CLAT PG Current Affairs — 29 July 2026

India's Supreme Court is revisiting the doctrine of 'constitutional morality' — a principle central to its landmark 2018 Navtej Singh Johar judgment that decriminalised consensual same-sex relations by striking down Section 377 IPC. The current judicial exercise may determine whether constitutional morality can extend LGBTQ protections further, including rights to marriage, adoption, and non-discrimination. The five-judge Constitution Bench that decided Navtej explicitly elevated constitutional morality over popular morality as a guiding interpretive standard.

Constitutional morality, as articulated by B.R. Ambedkar in the Constituent Assembly debates, means adherence to the letter and spirit of the Constitution rather than to the prevailing social consensus. The Supreme Court revived this doctrine in the Navtej Singh Johar case (2018) to hold that criminalising consensual adult same-sex relations violated Articles 14 (equality), 15 (non-discrimination), 19 (expression), and 21 (dignity and privacy). The Court drew heavily on Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017), the nine-judge Privacy Bench ruling, which established privacy as a fundamental right intrinsic to personal liberty under Article 21.

The critical current question is: can constitutional morality now compel the State to affirmatively recognise same-sex marriage or civil unions? In Supriyo v. Union of India (2023), a five-judge Constitution Bench declined to grant the right to same-sex marriage, saying Parliament — not the Court — must legislate. However, it did not foreclose future claims. The dissenting opinion by Justice S.K. Kaul explicitly called for a civil union framework.

For CLAT PG aspirants, the doctrinal scaffolding — constitutional morality vs. popular morality, the Puttaswamy privacy chain, Article 21 expansionism, and the limits of judicial review vis-à-vis parliamentary supremacy — forms the analytical core of likely passage questions. For UPSC, the tension between judicial interpretation and majoritarian democracy, and India's obligations under international human rights law, frame the static hinterland.

The Supreme Court, in a bench led by Justices B V Nagarathna and N K Singh, ruled that no court can compel a woman, especially a minor, to carry a pregnancy against her will. The judgment reinforces reproductive autonomy as a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Constitution. The ruling emphasises that forcing pregnancy continuation constitutes a violation of bodily integrity and personal liberty, making judicial override of a woman's reproductive choice constitutionally impermissible.

This ruling sits at the intersection of reproductive rights, bodily autonomy, and constitutional jurisprudence — a zone Indian courts have been progressively expanding since the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act was amended in 2021. That amendment raised the gestational limit for abortion to 24 weeks for certain categories of women, including survivors of sexual assault, minors, and women with foetal abnormalities, and effectively recognised that reproductive choice is not a privilege but a right.

The Supreme Court's present ruling goes further by categorically stating that courts themselves cannot override a woman's refusal to continue a pregnancy. This is significant because in several lower court orders — particularly those involving minors who approach courts seeking termination beyond the statutory limit — judges have sometimes conditioned or denied relief in ways that effectively compelled continuation of the pregnancy. The Supreme Court has now closed that interpretive gap.

The constitutional anchor is Article 21, under which the right to life and personal liberty has been expansively read to include the right to health, dignity, and bodily integrity. The ruling also intersects with the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, where pregnancy in a minor is presumptively the result of abuse, making compelled continuation of such pregnancy doubly violative of rights. For UPSC and CLAT examinees, this case matters as a landmark on reproductive autonomy, judicial limits, and Article 21 jurisprudence.

The Supreme Court of India ordered a Special Investigation Team (SIT) probe into violence against student protesters, reaffirming that the right to peaceful protest is protected under Article 21 (right to life and personal liberty) and Article 19(1)(a) (freedom of speech). The Court held police accountable for disproportionate force and directed independent investigation. The judgment strengthens constitutional safeguards for dissent, establishing that state suppression of peaceful protest violates fundamental rights.

This judgment sits at the intersection of three constitutional pillars: Article 19(1)(a) freedom of speech and expression, Article 19(1)(b) right to peaceful assembly, and Article 21 right to life and personal liberty. Courts in India have progressively interpreted Article 21 expansively — from Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India (1978) onwards — to include dignity, liberty, and freedom from arbitrary state action. When police deploy disproportionate force against peaceful student protesters, they violate the procedure established by law standard (and, post-Maneka, the just, fair, and reasonable standard). The SIT mechanism is significant: it removes investigation from the very police force accused of excess, ensuring independence. This mirrors the logic behind prior SIT orders in cases like the 2002 Gujarat riots (Zakia Jafri case). The judgment also engages with the doctrine of proportionality — a force must be proportionate to the threat — now firmly embedded in Indian constitutional law via K.S. Puttaswamy (2017). For student protest specifically, courts have historically protected the right to demonstrate: Ramlila Maidan Incident (2012) held that sleeping at a protest site at night is protected. This judgment extends that lineage, making police accountability for protest violence a constitutional mandate, not a policy choice.

A Member of Parliament has filed an Article 32 petition in the Supreme Court challenging the deployment of facial recognition technology (FRT) and biometric surveillance by police at protest sites. The petition raises concerns over violation of fundamental rights including privacy, free speech, and the right to protest. Filed before the Supreme Court of India, the case tests constitutional limits on state surveillance in public spaces and the absence of a dedicated statutory framework governing FRT use by law enforcement.

