February 2026

The Union Health Ministry’s announcement of a nationwide Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination programme targeting girls aged 14 marks a landmark moment in India’s public health journey. The programme, which will use Gardasil, a quadrivalent HPV vaccine procured through a partnership with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, is voluntary and free of cost. Given that cervical cancer is the second most common cancer among Indian women, with nearly 80,000 new cases reported annually, this policy decision has enormous implications for women’s health, preventive medicine, vaccine diplomacy, and healthcare governance in India.

Five Important Key Points

• India’s HPV vaccination programme will target girls aged 14, a group identified as deriving maximum preventive benefit from the vaccine before potential HPV exposure.
• The vaccine used, Gardasil, is a quadrivalent HPV vaccine providing protection against HPV types 6, 11, 16, and 18, the latter two being responsible for most cervical cancer cases.
• Scientific evidence confirms that a single dose provides robust and durable protection when administered to girls in the recommended age group, enabling a simpler single-dose schedule.
• Vaccination will be conducted exclusively at designated government health facilities, ensuring quality control and post-vaccination monitoring.
• The procurement follows a globally supported mechanism through Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, ensuring affordability and supply chain reliability.

Background: Cervical Cancer Burden in India

Cervical cancer is caused by persistent infection with certain strains of Human Papillomavirus, which is transmitted through sexual contact. HPV types 16 and 18 together account for approximately 70% of all cervical cancer cases globally. In India, cervical cancer remains a significant public health challenge disproportionately affecting women from lower socio-economic backgrounds who lack access to regular screening. With 80,000 new cases annually and thousands of deaths, the disease imposes not only a health burden but also an economic and social burden on families.

India already has a domestically produced HPV vaccine, Cervavac, developed by the Serum Institute of India and approved by the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO). However, for the national programme, the government has chosen Gardasil procured through the Gavi partnership, citing stringent quality standards and the established international evidence base for the vaccine. This choice reflects a pragmatic approach to ensuring a successful national rollout.

Scientific Rationale and Single-Dose Schedule

One of the most significant scientific aspects of this programme is its adoption of a single-dose schedule. For many years, HPV vaccination was administered in a two or three-dose schedule. However, accumulating global evidence, including data from the World Health Organization (WHO), the Gates Foundation-funded trials in Kenya, and other large-scale studies, demonstrates that a single dose administered to girls aged 9 to 14 provides protection equivalent to multi-dose schedules. This is particularly important for India, where health system infrastructure, cold chain maintenance, and follow-up compliance are challenges in reaching every eligible girl with multiple doses.

The single-dose schedule dramatically simplifies programme management, reduces cold chain storage requirements, lowers overall costs, and improves the probability of achieving high coverage. For India’s vaccination infrastructure, which has demonstrated remarkable capacity through the Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP) and the COVID-19 vaccination drive, a single-dose HPV vaccine is operationally far more achievable.

Governance and Delivery Framework

The programme will be delivered exclusively through government health facilities including Ayushman Arogya Mandirs (formerly Sub-Health Centres and Primary Health Centres), Community Health Centres, Sub-District and District Hospitals, and Government Medical Colleges. Each session will be conducted under trained medical officers with provisions for post-vaccination observation, ensuring safety surveillance.

This delivery model aligns with the National Health Mission’s (NHM) existing infrastructure and leverages the experience gained through school-based vaccination programmes such as the Measles-Rubella (MR) vaccination campaign. The integration with Ayushman Arogya Mandirs, which are the flagship delivery points of Ayushman Bharat, signals an attempt to strengthen primary healthcare infrastructure as the backbone of preventive health programmes.

However, the success of the programme will depend critically on community awareness, consent from parents, healthcare worker training, and robust monitoring systems. India’s experience with previous vaccination campaigns has shown that rumours, misinformation, and hesitancy can significantly derail uptake. A comprehensive communication strategy involving ASHA workers, Anganwadi workers, school teachers, and local leaders will be essential.

Constitutional and Rights Dimensions

The decision to make the HPV vaccination voluntary rather than mandatory reflects a careful balance between public health goals and individual autonomy. The right to health, while not explicitly enumerated in the Constitution, is derived from Article 21 (right to life and personal liberty) through judicial interpretation. The Supreme Court in multiple decisions including Paschim Banga Khet Mazdoor Samity vs State of West Bengal (1996) has held that the state has a constitutional obligation to ensure access to healthcare for its citizens.

By making the vaccine free and accessible through government facilities, the programme is consistent with the state’s positive obligations under Article 21. The voluntary nature of the programme also respects personal autonomy and religious or cultural concerns that some communities might raise regarding vaccines associated with sexual health.

Economic Implications

The economic case for investing in HPV vaccination is strong. Cervical cancer treatment is costly, involves hospitalisation, surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, and imposes significant economic burdens on low-income households. A cost-effectiveness analysis from the perspective of India’s healthcare budget shows that the investment in HPV vaccination generates substantial returns through reduced treatment costs, prevention of premature female mortality, and preservation of workforce productivity.

The partnership with Gavi ensures that vaccine procurement costs are subsidised, making the programme financially viable for the government. More than 90 countries have already implemented single-dose HPV vaccination schedules, and their experience demonstrates the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of this approach at scale.

Challenges and Way Forward

Despite the programme’s promise, several challenges must be addressed. Geographic reach remains a concern, particularly in remote tribal and hilly areas where health infrastructure is inadequate. Awareness campaigns must actively counter misinformation about the vaccine’s safety and its association with sexual activity, which has been a barrier in some states. Cold chain maintenance for vaccine storage and transportation needs to be strengthened. Data systems for tracking vaccination coverage and adverse events must be robust and real-time.

The government should also consider integrating HPV vaccination with cervical cancer screening programmes for older women, creating a comprehensive cervical cancer prevention ecosystem. Investment in training healthcare workers on counselling skills to address parental concerns will be equally important.

Relevance for UPSC and SSC Examinations

This topic is relevant for UPSC Prelims under Science and Technology and Health Policy. For UPSC Mains GS-II, questions on health policy, government schemes, and women’s health frequently appear. The GS-III paper may test the economic aspects of public health investment. For SSC examinations, questions on health ministries, vaccination programmes, and Indian Constitution’s provisions on health are common. Aspirants should understand the linkages between Ayushman Bharat, NHM, Universal Immunisation Programme, and the new HPV vaccination drive.

The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal has emerged as one of the most contentious electoral law and governance debates in recent times. The Supreme Court of India, led by Chief Justice Surya Kant, has taken an extraordinary step of deploying judicial officers from neighbouring states of Odisha and Jharkhand to assist in the verification of claims and objections in West Bengal. This unprecedented judicial intervention in an Election Commission (ECI) exercise raises fundamental questions about electoral integrity, federalism, the constitutionality of the SIR process, and the independence of the Election Commission. The matter touches the heart of India’s democratic processes, universal adult franchise, and the role of the judiciary in electoral matters.

Five Important Key Points

• The Supreme Court expanded the judicial team deployed for West Bengal’s SIR process, authorising deployment of civil judges with at least three years of experience from Odisha and Jharkhand.
• Nearly 50 lakh claims and objections were pending before Electoral Registration Officers, with 294 district judges insufficient to handle the load within the election timeline.
• The Supreme Court permitted the ECI to publish a voter list on February 28, 2026, while allowing supplementary lists to be published continuously till nominations are filed.
• Under Article 142, the Supreme Court declared that voters in supplementary lists would be deemed part of the final electoral roll published on February 28.
• Aadhaar, Class 10 admit cards, and pass certificates were declared valid proof documents for SIR verification, despite concerns about Aadhaar forgery in border areas.

Background: What Is the Special Intensive Revision?

The Special Intensive Revision is a process undertaken by the Election Commission of India under the Representation of the People Act, 1950, to update and correct electoral rolls. It involves identifying voters based on logical discrepancies, address mismatches, and mapping errors. The ECI notified the SIR for West Bengal on October 27, 2025, and the process has since been enveloped in political controversy between the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress government and the ECI.

The ECI’s decision to conduct SIR just before the West Bengal Assembly elections brought it under intense scrutiny. Large-scale deletions from electoral rolls were reported across multiple states. Tamil Nadu saw nearly 11.5% of voters removed, Gujarat 13.4%, and Chhattisgarh 11.8%. These numbers are strikingly high for a routine exercise, particularly given that female electors were deleted in higher proportions than male electors, raising concerns about structural bias in the SIR methodology.

Constitutional and Legal Dimensions

The SIR draws its legal basis from the Representation of the People Act, 1950, particularly Section 21 to Section 28, which empower the Election Commission to prepare, revise, and maintain electoral rolls. The Election Commission, constituted under Article 324 of the Constitution, has superintendence, direction, and control over the preparation of electoral rolls for all elections to Parliament and State Legislatures.

However, the Supreme Court has played an active role in questioning whether the SIR process itself is constitutionally valid. Critics argue that conducting a mass revision without a fresh Census, which has been delayed by the BJP-led Union government since the 2011 Census, is inherently flawed because comparisons with accurate population data are impossible. This raises the question of whether the ECI acted prematurely and whether the exercise violated the right to vote, which is a statutory right closely linked to Articles 19 and 21 of the Constitution.

The Supreme Court’s use of Article 142, which grants the Court power to pass orders necessary for doing complete justice in any cause or matter, reflects the gravity with which the apex court is treating the issue. By declaring supplementary list voters as part of the final electoral roll, the Court is essentially filling a legal vacuum created by the ECI’s logistical failures.

The inclusion of Aadhaar as a verification document under Section 23 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, has also been challenged. Petitioners argued that Aadhaar was being forged on an industrial scale in border areas of West Bengal, potentially enabling illegal immigrants to enrol as voters. The Supreme Court declined to remove Aadhaar from the list of valid documents but directed concerns to be raised with the Union government for statutory amendments.

Governance Concerns and the Trust Deficit

A central theme in the Supreme Court’s intervention is the persistent trust deficit between the Mamata Banerjee government and the ECI. The Court itself acknowledged this trust deficit as a justification for judicial deployment in a process that is ordinarily administrative. This is constitutionally unprecedented in the history of Indian elections.

