Current Affairs Quiz 11 August 2026

India retains capital punishment but confines it through Bachan Singh’s “rarest of rare” test, requiring a reasoned balance of aggravating and mitigating factors before a death sentence can be imposed. Machhi Singh v. State of Punjab (1983) built on Bachan Singh by listing categories, manner of commission, motive, magnitude, and victim’s status, that could qualify a case as “rarest of rare.” Separately, Mithu v. State of Punjab (1983) struck down Section 303 IPC’s mandatory death sentence for murder by a life convict, holding a mandatory sentence unconstitutional regardless of circumstances.
The Law Commission of India’s Report No. 262 (2015), chaired by Justice A.P. Shah, went further and recommended abolishing the death penalty for all offences except terrorism-related crimes and offences against the state, citing weak deterrence evidence and risks of arbitrary sentencing. Lebanon’s August 2026 abolition, the first by an Arab League state, offers a live comparative peg for this debate.

International criminal law distinguishes several categories of atrocity crime: war crimes (violations of the laws of armed conflict tied to specific incidents), crimes against humanity (a widespread or systematic attack on civilians, which can occur even outside formal armed conflict), genocide (requiring specific intent to destroy a protected group, the hardest to prove), and aggression (the unlawful use of force by one state against another, a crime of state leadership). The Assad verdict, delivered in absentia against Bashar and Maher al-Assad (both granted asylum in Russia) and in person against co-defendants including former Daraa political security chief Atef Najib, is Syria’s first conviction since the regime fell on December 8, 2024, testing the new government’s transitional-justice capacity, and the practical enforceability of in-absentia sentences against defendants a host state will not extradite.

India’s 2020 space-sector liberalisation opened launch-vehicle development, satellite manufacturing and space services to private industry for the first time, and created IN-SPACe as the single-window body authorising and promoting private space activities, distinct from NSIL (ISRO’s commercial and marketing arm) and the Department of Space (the parent government ministry). Skyroot’s Vikram-1 reached orbit on July 18, 2026 from Sriharikota, deploying the SCOPE and Grahaa satellites, becoming India’s first privately-developed orbital-class launch vehicle to fly successfully.
The subsequent Multi-Launch Agreement with HEX20 (signed August 6, 2026, for three launches from Q4 2027) signals the sector moving from single demonstration flights toward repeat commercial business, a maturation Skyroot hopes will support its stated goal of 12 launches a year, contingent on sustained IN-SPACe regulatory support.

Launched by the United States in 2020 and grounded in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, the Artemis Accords are explicitly non-binding, deliberately avoiding a treaty-style dispute-resolution mechanism like ICJ arbitration. Their core commitments cover transparency in space activities, interoperability of systems, provision of emergency assistance to astronauts in distress, public release of scientific data, registration of space objects consistent with the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) framework, and principles for the extraction and use of space resources.
India signed on June 21, 2023, at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., becoming the 27th signatory. NASA’s August 2026 invitation to ISRO to join its Moon Base programme, discussed at the 9th India-U.S. Civil Space Joint Working Group in Bengaluru, builds on this non-binding framework and on existing cooperation such as the NISAR satellite (launched July 2025), testing how far India will deepen a US-anchored lunar partnership while preserving strategic autonomy.

DPIIT administers India’s full intellectual-property statutory framework, but each IP category has its own dedicated law: patents (Patents Act, 1970), trademarks (Trade Marks Act, 1999), industrial designs (Designs Act, 2000), and geographical indications (Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999). The August 5, 2026 MSME-DPIIT MoU links MSME enterprise-support systems with this GI legal framework, aiming to onboard GI collectives onto ONDC and the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) under a “Bharat GI” banner, and integrating the existing One District One Product (ODOP) ecosystem.
Well-known GI-tagged products include Darjeeling Tea and the Kanchipuram Silk Saree. The MoU addresses a recognised gap: GI registration protects a name from misuse but does not by itself deliver market access to often small, dispersed producer collectives.

