CLAT PG Current Affairs — 26 August 2026

The Supreme Court of India has held that no court possesses the authority to compel a woman, including a minor, to carry a pregnancy against her will. The ruling grounds reproductive autonomy firmly within Article 21, recognising a woman's right to make decisions about her own body as a core dimension of the right to life and personal liberty. The court emphasised that forcing pregnancy constitutes a violation of bodily integrity and dignity.

This ruling advances the constitutional doctrine of reproductive autonomy as an integral facet of Article 21. The right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 has been expansively interpreted since Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India (1978), which held that personal liberty cannot be curtailed except by a procedure that is fair, just, and reasonable. Subsequent rulings extended Article 21 to encompass dignity, privacy, and bodily autonomy.

The right to abortion in India is governed by the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act, 1971, as amended in 2021. The 2021 amendment extended the permissible gestational limit from 20 to 24 weeks for special categories including survivors of rape, minors, and women with foetal abnormalities. For pregnancies beyond 24 weeks, a Medical Board constituted under the Act must opine on foetal abnormalities.

The Supreme Court had earlier in X v. Principal Secretary, Health and Family Welfare Department, Govt. of NCT of Delhi (2022) held that all women — married or unmarried — have an equal right to safe abortion. The court had categorically stated that the right to reproductive autonomy flows from the right to privacy recognised in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017).

The present ruling reinforces that judicial orders cannot override a woman's bodily autonomy. Even where a court is approached for permission (typically in cases beyond 20 or 24 weeks), the court's role is to facilitate access, not to compel continuation. For minors, the ruling carries extra weight because their consent is independently protected and overriding it would compound the constitutional violation.

The test applied: the court uses a three-pronged Article 21 test — the restriction must be by law, the law must be fair/just/reasonable, and the restriction must not violate the basic structure (dignity and autonomy). Compulsion to continue pregnancy fails all three prongs.

The Jharkhand High Court has held that Section 498A IPC does not restrict cruelty to demands for 'dowry' alone. Any unlawful demand for property or valuable security made by a husband or his relatives against a wife constitutes cruelty under the provision. The court clarified that the second limb of Section 498A is broader than the Dowry Prohibition Act's definition and covers all coercive property demands, regardless of whether they qualify as dowry under that statute.

Section 498A IPC (now Section 85, BNS 2023) punishes a husband or his relatives for subjecting a wife to cruelty. The section has two limbs: (1) conduct likely to drive the woman to suicide or cause grave injury, and (2) harassment with a view to coercing her or her relatives to meet an unlawful demand for property or valuable security.

The Jharkhand High Court's ruling clarifies a critical interpretive question: the second limb is not confined to 'dowry' as defined under Section 2 of the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961. That definition restricts dowry to property given or agreed to be given in connection with marriage. Section 498A, by contrast, uses the phrase 'unlawful demand for property or valuable security' — which is wider.

This means a demand made after marriage, or a demand for property unconnected to the marriage arrangement, can still attract Section 498A if it is coercive and causes harassment. The husband cannot escape liability by arguing that the demanded property does not fall within the technical dowry definition.

For CLAT PG, this ruling is a clean application question: examiners will present a fact pattern where the demanded property falls outside the Dowry Prohibition Act's definition and ask whether 498A is still attracted. The correct answer — yes — depends on understanding the two-limb structure of the section and the independence of the second limb from the DP Act.

The Calcutta High Court held that a victim cannot be denied investigation documents simply because their application cited a CrPC provision instead of the correct BNSS equivalent. The court applied a substance-over-form principle, ruling that procedural technicalities must not obstruct a victim's substantive right to access case documents during investigation. The judgment reinforces that the transition from CrPC to BNSS should not be weaponised to defeat legitimate rights through citation errors.

This ruling sits at the intersection of two exam-critical ideas: the rights of victims under the new criminal procedure code, and the principle that substance prevails over form in procedural law.

Under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) 2023, which replaced the CrPC from 1 July 2024, victims have a statutory right to access documents related to the investigation of their case. The BNSS has introduced or repositioned several victim-centric provisions — a key structural change examiners will probe. The corresponding provision under CrPC was Section 173 (police report and documents), while the BNSS equivalent is Section 193.

