1 June 2026

• Judiciary: The Supreme Court expanded the right to privacy to cover criminal records online. It also allowed an MTP at 28 weeks for a minor survivor and issued a landmark ruling on homemaker compensation.
• Polity: Three-language formula back in the Supreme Court after CBSE mandated it from July 2026. Voter roll deletions challenged in multiple states.
• International: India-Canada CEPA talks target conclusion by end of 2026. Nepal PM acknowledged mutual encroachments along the border.
• Security and defence: Gen. N.S. Raja Subramani assumed charge as the third Chief of Defence Staff. New CDS, new Navy chief.

GS area: Polity (Judiciary), Governance

The Delhi High Court ordered the de-indexing of a petitioner's criminal record from name-based internet searches. The order rests on two anchors:

• Article 21 of the Constitution: guarantees the right to life and personal liberty. The Supreme Court's K.S. Puttaswamy judgment of 2017 read the right to privacy into Article 21 as a fundamental right.
• Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023: India's data-protection statute. It creates the right to correction and erasure of personal data in specified circumstances.
• The global precedent: the EU's 2014 Google Spain ruling established the right to be forgotten in European law. India's courts have built on that logic.

The tension the court navigated is real: digitisation means acquittals are archived alongside charges in perpetuity. A person's past follows their name in every search result. The court's relief is de-indexing rather than deletion, which preserves the record while limiting casual discovery.

Static linkage: Fundamental rights (Polity), data governance.

GS area: Polity, Education

The Supreme Court issued notice to the Centre, CBSE and NCERT after CBSE mandated three languages for Class 9 students from July 2026. The order relies on NEP 2020 and the National Curriculum Framework 2023. The court declined an immediate stay but flagged concerns.

• NEP 2020: the National Education Policy adopted in July 2020. It recommends the three-language formula for all students but stops short of mandating any specific language.
• NCF 2023: the National Curriculum Framework issued by NCERT. It is the implementation document for NEP 2020 at the school level.
• The Tamil Nadu dispute: Tamil Nadu has consistently refused the three-language formula. The state's resistance is the reason the court's notice matters beyond a procedural point.

Education sits on the Concurrent List (Entry 25). Both Parliament and state legislatures can legislate on it. That makes disputes about national education policy into federalism disputes as much as curriculum disputes.

Static linkage: Concurrent List, Centre-State relations (Polity).

GS area: Governance, Society

India's jail occupancy rate stood at 112.7 per cent in 2024. The numbers behind that figure are worth retaining:

• Capacity and population: 1,333 jails across the country. Sanctioned capacity is 4.53 lakh. Actual population is 5.11 lakh.
• Undertrial share: about 73 per cent of all inmates are undertrials awaiting trial. They have not been convicted of anything.
• Delhi: occupancy at 194 per cent. Delhi and Bihar report undertrial shares around 87 per cent.
• Staff vacancies: up to 60 per cent vacant in some states.

The undertrial figure is the core problem. Slow trials and denial of bail keep unconvicted people in grossly overcrowded jails for years. The constitutional provision is Article 21: no deprivation of life or liberty except by procedure established by law. Extended undertrial detention without trial raises the question of whether that procedure is adequate.

Static linkage: Judicial reforms, criminal justice, fundamental rights.

GS area: Polity, Society

A demand surfaced at an RSS-affiliated conclave to strip Scheduled Tribe status from Adivasis who convert to Christianity. The constitutional basis of ST classification makes this demand legally unsound:

• Article 342: empowers the President to specify Scheduled Tribes by public notification in consultation with Governors. The criteria are ethnographic and anthropological: community kinship, tribal characteristics, geographic isolation, backwardness and shyness of contact.
• Religion is not a criterion: unlike Scheduled Castes (governed by the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950, which restricts SC status to Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists), ST classification carries no religion test.
• Patna High Court, 1963: affirmed that tribal identity transcends religious faith. Conversion does not sever the community link.

The SC-ST distinction on religion is a frequent MCQ trap. SC status is religion-linked. ST status is not.

Static linkage: Scheduled tribes, fundamental rights, Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order 1950.

GS area: International Relations, Environment

Bangladesh approved the Padma Barrage on its stretch of the Ganga. The structure is:

• Dimensions: 2.1 km in length, 78 gates, 113 MW of hydropower generation.
• Storage: impounds approximately 2.9 billion cubic metres of water.
• Coverage: designed to irrigate about 2.88 million hectares. That affects roughly 37 per cent of Bangladesh's land area.
• The upstream link: Bangladesh built the barrage partly to counter the reduced dry-season flows it attributes to India's Farakka Barrage, commissioned in 1975.
• Ganga Waters Treaty, 1996: the bilateral treaty governing sharing at the Farakka Barrage is due for renewal in 2026. Delay would worsen the political climate.

The Farakka-Padma sequence illustrates a common pattern in transboundary river disputes: each upstream intervention provokes a downstream response.

Static linkage: Transboundary rivers, India-Bangladesh relations.

