Current Affairs — 30 May 2026

📖 Explanation

Hyderabad-based Skyroot Aerospace raised 60 million dollars at a 1.1 billion dollar valuation in May 2026, making it India's first space-tech unicorn. The funds will be used to scale launches of Vikram-1, India's first privately built orbital rocket, planned for lift-off later in the year from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. GalaxEye placed Mission Drishti in orbit while Pixxel won a US National Reconnaissance Office contract during the same month.

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Mission Drishti, built by GalaxEye, is described as the world's first OptoSAR satellite because it combines optical imaging and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) on a single platform. It was launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Vandenberg, California, and is intended for defence, agriculture, disaster management, maritime monitoring and infrastructure planning. India already operates 29 active earth observation satellites, to which Mission Drishti adds.

📖 Explanation

Apsara, which went critical in August 1956 at Trombay, was India's first research reactor and also the first research reactor in Asia. The Atomic Energy Commission was set up in 1948 and the Department of Atomic Energy in 1954 under Dr Homi Bhabha. India's first commercial nuclear power plant was the Tarapur Atomic Power Station, which started operating in 1969. The three-stage programme uses PHWRs, then Fast Breeder Reactors, and finally thorium-based reactors.

📖 Explanation

India's three-stage nuclear programme begins with Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors fuelled by natural uranium, moves to Fast Breeder Reactors that produce more fissile material than they consume to build up a plutonium stockpile, and finally aims at thorium-based reactors to tap India's vast thorium reserves. This sequence was designed because India has limited natural uranium but plentiful thorium, making long-term energy security through thorium utilisation the strategic goal.

📖 Explanation

Listed companies have up to 60 days to report fourth-quarter results, and tax, subsidy and expenditure data from the Controller General of Accounts are finalised only at the end of May. Releasing the GDP figures on the same day made it difficult to use this fresh information. The change pushes the Q4 and provisional annual release to 7 June (or the previous working day), helping the National Statistical Office estimate Gross Value Added with better corporate and government data. For 2026, the release will be on 5 June.

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The Supreme Court bench of Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice R. Mahadevan set aside the SEBI direction asking Reliance Industries to disgorge Rs 447 crore in connection with the November 2007 trading of Reliance Petroleum Limited futures. The court held that the use of twelve agency entities alone did not amount to fraud under the PFUTP Regulations. It also ordered SEBI to refund the Rs 250 crore that RIL had deposited in the Investor Protection Fund under a 17 December 2020 interim order.

📖 Explanation

The case turned on the SEBI (Prohibition of Fraudulent and Unfair Trade Practices relating to the Securities Market) Regulations, commonly called the PFUTP Regulations. The court held that the threshold for fraud under these regulations is high and cannot be met by inference alone. The regulator had to prove not just the existence of agency agreements but how those agreements were actually used in a fraudulent or manipulative manner. The court also said SEBI used the wrong base — only the futures segment — to calculate Reliance's market share rather than the entire derivatives market.

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Ajit Doval met Nikolai Patrushev, aide to the Russian President and Chairman of Russia's Maritime Board, in Moscow on 29 May 2026. Their talks covered the Arctic or Northern Sea Route, maritime connectivity, shipbuilding cooperation, defence collaboration and training of Indian sailors for polar operations. Doval was in Moscow for the first International Security Forum and separately met First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov on 28 May 2026 to discuss defence, energy and space cooperation. India has been a permanent observer at the Arctic Council since 2013.

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The RBI annual report for FY26, released on 30 May 2026, identified the war in West Asia that broke out in late February 2026 as the single biggest risk to global and Indian economic stability. The central bank warned that a prolonged escalation could push up crude oil prices, fuel commodity market volatility and disrupt key shipping routes. Consumer price inflation for FY27 has been pegged at 4.6 per cent with upside risks. The Monetary Policy Committee is widely expected to keep the repo rate unchanged at 5.25 per cent in its early-June meeting.

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A bench led by Justice Surya Kant on 29 May 2026 ruled that High Courts must pronounce judgment within three months of the date on which the verdict is reserved. Earlier, no statutory rule fixed this time, and the convention was a reasonable period of roughly two to six months. The Court also said the operative part of every judgment must be announced in open court, full written reasons must be uploaded within one week, and High Court websites must display the date of reservation. For bail orders, the order should ideally be pronounced the next day and communicated to the jail the same day.

📖 Explanation

NFHS-6 found that the share of women who had used the internet at least once rose from 33.3 per cent in NFHS-5 (2019-2021) to 64.3 per cent in 2023-24, almost a doubling. Bank account ownership among women grew from 78.6 per cent to 89 per cent, mobile phone ownership rose from 53.9 per cent to 63.6 per cent, and hygienic menstrual protection use among women aged 15 to 24 moved up from 77.6 per cent to 79.2 per cent. The survey covered around 6.79 lakh households across 715 districts.

