Current Affairs – July 27, 2026

{GS1 – A&C} Sarnath *

• Context (PIB): Sarnath has been inscribed as India’s 45^th (UP’s 4^th) UNESCO World Heritage Site during the 48^th session of the World Heritage Committee in South Korea.

• Sarnath in Uttar Pradesh is one of four holy Buddhist sites (with Lumbini, Bodh Gaya, and Kushinagar) where Gautama Buddha gave his first sermon (Dhammachakkappavattana) after enlightenment.
• It faced Huna invasions but was later restored by Harshavardhana. Sacked by Mahmud of Ghazni in the 11th century, it was revived by Mahipala and finally destroyed by Qutb-ud-din Aibak (1194 CE).
• Alternate Names: Known historically as Rishipatana, Mrigadava, or Saranganatha (Lord of the Deer).
• Excavation: Babu Jagat Singh, diwan of Raja Chait Singh of Benares, rediscovered relics in 1787–88, but colonial accounts credited Jonathan Duncan and Colonel Mackenzie. Alexander Cunningham later led systematic excavations (1834–1836).

Significance of Sarnath

• Stupas: Dhamek Stupa (500 CE) with Gupta floral carvings marks Buddha’s sermon; Chaukhandi Stupa (5th Century CE) marks where Buddha met his first disciples, with an octagonal tower added by Govardhan (son of Raja Todarmal) in 1588; Dharmarajika Stupa (3rd BCE) enshrined relics under Ashoka.
• Ashokan Pillar & Lion Capital (250 BCE): Carved from single blocks of polished Chunar sandstone, it features four lions on an abacus with a bull, horse, elephant, and lion, separated by wheels.
  • It was adopted as India’s National Emblem in 1950.
• Viharas: Dharmachakra Jina Vihara (11th century, Kumaradevi) and Mulagandha Kuti Vihara (1930s, Mahabodhi Society) served as monastic centres, with the latter showcasing murals of Buddha’s life.
  • The site also preserves Jain temples, including the Digambara Jain Temple.

{GS2 – Governance} DISHA 2.0

• Context (PIB): Centre launches Designing Innovative Solutions for Holistic Access to Justice (DISHA 2.0) with ₹255 crore outlay for technology-driven access to justice across india.

Key Features of the Scheme

• Aim: Leveraging technology to develop and enhance outreach of citizen friendly solution platforms for legal services.
• Central Sector Scheme for period 2026-31 for pan India implementation.
• Four Components:
  • Tele-Law: Connects people with panel lawyers through mobile-app and Toll-Free No. 14454 for rendering pre-litigation legal advice.
    • Engages Nyaya Sahayaks, active community based legal facilitators, in Aspirational Blocks.
  • Nyaya Bandhu (Pro-Bono Legal Services) Programme: Advocates voluntarily provide legal assistance to marginalized sections under Section 12 of Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987.
    • Pro-Bono panels have been constituted in 23 High Courts across the country.
  • Legal Literacy and Legal Awareness Programme (LLLAP): Envisages engaging with institutions and building partnerships across stakeholders, to build capacity of grassroot workers.
  • VIDHI (Vision for Integrated Delivery of Harmonized Legal Initiatives) – Sanjeevani: Enhances monitoring through development and operationalization of centralized Integrated Dashboard.
    • Envisages overall outreach to 50 lakh beneficiaries over five years i.e., 2026-31 with no state-specific targets.

Read More> DISHA Scheme I Legal Aid in India

{GS2 – MoRD} Start-up Village Entrepreneurship Programme (SVEP) *

• Context (PIB): Since its launch in 2016, the Start-up Village Entrepreneurship Programme (SVEP) has supported 4.32 lakh rural enterprises, with an average investment of ₹27,083 per enterprise.

• SVEP is a centrally sponsored sub-scheme of the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana – National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM), under the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD)
• Objective: Eliminate rural poverty and unemployment by helping Self-Help Group (SHG) households establish sustainable, non-farm micro-enterprises.
• Beneficiaries: Community institutions identify beneficiaries based on need, poverty status, and entrepreneurial potential. Women must form at least 60% of all beneficiaries.
• Delivery: SVEP operates on a decentralised model managed by the State Rural Livelihoods Missions:
  1. Block Resource Centre: Single-window advisory hubs managing training, business databases, and regional enterprise activities.
  2. Block Enterprises Promotion Committee (BEPC): Selected representatives from the highest tier of community federation, leading the block-level project and driving enterprise promotion.
  3. Community Resource Persons – Enterprise Promotion (CRP-EP): Trained local mentors providing end-to-end business guidance and operational support to up to 50 enterprises each. At least 90% must be from SHG households, with a minimum of 60% being women.
  4. Community Enterprise Fund (CEF): Dedicated capital fund managed by community institutions such as SHG federations to provide seed capital and bridge the credit gap.
• Project Cycle: The administrative block serves as the base unit, with a project budget of up to ₹6.50 Crore over a fixed four-year cycle. The community assumes management thereafter.

