Prelims Focus 5th September 2026

Bar Council of India (BCI)

In News: Supreme Court decisively ruled that the Bar Council of India (BCI) cannot have any statutory authority to govern the conduct of law students prior to their enrolment as advocates.

• The BCI is a statutory body, formed under Section 4 of the Advocates Act, 1961, which deals with the regulation of legal practice and legal education in India.
• Its members are elected from amongst the lawyers in India and, as such, represent the Indian bar.
• Structure:
  • It consists of members elected from each state bar council, and the Attorney General of India and the Solicitor General of India, who are ex officio members.
  • The council has its own chairman and vice-chairman, who are elected from among its members for a term of two years.
• Functions:
  • Sets codes of professional practice and etiquette for advocates. 
  • Sets guidelines for legal education. 
  • Gives university degrees in law a degree of recognition. 
  • Protects the rights, privileges and interests of advocates.
  • Improve and encourage law reform.
  • Deal with and dispose of any matter which may be referred by a State Bar Council.
  • Organise and provide legal aid to the poor.
  • To accept foreign qualifications in law from outside India as an advocate.

Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

In News: The SpaceX rocket sent into space is carrying the space telescope called Nancy Grace Roman, named after “the mother of Hubble,” who was a trailblazer in space-based astronomy.

• Vantage point: Space-based, from Lagrange point 2 (LP-2) approximately 1.2 million km from Earth, where the combined gravity of the Sun and the Earth provides stability and a clear picture of the cosmos. This is also the operating range for James Webb.
• Instruments onboard:
• Wide Field Instrument: A 300-megapixel infrared camera that will image a 1.5-times larger “field of view” across the sky, and with 1,000 times the speed of Hubble.
• Coronagraph: Masks bright starlight to detect faint reflected light from orbiting planets, like the protectors used to observe the Corona of the Sun.

Thorium-based Fuel For Nuclear Reactor 

In News: Indigenous nuclear scientist Anil Kakodkar has recommended the use of thorium fuel in the country’s indigenous pressurised heavy water reactor (PHWR) fleet along with the country’s three-stage nuclear programme.

• India has small uranium reserves but very large thorium reserves in the world. 
• The DAE has, therefore, drawn up a nuclear power program in three stages, which is based on the concept of a closed fuel cycle for the best utilisation of the available resources. 
• The goal is to gradually expand the domestic fissile material supply and to become energy independent in the long-term.
• Stage 1: Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWR): The PHWRs will be fuelled by natural uranium and will generate power. The used fuel from these reactors produces plutonium as the primary feed for the next step.
• Stage 2: Fast Breeder Reactors (FBR): The fuel used is the Plutonium obtained at Stage 1.
  • This fuel is used in Fast Breeder Reactors, which generate excess fuel. Kalpakkam PFBR is India’s foray into this. These reactors will produce U-233 from thorium, thus entering into Stage 3.
• Stage 3: Thorium-fuelled reactors: This will be when India’s vast thorium reserves will be put to full use and the Uranium-233 produced at Stage 2 will be used as fuel.
  • This is the turning point in India’s long-term energy security, as thorium is a virtually limitless source of energy.

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