Constitutional provisions, institutions and processes the news keeps testing. 579 concepts, each with its definition, key details and a timeline of every news story that touched it.
All India Services are a special kind of civil service that is common to the Centre and the states. Officers are recruited by the Union through the UPSC...
Departmentally Related Standing Committees, or DRSCs, are small permanent groups of MPs that closely examine the work of government ministries. There are 24...
Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution gives every citizen of India the right to freedom of speech and expression. This means you can share your views and...
President's Rule is the system under which the Union government takes over the running of a state when the state government cannot work according to the...
The 103rd Constitutional Amendment Act, 2019 allows up to 10% reservation in government jobs and in admissions to educational institutions for Economically...
Articles 330 and 332 of the Constitution reserve seats for Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) in the Lok Sabha and in the Legislative...
Delimitation means fixing the number of seats each state gets in the Lok Sabha and in its Legislative Assembly, and drawing the boundaries of each...
Article 19(1)(b) of the Constitution gives every citizen of India the right 'to assemble peaceably and without arms'. In simple words, citizens can come...
The National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) is a constitutional body set up under Article 338 of the Constitution. Its job is to watch over the...
The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) is a rocket made by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Its main job is to carry satellites weighing up...
The Central Staffing Scheme (CSS) is the system the Union government uses to fill senior posts in its ministries and departments, such as Deputy Secretary...
Pakistan's Constitution of 1973 has a special part, Part X (Emergency Provisions), that lets the federal government take extra powers during a crisis. It...
A Suspension of Operations (SoO) agreement is a deal between the government and an armed rebel group to stop fighting each other for a while. The security...
Article 226 of the Constitution gives every High Court the power to issue orders and directions, called writs, to any person or authority, including any...
The right to privacy means every person has the right to be left alone and to control information about themselves: their body, their home, their personal...
The census is the official count of every person living in India, done once every ten years. It also collects details about each person and each house: age...
Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) are the most disadvantaged communities among India's Scheduled Tribes. They usually live in remote places, use...
A Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS) is a government programme that the Centre designs and part-funds, but the states carry out and also part-fund. For...
The 'triple test' is a set of three conditions laid down by the Supreme Court. A State must meet all three before it can reserve seats for Other Backward...
The Prohibition of Child Marriage Act (PCMA), 2006 is the main Indian law that sets the minimum legal age for marriage and punishes those who arrange...
A zero-rated supply is a sale on which the final GST burden is zero, and the seller can still recover all the GST it paid on its inputs. Under India's GST...
A mandamus is a court order telling a government body or official to do a duty that the law requires of them. A continuing mandamus is a special form of it....
Prakash Singh v. Union of India is a landmark Supreme Court judgment of 22 September 2006 that ordered the Centre and the states to reform how the police...
A Special Leave Petition (SLP) is a request to the Supreme Court asking for permission ('leave') to appeal against a judgment of any court or tribunal in...
Administrative data is information that the government collects while running its normal work, not through a special survey. When you file a tax return...
A deemed forest is land that looks and works like a forest, but has never been officially declared as a forest in government records. In India, such land is...
GST registration is the process by which a business gets itself recorded with the tax department and receives a unique number called the GSTIN (Goods and...
The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) is India's biggest programme for the care of young children and mothers. It works through small village and...
The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, usually called the JJ Act, is India's main law for children below 18 years of age who...
Bal Vivah Mukt Bharat Abhiyan (meaning 'Child Marriage Free India Campaign') is a national campaign of the Government of India to end child marriage. It was...
Mission Shakti is the Government of India's umbrella scheme for the safety, security and empowerment of women. It is run by the Ministry of Women and Child...
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, or UNCRC, is an international treaty that lists the rights every child in the world should have....
The Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010, or FCRA, is the law that controls how people and organisations in India can receive money or gifts from...
Central Armed Police Forces, or CAPFs, are armed police forces that belong to the Union government and work under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). They...
The Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2023 is a law that changed many existing central laws in one go. It removed jail terms for small, technical...
A Constitution Bench is a bench of at least five judges of the Supreme Court. Article 145(3) of the Constitution says that any case involving a substantial...
A deepfake is a fake photo, video or audio clip made with artificial intelligence (AI) that looks or sounds real. It can show a real person saying or doing...
The India AI Governance Guidelines are the Government of India's official framework for how artificial intelligence (AI) should be built, used and kept safe...
Parliamentary privileges are special rights and protections given to Parliament, the state legislatures, their members and their committees. They exist so...
Sometimes a court gives a judgment and the government does not agree with it. The legislature (Parliament or a state assembly) then passes a new law to...
Article 143 of the Constitution lets the President of India ask the Supreme Court for its opinion on an important question of law or fact. This is called...
The Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) is an agreement between India and Pakistan on how to share the water of the Indus river system. It divides six rivers into two...
Recusal means a judge stepping away from hearing a case because there is a reason that may make the judge look biased, or actually be biased. The idea rests...
The 74th Constitutional Amendment Act, 1992 gave constitutional status to urban local bodies, which are the elected local governments of towns and cities....
The Finance Commission is a body set up by the President of India every five years under Article 280 of the Constitution. Its main job is to recommend how...
The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) is India's central recruiting agency for the top government jobs. It is a constitutional body set up under...
The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) is the 'rulebook for treaties'. It is an international agreement that sets out how countries make...
A curative petition is the very last legal chance to ask the Supreme Court to correct its own final judgment. It can be filed only after the Court has...
India and China share several big rivers that start in Tibet and flow down into India. The most important are the Brahmaputra (Yarlung Tsangpo) and the...
The Siang Upper Multipurpose Project, or SUMP, is a very large dam proposed on the Siang river in Upper Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh. The Siang is...
A writ of quo warranto is a court order that asks a person holding a public office: 'By what authority are you holding this office?' The words are Latin and...
The Great Nicobar Island Development Project is a large infrastructure plan for Great Nicobar, the southernmost island of India in the Bay of Bengal. It...
The basic structure doctrine says that Parliament can amend any part of the Constitution, but it cannot destroy or damage its basic structure, the core...
The Integrated Transport and Logistics Authority (ITLA) is a central government body that plans India's transport system as one connected network. Instead...
The Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976 is the largest single set of changes ever made to India's Constitution. It was passed during the...
A Gram Panchayat Development Plan (GPDP) is a yearly plan that each village panchayat makes to decide what development work it will do and how it will pay...
A rare disease is a health condition that affects only a very small number of people. Many rare diseases are genetic, start in childhood, last for life and...
The Preamble is the short opening passage of the Constitution of India. In one paragraph, it tells us three things: where the Constitution gets its power...
Section 9(5) of the Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST) Act, 2017 is a special rule for some services sold through online platforms. Normally, the person...
The Self Reliant India Fund, or SRI Fund, is a government scheme that gives growing small businesses equity: money in exchange for a share of ownership...