Daily News Capsules
1. SC recalls order that halted retrospective green permits
The Supreme Court on Tuesday, by a 2-1 majority, recalled its May 16 judgment that barred grant of ex-post-facto environment clearance (EC) to development projects, holding that the previous ruling failed to consider binding earlier precedent and thereby violated judicial discipline. Chief Justice of India (CJI) Bhushan R Gavai and Justice K Vinod Chandran, writing separate but concurring opinions, allowed a batch of review petitions and declared that the May verdict, delivered by a two-judge bench of justices Abhay S Oka (since retired) and Ujjal Bhuyan in the Vanashakti case, could not stand in the face of earlier Supreme Court rulings that had recognised limited situations where post-facto EC may be permissible. The majority judgment further noted that the May ruling produced consequences that were legally unsustainable and “devastating” for numerous public projects across the country. Justice Bhuyan dissented firmly, emphasising that ex-post-facto EC is “an anathema to environmental jurisprudence” and that the earlier ruling took the only legally correct view. The review verdict, issued on a plea by the Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Association of India (CREDAI) and others, means that the 2017 notification and 2021 office memorandum, which permit post-facto EC in limited situations with heavy penalties, revive. The challenges to them will now be placed before an appropriate bench for a fresh consideration, upon administrative orders of the CJI.
Possible Question
Critically analyse the tensions between environmental rule of law, administrative feasibility, and economic imperatives in India’s environmental regulatory framework.
2. Major web services go offline after glitch hits network firm
A worldwide outage plagued web infrastructure company Cloudflare Inc. on Tuesday evening, preventing thousands from accessing major internet platforms, including X and ChatGPT, and other websites including that of financial data provider Moody’s Corp and Shopify. It also affected online game, “League of Legends,” and the New Jersey Transit system. The outage was caused by an automatically generated configuration file, designed to manage potential security threats, the company said. The file grew too large and crashed the software system handling traffic for several Cloudflare services, the company, whose network handles around a fifth of web traffic, said. The issue, which began around 6.30am ET (5pm IST) was fully resolved after several hours, the company said. Cloudflare said there was “no evidence that this was the result of an attack or caused by malicious activity”. It runs one of the world’s largest networks that helps websites and apps load faster and stay online by protecting them from traffic surges and cyberattacks. Dane Knecht, Cloudflare’s chief technology officer, confirmed on X that the outage was “not an attack” but acknowledged that it caused “real pain” and said “work is already underway to make sure it does not happen again”.
Possible Question
A single point of failure in global web-infrastructure companies such as Cloudflare can trigger widespread digital paralysis. Discuss the need for resilient internet architecture in India, focusing on redundancy, regulatory oversight, and the cybersecurity–reliability interface.
3. The unrequited loves of fandoms: Cambridge Dictionary names ‘Parasocial’ word of 2025
Cambridge Dictionary has named Parasocial as the Word of the Year for 2025. It defines the term as “involving or relating to a connection that someone feels between themselves and a famous person they do not know, a character in a book, film, TV series, etc, or an artificial intelligence.” The word itself is not new. It’s been around since 1956, though it was coined for people’s relationship with a different kind of screen. “It’s only fairly recently that it’s made a shift into popular language and it’s one of those words that have been influenced by social media,” says the dictionary’s chief editor Colin McIntosh. Dictionary searches for the word spiked on June 30, right after YouTube streamer IShowSpeed blocked an obsessive fan who called himself the streamer’s “number 1 parasocial”. The word kept coming up after August 26, as the world woke up to news of Taylor Swift’s engagement to footballer Travis Kelce, causing her fans to celebrate as if she were a member of their own family. And it was on search lists once again just last week, when Johnson Wen, a 26-year old Australian Instagrammer was sentenced to nine days in jail for jumping over a barricade and grabbing actor and singer Ariana Grande at a movie premiere in Singapore earlier this month. Other words that it the dictionary found to have “significant impact” this year include Slop (lowbrow content, possibly AI generated) and Memeify (to turn an event, image, person, etc into a meme). The terms that actually made it to the dictionary include Skibidi, Delulu and Tradwife. Meanwhile, Dictionary.com’s word of the year isn’t even a word, it’s a number: 67, the nonsense Gen Alpha term that has had grownups confused and fuming.
