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By Mahima Katal New Delhi, July 23: The US House of Representatives passed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2027 on Wednesday by a margin of 216 to 212, clearing a $1.15 trillion military spending bill that will now move to the Senate. The vote broke almost entirely along party lines, with Republicans voting 209-7 in favour and Democrats voting 205-6 against. On its face, this looks like a familiar story: a defence budget passed on a near party-line vote, in a legislature divided over an unrelated war. But the more instructive story lies not in the final tally, but in what happened the day before, when the House decided what its members would be allowed to vote on at all. At the centre of the dispute is Section 219 of the bill, formerly numbered Section 224, which calls on the US defense secretary to designate a coordinator for US-Israel military cooperation. Critics, led by Representatives Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Ro Khanna of California, argued the provision would "fuse" the US and Israeli militaries, compromising American sovereignty over its own defence-technology and supply-chain decisions, though supporters of the section maintained its text does no more than create a bureaucratic administrative role to manage existing cooperative efforts. That substantive disagreement is not, in itself, unusual in defence legislation. What is unusual is that the disagreement never reached a vote. On Tuesday, the House Rules Committee — the body that decides which amendments may be debated and voted on before a bill reaches the floor — declined to allow a vote on the Massie-Khanna amendment that would have stripped Section 219 from the NDAA. The rule governing debate on H.R. 8800 passed by a 214-211 vote, and it excluded the amendment from consideration entirely. Massie said afterward that "no debate or vote was allowed on section 219, integration of US military technology and supply chains with Israel's," and announced he would oppose the underlying bill as a result. He was one of seven Republicans who ultimately voted no on the full NDAA the next day, joined by Representatives Josh Brecheen, Tim Burchett, Eli Crane, Harriet Hageman, Anna Paulina Luna, and Chip Roy. Six Democrats crossed over to vote yes, all of them from competitive districts or not seeking re-election. The distinction matters more than it might first appear. A lawmaker voting against a bill because they disagree with a provision inside it is ordinary legislative politics — the system working as designed, however imperfectly. A lawmaker being denied the chance to force a vote on that provision at all is a different kind of problem: it is a question about whether the chamber's own procedural machinery can be used to insulate a substantive policy choice from scrutiny, regardless of how members might actually vote if given the opportunity. The Rules Committee's decision meant that no member of the House — for or against Section 219 — ever cast a recorded vote on the narrow question of whether US-Israel military integration belonged in this year's defence bill. The only vote available was up-or-down on the entire $1.15 trillion package, forcing lawmakers who objected to Section 219 to choose between swallowing it or voting against defence pay raises, procurement authorisations, and every other unrelated provision bundled into the same bill. This is not a uniquely American affliction, and that is precisely why it is worth examining from Delhi. Indian Parliament has its own well-documented history of using procedural control to foreclose substantive votes rather than losing them outright. The guillotine motion — under which the Speaker, at the end of the allotted time for discussion on Demands for Grants, puts all remaining outstanding demands to vote "whether they have been discussed or not" — has been used routinely to close out budget scrutiny without member-by-member consideration, particularly on contentious ministries. The classification of legislation as a "Money Bill" under Article 110, which restricts the Rajya Sabha's power to amend or reject it, has generated its own line of litigation precisely because it can be used to route substantively controversial legislation around the chamber where a government lacks a majority — a question the Supreme Court grappled with in the Aadhaar Act challenge and again in Rojer Mathew v. South Indian Bank, where a Constitution Bench flagged serious doubts about the Speaker's certification of the Finance Act, 2017 as a Money Bill and referred the matter to a larger bench. In both the American and Indian instances, the underlying mechanism is the same: control over what gets voted on is itself a form of control over the outcome, exercised without ever appearing on the record as opposition to the substance. There is a second, related data point in this week's vote worth setting alongside the first. Six Democrats supported the NDAA despite President Trump's continued war against Iran, which was launched without congressional authorisation, and this occurred even though both chambers had earlier passed a concurrent War Powers Resolution directing the president to end the conflict. A war powers resolution is, in constitutional theory, one of the most direct tools a legislature has to check unilateral executive military action. That Congress passed one and the executive continued the conflict regardless — with the legislature then proceeding to fund an even larger defence package in the same window — illustrates how a formally available check can lose practical effect when it is not backed by an enforcement mechanism beyond further legislation, which itself remains subject to executive discretion in execution. This is a familiar problem in Indian constitutional discourse as well, where the absence of any equivalent statutory war-powers framework leaves treaty-making and deployment decisions almost entirely within executive discretion under Article 53, subject to only the loosest form of parliamentary oversight after the fact. None of this requires taking a position on whether Section 219 itself is sound policy, or on the merits of the Iran conflict that shaped this week's vote. The more durable point, for an Indian legal audience, is structural: both the American and Indian legislatures possess an array of formal tools — rules committees, guillotine motions, money-bill certification, war-powers resolutions — that exist on paper to preserve meaningful deliberation over matters of war, defence, and foreign entanglement. What Wednesday's vote demonstrates is how easily those tools can be inverted, turned from instruments of deliberation into instruments for avoiding it, without any single actor having to be blamed for suppressing debate outright. The bill will now go to the Senate, where its own version already contains a provision to integrate the two militaries, though the broader legislation was blocked last week by Senate Democrats over the unauthorised war with Iran. Whether that chamber allows a genuine vote on Section 219, or resolves the question through the same kind of procedural manoeuvring that defined the House process, will say as much about the durability of legislative oversight as the underlying policy ever could.

