UPSC/KPSC Current Affairs: 20th December 2025

• CM flags off 81 ‘Arogya Sethu’ mobile health units

Context: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah flagged off 81 ‘Arogya Sethu’ Mobile Health Units (MHUs) aimed at delivering primary healthcare services to people living in remote, inaccessible, forest and hilly regions of Karnataka.

• Launching the units in front of the grand steps of the Suvarna Vidhana Soudha in Belagavi, the Chief Minister said the initiative was intended to ensure that quality healthcare reaches citizens who have so far remained outside the formal health system.
• The mobile units, rolled out under the theme “Healthcare at the remotest village”, will provide doorstep healthcare services in hard-to-reach areas, including 32 Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (SC/ST)-reserved constituencies. Of the total 81 units, 49 are being implemented under the National Health Mission (NHM), while 32 are funded through the State government’s Scheduled Caste Sub-Plan and Tribal Sub-Plan (SCSP/TSP) allocations.
• Health Minister Dinesh Gundu Rao said each mobile health unit will be staffed with an MBBS doctor, a nurse and a laboratory technician. The services offered will include outpatient consultations, basic diagnostic tests using rapid diagnostic kits, free medicines, referral services and community health monitoring. The units will also support the implementation of national and State health programmes in remote regions, the Minister said.
• The MHUs will be implemented at the district level with decentralised monitoring and supervision, enabling flexibility based on local needs and geographical conditions.
• Officials said the units would also be deployed during medical emergencies and disasters.
• As per the operational plan, each unit will ​conduct medical camps in two to three villages a day on fixed schedules, with prior intimation to residents. The vehicles have been procured on an outsourcing basis, while human resources will be engaged on a contractual basis.
• Officials said the ​operational cost has been pegged at ₹1.92 lakh per unit per month, with an annual expenditure of ₹1,686.24 lakh for all 81 units. Of the total, 41 vehicles have been allotted to the North Karnataka region.
• Raichur has been allotted the highest number of mobile health units (eight), followed by Uttara Kannada (six), Kalaburagi and Dakshina Kannada (five each). Belagavi, Chamarajanagar, Kodagu, Mysuru, Udupi and Vijayanagara districts have been allotted four units each.
• Hate speech Bill passed in Council after oversix hours of debate

Context: After over six hours of debate, an adjournment and protest by the BJP in the Well of the House, The Karnataka Hate Speech and Hate Crimes (Prevention) Bill, 2025, was passed by the Karnataka Legislative Council.

• Dr. Parameshwara quoted the Supreme Court observation in Vishal Tiwari vs Union of India and others, which said, “Hate speech cannot be tolerated as it leads to loss of dignity and self-worth of the targeted group members, contributes to disharmony amongst groups, and erodes tolerance and open-mindedness.” The Minister also placed some data on increasing cases of hate speech  before the House emphasising the need for a new law.

• Govinda Rao panel report on regional imbalances will be implemented: CM

Context: Stating that the government was committed to removing regional imbalances through development, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah declared that it would implement the report of M. Govinda Rao High Power Committee for Reddressal of Regional Imbalances which is expected to be submitted in January, 2026.

Debate on issues

• “Whatever may be the requirement of funds, we will implement the committee’s recommendations fully,” the Chief Minister told the Legislative Assembly while replying to a debate on issues related to development of North Karnataka.
• The government would take measures to focus on taluks that would be identified by the Govinda Rao committee as backward, the Chief Minister said.

Backward taluks

• He pointed out that earlier measures had been taken to provide funds to the tune of ₹31,000 crore over the period of eight years to 114 taluks that had been identified as most backward, more backward and backward taluks in the State.
• However, the Govinda Rao committee had been formed later to know if regional imbalances still prevailed and the measures to be taken to tackle them, he noted.
• The disparities in terms of development were clearly visible with about 10 districts of the total 31 in Karnataka, particularly those from the northern region, having a per capita income of less than ₹2 lakh as against the State’s average per capita income of ₹3,39,813, Mr. Siddaramaiah noted.