The Calcutta HC's core holding is doctrinal: courts must look at what a party is asking for, not just the label they attached to their request. If the substance of the application correctly invokes a right that exists under the new law, a technical mislabelling of the provision is not fatal. This echoes the general principle in procedural law — courts should be 'liberal in construing procedural provisions to advance justice.'

For CLAT PG, the examiner will frame a passage around either this judgment or the BNSS victim-rights provisions and ask which statutory provision governs, what happens when the wrong section is cited, and whether the right survives the CrPC-to-BNSS transition. The distinction between CrPC Section 173 and BNSS Section 193, and the victim's right to documents at the investigation stage, are the anchor facts to lock in.

The Supreme Court, while hearing challenges to the Bihar Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, clarified that exclusion from the electoral roll does not strip a person of other constitutional and statutory rights — citizenship, welfare benefits, and entitlements under social schemes remain unaffected. The Court distinguished the right to vote from the bundle of rights attached to citizenship, holding that disenfranchisement through roll-revision is not equivalent to statelessness or loss of fundamental rights under Articles 14, 19, and 21.

This ruling sits at the intersection of three constitutional concepts that CLAT PG tests heavily: the nature of the right to vote, the doctrine of severability of rights, and the limits of administrative action under Article 14.

First, the right to vote. It is a statutory right under the Representation of the People Act, 1950, not a fundamental right — a distinction the Supreme Court drew sharply in Jyoti Basu v. Debi Ghosal (1982) and affirmed in PUCL v. Union of India (2003). Because it is statutory, it can be regulated and even removed through a lawful process without engaging fundamental rights directly. However, the process of removal must itself satisfy Article 14 (non-arbitrariness) and, where livelihood or dignity is at stake, Article 21.

Second, the severability principle. Rights are not a monolithic block. Losing one right — the franchise — does not automatically cascade into losing citizenship-attached entitlements. This is constitutionally important: citizenship under Part II of the Constitution is the gateway to most rights, and only Parliament, not an administrative roll-revision exercise, can strip citizenship under the Citizenship Act, 1955.

Third, the Article 300A dimension. Property and welfare entitlements linked to government schemes are increasingly treated as 'other rights' protected against arbitrary deprivation. The Court's clarification insulates those entitlements from a collateral rollback triggered by electoral roll exclusion.

When a foreign parent company grants ESOPs to employees of its Indian subsidiary, compliance obligations span multiple regulatory regimes. Under FEMA 1999, the remittance by the Indian subsidiary to the parent constitutes a capital account transaction requiring RBI-compliant documentation. The Companies Act 2013 provisions on sweat equity and stock options apply domestically. SEBI's ESOP guidelines govern listed entities separately. Income-tax treatment differs at grant, vesting, and exercise stages, creating layered obligations the subsidiary must independently satisfy.

ESOPs granted by a foreign parent to Indian subsidiary employees sit at the intersection of three distinct legal regimes, which is precisely why the examiner finds this topic fertile.

First, FEMA 1999 governs the cross-border dimension. When an Indian resident employee exercises foreign ESOPs, the acquisition of foreign securities is treated as a capital account transaction. Under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS), an individual can remit up to USD 2,50,000 per financial year for such purposes. If the Indian subsidiary reimburses the parent for the cost of shares (a common back-to-back arrangement), this outward remittance must follow RBI's Overseas Direct Investment or trade credit norms depending on the structure.

Second, the Companies Act 2013 (Sections 62 and 67, read with Rule 12 of the Companies Share Capital and Debentures Rules 2014) governs ESOPs issued by the Indian subsidiary itself. Foreign parent ESOPs fall outside this domestic framework but cannot ignore it when the Indian company is a party to the reimbursement agreement.

Third, income tax treatment creates a three-stage obligation: (a) grant — generally not taxable; (b) vesting — no immediate tax; (c) exercise — the difference between fair market value on exercise date and the exercise price is taxable as perquisite under Section 17(2) of the Income Tax Act, subject to TDS by the employer-subsidiary under Section 192.

For CLAT PG, the doctrinal hook is contract law: the ESOP agreement is a unilateral offer from the parent, acceptance occurring on exercise. Consideration is the employee's continued service (past consideration issues arise if the grant is retrospective). The examiner tests whether aspirants can identify which statute governs which dimension and whether the arrangement constitutes a valid enforceable contract under the Indian Contract Act 1872.