The involvement of judicial officers transforms the nature of the SIR from an executive administrative exercise into a quasi-judicial process. While this may improve credibility, it also sets a potentially dangerous precedent where the judiciary is routinely pressed into service to validate or oversee administrative failures. The question of institutional capacity and administrative accountability deserves deeper reflection.

The Calcutta High Court Chief Justice’s letter to the Supreme Court, detailing that even if each of the 294 judges handled 250 cases per day, the entire process would take 80 days, is a damning indictment of the planning and execution of the SIR. It reveals a fundamental mismatch between the scale of the exercise and the resources deployed, leading to inevitable infringement of voter rights.

Impact on Universal Adult Franchise

Universal adult franchise is guaranteed through Articles 326 of the Constitution, which provides that elections to the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies shall be on the basis of adult suffrage. Any process that leads to wrongful deletion of eligible voters directly undermines this constitutional guarantee.

The disproportionate deletion of female voters is particularly alarming. Married women who shift residences, migrant workers, and those living away from their registered addresses are structurally vulnerable to deletion under the SIR methodology. This is not merely a logistical problem but a systemic failure that requires a household-by-household approach rather than a technology-driven mapping exercise.

The Supreme Court’s observation that it is seeking to ease the hurt rather than aid the process of universal adult franchise is a candid admission that the ongoing judicial intervention is remedial rather than preventive. The constitutional goal of ensuring every eligible adult has the right to vote is being compromised by the manner in which the SIR was designed and implemented.

Editorial Analysis: Was the SIR Premature?

From a policy analysis standpoint, the decision to conduct SIR without an updated Census is questionable. The 2011 Census data, now 15 years old, cannot accurately reflect India’s demographic realities. Projected adult population estimates based on such old data inevitably produce large discrepancies when compared against actual electoral roll numbers, making it impossible to determine whether high deletion rates reflect genuine errors or administrative over-exclusion.

The Supreme Court’s editorial observations in this case, as reflected in its orders, strongly suggest that it believes the process was flawed from conception. However, having allowed the process to proceed, the Court is now managing consequences rather than preventing them. This is a lesson for constitutional democracies about the importance of timely judicial intervention in electoral processes.

Way Forward

Several structural reforms are necessary to prevent a recurrence. First, the Election Commission must wait for updated Census data before undertaking mass revisions of electoral rolls. Second, the SIR methodology must incorporate a robust household-by-household verification mechanism rather than technology-driven mapping that is prone to errors. Third, legal safeguards must be strengthened to protect migrant voters and married women from wrongful deletion. Fourth, the ECI must develop adequate institutional infrastructure for large-scale revision exercises instead of depending on the judiciary. Finally, Parliament must debate and legislate clearer standards for SIR processes to prevent discretionary and potentially partisan use of electoral roll revisions.

Relevance for UPSC and SSC Examinations

This topic is directly relevant for UPSC Prelims under Polity and Governance, UPSC Mains GS-II for questions on Election Commission, electoral reforms, federalism, and Supreme Court jurisdiction, and the Essay paper for themes on democracy and institutions. For SSC examinations, questions on Article 324, Article 326, Representation of the People Act, and the role of the Election Commission are commonly asked. Aspirants must understand the interplay between the ECI’s constitutional mandate, the right to vote, and the Supreme Court’s plenary powers under Article 142.

The deaths of three adolescent girls in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, earlier in February 2026 have forced a reckoning with what mental health professionals are increasingly calling India’s most neglected public health emergency: the crisis of child and adolescent mental health. The intense media attention following the Ghaziabad tragedy reflects not isolated grief but a collective confrontation with a systemic failure — the failure to recognise, resource, and respond to the mental health needs of India’s 350 million children and adolescents before crises escalate to tragedies.

This issue received formal governmental acknowledgement in India’s Economic Survey 2025–26, released in January 2026, which highlighted rising mental health challenges among young people and proposed a range of preventive strategies. The convergence of clinical evidence, policy attention, and public tragedy makes this one of the most urgent social policy issues of the current moment, with direct implications for education policy, digital regulation, healthcare governance, and the allocation of public resources.

Scale and Epidemiology of the Crisis

Five Important Key Points

• National Mental Health Survey findings and subsequent studies suggest that 7–10 percent of Indian adolescents have diagnosable mental health conditions, while 5–7 percent of school-aged children have ADHD.
• India has fewer than 10,000 psychiatrists for a population exceeding 1.4 billion people, with only a small fraction specialising in child and adolescent mental health.
• The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically accelerated screen dependence among children and adolescents, embedding digital devices as tools for education, recreation, and social interaction in ways that have persisted beyond the pandemic.
• The WHO issued guidelines as early as 2019 cautioning against excessive screen exposure among children and adolescents, noting adverse effects on sleep, attention, emotional regulation, and overall wellbeing.
• India’s Economic Survey 2025–26 explicitly acknowledged rising mental health challenges among young people, noting that several states are considering regulatory steps to limit adolescent social media use, drawing on precedents from Australia, France, and South Korea.

The epidemiological data on child mental health in India presents a deeply concerning picture. With 7–10 percent of adolescents having diagnosable conditions, this translates to conservatively 25–30 million young people in need of specialised mental health support, a figure that dwarfs India’s mental health service capacity. The shortage of child and adolescent psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, psychiatric social workers, and school counsellors means that the vast majority of these young people receive no professional support at all.

The World Health Organization estimates that 50 percent of all mental health conditions begin before age 14 and 75 percent before age 24. Early intervention is therefore not merely clinically preferable but is a matter of fundamental public health economics — untreated childhood mental health conditions impose vastly greater costs, both human and economic, than the costs of early identification and treatment.

The Digital Dimension: Social Media, Screen Time, and Mental Health

The relationship between digital technology use and adolescent mental health is one of the most actively researched questions in contemporary public health. India’s rapid digital expansion — with over 800 million internet users, driven partly by the near-universal penetration of affordable smartphones and low-cost data — has created conditions that are particularly concerning for young people. By 2022, India had over 467 million social media users, a substantial proportion of whom are under 18.

Excessive screen use does not cause neurodevelopmental conditions such as ADHD or autism spectrum disorders, but it can significantly exacerbate symptoms, delay diagnosis, and displace the human interaction essential for healthy brain development during periods of heightened neuroplasticity. During middle childhood and early adolescence — roughly ages 8–14 — the brain is undergoing rapid structural development in areas governing emotional regulation, impulse control, and social cognition. These are precisely the developmental processes that are most vulnerable to the displacement of in-person social interaction by screen-mediated interaction.

Internet addiction disorder — characterised by loss of control over digital use, irritability when unable to access devices, sleep disruption, and social withdrawal — has been recognised as a clinical entity in ICD-11 (the WHO’s International Classification of Diseases) as Gaming Disorder, and broader patterns of problematic internet use are increasingly prevalent in clinical practice in India.

Regulatory Responses: The Global Context and India’s Positioning

Several countries have moved to regulate adolescent social media use at the legislative level. Australia enacted legislation in 2024 prohibiting children under 16 from creating accounts on social media platforms, with platforms bearing the burden of age verification. France has implemented restrictions on social media use for minors under 15. South Korea has age-related restrictions on online gaming. These regulatory interventions remain contested — critics argue that prohibition drives use underground and increases the importance of digital literacy education — but they reflect a growing global consensus that the current digital environment for adolescents requires active governance rather than passive market reliance.

India’s Economic Survey 2025–26 endorsed the exploration of similar regulatory approaches, while acknowledging that implementation must be “thoughtful, alongside education and support rather than punitive controls.” This framing is important — effective regulation of adolescent digital use requires not just age restrictions or screen time limits but a comprehensive ecosystem of digital literacy, parental guidance frameworks, platform design accountability, and mental health awareness.

The Personal Data Protection and Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act 2023 includes provisions restricting data processing related to children (defined as under 18), requiring verifiable parental consent. While these provisions create some safeguards, they do not address the fundamental design features of social media platforms — including algorithmic recommendation systems, infinite scroll, notification-driven engagement, and social comparison mechanisms — that researchers have identified as driving excessive use and negative mental health outcomes among adolescents.

The Role of Schools, Families, and Healthcare Systems

Schools occupy a uniquely important position in India’s response to the child mental health crisis, both because they are the primary institution through which children can be reached at scale and because they are currently a significant weak link in the system. The vast majority of India’s approximately 1.5 million schools have no trained counsellor. Where school counsellors exist, they are typically undertrained for clinical mental health support and overwhelmed by their caseloads. Academic performance continues to dominate school culture, often at the explicit expense of emotional wellbeing.

The Right to Education Act 2009 does not include any provisions mandating school mental health services or psychosocial support. The National Education Policy 2020, while acknowledging the importance of holistic development, does not provide detailed frameworks for school mental health infrastructure. Bridging this policy gap requires both regulatory requirements and dedicated funding — neither of which is currently in place at a systemic level.

Families are the first and most important protective factor in child mental health outcomes. Trauma-informed parenting — which recognises how stress, loss, and adversity shape children’s behaviour and emotional development — has strong evidence for improving outcomes, particularly for children exposed to adverse childhood experiences. However, parental awareness of child mental health in India remains low, stigma around mental health help-seeking is high, and access to parenting support programmes is extremely limited outside urban centres.

Paediatricians represent the most accessible point of professional contact for families with young children. Routine developmental and mental health screening at well-child visits — asking about sleep, mood, social engagement, screen use, and peer relationships in addition to physical growth — would enable earlier identification of emerging mental health concerns. However, the average consultation time in India’s overwhelmed public healthcare system makes this an aspiration rather than a current reality without significant investment in training and capacity.

Policy Framework: Existing Programmes and Gaps

India’s National Mental Health Programme (NMHP), launched in 1982 and revised multiple times, focuses primarily on adult mental health and tertiary care. The District Mental Health Programme (DMHP), which is the NMHP’s delivery mechanism at the district level, has very limited capacity for child and adolescent mental health services. The tele-mental health initiative NIMHANS-driven Tele-MANAS, launched in 2022, provides telephone-based counselling but has not specifically addressed the child and adolescent segment with tailored services.

