 2009, and a reintroduction programme rebuilt the population, treated as a landmark recovery.
    7. Vegetation: Tropical dry deciduous forest with teak and kardhai woodland, interspersed with grassland and plateau.
    8. Fauna: Tiger, leopard, sloth bear, chital, chinkara, sambar and nilgai on land, with gharial, mugger and the Indian vulture along the Ken.
    9. Landscape connectivity: It links to the Nauradehi Wildlife Sanctuary and the Satpura landscape, and the Panna Ranipur corridor extends toward Uttar Pradesh.

    Government Initiatives

    1. Ken Betwa Link Project Authority: The special purpose body created in 2021 to execute the link, with an interstate memorandum of agreement signed on 22 March 2021.
    2. National Perspective Plan and the National Water Development Agency: The 1980 plan and the 1982 agency that prepare and appraise interlinking proposals.
    3. Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana: Consolidates irrigation schemes to expand assured irrigation and improve water use efficiency at the farm level.
    4. Atal Bhujal Yojana: Supports community led groundwater management in water stressed blocks, including in Bundelkhand districts.
    5. Jal Jeevan Mission: Aims at functional household tap connections in rural areas, the drinking water objective the link project is meant to support.
    6. Project Tiger and the National Tiger Conservation Authority: Provide the statutory and funding framework for tiger reserves such as Panna, including village relocation packages.
    7. Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority: Manages funds collected from forest diversion for compensatory afforestation and habitat improvement.

    Key Facts about the Ken Betwa Link Project

    1. Approval and cost: Approved by the Union Cabinet in December 2021 at a cost of about Rs 44,605 crore, with an eight year completion schedule.
    2. The agreement: A memorandum of agreement between the Union government, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh was signed on 22 March 2021, observed as World Water Day.
    3. Annual irrigation: Designed to provide annual irrigation to about 10.62 lakh hectares across the two States.
    4. Drinking water: Designed to supply drinking water to about 62 lakh people.
    5. Power: Includes 103 MW of hydropower and 27 MW of solar capacity.
    6. The dam: The Daudhan dam is about 77 metres high and about 2,031 metres long, with a tunnel system feeding the link canal.
    7. The rivers: The Ken and the Betwa are both tributaries of the Yamuna, joining it at Banda and Hamirpur respectively in Uttar Pradesh.
    8. The region: Bundelkhand covers 13 districts across Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh and is among India’s driest and most impoverished regions.

    Challenges in River Interlinking

    1. Basin surplus is contested science: Surplus and deficit classifications rest on yield estimates that vary with the data series used. e.g. disputes over the assessed surplus of the Ken before appraisal bodies.
    2. Ecological alteration of river regimes: Reduced downstream flow changes sediment transport, fish migration and floodplain recharge. e.g. gharial habitat along the Ken downstream of the Daudhan site.
    3. Forest and protected area loss: Links routinely pass through forests and sanctuaries where diversion cannot be reversed. e.g. submergence of about 4,141 hectares inside the Panna Tiger Reserve.
    4. Displacement and rehabilitation deficits: Resettlement lags construction, so families lose land before they receive an alternative. e.g. the long running rehabilitation disputes of the Sardar Sarovar project on the Narmada.
    5. Interstate political friction: Donor States resist parting with water once a project is under way. e.g. the long deadlock over the Mahanadi and the Godavari Cauvery link proposals.
    6. Cost and time overruns: Multi decade civil works escalate in cost, which squeezes the rehabilitation component first. e.g. the 2021 approved cost of about Rs 44,605 crore for a single link.
    7. Climate uncertainty: Interlinking assumes stable rainfall distribution between basins, which a changing monsoon does not guarantee. e.g. simultaneous drought across both donor and recipient basins in a deficient monsoon year.
    8. Groundwater alternatives neglected: Large transfers draw attention and funds away from cheaper local recharge and watershed options. e.g. traditional Bundelkhand tanks and chandela ponds that remain unrestored.

    Way Forward

    1. Settle forest rights first: Complete recognition of individual and community forest rights under the 2006 Act before any acquisition notification is issued.
    2. Resettle the village as a unit: Provide a single relocation site with forest access, water and common land so that community structure survives the move, as the affected families have demanded.
    3. Compensate the livelihood, not only the acre: Value minor forest produce income and standing trees in the entitlement package for households without titled land.
    4. Institutionalise dialogue: Create a standing negotiation forum between the project authority, the district administration and elected village representatives, with recorded minutes.
    5. Independent hydrological review: Publish and peer review the basin yield assessment on which the surplus classification rests, before further links are appraised.
    6. Fund rehabilitation ahead of construction: Ring fence the rehabilitation and resettlement outlay and release it before submergence rather than after.
    7. Restore local water systems in parallel: Revive tanks, ponds and watershed structures across Bundelkhand so that drought relief does not rest on a single project.
    8. Compensatory afforestation in contiguous blocks: Locate the compensatory forest within the same landscape and monitor survival rates, rather than counting saplings planted.

    “[2017, GS3, 10 marks] Not many years ago, river linking was a concept but it is becoming reality in the country. Discuss the advantages of river linking and its possible impact on the environment.”

  • In J&K, a facade of normalcy cannot substitute for peace

    Why in the News

    An administrative order circulating in Anantnag directed government employees to take part in a Tiranga Rally, making attendance at a State sponsored event an official obligation. The order brings out the central tension in the governance of Jammu and Kashmir since August 2019, between an official account of restored normalcy and a security regime of raids, dismissals, detentions and attachments that continues without pause. Whether participation of this kind reflects public enthusiasm or administrative compulsion is the question the order leaves unanswered.

    What is Article 370 of the Constitution?

    1. What it provided: A temporary provision under Part XXI that limited Parliament’s legislative power over Jammu and Kashmir to defence, foreign affairs and communications, with other laws requiring the State government’s concurrence.
    2. The linked provision: Article 35A, added by a 1954 Presidential Order, allowed the State to define permanent residents and reserve rights in employment and property for them.
    3. What changed in 2019: Presidential Orders of August 2019 applied the whole Constitution to the State and rendered Article 370 inoperative, and Article 35A ceased to apply.
    4. The statutory change: The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019 split the State into two Union Territories, Jammu and Kashmir with a legislature, and Ladakh without one.
    5. The judicial outcome: The Supreme Court upheld the 2019 measures in In re Article 370 of the Constitution (2023) and directed that statehood be restored and elections held.
    6. The contested question: The argument advanced in this piece treats the 2019 change as an abrogation imposed without consent, and reads subsequent governance as its continuation.

    Who is an overground worker?

    1. The term: A person alleged to provide logistical support to militants, such as shelter, transport, money or information, without taking part in armed action.
    2. Why the term matters: It is not defined in statute, so the label carries no fixed evidentiary threshold and can be applied to large numbers after a single incident.

    What is preventive detention?

    1. What it is: Detention ordered by the executive to prevent an anticipated act, without any charge, trial or conviction.
    2. Its basis: Article 22(3) to 22(7) carve preventive detention out of the ordinary protections against arrest, and permit detention up to three months before an Advisory Board must review it.

    What is the United Liberation Council?

    1. What it is: The name attached to a purported threat letter reported on 12 August, described by authorities and sections of the media as an affiliate of Lashkar e Taiba.
    2. What the letter did: It reportedly named several Kashmiri Pandit government employees and carried their telephone numbers.

    Why is the Tiranga Rally order treated as symptomatic rather than isolated?

    1. The object is not the issue: The objection is not to the national flag but to the coercive form of the instruction.
    2. Obligation replaces participation: When attendance at a government event becomes an administrative duty, the resulting turnout cannot be read as evidence of public sentiment.
    3. A pattern of governance: The order fits a style of administration that has defined the region since the Union government took direct control in August 2019.
    4. Display as policy output: A visible ceremony is treated as the deliverable, so the appearance of normalcy substitutes for the conditions that would produce it.
    5. Self defeating measurement: A government that compels attendance loses the only instrument that could have told it whether sentiment had actually changed.

    What measures define administration in the Valley since 2019?

