CLAT passages of October 2026

India's Constitution does not leave law-making to a single authority. Its Seventh Schedule divides subjects into three lists: the Union List, on which Parliament legislates; the State List, on which State legislatures legislate; and the Concurrent List, on which both may make laws. This division is the legal skeleton of Indian federalism. It also means that reforming the law is rarely the job of one body alone.

The 23rd Law Commission of India chose this theme for a national conference held at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi, on 22 October 2026. It brought together State Law Commissions and similar bodies, jurists, former judges, scholars, policymakers, lawyers and teachers of law. The Vice-President of India was to inaugurate it, in the presence of the Union Minister of State for Law and Justice.

The idea behind 'co-operative federalism' is that the Union and the States, though each has its own field, can work together rather than in isolation. The conference set out to strengthen coordination among the bodies that review and propose changes to laws, while respecting the autonomy of the States, so that reform answers both national and regional needs.

Two sessions gave the discussion its shape. The first asked why laws need continuous review — because society, the economy and technology keep changing — and how such reform should be done: through accessible and justice-oriented changes, periodic review of statutes, and research. The second looked at law reform within a system of divided legislative powers, and at ways for national and State institutions to consult each other more, while keeping State laws responsive to local needs.

The underlying point is practical. A reform proposed at the national level may touch a subject on which only a State can legislate; a State reform may sit uneasily beside a central law on a concurrent subject. Regular consultation between the Law Commission of India and its State counterparts is one way to find such problems early, before they reach the courts.

Article 41 of the Constitution is a Directive Principle: it asks the State, within the limits of its economic capacity, to make provision for public assistance in cases of unemployment, old age, sickness and disablement. The National Social Assistance Programme, launched on 15 August 1995, is one of the ways the Union has acted on it. It pays pensions to poor households for old age, widowhood and disability, and a one-time benefit when a household loses its main earner. The Union meets the central share in full; States and Union Territories add their own top-ups.

On 14 October 2026 the Union Cabinet approved continuing the programme for five years, from 2026-27 to 2030-31, with an outlay of ₹53,428 crore, and renamed it the Pradhan Mantri Samajik Sahayata Yojana. Three of its parts continue as before. The fourth, the disability pension, has been changed.

The change is about who counts as disabled for the pension. Since 2009 the pension had required severe disability — 80 per cent or more, a figure drawn from the National Trust Act, 1999 — and a minimum age of 18. The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, passed to give effect to a United Nations convention, uses a different measure: it defines 'benchmark disability' as a specified disability of at least 40 per cent, certified by the prescribed authority. That 40 per cent measure already governs disability entitlements in higher education, government jobs, and land and housing.

The pension now uses the 2016 Act's benchmark of 40 per cent. The age limit has been removed, so a child can qualify from birth. Central assistance rises from ₹300 to ₹375 a month up to age 79, and from ₹500 to ₹625 a month from age 80. The number of beneficiaries of this pension rises from 8.33 lakh to 27.48 lakh.

Some conditions have not changed. A certificate of disability is still needed, the household must still be below the poverty line, and applications still go through the State welfare department. Revised guidelines are to be issued and implemented within three months of the decision.

Consumer law in India has had to keep pace with the way people now shop. The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 allowed the Union Government to frame rules for online marketplaces, and the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020 were made under it. In September 2026 the Department of Consumer Affairs amended those rules. The amended rules take effect on 1 January 2027.

The Government has presented the change as a balance. On one side is the shopper, who often cannot inspect goods, may not know who the seller is, and depends on the platform to show honest information. On the other side is the business, which the Government says should not carry needless regulatory burden. The scale of the problem explains the attention: of about 17.7 lakh grievances received by the National Consumer Helpline in 2025, roughly 29 per cent concerned e-commerce.