By The Slate Bureau Staff United Nations, Jul 23 (PTI) India has strongly rejected Pakistan's remarks at the United Nations, asserting that cooperation under the Indus Waters Treaty cannot be expected when "cross-border terrorism" is used as an "instrument of state policy". India also maintained that Jammu and Kashmir "has always been, is, and will remain" an integral and inalienable part of the country. The remarks were made on Wednesday by India's Permanent Representative to the United States, Ambassador Parvathaneni Harish, at the High-Level Open Debate of the UN Security Council on Natural Resources Governance: the Foundation of Peace, Security and Prosperity. Responding to Pakistan, Parvathaneni said India was compelled to reply after Islamabad "misused" the discussion to push a "false narrative". "Our position on the Indus Water Treaty remains clear and consistent. Cooperation on the basis of mutual trust and goodwill cannot be expected when cross-border terrorism is regularly deployed as an instrument of state policy," Parvathaneni said. India's sharp rebuttal came after Pakistan's Permanent Representative to the UN, Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, accused New Delhi of "weaponising water" by placing the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in abeyance, calling the move "illegal" and claiming it threatened the livelihoods of over 240 million Pakistanis. India Reasserts Kashmir Is an Integral Part After Pakistan Faces Another Rebuke at UN The IWT, signed in 1960, is a World Bank-brokered agreement between India and Pakistan that governs the sharing of the waters of the six rivers of the Indus basin, allocating the eastern rivers to India and the western rivers largely to Pakistan. India put the IWT in abeyance following the April 22, 2025, Pahalgam terror attack, saying cooperation under the agreement cannot continue in the face of cross-border terrorism. "As for the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, it has always been, is, and will remain an integral and inalienable part of India. This is the constitutional and legal reality that Pakistan deliberately chooses to ignore," the Indian envoy said while exercising India's right of reply during the UN Security Council open debate. "The only outstanding issue with regard to Jammu and Kashmir is the naked aggression and illegal occupation of India's sovereign territory by Pakistan. Instead of pointing fingers at India, Pakistan would serve itself and its people far better by putting its own house in order," he added. During his address, Parvathaneni said the “illicit exploitation and trafficking of natural resources can, in certain situations, contribute to the financing of armed groups and prolong conflict,” but stressed that natural resources should primarily serve as an engine of development and prosperity for sovereign states. He also highlighted that the primary responsibility for the governance and management of natural resources rests with sovereign states and called for transparent, accountable and nationally owned governance, along with responsible supply chains, greater transparency and stronger international cooperation to curb illicit exploitation of natural resources. (Except headline, the content is sourced from a syndicated feed.)

Supreme Court will hear Kapil Sibal's plea on July 27 challenging the interpretation of the Tenth Schedule's merger exception, alongside the parallel Shiv Sena (UBT) merger challenge heard the same day. The pairing revives the Kihoto Hollohan (1992) question of whether Speakers can remain sole arbiters of defection disputes, with tagging for a larger bench the likelier near-term outcome over a ruling on merits. By Mahima Katal New Delhi, July 22: The Supreme Court's decision on Wednesday to list senior advocate Kapil Sibal's plea for hearing on July 27 does more than add one more matter to an already crowded anti-defection docket. It positions the Court, whether by design or accumulation, to confront a question it has sidestepped since 1992: whether a Presiding Officer, whose tenure and political fortunes are tied to the House majority, can continue to function as the sole first-instance adjudicator of defection disputes under the Tenth Schedule. Sibal, appearing before a bench comprising Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana, sought urgent listing of a petition he has filed in his personal capacity as an Independent Rajya Sabha MP. His submission was narrow in form but expansive in implication: whether the composition of Parliament can be permitted to change in the manner currently occurring in the country, and how paragraph four of the Tenth Schedule ought to be interpreted in that context. The CJI, taking note of the submissions, agreed to list the matter for July 27, a Monday. Paragraph four of the Tenth Schedule is the merger exception. Where the general scheme of the Schedule disqualifies a legislator who voluntarily gives up membership of the party on whose ticket they were elected, or who votes against a party whip, paragraph four exempts members from disqualification where their original political party has undergone a merger with another party, provided not less than two-thirds of the members of the legislature party concerned have agreed to the merger. The provision was designed to distinguish a genuine, negotiated merger of political parties from an engineered defection dressed up as one. Sibal's petition, on the facts recited before the Court, concerns whether that distinction is currently being observed at all, or whether paragraph four has become a mechanism through which breakaway factions retroactively manufacture the appearance of a merger to escape the primary disqualification provisions of paragraphs two and three. The timing of Sibal's plea is not incidental. The same day it was mentioned, a separate petition filed by Shiv Sena (UBT) challenging the Lok Sabha Speaker's approval of the merger of a section of its MPs with the Shinde faction was listed before a bench headed by Justice P S Narasimha. Sibal specifically drew the CJI's attention to the pendency of that matter, and to other similar pleas already before the Court. Taken together, the docket now includes challenges arising from defections and mergers involving AAP, Trinamool Congress, and Shiv Sena (UBT) MPs joining the ruling BJP and allied parties. The recurrence of the same underlying grievance, filed by different parties across different Houses and legislatures, is itself a data point: it suggests the paragraph four merger exception is being invoked with a frequency and a procedural pattern that outstrips its intended, narrow use. This is where the constitutional design problem resurfaces. The Tenth Schedule, in paragraph six, vests the decision on whether a member has incurred disqualification in the Speaker or Chairman of the House concerned, and Explanation (c) to that paragraph clarifies that such a decision is deemed to be a proceeding in Parliament or the Legislature for the purposes of Article 122 or Article 212. The constitutional bench in Kihoto Hollohan v. Zachillhu (1992) upheld this scheme against a challenge that it violated the basic structure by placing adjudicatory power over a quasi-judicial question in the hands of a political functionary. The Court's reasoning at the time rested on the presumption that the Speaker, though a member of a political party, acts as a tribunal once seized of a disqualification petition, and that this quasi-judicial function is severable from, and does not compromise, the Speaker's ordinarily partisan role. The Court did, however, subject the Speaker's decision to judicial review on the grounds available against any tribunal, including malafides, perversity, and violation of natural justice, while confining such review to the final order rather than permitting interference at intermediate stages. In the more than three decades since Kihoto, the Court has repeatedly encountered the friction between that presumption and how the Schedule actually operates on the ground. In Rajendra Singh Rana v. Swami Prasad Maurya (2007), the Court found that a Speaker's failure to decide a disqualification petition, while permitting the defecting members to participate in and even influence the composition of a new government, amounted to a decision vitiated by mala fides. In Nabam Rebia v. Deputy Speaker (2016), a different constitutional bench, dealing with a Speaker's power to decide disqualification petitions while a resolution for the Speaker's own removal was pending, held that the Speaker could not adjudicate such petitions during that period, precisely because impartiality could not be assumed. Most significantly, in the matter arising from the 2019 Karnataka defections and subsequently in Subhash Desai v. Governor of Maharashtra (2023), the Court expressed clear disquiet over Speakers sitting on disqualification petitions for months or years without decision, effectively allowing defecting members to alter the arithmetic of the House and even change the government while the question of their own disqualification remained undetermined. In the Maharashtra matter, the Court went so far as to observe that the Speaker had acted contrary to the constitutional scheme in recognising a faction without first deciding the disqualification petitions pending against its members, yet it declined to itself adjudicate the disqualification questions or to unseat