Possible Question
Parasocial relationships are increasingly shaping online behaviour, public discourse, and digital safety. Analyse their sociological and psychological implications in India, and evaluate the policy challenges they pose for platform governance, celebrity management, and AI-generated content.
4. Top Maoist Hidma killed in crippling blow to LWE
Madvi Hidma, 50, his wife Madakam Raje, 44, and four other Maoists were killed by the Andhra Pradesh police after a gunfight early on Tuesday, dealing a crippling blow to the Left Wing Extremist (LWE) movement in the country. Hidma, CPI (Maoist) central committee member and commander of party’s first battalion and the others were killed after the encounter at Maredumilli forests of Alluri Sitarama Raju district on Tuesday morning, state intelligence chief Mahesh Chandra Laddha announced. Hidma, a native of Purvati village in Chhattisgarh’s Sukma district, was one of the most feared commanders of the CPI (Maoist) and is believed to have led the outfit’s elite PLGA Battalion No. 1. In the past year, security forces across Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Bihar, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana have neutralised at least 270 Maoists, got at least 1,225 to surrender and arrested 680, including top leaders. The senior leaders who were killed include top cadres such as Nambala Keshava Rao (Basavaraju), and central committee members such as Uday aka Gajrala Rao, Katta Ramachandra Reddy, and Kadri Satyanarayan Reddy. At least 10 central committee members have also been killed in gunfights this year. At a recent security meeting, Union home minister Amit Shah had directed security forces to eliminate Hidma by November 30, officials aware of the matter said. The Union home ministry recently said that the number of LWE-afflicted districts has fallen to 11, from 18 in April.
Possible Question
With top Maoist leaders neutralised, the LWE movement is at an inflection point. Critically assess what must be done to ensure that current gains translate into long-term institutional resilience in affected districts.
5. Anmol Bishnoi deported from US
Anmol Bishnoi — the younger brother of gangster Lawrence Bishnoi, who is currently incarcerated in Gujarat’s Sabarmati jail, and one of India’s most wanted organised crime fugitives — has been deported from the US, marking a major breakthrough for Indian agencies pursuing him in multiple high-profile cases. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) informed the family of slain NCP leader Baba Siddique on Tuesday that Bishnoi was “removed” from American soil. Bishnoi is believed to be on a plane back to India and is expected to land in Delhi on Wednesday. Bishnoi, a native of Punjab’s Fazilka district, was on the run since fleeing India on a forged passport in 2021. HT learns that the US’ Immigration and Customs Enforcement took Bishnoi into custody for his fake passport, and that he was lodged in Pottawattamie County jail , Iowa. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) had declared Anmol Bishnoi ‘most wanted’ and announced a reward of ₹10 lakh for information that could lead to his capture. Bishnoi faces at least 18 criminal cases in India, including the conspiracy to murder former Maharashtra minister and NCP leader Baba Siddique, who was shot dead in Mumbai in October 2024.He is also wanted for the firing outside actor Salman Khan’s Bandra home in April 2024 — an attack investigators say was carried out at the behest of the Bishnoi network. His role in the May 2022 killing of Punjabi rapper Sidhu Moosewala remains one of the most significant cases against him, with agencies alleging he coordinated the plot while operating from abroad.
Possible Question
Examine whether India’s current extradition frameworks, intelligence cooperation, and legal instruments are adequate to deter organised crime operating from abroad.
