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The day's papers, read for the exam. Every article here is rewritten and reviewed — we link you to the original, we never reprint it.
Read the week in one go9 August 2026
The Hindu (7)
7 articles in all · 44 min to read everything
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3 articles- The HinduGS-210min
Outgoing NALSAR students don't want CJI at convocation
B. Pradeep
The outgoing batch at a national law university in Hyderabad has asked its administration to reconsider inviting the Chief Justice of India to deliver the convocation address — a role the country's senior-most judge has traditionally filled there. What makes the request unusual is where it comes from. These are students training to practise before the very court whose head they are declining to honour, and they have chosen a written representation to their Vice-Chancellor rather than litigation or disruption. The trigger was a bench led by the Chief Justice declining to take suo motu cognisance of alleged police excesses during a protest march to Parliament, together with remarks from the bench — refusing to view video material, and telling those before it not to waste the court's time — that circulated widely. Campus solidarity first appeared on 20 July, the representation followed on 23 July, and within two days roughly 380 students across five junior batches had endorsed it. For the exam the value is not the controversy but what it exposes. Suo motu cognisance is discretionary: no litigant can compel it, and a refusal settles nothing about whether the conduct complained of occurred. Yet a court's authority rests on being seen to hear. This is judicial independence and judicial accountability pulling against each other in public.
- 6Key Ideas
- Ammunition
- 3Prelims Drill
- Mains Practice
- The HinduGS-2GS-310min
As U.S. Senate clears Bill, 100% tariff threat looms
T.C.A. Sharad Raghavan
The United States Senate has cleared a Bill that could impose a 100% tariff on Indian goods, triggered by India's purchase of Russian crude oil. The vote was 86-11, with support from both parties. It is not law yet: a Bill must also pass the House of Representatives, so this is a strong signal rather than a settled outcome. The stated aim is to choke the revenue funding Russia's war in Ukraine, and the Bill targets Russian political leaders, banks, the energy sector and sanctions-evasion networks. What matters for India is how it selects its targets. It names no country. It sets two tests, and meeting either one brings the tariff thirty days after the law takes effect. The first catches any nation among the five biggest buyers of Russian crude or gas in the preceding year that keeps buying past that window. India and China are the two largest buyers, and Russian oil made up more than 40% of India's crude imports in May and above half in June. The second test targets countries facilitating sanctions evasion — a charge Indian refiners reject, saying every purchase has been lawful. India's real exposure is to the first test, and the timing is difficult. The obvious substitute is Gulf crude, which sails through the Strait of Hormuz, where passage is currently constrained. Any tariff would also sit on top of the 10% the U.S. already levies on Indian goods.
- 6Key Ideas
- Ammunition
- 3Prelims Drill
- Mains Practice
- The HinduGS-212min
More than 1.5 crore names off poll rolls in latest phase of SIR
Sreeparna Chakrabarty
The Election Commission is midway through the third round of its special intensive revision of electoral rolls, and the scale of the pruning is now visible. Across the twelve States and Union Territories where draft rolls have been published, 1.58 crore names have gone — 11.51% of the 13.77 crore voters who were on those rolls before the exercise began. The removals are far from uniform. Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu lost the largest share at 29.64%, followed by Arunachal Pradesh at 19.09% and Haryana at 16.38%. Mizoram sits at the other end at 5.2%. In raw numbers Andhra Pradesh leads: 44.89 lakh names struck off, shrinking its roll from 4.16 crore to 3.71 crore. Andhra Pradesh also shows what those categories actually mean. Of its deletions, 22.30 lakh had shifted or were not found at the address, 15.22 lakh were reported dead, and 7.37 lakh were enrolled in more than one place. None of it is final. A claims-and-objections window follows every draft, so names can be restored or newly added before the roll is notified. Seven more States and Union Territories, including Delhi, Punjab, Karnataka and Maharashtra, are still doing door-to-door verification. For the exam the useful thing is not the arithmetic but the tension underneath it: an accurate roll and an inclusive roll are both constitutional goods, and an exercise on this scale sets them against each other.