the resulting government, citing the limits of what relief could be moulded at that remove in time. That pattern, delay followed by a fait accompli that judicial review arrives too late to reverse, is the structural core of what Sibal's plea and the pending Shiv Sena (UBT) matter both put before the Court once more. If a Speaker can decline to decide, or can decide in a manner that favours the ruling dispensation, and if the consequence of that delay is that the composition and confidence of the House shift irreversibly before any court can intervene, the Kihoto premise that judicial review is an adequate safeguard becomes difficult to sustain in practice, whatever its theoretical soundness. The paragraph four merger exception compounds this because the threshold determination, whether two-thirds of a legislature party genuinely agreed to a merger, is itself a factual and political question that the Speaker decides in the first instance, with the same incentives and the same possibility of delay that the Court has already found problematic in straightforward disqualification cases. What the Court does with Sibal's petition on July 27 will indicate whether it intends to use the current cluster of pending matters to revisit the design question left open since Kihoto, rather than continuing to dispose of individual defection disputes on their specific facts. The narrower course would be to decide the Shiv Sena (UBT) merger challenge and any connected matters strictly on whether the Lok Sabha Speaker's specific approval met the two-thirds threshold and complied with natural justice, leaving Kihoto's institutional framework undisturbed. The broader course, which Sibal's framing invites by asking whether the composition of Parliament itself can be permitted to change through this mechanism, would require the Court to consider whether the time has come to prescribe a different adjudicatory mechanism altogether, an independent tribunal or a fixed timeline enforceable through mandamus, rather than continuing to rely on after-the-fact review of Speaker's decisions that by the time they are reviewable have already produced irreversible political consequences. Given that a five-judge or larger bench would likely be required to revisit Kihoto's core holding, the more probable near-term outcome is that the CJI-led bench uses the July 27 hearing to decide whether these pending matters ought to be tagged together and referred to a larger bench, rather than deciding the substantive question itself. That procedural decision, on tagging and reference, is likely to be the more consequential news out of the July 27 listing than any observation on the merits.

The Centre has agreed to discuss the NEET paper leak and student protests in Parliament after mounting nationwide demonstrations, but the Opposition insists any debate must begin with the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. As Congress and other INDIA bloc MPs intensify protests, the controversy has evolved into one of the Modi government's biggest youth challenges, raising larger questions about examination reforms, accountability, and the handling of student dissent. By Mahima Katal New Delhi, July 22: The political fallout from the nationwide student protests over the alleged NEET paper leak intensified on Wednesday as the Centre indicated it was ready to discuss the issue in Parliament, while the Opposition insisted that any debate must begin with the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. AI Generated Image. The standoff marks a significant escalation in what has become one of the Narendra Modi government's most serious youth-driven political challenges since 2014, with the protests evolving from a student movement into a broader confrontation over examination reforms, government accountability and police action against demonstrators. Government Opens Door for Parliamentary Discussion In his first detailed response since the protests gathered momentum, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said the government remained committed to addressing students' concerns and reforming the examination system. "Our government remains 100% committed to discussing NEET and addressing every genuine concern of our youth on the floor of the House," Pradhan said in a post on X. He accused the Opposition of politicising the issue, stating that students "deserve far better than being treated as props in a political campaign." Pradhan added that the government was committed to delivering "answers, reforms and accountability" following widespread anger over the alleged examination paper leaks. His remarks came a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the controversy for the first time, promising strict action against those responsible for examination leaks and calling for a foolproof examination system. Health Minister J.P. Nadda also met representatives of the student-led Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) movement earlier this week, assuring them that the government would consider their demands. Opposition Escalates Pressure Despite the government's willingness to hold a discussion, Opposition parties intensified their protests inside and outside Parliament on Wednesday. Congress MPs, dressed in black, staged demonstrations at the Parliament complex alongside MPs from several INDIA bloc parties, including the Samajwadi Party, demanding the resignations of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Home Minister Amit Shah. The protests followed Tuesday's dramatic sit-in led by Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi outside the Prime Minister's residence, during which Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and several senior Opposition leaders were detained by Delhi Police before being released later in the day. Congress leader Pawan Khera maintained that the Opposition would not settle for a discussion alone. "Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan must resign first, and then there will be discussion. After the lathi charge on so many students, what will be the discussion now?" he said. According to government sources, the Centre has agreed in principle to a discussion in both Houses of Parliament. The procedural rule under which the debate will take place is expected to be decided by the Speaker after consultations with leaders of political parties. Rahul Gandhi Lists Five Demands Rahul Gandhi accused the government of exploiting students and failing to protect the integrity of India's examination system. He demanded: Resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. Resignation of Home Minister Amit Shah. Action against police officials involved in the crackdown on student protesters. An apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Immediate reforms to India's examination and education systems. In a video recorded while in police detention, Gandhi questioned the state of India's education system. "Why is the Indian education system collapsing? Why are papers leaking? Why is education so expensive? These are legitimate questions." He also urged Parliament to hold a full debate on the crisis. From Satire to National Movement The protests were initially launched by the self-described Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a youth-led movement that began as an online satirical campaign following allegations surrounding the NEET examination paper leak. What started as demonstrations involving a few hundred students has rapidly expanded into a nationwide movement attracting tens of thousands of protesters, particularly after clashes with Delhi Police earlier this week, when authorities used tear gas and batons to disperse demonstrators. The movement has drawn support from environmental activist Sonam Wangchuk, whose hunger strike over education reforms and youth issues further amplified public attention before he was shifted to a private hospital following a Delhi High Court order. Political Stakes Ahead The controversy has emerged as one of the most politically sensitive issues confronting the Modi government in its third term. Beyond allegations of examination irregularities, the protests have tapped into wider frustrations among young Indians over recurring paper leaks, unemployment, and concerns about fairness in competitive recruitment and admission processes. For the Opposition, the issue has provided a rare opportunity to unite around a youth-centric campaign capable of mobilising first-time voters. For the BJP, which has traditionally enjoyed significant support among young voters, the challenge lies in balancing accountability with political damage control. The BJP has accused Rahul Gandhi and the Congress of attempting to exploit student grievances for political gain and plans to organise protests outside Congress offices across the country in response to Tuesday's demonstrations. A Defining Test for Education Reform With the government signalling openness to parliamentary debate and the Opposition refusing to back down without ministerial accountability, the coming discussion in Parliament could become a defining moment in the national conversation on examination reforms. Whether the debate results in structural changes to India's examination system, or remains another political confrontation, may determine how effectively the government can respond to growing youth discontent that has moved from campuses to the centre of national politics.

