UPSC Mains Current Affairs for 29 August 2026

Acting Chief Justice and Judicial Appointments – The Question Before the Collegium

August 29, 2026

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A controversy involving the Acting Chief Justice of the Rajasthan High Court has revived a recurring question before the Supreme Court Collegium: how to treat recommendations for the appointment of High Court judges sent by an Acting Chief Justice.

The Collegium System

Judicial appointments to the higher judiciary in India are made through the Collegium system, evolved through a series of Supreme Court judgments rather than written into the Constitution.

The Convention on Acting Chief Justices

An Acting Chief Justice is appointed when the post of Chief Justice of a High Court falls vacant and a permanent appointment has not yet been made. The senior-most available judge usually takes charge in this capacity.
Conventionally, Acting Chief Justices do not make recommendations for judicial appointments.
The reasoning is straightforward: their tenures are typically short, and vetting candidates requires familiarity with the Bar, consultation with colleagues, and considered assessment that a brief stint may not permit.
However, in exceptional cases where such names have been sent, the Collegium has adopted varied approaches rather than following a fixed rule.

News Summary

The Acting Chief Justice of the Rajasthan High Court has held the position since late September 2025, a tenure of almost a year.
The Supreme Court Collegium will now have to consider at least four names recommended by him.

Judicial Precedents

The Bombay High Court Case (2020)
- A judge served as Acting Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court from February 20 to March 19, 2020, and then as Chief Justice from March 20 until retirement on April 27, 2020. During this period, he prepared a list of 22 names for appointment as High Court judges.
- Two consultee judges objected in writing, arguing that no Chief Justice could properly vet 22 candidates, each requiring consultation with the Bar, in so short a tenure. They urged that the list be sent back to the sitting Chief Justice.
- A third consultee judge disagreed, noting that the recommending judge had served on the Bombay High Court since 2004 and knew the Bar well.
- Relying on this affirmative response, the Collegium sent 18 of the 22 recommendations to the Centre.
- The Centre, however, returned the names, underlining the reservations recorded by the consultee judges. Fresh lists were subsequently drawn up by the High Court.
The Rajasthan High Court Case (2022)
- In another instance, the Centre raised objections to at least 12 names sent by the then Chief Justice of the Rajasthan High Court, on the ground that the recommendations were made during the fag end of his tenure.
- The Collegium asked whether there were specific objections against any name based on intelligence inputs, but received no response. The Centre subsequently cleared 8 of the 12 names.
- Together, these cases show that the Collegium has treated such recommendations case by case, weighing the recommending judge's familiarity with the High Court against the brevity of the tenure.

The Underlying Controversy

The present question has arisen against the backdrop of a separate dispute.
A Supreme Court judge, previously of the Rajasthan High Court, wrote three letters to the Chief Justice of India, seeking that the Acting Chief Justice be replaced by a Chief Justice from outside the state.
The letters alleged manipulation of case listings, threats to fellow judges citing closeness to the CJI, and misuse of administrative powers. They also described the acting tenure as "unusually long."
The CJI responded that allegations against a sitting judge could not be adjudicated through the media and must go through institutional channels.

Why This Matters

The question is narrow in form but touches on broader institutional concerns.
Judicial vacancies remain a persistent problem across High Courts, and returning recommendations on procedural grounds can delay appointments further.
At the same time, appointments made without adequate vetting risk compromising the quality of the higher judiciary.
The debate also highlights the problem of prolonged acting tenures. When an Acting Chief Justice remains in place for a year, questions inevitably arise about whether the arrangement has become a substitute for a permanent appointment rather than a stopgap.
Finally, the absence of a written rule on this point illustrates a wider feature of the Collegium system, much of it rests on convention and precedent rather than codified procedure, which allows flexibility but also invites inconsistency.

Conclusion

Whether an Acting Chief Justice can recommend names for judicial appointment has no settled answer, and past practice has varied with circumstance.
The Collegium's approach in the present case will effectively set a precedent, either affirming that merit and familiarity with the Bar matter more than official designation, or reinforcing the convention that permanent appointments should precede such consequential recommendations.
Either way, this underlines the case for clearer, written norms within the appointments process.

