CLAT PG Current Affairs — 14 October 2026

On October 13, 2026, the Supreme Court intervened after women journalists alleged assault by Delhi Police while covering a protest. The Court summoned a senior Delhi Police officer to explain the conduct, invoking Articles 14, 19, and 21 — equality, press freedom, and personal liberty. The case raises questions about police accountability when state action curtails fundamental rights of journalists exercising their profession in a public space.

This intervention sits at the intersection of three fundamental rights doctrines that CLAT PG tests with precision.

Article 19(1)(a) guarantees freedom of speech and expression, which the Supreme Court has consistently interpreted to include the right of the press to gather and report news. In Romesh Thappar v State of Madras (1950) and Bennett Coleman v Union of India (1972), the Court held that press freedom is a species of the broader free-speech right and cannot be abridged except on grounds listed under Article 19(2). Physical obstruction of journalists covering a lawful public event goes beyond any permissible 19(2) restriction.

Article 21 (right to life and personal liberty) as expanded in Maneka Gandhi v Union of India (1978) requires that any state action depriving a person of liberty must satisfy three tests: it must be authorised by law, that law must be just, fair, and reasonable, and the procedure must itself be fair. An assault by police officers in the field satisfies none of these conditions.

Article 14 (equality before law) adds a further layer: state agents cannot single out a class of persons — here, women journalists — for disparate or hostile treatment without a rational basis.

The Court's decision to summon a senior officer rather than merely seek a written reply signals the use of its suo motu and contempt jurisdiction to enforce accountability, a pattern the Court has followed in cases like Arnab Goswami v Maharashtra (2020) on personal liberty and Prabir Purkayastha v State (2024) on press freedom. The doctrinal principle being enforced is that the state bears a positive obligation not merely to refrain from violating rights but to protect journalists exercising rights in public spaces.

The Andhra Pradesh High Court set aside a preventive detention order, holding that an unexplained delay in deciding the detenu's representation violates Articles 21 and 22(5) of the Constitution. The court ruled that the right to have a representation considered promptly is a constitutional imperative, not a procedural formality. Failure by the detaining authority to explain the delay renders the continued detention constitutionally unsustainable, entitling the detenu to immediate release.

Preventive detention allows the State to detain a person without trial to prevent a future act, making it an extraordinary departure from the presumption of liberty under Article 21. Because it operates outside criminal procedure, the Constitution itself builds in safeguards through Article 22. Article 22(5) imposes two mandatory duties on the detaining authority: (1) communicate the grounds of detention as soon as possible, and (2) afford the detenu the earliest opportunity to make a representation against the order.

The Supreme Court has consistently treated these as non-negotiable procedural guarantees, not mere technical requirements. In Icchu Devi Choraria v. Union of India (1980) and Kamleshkumar Ishwardas Patel v. Union of India (1994), the Court held that prompt disposal of the representation is integral to the right to personal liberty. If the authority sits on the representation without explanation, the detention order becomes void ab initio — the passage of time itself converts a lawful detention into an unlawful one.

The test the courts apply is simple but strict: Was there delay? If yes, is there a satisfactory explanation? An unexplained delay — even a short one — is fatal. The authority cannot retroactively justify inaction. This principle intersects with Article 21's guarantee of a fair procedure, meaning both the substantive and procedural dimensions of liberty must be protected simultaneously. The AP High Court's ruling reaffirms this chain: Article 22(5) right → duty to decide representation promptly → unexplained delay = violation → detention vitiated.

The Supreme Court reversed the Bombay High Court's conviction of a telephone department cashier accused of misappropriating ₹8.73 lakh in collections. The Court found that the prosecution failed to prove three essentials: that funds were formally entrusted to the accused, that he acted with dishonest intent, and that the seized cash was properly documented. Withheld cash records were a critical gap. The trial court's acquittal was restored, reaffirming that criminal breach of trust requires strict proof of entrustment.

This case turns on Section 405 IPC (criminal breach of trust), which requires the prosecution to establish two elements beyond reasonable doubt: (1) entrustment or dominion over property, and (2) dishonest misappropriation or conversion of that property. The Supreme Court's reversal of the High Court's conviction is a textbook application of the principle that acquittal cannot be reversed unless the appellate court finds the trial court's view to be perverse or impossible — a threshold far higher than mere disagreement.

For CLAT PG purposes, several layers operate simultaneously. First, the law on appellate interference with acquittals: Section 378 CrPC (Section 474 BNSS) governs appeals against acquittal and courts have consistently held that the presumption of innocence is strengthened, not weakened, after an acquittal. Second, the principle that withheld or non-produced documents raise an adverse inference under Section 114(g) of the Indian Evidence Act — if the prosecution controls records and withholds them, the court may presume those records would be unfavourable to the prosecution. Third, entrustment in Section 405 IPC is not presumed from employment; it must be affirmatively proved. A cashier handling money institutionally is not automatically in 'entrustment' unless the specific sum is shown to have been received and made the subject of a specific duty. The examiner may test any of these three statutory anchors.