    1. Raids and investigations: Searches and investigations by multiple central and State agencies have become a recurring feature of life in the Valley.
    2. Dismissals from service: Government employees have been dismissed over alleged links with militancy or with militant sympathisers, without the ordinary departmental process.
    3. Mass detention: Thousands have been detained after militant incidents, at times under broad allegations of being overground workers.
    4. Institutional closure: Educational and charitable institutions have faced closure or restriction over alleged links with banned organisations.
    5. Property attachment: Properties worth hundreds of crores of rupees have been attached under various laws.
    6. House demolition: Homes have been demolished where a member of the family stands accused of militancy.
    7. Post incident crackdowns: Thousands were reportedly detained after the killing of a police constable in south Kashmir, and the cycle of raids, detentions and suspicion followed the killing of migrant workers.

    What does the record on the Kashmiri Pandit community show?

    1. The threat letter: Reports on 12 August described a purported threat letter naming several Kashmiri Pandit government employees along with their telephone numbers.
    2. The attributed source: The letter was attributed to the United Liberation Council, described as an affiliate of Lashkar e Taiba.
    3. The casualty count: 25 members of the community have been targeted and killed since 2019.
    4. The named victims: They include Ajay Pandita Bharti, Rakesh Pandita, Makhan Lal Bindroo, Rahul Bhat, Rajni Bala, Puran Krishan Bhat and Sanjay Sharma.
    5. Why the memory matters: For a community displaced in the 1990s, each such threat revives the circumstances of that displacement rather than reading as an isolated crime.
    6. The return condition: Return has to rest on an environment in which the community feels safe, not on participation in official ceremonies designed to demonstrate that everything is normal.

    Why do the claim of normalcy and the continuing security regime contradict each other?

    1. The official account: The government tells the rest of India that Kashmir has entered a new era of peace and normalcy.
    2. The parallel reality: Extraordinary security measures, raids, detentions, dismissals and restrictions continue to shape the everyday lives of ordinary people.
    3. Both cannot be operative: A settled peace does not require a standing apparatus of preventive detention and property attachment to maintain it.
    4. The tourist test fails: Busy markets, full hotels and traffic on the roads are what a visitor sees in a few days. They measure commerce, not security of person.
    5. What each side gains: The government gains a demonstrable output in the display. The population gains nothing it can rely on when the display ends.
    6. The unresolved reminder: The threat letter of 12 August is the demonstration that the underlying problem has not closed, whatever the ceremonies record.

    How should normalcy actually be measured?

    1. Freedom to speak: Whether ordinary people feel secure enough to speak freely without anticipating consequences.
    2. Law as protection: Whether families believe the law will protect them rather than intimidate them.
    3. A visible future: Whether young people see a future for themselves in the region.
    4. Safe return: Whether communities that have suffered displacement and violence feel safe enough to return and rebuild their lives.

    What does the security regime do to a generation born after the conflict?

    1. Who they are: Those in their teens and twenties in Kashmir were born decades after the worst years of the conflict and bear no responsibility for the violence of the 1990s.
    2. What they observe: Many grow up watching fathers, brothers, relatives and neighbours being summoned, detained or questioned.
    3. Collective punishment: Large scale detentions and punitive measures after militant attacks deepen the perception that a whole community is being punished for the acts of individuals.
    4. The asymmetry they learn: One section of society is repeatedly assured that everything is normal while another is continually asked to prove that it is not a threat.
    5. The outcome: This produces bruised memory rather than reconciliation, and bruised memory does not disappear because officials are instructed to display flags.
    6. The time horizon: Brute force can silence a street for a period. It cannot silence a generation’s memory.

    What distinctions must the state draw?

    1. Militant and citizen: The State must distinguish between a militant and an ordinary citizen, which mass categorisation after an incident destroys.
    2. Accused and convicted: It must distinguish between an accused person and a convicted person, which dismissal, attachment and demolition before trial collapse.
    3. Family member and accused: It must distinguish between a family member and the person accused of committing a crime, which punitive action against a household erases.

    Challenges to restoring political normalcy in Jammu and Kashmir

    1. Punitive measures before adjudication: Attachment and demolition operate before a court has decided guilt, so the penalty precedes the finding. e.g. property attachments running to hundreds of crores of rupees under various laws since 2019.
    2. Undefined categories in enforcement: Terms such as overground worker carry no statutory definition, so detention scales with suspicion rather than evidence. e.g. thousands reportedly detained after the killing of a police constable in south Kashmir.
    3. Employment as a security instrument: Dismissal without departmental inquiry converts government service into a lever of security policy. e.g. dismissals of employees over alleged links with militancy since 2019.
    4. Targeted killings of minorities: The safety of returning and resident minority employees remains unsecured. e.g. 25 members of the Kashmiri Pandit community killed since 2019 and a threat letter naming employees on 12 August 2026.
    5. Statehood still pending: Restoration of full statehood remains incomplete, leaving an elected government without control over police and public order. e.g. the Supreme Court’s 2023 direction to restore statehood at the earliest.
    6. Space for civil society: Closure of educational and charitable institutions removes the mediating layer between the State and the population. e.g. restrictions on institutions over alleged links with banned organisations.
    7. Cross border sponsorship: Infiltration and external support keep the security justification alive irrespective of local political settlement. e.g. attacks on migrant workers in the Valley followed by area wide crackdowns.
    8. Economic dependence on tourism: A single security incident removes the region’s main visible income source. e.g. the collapse of bookings in the Valley after major attacks on visitors.

    Conclusion

    The administrative order in Anantnag is a small instrument, and its significance lies in what it substitutes for. Kashmir needs healing built on dignity, justice, security and dialogue, and healing cannot be produced by an order requiring attendance. A facade of normalcy may impress visitors, and it cannot substitute for real peace. The measure of whether the situation has changed is whether the State begins to distinguish the militant from the citizen and the accused from the convict, not whether the flag is displayed on schedule.

    Jammu and Kashmir after 2019

    1. Constitutional status: The former State was reorganised on 31 October 2019 into the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, with a legislature, and the Union Territory of Ladakh, without one.
    2. Political timeline: Assembly elections were held in 2024, the first since 2014, restoring an elected government to the Union Territory.
    3. Statehood question: Full statehood has not been restored. Public order and police remain with the Union government under the Reorganisation Act.
    4. Security geography: The region has a Line of Control of about 740 km with Pakistan and a Line of Actual Control segment with China in Ladakh.
    5. Displacement history: Large scale displacement of the Kashmiri Pandit community occurred from 1990, and return and rehabilitation remains an unfinished policy objective.
    6. Economy: Horticulture, handicrafts and tourism dominate the economy, all of which are directly sensitive to security incidents.

    Constitutional Framework Governing Jammu and Kashmir and Security Measures

    1. Article 1: Declares India a Union of States and makes the territories in the First Schedule part of that Union.
    2. Article 3: Empowers Parliament to form new States and Union Territories and to alter boundaries, the provision used for the 2019 reorganisation.
    3. Article 370: The temporary provision governing the State’s relationship with the Union, rendered inoperative by the Presidential Orders of August 2019.
    4. Article 14: Requires equality before the law, which limits arbitrary classification of persons or communities in security administration.
    5. Article 19: Guarantees freedom of speech, assembly, association and movement, subject to reasonable restrictions on the specified grounds.
    6. Article 21: Protects life and personal liberty, and requires that any deprivation follow a procedure that is fair, just and reasonable.
    7. Article 22: Provides protections on arrest, and separately permits preventive detention with an Advisory Board review after three months.
    8. Article 239A read with the Reorganisation Act: Provides the framework for a legislature in a Union Territory, with police and public order reserved to the Union in the case of Jammu and Kashmir.
    9. Article 355: Places a duty on the Union to protect every State against external aggression and internal disturbance.

    Laws and Rules Governing Security Administration in Jammu and Kashmir

    1. Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019: Created the two Union Territories and set out the distribution of legislative and executive power between them and the Union.
    2. Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967: The principal anti terrorism statute, providing for banning organisations, designating individuals and attaching proceeds of terrorism.
    3. Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978: Permits preventive detention for up to two years on grounds of security of the State or maintenance of public order.
    4. Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Powers Act, 1990: Confers search, arrest and use of force powers on the armed forces in areas declared disturbed, with prior sanction required for prosecution.
    5. National Investigation Agency Act, 2008: Establishes the central counter terrorism investigation agency and defines the scheduled offences it can take over.
    6. Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002: Provides for provisional attachment of property representing proceeds of crime, used in terror financing investigations.
    7. Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023: Replaces the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 and carries the powers to issue prohibitory orders and regulate assemblies.