Source: IE

Acting Chief Justice FAQs

Q1: Who is an Acting Chief Justice of a High Court?

Ans: A judge, usually the senior-most available, who heads a High Court temporarily when the post of Chief Justice falls vacant and no permanent appointment has been made.

Q2: Why do Acting Chief Justices conventionally not recommend appointments?

Ans: Because their tenures are typically short and vetting candidates requires familiarity with the Bar and considered consultation that a brief stint may not permit.

Q3: Who comprises the Collegium for High Court appointments?

Ans: The Chief Justice of India along with the two senior-most judges of the Supreme Court.

Q4: What are consultee judges?

Ans: Supreme Court judges familiar with a particular High Court who are consulted by the Collegium before names are forwarded to the Centre.

Q5: How long has the Rajasthan High Court had an Acting Chief Justice?

Ans: Since late September 2025, a tenure of almost a year.

PM Modi’s Central Asia Visit: Why Central Asia Matters for India

August 29, 2026

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PM Modi is on a Central Asia trip. He will visit Uzbekistan from August 29-30 on a bilateral visit, followed by the Kyrgyz Republic to attend the 26th Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit from August 31 to September 1.
India's focused engagement with the region's five countries — Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan — began in 2012, with the framing of the "Connect Central Asia" policy.
The policy gained momentum when Modi became the first Indian Prime Minister to visit all five Central Asian nations in July 2015. This latest visit continues that outreach.

What Central Asia Offers

Central Asia has traditionally been viewed as Russia's strategic backyard, with a 20-30% ethnic Russian population and widespread use of the Russian language.
The region's growing global significance was underscored when Chinese President Xi Jinping chose it for his first overseas trip after the COVID-19 pandemic disruption, visiting four of the five Central Asian countries in September 2022.
The region is exceptionally rich in mineral and natural resources:
- Kazakhstan: One of the world's largest uranium reserves, along with coal, lead, zinc, gold, and iron ore
- Kyrgyz Republic: Gold and hydropower potential
- Turkmenistan: One of the world's largest natural gas reserves
- Tajikistan: Significant hydropower potential
- Uzbekistan: Gold, uranium, and natural gas
This resource wealth has drawn global powers seeking to tap into the region's vast potential.

India's Strategic Stakes: The Battle for Space

For India, engagement with Central Asia serves multiple strategic objectives:
- Security cooperation: Particularly important following the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan.
- Countering China's influence: Balancing Beijing's expanding footprint through its Belt and Road Initiative.
- Connectivity: Advancing plans like the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC).
- Energy security: Leveraging Kazakhstan's uranium reserves and Turkmenistan's role in the proposed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline.
- Historical and cultural ties: Building on centuries-old civilisational links.
- Trade potential: Expanding economic partnerships.
India regards Central Asia as part of its extended neighbourhood, with outreach aimed at securing political, security, and economic benefits.
A notable diplomatic gesture came in January 2022, when New Delhi invited Central Asian leaders to its Republic Day celebrations.
India's engagement is partly driven by a desire to prevent China from dominating this post-Soviet space through its substantial regional investments.

Key Challenges

Despite the clear economic opportunities from Central Asia's mineral wealth, India faces a significant hurdle: the lack of direct overland transport access, since Pakistan blocks India's land route to the region.
This challenge is a primary driver behind India's push to integrate the INSTC with Iran's Chabahar port, creating an alternative access route to this resource-rich region.
Security concerns also loom large. Central Asia is widely seen as the northern boundary of the Islamic world, and the Taliban's ascent in Afghanistan has heightened fears of radicalism and a potential regrouping of the Islamic State — posing risks not just for India but for the Central Asian states themselves.
Additionally, the Russia-Ukraine conflict has triggered demographic shifts, with reports of skilled Russians relocating to Central Asian countries since they cannot easily move westward.
While this migration could boost local economies through an inflow of talent and capital, it may also generate social and political tensions within these nations.