• Significance: Encourages localised production, bridges the credit gap, reduces rural-to-urban migration pressure, and builds a rural entrepreneurial ecosystem.

{GS3 – Agri} Soil Health Conservation in India **

• Context (PIB): Ministry of Agriculture highlighted India’s efforts to conserve soil health to strengthen agricultural sustainability and climate resilience.

Need for Soil Health Conservation

• Agricultural Sustainability: Agriculture covers nearly 59% of India’s reported area, making healthy soil essential for productivity, nutrition and reduced external inputs.
• Livelihood Security: Agriculture employs over 46% of India’s workforce, making soil degradation a threat to rural incomes, poverty reduction and economic stability.
• Global Commitments: Soil preservation is necessary to achieve UN SDGs such as SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) and SDG 13 (Climate Action) by 2030.
• Carbon Mitigation: Soil stores atmospheric carbon as Soil Organic Carbon (SOC), whose average level reportedly declined from 1% to 0.3% over 70 years.
• Salinity Prevention: Unscientific irrigation and poor drainage have raised salinity and waterlogging; by 2050, 50% of arable land worldwide could be affected without preservation efforts.

Government Initiatives for Soil Resilience

Read More > Soil Degradation in India

{GS3 – IE} Bharat Audyogik Vikas Yojana Rasayan (BHAVYA Rasayan)

• Context (PIB): Union Cabinet approved the BHAVYA Rasayan scheme under the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers to establish 3 dedicated Chemical Parks on a plug-and-play model.

• Objective: Expand chemical manufacturing, attract FDI, reduce import reliance, and lower logistics costs for downstream sectors (Pharma, Textiles, Agrochemicals, Automobiles, and Electronics)
• Outlay: ₹3,030 crore is allocated over 5 years, from FY 2026-27 to FY 2030-31. Of this, ₹3,000 crore funds shared utilities like Common Effluent Treatment Plants and Treatment, Storage and Disposal Facilities.
• Funding: Centre will provide a grant-in-aid of up to ₹1,000 crore per park. Participating state governments must contribute a minimum of ₹500 crore per park.
• Selection: Each park requires a minimum contiguous, encumbrance-free area of 2,000 acres (8 sq. km). Locations will be awarded to states through a competitive, challenge-based selection route.

{Prelims – DM} Typhoon Noul

• Context (TOI): Typhoon Noul made landfall in southern China’s Guangdong province.

• It originated over the Philippine Sea (Western North Pacific Ocean), northeast of the Philippines.
• The name “Noul” is contributed by South Korea and means “the glow of sunrise or sunset.”
• A typhoon is a tropical cyclone that forms over the northwestern Pacific Ocean. It is called Hurricane in the North Atlantic and northeastern Pacific, Typhoon in the northwestern Pacific and Cyclone in the North Indian Ocean and South Pacific.

Read More> Tropical Cyclones: Favourable Conditions, Formation & Structure

{Prelims – IR} East Asia Summit (EAS)

• Context (NOA): External Affairs Minister addressed the 16th EAS Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Manila, Philippines and called for safety and unblocking of International Waterways.

About EAS

• Genesis: Initiated in 2005 with the convening of the 1^st East Asia Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
• Nature: Leaders-led forum for dialogue and cooperation on broad strategic, political, and economic issues of common interest for promoting peace, stability, and economic prosperity in East Asia.
  • Involves Meeting of Heads of States/Governments of EAS participating countries convened annually.
• Participating Countries: Included 16 countries at its inception namely ASEAN Member States, Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, and the Republic of Korea.
  • United States and Russian Federation joined at 6^th East Asia Summit in Bali, Indonesia in 2011.
• Key Documents: 2005 Kuala Lumpur Declaration, 2010 Ha Noi Declaration on Fifth Anniversary, 2011 Declaration on Principles for Mutually Beneficial Relations, 2015 Kuala Lumpur Declaration on the 10^th Anniversary, and 2020 Ha Noi Declaration on 15^th Anniversary.

{Prelims – PIN World} Black Sea *

• Context (NOA): Ministry of External Affairs condemned the attack on the commercial vessel MV OMORFI in the Black Sea, reportedly within Russian territorial waters, which killed one Indian crew member.