    Back2Basics: In re Article 370 of the Constitution (2023)

    1. What it was: A Constitution Bench judgment of the Supreme Court on the validity of the Presidential Orders of August 2019 and the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019.
    2. Holding on sovereignty: The Court held that Jammu and Kashmir retained no element of internal sovereignty after its accession and the adoption of the Constitution.
    3. Holding on Article 370: Article 370 was held to be a temporary provision, and the President’s power to declare it inoperative was held to survive the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly of the State.
    4. Holding on Article 35A: The Court held that the removal of Article 35A did not violate the fundamental rights framework.
    5. Direction on statehood: The Court directed that the statehood of Jammu and Kashmir be restored at the earliest, while upholding the carving out of Ladakh.
    6. Direction on elections: The Election Commission was directed to hold Assembly elections by 30 September 2024.
    7. Additional direction: The Court recommended a truth and reconciliation commission to examine human rights violations in the region since the 1980s.

    Government Initiatives

    1. Prime Minister’s Development Package, 2015: An outlay of about Rs 80,068 crore covering road, power, health, tourism and rehabilitation projects in the region.
    2. Prime Minister’s Package for Kashmiri Migrants: Provides government jobs and transit accommodation to support the return of displaced Kashmiri Pandit families to the Valley.
    3. Udaan and Himayat: Skill development and placement schemes for youth of the region, run through the National Skill Development Corporation and the rural livelihoods mission.
    4. Prime Minister’s Special Scholarship Scheme: Funds higher education outside the region for students from Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
    5. Security Related Expenditure scheme: Reimburses the Union Territory for expenditure on security, relief and rehabilitation of surrendered militants and civilian victims.
    6. Operation Sadbhavana and the Civic Action Programme: Army and central armed police force programmes that fund schools, medical camps and community infrastructure in border and affected areas.
    7. New Central Sector Scheme for Industrial Development, 2021: An outlay of about Rs 28,400 crore of capital and interest incentives to attract manufacturing investment to the Union Territory.

    Key Facts about Jammu and Kashmir

    1. Reorganisation date: The two Union Territories came into existence on 31 October 2019, observed as National Unity Day.
    2. Representation: The Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir returns five members to the Lok Sabha and Ladakh returns one.
    3. Delimitation: The 2022 delimitation raised Assembly seats to 90, with 43 in the Jammu division and 47 in the Kashmir division, besides seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes for the first time.
    4. Reservation extension: Central laws on reservation, including for Scheduled Tribes such as the Gujjar, Bakarwal, Gaddi and Sippi communities, now apply to the Union Territory.
    5. Boundaries: The region borders Pakistan along the Line of Control and China along the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh.
    6. Geography: The Pir Panjal range separates the Jammu division from the Kashmir Valley, and the Jhelum, Chenab and Indus are the principal rivers.
    7. Treaty link: The Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 governs the use of the western rivers that flow through the region, and India placed it in abeyance in 2025.

    Challenges in Internal Security Management

    1. Balancing force and consent: Security operations that succeed tactically can widen alienation and cost the political objective. e.g. area wide cordon and search operations following a single militant incident.
    2. Preventive detention without adjudication: Detention laws allow long custody without trial, which produces grievance even where the intelligence is sound. e.g. detention up to two years permitted under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978.
    3. Radicalisation through digital channels: Recruitment and propaganda have moved online, beyond the reach of physical area domination. e.g. encrypted messaging used for handler communication in recent militancy cases.
    4. Terror financing: Funding routes through hawala, cryptocurrency and front organisations are hard to interdict. e.g. investigations into non governmental organisations and trusts by central agencies since 2017.
    5. Rehabilitation of surrendered cadre: Without livelihood and social acceptance, surrendered militants relapse. e.g. surrender and rehabilitation policies across the Northeast and Left Wing Extremism affected districts.
    6. Centre and State coordination: Multiple agencies operating in the same theatre create gaps in intelligence handover. e.g. the multi agency centre framework created after the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
    7. Human rights accountability: Sanction requirements delay prosecution in cases of alleged excess, which erodes trust in the process. e.g. the prior sanction requirement for prosecuting armed forces personnel.
    8. Border management technology: Infiltration continues where terrain defeats physical fencing. e.g. tunnels detected along the international boundary in the Jammu sector.

    Way Forward

    1. Restore statehood on a stated timeline: Give the elected government responsibility for public order so accountability for security decisions is politically located.
    2. Individualise security action: Confine dismissal, attachment and demolition to persons against whom a case is established, with reasons recorded and an appeal available.
    3. Institutionalise dialogue: Create a standing channel with elected representatives, civil society and displaced communities rather than event driven engagement.
    4. Secure minority employees: Provide verified protection and posting choices to Kashmiri Pandit employees rather than requiring presence at ceremonial events.
    5. Time bound trials: Expand special court capacity so that persons in preventive detention are either charged and tried or released.
    6. Youth employment at scale: Convert skill schemes into placement linked outcomes so that the young have a visible economic route.
    7. Independent grievance mechanism: Set up an accessible body to examine complaints of excess, following the reconciliation mechanism the Supreme Court recommended in 2023.

    “[2023, GS3, 10 marks] Winning of ‘Hearts and Minds’ in terrorism-affected areas is an essential step in restoring the trust of the population. Discuss the measures adopted by the Government in this respect as part of the conflict resolution in Jammu and Kashmir.”

  • A third of names could be deleted in Delhi’s draft SIR roll of electors

    Why in the News

    The enumeration phase of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls closed with forms uploaded for only 97.47 lakh of Delhi’s 1.45 crore electors, implying a deletion of about 32.41 per cent, the highest in the country. The same exercise has left 2.08 crore forms uncollected in Maharashtra and 1.08 crore Karnataka electors outside the draft roll. The revision is designed to purify the roll, and the figures show that the burden of staying on it has shifted to the elector within a fixed calendar.

    What is the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls?

    1. About: A house to house revision of electoral rolls conducted by the Election Commission of India (ECI) in which every existing elector must be re verified rather than only new applicants being added.
    2. Enumeration phase: Booth Level Officers (BLOs) carry pre filled enumeration forms door to door, help electors complete them and upload the details to the official portal.
    3. Mapping requirement: Electors are required to map themselves or their lineage to an earlier reference roll, the 2002 roll in the States covered so far.
    4. Consequence of non collection: A name whose form is not collected and digitised does not appear in the draft roll published at the end of the phase.
    5. Restoration route: Exclusion from the draft is not final, since an elector may apply afresh during the claims and objections window.

    What is the ASDDO category?

    1. About: ASDDO stands for Absent, Shifted, Dead, Duplicate and Other, the classification used for electors whose enumeration forms could not be collected.
    2. What it does not mean: A form recorded as uncollected does not by itself establish that the elector is dead, has shifted or is ineligible, since the elector may simply not have been traced at the recorded address.

    What is Form 6 in the electoral roll process?

    1. About: Form 6 is the application for inclusion of a name in the electoral roll, prescribed under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960.
    2. Use in this revision: Electors dropped from the draft roll must file Form 6 during the claims and objections period to be added to the final roll.

    What do the State level enumeration figures show?

    1. Delhi: Forms were uploaded for 97.47 lakh electors, about 67 per cent of the 1.45 crore on the roll when the exercise began, leaving 47.62 lakh marked uncollectible.
    2. Maharashtra: Of an electorate of 9,78,54,049, forms for 7,69,52,262 or 78.64 per cent were digitised, 2,07,93,916 or 21.25 per cent were uncollected and 1,07,871 or 0.11 per cent remained pending.
    3. Karnataka: 1.08 crore electors fall in the ASDDO list, of whom 65.61 lakh or 11.84 per cent have permanently shifted, 16.38 lakh or 2.96 per cent are dead and 15.28 lakh or 2.76 per cent are untraceable or absent.
    4. Karnataka notices: A further 25.14 lakh electors face notices under the No Mapping category for failing to link themselves or their lineage to the 2002 roll, with about 4.46 crore mapped electors digitised at 80.46 per cent.
    5. Telangana: 73.39 lakh names were deleted in the draft roll, 60 lakh showed anomalies and 32 lakh remain unmapped, so 92 lakh electors will receive notices out of a total of 3.38 crore.
    6. Telangana breakdown: 9,22,229 electors or 2.73 per cent have died, 57,46,803 or 16.99 per cent were found shifted or absent and 6,70,203 or 1.98 per cent were enrolled in more than one place.
    7. Published draft rolls so far: Telangana recorded the highest deletion at 21.59 per cent, followed by Arunachal Pradesh at 19.09 per cent and Uttar Pradesh at 18.7 per cent.