By Mahima Katal New Delhi, July 21: The Bar Council of India placed a draft Advocates (Amendment) Bill before the legal profession for public comment, setting a deadline of 31 July at 3 PM for stakeholders to respond. The exercise carries an institutional weight that the bare procedural facts do not convey, because this is not a first attempt at amending the Advocates Act, 1961. It is a second attempt, following the withdrawal in February 2025 of an earlier draft that collapsed within roughly ten days of its release under the weight of nationwide bar association protests, work stoppages, and formal objections from the Bar Council of India itself. Understanding what the 2026 draft actually proposes requires understanding what happened to the version that preceded it, because the two texts are in direct conversation with each other, and the changes between them trace the outline of a negotiation that has been conducted largely outside public view over the past year and a half. The Advocates (Amendment) Bill, 2025 was published for consultation by the Union Law Ministry in February of that year with the declared aim of modernising a statute that had gone substantially unrevised since the early 1990s. Its most contentious provision was a proposed Section 35A, which would have designated participation by advocates or bar associations in strikes or boycotts that disrupted court proceedings as a form of professional misconduct, subject to disciplinary action, with only a narrow exemption for one-day or symbolic protests that did not interfere with judicial work. For a profession whose institutional memory includes strikes as a recurring instrument of protest against everything from judicial appointments to legislative overreach, this was read as an attempt to foreclose a mode of collective action that lawyers regarded as inseparable from their constitutional right to assemble and express dissent under Article 19. The 2025 draft compounded the objection by proposing disciplinary liability for the office-bearers of bar associations who called such strikes, and by attaching a substantial monetary penalty, reported at five lakh rupees, for advocates found culpable in serious disciplinary proceedings. A second and equally significant flashpoint concerned the government's relationship to the Bar Council of India itself. The 2025 draft proposed provisions that would have permitted the Central government to nominate members to the Bar Council of India and to issue what were described as binding directions to the Council, alongside a shift of regulatory authority over foreign lawyers and foreign law firms from the BCI to the Central government under a proposed Section 49A. The Bar Council's own chairman, Manan Kumar Mishra, wrote to the Law Minister warning that these provisions would undermine the Council's autonomy, and the criticism found an echo in Parliament, where opposition members raised the question of executive overreach into a self-regulating profession. Faced with this combination of street-level protest and institutional objection, the Ministry of Law and Justice announced on 22 February 2025 that it would conclude the consultation process and return with a revised draft prepared in consultation with stakeholders. The eighteen months between that withdrawal and the release of the 2026 draft is the period in which the substantive work of reconciliation appears to have taken place, and the Bar Council's covering letter accompanying the new draft is unusually candid about what changed and why. The strike and boycott provision has been removed in its entirety. There is no equivalent to the earlier Section 35A anywhere in the 2026 text, and the amendments to Section 35 that do appear are confined to procedural matters, principally a fifteen-day timeline within which a State Bar Council must refer a disciplinary complaint to its committee. The proposed liability for bar association office-bearers has likewise been dropped, as has the five lakh rupee penalty provision. The BCI's letter attributes these deletions directly to what it describes as constructive deliberations with the Union Law Minister following representations from a coordination committee of bar associations across Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and other states, and states plainly that the government agreed to revise the draft to address the concerns that had given rise to the 2025 protests. The provision for Central government nominees on the Bar Council of India and State Bar Councils has also been deleted, with no equivalent language anywhere in the 2026 text. Where the picture becomes more complex, and arguably more consequential for the profession's future, is in the treatment of foreign lawyers and foreign law firms. The 2025 draft's proposal to transfer regulatory authority over foreign entry to the Central government has not survived in that form, but neither has authority simply reverted in full to the Bar Council. The 2026 draft's substituted Section 47 retains rule-making power with the Bar Council of India for registering, renewing, suspending or cancelling the registration of foreign lawyers and foreign law firms, and for permitting the fly-in fly-out practice through which a foreign lawyer may visit India temporarily to engage in permitted work. But those rules must now be framed with the prior approval of the Central government, a formulation that splits the difference between the 2025 proposal and the pre-existing position rather than restoring the pre-existing position outright. The BCI's own explanation frames this as necessary because only the Central government is positioned to assess India's diplomatic and reciprocal relationship with any given foreign country, but the practical effect is that the Bar Council's regulatory authority over this domain is now conditioned on executive concurrence in a way it was not before the 2025 Bill was ever introduced. The substantive boundaries of what a foreign lawyer or firm may do have also been drawn with considerably more precision than either the current Act or the withdrawn 2025 draft attempted. The new Section 47 expressly states that the permitted area of practice for a foreign lawyer or foreign law firm does not extend to appearance before any court, tribunal, authority or person before whom only an advocate is entitled to appear under Section 33 of the Act. This forecloses appearance before the Supreme Court, any High Court, and any District or Taluka court, and bars foreign lawyers from undertaking Indian litigation or practising Indian law before any statutory authority, regardless of foreign qualification or professional registration elsewhere. The sole carved-out exception is appearance before an arbitral tribunal in an international commercial arbitration where the substantive law governing the dispute is foreign law, a concession the Bar Council's letter justifies by reference to the loss of arbitration business to hubs such as Singapore and Hong Kong. A reciprocity principle underwrites the entire framework: where a foreign country restricts Indian lawyers from practising there or subjects them to discriminatory treatment, nationals of that country may be barred from practising in India by Central government notification, subject to the Bar Council's residual discretion to permit or refuse registration having regard to that principle. A related and arguably more consequential change concerns the ordinary route to enrolment as an advocate, independent of any foreign-lawyer framework. The existing proviso to Section 24(1)(a), which permits a national of another country to be admitted as an advocate where Indian citizens are permitted to practise reciprocally in that country, is proposed for deletion entirely. The Bar Council's letter explains this by reference to a Delhi High Court direction compelling the Council to enrol a South Korean citizen under the existing proviso, and expresses concern that the provision has opened enrolment applications from nationals of Bhutan, Nepal and Bangladesh studying law in India. If the proviso is omitted as proposed, Indian citizenship becomes, without qualification, a precondition for enrolment as an advocate on a State roll, a materially more restrictive position than either the current Act or the 2025 draft contemplated, and one that has received markedly less public attention than the foreign law firm provisions despite touching a comparable set of questions about who may practise law in India and on what basis. Several further provisions in the 2026 draft have no real analogue in the 2025 text and represent a distinct, additive agenda rather than a retreat from anything previously proposed. A new Chapter IIIA requires every law firm operating in India, whatever its legal form, to register with the Bar Council of India, with a register to be maintained and furnished annually to the government, a