Ayushman Bharat Health and Wellness Centres, which are the primary health infrastructure upgrade initiative under Ayushman Bharat, could theoretically integrate mental health screening and counselling, but implementation has been slow and the mental health module has not been systematically deployed at scale.

The Economic Survey’s acknowledgement of the crisis and its recommendation of school-based screening, teacher training, and community-based counselling — particularly for low- and middle-income families — provides a policy direction, but converting this into budgeted, time-bound programmatic action requires political will and institutional capacity that are currently lacking.

Way Forward

A comprehensive national response to the child and adolescent mental health crisis requires a multi-pronged strategy that operates simultaneously across several dimensions. First, earmarked funding for child mental health within the National Mental Health Programme, with a dedicated National Child and Adolescent Mental Health Mission, needs to be established. Second, the National Education Policy’s commitments to holistic development must be operationalised through mandatory mental health screening in schools, compulsory training for school counsellors, and integration of socio-emotional learning into the school curriculum. Third, the DPDP Act’s child protection provisions must be strengthened and extended to address the design features of social media platforms that drive harmful use patterns. Fourth, a national public awareness campaign to reduce mental health stigma and increase parental mental health literacy is essential. Fifth, community-based mental health support — including peer support groups, community counsellors, and tele-mental health services specifically designed for adolescents — must be scaled up with public financing.

Relevance for UPSC and SSC Examinations

This topic is directly relevant to UPSC GS Paper 2 (Health, Education, Government Schemes for Vulnerable Populations), GS Paper 3 (Science and Technology — neuroscience, digital technology), and GS Paper 4 (Ethics — duty of care for vulnerable populations). The Mains Essay Paper frequently features topics on youth, education, mental health, and India’s social development challenges.

For SSC examinations, questions on government health programmes, child welfare schemes, the Right to Education Act, and India’s public health challenges are important General Awareness topics. The intersection of digital technology and health outcomes is an increasingly examined area reflecting current policy salience.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s announcement of a visit to India on February 27, 2026, with meetings scheduled in Mumbai and Delhi, represents one of the most significant diplomatic developments in the India-Canada bilateral relationship in several years. The visit, part of a three-nation Indo-Pacific tour covering India, Australia, and Japan, comes after an extended period of acute tension triggered by the June 2023 killing of Khalistani separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia, which the Canadian government under Justin Trudeau attributed to Indian government agents. The relationship had deteriorated to its lowest point in decades, with mutual expulsion of diplomats, suspension of trade negotiations, and intense public recrimination between the two governments.

The visit’s announcement follows a series of carefully managed confidence-building measures — including External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s meeting with his Canadian counterpart Anita Anand in Munich, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval’s visit to Canada in early February 2026, and PM Modi’s meeting with Carney on the sidelines of the G7 summit in June 2025. Together, these represent a deliberate, graduated diplomatic rehabilitation that has significant implications for India’s trade, diaspora relations, and Indo-Pacific strategic positioning.

The Downward Spiral: Understanding the Context

Five Important Key Points

• The India-Canada relationship reached its nadir following PM Trudeau’s September 2023 statement in the Canadian Parliament alleging “credible allegations” of Indian government involvement in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, which India categorically denied.
• Trade between India and Canada was approximately $9 billion in 2022-23, with negotiations for a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) suspended following the diplomatic rupture.
• The trial of four individuals arrested in connection with the Nijjar killing is expected to begin in 2026, and the Canadian Attorney-General has reportedly requested court permission to suppress certain evidence on grounds of potential injury to international relations and national security.
• NSA Ajit Doval’s visit to Canada in early February 2026 — the first such high-level security dialogue in years — produced a “shared work-plan” for bilateral cooperation on national security and law enforcement, signalling a pragmatic desire to compartmentalise the Nijjar issue from the broader bilateral relationship.
• PM Carney’s visit will focus on trade partnership, energy cooperation (including fossil fuel and nuclear energy), critical minerals, AI, talent mobility, and defence, representing a comprehensive agenda that reflects both countries’ interest in economic diversification away from the United States.

The Trudeau-era tension with India was characterised by a fundamental mismatch in strategic priorities. For Canada, the Nijjar issue was a matter of sovereign integrity and the rule of law — a foreign government allegedly conducting an extrajudicial killing on Canadian soil was, in Ottawa’s framing, an intolerable violation of Canadian sovereignty. For India, Canada’s perceived tolerance of Khalistani separatist activity — including fundraising for secessionist causes, propaganda against India, and what India characterised as operational support for terrorist networks — was the foundational grievance that preceded and contextualised the Nijjar killing.

The change in Canadian government from Trudeau to Carney — whose Liberal Party won the January 2025 federal election — has facilitated a reset without either side explicitly conceding ground on the substantive issues in dispute. Carney, a former Bank of England and Bank of Canada governor with a technocratic rather than partisan background, has adopted a more pragmatic foreign policy posture focused on economic diversification and trade partnership, which has created political space for diplomatic normalisation.

Strategic Rationale for India-Canada Engagement

From India’s perspective, the restoration of functional relations with Canada serves multiple strategic interests. Canada is home to approximately 1.8 million persons of Indian origin, the largest Indian diaspora community in any Western country by proportion, and the relationship between the two governments directly affects the interests of this community — in terms of immigration, education, business, and cultural ties. The deterioration of diplomatic relations had created practical difficulties for Indian students, workers, and businesses in Canada.

Trade and investment linkages are also substantial. Canada’s large reserves of critical minerals — including lithium, cobalt, nickel, and rare earth elements — are directly relevant to India’s electric vehicle and clean energy transition ambitions. The Carney visit’s emphasis on critical minerals cooperation reflects a recognition on both sides that supply chain diversification away from China-dominated mineral processing is a shared strategic interest.

Canada’s nuclear industry, particularly its CANDU reactor technology, has historical ties to India’s civilian nuclear programme. The potential for renewed cooperation in nuclear energy — civilian power generation being a key component of both countries’ long-term decarbonisation strategies — represents a significant area of bilateral opportunity that has been dormant during the period of diplomatic estrangement.

From Canada’s perspective, the imperative for trade diversification has become more acute in the context of the Trump administration’s tariff threats. With the United States representing approximately 75 percent of Canadian exports, the structural vulnerability of Canada’s trade position to American policy volatility has created a powerful incentive to accelerate engagement with the Indo-Pacific. India — as the world’s most populous country and fastest-growing major economy — is a natural candidate for deepened trade and investment ties.

The Nijjar Case: Compartmentalisation and Legal Proceedings

The most delicate element of the diplomatic reset is the management of the Nijjar case. The trial of four individuals arrested in connection with the killing is expected to begin in 2026, and its outcome will inevitably shape public and political narratives in Canada about India’s conduct. The Canadian Attorney-General’s reported request to suppress certain evidence on grounds of its potential to injure international relations and national security — understood to relate to intelligence-sharing arrangements and perhaps evidence of the operational linkages — signals that the Canadian government is managing the legal proceedings with diplomatic sensitivity.

India has consistently denied any government involvement in the Nijjar killing and has consistently characterised Nijjar as a terrorist — he was designated as such under India’s UAPA — and the organisations he was associated with as entities that actively promoted violent secessionism. This fundamental difference in the characterisation of Nijjar (victim of state violence in the Canadian framing; terrorist whose death the Indian government denies responsibility for) cannot be reconciled through diplomatic communications and will eventually have to be addressed through the legal process or the political acceptance of an unresolved disagreement.

The NSA-level agreement on a “shared work-plan” for national security and law enforcement cooperation is a pragmatic acknowledgement that both countries have ongoing security interests — in counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics, and cybersecurity — that can be advanced separately from the question of accountability for the Nijjar killing.

Implications for India’s Indo-Pacific Strategy

Carney’s inclusion of India alongside Australia and Japan in a single Indo-Pacific tour is symbolically significant. All three countries are Quad members, and the tour’s design reflects Canada’s desire to deepen its engagement with the Quad’s informal network of democracies with shared interests in a free and open Indo-Pacific. While Canada is not a Quad member and is unlikely to join formally given its existing alliance commitments through NATO and NORAD, its alignment with Quad-affiliated countries on trade and technology cooperation is consistent with a broader Western strategy of building resilient supply chains and technology partnerships across the Indo-Pacific.

For India, Canada’s engagement offers an additional partner in the diversification of critical minerals supply chains, AI governance frameworks, and clean energy technology that complements the relationships India has been building through I2U2 (India-Israel-UAE-US), the Mineral Security Partnership, and bilateral technology partnerships with the United States, Japan, and Australia.

Economic Dimensions: CEPA Negotiations and Trade Potential

PM Modi and PM Carney are expected to discuss the resumption of Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) negotiations, which were suspended in 2023 following the diplomatic rupture. India has successfully concluded CEPAs with the UAE (2022), Australia (2022), and is in advanced negotiations with the UK, EU, Canada, and others. A Canada-India CEPA would cover goods, services, investment, intellectual property, and sustainable development, with particular significance in areas including pharmaceuticals, information technology, agriculture, financial services, and clean energy.

India’s interest in increasing trade to $30 billion by 2030 — double the current level — reflects an ambitious but achievable target given the complementarities between the two economies. Canadian pension funds, which manage over CAD $2 trillion in assets, have been significant investors in Indian infrastructure in the past and could be re-engaged as major capital sources for India’s infrastructure and renewable energy programmes.

Way Forward

The current diplomatic moment requires both countries to build institutional resilience into the bilateral relationship that makes it less vulnerable to single-issue disruptions of the kind seen in 2023–2024. This means establishing regular bilateral consultation mechanisms at ministerial and official levels, creating institutionalised frameworks for security cooperation that allow difficult conversations to be had without cascading into diplomatic crises, and developing the economic relationship to a depth and breadth that provides both governments with strong domestic constituencies for stable bilateral ties.

The Canadian diaspora of Indian origin — while internally diverse in its political views — broadly benefits from strong India-Canada relations and represents a natural constituency for sustained engagement across trade, education, culture, and security dimensions.

Relevance for UPSC and SSC Examinations

This topic is directly relevant to UPSC GS Paper 2 (India’s foreign policy, bilateral relationships, Indo-Pacific strategy, diaspora policy) and connects to GS Paper 3 (trade policy, critical minerals, clean energy). The India-Canada relationship and its connection to the Khalistan issue, India’s foreign policy doctrine of strategic autonomy, and the Quad framework are important examination themes.

