12 June 2026

• West Asia: Iran announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Indian seafarers were caught in the strikes and the rupee fell to 95.85 a dollar.
• Polity: a heavy day. The Tenth Schedule in action in Tamil Nadu. A Rajya Sabha nomination fight under Section 33A. The FCRA Amendment Bill debate.
• Courts: the Supreme Court fixed a minimum value for a homemaker's unpaid work in accident compensation.
• Data: May CPI came in at 3.93 per cent. NFHS-6 numbers on fertility and contraception entered the policy debate.

GS area: International Relations, Geography, Energy security

Iran announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to all traffic. This followed US strikes on Iranian air defence and radar sites and Iranian return strikes on US bases in Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan. The Indian angle:

• Jalveer: a Guinea-Bissau-flagged bitumen carrier was hit off Shinas in Oman. All 20 Indian crew members on board are safe.
• Settebello: three Indian sailors were killed when this tanker was struck earlier in the conflict.
• Indian Navy: recovered an unexploded missile warhead from the tanker MT Olympic Life. That is its escort and ordnance-disposal role at work.
• Rupee: fell 60 paise to 95.85 per US dollar. India imports over 80 per cent of its crude and much of that oil transits this strait.
• DG Shipping: the Directorate General of Shipping is India's maritime regulator. It had warned Indian vessels about the region in a February advisory.

Why prelims cares. The strait is a map question waiting to happen:

• Location: a narrow channel that links the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and on to the Arabian Sea.
• Neighbours: Iran sits on the northern shore. Oman's Musandam exclave and the UAE sit on the southern shore.
• Weight: the only sea exit from the Persian Gulf. Roughly a fifth of the world's traded oil passes through it. That is why one announcement moved both oil prices and the rupee.

Static linkage: world geography (chokepoints), Indian Ocean trade routes.

GS area: Polity

The Tamil Nadu Speaker dropped disqualification proceedings against 21 AIADMK MLAs. The party condoned their whip violation within the prescribed 15 days. That single sentence packs four testable points:

• 52nd Amendment (1985): inserted the Tenth Schedule into the Constitution. This is the anti-defection law. It lays down when an MP or MLA loses the seat for switching sides.
• Two grounds for disqualification: voluntarily giving up party membership or defying the party whip in the House.
• The condonation window: a whip violation does not disqualify if the party forgives it within 15 days of the vote. The AIADMK did exactly that and its 21 members keep their seats.
• Kihoto Hollohan (1992): the Supreme Court upheld the Schedule but cut down its finality clause. The Speaker decides defection cases but the decision can be challenged in court like any tribunal order.

A point worth a moment of thought. The Speaker is a party figure and also the judge in defection cases. Courts have flagged that conflict repeatedly yet the design survives. Expect a statement on this in both prelims and mains.

Static linkage: Parliament and state legislatures (Polity).

GS area: Polity (elections)

A Congress Rajya Sabha candidate's nomination in Madhya Pradesh was rejected for not disclosing a pending case in the affidavit. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the challenge but refused to pause the election. The law here is narrow and precise:

• Section 33A of the RP Act 1951: added in 2002 after the Supreme Court's right-to-know rulings. The nomination affidavit must declare every pending case punishable with two years or more where a court has framed charges.
• What stays outside it: a private complaint where charges have not been framed carries no disclosure duty. The rejected candidate leans on this because the Hyderabad matter never reached the charge-framing stage.
• Article 324: vests the superintendence, direction and control of elections in the Election Commission. Electoral rolls and the conduct of polls both fall under it. The returning officer who rejected this nomination draws his power from that authority.

The fairness question raised in court: another candidate was reportedly given time to fix affidavit defects. The live controversy is differential treatment by returning officers rather than the statute itself.

GS area: Polity, Governance

The Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act of 2010 governs who may receive foreign donations and how the money may be spent. An amendment Bill introduced in the Lok Sabha on 25 March 2026 is now the sharpest civil liberties fight in Parliament. What the Bill adds:

• Section 14B: an organisation's FCRA registration ends automatically in the situations the section lists. There is no separate cancellation order and no hearing before the registration dies.
• Section 16A: foreign contributions and any assets built from them can provisionally vest in a government-designated authority. In plain terms the state can take charge of an NGO's foreign-funded property while proceedings are still underway.