    How do the numbers differ between urban and rural districts?

    1. City comparison: Deletions in the draft roll stand at 32.41 per cent in Delhi, 40.09 per cent in Hyderabad, 27.16 per cent in Pune and 20.26 per cent in Gurgaon.
    2. Maharashtra’s four largest urban districts: Thane, Mumbai City, Mumbai Suburban and Pune account for 94.47 lakh uncollected forms, 45.4 per cent of the State total, while holding only 27.5 per cent of the electorate.
    3. District level peaks: Thane leads with 28.88 lakh of 74.51 lakh electors uncollected at 38.77 per cent, followed by Mumbai City at 37.57 per cent, Mumbai Suburban at 34.48 per cent and Pune at 31.92 per cent.
    4. Next tier: Nagpur recorded 14.06 lakh uncollected forms at 30.32 per cent, Palghar 6.87 lakh at 28.88 per cent and Raigad 5.91 lakh at 23.33 per cent.
    5. Rural contrast: Uncollected forms stand at 8.82 per cent in Hingoli, 9.10 per cent in Buldhana, 9.93 per cent in Ratnagiri and 10.62 per cent in Latur.
    6. Concentration: Seven districts hold about 1.21 crore or 58.3 per cent of all uncollected forms while holding about 37 per cent of Maharashtra’s electorate.
    7. Movement in the final days: Maharashtra’s uncollected figure rose from 1.80 crore on 12 August to 2.08 crore on 17 August, an increase of about 27.3 lakh in five days.

    Why are deletion rates highest in the largest cities?

    1. Floating population: Officials attribute the urban pattern to large migrant workforces recorded at addresses they no longer occupy.
    2. Address updation gap: Government employees and salaried private sector workers move frequently and rarely update their address in the roll.
    3. Physical verification limits: A Booth Level Officer must find the elector at the recorded address, which fails in high rise and high churn neighbourhoods.
    4. Refusal category: Delhi officials estimate 1 to 2 lakh electors in the Other category, covering those who refuse to sign or submit enumeration forms.
    5. Booth level concentration: In nearly 3,000 booths in Karnataka, deletion rates exceed 60 per cent, so the effect is concentrated rather than spread evenly.
    6. Timeline pressure: Delhi’s enumeration was extended twice, from 29 July to 8 August and then to 17 August, because digitisation of forms lagged.

    Does a shorter roll necessarily mean a more accurate one?

    1. Two defensible objectives: Removing dead, shifted and duplicate entries protects the roll, and retaining every genuine elector protects the franchise, and the same procedure serves both unevenly.
    2. Category conflation: A single uncollected label covers the dead, the shifted, the duplicated and the merely absent, so an administrative failure to trace is recorded alongside genuine ineligibility.
    3. Reversal of the burden: The elector must now prove entitlement afresh within a fixed window rather than the State proving ineligibility before deletion.
    4. Unequal cost of restoration: Filing Form 6 and producing documents is easiest for those with stable addresses and hardest for the migrant workers who dominate the deletion lists.
    5. Contested reading of the data: Officials state that the draft is not a permanent deletion, while civil society groups in Karnataka petitioned the Chief Minister that about half of Bengaluru’s electors face removal.
    6. Demand for more time: Civil society groups have asked the Karnataka government to seek a three month extension of the revision and to approach the Supreme Court if necessary.

    What is the timeline from draft roll to final roll?

    1. Draft publication: Draft electoral rolls are published on 24 August in Delhi, Maharashtra and Karnataka.
    2. Claims and objections: Electors may file claims and objections in Delhi until 23 September, and in Telangana from 17 August to 16 September.
    3. Disposal window: Claims and objections in Delhi are to be disposed of between 24 August and 22 October, and in Telangana until 15 October.
    4. Notices for incomplete forms: Electors who submitted forms with incomplete details receive notices seeking proof of eligibility over the following two months.
    5. Final roll: The final electoral roll for Delhi is published on 27 October, and only that number settles the actual scale of exclusion.
    6. Pre draft correction: Booth Level Agents of political parties and residents may point out errors in the list before the draft is published.

    Challenges to the Special Intensive Revision

    1. Documentary burden on the poor: Proof of lineage against a 2002 roll is hardest for those without stable records. e.g. Karnataka has issued No Mapping notices to 25.14 lakh electors who could not link themselves to the 2002 list.
    2. Compressed calendar: Enumeration, notice and disposal phases overlap, leaving little time for genuine electors to respond. e.g. Delhi’s enumeration was extended twice and still closed with 47.62 lakh forms uncollected.
    3. Booth Level Officer workload: One official covers a full booth in a fixed window with no realistic revisit capacity. e.g. Thane recorded nearly four in ten forms uncollected against fewer than one in ten in Hingoli.
    4. Migrant disenfranchisement: India has no portable voting right, so a worker deleted at the home address is not automatically enrolled at the workplace. e.g. Mumbai Suburban recorded 26.99 lakh uncollected forms in a district built on internal migration.
    5. Political contestation of the process: Deletion figures become an electoral dispute rather than an administrative one. e.g. a leading public figure in Karnataka reported being marked as shifted during enumeration.
    6. Verification quality: Duplicate and dead entries are identified by field report rather than by linkage to a civil registration database. e.g. Telangana classified 9.22 lakh electors as dead on field verification alone.
    7. Appeal capacity: Disposal of lakhs of claims within two months strains Electoral Registration Officers. e.g. Telangana must dispose of notices to 92 lakh electors by 15 October.

    Conclusion

    The revision has converted a routine roll correction into a mass re registration event whose cost falls hardest on internal migrants in large cities. The published deletion figures record failure to trace as much as genuine ineligibility, and the two are not separated in the draft. Draft rolls publish on 24 August, claims and objections close on 23 September in Delhi, and the final roll on 27 October is the first number that will show how many genuine electors were actually lost. The scale of restoration achieved in that window is the real test of the exercise.

    [2024, GS2, 10 marks] Examine the need for electoral reforms as suggested by various committees with particular reference to “one nation-one election” principle.”

  • 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?”

  • Meghalaya Still Has No Mine Closure Policy, 10 Years After Rat-Hole Mining Ban

    Why in the News

    The 39th interim report of the Justice B.P. Katakey Committee has flagged Meghalaya’s failure to adopt a comprehensive policy for closing and fencing abandoned rat-hole coal mines. The issue has shifted from merely stopping illegal extraction to managing the dangerous legacy of thousands of abandoned mine pits.

    What is Rat-Hole Mining?

    • A manual coal mining method involving a vertical pit and narrow horizontal tunnels.
    • Tunnels may extend 150 to 300 metres underground.
    • Side cutting: Tunnels follow exposed coal seams along hill slopes.
    • Box cutting: A vertical pit is dug first, followed by horizontal tunnels.
    • Meghalaya’s thin coal seams made this method economically attractive.

    Why is Meghalaya’s Mine Closure Issue Important?

    • The NGT banned rat-hole coal mining in April 2014.
    • The Supreme Court in 2019 upheld the prohibition and held that the MMDR Act, 1957 applies to Meghalaya.
    • Thousands of abandoned pits remain uncovered and unfenced, creating risks to people and livestock.
    • East Jaintia Hills alone is reported to have around 60,000 mines across 360 villages.
    • Sulphur-rich coal contributes to acid mine drainage, affecting rivers such as the Lukha and Myntdu.

    What is Mine Closure?

    Mine closure means planned decommissioning of a mine after extraction, including:

    • Sealing and fencing mine openings
    • Backfilling and slope stabilisation
    • Land restoration
    • Water treatment
    • Revegetation
    • Post-closure monitoring

    Indian mining regulations provide for both progressive closure during the life of a mine and final closure after mining ends. Financial assurance is maintained through an escrow mechanism for eligible mines.

