Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023
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Current affairsPunjab's "Pehchaan" Portal: India's First Digital System for Identifying Unidentified Deceased PersonsPunjab became the first state in India to launch "Pehchaan" — a free, publicly accessible digital portal for identifying unidentified and unclaimed deceased persons in mortuaries. Built on the existing MedLEaPR (Medico-Legal Examination and Post-Mortem Reporting System), it stores photographs, physical descriptions, and identification marks, enabling families to trace missing relatives through police and hospital mortuary records. Current affairsCensus 2027: 40 Questions, First Caste Count Since 1931, and NPR Link — Complete UPSC GuideIndia's 16th Census, scheduled for 2027, was formally notified by Registrar General Mritunjay Kumar Narayan. Its questionnaire carries 40 questions — 14 new or modified from 2011 — including individual caste (jati) enumeration for the first time since 1931, linkage to Aadhaar and NPR, and a first-ever self-enumeration portal in 16 languages. The House Listing phase began April 1, 2026; Population Enumeration is slated for February 2027. Current affairsPM Modi's Third High-Level Secretaries Meeting 2026: Data as National Asset, Port-Led Development, and AI-First GovernancePrime Minister Narendra Modi chaired the third high-level meeting with Secretaries to the Government of India on August 20, 2026, at 7 Lok Kalyan Marg, New Delhi. The session covered Infrastructure and Connectivity, Security and External Affairs, and Governance, with key directives on breaking inter-departmental silos, leveraging AI and data as national assets, port-led development, and building informal team networks across government cadres. Current affairs4th India-Singapore Ministerial Roundtable 2026: Sitharaman, Jaishankar, Goyal in Singapore for Trade, Digital, and Strategic PartnershipIndia and Singapore held the 4th India-Singapore Ministerial Roundtable (ISMR) and Business Roundtable (ISBR) in Singapore on August 20, 2026. The Indian delegation — led by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and including EAM S. Jaishankar, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw — reviewed bilateral cooperation in finance, trade, digital services, and advanced manufacturing, and signed multiple MoUs to deepen the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. Current affairsBRICS ICT Track 2026, Pune: Digital BRICS Forum, 12th Communications Ministers Meeting — India's Chairship PrioritiesIndia, as BRICS Chair 2026, is hosting the BRICS ICT Track in Pune from August 17–21, comprising the 7th BRICS ICT Working Group, Digital BRICS Forum and Expo (August 20), and the 12th BRICS Communications Ministers Meeting (August 21). The five-day programme — themed "Innovate, Cooperate and Transform for a Resilient Future" — covers cybersecurity, digital skilling, AI governance, and digital infrastructure for BRICS's 11 member nations. Current affairsSraVaani 1.0 — IISc Releases India's Broadest-Coverage Multilingual Speech Recognition Model: 65 Indian Languages and DialectsThe SPIRE Lab at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, in collaboration with ARTPARK, released SraVaani-1.0 on August 13, 2026 — the broadest-coverage Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) model for Indian languages reported to date, covering 65 languages and dialects (20 scheduled + 45 regional). The model achieves 9.5% word error rate on Garo vs 69.4% for the next-best system. It is open-source (MIT licence) on Hugging Face. Note: it is NOT India's first multilingual ASR model — AI4Bharat's IndicConformer (22 scheduled languages) predates it. Current affairsUNSC Sanctions Report Officially Attributes November 2025 Red Fort Blast to Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS)The UN Security Council's 38th Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team report (document S/2026/651, circulated 10 August 2026) officially attributes the November 2025 car-bomb blast near Delhi's Red Fort — which killed 11 people — to Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), marking the first formal UN attribution of the attack and warning that AQIS is evolving into a regional terrorist entity in South Asia. Current affairsSupreme Court Directs 19 States and UTs to Declare Cancer a Notifiable Disease for Early Detection and Uniform CareA Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant directed 19 states and Union Territories to declare cancer a "notifiable disease" to enable systematic early detection, uniform treatment, and data-driven public health planning. The order came in a PIL filed by Dr Anurag Srivastava, a former AIIMS surgeon, noting that only 17 of India's 36 states and UTs had complied with a parliamentary standing committee recommendation to notify cancer. Current affairsBankers' Books Evidence Bill, 2026: India Repeals 135-Year-Old Colonial Banking LawThe Lok Sabha passed the Bankers' Books Evidence Bill, 2026 on 5 August 2026, repealing the 135-year-old Bankers' Books Evidence Act, 1891. The new law expands the definition of "bankers' books" to cover digital, cloud-based, and electronic records, and makes certified copies of such records admissible as prima facie evidence in courts, arbitrations, and regulatory investigations.