For SSC, questions on India’s major bilateral relationships, important diplomatic developments, and India’s position in global multilateral frameworks are regularly featured in General Awareness sections. The resumption of India-Canada CEPA negotiations and Canada’s role in India’s critical minerals strategy are likely examination-relevant developments.

The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has emerged as one of the most contested governance developments in India in early 2026. The process, initiated by the Election Commission of India (ECI) in Bihar and West Bengal ahead of upcoming state assembly elections, has generated significant controversy over alleged irregularities in voter deletions, claims of targeting minority and Opposition-supporting voters, and broader questions about the institutional independence of the ECI. The Opposition alliance has gone so far as to pass a resolution seeking the removal of the Chief Election Commissioner, while the Supreme Court has intervened multiple times to oversee the process, most recently directing that 250 judicial officers in West Bengal begin work on resolving approximately 45 lakh disputed SIR cases.

This development sits at the heart of India’s democratic architecture, engaging fundamental questions about the right to vote under Article 326 of the Constitution, the institutional design of the ECI under Article 324, the Chief Election Commissioner and other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Terms of Office) Act 2023, and the role of the judiciary in supervising electoral administration.

The Special Intensive Revision Process

Five Important Key Points

• The SIR process involves a comprehensive review and update of electoral rolls, including deletion of names of deceased, permanently migrated, or untraceable voters, and addition of newly eligible voters.
• In Bihar, approximately 65 lakh voter names were deleted during the SIR exercise, which has been challenged before the Supreme Court on grounds of procedural impropriety and alleged targeting of minorities.
• In West Bengal, approximately 58 lakh names were deleted when the draft voter list was published, with the Supreme Court directing 250 judicial officers to resolve nearly 45 lakh disputed cases before the final roll publication on February 28, 2026.
• Tamil Nadu published its final electoral rolls after SIR, showing 5.67 crore electors, with 27.53 lakh eligible electors added and 4.23 lakh ineligible ones deleted since the draft rolls in December 2025.
• The Supreme Court, in a related case, directed that persons whose homes had been demolished by local authorities could approach the District Election Officer regarding their inclusion in electoral rolls during the SIR.

Electoral rolls are the foundational documents of democratic representation. Article 326 of the Constitution provides for universal adult suffrage, and the right to be registered as a voter is a legal right central to democratic participation. Any procedural irregularity in the maintenance of electoral rolls, whether through improper deletions or the failure to add eligible voters, directly affects this right.

The SIR process is governed by the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 framed under the Representation of the People Act, 1950. The Election Commission has wide powers under Article 324 to superintend, direct, and control the preparation and maintenance of electoral rolls. However, the exercise of these powers is subject to judicial review, and the Supreme Court’s repeated interventions in the current SIR process signal that it does not consider the Commission’s actions to have been procedurally adequate.

Constitutional Architecture of the Election Commission

Article 324 of the Constitution establishes the Election Commission as a permanent constitutional body with extensive powers over election administration. The Chief Election Commissioner holds office for six years or until age 65, whichever is earlier, and can be removed only through the same procedure as a Supreme Court judge — by a parliamentary resolution supported by a special majority on grounds of proved misbehaviour or incapacity. This security of tenure is designed to insulate the CEC from political pressure.

The Chief Election Commissioner and other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Terms of Office) Act, 2023, which replaced the 1991 Act, modified the appointment process by removing the Chief Justice of India from the selection committee. The 2023 Act provides for a selection committee comprising the Prime Minister, a Union Cabinet Minister, and the Leader of the Opposition. This change was controversial because it followed the Supreme Court’s five-judge bench ruling in Anoop Baranwal v. Union of India (2023), which had directed that the appointment committee should include the CJI until Parliament enacted a law — a direction the government effectively overrode through the legislation.

The constitutional validity of the 2023 Act has been challenged in Jaya Thakur v. Union of India, with the next hearing scheduled for March 2026. The outcome of this case will have significant implications for the institutional independence of the ECI and the broader question of how constitutional bodies that must be insulated from executive influence can be structured.

The Controversy Over Voter Deletions

The Opposition’s allegations of improper voter deletions in the SIR process centre on the claim that the process was rushed, that field-level verification was inadequate, and that the deletions disproportionately affected minority voters and those in constituencies where the Opposition has a strong base. In Bihar, the deletion of 65 lakh names out of a total electorate is extraordinarily large by any comparative standard and raises legitimate questions about the adequacy of the verification process.

The Supreme Court’s intervention — including directing that the ECI distribute enumeration forms to residents of Akbar Nagar in Lucknow whose buildings were demolished, enabling them to participate in the SIR — reflects a concern that technicalities of electoral administration were being used to deny voting rights to people who retain their status as citizens and voters despite lacking a fixed physical address.

The deployment of 250 judicial officers in West Bengal to resolve disputed SIR cases is unprecedented and represents a dramatic escalation of judicial involvement in electoral administration. While the Supreme Court has extensive supervisory powers over election administration under Article 142 and its appellate jurisdiction, the direct deployment of state judicial officers for electoral work blurs institutional boundaries and raises questions about judicial independence in the political context of pre-election Bengal.

ECI’s Constitutional Mandate and Operational Challenges

The ECI operates under a constitutional mandate that combines administrative, quasi-judicial, and supervisory functions. As the Supreme Court noted in T.N. Seshan v. Union of India (1995), the ECI’s powers under Article 324 are plenary and cannot be limited by ordinary legislation. However, this plenary power must be exercised in accordance with the principles of natural justice, transparency, and procedural fairness.

The operational challenge of conducting an intensive revision of electoral rolls in a large and populous state like Bihar or West Bengal within a compressed timeframe, with limited field verification capacity, is genuine. The ECI’s attempt to complete a comprehensive revision before the upcoming assembly elections in both states reflects a legitimate institutional objective. The controversy lies in whether adequate safeguards were in place to prevent wrongful deletions and ensure that eligible voters were not disenfranchised.

The broader question this episode raises is whether the current legal and institutional framework governing electoral roll revision is adequate for a democracy of India’s scale. The Representation of the People Act 1950 and Registration of Electors Rules 1960 were designed for a much smaller electorate and do not fully anticipate the challenges of digital verification, population mobility, demolition drives, and the use of AI-assisted electoral management systems.

Judicial Oversight and Democratic Accountability

The Supreme Court’s active engagement with the SIR process represents a pattern of judicial intervention in electoral administration that has become more pronounced since the 1990s. Beginning with T.N. Seshan’s tenure as CEC, which saw the court repeatedly uphold the ECI’s independence and powers, the relationship between the judiciary and the ECI has evolved from deference to active oversight.

This judicial oversight is not without tension. The ECI is a constitutional body with its own independent mandate, and excessive judicial micro-management of its operations risks substituting judicial preferences for the ECI’s constitutional authority. At the same time, the court’s interventions in the current SIR controversy appear motivated by a genuine concern that procedural failures in electoral roll maintenance were threatening to disenfranchise large numbers of eligible voters.

Way Forward

A sustainable resolution to the tensions surrounding the SIR process requires structural reforms rather than case-by-case judicial intervention. These reforms should include: statutory timelines for electoral roll revision with mandatory verification periods; digitisation and real-time updating of electoral rolls using Aadhaar-linked databases with adequate privacy safeguards; an independent monitoring mechanism for the SIR process; clear grievance redressal channels for voters whose names are incorrectly deleted; and a transparent, publicly accessible audit trail for all additions and deletions to electoral rolls.

The broader question of the ECI’s institutional independence — particularly in the context of the 2023 appointment legislation — requires either legislative revision to restore the CJI’s role in the selection committee or, if the Supreme Court strikes down the 2023 Act, a fresh legislative framework that balances executive accountability with genuine institutional independence.

Relevance for UPSC and SSC Examinations

This topic is directly relevant to UPSC GS Paper 2 (Constitutional bodies, Elections and Election Commission, Fundamental Rights — Article 326, Federalism and Centre-State relations) and connects to GS Paper 4 (Ethics, accountability of constitutional bodies). The constitutional provisions governing the ECI — Articles 324 to 329 — are core examination topics, and the current controversy provides excellent analytical material for Mains answers and essay preparation.

For SSC examinations, questions on the Election Commission of India, its powers and composition, landmark judgments related to elections, and electoral laws are regularly featured in General Awareness sections.

At the India Energy Week held in January 2026, Prime Minister Narendra Modi outlined India’s ambition to become not merely energy-secure but energy-independent, identifying clean energy investment opportunities worth $500 billion. Within this vast landscape of India’s energy transition, a relatively less-publicised but extraordinarily significant development has been quietly unfolding: India’s green ammonia auction conducted by the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) under the Strategic Interventions for Green Hydrogen Transition (SIGHT) programme of the National Green Hydrogen Mission (NGHM).

The results of this auction, which concluded in August 2025, have attracted global attention because the discovered prices for green ammonia were almost 40–50 percent lower than comparable prices from the European Union’s H2Global auction. With 15 bidders participating and seven unique successful awardees, India’s green ammonia procurement framework is now being described as a potential global benchmark for clean energy adoption. Understanding this development requires situating it within India’s broader energy transition strategy, the global landscape for green hydrogen and its derivatives, and the economic and environmental implications of scaling up green ammonia.

What is Green Ammonia and Why Does It Matter

Five Important Key Points

• Green ammonia is produced by combining nitrogen with green hydrogen derived from renewable energy sources, making it a fully decarbonised version of conventional (grey) ammonia.
• India currently imports grey ammonia at prices as high as $515 per tonne; the SECI auction has discovered green ammonia prices ranging from ₹49.75 to ₹64.74 per kg ($572–$744 per tonne), making the cost gap significantly narrower than previously.
• The SECI tender under the SIGHT programme covered an aggregated demand of up to 724,000 tonnes of green ammonia annually, to be delivered to 13 fertiliser plants, with 10-year fixed-price offtake agreements.
• India’s auction attracted broader market participation than comparable global efforts, with successful bidders receiving production subsidies of ₹8.82, ₹7.06, and ₹5.3 per kilogramme for the first three years respectively.
• The contracted volumes of green ammonia represent approximately 30 percent of India’s total ammonia imports, providing price predictability and insulation from global gas market volatility.

