Article 94 of the Constitution

Speaker directs Lok Sabha Secretariat to correct notice seeking his removal

Context: Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla asked the Lok Sabha Secretariat to correct shortcomings in the Opposition’s notice seeking his removal from his Constitutional office, and proceed with the corrected notice.

• The revised notice will be listed after the commencement of the second phase of the Budget Session. The second phase will be held between March 9 and April 2.
• “Shortcomings were found in the notice submitted by Opposition MPs to remove Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla,” a source in the Lok Sabha Secretariat said. “The notice referred four times to events of February 2025, on the basis of which it could have been rejected under the rules,” they added.
• Mr. Birla directed the Secretariat to have the defective notice corrected and then proceed with it. It will be taken up in the second part of the Budget Session. The first part of the session, which got under way on January 28, will go into recess on February 13.
• While the Opposition’s move is aimed at making a political point on the way the House has functioned, there is considerable interest in the process. Article 94 of the Constitution deals with the provisions regarding the removal of the Speaker.

On Article 94C

• The Opposition notice is under Article 94C, which states that the Speaker “may be removed from his office by a resolution of the House of the People by a majority of the then members of the House”.

• This is interpreted as the effective majority of the House, that is, more than half of the strength of the House minus the vacancies.
• “The Constitution doesn’t use the word effective majority but it’s meant to convey the effective strength of the House,” former Lok Sabha Secretary-General P.D.T. Achary told The Hindu.
• A minimum of 14 days’ notice has to be given before a resolution seeking the removal of the Speaker can be taken up by the House, and under Article 96, the Speaker can respond to the notice for removal.

Denotified tribes

No plans for distinct legal recognition for denotified tribes: Centre

Context: The Union government is not considering any proposal for distinct legal and constitutional recognition of a category on a par with the SC/ST/OBC classifications for the denotified, nomadic, and semi-nomadic tribes in India, the Tribal Affairs Ministry told the Rajya Sabha.

• This comes even as these communities (formerly classified as “criminal” under the colonial-era Criminal Tribes Act, 1871) are organising to push for a “separate column” in the upcoming 2027 Census forms for themselves, in the hopes of building it up into a movement for a fresh classification for communities that were once labelled “criminal”.
• In a meeting held on January 30, officials of the Social Justice Ministry assured leaders of the community that they will be counted in the Census.
• Replying to a question from MPs Manoj Kumar Jha (Rashtriya Janata Dal) and Sandosh Kumar P. (CPI) about the issue and the government’s plans for such a new classification, the Ministry said it had consulted with the Social Justice Ministry, which said, “There is no such proposal or plan under consideration.”

16th Finance Commission

• No reduction in States’ share in tax devolution, FM asserts in Lok Sabha

Context: Minister counters Opposition, says that resources that will be transferred to the States is estimated at ₹25.44 lakh crore; Constitution gives Centre authority to collect cesses and surcharges, she adds

• Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday dismissed allegations by Opposition members that the Centre was not transferring 41% of the divisible pool of taxes to the States, as mandated by the 15th Finance Commission, asserting that the required transfers were made every year.

• The 15th Finance Commission had recommended that for 2020 to 2026, the Centre should transfer 41% of its divisible pool of taxes to the States, which the Centre had accepted.

• “Often, we are accused of not transferring the 41% that the 15th Finance Commission has recommended,” Ms. Sitharaman said in the Lok Sabha, during her reply to the debate on the Union Budget.
• “I assure you, it is 41% that we have transferred to the States. We have not reduced any State’s devolvable tax,” she said.
• The Union Finance Minister said the total resources to be transferred to the States, including the devolution and under Centrally sponsored schemes, was estimated at ₹25.44 lakh crore for 2026-27.
• “This entails an increase of ₹2.7 lakh crore over 2025-26 and is ₹3.78 lakh crore more than the actuals of 2024-25,” she said.