    Why is Meghalaya Different?

    Meghalaya comes under the Sixth Schedule. Land and mineral resources are substantially associated with private and community ownership, creating a distinct governance framework compared with conventional state-leased mining.

    Constitutional provisions to remember

    • Article 244(2): Administration of tribal areas under the Sixth Schedule.
    • Entry 23, State List: Regulation of mines and mineral development, subject to Entry 54.
    • Entry 54, Union List: Union regulation of mines and mineral development when Parliament declares it in public interest.
    • Article 21: Right to life includes the right to a clean and healthy environment.
    • Article 48A: State duty to protect the environment.
    • Article 51A(g): Fundamental duty to protect the environment.

    Important Laws and Institutions

    • MMDR Act, 1957: Parent legislation governing mineral concessions, leases and mining regulation.
    • Mineral Conservation and Development Rules, 2017: Provide for progressive and final mine closure plans and financial assurance.
    • Mines Act, 1952: Deals with health, safety and working conditions in mines. The Directorate General of Mines Safety (DGMS) is the safety regulator.
    • National Green Tribunal Act, 2010: Created the National Green Tribunal (NGT), a specialised statutory environmental tribunal. Its 2014 order banned rat-hole mining in Meghalaya.
    • District Mineral Foundation: A non-profit trust in mining districts, funded through a levy on mining lessees, for the benefit of communities affected by mining.

    “[2025, GS3, 15 marks] Mineral resources are fundamental to the country economy and these are exploited by mining. Why is mining considered an environmental hazard? Explain the remedial measures required to reduce the environmental hazard due to mining.”

  • Odisha’s Coastline Is Shrinking: 28% Under Erosion Threat

    Why in the News

    A reply tabled in the Rajya Sabha by the Union Minister for Ports, Shipping and Waterways stated that about 28.3 percent of Odisha’s 564 km coastline is undergoing erosion. The figure sits alongside a second one that complicates it, since 54.1 percent of the same coastline is gaining land, which means the state faces not a uniformly retreating coast but a redistribution of sand that destroys some villages while building others.

    What is a geotextile tube embankment?

    1. About: A geotextile tube is a large cylindrical container fabricated from high strength, porous synthetic fabric and filled with a sand slurry to form an artificial coastal structure.
    2. Material: The fabric is a woven synthetic such as polypropylene, which retains the sand fill while allowing water to drain out through the pores.
    3. Function: Rows of such tubes are laid to form a sea wall that absorbs the impact of incoming waves at the shoreline. The energy loss at the structure reduces the scouring of the beach behind it.
    4. Deployment in Odisha: One such embankment is being developed at Pentha village in Kendrapara district, one of the worst affected stretches of the Odisha coast.
    5. Why it is preferred: The tubes are filled with locally dredged sand rather than imported rock armour, which lowers cost and allows the structure to settle with the seabed.

    What is shoreline change?

    1. About: Shoreline change is the dynamic process in which the boundary between land and water shifts over time.
    2. Drivers: The shift is produced by natural forces such as waves, tides and storms, and by human activity such as port construction and sand mining.

    What is coastal accretion?

    1. About: Accretion is the seaward growth of the shoreline when sediment carried by waves and currents is deposited faster than it is removed.
    2. Why it matters: A coastline can record accretion in aggregate while individual stretches erode, because the same longshore current that starves one beach feeds another.

    What is the National Centre for Coastal Research?

    1. About: The National Centre for Coastal Research (NCCR) is the national institution that monitors long term shoreline change across the Indian coastline.
    2. The Odisha study: It carried out a comprehensive assessment and mapping of shoreline change analysis along the Odisha coast from 1990 to 2022, and identified several stretches in the affected districts as vulnerable stretches.

    How does erosion vary across Odisha’s six coastal districts?

    1. The state level split: Of the 564 km coastline, 28.3 percent is eroding, 17.6 percent is stable with no significant shoreline change, and 54.1 percent is undergoing accretion.
    2. Jagatsinghpur: The most erosion prone district, with 47.6 percent of its 55.8 km coastline facing erosion.
    3. Ganjam: Erosion affects 45.7 percent of its 60.18 km shoreline.
    4. Kendrapara: Erosion affects 45 percent of its 149.36 km shoreline, the longest coastline among the six districts.
    5. Balasore: Erosion affects 23.8 percent of its 88 km coastline.
    6. Puri: Erosion affects 10.2 percent of its 138 km coastline.
    7. Bhadrak: Erosion affects 4.6 percent of its 72 km coastline, the lowest share among the six.

    What drives shoreline change along the Odisha coast?

    1. Natural marine forces: Waves, tides and storms continuously redistribute sediment along the coast.
    2. Coastal structures: A 2021 study on shoreline change along the Odisha coast, published in the Journal of Earth System Science, records that sea walls, breakwaters and jetties modify both the shoreline and the beach morphology.
    3. Ports and harbours: The effect is more significant where hard structures are raised for port and harbour development, which interrupts the longshore movement of sand.
    4. Extreme events: Tsunamis and cyclonic storms produce drastic shoreline changes, and Odisha is the most cyclone prone state along the Indian coast.
    5. Human extraction and construction: Sand mining and unplanned infrastructure development along the coast remove or block sediment supply.
    6. Sea level rise: Global sea level rise driven by climate change adds a permanent upward baseline to every storm surge and tidal cycle.

    What has coastal erosion already cost Odisha’s communities?

    1. Villages lost in Kendrapara: Rising sea level and coastal erosion have already submerged 16 villages in Kendrapara district, displacing several hundred people.
    2. Loss beyond land: The affected villagers lost not only their land but also their livelihoods, since fishing and cultivation both depend on proximity to the lost shoreline.
    3. Podampeta in Ganjam: A village of nearly 500 households has been deserted as the sea swept inland.
    4. Ramayapatna and other settlements: Several other coastal villages in Ganjam are witnessing the sea advance towards the landmass, rendering residents homeless.

    What measures has Odisha taken to protect its coast?

    1. Geotextile tube embankment: A geotextile tube sea wall is being developed at Pentha in Kendrapara to absorb wave impact on one of the most exposed stretches.
    2. Sea wall cum service roads: These are being developed across parts of Balasore district and at Ramayapatna beach in Ganjam.
    3. How the dual structure works: The outer tier acts as a defensive barrier against strong tidal waves and erosion. The inner tier operates as a service road for local transport and public access.
    4. Planned relocation: The state has developed a resettlement colony, described as India’s first climate resettlement colony, to accommodate people displaced by coastal erosion.
    5. Vulnerability mapping: The NCCR has identified specific vulnerable stretches within the six districts on the basis of long term shoreline analysis, which allows protection works to be prioritised.

    “[2022, GS3, 15 marks] Explain the causes and effects of coastal erosion in India. What are the available coastal management techniques for combating the hazard?”

  • Assam’s Floods: A 200-Year Man-Made Crisis?

    Why in the News

    In the third week of July, several south bank rivers of Upper Assam rose with extreme speed, swallowed paddy fields and grazing lands, and swept through villages and towns in districts that had not previously faced catastrophic floods. The event exposes a conflict between two explanations of the disaster, one that treats the flood as a hydrological event to be excluded by engineering, and one that treats it as the outcome of a landscape whose capacity to absorb rain has been dismantled over two centuries.

    What is embankment based flood control?

    1. About: An embankment is an earthen barrier raised along a river to confine its flow within the channel and shield the settled floodplain from inundation.
    2. When it was adopted in Assam: A techno bureaucratic campaign in the mid 20th century set out to shield settled floodplains from floods that had until then been treated as predictable and nourishing for agriculture.
    3. The design assumption: The approach treats the flood as an external event to be kept out, rather than as the process that builds the plain it inundates.
    4. The sediment consequence: These barriers interrupted the flow of sediment onto the floodplain, confining silt to the channel instead of spreading it across the fields.
    5. The coverage limit: By 1988, even after thousands of kilometres of embankments had been built, two thirds of the valley still lay open to flooding.

    What are the south bank tributaries of Upper Assam?