Guarantee schemes

• He termed the guarantee schemes too as tools for removing regional imbalances. As much as 43.63% per cent of the funds meant for guarantee schemes had been spent in North Karnataka region, he pointed out.
• Of the total population of 6.95 crore in the State, North Karnataka accounted for 2.96 crore (42%). Geographically, the northern region accounted for 14 districts of the total 31 districts in the State and 97 Assembly constituencies of the total 224 in the State, he explained.
• Citing lack of dairy development in North Karnataka as one of the reasons for its backwardness, particularly in rural areas, he pointed out that as against the State’s milk production of over one crore litres a day, the northern milk unions accounted for just 10 lakh litres a day.
• Accusing the Centre of indulging in non-cooperation with the State, he alleged that the Centre had failed to keep its promise of providing assistance of ₹5,300 crore to Upper Bhadra Project as listed in its Budget a few years ago.
• Similarly, it had put a stumbling block in the path of development of North Karnataka by not notifying the award of Krishna Water Disputes Tribunal-2 and by not providing clearances to the Mahadayi drinking water project, he alleged.
• The Centre was yet to provide the State’s share of ₹13,000 crore towards Jal Jeevan Mission and ₹3,000 crore towards peripheral ring road in Bengaluru, he said, and reiterated that Karnataka had suffered a loss of ₹ 1.5 lakh crore in the last five years in terms of devolution of funds, grants and its share of Central taxes though it contributed a tax amount of ₹4.5 lakh crore a year.
• He agreed to bring out a White Paper on the status of promises made for the development of North Karnataka.

• ISRO’s launch of U.S. satellite scheduled on December 24

Context: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will launch the 6,500 kg BlueBird communications satellite on December 24 from Sriharikota.

• The national space agency announced that the communication satellite developed by the U.S.-based AST SpaceMobile will be launched as part of the LVM3-M6 mission.
• “The launch of LVM3-M6 is scheduled on 24 December 2025 at 8.54 am IST from the Second Launch Pad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre,” it said. The satellite was initially scheduled to be launched on December 15, but was postponed.

• Centre plans portal to provide all forest rights services online

Context: The Union government is developing a national web portal to try and take the entire process of forest rights recognition and management online, senior officials told.

• According to a presentation prepared by the Tribal Affairs Ministry, this new portal is proposed to act as a single window for all Forest Rights Act (FRA) processes, which include filing and processing of claims (from the Gram Sabhas’ Forest Rights Committee to State-Level Monitoring Committees), issuing digital title deeds, storing legacy data on titles granted, and mapping potential forest areas over which FRA rights could be claimed in the future in the form of an FRA Atlas.
• The Ministry’s pitch came at a national consultative workshop organised by the National Tribal Research Institute in New Delhi on Friday on the challenges in implementing the 2006 Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, popularly known as the Forest Rights Act or FRA, meant to recognise generationally held and exercised rights of STs and other forest dwellers on forest land across the country.
• The law recognises various rights of forest dwellers on these lands, such as individual, community, the right to use resources, habitation, etc.
• On the sidelines of the workshop, senior officials said this portal would be part of the overarching FRA road map, which the Ministry was working to finalise by the first half of 2026. One of them said this was part of the government’s larger plans to use FRA records to identify beneficiaries for the saturation of existing government welfare schemes.

Beta version

• A beta version of the portal has been developed, and it is being called TARANG for the time being, an official said.
• At the workshop, while Tribal Affairs Minister Jual Oram stressed how FRA rights were “fundamental” to ensuring sustainable livelihoods, Tribal Affairs Secretary Ranjana Chopra spoke of the need to geotag all recognised types of forest rights and called for solutions on livelihood promotion and digitising records.
• Officials from various States where recognition of forest rights has been high are likely to be invited for a demonstration of the portal in January, according to government officials.

• Child trafficking a deeply disturbing reality, says SC

Context: SC judgment emphasises that courts must not disbelieve the testimony of a trafficked child just because of minor inconsistencies in her evidence; says she must be treated as an injured witness.

• The Supreme Court, in a judgment, observed that child trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of children by organised cartels is a “deeply disturbing reality” in India which continues to flourish despite protective laws.
• The court said child trafficking networks have a complex and layered structure which operate at various levels of recruiting, transporting, harbouring, and exploiting minor victims.
• The judgment, which laid down guidelines for appreciating evidence in child trafficking cases, said courts must not disbelieve the testimony of a trafficked child just because of minor inconsistencies in her evidence.
• “Such organised crime activities operate as apparently independent verticals whose insidious intersections are conveniently veiled through subterfuge and deception to hoodwink innocent victims,” a Bench of Justices Manoj Misra and Joymalya Bagchi said.
• A victim’s sole testimony must suffice if her version appeared to be credible and convincing. A trafficked child must not be treated as an accomplice by the courts. “Her deposition is to be given due regard and credence as that of an injured witness,” the court directed.
• Justice Bagchi, who authored the judgment, termed child trafficking and sexual exploitation as an offence that struck at the very foundations of dignity and bodily integrity.
• The judgment concerned a minor who was forcibly pushed into illicit sexual intercourse by a gang of traffickers in Bengaluru. Her persistent refusal to consent had led her to be confined in a rental apartment, until she was rescued by the police in November 2010.
• The top court, while upholding the conviction of the gang members under the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, said the case laid bare the “moral and material abandonment” of a child whom the state was constitutionally obliged to protect from harm’s way.
• Justice Bagchi said courts must not discard a trafficked victim’s version as improbable or “against ordinary human conduct” solely on the ground of her failure to promptly protest against the “ostensibly innocuous yet ominous agenda of the trafficker”.
• “Diffused and apparently disjoint manner in which the crime verticals operate in areas of recruitment, transportation, harbouring and exploitation make it difficult, if not impossible, for the victim to narrate with precision and clarity the interplay of these processes…,” Justice Bagchi observed.