Several of the new duties are about honesty in what a buyer sees. A platform may not arrange search results in a way that misleads users or makes the results less relevant to what was searched. Paid placements, called sponsored listings, must be clearly marked as such. When a platform announces a discount, it must show both the reduced price and the earlier price, and the earlier price is defined as the lowest price at which the item was offered in the 30 days before the announcement. This stops a seller from inflating a price for a day and then advertising a large 'cut'.

Other duties concern the buyer's information and money. A marketplace must not use a consumer's information for specified purposes unless the consumer has given express and affirmative consent, and it may not collect bundled fees for services unrelated to the platform, except for loyalty or membership programmes. Marketplaces must show details such as best-before dates, return and refund terms, warranty and delivery information, and imported goods must carry the importer's details and the country of origin.

Finally, the rules address grievances and manipulative design. Every e-commerce entity must join the convergence process of the National Consumer Helpline, and must give a complainant a copy of the complaint as its grievance officer recorded it. Platforms must follow the 2023 guidelines on dark patterns — interface tricks that push users into choices they did not intend — carry out a self-audit every year and display a certificate of compliance prominently.

Discussions of judicial independence usually focus on appointments, transfers and freedom from outside pressure. The Supreme Court of India has now drawn attention to a less discussed condition of good judging: the health of judges themselves. On 10 October 2026, World Mental Health Day, the Chief Justice of India constituted a Standing Committee on Judicial Well-being under the Supreme Court.

The committee is chaired by a judge of the Supreme Court and has four other members: a psychiatrist who is a former dean of PGIMER Chandigarh, a psychologist, an Advocate-on-Record of the Supreme Court, and a registrar of the Court's Centre for Research and Planning. The mix of law and mental health in its membership signals that the problem is treated as both institutional and personal.

The Court's reasoning starts from the work itself. Judicial officers deal with heavy caseloads, long hours, complex decisions, administrative duties and cases that are emotionally hard. Research by the Court's Centre for Research and Planning on judges in the district judiciary examined occupational stress, workload, exhaustion, staff shortages, infrastructure, transfers, work-life balance and the support available.

The committee is meant to be continuing rather than a one-off. Its tasks include identifying where institutional help is needed, coordinating welfare measures, developing guidance and reviewing these measures from time to time. The Court's view is that the well-being of judges is not only a matter of personal welfare but is closely linked to the efficiency, quality and sustainability of justice.

The step also follows an international trend. A declaration on judicial well-being agreed at Nauru on 25 July 2024 asked for measures that are systemic and based on evidence to protect the physical and mental health of judges, and in March 2025 the United Nations General Assembly declared 25 July the International Day for Judicial Well-being. India's committee is therefore part of a wider recognition that a court system is only as sound as the people who staff it.

Every legal system must decide how to treat a child who breaks the law, and how to protect a child who needs care. In India both questions are answered by one statute, the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015. Its title reflects the two groups it serves: children in conflict with law, and children in need of care and protection.

In October 2026 the Juvenile Justice Committee of the Supreme Court of India, working with UNICEF, held a two-day national consultation on ten years of the Act, on 10 and 11 October, at the Supreme Court in New Delhi. The Chief Justice of India was to inaugurate it, and a compendium of landmark Supreme Court and High Court judgments on the Act, from 2015 to September 2026, was to be released.

The agenda shows where the hard questions lie. One is the treatment of children in conflict with law, and in particular the 'preliminary assessment' that Juvenile Justice Boards carry out when a child is alleged to have committed a heinous offence — an assessment that bears on how the child's case is then handled. Others concern vulnerable children who need care and protection, the working of adoption, children living in institutions, and their rehabilitation.

Because the Act is carried out on the ground by State governments and local bodies, the consultation gave time to the experience of individual States and Union Territories, with representatives of several of them scheduled to speak. The stated aims were to review what has been achieved, identify difficulties in implementation, share good practices and set priorities for the next ten years.

The wider purpose, as the Court put it, is a system in which every child receives care, protection, dignity and access to justice. The consultation's emphasis on rehabilitation and reintegration reflects the idea that a child who has offended is still a child, and that the law's task is to restore as well as to respond.