GS area: Polity (Defence), Security

General N.S. Raja Subramani assumed charge as India's third Chief of Defence Staff. Admiral Krishna Swaminathan became the new Navy chief simultaneously.

• CDS post: created in January 2020 following the Kargil Review Committee and Shekatkar Committee recommendations. The CDS heads the Department of Military Affairs and is the single-point military adviser to the Defence Minister.
• Vision: Gen. Subramani framed his priorities as JAI: Jointness (tri-service integration), Atmanirbharta (indigenisation) and Innovation.
• Theatre commands: the first CDS, Gen. Bipin Rawat, initiated the process of creating integrated theatre commands. The third CDS inherits that unfinished agenda.

Static linkage: Defence organisation, military reforms.

GS area: International Relations, Economy

India and Canada are working toward concluding a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement by end-2026. Bilateral trade is targeted at 50 billion US dollars by 2030.

• What Canada supplies: uranium for India's civil nuclear programme, potash for fertilisers and critical minerals for clean energy.
• The diplomatic chill: relations deteriorated after Canada alleged Indian involvement in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia in 2023. The diplomatic reset began in late 2025.
• The diaspora factor: Canada has the largest Indian diaspora in North America. That community's economic and political weight shapes both sides' calculations.

Static linkage: India's bilateral trade agreements, diaspora diplomacy.

GS area: Governance, Cybersecurity

A 19-year-old hacker accessed CBSE's OnMark dashboard and exposed 9.3 million rows of student data stored in an unsecured AWS bucket. The board's vendor, COEMPT Eduteck, processed answer sheets via an AI tool on a US-based server.

• Scale of exposure: 9.3 million records including student names, roll numbers and answer sheet images.
• IT Act, 2000: Sections 66 and 43 cover unauthorised access and data damage. Cases were filed under these provisions.
• DPDP Act, 2023: India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act creates obligations on data fiduciaries to protect personal data. A breach of this scale tests those obligations in real conditions.

The CBSE controversy has a second dimension: the Centre replaced the board's Chairman and Secretary and constituted a one-member inquiry committee after protests over the OSM evaluation system. The Capacity Building Commission chairperson was appointed to lead the probe.

Static linkage: Cybersecurity, data protection, governance.

GS area: Polity (Elections)

About 6.5 crore names were deleted from electoral rolls across 13 states and union territories during the Special Intensive Revision exercise. Key facts:

• Challenge volume: about 27 lakh deletions are being contested in West Bengal alone.
• Legal basis: Article 326 of the Constitution guarantees universal adult suffrage. The Representation of the People Act, 1950 governs roll preparation. The disputed point is whether SIR was conducted under the correct sub-section (Section 21(2) or 21(3)).
• Court: the Supreme Court upheld the SIR on 27 May 2026 but noted that citizenship determination is the province of the Ministry of Home Affairs, not the Election Commission.

Static linkage: Electoral rolls, Election Commission, Articles 324-327.

GS area: Polity (Judiciary), Society

The Supreme Court allowed a medical termination of pregnancy at 28 weeks for an unwed 15-year-old survivor. The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act normally caps the procedure at 24 weeks. The court used its power under Article 142 to do complete justice in an exceptional case.

• Article 142: empowers the Supreme Court to pass any order necessary for complete justice in any matter pending before it. Courts have used it in the Bhopal settlement, the Ayodhya matter and other cases.
• POCSO tension: the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act criminalises sexual activity with minors. The case sits at the intersection of reproductive rights and child protection.
• AIIMS: requested the court to reconsider, citing the ethical burden on the medical team at such late gestation.

Static linkage: Article 142, MTP Act, POCSO, reproductive rights.

GS area: Science and Technology

The James Webb Space Telescope detected weather patterns on WASP-94A b, an exoplanet about 700 light-years away. Key facts:

• Planet: twice Jupiter's size but half its mass. It orbits its star every four days and is tidally locked.
• Weather: magnesium-silicate and iron clouds form on the cooler night side. Winds sweep them toward the day side, where the heat dissipates them. The result is a permanent clear-sky region on the day side and persistent cloud cover on the night side.
• Significance: the finding demonstrates that the JWST can resolve atmospheric dynamics on distant worlds. Atmospheric composition and cloud patterns are stepping stones to detecting biosignatures.

Static linkage: Space science, JWST.

• India-Nepal boundary: Nepal's PM acknowledged that Nepal may have encroached on Indian territory in some areas while also alleging Indian encroachments. The disputed triangle of Kalapani-Lipulekh-Limpiyadhura remains unresolved. India reiterated its "no third-party mediation" position.
• Human trafficking judgment: the Supreme Court, in a 297-page judgment, described trafficking as "one of the worst forms of exploitation." The court flagged the conflation of voluntary sex work with trafficking and called for recognition of distinctions under the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act and the Palermo Protocol.
• Shakti-NCMC integration: Karnataka is integrating its Shakti free-bus scheme with the National Common Mobility Card framework.
• Chola copper plates: a set of Chola dynasty copper plates was returned from the Netherlands to India.