Recognise vulnerability

• In the present case, the victim’s testimony about the topography of the rented apartment was rebutted by two prosecution witnesses, prompting the defence to attempt to discredit her evidence.
• The Bench underscored that courts must bear in mind, while examining a victim, her “inherent socio-economic and, at times, cultural vulnerability when the minor belongs to a marginalised or socially and culturally backward community”.
• Judicial appreciation of the victim’s evidence must be marked by sensitivity and realism, it said.

• WHO meet boosts collaboration on global health: PM

Context: The second WHO Global Summit on Traditional Medicine facilitated dialogues among Health Ministers and representatives of various countries, opening up new avenues for promoting joint research, simplifying regulations, and advancing training and knowledge sharing, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at the closing ceremony of the summit at Bharat Mandapam. 

• He said that over the past three days, experts in the field of traditional medicine from across the world engaged in serious and meaningful discussions.   “It is India’s privilege and a matter of pride that the WHO Global Centre for Traditional Medicine has been established in Jamnagar,” said the Prime Minister.

Digital technology

• He said the summit gave an opportunity to showcase digital health technology, AI-based tools, research innovations, and modern wellness infrastructure, which together showed a new collaboration between tradition and technology.
• “When tradition and technology come together, the capacity to make global health more effective increases significantly, and therefore the success of this summit holds great importance from a global perspective,” he said.
• He highlighted the launch of the Traditional Medicine Global Library as an international platform aimed at preserving scientific data and policy documents related to traditional medicine in one place. 
• Emphasising India’s focus on “partnerships of healing” globally, Mr. Modi shared two key collaborations: the establishment of a Centre of Excellence for BIMSTEC countries, covering South and South-East Asia, and a collaboration with Japan aimed at integrating science, traditional practices, and health. 

• Corporates have fundamental duty to protect the ecosystem, asserts SC

Context: The Supreme Court interpreted ‘corporate social responsibility’ or CSR to inherently include environmental responsibility, holding that the legal person of a corporation has a fundamental duty to protect the environment as a key organ of society.

• “The corporate duty must evolve from merely protecting the shareholders to protecting the ecosystem that we all inhabit. Therefore, the corporate definition of ‘social responsibility’ must inherently include ‘environmental responsibility’,” a Bench of Justices P.S. Narasimha and Atul S. Chandurkar held in a judgment.
• The judgment was based on petitions highlighting the cause of a near-extinct bird species — the Great Indian Bustard, “one of the heaviest flying birds in the world and a flagship species of the arid and semi-arid grasslands of the Indian subcontinent”, primarily located in and around the Great Thar desert.
• The court brought companies under the ambit of Article 51A(g) of the Constitution, which imposes a fundamental duty on every citizen “to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wildlife, and to have compassion for living creatures”.
• “Companies cannot assert to be socially responsible while ignoring equal claims of the environment and other beings of the ecosystem…,” Justice Narasimha, who authored the judgment, reasoned.
• The court explained that allocation of CSR funds by companies for the protection of the environment cannot be seen as “a voluntary act of charity”, but a fulfilment of a Constitutional obligation.

Shared environment

• “The obligation to protect endangered species is paramount… Where corporate activities such as mining, power generation, or infrastructure threaten the habitat of endangered species, the ‘polluter pays’ principle mandates that the company bears the cost of species recovery. CSR funds must, therefore, be directed towards ex-situ and in-situ conservation efforts to prevent extinction,” the court said.
• Non-renewable power generators operating near the habitats of the Great Indian Bustard in Rajasthan and Gujarat must always remember that they share the environment with the bird and must undertake their activities as if they were “guests in its abode”, Justice Narasimha said.
• The court also upheld an expert committee’s recommendations to revise the priority areas to 14,013 sq. km and 740 sq km for Rajasthan and Gujarat, respectively.