A mark of quality is useful only if buyers can trust it. In India, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) grants the Standard Mark, and for many electronic goods a product cannot be sold without a BIS registration. On 22 October 2026, officials of the BIS branch office in Chennai searched a mobile hardware shop in Velachery and seized about 300 lithium-ion batteries. The action was taken under Section 28 of the Bureau of Indian Standards Act, 2016.

The problem was not that the batteries carried no mark. They did carry the BIS Standard Mark, but the registration numbers printed on them were either invalid or belonged to other brands. In other words, a number that BIS had issued for one brand was being displayed on goods sold under a different brand name. Such batteries are covered by an Indian Standard, IS 16046 (Part 2):2018, and by an order of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology that makes registration compulsory for these goods.

Under this Compulsory Registration Scheme, the rule is specific: a registration is valid only for the product and the brand for which it was granted. A firm cannot borrow another firm's registration, and a seller cannot rely on a number simply because it looks official. BIS treats the use of one brand's registration on another brand's goods as a breach of the Act.

The law provides a serious penalty. Under Section 29 of the Act, depending on the offence, a violator may face imprisonment of up to two years, or a fine of at least ₹2,00,000 that can rise to ten times the value of the goods, or both. BIS has said it will take further action against the shop under the Act.

The head of the Chennai office used the case to make a broader point for buyers. A printed mark or number, he said, should not by itself satisfy a customer. Before buying electronic goods or batteries, consumers are advised to check, through the BIS Care App, the BIS website or the manakonline.in portal, that the registration is valid and matches the actual product and brand. Suspected misuse can be reported through the same app.

Diplomacy is usually thought of as the work of governments, but legislatures also meet and talk across borders. India's Parliament announced that it would host the 12th BRICS Parliamentary Forum in the Central Hall of Samvidhan Sadan, on 26 and 27 October 2026. Speaking to the press on 22 October, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla described the event as a new chapter in India's parliamentary diplomacy.

Taking part were to be the presiding officers and parliamentary leaders of BRICS member and partner countries, along with Union Ministers, the Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, presiding officers of State legislatures and Members of Parliament. The Speaker said the Prime Minister would attend and meet the leaders of the visiting delegations. A meeting of the delegations' Secretaries, set for 25 October, was to finalise the Forum's Joint Statement.

The overall theme chosen was "Strengthening Parliaments for People-Centric Development". Discussion was planned in four high-level sessions, meant to reach agreement through dialogue. The first, on resilience, concerned the part parliaments play in making institutions stronger for the future. The second, on innovation, was about parliaments encouraging human-centred progress in artificial intelligence and digital technology.

The third session, on cooperation, dealt with making global governance more representative through cooperation among parliaments, and the fourth, on sustainability, with the role of parliaments in securing a sustainable and inclusive future. Apart from these, the chairpersons of the international affairs committees of the participating parliaments were to hold a special meeting on parliamentary diplomacy, capacity building and the sharing of good practices.

The programme also included bilateral and multilateral meetings, talks with parliamentary friendship groups, a cultural programme, and a banquet to be hosted by the Vice-President of India. Delegates were to visit the Parliament of India and places of interest in Delhi before the Forum closed on 27 October.

Air pollution in the National Capital Region is a particular concern in the winter months, and the burning of paddy stubble in neighbouring States is among the sources under review. The Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM), set up for the National Capital Region and the areas around it, issues directions on this problem. On 22 October 2026, the Commission, chaired by Rajesh Verma, held separate review meetings in Chandigarh with the Governments of Punjab and Haryana.

With Punjab, the focus was narrow: how far the State had carried out its action plan against stubble burning, which the Commission had required through its Direction No. 99 of 15 May 2026. The review looked at enforcement on the ground, preparation at the district level, and whether crop residue management machines were actually reaching farmers and being used. It also looked at how paddy straw is collected, moved and put to use, both in the field and away from it.