first-time statutory recognition of the law firm as an institutional vehicle for the collective practice of law. The Legal Education Committee is more than doubled in size, from ten to twenty-five members, with mandated representation for former Supreme Court judges, sitting or former High Court Chief Justices, the Attorney General, the Solicitor General, the Chairman of the University Grants Commission, and university vice-chancellors and deans, a restructuring intended to draw the judiciary and academia more directly into the standard-setting function for legal education. An Election Tribunal mechanism is introduced under new Sections 14A and 15A to adjudicate disputes arising from State Bar Council elections, with the presiding officer required to have served as a judge of the Supreme Court or Chief Justice of a High Court, addressing a gap in the current Act that has left election disputes to protracted litigation before ordinary courts. State Bar Council composition is restructured to increase overall strength across all three existing electorate-based categories, with fixed numbers of women members elected and additional women advocates co-opted by the Bar Council of India, a change the BCI's letter frames as necessary to secure representation for under-represented regions such as Goa and parts of Assam and Jharkhand where the existing electoral system has left State Bar Councils without effective local representation. The enrolment fee, frozen by statute at seven hundred fifty rupees for general candidates since a 1993 amendment, is revised upward to eighteen thousand rupees payable to the State Bar Council and four thousand five hundred rupees to the Bar Council of India. The Bar Council's letter ties this revision to the Supreme Court's judgment in Gaurav Kumar versus Union of India, which had held that the aggregate enrolment fee chargeable under the existing Section 24(1)(f) could not lawfully exceed the statutory ceiling, and to a subsequent writ petition directing the Union government to revise that ceiling in line with current costs. A one-fourth concession is preserved for candidates from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and persons with benchmark disabilities who are unable to pay owing to financial hardship. Separately, a new Section 24C permits the removal of an advocate's name from the State roll upon conviction and sentencing to two years' imprisonment or more, subject to confirmation by a High Court or the Supreme Court, with a route to reapplication for enrolment preserved for those whose sentences fall below five years. The cumulative effect of comparing the two drafts is a Bill that has been rebuilt with unusual specificity around the precise objections that destroyed its predecessor, while simultaneously advancing an institutional agenda, spanning welfare funds, legal education governance, election dispute resolution, and law firm registration, that goes considerably beyond anything the withdrawn 2025 version attempted. Whether this qualifies as the collaborative, profession-first process the Bar Council's letter describes, or whether it reflects a more contested negotiation in which the government retained meaningful leverage over the questions it cared most about, foreign lawyer entry and citizenship-based restrictions on enrolment chief among them, is a judgment that the submissions due by 31 July, and the shape of whatever draft follows them, will do more to answer than the text of this draft alone can.

By The Slate Staff New Delhi, July 21: British Prime Minister Andy Burnham moved quickly to appoint his new Cabinet within hours of entering 10 Downing Street, promoting British Indian MP Kanishka Narayan to a Cabinet-level role while removing several ministers closely associated with former prime minister Keir Starmer. After King Charles III formally invited Burnham to form a government on Monday, the new prime minister immediately began announcing the ministers who will make up his top team. The appointments reflect Burnham's effort to shape his own administration and set a new direction for the government. Among the key appointments, British Indian politician Kanishka Narayan was promoted as Minister for Artificial Intelligence (AI). His role spans both the Cabinet Office and the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, highlighting the government's intention to place AI at the centre of its economic and technological agenda. British Indian AI Minister Kanishka Narayan, Lisa Nandy Among Key Faces in Burnham's UK Cabinet (File Image) Speaking after his appointment, Narayan said his promotion showed Prime Minister Burnham's "deep commitment to AI's importance". He added that the government sees artificial intelligence as a major driver of innovation, productivity and future economic growth. Another Indian-origin minister, Lisa Nandy, retained her position in the Cabinet. She will continue to lead the Department for Culture while taking on expanded responsibilities as Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, reflecting the government's focus on the growing links between technology, media and the creative industries. “AI is likely the most significant technology in human history. Its impact will dwarf other things. The best case for it is compelling beyond our dreams: a reindustrialised Britain, stronger national security, public services transformed for the better," said Narayan, who was elected as the first Indian-origin member of Parliament from Wales in the July 2024 general election. “The risks, too, are real: it is right that the British public shares those worries, for jobs, for the pace of change. The central fact is that it is happening. Nations have a narrow window to decide whether they shape AI or get shaped by it. Britain is in that window right now,” he said. The 36-year-old Bihar-born Labour MP for the Vale of Glamorgan, who held the AI brief as a junior minister in former prime minister Keir Starmer’s team, pledged to act with "pace and ambition" and “focus relentlessly on securing British influence in shaping AI”. “I will also bring to this job the place I represent – a constituency in Wales, a nation with industry and ambition at its heart, a proud history of punching above its weight on the global stage. A nation which welcomed a 12-year old and his family, gave us the best chance at opportunity, put me in Parliament as Wales' first ethnic minority MP, and now affords me the chance to make a mark in Cabinet,” he said. With roots in Muzaffarpur, Narayan's family moved to the Welsh capital of Cardiff when he was a little boy. He studied at Oxford and Stanford universities before entering politics after a stint in the private sector and has been vocal about the importance of the India-UK relationship. “The question being asked is one of policy continuity in a slightly transitioning political moment; on this question, I feel absolutely convinced that the stability of the depth of our relationship (with India) is a stability we'll continue to see in the months and years ahead,” said Narayan, addressing the India All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) last month. Meanwhile, Lisa Nandy is reappointed to the ministerial role she has been in charge of since July 2024 with the additional responsibility for digital services too. The 44-year-old Manchester-born daughter of Calcutta-born academic Dipak Nandy and English mother Luise Byers is a close ally of Burnham as his Makerfield constituency neighbour in Wigan, within the Greater Manchester region. In the lead-up to the elevation of the region’s former mayor to prime minister, she vouched for her new boss being “faster and bolder” in the Labour Party's reform agenda. Among the other key Cabinet appointments, South Asian heritage Shabana Mahmood holds on to her role as Home Secretary, which she described as "the best job in the business”. “We have begun the work of major reform to make our streets safer and our immigration system fair for all. Now let’s finish the job," she said, after her meeting with Burnham. Jonathan Reynolds, who oversaw the completion of the India-UK free trade agreement last year with Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, resumes the trade brief in a bulked-up Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade. “I look forward to partnering with you once again to build on this momentum and strengthen investment flows, mobility provisions, and the shared vision of our leaders for a modern, resilient trade corridor between our two nations,” said Goyal, with reference to the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) entering into force last week. While former defence secretary John Healey has been elevated to the crucial post of Chancellor of the Exchequer, former energy minister Ed Miliband is the new Foreign Secretary. Yvette Cooper moves from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) to Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and the previous incumbent of that role, Wes Streeting, has been appointed Defence Secretary. Burnham removed several of Starmer's senior ministers from the government including ex-deputy prime minister David Lammy, former business secretary Peter Kyle and Starmer's chief secretary Darren Jones. (With Inputs from PTI)