Civilisational and Cultural Links with Uzbekistan

India shares a particularly deep cultural and civilisational connection with Uzbekistan.
Notably, the only known Buddhist monastery in Central Asia is located at Kara Tepa, Termez, Uzbekistan — an important centre during the Kushana era, when Buddhist influence extended into the region.
Linguistic ties run deep as well, with nearly 3,000 shared words between Hindi and Uzbek.
Cultural parallels extend to cuisine too — ghee-sariyok, samosa-samsa, naan-non, and pulao-pilaf reflect shared culinary heritage.
Economically, India ranks among Uzbekistan's top 10 trading partners, with bilateral trade reaching close to $1 billion in 2025-26.

Conclusion

PM Modi's Central Asia visit reflects India's sustained strategic push to deepen ties with a region critical to its security, energy, and connectivity interests, while also countering growing Chinese influence in the post-Soviet space.
Despite persistent challenges — particularly the lack of direct overland access due to Pakistan and rising regional security risks from Afghanistan — India's civilisational links, economic potential, and multilateral engagement through platforms like the SCO position Central Asia as an increasingly vital pillar of its extended neighbourhood policy.

Source: IE | IDSA

PM Modi's Central Asia Visit FAQs

Q1: Why is PM Modi's Central Asia Visit important for India?

Ans: PM Modi's Central Asia Visit strengthens India's strategic, economic and security engagement with a resource-rich region considered part of India's extended neighbourhood.

Q2: What resources make Central Asia important during PM Modi's Central Asia Visit?

Ans: PM Modi's Central Asia Visit highlights access to uranium, natural gas, gold, hydropower, coal and other resources vital for India's energy and economic interests.

Q3: How does connectivity feature in PM Modi's Central Asia Visit?

Ans: PM Modi's Central Asia Visit reinforces India's efforts to improve connectivity through the International North-South Transport Corridor and Iran's Chabahar port.

Q4: What security concerns shape PM Modi's Central Asia Visit?

Ans: PM Modi's Central Asia Visit addresses security challenges arising from Afghanistan, potential radicalism, terrorism and China's expanding strategic influence across Central Asia.

Q5: How does Uzbekistan feature in PM Modi's Central Asia Visit?

Ans: PM Modi's Central Asia Visit with Uzbekistan builds on deep civilisational links, including Buddhist heritage, linguistic similarities, cultural connections and growing bilateral trade.

Glacial Collapse: The Science Behind the Nepal-Tibet Floods

August 29, 2026

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Flash floods devastated Nepal's Rasuwa district and parts of Tibet this week. Officials initially suspected an earthquake. Experts and the US Geological Survey later confirmed the seismic signal was a result of a glacial collapse — not its cause.
This raised a key question: what exactly is a glacial collapse, and how frequent are such events?

What Is a Glacial Collapse?

A glacial collapse is the sudden detachment of a large mass of ice, rock, and water from a glacier.
It occurs on steep mountain slopes. Sometimes millions of cubic metres of material break away. This mass can transform into a fast-moving, ice-rich avalanche or debris flow.
The term is not a formal scientific definition in glaciology. It is, however, widely used to describe such events.
The journal Earth System Science Data describes this broader category as gravity-driven failures of glacier ice. It includes ice avalanches, glacier detachments, and rock-ice avalanches.

How a Glacier Forms and Collapses

A glacier forms when snow builds up and survives several melting seasons. These layers compress into firn — a stage between fresh snow and solid glacial ice. Over time, firn recrystallises into ice, becoming part of the glacier.
Once the glacial mass grows heavy enough, it begins to flow outward. Steep mountain gradients cause this outward flow, which can trigger collapse.
Warming temperatures add to the risk. Melted water collects in channels beneath the glacier. When the glacier's lower portion collapses, these channels open suddenly, releasing water in large volumes.
As the ice mass moves over uneven terrain, stress builds up. This stress can exceed the ice's structural strength, causing fractures.
Surface melting adds further weakness: water seeps into cracks, and repeated freeze-thaw cycles force these cracks apart until the ice splits through.

