Polity and governanceThe Hindu, Page 1GS2Must read
On 5 November 2026, a Supreme Court Bench of Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and Atul S. Chandurkar held that the 24-hour period in Article 22(2) of the Constitution, within which an arrested person must be produced before a magistrate, runs from the moment the person's liberty is actually curtailed, not from the time the police formally record an arrest. The case came from Tripura. Four men were detained at about 2 pm on 29 September 2025 during a search and seizure in which 11.03 kg of yaba tablets were recovered under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985. They were shown as formally arrested only at 11 am on 30 September. The Tripura High Court had refused them bail. The Supreme Court ordered their immediate release because they had not been produced within 24 hours of being detained.
Prelims facts
- Article 22(2) requires every person arrested and detained to be produced before the nearest magistrate within 24 hours, excluding only the journey time.
- On 5 November 2026 the Supreme Court held that the 24 hours start when liberty is actually curtailed, not when an arrest is formally recorded.
- Magistrates must record the actual time of detention, release a person held beyond 24 hours without production, and may refuse remand for an unreasonably long detention.
- The Bench of Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and Atul S. Chandurkar disapproved Orissa, Kerala and Madras High Court rulings that excluded pre-arrest custody from the count.
- Article 22(3) excludes enemy aliens and persons held under preventive detention laws from the protections of Article 22(1) and 22(2).
Read the full story, model answer and deep dive
EconomyThe Hindu, Page 16GS3GS2Must read
The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which runs the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), has told the Supreme Court in a counter affidavit filed on 3 November 2026 that a zero merchant discount rate (MDR) on all UPI payments is unsustainable. MDR is the fee a merchant's bank charges for accepting a digital payment. The petition before the court challenges three things: the amendment of Section 10A of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007 through the Taxation and Other Laws (Amendment) Act, 2026; the Centre's notification of 14 September 2026 naming the payment modes that stay free; and NPCI's circular of 15 September 2026 that set out a revised MDR. Under the framework, an MDR not exceeding 0.4% applies only to person-to-merchant (P2M) payments above ₹2,000. The charge was meant to start on 15 October, but NPCI says it has been postponed.
Prelims facts
- NPCI's framework allows an MDR of up to 0.4% only on person-to-merchant UPI payments above ₹2,000.
- Person-to-person UPI transfers, about 70% of all UPI transactions, and merchants with monthly UPI credits up to ₹1 lakh stay free of MDR.
- NPCI told the Supreme Court that merchants cannot pass the MDR on to customers and UPI apps cannot charge platform fees.
- NPCI argues it is not 'State' under Article 12, so Articles 14 and 19(1)(g) cannot be enforced against it under Article 32.
- Zero MDR on RuPay debit cards and UPI has applied since 1 January 2020.
Read the full story, model answer and deep dive
Science and technologyThe Hindu, Page 16GS3Must read
The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), the national agency for responding to cyber incidents, has issued the 'Artificial Intelligence (AI) Security Auditing Guidelines: Framework for Secure, Ethical and Auditable Artificial Intelligence Systems'. Version 1.0 is dated 4 November 2026 and was prepared by a working group under CERT-In's effort on Indian standards for cybersecurity auditing. It applies to AI systems developed or operated in India, and to systems that process Indian data or serve Indian users. Its aim is a consistent, risk-based way to audit AI for security, governance, privacy, fairness, transparency, resilience and auditability across the system's life cycle. The Hindu reported it on 6 November with a focus on its rules for agentic AI, which are systems that plan and carry out tasks, use tools and delegate work on their own.
Prelims facts
- CERT-In's AI Security Auditing Guidelines, version 1.0, are dated 4 November 2026.
- AI systems are placed in four risk tiers (Low, Moderate, High, Critical) using eight risk factors scored 1 to 4.
- Critical-tier systems need an audit by a CERT-In empanelled auditor plus continuous monitoring, and an AI Impact Assessment is mandatory for Tiers 3 and 4.
- Audits of agentic AI must test permissions, credential misuse, safe delegation and emergency-stop mechanisms.
- AI-related security incidents must be reported to CERT-In within six hours, with logs kept for 180 days.
Read the full story, model answer and deep dive
Society, justice and ethicsThe Hindu, EditorialGS2GS1
Late on 31 October 2026, four workers died after entering a waste chamber to clean it at the Shri Ganga Hotel on the Ujjain-Dewas road in Madhya Pradesh. Two others who went in to rescue them fell ill. Police suspected suffocation, the district administration ordered an inquiry, and Chief Minister Mohan Yadav announced ₹4 lakh for each family. The Hindu's editorial of 6 November, 'Danger in the sewer', uses the deaths to argue that India keeps losing sanitation workers in deaths that are foreseeable and largely preventable, despite laws, Supreme Court orders, government programmes, mechanised cleaning technology and political appeals. Data from the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis (NCSK) show 859 deaths in sewer and septic tank cleaning from 2014 to 2025, and 31 deaths in 2026 up to 20 October, with full compensation paid in only nine of those cases.
Prelims facts
- NCSK data show 859 deaths in sewer and septic tank cleaning in India from 2014 to 2025.
- The Manual Scavengers Act, 2013 prohibits employing anyone, directly or indirectly, for hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks.
- In Dr. Balram Singh v. Union of India (2023), the Supreme Court fixed ₹30 lakh compensation for a sewer death.
- The Balram Singh ruling also barred outsourced contracts from requiring workers to enter sewers.
- The editorial calls for zero human entry, principal employer liability and an independent public record of deaths.
Read the full story, model answer and deep dive
Science and technologyThe Hindu, Page 13GS3
The Hindu's explainer of 6 November 2026 sets out how tokamaks work and why they are central to the search for fusion power. Fusion joins light nuclei into a heavier one and releases energy. The favoured fuel is deuterium and tritium, two isotopes of hydrogen, which fuse into helium and a fast neutron, releasing 17.6 MeV per reaction, about 80% of it (14.1 MeV) carried by the neutron. The fuel must be heated into a plasma at temperatures of the order of 150 million °C, far hotter than the Sun's core, and no material wall can hold it. A tokamak solves this with magnetism: external coils and an electric current driven through the plasma together create a twisted magnetic field that keeps the plasma inside a ring-shaped vacuum chamber and away from the walls. The name is a Russian acronym for 'toroidal chamber with magnetic coils', and the concept emerged in the Soviet Union in the early 1950s, mainly through Igor Tamm and Andrei Sakharov.
Prelims facts
- A tokamak confines plasma in a ring-shaped vacuum chamber using magnetic fields from external coils and a current driven through the plasma.
- Deuterium-tritium fusion releases 17.6 MeV per reaction, about 80% of it carried by the neutron.
- ITER, at Cadarache in France, has seven members including India, which joined in December 2005; it aims for a gain of Q = 10 but will not generate electricity.
- Under ITER's 2024 schedule, deuterium plasma operations start in 2034 and deuterium-tritium operation in 2039.
- India's tokamaks, ADITYA-U and SST-1, are at the Institute for Plasma Research, Gandhinagar.
Read the full story, model answer and deep dive