ASEAN foreign ministers meeting in Manila call for a Hormuz ceasefire as a Second Thomas Shoal clash and stalled code of conduct talks test the bloc's sovereignty principles. New Delhi, July 21: The foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations convened in Manila on Tuesday for three days of talks that will test the bloc's founding commitment to consensus and non-intervention against a backdrop of two simultaneous crises bearing directly on regional sovereignty and economic security: the resurgent war between the United States and Iran, now in its tenth consecutive night of strikes, and a violent altercation between Philippine and Chinese vessels at Second Thomas Shoal that has reopened one of the most contested legal questions in the South China Sea. ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting at the Philippine International Convention Center on July 20, 2026 in Pasay, Metro Manila, Philippines. The ministers' joint statement calling for an immediate halt to fighting in the Middle East and the full and safe reopening of the Strait of Hormuz situates ASEAN's intervention within the framework of customary international law governing straits used for international navigation, a regime codified under Part III of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The Strait of Hormuz, through which a significant share of global oil and gas shipments transit, falls squarely within this regime, and the war's disruption of transit rights there is not merely a humanitarian or economic concern but a challenge to the freedom of navigation principle that underwrites the maritime order ASEAN states depend upon for their own energy imports. The bloc's reliance on Middle East oil and gas, and the price and supply shocks that followed the conflict's outbreak, gave the statement's language on Hormuz an unusually direct economic stake rather than the abstract solidarity that often characterises ASEAN pronouncements on conflicts outside the region. The ministers' broader affirmation of the obligation of states to resolve disputes peacefully and to respect sovereignty and territorial integrity draws on Article 2(3) and Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, principles ASEAN has long invoked as the normative foundation of its own regional order under the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation. The reaffirmation reads, in this context, less as commentary on a war fought thousands of kilometres away and more as an implicit reassertion of the same principles the bloc will need against a nearer and more immediate provocation: the altercation at Second Thomas Shoal, where the Philippine military has accused China's coast guard of injuring a Filipino sailor after personnel aboard a motorboat struck him with a wooden baton and damaged his vessel. China's coast guard has, in turn, blamed Philippine personnel for initiating the confrontation, a pattern of competing factual narratives that has recurred at the shoal for years without resolution through any binding third-party mechanism, notwithstanding the 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling that rejected the legal basis for China's expansive maritime claims under the so-called nine-dash line. That unresolved tension frames Wednesday's scheduled meeting between ASEAN ministers and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, at which the two sides are expected to take stock of negotiations toward a code of conduct for the South China Sea, a nonaggression instrument under discussion for roughly two decades that both parties have said they intend to conclude within the year. The Second Thomas Shoal incident is likely to sharpen, rather than derail, that timeline, underscoring for ASEAN negotiators the practical cost of continuing without a binding framework while placing pressure on Beijing to demonstrate that the code of conduct process retains substance. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who summoned Chinese Ambassador Jing Quan for a meeting Tuesday afternoon without disclosing details, has separately invoked a national energy emergency in March to guard against the fuel and supply shocks flowing from the Iran war, a domestic legal measure that illustrates how the two crises, though geographically distant from one another, are converging on the same set of governmental tools: emergency economic powers on one front, and diplomatic and prospective legal recourse on the other. The presence in Manila of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi for Wednesday's ASEAN Regional Forum, followed by Thursday's East Asia Summit involving eighteen countries, raises the possibility of the highest-level US-China contact since Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met in Beijing in May, a meeting that had addressed the Iran war, trade, and Taiwan. Neither government has confirmed any bilateral meeting on the Manila sidelines, and the absence of a formal channel between Washington and Beijing on the Iran conflict, even as both attend the same multilateral forums as Moscow, points to the limits of ASEAN-centred diplomacy as a venue for resolving disputes whose principal parties lie outside the region. What the Manila talks can offer is not resolution of either crisis but a test of whether ASEAN's procedural architecture, built for consensus among ten to eleven member states with divergent bilateral relationships with Beijing and Washington, can still produce statements with enough legal and normative weight to matter, at a moment when both the law of the sea and the law of armed conflict are being tested well beyond Southeast Asia's shores.

New Delhi, Jul 21 (PTI) The Delhi High Court on Tuesday ordered immediate shifting of activist Sonam Wangchuk, who has been on an indefinite fast since June 28 over alleged examination irregularities, from Safdarjung Hospital here to Medanta Hospital in Gurugram. A bench of Chief Justice D K Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia passed the order on a plea by the activist's wife, Gitanjali Angmo, against a Sunday order of the high court refusing to interfere with his ongoing treatment at the central government hospital. The court asked the director of Medanta Hospital to form a team of doctors with requisite expertise to constantly monitor Wangchuk. It clarified that the doctors shall administer medication according to the accepted medical norms and protocol, "to which husband of the appellant shall abide". Wangchuk ought to be shifted to a hospital of his choice, i.e. Medanta Hospital, which would fulfil his fundamental rights under Articles 19 and 21 of the Constitution. Sonam Wangchuk is shifted to Medanta Hospital after the Delhi High Court ordered his immediate transfer from Safdarjung Hospital for specialised medical care and continuous monitoring. (File Image) It also said Angmo will be permitted to visit Wangchuk as and when she desires. "We are concerned with (Wangchuk's) fundamental rights. Nothing to do with all that is going on," the bench remarked, as it closed the proceedings. During the hearing, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said the government had no objection to Wangchuk being shifted to Medanta Hospital. The senior law officer, however, asserted that the activist should not seek discharge from Medanta Hospital against medical advice. "Medanta is a reputed hospital. The government would have no objection if he is shifted to Medanta," Mehta said. The court interacted with doctors from AIIMS, who are part of the team monitoring Wangchuk at Safdarjung Hospital, as well as the activist's own doctor, and observed that there was a consensus that he needed monitoring. In her appeal, Angmo contended that the single judge's Sunday order illegally confined Wangchuk to Safdarjung Hospital without any arrest and effectively directed that neither the activist nor his wife had decisive authority in determining his medical treatment. In a special Sunday hearing, Justice Mini Pushkarna refused to interfere with Wangchuk's treatment at Safdarjung Hospital, stating that the government's removal of the fasting activist from Jantar Mantar to a government hospital could not be called arbitrary. Angmo had sought an urgent hearing on her petition on Sunday, a day after Delhi Police whisked Wangchuk away from the protest site at Jantar Mantar and forcibly shifted him to Safdarjung Hospital on the 21st day of his hunger strike. (Except headline, the content is sourced from a syndicated feed).