Editorial Snapshots
A. Deregulation as a tool to discipline the State
The Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2023 and the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2025 embody a transition from a permission and-penalty regime to a trust-based government. Yet, do they fulfil the true purpose of deregulation? The Indian State has often treated deregulation as a form of administrative housekeeping. Redundant provisions are deleted, fines rationalised, and digital portals introduced to replace manual processes. True deregulation requires dismantling this epistemology of control. Three questions are foundational. First, what is the legitimate objective of regulation? Regulation exists to reconcile freedom with responsibility. It fails when it substitutes bureaucratic uniformity for economic adaptability. Second, what conception of the citizen underlies the law? Many legacy statutes are written for subjects, not citizens. Regulation should operate on a presumption of good faith, drawing on transparency, disclosure, and deterrence rather than ex-ante permission. Third, what is the epistemic competence of the State in a complex economy? The assumption that central authorities can anticipate all contingencies is an artefact of the command economy. Regulation must, therefore, be adaptive, iterative, and experimental, guided by evidence and feedback rather than static command. Translating these philosophical commitments into operational design requires institutional instruments that embed adaptability and accountability in the regulatory process. First, every proposed regulation should be accompanied by an ex-ante Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) quantifying compliance costs, evaluating alternatives, and disclosing trade-offs. RIAs must be made public and subject to independent review. Second, all regulations should contain mandatory expiry or review provisions, typically at five-year intervals. Third, dispersed subordinate legislation should be consolidated into thematic regulatory codes, updated annually. Codification eliminates duplication, facilitates machine readability, and permits algorithmic monitoring of compliance. Fourth, performance of regulators should be assessed through transparent metrics such as average time to compliance, inspection-to violation ratios, and stakeholder satisfaction. Regulation should be seen as a tool to discipline the State. A State that intervenes selectively and transparently governs more effectively than one that legislates indiscriminately.
Possible Question
Critically evaluate how India can institutionalise regulatory impact assessments, sunset clauses, and codified regulatory codes to ensure accountability without compromising public interest.
B. Losing home advantage on doctored pitches
There is more to home advantage than just the pitch. But by asking for specific kinds of wickets, coach Gautam Gambhir and the India team management have suffered the ignominy of trying to set a trap for the opposition, and then falling into it themselves. The defeat against South Africa at Eden Gardens is India’s fourth loss in six home Tests — an indication of how poorly India, under Gambhir, have played their cards. The last four losses before the most recent downturn spanned seven years (February 2017 to January 2024). Now, we have seen four in 13 months. Curators know local conditions best, and if left alone, they will usually try to produce a wicket that promises good cricket. But when you start asking them to mix things up just a few days before the game, there is a risk of things backfiring as they did at Eden. The batters, as the Test tour of England in June-August showed, are good enough, but if you reduce batting to a lottery, then there are no guarantees. Yes, the batters should have done better. But this is also a young batting unit that must be allowed to come into its own. Even the best Indian batters have struggled at home in the last five years — with only Yashasvi Jaiswal (1,322 runs at 57.47) averaging over 50. A doctored pitch is the last thing such a line-up needs. Eden Gardens saw great crowds for its first Test in six years, but the match itself ended within three days. The demand for such pitches, thus, does a disservice to spectators and the game itself. The England series was fun because it tested the cricketers’ technique and temperament, and most matches went the distance. India have much to introspect — in terms of both team and pitch — and it would be a pity if an anticipated win in the next test sweeps these concerns under the carpet.
Possible Question
Analyse how pitch manipulation debates reflect deeper issues in sports administration, player development, and accountability within national sporting bodies.
Fact of the day
Government announces 26% hike in print ad rates: The ministry of Information & Broadcasting (I&B) announced on Monday that it has approved a 26% increase in the rates paid by the government for advertisements in print media. The revised rates are meant to strengthen the revenue base of newspapers, especially as they face rising costs and growing competition from digital platforms, the government said. The rates are effective from December 1, 2025, an I&B official told HT. “Higher rates for government advertisements will provide essential revenue support to print media, especially in an era of competition from various other media platforms and in view of the escalation in cost in the last few years. This can help sustain operations, maintain quality journalism, and support local news initiatives,” said the government in a press release. Under the new structure, the rate for black-and-white ads in daily newspapers with a circulation of 100,000, has gone up from ₹47.40 to ₹59.68 per sq cm. The government has also introduced premium rates for colour advertisements and preferential positioning. The Central Bureau of Communication (CBC), which releases ads on behalf of various ministries, last revised print ad rates in January 2019, a 25% hike, based on the recommendations of the 8th Rate Structure Committee (RSC). The rates were valid till 2022. Prior to 2019, the rates were revised in 2013 with a 19% increase on the rates of 2010. The new increase follows recommendations from the 9th RSC, set up in November 2021. This comes after deliberations held between November 2021 and August 2023.