• ‘Too low an inflationa cause for concern’

Context: Prevailing low inflation will squeeze profit margins, increase real valueof debt and interest rates for private sector, says MPC’s external member.

• Although low inflation rate and high growth led the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) to reduce repo rate by 25 basis points (bps) earlier this month to support growth, the drastic fall in inflation numbers remained a cause for concern, the minutes of the MPC released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) indicate.
• “The current inflation rate is actually too low, breaching the lower bound in the flexible inflation targeting regime, especially if precious metals like gold are excluded. Besides, too low an inflation rate is not healthy for a developing country like India, suggesting a demand deficit,” external MPC member Nagesh Kumar wrote.
• He said inflation not only continued to remain benign, the headline CPI too declined further to 0.3% in October 2025, largely driven by decreasing food prices. “It is in contrast to FY25: Q2, when the growth was slowing, but inflation was at relatively high levels,” he pointed out.
• Stating that inflation had continued to undershoot forecasts, external MPC member Saugata Bhattacharya said while the low prints had largely emanated from a small set of components, the broader basket of “underlying” inflation too was likely to undershoot the inflation target for many months.
• “In addition, there is little to signal a risk of potential overheating of capacity even if growth momentum were to sustain. Household inflation expectations remain well anchored and have responded to the recent sharp drop in inflation,” he stated.
• External member Prof. Ram Singh said in his statement that the prevailing low inflation would squeeze profit margins and increase the real value of debt and interest rates for the private sector.
• “Disinflationary expectations running across several quarters can dampen and defer private-sector investment even in the short run. As MSMEs’ businesses operate in highly competitive markets and have limited ability to raise prices through the market power channel but the wages tend to be downward sticky, low inflation is detrimental to their interests as well,” he emphasised.
• Deputy Governor Poonam Gupta stated that inflation had been below the 4% target for the last nine months averaging 2.3% and was likely to remain well contained for at least nine more months. “The average inflation for 2025-26 is projected to be 2.0%, down by 60 bps from the October policy.
• The most crucial recent development from the perspective of monetary policy has been the faster than anticipated moderation in CPI headline inflation,” she wrote.
• “Going ahead, good agricultural production, low food prices and exceptionally benign international commodity price outlook suggest that headline inflation for the full year (2025-26) is likely to be around 2%, half of what was projected at the beginning of the year, RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra wrote in his statement.

• RBI Board approves risk-based deposit insurance for banks

Context: The Central Board of Directors of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has approved a risk-based deposit insurance framework for banks at its meeting in Hyderabad.

• The approval follows the Central Bank’s statement in October, in which it had proposed a risk-based premium model.
• Mooted as an alternative to the existing flat rate premium-based deposit insurance scheme, the framework is expected to help banks that are more sound financially to save significantly on the premium paid.
• Detailed notification will be issued shortly and the framework will be effective from next financial year, RBI had then said.

• China requests WTO consultations with India over ICT tariffs

Context: China filed a petition with the World Trade Organisation (WTO), requesting consultations with India over New Delhi’s tariffs on information and communication technology (ICT) products and solar sector subsidies.

• A statement issued by the spokesman of the Ministry of Commerce here said India’s measures allegedly violate multiple WTO obligations, including the principle of national treatment, and constitute import substitution subsidies explicitly prohibited under WTO rules.

‘Unfair advantages’

• “They grant unfair competitive advantages to India’s domestic industries while undermining China’s interests,” the statement said. It urged India to honour its WTO commitments and promptly adjust these measures.
• This is the second petition filed by China at the WTO against India this year.

• UN rights chief calls for an end to revenge attacks in Bangladesh

Context: Soon after the return of the mortal remains of Sharif Osman Hadi, the upcoming leader of Inquilab Mancha, UN Human Rights chief Volker Turk has called for a “transparent investigation” into the killing and urged “everyone to refrain from violence”.

• “Retaliation and revenge will only deepen divisions and undermine the rights of all. I urge the authorities to conduct a prompt, impartial, thorough and transparent investigation into the attack that led to Hadi’s death, and to ensure due process and accountability for those responsible,” Mr. Turk said.
• Chief Adviser to the interim government Mohammad Yunus announced that funeral prayers for Hadi would be held at 2 p.m. at the South Plaza of the National Parliament of Bangladesh in Dhaka.