The 2020 amendments had already tightened the regime:

• Single route: every foreign contribution must land in one designated SBI branch in New Delhi before it can move anywhere else.
• Administrative cap: the share of foreign funds an organisation may spend on its own administration was cut from 50 per cent to 20.
• Sub-granting ban: an FCRA recipient can no longer pass foreign funds on to another organisation. That ended the common model of large NGOs funding smaller grassroots ones.

The case against the Bill is serious. About 22,000 FCRA licences were cancelled between 2014 and 2026. Automatic cessation and asset vesting without a hearing turn regulation into control of civil society. The sector contributes around 2 per cent of GDP. Each constitutional touchpoint below is a potential MCQ statement:

• Article 14: equality before the law. Automatic cessation with no hearing invites the arbitrariness test.
• Article 19(1)(c): the freedom to form associations. This is the core right every NGO operates under.
• Articles 25 and 26: religious freedom and the right of denominations to manage their own affairs. Many FCRA recipients are religious charities.
• Articles 29 and 30: minority rights including the right to run educational institutions. Many such institutions depend on foreign funds.
• Article 300A: no deprivation of property except by authority of law. Asset vesting raises this squarely.

GS area: Polity (judiciary), Society

A Bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and N.K. Singh ruled on compensation for a homemaker's death in road accidents. The forum to remember is the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal. That is the body under the Motor Vehicles Act which decides accident compensation. The ruling:

• A floor value: tribunals must value unpaid domestic work at no less than 30,000 rupees a month when computing compensation for a homemaker's death.
• Built-in escalation: the floor rises 10 per cent every three years. The value keeps pace with time without fresh litigation.
• Additive: a homemaker who also held a paid job gets the 30,000 over and above the lost salary.
• Language: the Court consciously chose homemaker over housewife. It framed the work as nation building rather than dependence.

The ruling puts a price on care work that national accounts ignore. The gap between unpaid work and GDP is a favourite essay and mains angle.

GS area: Society, Social policy

Andhra Pradesh announced incentives of 30,000 and 40,000 rupees for a third and fourth child. The backdrop is NFHS-6. That is the National Family Health Survey round for 2023-24 and its numbers are classic prelims material:

• Total Fertility Rate: the average number of children a woman is expected to bear. India is at about 2.0. That is below the replacement level of 2.1 at which a population holds steady. Southern states run as low as 1.3.
• Contraceptive prevalence: rose from 66.7 per cent in NFHS-5 to 69.1 per cent. Access is improving overall.
• The gender skew within it: female sterilisation alone accounts for 36.5 per cent of all contraceptive use. Male sterilisation is 0.5 per cent. The burden of permanent contraception falls almost entirely on women.
• Early marriage: 20.1 per cent of women aged 20 to 24 were married before turning 18. The rural figure is 23.3 per cent.
• The ageing horizon: by 2050 more than a fifth of Indians will be over 60. The estimate comes from the Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (LASI). This is what drives the new pro-natalist talk.

The critical point: pro-natalist cash incentives have a poor record. Poland, Japan, South Korea and Singapore all saw short-lived boosts. The deeper constraints sit in Andhra Pradesh itself: early marriage, low asset ownership among women and weak female workforce participation.

Static linkage: population (Indian geography), society topics.

GS area: Economy, Polity

Rules under the four labour codes were notified in May 2026. That completes a framework which replaced 29 central labour laws. Know the four and what each covers:

• Code on Wages, 2019: minimum wages, timely payment and equal remuneration for all employees rather than only scheduled industries.
• Industrial Relations Code, 2020: trade unions, standing orders, strikes, lay-offs, retrenchment and the disputes machinery.
• Code on Social Security, 2020: provident fund, insurance, gratuity and maternity benefit. It also gives gig and platform workers their first statutory definitions.
• Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020: safety standards, working hours, welfare facilities and migrant worker protections.