Role of the Glacier's Base

What lies beneath a glacier also matters. Many Himalayan glaciers rest on soft mud or clay — known as "wet-base" glaciers.
In these cases, water collects in large quantities at the glacier's base, sometimes connected through internal tunnels.
When such glaciers collapse, the sudden rush of water mixes with loose dirt, rock, and riverbed material. This debris-laden torrent can race down narrow valleys at very high speed.
Collapsed ice and rock can also block river channels, forming temporary natural dams.
When such dams break under pressure, they trigger a second wave of flooding — exactly what happened in Nepal this week.

How Common Are Glacial Collapses?

Glacial collapses remain rare and highly unusual, according to scientists and geologists.
Only a handful of such events have been documented over the past decade — though Tibet has emerged as a hotspot for some of the world's largest recorded cases.
Notable past instances include:
- July 2016, Aru Range, Tibet: A valley glacier's lower section detached, releasing about 68 million cubic metres of ice and killing nine herders and hundreds of animals. A nearby glacier collapsed two months later, releasing about 83 million cubic metres — NASA called it a rare occurrence.
- 2018, Sedongpu Basin, Tibet: Two ice-rock avalanches spilled debris into the Yarlung Tsangpo River (upper Brahmaputra), blocking it and forming a dangerous temporary lake.
- November 2022, Bukadaban Feng glacier, Kunlun Mountains: About 40 million cubic metres of ice detached, crashing into a lake below and creating a 13-metre wave. It went unnoticed initially due to the remote location.
- 2018, Ronti Peak, Uttarakhand, India: About 27 million cubic metres of rock and glacier ice collapsed, killing over 200 people — though this was classified more as a rock avalanche coupled with ice.
- May 2025, Blatten, Switzerland: A cascade of rock, soil, and ice buried much of the village. Experts linked the collapse to climate change in the Alps.

The Climate Change Question

Experts noted that climate change in the Himalayas shows increased heatwaves, glacial retreat, and permafrost reduction — all of which can drive landslides and glacial outburst floods.
Glaciers across the Hindu Kush Himalaya region — spanning Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan — lost ice 65% faster between 2011-2020 than in the previous decade.
Nepal's glaciers alone have lost nearly one-third of their ice volume over roughly three decades, according to a 2023 UN assessment.
Hydrologists flagged a critical warning-system challenge: the absence of rainfall before such events defeat most operational flood warning systems, which typically rely on precipitation data.
By the time a mud flow becomes visible, it is often too late to escape — the fast-moving mixture behaves "like liquid concrete."

Conclusion

Glacial collapses remain rare geological events, but their consequences can be catastrophic — as seen in the Nepal-Tibet floods.
While scientists resist attributing any single event directly to climate change, the broader pattern of accelerated Himalayan glacial melt raises the risk of such collapses recurring.
This underscores the urgent need for improved seismic and satellite monitoring, early-warning systems attuned to non-rainfall triggers, and greater regional cooperation to protect downstream communities.

Source: IE | AJ

Glacial Collapse FAQs

Q1: What is Glacial Collapse?

Ans: Glacial Collapse is the sudden detachment of ice, rock and water from a glacier, potentially creating fast-moving avalanches, debris flows and catastrophic flooding.

Q2: How does Glacial Collapse occur?

Ans: Glacial Collapse can occur when accumulated stress, steep terrain, fractures, surface melting and water beneath glaciers weaken ice beyond its structural strength.

Q3: What role does a glacier's base play in Glacial Collapse?

Ans: A wet glacier base can accumulate water beneath the ice; Glacial Collapse may then release debris-laden torrents and trigger temporary river blockages.

Q4: How common are Glacial Collapse events?

Ans: Glacial Collapse events are rare and highly unusual, with only a handful documented over the past decade, although Tibet has recorded major examples.

Q5: Is Glacial Collapse caused by climate change?

Ans: Scientists avoid attributing individual Glacial Collapse events directly to climate change, but accelerated Himalayan melting, permafrost loss and retreating glaciers may increase risks.