The meeting with Haryana was wider. Besides stubble, it covered pollution from vehicles, dust from roads, open land and construction sites, and industry. On vehicles, the measures discussed included cameras that read number plates at fuel and CNG stations to check for valid pollution certificates, action against vehicles at the end of their life, and the phasing out of diesel auto-rickshaws in NCR districts.

With both States, the Commission also checked compliance with Direction No. 92, which requires brick kilns to use pellets or briquettes made from paddy straw, and progress on co-firing biomass in thermal power plants. Monitoring tools such as satellite fire alerts, drones and low-cost sensors were reviewed as well.

The Commission asked for time-bound action and close coordination between State departments, district administrations and enforcement agencies. It warned district administrations that laxity leading to more burning incidents would be viewed seriously. At the same time, it urged that paddy straw be treated as a resource for a circular economy rather than only as waste whose burning must be stopped.

PM-DAKSH, a Central Sector Scheme started in 2020-21, offered skill training to Scheduled Castes, Other Backward Classes, Economically Weaker Sections, De-notified Tribes and Safai Karamcharis, including waste pickers. Training was given through empanelled institutes, with the aim of helping trainees earn wages or start their own work, and so improve their social and economic position.

Three corporations under the Department of Social Justice and Empowerment ran the scheme: the national finance and development corporations for Scheduled Castes, for Backward Classes and for Safai Karamcharis. According to an official of the Ministry, the department releases money to these corporations, which then repay institutes for the cost of training; the institutes are ones on the panel of the skill development ministry's Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY).

From 2024-25, PM-DAKSH was merged into PMKVY. The reason given is duplication: PM-DAKSH was an addition to PMKVY, and every job role it trained for came from the Skill India Digital Hub portal and was already covered by PMKVY. Keeping two schemes for the same courses was therefore seen as unnecessary.

The scheme also tied payment to results. After training, an institute must place at least 70 per cent of its trainees in wage employment or self-employment. If it falls short, it loses the third instalment, which is 30 per cent of the training cost. Institutes must also keep links with industry, and the corporations offer loans and handholding to eligible young people who want to set up projects of their own.

The figures given are these: ₹276.47 crore was allotted from 2020-21 to 2023-24, while ₹309.5 crore has been spent so far; 1,87,305 candidates were trained and 96,162 placed in those years. An evaluation study, the official said, found that more than 90 per cent of beneficiaries felt the training matched their career goals and local job markets, and it found gains in confidence, self-esteem and social recognition.

Economic empowerment, a release of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs argues, becomes more effective only when people's skills are upgraded along with the money they receive. Training and knowledge, it says, must be closely linked to funding if Scheduled Tribe communities are to build livelihoods that last, and new entrepreneurs need basic knowledge of finance, marketing and branding.

The example it gives is the Livelihood Business Incubation Centre at Rourkela in Odisha, set up in 2018 and recognised by the Ministry as a Centre of Excellence. The centre is a joint effort of three ministries acting through public bodies under them: the National Scheduled Tribes Finance and Development Corporation (NSTFDC) of the Tribal Affairs Ministry, NSIC under the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, and the Rourkela Steel Plant of Steel Authority of India Ltd under the Ministry of Steel. On 22 October 2026, the three signed a tripartite memorandum of understanding.

Each partner has a defined share. The steel plant provides the site; plant and machinery are installed under the MSME Ministry's ASPIRE scheme; and the centre's recurring expenses are borne by NSTFDC from a grant of the Tribal Affairs Ministry.

The centre's purpose is to train local Scheduled Tribe youth and help them start sustainable enterprises. Courses this year include assistant beautician, self-employed tailor, assistant computer operator (Tally and accounting), assistant electrician, bread and bakery manufacturing, and mushroom farming. The centre has also offered training in welding, furniture making, and soya milk and tofu work. According to the release, more than 600 students have benefited and have set up businesses such as bakeries, mushroom farms, beauty parlours and tailoring units.

At the signing, officials of the three bodies met trainees and teachers and discussed how candidates are brought in, how the current training modules are working and how trainees are progressing.