📖 Explanation

NFHS-6, conducted during 2023-24 by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare with IIPS Mumbai as the nodal agency, found that 90.6 per cent of births now take place in a hospital or recognised health facility, up from 88.6 per cent in NFHS-5. Antenatal care coverage stands at 95.9 per cent, while four-or-more antenatal visits rose from 58.5 to 65.2 per cent. The share of births in public facilities, however, slipped from 61.9 per cent to 58.6 per cent, indicating a steady shift towards private hospitals.

📖 Explanation

The IBC moved India from a debtor-in-possession model, where promoters kept running the company during insolvency, to a creditor-in-control model. Once an insolvency application is admitted, the existing management is replaced by a resolution professional and the Committee of Creditors takes the major commercial decisions. The Supreme Court has upheld this framework in cases such as Ramakrishnan (2018), Lalit Kumar Jain (2021) and Ghanshyam Mishra (2021). The RBI's June 2017 Dirty Dozen direction sent twelve large defaulters to the NCLT under this code.

📖 Explanation

A kill switch is an emergency control that disables a system or service immediately. In banking, the proposed feature would let a customer who fears that fraudsters are pushing them to transfer money tap one button to freeze all outgoing transactions across the account. The RBI is also planning to extend the existing switch on or switch off option from cards to UPI, internet banking and other channels. The trigger is the rise in digital arrest scams, with customers estimated to have lost around Rs 3,000 crore. The Supreme Court took suo motu notice of the issue in October 2025.

📖 Explanation

A polymer banknote is printed on a thin, flexible plastic film instead of cotton-based paper. Despite the label plastic, these notes are foldable and handled like ordinary notes. Their key advantage is durability — they resist dirt, water and tearing, so they stay in circulation longer and reduce replacement costs over time. They can also carry advanced security features such as see-through windows and micro-optic holograms, which makes counterfeiting harder. India had earlier piloted polymer Rs 10 notes in 2012 across cities such as Kochi, Mysore, Jaipur, Bhubaneswar and Shimla, but shelved it due to ATM-handling issues. More than 60 countries already use polymer notes, with Australia being the first in 1988.

📖 Explanation

The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue began informally after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami when the four navies coordinated disaster relief. A formal dialogue was launched in 2007 but lost momentum within a year and was revived in 2017. It has no binding treaty, no collective defence clause and no permanent secretariat. The New Delhi meeting on 26 May 2026 focused on maritime domain awareness, resilient supply chains, critical minerals and energy security. The first joint deliverable announced was a port infrastructure project in Fiji. China has rejected the grouping, with Foreign Minister Wang Yi having earlier compared it to sea foam.

📖 Explanation

The TRAI rule, framed in 2013, permits 10 minutes of commercial spots and an additional 2 minutes of self-promotional content in every clock hour, adding up to 12 minutes. A division bench of Justice Anil Kshetarpal and Justice Amit Mahajan rejected broadcasters' challenge under Articles 14 and 19, holding that TRAI was acting within its statutory powers. The bench said spectrum is a scarce public resource and viewers have a right to a fair viewing experience. The Indian cap is in line with global practice in countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Ireland, Argentina and Croatia, where the ceiling typically lies between 9 and 12 minutes per hour.

📖 Explanation

Section 139(1) of the BSF Act, 1968 allows the central government to notify a belt along the international border where the BSF can exercise preventive powers under listed central laws such as the Criminal Procedure Code, the Passport (Entry into India) Act and the Passports Act. The BSF can arrest, search and seize but must hand over the accused and seized material to the state police within 24 hours, and cannot investigate or prosecute on its own. The October 2021 notification widened this belt to 50 km in Punjab, West Bengal and Assam, trimmed Gujarat's 80 km to 50 km, and kept Rajasthan at 50 km. Home Minister Amit Shah's directive on 26 May 2026 focused enforcement on the core 15 km zone.

📖 Explanation

RBI's Basic Statistical Return-1 for end-March 2026 shows total bank credit growth accelerated to 14.1 per cent year-on-year, up from 11.1 per cent a year earlier. The share of female borrowers in individual bank credit edged up to 24.7 per cent from 23.8 per cent. The share of loans carrying interest rates below 9 per cent rose to 64.2 per cent from 43.9 per cent, signalling effective transmission of rate cuts. Metropolitan branches held 58.2 per cent of credit, while personal loans grew 12.9 per cent and accounted for 30.7 per cent of total credit. Loans to private corporates grew much faster at 15.5 per cent.