30th June 2026

Explanation – In an international armed conflict, neutral merchant vessels are generally protected from attack. This protection comes from a combination of International Humanitarian Law, the law of naval warfare, and the law of the sea, especially the principles reflected in UNCLOS.

Two Main Legal Frameworks:

• The first is the law of naval warfare, which governs military conduct at sea. It regulates attack on vessels, visit and search, capture and destruction after capture, naval blockades, and rights and duties of belligerents and neutral states.
• The second is the law of the sea, mainly reflected in the UNCLOS. It defines territorial sea, Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), high seas, and international straits.
• Even where some states are not parties to UNCLOS, many of its rules are treated as customary international law.

Explanation – A blockade is recognised under the law of naval warfare as a belligerent tool, but only if it is publicly declared, effective, applied impartially to all vessels, and enforced according to international law.

Neutral ships can be stopped or even attacked if they are knowingly breaching a lawful blockade, but this raises an additional legal issue: whether the blockade itself is lawful under the UN Charter. That is where jus ad bellum and jus in bello must be distinguished. Jus ad bellum concerns the legality of using force in the first place. Jus in bello concerns the legality of conduct during war.

A blockade may satisfy technical rules of naval warfare, but still be unlawful if the broader use of force lacks justification under the UN Charter. Unless there is UN Security Council authorisation or a valid claim of self-defence under Article 51, the use of force may itself be unlawful. This matters because belligerent rights like blockade enforcement cannot automatically override the UN Charter’s prohibition on the use of force.

Explanation – It is India’s largest integrated digital agro-advisory platform launched in 2021. It provides timely, authentic, and multilingual advisories to farmers. Farmers also get access to schemes, weather updates, and expert consultations. It is a joint initiative of the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology and the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare. The Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute and the Digital India Corporation implement the platform.

The platform uses the Interactive Information Dissemination System (IIDS). IIDS enables two-way communication between farmers and experts. It supports lab-to-land transfer of agricultural knowledge. It connects farmers with Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs), ICAR institutes and agricultural universities.

Features of Kisan Sarathi Platform:

• It provides personalised advisory based on farm and farmer profile.
• It offers live interaction in 13 regional languages with domain experts.
• It provides access to the farmer’s knowledge database.
• It connects farmers directly with agricultural experts.
• Farmers can get region-specific, real-time advisories on weather updates, market prices, and more.
• It helps farmers discover government schemes suitable to their specific needs.
• It provides advisories for all major cereals, pulses, oilseeds, horticulture crops, plantation crops, and fodder crops and also for the livestock, poultry, fisheries, and allied sectors.
• Farmers can raise queries to KVK experts and receive advice in their local languages.
• Farmers can easily access the mandi prices and district-wise market rates for major crops.

Explanation – GAGAN is an acronym for GPS Aided GEO Augmented Navigation. It is a Space Based Augmentation System (SBAS) jointly developed by ISRO and Airports Authority of India (AAI) to provide the best possible navigational services over Indian FIR (Flight Information Region) with the capability of expanding to neighbouring FIRs.

• GAGAN is a system of satellites and ground stations that provide GPS signal corrections, giving you better position accuracy.
• GPS alone does not meet the ICAO’s navigational requirements for accuracy, integrity and availability.
• GAGAN corrects for GPS signal errors caused by ionospheric disturbances, timing and satellite orbit errors and also provides vital information regarding the health of each satellite.

Services Offered: Aviation, forest management, railways signalling, scientific research for atmospheric studies, natural resource and land management, location-based services, mobile, and tourism.

Explanation – Rural Internal Audit Portal is a unified digital platform for end-to-end management of internal audits covering both risk-based and compliance audits. It is conceived by the Office of the Chief Controller of Accounts (CCA), Ministry of Rural Development, and developed in collaboration with the National Informatics Centre (NIC).

Objectives of the Portal:

• Digitise and simplify the entire internal audit process to improve efficiency, transparency and accountability.
• Create a centralised repository of audit units, audit observations, Action Taken Reports and audit records.
• Enable risk-based audit planning through systematic identification and prioritisation of audit units.
• Automate the generation of audit reports and standardise audit documentation.
• Facilitate real-time monitoring of audit progress, compliance status and approval workflows.
• Evaluate outputs and outcomes of internal audit interventions.

Tech architecture:

• It uses Git-based version control systems and Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) workflows.
• It also includes role-based access control, centralised monitoring systems, secure API-based integrations, automated exception handling.
• Disaster recovery protocols have also been incorporated.

Key Features of Rural Internal Audit Portal:

• End-to-End Digital Audit Management.
• Centralised Audit Repository.
• Role-Based Governance Framework.
• Real-Time Monitoring and Analytics.
• Geospatial Monitoring through Map View Module.
• Multilingual and User-Friendly Interface.
• Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Analytics: It has been designed as a future-ready platform capable of integrating Artificial Intelligence, advanced analytics and machine learning tools for risk assessment, audit prioritisation and decision support.