Ammonia (NH₃) has a wide range of applications — it is the primary feedstock for nitrogen-based fertilisers, which underpin agricultural productivity worldwide. Conventional ammonia production uses the Haber-Bosch process, which relies on natural gas or coal as the hydrogen source, making it one of the most carbon-intensive industrial processes globally. The fertiliser sector alone accounts for approximately 1–2 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Green ammonia, produced using green hydrogen generated through electrolysis of water powered by renewable electricity, eliminates these emissions entirely.

Beyond fertilisers, ammonia has emerged as a leading green shipping fuel candidate, a medium for hydrogen transportation, and a potential industrial fuel. The International Maritime Organization’s decarbonisation targets have placed green ammonia at the centre of the global shipping transition. Countries including Japan, South Korea, Germany, and the Netherlands have made green ammonia imports a central pillar of their decarbonisation strategies.

India’s SIGHT Programme and the SECI Auction Design

The National Green Hydrogen Mission, launched in January 2023 with an outlay of ₹19,744 crore, established the SIGHT programme as its central demand aggregation mechanism. SIGHT has two components: support for domestic green hydrogen production and support for the manufacture of electrolysers. The green ammonia auction under SIGHT represents SIGHT’s most ambitious implementation so far.

The auction design incorporated several innovative features that distinguished it from comparable global efforts. First, SECI pre-identified delivery points at fertiliser plants located near coastal areas, which enabled the use of shipping for green ammonia transportation — a critical logistical advantage that reduces inland transportation costs and allows flexible sourcing from coastal green energy production sites.

Second, the 10-year fixed-price offtake agreements provided the long-term revenue certainty that project developers require to secure financing for capital-intensive green hydrogen and ammonia production facilities. Project finance for renewable energy projects is typically constrained by offtake risk — the uncertainty about whether and at what price the output will be purchased. By aggregating demand across 13 fertiliser plants and offering fixed-price long-term contracts, SECI effectively de-risked the offtake side of the equation.

Third, the production subsidies covering the first three years of operation were designed to bridge the initial cost gap between green and grey ammonia, allowing projects to ramp up while renewable energy costs continue their trajectory of decline.

Significance of the Price Discovery

The price discovery achieved through this auction is genuinely transformative in its implications. The discovered prices of ₹49.75–₹64.74 per kg represent a 40–50 percent reduction compared to the H2Global auction in Europe, which is currently the most referenced benchmark for green ammonia procurement globally. This is not merely an academic price comparison — it reflects the combination of factors that give India a structural cost advantage in green ammonia production: abundant renewable energy resources (solar irradiation and wind speeds), falling solar and wind LCOE (Levelised Cost of Energy), large-scale project development experience, and a favourable regulatory environment under the NGHM.

India’s grey ammonia import price of approximately $515 per tonne, combined with green ammonia prices now in the range of $572–$744 per tonne, means the green premium has narrowed to 10–45 percent depending on the specific contract. When factors such as carbon pricing, ESG-linked financing costs, and regulatory risk from evolving global carbon border mechanisms are incorporated, the economics of green ammonia become increasingly competitive.

This price trajectory is significant for India’s fertiliser security. India is one of the world’s largest importers of ammonia and urea, with fertiliser imports creating significant foreign exchange outflows and vulnerability to global gas price shocks — as dramatically demonstrated during the 2021–2022 energy crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when natural gas prices in Europe spiked over 400 percent, driving up global ammonia and urea prices and creating fertiliser affordability crises across the developing world.

Environmental and Agricultural Implications

From an environmental perspective, the green ammonia transition directly addresses India’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement. India has committed to achieving 500 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030 and reducing the emissions intensity of its GDP by 45 percent by 2030 compared to 2005 levels. The fertiliser sector’s decarbonisation through green ammonia is one of the most direct pathways to achieving industrial emissions reductions.

For agriculture, the availability of domestically produced green ammonia has the potential to reduce the structural dependence on imported fertilisers, which has been a persistent vulnerability in India’s agricultural input supply chain. The fertiliser subsidy bill, which crossed ₹2.5 lakh crore in 2022–23 due to global price spikes, represents one of India’s largest and most volatile budget items. Substituting imported grey ammonia with domestically produced green ammonia — at long-term fixed prices — would provide greater budget predictability and reduce geopolitical exposure.

Challenges to Scaling Up

Despite the impressive auction results, significant challenges remain in translating contracted volumes into actual production and delivery. The renewable energy infrastructure required for large-scale green hydrogen production — particularly dedicated offshore wind and large-scale solar parks — requires substantial capital investment and grid infrastructure development. Electrolyser manufacturing capacity, while growing, remains a constraint, with India still largely dependent on imported electrolysers despite policy incentives for domestic manufacturing.

The integration of hybrid renewable systems with storage is essential to ensure continuous hydrogen production at the volumes required for 724,000 tonnes of annual green ammonia, since solar and wind are intermittent sources. Grid access and banking regulations, which govern how renewable energy producers interact with the electricity grid, require harmonisation to support the green hydrogen economy.

Furthermore, the certification and standards framework for green hydrogen and green ammonia — including internationally recognised green credentials that allow export market access — is still evolving both in India and globally. Alignment with EU, Japanese, and South Korean certification frameworks is necessary for India to position its green ammonia competitively in global markets.

Way Forward and Global Leadership

India’s approach to green ammonia procurement is increasingly being examined by other countries as a model. The combination of demand aggregation, long-term fixed-price offtake, production subsidies, and coastal delivery infrastructure creates a replicable framework that developing countries with abundant renewable resources can adapt.

For India to consolidate its emerging leadership in global clean ammonia markets, the next steps must include sustained policy stability, continued scaling of the NGHM, investments in electrolyser manufacturing, regulatory reforms on grid access and banking, and active engagement in international forums to shape green hydrogen certification standards in a manner that recognises India’s renewable energy cost advantage.

Relevance for UPSC and SSC Examinations

This topic is directly relevant to UPSC GS Paper 3 (Environment and Ecology, Energy Security, Indian Economy, Agriculture), and connects to GS Paper 2 (Government Schemes — National Green Hydrogen Mission, SIGHT, SECI). For Essay Paper, themes of India’s energy transition, clean energy leadership, and sustainable agriculture provide excellent analytical frameworks within which this development can be situated.

For SSC examinations, questions on renewable energy, government schemes related to clean energy, and India’s environmental commitments under the Paris Agreement are regularly examined in General Awareness sections.

On February 23, 2026, the Allahabad High Court delivered a significant ruling granting police protection to twelve interfaith live-in couples and directed that private respondents and state authorities refrain from interfering with their lives, liberty, and privacy. The ruling arose from a batch of twelve writ petitions, comprising seven cases where Muslim women were living with Hindu men and five cases where Hindu women were living with Muslim men. The court, led by Justice Vivek Kumar Singh, held that none of the twelve couples had converted from their respective religions and therefore the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021, popularly known as the anti-conversion law, had no application to their relationships.

This judgment carries profound constitutional significance and sits at the intersection of several contested areas of Indian law and public policy — the right to privacy, the right to choose one’s partner, the scope of state anti-conversion legislation, the limits of state intervention in intimate personal choices, and the constitutional protections available to citizens regardless of their religious identity. The ruling comes at a time when interfaith relationships have been subjected to increasing social and administrative scrutiny in several states.

The Anti-Conversion Law Framework

Five Important Key Points

• The Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021, requires individuals intending to convert to file a prior application with the district magistrate, and criminalises conversion through misrepresentation, force, coercion, undue influence, allurement, or fraud.
• The Allahabad High Court held that the anti-conversion law applies only when there is an actual conversion from one religion to another, and does not apply to interfaith relationships where no such conversion has occurred.
• The court drew upon Article 21 of the Constitution, affirming the right to life and personal liberty as extending to the choices individuals make in their intimate relationships.
• The court noted that even interfaith marriages are not prohibited under the 2021 Act, dismantling the state government’s argument that interfaith live-in relationships are unlawful.
• The judgment strengthens the line of constitutional jurisprudence running from Hadiya (2018) and Shakti Vahini (2018), affirming that the right to choose one’s partner is a fundamental aspect of personal liberty.

The Uttar Pradesh law, enacted under Section 4 of the Act of 2016 as revised, requires any person desiring to convert to submit an application to the district magistrate prior to the conversion. Sections 8 and 9 of the 2021 Act specify the procedure for such declarations. The state government’s argument in this case was that the couples had failed to comply with these provisions, and that their relationships were therefore “unlawful” and not entitled to legal protection.

The court rejected this argument comprehensively. It pointed out that the anti-conversion law is triggered only when an actual, bona fide conversion from one religion to another takes place through specified coercive means. Where no conversion has occurred — as was the case with all twelve petitioner couples — the law simply has no application. This is a textually straightforward but practically important clarification, because state authorities in several instances had been treating interfaith cohabitation itself as presumptive evidence of unlawful conversion.

Constitutional Foundations of the Judgment

The constitutional architecture underlying this ruling is rich and layered. The court grounded its judgment primarily in Article 21, which guarantees the right to life and personal liberty. The Supreme Court’s nine-judge bench ruling in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017) established privacy as a fundamental right under Article 21, and this includes the autonomy to make intimate personal choices including the choice of one’s partner, one’s form of cohabitation, and one’s relationship structure.

The court also invoked Articles 14 and 15, which guarantee equality before law and prohibit discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, or place of birth. By treating interfaith couples differently — subjecting them to surveillance, social pressure, and administrative obstruction not applicable to same-faith couples — state and private respondents were effectively engaging in unconstitutional religious discrimination.

The ruling’s observation that “if the law permits two persons even of the same sex to live together peacefully, then neither any individual nor a family nor even the state can have objection to heterosexual relationship of two major individuals who out of their own free will are living together” is particularly significant. It places interfaith heterosexual cohabitation within the ambit of constitutionally protected freedom, drawing upon the Supreme Court’s decriminalisation of consensual same-sex relationships in Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India (2018).