    1. About: The south bank tributaries are the rivers that rise in the hills south and east of the Brahmaputra valley and join the main river from its right bank, including the Buridihing, Disang, Dikhow, Jhanji and Dhansiri.
    2. Why they matter here: They are fed by rainfall over the Naga Hills and eastern Arunachal Pradesh, so their flood peaks are set by rain falling outside Assam’s own boundaries.

    What is riverbed aggradation?

    1. About: Aggradation is the raising of a riverbed by deposition of sediment that the river can no longer carry downstream.
    2. Why it worsens flooding: A raised bed reduces the channel’s carrying capacity, so the same discharge overtops the banks at a lower volume than before.

    What is a flash flood?

    1. About: A flash flood is a rapid rise in water level within hours of intense rainfall, typical of steep catchments where runoff reaches the channel before it can infiltrate the soil.
    2. The determining factor: The severity depends on how quickly the catchment sheds water, which is a function of forest cover and soil condition rather than rainfall volume alone.

    What made the July flood different from a routine Brahmaputra flood?

    1. Damage before the main river peaked: Upper Assam felt the brunt of the disaster before the Brahmaputra swelled to its highest, which rules out the main channel as the primary cause.
    2. Rain fell outside Assam: Relentless rain pounded the Naga Hills and Arunachal Pradesh, soaked the slopes and unleashed sudden torrents into the southern tributaries.
    3. New districts affected: Several districts once strangers to such catastrophic floods found themselves engulfed.
    4. Extraction accelerated the runoff: Stone and boulder extraction from riverbeds and hillsides, common in both highlands and lowlands, was identified as a factor that hastened the rainfall’s journey downstream.
    5. The regional setting: Assam is cushioned between the Eastern Himalaya to the north, the Patkai and Barail ranges to the east and the Bay of Bengal to the south, so the southwest monsoon links highlands, floodplains, billions of tonnes of sediment and the shifting channels of hundreds of rivers into a single interdependent system.

    What has changed in the highland catchments that feed Upper Assam?

    1. Shorter cultivation cycles: Growing populations in the highlands of Nagaland and eastern Arunachal Pradesh have made cultivation cycles shorter and more intense, cutting the fallow period that allowed soil to recover.
    2. Small scale coal mining: Mining woven into local economies now competes with the highland agrarian economy and operates through complex networks of speculators.
    3. Relentless logging: Continued removal of tree cover strips the canopy and root systems that slow rainfall reaching the ground.
    4. Expanding infrastructure: New construction seals and compacts surfaces, adding to runoff.
    5. The combined effect: This pressure on the uplands erodes the land’s ability to absorb rainfall, so a given storm now delivers more water, faster, to the tributaries below.

    How did the south bank lose its historic resilience?

    1. The earlier condition: The south bank districts of Upper Assam were once among the Brahmaputra valley’s most resilient regions, defined by thick forests, scattered settlements and a safe distance from the Brahmaputra’s main channel.
    2. The colonial turn: The calm began to unravel in the mid 19th century, when these areas drew the attention of colonial tea planters.
    3. The land use conversion: Land where rain once vanished quietly into the forest floor was transformed into plantations, sites of mineral extraction and farms.
    4. The hydrological result: The converted land could no longer hold back the water, which shifted the flood response of the whole south bank.

    What did the embankment campaign change?

    1. The reversal of the flood’s meaning: Floods that had been seen as predictable and nourishing for agriculture were reclassified as a hazard to be excluded.
    2. The sediment interruption: The barriers cut off the annual deposition of silt that had renewed floodplain fertility.
    3. The incomplete shield: By 1988, thousands of kilometres of embankments still left two thirds of the valley exposed.
    4. The failure mode in July: Embankments along the southern tributaries gave way before the main river crested, producing sudden breaches.
    5. Why a breach is worse than a flood: The breach released a fall of water onto an unembanked plain, concentrating the discharge instead of spreading it.

    How is the monsoon itself changing?

    1. Greater unpredictability: India’s rainy season has become more unpredictable, marked by sudden downpours separated by long dry spells rather than simply more rain overall.
    2. Corroboration for the Northeast: Studies focused on Northeast India echo these findings.
    3. The explanatory shift: The gap between intense rainfall and a weakened landscape explains the flash floods more fully than the quantity of rain alone.
    4. Why the distinction matters: A landscape that once absorbed a heavy monsoon now converts the same rainfall into a peak discharge, so historical rainfall thresholds no longer predict damage.

    Do embankments protect the floodplain or deepen its exposure?

    1. The protection is real but partial: Embankments shielded settled floodplains and made permanent cultivation and settlement possible on land that had flooded annually.
    2. The cost is the sediment: The same barriers interrupted sediment flow, denying the plain the silt that renewed it and confining deposition to the channel bed.
    3. Protection invites exposure: A shielded plain attracts denser settlement, which raises the population and assets at risk when a breach occurs.
    4. Failure is concentrated, not gradual: An unembanked plain floods slowly and predictably, while an embanked one stays dry until the barrier gives way and then receives the full discharge at once.
    5. The measure of the approach: After thousands of kilometres of construction, two thirds of the valley remained open to flooding, which shows the strategy could not be completed at the scale it assumed.
    6. The deeper limitation: The state’s ecology has been treated as a puzzle for engineers, with each crisis examined in isolation, so the cumulative loss of catchment capacity is never entered into the calculation.

    Challenges to flood management in Assam

    1. Ageing embankments past their design life: Most of Assam’s embankment network was built decades ago and now fails at multiple points each season. e.g. the breach of the Bethukandi embankment on the Barak in June 2022, which submerged Silchar town for days.
    2. Bank erosion and permanent land loss: The braided Brahmaputra shifts its channels and consumes cultivated land and villages every year. e.g. Majuli, the large river island in Assam, which has lost a substantial part of its area to erosion since the 1950s.
    3. A catchment that lies outside the State’s jurisdiction: The rainfall that determines Assam’s flood peak falls in Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and beyond the international border. e.g. the July flood peak on the south bank tributaries generated by rain over the Naga Hills.
    4. Sudden releases from upstream hydropower projects: Reservoir operation upstream can add a flood wave to an already rising river. e.g. water released from the Ranganadi project in Arunachal Pradesh flooding parts of Lakhimpur district.
    5. Loss of wetlands that once absorbed flood water: The valley’s beels have been filled for construction and encroached upon. e.g. shrinkage of Deepor Beel, the Ramsar site adjoining Guwahati, which has intensified urban flooding in the city.
    6. Relief centred rather than mitigation centred spending: Public expenditure concentrates on camps, compensation and post flood repair rather than catchment restoration. e.g. annual embankment repair works sanctioned after each season’s breaches rather than a basin wide restoration programme.
    7. Riverbed and hillside extraction: Removal of stone, boulders and sand strips the roughness that slows runoff and destabilises slopes. e.g. boulder extraction from riverbeds in the foothills feeding the south bank tributaries.

    Conclusion

    The July flooding in Upper Assam is the outcome of vulnerabilities built over two centuries, not a seasonal misfortune produced by a river’s behaviour. Plantation conversion from the mid 19th century, embankment construction from the mid 20th century and current highland extraction have each reduced the landscape’s capacity to absorb rain, while the monsoon has shifted towards sudden concentrated downpours. Assam’s environment is approaching a tipping point and is not yet beyond repair. What remains unresolved is the framing itself, since the connections between highland and lowland, water and land, and forests and floodplains cannot be rebuilt by engineering alone.

    “[2017, GS1, 15 marks] In what way can floods be converted into a sustainable source of irrigation and all-weather inland navigation in India?”

  • Three girls die of a krait bite in a Gadchiroli ashram school, triggering a third party audit of all 513 private aided residential tribal schools in Maharashtra

    Why in the News

    A common krait entered the girls’ dormitory of a private aided Ashram School at Japtalai in Dhanora taluka of Gadchiroli district, Maharashtra, on the night of 9 and 10 August, bit six girls aged 8 to 14 and killed three. The deaths expose how a residential school built to carry tribal children out of poverty had neither the beds and nets to prevent the bite nor the road and ambulance to survive it.

    What is an Ashram School?

