4 November 2026
Kerala's Higher Education Department has put a mobile application in the hands of college students to deal with ragging. The app is called the Siddharth Student Welfare App. A student can record an audio complaint and send it without giving a name, and can pass on information about campus safety to the authorities concerned. It is launched at Government Women's College, Thiruvananthapuram, along with the first sub-centre of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Scientific Temper. Higher Education Minister Roji M John presides over the function. The government is also examining a draft Siddharth Anti-Ragging Act, which would give the app a legal footing and set up a State Anti-Ragging Commission. The app carries the name of J S Sidharthan, the student who died after being ragged at Pookode Veterinary College.
App:
Siddharth Student Welfare App
Department:
Higher Education Department, Kerala
Proposed body:
State Anti-Ragging Commission
Why it matters for exams: A new named app of the Kerala Higher Education Department, the draft Siddharth Anti-Ragging Act and the proposed State Anti-Ragging Commission are the durable facts here.
Kerala PSCUPSC
3 November 2026
Kerala's Local Self-Government Department has distributed the Swachhata Hi Seva awards in Malappuram, along with the district-level launch of the Nirmalam Puthuyuga Shuchithwa Keralam campaign. Local Self-Government Minister K M Shaji handed over the awards. Swachhata Hi Seva is a nationwide cleanliness campaign that treats sanitation as a shared public duty. In Kerala it was carried out under the tagline Kaiyodu Kai, which stressed public cleaning drives, scientific processing of waste, segregation of waste at the source, the welfare of sanitation workers and community participation. Kottakkal Municipality took the first place among the district's municipalities, with Ponnani and Tanur sharing the second place and Malappuram Municipality third. Fifteen gram panchayats, one from each block panchayat, were also awarded.
State campaign:
Nirmalam Puthuyuga Shuchithwa Keralam
Kerala tagline:
Kaiyodu Kai
Department:
Local Self-Government Department
Why it matters for exams: The Kerala campaign name, its tagline and the national Swachhata Hi Seva campaign that it sits under are the facts to remember.
Kerala PSCUPSC
2 November 2026
Kerala has opened an adalat for members of the Kerala State Unorganised Workers' Social Security Scheme who have fallen behind on their contributions. The drive runs for six months in Kozhikode and Wayanad districts. Members whose arrears are of less than ten years may pay what they owe without any penalty, and the payment restores their membership. Dues can be paid and membership revived through the scheme's portal, unorganisedwssb.org. The scheme covers workers outside organised employment, who otherwise have no employer-backed pension or provident fund cover.
Scheme:
Kerala State Unorganised Workers' Social Security Scheme
Adalat period:
Six months
Arrears covered:
Less than 10 years
Why it matters for exams: The scheme's name, the ten-year arrears cut-off and the six-month adalat are the durable details.
Kerala PSC
3 November 2026
The Information and Public Relations Department of Kerala has asked those drawing journalist and non-journalist pensions to file a life certificate. A pensioner may give a self-attested copy of a digital life certificate taken through the Jeevan Pramaan portal, or a certificate attested by a gazetted officer, in either case dated in the month of November. The certificate goes to the office of the Regional Deputy Director concerned or to the District Information Office, in person or through a messenger. Where a messenger carries it, the pensioner must also send a self-attested copy of an approved photo identity document bearing the pensioner's own photograph. A sample format is on the department's website. The last date is 30 November.
Department:
Information and Public Relations Department
Digital route:
Jeevan Pramaan portal
Where to submit:
Regional Deputy Director's office or District Information Office
Why it matters for exams: The Jeevan Pramaan digital life certificate route and the department that pays Kerala's journalist pension are the durable facts.
Kerala PSC
Background
Kerala's reconstituted State Wildlife Board has run into objections from environmentalists in Wayanad, and the stand of one nominee on killing wild animals is being argued over. The board is not an administrative arrangement but a statutory one. Section 6 of the Wild Life (Protection) Act requires every State to constitute a State Board for Wild Life and fixes who sits on it. The Chief Minister is its Chairperson and the Minister in charge of Forests and Wild Life is Vice-Chairperson. Three members of the State Legislature are on it, with three more named to speak for non-governmental organisations that work on wild life. Ten others are named by the State Government from among eminent conservationists, ecologists and environmentalists, and at least two of those ten must come from the Scheduled Tribes. The Chief Wild Life Warden is the Member-Secretary, and the board can set up a Standing Committee to use powers given to it.
Chairperson:
Chief Minister of the State
Member-Secretary:
Chief Wild Life Warden
Nominated conservationists:
10, at least 2 from Scheduled Tribes
Why it matters for exams: Who heads a statutory board and who its member-secretary is, is a standard question in Kerala PSC and UPSC papers, and this board's whole composition is written into the Act.
Kerala PSCUPSC
In plain words
State Board for Wild Life State Board for Wild Life — The statutory advisory board on wild life in every State.
Chief Wild Life Warden Chief Wild Life Warden — The senior-most wild life officer of a State, and the board's Member-Secretary.