• “The 16th Finance Commission analysed the States’ share transferred by the Centre to the States from 2018-19 to 2022-23 and concluded that in each of these years, the devolution made by the Centre exactly matches the recommendation of the 15th Finance Commission,” Ms. Sitharaman added.

Devolution pool

• She said that it was the Comptroller and Auditor-General (CAG) that audited the Centre’s finances and decided what the net proceeds of the Centre were, after subtracting from the gross tax receipts the cesses and surcharges collected by the Centre.
• “Out of that, have we transferred 41% of the divisible pool, that is what should be looked at, not the gross tax revenue,” the senior BJP leader said. “The Constitution gives the Centre the authority to collect cesses and surcharges.”
• The Finance Minister sought to counter charges levelled by Opposition members that the Centre was shrinking the divisible pool of taxes by focusing more on cesses and surcharges, which the States cannot gain from.
• “The cesses and surcharges are collected for a particular purpose such as health cess, education cess, road cess,” Ms. Sitharaman said. “These do not benefit the Centre, they go to the States in terms of building schools, hospitals, roads in the States.”

Medium-term Budget

• The Finance Minister explained why the Union Budget included several announcements that were aimed at the medium and long term.
• “This Budget has been prepared as the first Budget in the second quarter of the 21st century,” she said.
• “So, this Budget covers a lot of issues from 2026 to 2050. We are also starting the new five-year cycle of the new Finance Commission and therefore the estimates are largely on the recommendations of the 16th Finance Commission,” she said.
• “By doing these [longer term announcements], which are leading us towards the medium and long term, we are also continuing our push in building infrastructure,” she said.
• “It is not just roads and National highways, we are also looking at waterways so that the cost of logistics can come down and States that are in the hinterland will have the advantage of moving goods faster at a lesser cost,” she said.

‘Bacteria can talk to each other and are multilingual’

Context: Bacteria can get into us, make us sick, and they can even kill us – but they give us our life too. Bonnie Bassler, renowned molecular biologist and professor of Princeton University, best known for her work in bacterial communication, described bacteria as “magical microbes” holding great promise in the fields of medicine, ​environment and agriculture.

• “Bacteria can talk to each other and are multilingual, have so much to teach us about how collective behaviours evolved on earth,” said Prof. Bassler said at a lecture on Wednesday titled ‘A chemical language that enables communication between diverse organisms’. “It’s the bacteria in your gut that digests food and gives you those [nutrients].”
• This phenomenon of bacterial communication, or “quorum sensing” could indeed be a game changer for medicine, by opening new avenues to develop anti-quorum sensing therapies instead of antibiotics. Several are “notorious bacterial characters,” she said, specifically citing the deadly cholera-causing Vibrio cholerae bacterium, and perspectives on treating the disease.
• This bacterium is “the terrible cousin” to an obscure but brilliantly bioluminescent bacterium, the Vibrio fischeri that makes blue light and lives in a wonderful one-to-one symbiosis with a squid, she explained.
• The large squids live in knee-deep water along the coast of Hawaii. And as it is a nocturnal animal, when scavenging under a bright moonlit sky, it needs a way to protect itself from predators that track the squid through their moving shadow. And this is where Vibrio fischeri glows under the squid, making it shadowless. We know that bacteria very early in life colonise us and they teach our immune system over time to keep harmful bacteria out and to let good bacteria in, she said, adding “We don’t know how they do it, but we know that the microbes are in charge of educating our immune system.”
• “But there are no ​applications unless people, scientists make discoveries and work on mechanisms and work at the very basic part of how life on Earth manages to do what it does,” Prof. Bassler said.
• Prof. Bassler said she was delighted that she was delivering her lecture on the International Day for Women and Girls in Science.