    1. About: An Ashram School is a residential school for Scheduled Tribe children, providing free education, boarding and lodging, run either directly by a State tribal development department or by a private body on government aid.
    2. Purpose: They exist because tribal habitations are scattered across remote forest hamlets where a day school is not viable. e.g. most children on the rolls of the Japtalai school come from Etapalli, a village at least five hours away by road.
    3. Funding route: Central support flows largely through grants in aid under Article 275(1) of the Constitution and through State tribal sub plan funds.

    What is a common krait?

    1. About: The common krait is a nocturnal, highly venomous snake of the Elapidae family and one of India’s Big Four venomous species, alongside the Indian spectacled cobra, Russell’s viper and the saw scaled viper.
    2. Why the bite goes unnoticed: Its venom is neurotoxic, attacking the nervous system, and its bite feels like a mosquito bite with fang marks often impossible to locate. Treating clinicians place it at at least ten times more venomous than the king cobra.

    What is anti snake venom and why does timing decide survival?

    1. About: Anti snake venom (ASV) is an antibody preparation that neutralises circulating venom, and India uses a polyvalent formulation raised against the Big Four species.
    2. The golden hour: The effective window for administering ASV is about half an hour after the bite. Beyond it neurotoxic paralysis of the respiratory muscles progresses even after the correct dose is given.

    What happened at the Japtalai Ashram School?

    1. The dormitory: Anu Koreti, aged 8, and 111 other girls from Classes 1 to 10 were sleeping on the floor of a hall measuring about 850 square feet when the krait entered.
    2. The bite: The snake bit six girls aged between 8 and 14. Three died and three survived.
    3. The alarm: The snake coiled around the leg of a fourth child, who woke screaming, and the children woke the cook. The cook struck the snake with a stick and called the peon, the only school employee on campus, who killed it.
    4. The transport: The first two girls reached Dhanora Rural Hospital, 9 km away, at about 2.20 a.m. in a vegetable delivery van. Three more arrived at 2.40 a.m., and over 12 panicked girls were taken directly to Gadchiroli.
    5. The deaths: Two girls were declared dead at about 4.10 a.m. after all protocol doses and cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The 8 year old died on the way to Gadchiroli’s main hospital after referral for ventilator support.
    6. The survivors: One girl was airlifted to Nagpur and is home recovering, one remains on ventilator support at Gadchiroli but out of danger, and one is recovering.

    What do the hostel’s living conditions reveal about residential school standards?

    1. Sleeping arrangements: Over 100 girls slept on mattresses on the floor with no beds. The only bed in the hall belonged to the cook, a contractual worker.
    2. No mosquito nets until after the deaths: Nets were fitted only afterwards, and the cook states the demand had been raised repeatedly in the past with no response.
    3. Snake habitat at the window: Piles of bricks and wooden logs stood next to open windows and were removed only after the incident. Moist, cool wood is the most conducive environment for a krait.
    4. Supervision gap: The school’s woman supervisor had allegedly gone on leave without the principal’s approval, which is why the cook was sleeping with the girls that night. She is absconding after a first information report for negligence.
    5. Scale against space: The campus is about half a football field, with a two storied classroom block and a separate building of halls, holding 233 enrolled children.

    Why did the emergency response fail?

    1. The unusable highway: The 9 km stretch on National Highway 930 was so potholed it was unmotorable, forcing a 35 km detour and consuming the ASV golden hour.
    2. No ambulance: The first children were moved in a vegetable delivery van, since the school had no ambulance and no accessible emergency medical service.
    3. Delayed information to parents: A peon reached one father at 9 a.m., hours after the death, and did not tell him his daughter had died. He learnt it from a policeman outside the post mortem room.
    4. Referral without capacity assessment: The 8 year old was referred onward for ventilator support even though the rural hospital had a ventilator, and she died in transit.
    5. Seasonal isolation as a standing condition: Residents state the same highway stretch stays shut for three months every monsoon and the State bus service is suspended annually on that stretch.
    6. The official position: The district Collector’s position is that responding quickly and bringing children in during an emergency is the school’s responsibility.

    Why is Gadchiroli particularly exposed to snakebite?

    1. Forest cover: Gadchiroli is Maharashtra’s easternmost district with dense forest cover of over 75 percent and a scattered tribal population across remote hamlets.
    2. Reptile diversity: The dry deciduous forests and river basins of Gadchiroli and neighbouring Chandrapur support over 21 species of snakes, including all four of the Big Four venomous species.
    3. The mortality record: 99 people have died of snakebite in Gadchiroli in the last five years.
    4. Development profile: The district was earlier part of the Red Corridor and remains among the most underdeveloped and remote parts of the State, with the Chief Minister as its guardian minister.

    What has the State done in response?

    1. Criminal action: Separate first information reports have been registered against five persons, including the former Member of Parliament who ran the school, under several bailable sections.
    2. Licence cancellation: The State government has said the school’s licence will be cancelled.
    3. Systemwide audit: A third party has been appointed to audit all 513 private aided residential tribal schools in Maharashtra.
    4. Physical fixes: Mosquito nets have been fitted and the brick and log piles near the windows have been cleared.
    5. Road repair on ministerial visit: Contractors were called overnight to patch the road with gravel once ministers announced visits, after years of complaints produced nothing.

    Why does closing the school not solve the problem for these families?

    1. All children are now home: All 233 enrolled children have returned to their villages, with the academic year interrupted.
    2. No affordable alternative: Parents who work as farm labour say they cannot afford schools that require them to buy books and uniforms, so closure ends schooling rather than relocating it.
    3. The parents’ demand: Parents are asking the government to provide facilities in the same school and let it function rather than shut it down.
    4. Access was already fragile: One parent reports her daughter has lost three months of school every year for the last two years because the road is unusable in the monsoon.
    5. What the school represented: For two generations of Gonds, a Scheduled Tribe, the school was the only route out of poverty, and the 8 year old who died wanted to become an Anganwadi Sevika.

    What does the wider ashram school record show?

    1. Scale of the system: Maharashtra runs 1,056 ashram schools for tribal children, of which 513 are private and aided.
    2. The death toll: Opposition leaders cite reports that 584 students have died in these schools in the past two years, with the education system described as obsolete.
    3. Accountability inversion: The project officer whose lapse is alleged to have led to the incident is the complainant in the case, which is the specific objection raised against the State’s response.
    4. Supervision of quality: The demand is for action against senior government officials responsible for overseeing the quality of these schools, not only against school staff.

    Challenges to the Ashram School system

    1. Overcrowded residential infrastructure: Dormitory space is allotted by headcount rather than by norm, so basic safety fails. e.g. over 100 girls from Classes 1 to 10 sleeping on the floor of an 850 square feet hall at Japtalai.
    2. Absent or unqualified wardens and supervisors: Residential care depends on a single staff member who may be absent without sanction. e.g. the woman supervisor at Japtalai who left on unapproved leave, leaving a contractual cook in charge overnight.
    3. No emergency medical linkage: Schools in remote blocks have no ambulance, no tie up with a rural hospital and no protocol for night emergencies. e.g. children carried to Dhanora Rural Hospital in a vegetable delivery van.
    4. Road connectivity failure in the monsoon: Physical access collapses for months every year, breaking both schooling and emergency evacuation. e.g. National Highway 930 between Dhanora and Japtalai, which is motorable in adjoining Chhattisgarh but not on the Maharashtra stretch.
    5. Weak inspection and grant conditionality: Aid continues without verified compliance with hostel norms until a death forces an audit. e.g. the third party audit of Maharashtra’s 513 aided residential tribal schools ordered only after three girls died.
    6. Political and private control of aided schools: Management by politically connected trusts blunts enforcement. e.g. the Japtalai school was run by a former Member of Parliament, and a first information report followed only after the deaths.
    7. Nutrition and health monitoring gaps: Residential schools carry a documented record of student deaths from disease, suicide and accidents. e.g. the reported 584 student deaths across Maharashtra’s 1,056 ashram schools in two years.

    Conclusion

    The krait was the immediate cause of death, and every other cause was an administrative decision taken long before that night. A hall with no beds and no nets, a supervisor absent without sanction, a highway that turns 9 km into 35 km, and a vegetable van standing in for an ambulance together consumed the half hour in which anti snake venom works. The State’s response so far is a licence cancellation, five first information reports and a third party audit of 513 aided residential schools. The families most affected are asking for the school to be fixed rather than closed, since closure removes the only schooling their children have.