The criticism is specific rather than rhetorical:

• Fixed-term employment: formalised with no minimum tenure and no cap on renewals. A worker can be kept on rolling short contracts indefinitely.
• Union recognition: a sole registered union now needs 30 per cent membership for recognition. The threshold was set by the Rules and never debated in Parliament.
• Gig and platform workers: defined in the Social Security Code but still treated as self-employed. That keeps them outside minimum-wage and job-security protections.

GS area: Economy (energy)

The Centre removed central excise duty on E22, E25, E27 and E30 blends. This extends the existing E20 exemption. E85 was launched on 5 June. Pointers:

• E-numbers: the figure is the ethanol share of the blend. E20 is 20 per cent ethanol and E85 is 85.
• Why the exemption: a blend otherwise attracts a dual levy of excise on the petrol portion plus GST on the ethanol portion. Removing excise stops the double taxation.
• The catch: ordinary engines cannot run high-ethanol fuel. Roll-out waits on flex-fuel vehicles and compatibility testing. The duty cut is groundwork rather than a launch.

GS area: Economy, Science and Technology

About ten companies including Reliance, Vedanta and Adani expressed interest in rare-earth facilities in Andhra Pradesh. The numbers to retain:

• Andhra Pradesh: about 211 million tonnes of beach-sand mineral resources. These are the coastal sands that carry rare-earth-bearing minerals.
• India overall: about 482.6 million tonnes of rare-earth ore on the Geological Survey of India's estimate.
• Investment target: roughly 50,000 crore rupees over the next decade.
• Why it matters: mining is only half the problem. China dominates the processing and refining stage worldwide. Rare earths sit inside EV motors, electronics, wind turbines and defence systems. Domestic processing capacity is the strategic gap.

GS area: Economy

MoSPI released May retail inflation today. The numbers:

• Headline CPI: 3.93 per cent against 3.48 in April.
• Food inflation: 4.78 per cent against 4.20. Food drove the rise.
• Rural versus urban: 4.25 against 3.53 per cent. Price pressure is heavier in villages.
• RBI context: the print is still below the 4 per cent midpoint. The Monetary Policy Committee is the six-member body that sets the repo rate. In June it raised its FY27 inflation projection from 4.6 to 5.1 per cent because the West Asia conflict threatens oil prices.

Two facts examiners love. CPI comes from MoSPI through the National Statistics Office and not from the RBI. The statutory target is 4 per cent with a tolerance band of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

GS area: Government schemes (Education, S&T)

The Department of Higher Education under the Ministry of Education opened applications for the PMRC Scheme. The scheme brings accomplished Indian-origin researchers abroad into Indian institutions for cutting-edge research. The scheme card:

• Three categories by post-PhD experience abroad: Young Research Fellows (under 5 years), Senior Fellows (5 to under 10) and Research Chairs (10 or more).
• Benefits: packages worth up to 14 crore rupees covering research grants, relocation and lab access across 13 national priority sectors.
• Who can apply: Indian nationals working abroad, OCI cardholders and Persons of Indian Origin.
• Host institutions: government institutions in the NIRF top 100 overall or engineering or the top 50 in research. National labs under DST, DBT, ICMR and CSIR also qualify.
• Window: 1 June to 15 July 2026 on the pmrc.education.gov.in portal.

• France and the Rafale programme: talks on co-developing a new Rafale model under Make in India. The plan covers 114 fighters for the IAF at roughly 3.25 lakh crore rupees. The pitch is an equal partnership in place of the old buyer-seller arrangement. France also floated a multinational maritime security initiative for Hormuz. The PM travels to France for the G7 summit.
• Balakrishnan Commission: the three-member panel under former Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan completed its report. It was set up in October 2022 to examine whether Scheduled Caste status can extend to Dalit converts to Islam and Christianity. The Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order of 1950 currently limits SC status to Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist Dalits. Scheduled Tribe status carries no religion test. That is the comparison every examiner reaches for. Pleas have waited in the Supreme Court for about 20 years.