Tamil Brahmi inscriptions discovered in Egypt

• Tamil Brahmi inscriptions discovered in Egypt shed light on ancient trade links

Context: A path-breaking finding has shed new light on trade links between ancient Tamilagam, other parts of India, and the Roman Empire. Two researchers have identified close to 30 inscriptions in Tamil Brahmi, Prakrit and Sanskrit at tombs in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. These inscriptions are said to belong to the period between the 1st and 3rd Centuries CE

• The inscriptions were identified during a study in 2024 and 2025 by Charlotte Schmid, Professor at the French School of Asian Studies (EFEO) in Paris, and Ingo Strauch, Professor at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. The team documented them across six tombs in the Theban Necropolis. They followed in the footsteps of French scholar Jules Baillet, who surveyed the Valley of the Kings in 1926 and published more than 2,000 Greek graffiti marks.
• Presenting their findings in a paper titled “From the Valley of the Kings to India: Indian Inscriptions in Egypt” at the ongoing International Conference on Tamil Epigraphy, the scholars said the individuals who made these inscriptions came from the north-western, western and southern regions of the Indian subcontinent, with those from the latter forming the majority.
• Visitors had left brief inscriptions and graffiti by carving their names on the walls of corridors and rooms, marking their presence in the tombs, the researchers said, adding that these sets of inscriptions appear inside the tombs alongside larger bodies of graffiti in other languages, primarily Greek.
• Within such settings, the Indian visitors seem to have followed an existing practice of leaving their names inside the tombs, they said.
• The name Cikai Korran (pronounced ‘Kotran’) appears repeatedly. It was inscribed eight times across five tombs. The name was found near entrances and high on interior walls among other graffiti marks. In one tomb, it appears at a height of about four metres at the entrance, Mr. Strauch said. “The name Cikai Korran is revealing, as its first element may be connected to the Sanskrit śikhā, meaning tuft or crown. While this is not a common personal name, the second element, korran, is more distinctly Tamil. It carries strong warlike associations, as it derives from a root, korram, meaning victory and slaying. This root is echoed in the Chera warrior goddess Korravai and the term korravan, meaning king,” Ms. Schmid said.
• The name korran also came up in other finds in Egypt. It appears in Korrapumān, written on a sherd discovered at Berenike, a Red Sea port city, in 1995. The name also occurs in the Sangam corpus, where the Chera king Pittānkorran, praised in the Purananooru, is sometimes directly addressed as korran, the scholars pointed out, adding that these parallel attestations in inscriptions from Pugalur, the ancient Chera capital, dated back to the 2nd or 3rd century C.E.
• Two other individuals also left their names in Tamil Brahmi in these tombs. One inscription reads Kopān varata kantan (Kopān came and saw). The name Kopān has also been found at Ammankovilpatti in Tamil Nadu. Other Tamil names identified include Cātan and Kiran. “When I first identified these inscriptions, I could not believe it. Because so many people have visited these tombs over the years and nobody has identified anything Indian. I asked Charlotte whether I was mistaken,” Mr. Strauch said.
• K. Rajan, academic and research adviser, Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology, said the findings are significant as they shed light on the trade links between ancient Tamilagam from the Malabar Coast and the Roman Empire. He said that earlier work in Egypt had focused on the Red Sea port city of Berenike, where excavations were conducted for several years and attention has now moved to the Nile river valley.

Right to Information (RTI)

Human rights body could function as RTI panel, moots SC

Context: The Supreme Court mooted whether the Chairpersons of Human Rights Commissions of States with low traffic of Right to Information (RTI) appeals could be given additional responsibility of acting as Chief Information Commissioners (CICs) till there is an increase in workload.

• “Suppose it is just 100 appeals pending in a State Information Commission… Any institution you create is a burden on the public exchequer. Taxpayers’ money must be spent on development activities or something… Why not in such States, as an ad-hoc mechanism, the power of the Information Commissions be given to the State Human Rights Commissions?” Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, heading a three-judge Bench, asked advocates Prashant Bhushan and Rahul Gupta for the petitioners.
• The court was hearing a petition filed by petitioners Anjali Bhardwaj, Commodore Lokesh Batra (retired) and Amrita Johri, seeking timely and transparent appointments to the Information Commissions under the RTI Act.
• The Chief Justice said the “ad-hoc mechanism” could continue till the number of RTI appeals increases in “due course of time”.