The concept of “unity in diversity” invoked by the court is not merely rhetorical. It connects the judgment to India’s constitutional identity as a pluralistic, secular republic where the co-existence of different religions, cultures, and ways of life is not merely tolerated but positively protected.

The Shakti Vahini and Hadiya Precedents

The Allahabad High Court’s ruling builds upon a line of Supreme Court jurisprudence on the right to choose one’s partner. In Shakti Vahini v. Union of India (2018), the Supreme Court held that the right to choose a life partner is a fundamental right under Articles 19 and 21, and that honour killings and social or familial interference with this choice are unconstitutional. The court directed states to take preventive and remedial measures to protect couples who marry across caste or community lines.

In Shafin Jahan v. Asokan (the Hadiya case, 2018), the Supreme Court upheld the right of a Hindu woman who had converted to Islam and married a Muslim man to live with her chosen partner, overturning a High Court order that had annulled the marriage. The court emphasised that the right to choose one’s faith and one’s partner are components of individual autonomy that are inseparable from human dignity.

The present Allahabad High Court ruling carries this jurisprudence forward in a specific direction: it clarifies that these protections apply not just to married interfaith couples but also to those in live-in relationships, and that administrative and legal mechanisms designed to regulate religious conversion cannot be weaponised against interfaith cohabitation as such.

The Governance and Social Context

The broader context of this ruling is important for understanding its significance. Several states, particularly those governed by the BJP, have enacted anti-conversion laws since 2018 — including Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, and Karnataka in addition to Uttar Pradesh. The scope and enforcement of these laws has been a subject of significant legal and social controversy.

Critics of these laws argue that their enforcement in practice has been directed disproportionately at interfaith couples, particularly those involving Muslim men and Hindu women, and that they are being used as tools of social control rather than genuine protections against coercive conversion. The present judgment, by drawing a sharp legal distinction between coercive conversion (which the law legitimately targets) and consensual interfaith cohabitation (which is constitutionally protected), attempts to discipline this enforcement overreach.

The involvement of organisations such as Vishwa Hindu Parishad and other groups in surveilling, harassing, and reporting interfaith couples has created a de facto extra-legal enforcement apparatus that operates outside the formal legal framework. The court’s direction to private respondents as well as state authorities to refrain from interfering with the couples’ privacy represents an important judicial pushback against this phenomenon.

Live-in Relationships in Indian Law

The legal status of live-in relationships in India has evolved significantly over the past two decades. The Supreme Court in D. Velusamy v. D. Patchaiammal (2010) held that a live-in relationship of sufficient duration and stability would be treated as a relationship in the nature of marriage for the purposes of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005. This extended certain legal protections to women in live-in relationships.

However, live-in relationships do not confer the same legal rights as marriage in areas such as inheritance, maintenance, and adoption. The absence of a comprehensive legal framework governing these relationships creates significant vulnerability, particularly for women. The High Court’s ruling, by extending constitutional protection to interfaith live-in couples, does not resolve these substantive legal gaps but does establish a fundamental baseline — that the state cannot criminalise or obstruct consensual adult cohabitation on the basis of religious difference.

Challenges and Way Forward

The judgment raises important questions about the relationship between personal law reform, constitutional rights, and legislative sovereignty. The anti-conversion laws enacted by various states claim to protect vulnerable individuals from coercive religious conversion, which is a legitimate state interest. However, their implementation has frequently exceeded this mandate, creating constitutional problems.

A balanced way forward would involve clearer legislative drafting that explicitly confines the operation of anti-conversion laws to genuinely coercive situations, combined with robust enforcement mechanisms against harassment of interfaith couples by both state and non-state actors. The law commission and relevant ministries could examine whether a uniform national framework governing religious conversion — with explicit protections for consensual choices — would be preferable to the current patchwork of state laws with varying scopes and enforcement cultures.

Relevance for UPSC and SSC Examinations

This topic is directly relevant to UPSC GS Paper 2 (Judiciary, Fundamental Rights, Constitutional provisions relating to religious freedom under Articles 25–28, Federalism and state legislation) and GS Paper 1 (Social Issues, Women’s rights). It is also important for UPSC Mains Essay, where themes of constitutionalism, secularism, individual rights versus community interests, and the role of the judiciary frequently appear.

For SSC, the topic is relevant in the context of constitutional provisions, Supreme Court landmark judgments, and questions on fundamental rights that regularly appear in General Awareness sections. Candidates should be familiar with Article 21, the right to privacy jurisprudence, and the major Supreme Court rulings on personal autonomy.

The Union Home Ministry on February 23, 2026, released India’s first-ever comprehensive anti-terrorism policy titled PRAHAAR — the National Counter Terrorism Policy and Strategy. This landmark development marks a decisive institutional shift in how India conceptualises, coordinates, and responds to the multifaceted terror threats it faces domestically and from across its borders. The policy, which had been first reported by The Hindu on December 23, 2025, as being in the finalisation stage, comes in the backdrop of the April 22, 2025, Pahalgam terror attack and a series of cross-border drone-facilitated infiltration attempts in Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir.

The timing of this policy release is deeply significant. India has long operated without a unified, codified counter-terrorism framework. While institutional mechanisms like the National Investigation Agency (NIA), National Security Guard (NSG), and state Anti-Terror Squads (ATS) have existed, the absence of a single governing policy document meant that coordination between central and state agencies was ad hoc, procedurally inconsistent, and vulnerable to jurisdictional friction. PRAHAAR attempts to address this structural lacuna comprehensively.

The policy’s release also arrives in a broader geopolitical context where India simultaneously faces threats from Jihadi terror outfits operating from Pakistani soil, the expanding digital capabilities of terrorist groups, the misuse of drone technology, and the growing nexus between organised crime and terror logistics.

What is PRAHAAR and What Does It Contain

Five Important Key Points

• PRAHAAR is India’s first formally codified national counter-terrorism policy and has been uploaded on the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) website for public access.
• The policy recognises three-dimensional threats — on water, land, and air — and calls for the protection of critical infrastructure sectors including power, railways, aviation, ports, defence, space, and atomic energy.
• It explicitly states that India does not link terrorism to any specific religion, ethnicity, nationality, or civilisation, yet acknowledges the impact of “sponsored terrorism” from across the border involving Jihadi terror outfits.
• The policy identifies the role of global terror groups such as al-Qaeda and IS in attempting to incite violence within India through sleeper cells.
• It proposes a uniform anti-terrorism structure across all states to standardise processes and ensure synergistic responses to terror attacks.

PRAHAAR is a nine-page document, yet its significance far exceeds its volume. The policy lays out a comprehensive threat profile, institutional response framework, and a strategic roadmap that integrates legal, intelligence, technological, and community dimensions of counter-terrorism. It identifies not just physical threats but also digital ones, recognising that criminal hackers and nation-states continue to target India through cyber-attacks.

One of the most significant features of the policy is its explicit acknowledgement of CBRNED threats — Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, Explosive, and Digital. This represents a formal expansion of India’s counter-terrorism vocabulary beyond conventional explosives-based attacks. Disrupting terrorist access to CBRNED materials is identified as one of the core ongoing challenges for counter-terrorism agencies.

The policy also emphasises the role of the dark web, encrypted messaging platforms, crypto wallets, and drone technology in facilitating terror activities. This is a forward-looking acknowledgement that terror operations in the 21st century are deeply embedded in digital infrastructure, and that counter-terrorism responses must evolve accordingly.

Institutional Architecture and Legal Dimensions

From a governance perspective, PRAHAAR is significant because it proposes the establishment of a uniform anti-terrorism structure across all states. Currently, counter-terrorism operations in India involve a complex network of institutions — the NIA at the central level, state ATS units, the Intelligence Bureau, Research and Analysis Wing, Central Armed Police Forces, and various specialised units. The lack of standardisation across state-level structures has historically created gaps in intelligence sharing, evidence collection, and prosecution.

The policy underlines the importance of associating legal experts at every stage of counter-terrorism investigations to build stronger cases. This is a critical observation given that many high-profile terror cases in India have seen acquittals or prolonged trials due to procedural errors, inadmissible evidence, or inadequate charge-sheet preparation. The focus on legal robustness is an acknowledgement that security operations alone are insufficient without corresponding judicial outcomes.

India’s counter-terrorism legal framework rests on the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), 1967 as amended most recently in 2019, the National Investigation Agency Act, 2008, and various state-level laws. PRAHAAR does not replace these legal instruments but provides a strategic framework within which these laws are to be operationalised more effectively.

The policy also emphasises international and regional cooperation as key elements in addressing transnational terrorism, given that terrorist groups increasingly rely on cross-border logistic networks. This connects India’s domestic counter-terrorism architecture to its broader foreign policy posture, including its engagement with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), and bilateral agreements with various countries on counter-terrorism cooperation.

Drone Threat and Cross-Border Dimensions

Perhaps the most contemporary element of PRAHAAR is its recognition of drone technology as an emerging terror delivery mechanism. The policy explicitly notes that handlers from across the border frequently use drones to facilitate terror-related activities and attacks in Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir. This acknowledgement is backed by substantial on-ground evidence — multiple incidents of drug drops, weapons transfers, and IED deliveries via unmanned aerial vehicles have been documented in Punjab in particular.

The policy’s recognition of the organised crime-terror nexus is equally important. Terrorist groups are described as engaging criminal networks for logistics and recruitment, which has been a visible pattern in the Punjab-Pakistan corridor where drug trafficking networks have been co-opted for terror support. This nexus demands an integrated law enforcement response that combines counter-narcotics operations with counter-terrorism efforts.

The policy further recognises the use of social media platforms and instant messaging applications for propaganda, communication, and coordination of attacks. The regulation and monitoring of these platforms has been a longstanding governance challenge given the tension between surveillance powers and civil liberties, and PRAHAAR frames this as a strategic priority rather than merely a law enforcement concern.

Community Engagement and Deradicalisation

One of the more nuanced aspects of PRAHAAR is its emphasis on community and religious leaders as partners in preventing radicalisation. The policy calls for engaging moderate preachers and civil society organisations to spread awareness about the consequences of extremism. This approach reflects a growing international consensus — evidenced in the United Kingdom’s PREVENT programme, Germany’s deradicalisation initiatives, and similar frameworks — that counter-terrorism cannot rely solely on security operations but must include community-based prevention.