India has no dedicated legislation governing the use of facial recognition technology by state agencies, a gap that makes this petition constitutionally significant. The police deployment of FRT at protest sites effectively enables mass surveillance of citizens exercising their fundamental rights under Articles 19 and 21. The Supreme Court's landmark nine-judge bench ruling in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017) unanimously recognised the right to privacy as a fundamental right under Article 21, establishing informational privacy and data protection as constitutional entitlements. FRT at protests threatens the chilling effect doctrine: when citizens know they are being biometrically identified, they may self-censor participation in constitutionally protected assembly and speech. The petition, filed under Article 32 — the constitutional remedy for enforcement of fundamental rights — asks the Supreme Court to either restrain the use of FRT or mandate a legislative framework with safeguards. India currently lacks a comprehensive data protection law calibrated to surveillance contexts; the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 largely exempts state agencies for national security and law enforcement purposes. This creates a regulatory vacuum where biometric surveillance by police operates without judicial oversight, algorithmic accountability, or redress mechanisms, raising proportionality concerns central to the Puttaswamy framework.

The Supreme Court on July 27, 2025, held that the doctrine of res judicata applies to successive impleadment applications filed under different provisions of the Civil Procedure Code. Where an application under Order I Rule 10 CPC is rejected on merits, a fresh application for the same relief under Section 151 CPC is barred. The ruling clarifies that res judicata operates not merely between suits but also between interlocutory applications decided on merits within the same proceedings.

Impleadment is the procedural mechanism by which a party not originally named in a suit is added as a party, either as a plaintiff or defendant. Order I Rule 10 CPC is the primary provision empowering courts to add or strike out parties, while Section 151 CPC is a residuary provision preserving the court's inherent powers to make orders necessary for ends of justice. Litigants sometimes exploit the existence of multiple CPC provisions covering overlapping ground by filing successive applications for the same relief under different provisions when one is rejected — effectively circumventing an adverse order without filing a formal appeal or review. The Supreme Court's July 2025 ruling shuts this procedural loophole. The Court held that when an impleadment application under Order I Rule 10 is rejected on merits — meaning the court examined the substance and not merely dismissed it on technical grounds — the principle of res judicata kicks in. Filing another application for the same relief under Section 151 would constitute an abuse of process. This ruling extends the classic understanding of res judicata, which traditionally applies between two suits under Section 11 CPC, into the domain of interlocutory applications within the same suit. For CLAT PG, this is critical because it tests whether candidates can distinguish between rejection on merits versus rejection on technical grounds, and understand when res judicata attaches to interlocutory orders.

The Supreme Court ruled that interim custody of a vehicle seized in a criminal case cannot be decided solely on the basis of the registration certificate. Courts must examine the overall circumstances of each case, including the nature of the offence, the claimant's connection to the vehicle, and the purpose of seizure. The registration certificate is merely one evidentiary factor, not a determinative document. The ruling clarifies the judicial approach to Section 451 and 457 CrPC applications for interim custody.

When a vehicle is seized during a criminal investigation, the accused or any claimant may approach the court for its interim custody pending trial. Traditionally, many trial courts treated the registration certificate as near-conclusive proof of ownership and therefore the primary basis for granting or refusing custody. The Supreme Court's ruling disrupts this mechanical approach. The Court emphasised that criminal proceedings involve complex factual matrices — the vehicle may be seized as an instrument of crime, a stolen property, or merely incidental to an arrest — and each scenario demands a different judicial analysis. A registration certificate proves only that a person was registered as owner at a given point; it says nothing about who was in actual possession, whether the vehicle was used in the offence, whether releasing it would destroy evidence, or whether a third party has a superior claim. Practically, this matters because courts now have an affirmative duty to reason through the circumstances before granting interim custody under Section 451 CrPC or Section 457 CrPC (now mirrored under BNSS). For CLAT PG aspirants, this judgment is important as a passage-based question source: it tests the ability to apply a stated legal principle — that registration is one factor among many — to varied hypothetical scenarios involving claimants with or without registration certificates.

The Supreme Court of India issued notice on a fresh petition challenging the proviso to Section 2(k) of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026. Filed by a transgender rights advocate, the plea argues the proviso imposes restrictive conditions on the definition of 'transgender person,' potentially excluding individuals without a District Magistrate-issued certificate. The Court tagged this petition with a pending batch of cases challenging earlier provisions of the principal Act, signalling consolidated adjudication of transgender identity rights.

The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 created a statutory framework defining 'transgender person' under Section 2(k) and establishing a certification mechanism via District Magistrates. Critics argued the certification requirement imposed bureaucratic gatekeeping on identity — a concern the Supreme Court partially addressed in National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India (2014), which had recognised the right to self-identified gender. The 2026 Amendment Act introduced a proviso to Section 2(k) that allegedly narrows eligibility criteria, reigniting the tension between state-administered certification and constitutional autonomy over gender identity. By tagging the fresh petition with pending batch matters, the Supreme Court signals a comprehensive review rather than piecemeal adjudication — a procedurally significant choice because the outcome will bind all similar challenges. For CLAT PG aspirants, the critical doctrinal axis is the conflict between Articles 14, 19, and 21 as interpreted in NALSA (2014) and the legislative definition in the 2019 Act as now amended. The case also implicates the principle that identity-linked rights cannot be made contingent on bureaucratic approval without compelling state interest, drawing from Puttaswamy (2017) on informational privacy and dignity.