Article 309 of the Constitution

MNS officers to be eligible for re-employment benefits

Context: The Union Government has notified the Ex-servicemen (Re-employment in Central Civil Services & Posts) Amendment Rules, 2026 under Article 309 of the Constitution, formally expanding the definition of ex-servicemen to include personnel of the Military Nursing Service (MNS).

• The amendment revises Rule 2(c)(i) to explicitly cover those who have served in any rank — combatant or non-combatant — in the Regular Army, Navy or Air Force, as well as the Military Nursing Service of the Indian Union. The change removes a long-standing ambiguity over the eligibility of MNS officers, who are commissioned officers, for re-employment benefits available to other veterans.
• MNS personnel are now entitled to the same re-employment provisions as other ex-servicemen.

Article 309 of the Constitution of India

👉 Provision relating to Recruitment and Conditions of Service of persons serving the Union or a State

Meaning and Scope

Article 309 provides that:

• Parliament (for Union services) and State Legislatures (for State services) have the power to make laws regulating the recruitment and conditions of service of persons appointed to public services and posts.
• Until such laws are enacted,
  • The President (for Union services) and
  • The Governor (for State services)
    may make rules regulating these matters.

Key Features

• Covers service conditions such as recruitment, pay, promotion, transfer, disciplinary action, and retirement of government employees.
• Rules made by the President or Governor under Article 309 have statutory force.
• If Parliament or a State Legislature later enacts a law, that law will prevail over the rules.

In Brief

Article 309 forms the constitutional basis of civil services administration in India, ensuring a legal framework for governing the service conditions of government employees.

Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2026

Context: Amended IT Rules call for disclosure of AI-generated synthetic media, and warn platforms of loss of safe harbour for non-compliance; changes notified by the govt. to take effect on February 20.

• The Union government has notified amendments to the Information Technology Act, 2021, requiring photorealistic AI-generated content to be prominently labelled. The changes, which will come into force on February 20, also significantly shorten timelines for takedown of illegal material.
• Under the new rules, social media platforms will now have between two and three hours to remove certain categories of unlawful content, a sharp reduction from the earlier 24-36 hours.
• Content deemed illegal by a court or an “appropriate government” will have to be taken down within three hours, while sensitive content, featuring non-consensual nudity and deepfakes, must be removed within two hours.

• The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2026, defines synthetically generated content as “audio, visual or audio-visual information which is artificially or algorithmically created, generated, modified or altered using a computer resource, in a manner that such information appears to be real, authentic or true and depicts or portrays any individual or event in a manner that is, or is likely to be perceived as indistinguishable from a natural person or a real-world event.” The final definition is narrower than the one released in a draft version of these rules in October 2025. As with the existing IT Rules, failure to comply with the rules could result in loss of safe harbour, the legal principle that sites allowing users to post content cannot automatically be held liable in the same way as a publisher of a book or a periodical can.

• The rules include a carve-out for touch-ups that smartphone cameras often perform automatically.
• Platforms will be required to seek disclosures from users in case their content is AI-generated. If such a disclosure is not received for synthetically generated content, the official said, firms would either have to proactively label the content or take it down in cases of non-consensual deepfakes.
• The amended rules mandate that AI-generated imagery be labelled “prominently”. While the draft version specified that 10% of any imagery would have to be covered with such a disclosure, platforms have been given some more leeway, the official said, since they pushed back on such a specific mandate.

Safe harbour

• “Provided that where [a social media] intermediary becomes aware, or it is otherwise established, that the intermediary knowingly permitted, promoted, or failed to act upon such synthetically generated information in contravention of these rules, such intermediary shall be deemed to have failed to exercise due diligence under this sub-rule,” the rules say, hinting at a loss of safe harbour.
• The rules also partially roll back an amendment notified in October 2025, which had limited each State to designating a single officer authorised to issue takedown orders. States may now notify more than one such officer— an “administrative” measure to address the need of States with large populations, the official said.