Indian intelligence and law enforcement agencies have been described in the policy as continuously working to prevent the recruitment of Indian youth by extremist groups, particularly those operating from abroad. The challenge here is significant: online radicalisation through social media algorithms and targeted content has made geographic boundaries increasingly irrelevant in the spread of extremist ideology.

The policy’s statement that India does not link terrorism to any specific religion is both a constitutional affirmation and a strategic communication choice. Article 14 of the Constitution guarantees equality before law, and Article 15 prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, or place of birth. Any counter-terrorism framework that operationally profiles communities on religious lines would be constitutionally vulnerable and strategically counterproductive by alienating the very communities whose cooperation is essential for intelligence gathering.

Challenges in Implementation

Despite its comprehensive articulation, PRAHAAR faces significant implementation challenges. India’s federal structure means that law and order, including counter-terrorism, involves a shared responsibility between the Centre and states. The Seventh Schedule of the Constitution places Public Order in the State List (Entry 1) and Police in the State List (Entry 2). The Centre’s ability to impose uniform structures on state counter-terrorism apparatuses is therefore legally constrained and requires cooperative federalism rather than top-down mandates.

Furthermore, the policy’s ambitions around digital counter-terrorism require massive investments in technical capacity, a trained cybersecurity workforce, and inter-agency data sharing protocols that are currently underdeveloped. The proposed standardisation of counter-terrorism processes across states will require sustained funding, training programmes, and institutional reform at the state level, none of which can be achieved through a policy document alone.

The nexus between organised crime and terrorism also demands regulatory and enforcement reforms beyond the home ministry — including in financial regulation, border management, and foreign policy coordination.

Way Forward

PRAHAAR represents a necessary and overdue step in India’s counter-terrorism governance architecture. Its value lies not just in what it codifies but in providing a shared vocabulary and strategic framework within which India’s diverse security institutions can align their operations. The next steps must include operational guidelines, resource allocations, inter-agency protocols, and most importantly, legislative backing for the new institutional arrangements it proposes.

The policy must be followed by a comprehensive review and possible consolidation of India’s counter-terrorism legal framework, bridging the UAPA with state-level laws and ensuring that the entire criminal justice chain — from investigation to prosecution to conviction — is capable of delivering timely and constitutionally sound outcomes.

Relevance for UPSC and SSC Examinations

For UPSC Mains, this topic is directly relevant to General Studies Paper 3 (Internal Security, Challenges to Internal Security, Role of External State and Non-State Actors, Cybersecurity, Money Laundering) and General Studies Paper 2 (Government Policies and Interventions, Federalism). Essay Paper topics on national security, the evolving nature of terrorism, and India’s strategic responses are directly connected to this development.

For SSC examinations, particularly SSC CGL, this is relevant to General Awareness sections covering important government policies, MHA initiatives, and internal security frameworks. Questions on NIA, UAPA, drone regulation, and India’s counter-terrorism architecture have appeared in previous SSC examinations and are likely to recur given the current salience of this topic.

The introduction of PRAHAAR also provides an excellent case study for candidates preparing for the essay on India’s internal security challenges, connecting constitutional provisions, institutional design, federalism, technology governance, and community engagement within a single analytical framework.

On January 12, 2026, the United States Department of Energy (DOE) took a decision that has sent reverberations through the global nuclear safety community: it formally eliminated the ALARA (As Low as Reasonably Achievable) principle from its directives and regulations. This decision, made in the context of President Donald Trump’s executive orders aimed at accelerating nuclear energy development and reducing regulatory burdens on the nuclear industry, departs significantly from longstanding national and international practices of radiation protection. The implications extend far beyond the United States, as American regulatory standards have historically shaped global norms in the nuclear sector through international bodies like the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP).

For UPSC and SSC aspirants, this development is important for several reasons. It touches on the intersection of science, public policy, and governance; raises fundamental questions about how scientific consensus translates into regulatory practice; illustrates the tension between economic development goals and precautionary public health standards; and has direct relevance for India’s rapidly expanding civilian nuclear energy program.

Five Important Key Points

• ALARA (As Low as Reasonably Achievable) is the operational philosophy of radiation protection, balancing safety with feasibility, cost, and societal need, and is part of the regulatory framework upheld by the ICRP, WHO, and IAEA.
• The Linear No-Threshold (LNT) model, which underpins ALARA, holds that any dose of ionizing radiation carries some risk of harm — especially cancer — proportional to the dose, with no safe threshold below which radiation is completely risk-free.
• Critics of the DOE’s decision argue it relies on non-peer-reviewed internal reports, is politically motivated by nuclear industry interests, and risks undermining public trust in nuclear safety governance.
• The DOE’s stated justification is that excessive regulation based on ALARA has hindered nuclear innovation and that mission objectives can be met more effectively with a reformed radiation framework.
• India, which is rapidly expanding its nuclear energy capacity and has been at the forefront of complying with internationally accepted radiation protection practices, must continue adhering to ICRP and IAEA standards regardless of the US policy shift.

Understanding ALARA and the LNT Model

To understand why the elimination of ALARA matters, it is necessary to understand the two interconnected scientific and regulatory frameworks that have governed radiation safety for decades.

The Linear No-Threshold (LNT) model is a risk estimation framework developed in the mid-20th century based on epidemiological studies of populations exposed to ionizing radiation — including survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings, workers in uranium mines, and patients who received X-ray treatments for medical conditions. The core assertion of LNT is that the relationship between radiation dose and cancer risk is linear — meaning that doubling the dose doubles the risk — and that there is no threshold below which radiation carries zero risk. Even very low doses of radiation, according to LNT, carry a small but non-zero probability of causing cellular damage that could eventually lead to cancer.

The LNT model is used by regulatory agencies worldwide to set permissible exposure limits for radiation workers and members of the public. In India, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) sets occupational dose limits of 20 millisieverts per year for radiation workers, consistent with ICRP recommendations derived from the LNT model.

ALARA — As Low as Reasonably Achievable — is the operational expression of LNT in practice. It does not simply mandate that radiation exposure be minimized at any cost. The word “reasonably” is crucial: it introduces a cost-benefit calculus that balances the health benefit of further reducing exposure against the economic cost and practical feasibility of doing so. ALARA encourages nuclear facilities to adopt the best available engineering controls, administrative procedures, and training programs to reduce exposure, while acknowledging that absolute zero exposure is neither achievable nor economically rational.

Why Did the DOE Eliminate ALARA?

The DOE’s decision was framed as a response to what the department described as a decades-old regulatory framework that had become an obstacle to nuclear innovation. The Trump administration’s executive orders on energy policy explicitly identified nuclear regulation as excessively burdensome and called for a review of safety standards that had accumulated over decades without adequate cost-benefit analysis.

The DOE’s position draws on a body of scientific heterodoxy — the hormesis hypothesis — that challenges the LNT model. Hormesis argues that low doses of radiation are not merely harmless but may actually be beneficial, stimulating cellular repair mechanisms and immune responses. The analogy offered is that of exercise: moderate physical stress produces health benefits even though extreme stress causes harm. Proponents of hormesis argue that the LNT model’s assumption of linear risk at all doses is based on extrapolation from high-dose data and may significantly overstate the risks of low-dose exposure.

While the hormesis hypothesis has legitimate scientific proponents and some experimental support in cellular and animal studies, it remains highly controversial. The principal objections are that its effects vary unpredictably across different individuals, tissues, and types of radiation; that ethical constraints make it difficult to conduct the controlled human trials needed to establish the hypothesis rigorously; and that existing large-scale epidemiological studies, including the ongoing Million Person Study tracking radiation workers, have found evidence of cancer risks at low doses that is inconsistent with hormesis. A 2023 study published in Nature Medicine found elevated blood-related cancer risks even in populations exposed to very low radiation doses.

International Bodies Continue to Uphold LNT and ALARA

The international nuclear safety establishment has not followed the DOE’s lead. The ICRP — the body that sets the scientific and ethical framework for radiation protection globally — has not indicated any intention to revise dose limits or abandon the LNT framework. The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), which periodically reviews the global scientific evidence on radiation effects, and the World Health Organization (WHO) continue to rely on LNT as the basis for radiation protection guidance.

This creates an unusual and potentially destabilizing situation: the world’s largest economy and a major nuclear power has departed from the regulatory framework that it previously helped to develop and that is followed by every other nuclear nation. The implications could be significant. American nuclear facilities operating under less stringent ALARA requirements may face difficulties in export markets — for nuclear reactors, nuclear fuel, and nuclear technology — in countries that require compliance with ICRP standards as a condition of imports. Nuclear workers at US facilities may be exposed to higher doses than their counterparts in other countries, creating potential liability and workforce trust issues.

Radiation Safety Governance in India

India’s nuclear sector is governed by the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB), established under the Atomic Energy Act of 1962. The AERB sets safety standards for nuclear power plants, research reactors, medical radiation facilities, and industrial radiation users. India’s regulatory framework is broadly aligned with ICRP and IAEA recommendations, and this alignment has been consistently affirmed by Indian nuclear regulators.

India’s civilian nuclear energy program has ambitious expansion plans. India aims to increase nuclear power capacity from the current approximately 7,000 MW to 22,480 MW by 2031-32 and to 45,000 MW by 2050, as part of its long-term low-carbon energy strategy. This expansion involves the construction of Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs) of Indian design, Light Water Reactors being built in partnership with Russia (Kudankulam), France (Jaitapur), and the US (Gorakhpur, with Westinghouse technology), and the ambitious development of thorium-based fast breeder reactors through the third stage of India’s three-stage nuclear program.

Maintaining the highest standards of radiation safety is not merely a public health imperative for India — it is a strategic and economic necessity. Nuclear trade with partner countries, including the civil nuclear agreements India has signed with the US (123 Agreement), France, Russia, Australia, Canada, and others, requires India to demonstrate compliance with IAEA safeguards and international safety standards. Any weakening of India’s radiation safety regime, even in response to political pressure or short-term economic incentives, would jeopardize these agreements and India’s access to nuclear fuel and technology.