At the Martyrs' Day rally, Mamata Banerjee attacked rebel TMC leaders, alleged BJP workers vandalised the venue, and called for opposition unity in West Bengal. By Pranjal Gupta New Delhi, July 21: West Bengal former Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday once again challenged the rebel leaders of Trinamool Congress, who left her party after an embarrassing defeat at the 2026 Assembly Election this year. She said, "I challenge 'traitors' to join BJP, contest elections: Mamata Banerjee takes dig at rebel TMC faction." Mamata's remarks came after the stage set for Martyrs' Day rally in Kolkata was vandalised. She accused that "BJP goons attacked our stage for Martyrs' Day rally to prevent us from holding programme: Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata". Addressing the annual July 21 Martyrs' Day rally organised by the Kalighat faction of the TMC near Birla Planetarium here, Banerjee said the fight against the BJP was bigger than individual or political egos. Mamata Banerjee challenged rebel TMC leaders to join the BJP and contest elections, accused BJP workers of vandalising her rally stage, and urged INDIA bloc unity. (File Image) "I want everyone to unite under the banner of the INDIA alliance in Bengal to fight the BJP. I don't have any ego. I urge others also to keep aside their differences and fight together," the former West Bengal chief minister said. "I thank martyrs' families for attending our event; they stood by TMC despite 'temptations,' said Banerjee. She also drew the line for the rebel camp of her party, saying, "Traitors won't be allowed to return to TMC". High Court Allows Protection Meanwhile, the Calcutta High Court on Tuesday directed the Kolkata Police to ensure protection of the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC faction for holding its Martyrs' Day rally here, while hearing its allegation of vandalisation of the programme stage. Justice Saugata Bhattacharyya directed the Joint Commissioner (Headquarters) to file a report on July 31 when the matter will be heard again. The court also directed that the stage and other meeting materials must be removed by 9 pm on Tuesday and that the police will provide security and assistance for dismantling the stage and removing the materials. The Mamata Banerjee-led TMC faction moved the High Court on Tuesday, stating that they made an urgent application before Acting Chief Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty at midnight alleging vandalism at their July 21 Martyrs' Day rally venue in front of Birla Planetarium here. (With Inputs from PTI)

Parliament stalled for a second day as the Opposition sought accountability for Monday's lathi charge on protesting students in Delhi. The episode tests settled doctrine, unlawful assembly, prior warning, proportionate force, that courts have long used to constrain police action against dissent. New Delhi, July 21: Parliament's Monsoon Session ran aground for a second consecutive day on Tuesday, as both Houses were adjourned within minutes of convening over the police crackdown on the Cockroach Janta Party-led demonstration in the national capital a day earlier. In the Rajya Sabha, Leader of the House Mallikarjun Kharge had barely begun speaking on the lathi charge and tear gas shelling used against protesting students before the House broke into a din and was adjourned till noon. Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, subsequently led a delegation of Opposition MPs to Speaker Om Birla seeking a discussion on what he described as the "brutality unleashed on students" during Monday's protest march, telling reporters that the Speaker had said he required government permission before allowing such a discussion. The Opposition's demand for accountability, however, is not merely a political grievance, it revives a legal question that Indian courts have grappled with for decades and never fully resolved: under what conditions, if any, may the police lawfully use lathi charge against a crowd of protesters, and what happens when that force is used against students exercising a constitutional right to assemble and dissent. The immediate provocation for Monday's crackdown was a demonstration by the Cockroach Janta Party, a protest movement built around grievances over examination mismanagement, marching towards Parliament. Security forces responded with tear gas and lathi charge, and reports of the day's toll, dozens of protesters injured, several in critical condition, have hardened the Opposition's insistence that the Union Home Minister appear before the House to answer for the police action. Congress MP Manickam Tagore said as much on the floor, noting that the Opposition had sought to raise the lathi charge during Question Hour and been denied the opportunity. The government's response so far has been procedural rather than substantive: Kiren Rijiju, briefing the media after the NDA's parliamentary party meeting, focused on the underlying examination controversy, the conduct of a re-examination and steps to prevent future paper leaks, without directly addressing the conduct of the police on the ground. That the legality of the police action itself has become the site of parliamentary contestation is significant, because Indian law's treatment of lathi charge has always been considerably more constrained than its routine deployment would suggest. The term "lathi charge" itself appears nowhere in the Code of Criminal Procedure or the Indian Penal Code. What the statutory scheme actually provides for is the dispersal of an "unlawful assembly," a term defined under Section 141 of the IPC to mean a gathering of five or more persons whose common object falls within a specific set of categories, overawing the government by criminal force, resisting the execution of law, committing mischief or criminal trespass, or compelling a person to act against their legal rights. A crowd of protesting students, marching towards Parliament to press grievances about examination integrity, does not self-evidently fall within any of these categories merely by virtue of assembling in large numbers or marching towards a sensitive location. The Delhi Police's claim, reported in coverage of Monday's events, that protesters engaged in "large-scale violence" and vandalised property would need to be established as a matter of fact before the assembly could be lawfully classified as unlawful in the first place, a threshold determination that itself becomes contested territory whenever the police and the protesters offer irreconcilable accounts of who initiated the violence. Even where an assembly is properly classified as unlawful, the procedural safeguards built into the Code are exacting. Section 129 of the CrPC permits dispersal only on the order of an executive magistrate or the officer in charge of a police station, and Section 144 permits a District Magistrate to direct such action only where it will prevent obstruction, injury, danger to life, or a breach of public tranquillity, again presupposing a prior determination that the assembly poses such a threat. Courts have repeatedly read a three-part test into these provisions: there must first be an unlawful assembly with the object of committing violence, that assembly must then be ordered to disperse, and only upon its refusal to disperse despite such orders may force be used. The Punjab and Haryana High Court articulated this sequence in Karam Singh v. Hardayal Singh, and the Delhi High Court in Police Commissioner v. Yash Pal Sharma went further, holding that even where the police are entitled to use force, only "reasonable force" is authorised, and that this constraint flows directly from the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a) and (b) of the Constitution. Where security forces move directly to lathi charge and tear gas without a documented sequence of warning and refusal to disperse, a sequence that live reporting of Monday's protest does not appear to establish, the action sits uneasily against this settled