    Tribal Education in India

    1. About: Tribal education policy relies on residential schooling, since Scheduled Tribe habitations are dispersed across forest and hill terrain where a viable day school catchment does not exist.
    2. Population base: Scheduled Tribes number about 10.45 crore, roughly 8.6 percent of India’s population as per Census 2011, spread across more than 700 notified communities.
    3. The persistent gap: Scheduled Tribe literacy and school retention remain below the national average, with the steepest dropout at the transition from upper primary to secondary.
    4. Institutional structure: Delivery runs through State run and aided Ashram Schools, centrally supported Eklavya Model Residential Schools, and hostels funded under Article 275(1) grants.
    5. Administrative frame: Scheduled Areas are governed under the Fifth Schedule, with Tribes Advisory Councils and a Governor’s report to the President on their administration.

    Constitutional Framework Governing Tribal Welfare

    1. Article 15(4): Enables the State to make special provisions for the advancement of socially and educationally backward classes and Scheduled Tribes.
    2. Article 21A: Makes free and compulsory education for children aged 6 to 14 a fundamental right.
    3. Article 46: Directs the State to promote the educational and economic interests of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and protect them from social injustice and exploitation.
    4. Article 244 and the Fifth Schedule: Provide for the administration and control of Scheduled Areas and Scheduled Tribes outside the North East.
    5. Sixth Schedule: Provides for autonomous district and regional councils in the tribal areas of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram.
    6. Article 275(1): Provides grants in aid from the Union to States for tribal welfare schemes and administration of Scheduled Areas, which funds ashram schools and hostels.
    7. Article 338A: Establishes the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes to investigate and monitor safeguards for Scheduled Tribes.
    8. Article 342: Empowers the President to specify the tribes deemed to be Scheduled Tribes in each State and Union Territory.

    Laws and Rules Governing Tribal Welfare and Child Safety

    1. Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996: Extends Panchayati Raj to Fifth Schedule areas with adaptations.
    2. Makes the Gram Sabha competent to safeguard community resources and mandates its consultation before land acquisition.
    3. Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006: Recognises individual and community forest rights of forest dwelling Scheduled Tribes.
    4. Recognises the right to community forest resources and to convert forest villages into revenue villages.
    5. Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009: Guarantees free and compulsory elementary education and prescribes school infrastructure and pupil teacher norms.
    6. Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015: Regulates institutions housing children and prescribes standards of care and mandatory reporting.
    7. Residential facilities housing children in need of care require registration and inspection under the Act.
    8. Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989: Penalises offences against Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and provides for special courts.
    9. Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012: Applies to residential institutions and imposes mandatory reporting duties on staff.

    Back2Basics: Eklavya Model Residential Schools (EMRS)

    1. Ministry: Ministry of Tribal Affairs, implemented through the National Education Society for Tribal Students (NESTS).
    2. Launch: Introduced in 1997 to 1998 and restructured in 2018 to expand coverage.
    3. Norm: An EMRS in every block with more than 50 percent Scheduled Tribe population and at least 20,000 tribal persons.
    4. Design: Fully residential co educational schools from Class 6 to Class 12, with a sanctioned capacity of about 480 students each.
    5. Objective: Provide quality education comparable to Navodaya Vidyalayas to Scheduled Tribe children in remote areas, covering boarding, lodging and academic costs.
    6. Funding: Central capital and recurring grants, with construction and running costs met from the Ministry of Tribal Affairs budget and Article 275(1) grants.

    Government Initiatives for Tribal Welfare and Snakebite Control

    1. Eklavya Model Residential Schools: Central residential schools for Scheduled Tribe children in tribal majority blocks.
    2. Pre Matric and Post Matric Scholarships for Scheduled Tribe students: Fee and maintenance support to reduce dropout at the secondary and higher education stages.
    3. Pradhan Mantri Janjati Adivasi Nyaya Maha Abhiyan (PM JANMAN): Saturation approach for Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups covering housing, roads, electricity, water and mobile connectivity.
    4. Dharti Aaba Janjatiya Gram Utkarsh Abhiyan: Saturation of basic amenities and services across tribal majority villages.
    5. National Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Snakebite Envenoming (NAPSE), 2024: Aims to halve snakebite deaths and disabilities by 2030 through ASV availability, training and surveillance.
    6. Snakebite as a notifiable condition: States have been advised to make snakebite cases and deaths notifiable so that the true burden is captured.
    7. Van Dhan Vikas Kendras: Value addition and marketing support for minor forest produce collected by tribal households.
    8. Ashram School scheme under Article 275(1) grants: Central assistance to States for construction and upgradation of tribal residential schools and hostels.

    Key Facts about Tribal Welfare and Snakebite in India

    1. World Tribal Day, the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, is observed on 9 August.
    2. Janjatiya Gaurav Divas is observed on 15 November, the birth anniversary of Birsa Munda.
    3. India accounts for roughly half of global snakebite deaths, with about 58,000 deaths a year estimated by large mortality studies.
    4. The World Health Organization classifies snakebite envenoming as a neglected tropical disease and targets halving deaths and disabilities by 2030.
    5. The Big Four venomous snakes responsible for most Indian envenomations are the Indian spectacled cobra, common krait, Russell’s viper and saw scaled viper.
    6. Gadchiroli has over 75 percent forest cover and is Maharashtra’s easternmost district.
    7. Scheduled Tribes constitute about 8.6 percent of India’s population as per Census 2011.

    Challenges in Tribal Residential Education

    1. Distance between habitation and school: Enrolment forces children to live five hours or more from home, which raises both dropout and vulnerability. e.g. most children at the Japtalai school come from Etapalli, at least five hours away by road.
    2. Infrastructure norms that exist on paper: Hostel space, bedding, sanitation and boundary walls are prescribed but unverified. e.g. no beds and no mosquito nets for 112 girls at Japtalai despite repeated staff requests.
    3. Staffing and warden accountability: Residential care is left to contractual or unqualified staff at night. e.g. a contractual cook and a peon were the only adults handling a mass envenomation emergency.
    4. Health and emergency infrastructure deficit in Scheduled Areas: Primary health centres lack ASV stocks, ventilators and trained staff, and referral chains are long. e.g. 99 snakebite deaths in Gadchiroli in five years in a district with over 75 percent forest cover.
    5. Road and connectivity failure: Monsoon isolation cuts both schooling and evacuation for months. e.g. the kuccha forest road to Kehakawahi hamlet in Murumgaon, blocked by fallen trees and unusable in the monsoon.
    6. Language and curriculum mismatch: Instruction in the State language alienates first generation tribal learners in early grades. e.g. Gond speaking children entering Class 1 in Marathi medium ashram schools.
    7. Weak grievance and reporting culture: Parents learn of serious incidents late and through informal channels. e.g. a father informed at 9 a.m. by a peon who did not disclose that his daughter had died.

    Way Forward

    1. Make grant release conditional on a safety audit: Tie continued aid to each residential school to an annual verified certification of beds, nets, sanitation, boundary walls and fire and snake proofing.
    2. Post a qualified resident warden and a nurse in every hostel: Replace overnight cover by contractual staff with trained residential staff and a mandatory night duty roster.
    3. Stock anti snake venom and train staff at the nearest facility: Ensure every rural hospital and primary health centre in a high burden block holds polyvalent ASV and can begin treatment within the golden hour.
    4. Attach a dedicated ambulance or emergency vehicle to remote residential schools: Provide a defined emergency transport arrangement rather than relying on whatever vehicle is available.
    5. Prioritise all weather road connectivity in Scheduled Areas: Complete and maintain the Dhanora to Japtalai type stretches under road connectivity schemes so monsoon isolation ends.
    6. Repair rather than close failing schools: Upgrade facilities in place where closure would end schooling for children with no affordable alternative.
    7. Fix accountability upward: Ensure inquiries name the supervising project officers and departmental officials, and bar an official whose lapse is under examination from acting as complainant.
    8. Notify and monitor snakebite: Make snakebite reporting mandatory across the district and publish block level data so preventive investment follows the burden.

    PYQ:

    “`

    [2025, GS1, 15 marks] Does tribal development in India centre around two axes, those of displacement and of rehabilitation? Give your opinion.

    “`