• Black Sea is an inland marginal sea located between Southeastern Europe and Western Asia. It links to the Mediterranean Sea through the Bosporus Strait, the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles Strait, and connects to the Sea of Azov via the Kerch Strait.
• The sea is bordered by six countries: Turkey (south), Bulgaria and Romania (west), Ukraine (north), Russia (northeast), and Georgia (east).
• Topography: It is flanked by the Pontic Mountains to the south, the Caucasus Mountains to the east, and the Crimean Mountains to the north, with flat plains and steppes in the west and northwest.
• Black Sea is a meromictic basin, where upper and lower water layers rarely mix. Massive freshwater inflow from Europe’s largest river systems (Danube, Dnieper, Dniester) keeps its surface salinity at about 17-18 ppt (half the global ocean average).
• Transit Regime: The 1936 Montreux Convention grants Turkey control over the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits and regulates the passage and tonnage of naval warships from non-Black Sea nations.

{Prelims – S&T} ContactSeek

• Context (TH): Researchers have developed ContactSeek, a novel AI based computational tool that significantly improves the precision and safety of DNA base editing.

• It leverages AlphaFold3, Google’s advanced AI model for predicting biomolecular structures and interactions, to accurately map protein–DNA contacts.
• It predicts how different regions (amino acid residues) of gene-editing proteins physically interact with DNA, helping identify structural features responsible for off-target editing.
• Researchers used ContactSeek to engineer improved versions of widely used CRISPR-based base editors, including Cas9, thereby reducing off-target DNA modifications while maintaining editing efficiency.

What is DNA Base Editing?

• DNA base editing is a next-generation genome-editing technology that enables scientists to directly convert one DNA base (A, T, G or C) into another without creating double-stranded DNA breaks.
• Unlike conventional CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, which cuts both strands of DNA before repair, base editing chemically converts one nucleotide into another, making it a more precise and potentially safer approach for correcting disease-causing genetic mutations.
• Base editing has significant therapeutic potential for treating inherited genetic disorders such as Sickle Cell Disease, Beta-thalassemia, Cystic Fibrosis, and several other monogenic diseases.

Read More> What is Gene Editing?

{Prelims – S&T} First Exomoon Detected

• Context (TH): Using the radial velocity method, astronomers have discovered an exomoon in the CD-35 2722 system, located about 73 light-years from Earth.

• It is estimated to be 90% as massive as Jupiter and orbiting the brown dwarf every 170 days on an oval path.
• Discovery was made using the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile.
• An exomoon is a natural satellite that orbits an exoplanet (a planet outside our Solar System). While over 6,000 exoplanets have been confirmed, no exomoon has yet been conclusively confirmed.

{Prelims – Sports} Mirabai Chanu

• Context (BS): Mirabai Chanu won a gold medal in the women’s 48 kg weightlifting event in Commonwealth Games at Glasgow.

• She became only the 2^nd Indian athlete after wrestler Vinesh Phogat to win three successive individual gold medals at the Commonwealth Games.
• She previously won Commonwealth Games gold medals at Gold Coast (2018) and at Birmingham (2022).
• She also won silver Medal at Tokyo Olympics (2020), becoming the 1^st Indian weightlifter to win an Olympic silver medal.
• In 2021, she set a world record in clean & jerk in the 49 kg category with a lift of 119 kg in the 2020 Asian Weightlifting Championships.
• Mirabai Chanu was awarded Padma Shri (2018), Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award (2018) and Arjuna Award (2018).

{Prelims – Misc} One Liners

• Geo – Ken–Betwa Link Project (TH): Local communities and activists are protesting against the Ken–Betwa River Linking Project over displacement, inadequate compensation, and environmental concerns etc. It is India’s first major river-interlinking initiative, transferring water from the Ken River in Madhya Pradesh to the water-deficit Betwa River in Uttar Pradesh.
• 3^rd BRICS Ministerial Meeting on Disaster Risk Reduction (PIB): Hosted by the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) under India’s BRICS Chairship 2026 umbrella theme, “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability.”
  • Member countries unanimously adopted the BRICS Joint Statement on Disaster Risk Reduction to accelerate the implementation of the BRICS Disaster Risk Reduction Work Plan (2025–2028).
• In News – Kargil Vijay Diwas (PIB): 2026 year marks the 27^th Kargil Vijay Diwas commemorating India’s historic victory. Commemorative events including Shaurya Vijay Yatra (One Ride, One Nation, One Salute); Sanchar Shakti expedition; Tiger Hill Expedition are being organised to pay tributes to Bravehearts.