International environmental law layers multiple treaty regimes over different conservation objects: the Ramsar Convention (1971) protects wetlands of international importance; CITES (1973) regulates cross-border trade in endangered species; the World Heritage Convention (1972) protects cultural and natural heritage sites; and the CBD (1992) sets broader biodiversity-conservation and benefit-sharing goals. Gujarat’s Rs 2.94 crore, JICA-funded plastic waste management project around Nalsarovar covers 5 villages in Ahmedabad district and 2 in Surendranagar district, using community volunteers called “Swachhta Praharis” organised under Eco-Development Committees, a Joint Forest Management-style institutional model giving local communities a formal stake in conservation outcomes.
The project operates alongside India’s Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016 (as amended), addressing the last-mile collection gap around an ecologically sensitive, internationally designated site.

India’s freedom movement historiography distinguishes several overlapping but distinct strands: constitutional Moderate politics within the Indian National Congress (pre-1907), the Extremist wing that split from Moderates at the 1907 Surat session over methods, armed revolutionary nationalism centred in Bengal and Punjab through secret societies like Jugantar and Anushilan Samiti (from the mid-1900s), Gandhian mass movements (Non-Cooperation from 1920, Civil Disobedience from 1930), and the later armed INA under Subhas Chandra Bose (1940s). Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki’s April 30, 1908 bombing attempt, and Bose’s subsequent trial in the Muzaffarpur Conspiracy Case linked to the wider Alipore Bomb Case (implicating figures including Aurobindo Ghosh and Barindra Kumar Ghosh), sit squarely within the revolutionary-nationalism strand, distinct from the Congress’s internal Moderate-Extremist debate happening around the same years.

India’s environment-and-earth-sciences governance is split across ministries with distinct mandates: MoES (formed 2006, merging earlier departments of ocean development, meteorology and seismology) covers monsoon forecasting via IMD, ocean sciences, tsunami and cyclone early warning, seismology, and polar research through the National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research; the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change separately administers wildlife protection, forest clearances, pollution control, and climate policy. Dr Srinivasa Kumar Tummala assumed charge as MoES Secretary on August 10, 2026, succeeding Dr N. Kalaiselvi, bringing over 30 years of experience in satellite oceanography and tsunami early-warning systems, including heading the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System (IOTWMS) Secretariat under UNESCO-IOC in Perth, directly relevant to MoES’s core early-warning mandate.

India’s biodiversity-protection toolkit includes several distinct instruments for different scales and purposes: the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 empowers formally notified sanctuaries, national parks and tiger reserves to protect larger wildlife habitats; the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, under Section 37, additionally allows a lighter-touch Biodiversity Heritage Site notification for ecologically significant areas, including small, unprotected sites with high endemism, sacred groves, wetlands, and coastal stretches, without the heavier administrative and land-use restrictions of a full sanctuary; the Ramsar Convention applies specifically to wetlands; and CITES governs cross-border wildlife trade rather than habitat status. India has notified more than 50 Biodiversity Heritage Sites across states as of 2026, a mechanism the National Biodiversity Authority’s guidelines say is meant precisely for sites with high endemism, rare or threatened species, or evolutionary significance that fall outside the existing protected-area network.

India’s built-heritage protection operates on a two-tier system: the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958 lets the Central Government, through ASI, declare specific monuments and sites of “national importance” for central protection (India has roughly 3,691 such Centrally Protected Monuments), while all other heritage structures, regardless of age or significance, remain under state government jurisdiction, typically administered by state archaeology and museums departments using their own state-level heritage legislation or executive orders. Rattan Garh Fort, built in 1733 in Bhaderwah, Doda district, and later used as a prison, falls into this second category, explaining why its Rs 10 crore restoration was approved directly by the Omar Abdullah-led J&K government as a heritage-tourism initiative for the Chenab Valley, rather than routed through ASI.