doctrinal architecture, whatever operational justification the police may later offer. The Supreme Court's most considered treatment of the issue remains its judgment in Anita Thakur v. Government of Jammu and Kashmir, a case in which the petitioners were themselves found to have protested violently, pelting stones at the police, and were nonetheless awarded compensation because the police had continued to use force well after the mob had been brought under control. The Court's reasoning in that case is instructive precisely because it did not turn on whether the protesters had been peaceful, they had not been, but on the principle that force, once justified, remains bound by a continuing requirement of proportionality that does not lapse merely because the initial resort to force was lawful. The Court was explicit that excessive force, even against a genuinely violent assembly, constitutes a violation of human rights and dignity, and it attributed recurring police excesses in India to inadequate training in managing situations where authority is challenged. This reasoning maps uncomfortably well onto the pattern Opposition MPs are now describing in Parliament: not merely a contested initial classification of the assembly as unlawful, but reports of injuries, including, per some accounts of Monday's events, a child struck during the operation, that would be difficult to justify under any theory of proportionate, minimum necessary force, the standard that Kerala's own Police Manual codifies by directing that lathi blows avoid the head and other vulnerable areas of the body. International standards echo this domestic doctrine rather than displacing it. The UN's 1990 Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials direct that force against unlawful but non-violent assemblies be avoided altogether, or restricted to the minimum extent necessary where avoidance is not practicable, a standard that becomes directly relevant if the protesters' claim of a peaceful march to Parliament, rather than the police's claim of unruly violence, is borne out by subsequent investigation. None of this settles, as a matter of concluded law, whether Monday's specific police action was lawful, that determination depends on facts that remain contested between the Delhi Police and the protest organisers, and on findings no court has yet made. But it does explain why the Opposition's demand for a parliamentary discussion, and its insistence that the Home Minister answer for the operation, is not simply a political manoeuvre grafted onto an unrelated examination controversy. The legal framework governing lathi charge in India has always been narrower and more conditional than its practice suggests, built around sequential requirements of unlawful assembly, prior warning, and proportionate response that courts have found wanting in case after case, from the 2019 CAA protests to the 2021 Karnal lathi charge on farmers that preceded a fatality. Whether the Monsoon Session's repeated adjournments produce an actual accounting of Monday's events, through a Home Ministry statement on the floor of the House, an independent inquiry, or eventual judicial scrutiny, will determine whether this episode is treated as another entry in that unbroken pattern, or as the occasion on which Parliament finally extracted a specific, fact-based justification for the force used against a specific set of protesters.

NEET-UG 2026 Paper Leak: PM Modi said an action was taken immediately after the NEET-UG Paper Leak to ensure that no one plays with the students' future. By Pranjal Gupta New Delhi, July 21: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday stated that the Centre took strict actions in the NEET-UG 2026 paper leak incident. The PM added that the action will ensure that no one plays with the future of the youth in this country again. This comes a day after thousands of students gathered at Jantar Mantar in Delhi, and participated in the Chalo Sansad march, called by the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP), demanding resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. PM Modi also called for the support from all the states in the national interest to tackle the incidents of paper leak, in the NDA MPs meeting in the national capital. Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said the prime minister told MPs that the government acted immediately after reports of the paper leak surfaced, and 13 people were arrested and sent to jail. "At the same time, the prime minister said, to ensure that students' future was not affected, the NEET re-examination was given priority, conducted successfully, and the results were declared without delay," Rijiju said after the hour-long meeting. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the Centre acted swiftly after the NEET-UG 2026 paper leak and pledged tougher measures against offenders. (File Image) He said the prime minister also said that strict steps have been taken to prevent such paper leaks in the future. Modi told the NDA MPs that those found involved in the paper leak racket have been arrested and jailed. The prime minister also told the ruling alliance's MPs that those guilty in paper leaks should be given the strictest possible punishment, with the support of the country's top lawyers, so that those involved in such a grave offence face exemplary action and such incidents do not recur. "The prime minister said strong action has been taken to ensure that no one plays with future of youth. The prime minister also said that to ensure that no future paper leaks take place, all state governments and the Centre must join hands irrespective of party. This is not a matter of party politics but matter of national interests," Rijiju said. (With Inputs from PTI)

The Slate Bureau New Delhi, July 21: India on Tuesday summoned the Russian charge d'affaires over the killings of four Indian seafarers aboard a Guinea Bissau-flagged merchant vessel off the coast of Ukraine. Sources said the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) told the Russian diplomat that the attack on the merchant vessel, which killed Indians, was unacceptable. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Russia attacked the civilian vessel navigating Ukraine's maritime corridor on Sunday and its crew included citizens of Syria and India. It is the first instance of death of Indian seafarers in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The Guinea-Bissau-flagged ship was hit by Russian cruise missiles, the Ukrainian Air Force said. India summons the Russian charge d'affaires in New Delhi after four Indian seafarers were killed in a missile strike on the merchant vessel MV Golden Leo off Ukraine's coast. (Representative Image) The vessel -- MV Golden Leo -- had 17 crew members, including five Indian nationals, according to the MEA. India condemned the attack and reiterated that targeting commercial shipping and endangering innocent civilian crew members is "deplorable and should be avoided". "On the evening of July 19, the vessel MV Golden Leo was attacked while departing the port of Odesa. At the time of the incident, there were 17 crew members on board, including five Indian nationals," the MEA said on Monday night. "As per information available, four Indian nationals have tragically lost their lives, while one is hospitalised in a critical condition," it had said. The MEA said the Indian mission in Ukraine is closely monitoring the situation and is making every effort to extend all possible assistance to those affected. "We extend our deepest condolences to the families of the deceased Indian nationals and wish the injured Indian national a speedy and full recovery," it said in a statement. Without directly naming Russia, the MEA had said: "India condemns such attacks and reiterates that targeting commercial shipping and endangering innocent civilian crew members, or otherwise impeding freedom of navigation and commerce, is deplorable and should be avoided." (With Inputs from PTI)