The Supreme Court has ruled that a non-signatory to an arbitration agreement can be compelled to join arbitration proceedings when the dispute substantially affects that party's rights or obligations. The Court drew on the 'group of companies' doctrine and the principle that arbitration's consensual basis may be extended where parties are so intertwined that separating them defeats the purpose of dispute resolution. This ruling clarifies the outer boundary of arbitral jurisdiction under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996.

Arbitration is fundamentally consensual — only parties who have signed an arbitration agreement are ordinarily bound by it. This is rooted in the principle of privity of contract. However, complex commercial transactions often involve multiple entities — parent companies, subsidiaries, guarantors, affiliates — who participate in a deal without formally signing every document.

The Supreme Court's ruling applies the 'group of companies' doctrine, which recognises that where a non-signatory is so closely connected to the transaction and the dispute that excluding them would fragment the resolution or render the arbitral award ineffective, they may be joined as a party. The test is not merely formal signature but substantive involvement: Did the non-signatory's conduct show implied consent? Was the dispute's subject matter directly linked to their rights?

In Indian law, this doctrine was significantly debated after Cox and Kings Ltd v. SAP India Pvt Ltd (2023), where a five-judge Constitution Bench affirmed the group of companies doctrine as a legitimate tool under Section 8 and Section 45 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996. The critical doctrinal question is whether a non-signatory's inclusion respects or violates party autonomy.

For CLAT PG aspirants, this connects to offer-acceptance and consideration doctrine (only consenting parties are bound), but in arbitration law it extends to corporate structures and implied consent through conduct — a nuance examiners test through passage-based application questions requiring doctrinal precision.

The Supreme Court has ruled that a taxpayer cannot raise a fresh claim before a Revisional authority under the Income Tax Act without first filing a revised return within the prescribed time. The Court held that bypassing the revised return procedure and directly approaching the revisional forum is impermissible. This decision reinforces procedural discipline in income tax proceedings and closes a route that assessees had used to introduce new claims at the appellate or revisional stage without amending their original returns.

This ruling addresses a recurring tension in income tax law: whether an assessee who omits a deduction or exemption claim in the original return can introduce that claim for the first time at the revisional stage, without filing a revised return under Section 139(5) of the Income Tax Act, 1961.

The Supreme Court's answer is an unequivocal no. The revisional authority — typically the Commissioner of Income Tax (Appeals) or the Principal Commissioner under Sections 263/264 of the Income Tax Act — exercises supervisory jurisdiction over assessment orders. It is not a forum for introducing entirely new claims that were never part of the original return.

The logic is procedural and structural: the return of income is the foundational document of assessment. If an error or omission occurs, the statute provides a specific remedy — filing a revised return under Section 139(5) before the relevant deadline. Allowing fresh claims at the revisional stage without this step would circumvent the statutory scheme, create asymmetry between taxpayers who follow procedure and those who do not, and burden the revisional forum with adjudicating claims the Assessing Officer never had the chance to consider.

This principle connects to administrative law's doctrine of exhaustion of statutory remedies and the rule that appellate/revisional bodies cannot travel beyond the record below. For CLAT PG aspirants, the examiner is likely to test this as a passage-based MCQ where the principle must be applied to a hypothetical involving a missed deduction claim.

The Delhi High Court has referred to a larger bench the question of whether courts retain discretion to accept written statements filed beyond the mandatory 120-day deadline under Order VIII Rule 1 of the Civil Procedure Code. The conflict arises from divergent single-judge rulings — some holding the deadline is absolute, others allowing judicial discretion. The larger bench's ruling will settle whether the CPC's commercial-suit reforms bind all civil courts equally and how strictly procedural bars can be enforced.

Order VIII Rule 1 of the CPC, as amended by the Commercial Courts Act 2015, mandates that a defendant file a written statement within 30 days, extendable up to 120 days. Beyond 120 days, the right to file a written statement is forfeited — this was designed to fast-track commercial disputes and prevent tactical delay. The Supreme Court in Desh Raj v. Balkishan (2020) and SCG Contracts v. K.S. Chamankar (2019) had already held this deadline to be mandatory and non-extendable for commercial courts. The tension before the Delhi HC arises because some civil suits — not strictly 'commercial disputes' under the Act — are handled by the same courts, and single judges have disagreed on whether the 120-day bar applies with equal rigidity there. This implicates a fundamental civil procedure principle: is the court's inherent power under Section 151 CPC or its general discretion strong enough to override an explicit statutory time-limit? The larger bench must reconcile the strict statutory language with the court's equitable jurisdiction. For CLAT PG aspirants, this tests the intersection of Order VIII Rule 1, the Commercial Courts Act, and the Supreme Court's repeated position that procedural timelines in commercial litigation are non-negotiable — a principle the examiner has tested through passage-based MCQs requiring application of CPC rules to new fact patterns.