- 6Key Ideas
- Ammunition
- 3Prelims Drill
- Mains Practice
Worth knowing
4 articlesshorter — summary and concepts- 3min
IAF officer held for 'leaking sensitive data'
An Indian Air Force Wing Commander has been arrested over allegations that he passed sensitive defence information to a Pakistani intelligence operative. On the account given, the approach began on social media, where the officer was drawn into a manufactured relationship before any information changed hands. The allegations are untested. Two details are worth carrying away. The arrest was made in May and became public only now. That gap is ordinary in counter-intelligence work rather than a lapse: announcing a detection early can tell a network it has been found, and the value of a case often lies in what it reveals before anyone is told about it. The second is the method. Nothing was hacked. A person who already held legitimate access was persuaded to use it. For the exam this is the whole lesson, because espionage of this kind is habitually written up as a technology failure when the failure is human — in vetting, in whether an officer can report an approach without ending his own career, and in whether access follows need-to-know rather than rank.
The HinduGS-3 - 3min
Strait won't open until U.S. corrects its behaviour, says Iran
Iran's Supreme National Security Council has said that the Strait of Hormuz will stay shut until the United States "corrects its behaviour", attaching fresh demands to any reopening. The timing matters: talks had been under way on an arrangement to manage the waterway and the traffic moving through it, and new conditions introduced at this stage can unsettle those discussions. The Strait of Hormuz is the sea passage between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, with Iran along its northern shore. It is the only maritime exit for crude loaded at the Gulf's export terminals, and roughly a fifth of the world's seaborne oil trade moves through it. That is why a restriction there registers in prices far from the region — there is no alternative route by sea, only longer and more expensive workarounds by pipeline where they exist. For India the consequence is direct. A large share of Indian crude comes from Gulf suppliers and must pass this way. A constrained strait therefore narrows India's alternatives at precisely the moment it is under pressure from another direction to reduce its purchases of Russian oil — the substitute and the route to it are squeezed together.
The HinduGS-1GS-2 - 3min
Jharkhand exam row: CID summons three JPSC members
Aspirants in Jharkhand have been protesting over alleged irregularities in the conduct of State competitive examinations, and the State Crime Investigation Department has now summoned three serving members of the State Public Service Commission. The detail worth pausing on is who is being summoned: not clerks or private contractors, but sitting members of a body the Constitution itself creates. That is what lifts this above a routine law-and-order item. A State Public Service Commission is not a department of the State government. Its members are appointed by the Governor, but they can be removed only by the President, and only after an inquiry by the Supreme Court. That deliberate split exists so a Commission can return a result the government of the day dislikes without its members fearing for their jobs. The same insulation turns awkward the moment the allegation is against the Commission itself. A State investigative agency, answerable to the State government, summoning members of a body designed to be independent of that government raises a genuine institutional question — and it is the question an examiner would set. Who holds a watchdog to account without dismantling the independence that made it a watchdog in the first place? For an aspirant, the recruitment angle is also personal: a Commission's credibility is the currency in which every candidate is paid.
The HinduGS-2 - 3min
Manipur CM reopens NH to allow free movement
Manipur's government has reopened the State's national highways, saying people of every community may now travel on them freely. The announcement came jointly from the Chief Minister, the Deputy Chief Minister and a local MLA, and it was made during a visit to Kangpokpi, which the report identifies as a Kuki-majority district rather than from the State capital. In a divided State, where an announcement is made is part of the message. The exam value here lies less in the event than in the institutional question it exposes. A national highway is declared and funded by the Union, yet whether a citizen can actually use one depends on public order and policing, which sit with the State. Ownership and control rest in different hands, and neither alone can guarantee a road stays open. Manipur's geography sharpens the point. The Imphal valley connects to the rest of the country through only a small number of arterial roads, so the condition of a single route is felt across the whole State. That is why reopening a highway is treated as a political act and not merely an administrative one.
Rahul KarmakarThe HinduGS-2GS-3