The Deeper Issue: Scientific Consensus, Precaution, and Public Trust

The US decision to drop ALARA raises a broader and more profound question about the relationship between scientific uncertainty, regulatory policy, and public trust in institutions. Modern regulatory science deals routinely with situations where the underlying science is uncertain — where the evidence is contested, where different methodologies produce different conclusions, and where the economic stakes create powerful incentives to favor particular interpretations of data.

The precautionary principle — which holds that in the face of scientific uncertainty about potential harm, regulatory action should err on the side of caution — is not universally accepted in regulatory philosophy. Critics argue that excessive precaution can itself cause harm, by blocking beneficial technologies, driving up costs unnecessarily, and misallocating resources to manage risks that may be vanishingly small.

However, in domains like radiation safety, the precautionary approach has a specific justification: the harms — cancer, genetic damage, radiation sickness — are severe and often irreversible; the affected populations include the most vulnerable (radiation workers, people living near nuclear facilities, future generations affected by genetic damage); and the economic interests of the nuclear industry create powerful incentives to systematically underestimate risk. In such contexts, public trust in the regulatory system depends on the perception that regulators are protecting public health rather than serving industry interests.

The DOE’s decision — made without broad scientific consensus, relying on non-peer-reviewed internal reports, and framed in explicit alignment with presidential executive orders aimed at deregulation — threatens to erode this trust precisely at the moment when the US is trying to position nuclear energy as a key part of its clean energy transition. The optics of abandoning ALARA, even if some experts believe the scientific case for revision has merit, risk deepening public mistrust and fueling opposition to nuclear projects that the country urgently needs.

Relevance for UPSC and SSC Examinations

This topic is directly relevant to UPSC Mains GS Paper III on science and technology, energy policy, and environmental governance. Questions on India’s nuclear energy program, the three-stage nuclear program, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, the civil nuclear 123 Agreement, and India’s nuclear safety standards are standard fare in UPSC Prelims and Mains. The broader questions about the precautionary principle, the relationship between scientific consensus and regulatory policy, and the governance of nuclear technology connect to GS Paper IV (ethics) as well. For SSC examinations, basic awareness of what ALARA is, why the US decision is controversial, and India’s position is sufficient. The topic also has obvious relevance for the Science and Technology optional paper and for candidates interested in energy policy as an essay topic.

In a world where strategic competition is increasingly fought over semiconductors, artificial intelligence infrastructure, critical minerals, and data, India has made a decisive move by joining the Pax Silica alliance — a US-led coalition focused on building trusted, democratic infrastructure for AI and critical technologies. The decision, which has been likened by analysts to India’s earlier choices on nuclear technology and defense platforms, represents a significant alignment of India’s technological future with the democratic world’s effort to build supply chains that are not dependent on China.

The name “Pax Silica” — a play on the Latin “Pax” (peace) and Silicon — reflects the alliance’s ambition to create a geopolitical order built around the control of semiconductor technology and the AI systems that depend on it. For India, joining is simultaneously an economic opportunity, a strategic calculation, and a potential constraint on the foreign policy flexibility that has been the hallmark of Indian diplomacy for seven decades.

Five Important Key Points

• The Pax Silica alliance focuses on critical minerals, semiconductor manufacturing, and AI infrastructure, complementing India’s domestic programs including India Semiconductor Mission, IndiaAI, and the National Critical Mineral Mission.
• India’s membership can provide access to advanced equipment, attract FDI in high-tech manufacturing, influence global technology standards, and financially justify new supply chains not pegged to China.
• The primary risks include potential economic retaliation from China (which supplies key upstream inputs in minerals and active pharmaceutical ingredients), and stricter technology-transfer guardrails that could clash with India’s preference for strategic autonomy.
• The alliance’s “trusted ecosystem” framework could create rigid expectations around export controls that limit India’s ability to maintain its traditional “issue-based alignment” foreign policy approach.
• Success depends on whether Pax Silica partners move beyond declarations to build a real-world end-to-end supply chain — from mining critical minerals to refining them, converting them into chips, and deploying them in AI systems — all within the alliance’s member countries.

What Are Critical Minerals and Why Do They Matter?

Critical minerals are raw materials that are essential for modern technology — particularly for batteries, semiconductors, renewable energy systems, defense electronics, and communication infrastructure — but whose supply chains are heavily concentrated in a small number of countries, many of which are either geopolitically unstable or aligned with China. The list of critical minerals typically includes lithium, cobalt, nickel, rare earth elements, gallium, germanium, graphite, and several others.

China’s dominance of critical mineral supply chains is extraordinary. China controls approximately 60% of global lithium refining, 80% of cobalt refining, and over 90% of rare earth element processing. For semiconductors, gallium and germanium — both of which China has recently restricted for export — are essential components. This concentration gives China immense potential leverage over the defense and technology sectors of democratic nations, a vulnerability that the Pax Silica alliance is explicitly designed to address.

India’s positioning in this landscape is complex. India has significant deposits of several critical minerals — including rare earth elements (with one of the world’s largest estimated reserves), mica, bauxite, and iron ore — but its processing and refining capacity is negligible. Most of India’s rare earth ore is exported unprocessed and then imported back as refined material, largely through Chinese processing facilities. Building domestic processing capacity is a strategic imperative but requires massive capital investment, technology transfer, and regulatory reform of India’s mining sector.

India’s Strategic Calculus: Opportunity and Autonomy

For India, the Pax Silica alliance offers a path toward accelerating its semiconductor and AI ambitions. The India Semiconductor Mission, launched in 2021, aims to establish a domestic semiconductor fabrication and design ecosystem. However, semiconductor fabrication requires not only massive capital investment (a state-of-the-art fab can cost $20 billion or more) but also access to advanced equipment — particularly extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines made almost exclusively by the Dutch company ASML. US export controls on advanced chips and chip-making equipment to China have created an opportunity for India to position itself as an alternative manufacturing location for companies redirecting their supply chains away from China.

The Pax Silica alliance, by creating a framework of “trusted ecosystems,” could facilitate technology transfer, joint R&D, and preferential market access that accelerates India’s semiconductor ambitions. The alliance could also give India a seat at the table in setting global technology standards — standards for AI safety, data governance, critical mineral certification, and semiconductor export controls — which will significantly affect India’s future economic and strategic options.

However, the strategic autonomy concern is real and must be taken seriously. India’s foreign policy since independence has been built around the principle of non-alignment — later evolved into “strategic autonomy” — which emphasizes that India makes its international alignments based on specific interests rather than ideological or alliance commitments. This approach has served India well, allowing it to maintain productive relationships with Russia, Iran, the Gulf states, and Israel simultaneously, even as these relationships involve obvious contradictions.

Joining a technology alliance anchored in US strategic interests creates genuine risks. The most immediate is Chinese economic retaliation. China is India’s largest trading partner by total volume, a major supplier of electronics components, active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), and industrial inputs. If China interprets Pax Silica membership as a hostile act, it could restrict exports of critical upstream inputs, slow approvals of Indian business operations in China, or use its influence in third markets to disadvantage Indian companies. The 2020 Galwan Valley clash demonstrated that China is willing to use economic pressure alongside military signaling.

The Technology Transfer and Export Control Dilemma

A central feature of the Pax Silica framework is its emphasis on “trusted ecosystems” — the idea that advanced technology should only flow among nations that have robust export control regimes, cybersecurity standards, and democratic governance structures. This is operationalized through requirements like end-use verification, re-export restrictions, security audits of facilities handling sensitive technology, and aligned export control lists.

For India, implementing these requirements creates both opportunities and burdens. On the positive side, India’s compliance with high-standard technology transfer protocols would strengthen its case for access to advanced US defense and dual-use technologies — including those relevant for AI, quantum computing, and advanced communications. The US-India Defence Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI) and the foundational defense agreements (LEMOA, COMCASA, BECA) have already created a framework for deeper technology sharing; Pax Silica could extend this logic to the civilian technology domain.

On the negative side, strict export control requirements create compliance costs for Indian companies, particularly smaller firms that may lack the legal and administrative infrastructure to navigate complex dual-use export control regimes. Indian companies attempting to join global value chains — including in the semiconductor, AI hardware, and quantum computing spaces — may face significant delays, costs, and uncertainty as they seek to demonstrate compliance with multiple overlapping regulatory frameworks (US Export Administration Regulations, EU export controls, and India’s own SCOMET framework).

The China Factor and Managing Bilateral Complexity

Perhaps the most sensitive dimension of India’s Pax Silica membership is its implications for Sino-Indian relations. The India-China relationship, already deeply strained by the 2020 military standoff in Eastern Ladakh and the subsequent four-year process of disengagement, exists in a state of managed tension. Trade and economic links remain substantial despite the political and military friction — India imported approximately $100 billion worth of goods from China in 2024-25, including electronics, chemicals, and industrial machinery.

A technology decoupling from China through Pax Silica membership could exacerbate this tension. China has already demonstrated that it views technology alliances — whether the US-Japan-Netherlands semiconductor export control coordination, the AUKUS advanced technology pillar, or the Quad’s semiconductor supply chain initiative — as strategic threats to its own technology ambitions and its position as the dominant power in Asia. India joining another such coalition will likely provoke a negative response, though its form and magnitude remain uncertain.

India’s task is to manage this complexity by ensuring that Pax Silica membership is accompanied by consistent diplomatic engagement with China, clear communication about the non-hostile intent of India’s technology policy choices, and maintenance of enough economic interdependence to ensure that China calculates the costs of retaliation as higher than the benefits.

Relevance for UPSC and SSC Examinations

This topic sits at the intersection of several UPSC Mains GS Paper II themes — India’s foreign policy, bilateral relations, multilateral groupings, and technology diplomacy — and GS Paper III themes — critical minerals, semiconductor policy, AI governance, and economic security. For Prelims, awareness of what critical minerals are, India’s semiconductor policy, the concept of “trusted ecosystems,” and India’s strategic autonomy doctrine are all potentially testable. Essay paper candidates can explore the theme of “technology sovereignty and the limits of strategic autonomy in a multipolar world.” For SSC aspirants, a basic understanding of why semiconductors and critical minerals matter for national security and economic competitiveness is the key takeaway.