Background
Fishing communities in Kerala have put together their own biodiversity register of sea life and traditional knowledge, after that knowledge was left out of a State register, and have taken it to the biodiversity Conference of the Parties. India's biodiversity law puts the job of such documentation on a committee in every local body. Section 41 of the Biological Diversity Act says every local body shall constitute a Biodiversity Management Committee in its area. The committee's job is to promote conservation, sustainable use and documentation of biological diversity. That takes in habitats, land races, folk varieties and cultivars, and with them domesticated stocks and animal breeds, besides keeping a written record of the knowledge tied to biological diversity. The National Biodiversity Authority and the State Biodiversity Boards must consult the committee before settling any use of biological resources in its area, and the committee can charge a collection fee from anyone taking a biological resource from there for commercial purposes.
Section:
Section 41, Biological Diversity Act
Where constituted:
In the area of every local body
State body:
Kerala State Biodiversity Board
Why it matters for exams: The three-tier structure of India's biodiversity law, and what the committee at the bottom of it can do, is asked in both State and central papers.
Kerala PSCUPSC
In plain words
BMC Biodiversity Management Committee — The local body level committee under India's biodiversity law.
KSBB Kerala State Biodiversity Board — The State level body under the same law in Kerala.
Landrace Landrace — A primitive cultivar grown by ancient farmers and their successors.
Background
KSRTC is turning its non-air-conditioned Premium Super Fast buses back into ordinary Super Fast services, citing low passenger occupancy, higher fares for few extra amenities, limited stops and discontent among crew over how duty shifts were counted. The corporation running those buses is itself a statutory creature. Section 3 of the Road Transport Corporations Act lets a State Government set up a road transport corporation for the whole of the State or for any part of it, by a notification in the Official Gazette, under whatever name that notification specifies. Before doing so the State is told to weigh three things: the gains to the public, trade and industry from developing road transport; how far road transport should be co-ordinated with other forms of transport; and how far facilities should be extended and improved to give an efficient and economical system of road transport service in the area.
Section:
Section 3, Road Transport Corporations Act
Instrument:
Notification in the Official Gazette
Extent:
Whole or any part of the State
Why it matters for exams: Kerala PSC transport and polity papers ask which Act a State corporation is set up under and by what instrument it is created.
Kerala PSCUPSC
In plain words
KSRTC Kerala State Road Transport Corporation — Kerala's State owned bus corporation.
Official Gazette Official Gazette — The government's own publication in which notifications are issued.
Background
Eight firms have put in Expressions of Interest to neutralise and dispose of the old Endosulfan stocks lying in Plantation Corporation of Kerala godowns at Kasaragod and Mannarkkad, a clean-up revived by a National Green Tribunal intervention. The Expressions of Interest were invited by the Kerala State Pollution Control Board, and the Plantation Corporation is to meet the cost. Endosulfan is one of the pesticides the Stockholm Convention deals with. That Convention is a multilateral treaty to protect human health and the environment from the chemicals known as POPs, or persistent organic pollutants. Such chemicals do harm to human health or to the environment, and three things make them hard to be rid of: they stay intact in the environment for long periods, they spread widely across geography, and they build up in the fatty tissue of humans and of wildlife. The Stockholm Convention is administered alongside two sister agreements on chemicals and waste, the Basel Convention and the Rotterdam Convention.
Treaty:
Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants
Sister conventions:
Basel Convention, Rotterdam Convention
Firms that bid:
Eight
Why it matters for exams: Endosulfan is a standing Kerala question, and what the Stockholm Convention is and which family of conventions it belongs to is asked in environment sections.
Kerala PSCUPSC
In plain words
POPs Persistent Organic Pollutants — Chemicals that persist in the environment and build up in living tissue.
Stockholm Convention Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants — The multilateral treaty that deals with such chemicals.
Background
A judicial commission looking at the Mundathikode fireworks case has reported that 7,000 kg of material was kept where the permitted quantity was 15 kg, and that banned potassium chlorate was in use. The legal frame for all of this is the Explosives Act. Its definition clause, substituted in 1978, lists what an explosive is: gunpowder, nitroglycerine, gun-cotton, picric acid, fulminate of mercury and a long roll of named compounds, and then any other substance, solid, liquid or gaseous, used or made to produce a practical effect by explosion or a pyrotechnic effect. The same clause expressly includes fog-signals, fireworks, fuses, rockets, percussion-caps, detonators, cartridges and ammunition of every description. Carriage covers any wagon, cart, truck or vehicle that moves goods or passengers by land, and in an area with a Commissioner of Police it is that Commissioner who is the District Magistrate for the Act's purposes.
Act:
The Explosives Act, 1884
Quantity found:
7,000 kg against 15 kg permitted
Banned chemical named:
Potassium chlorate
Why it matters for exams: The Act that governs fireworks and its definition of an explosive are asked whenever a storage or licensing case is in the news.
Kerala PSCUPSC
In plain words
Pyrotechnic effect Pyrotechnic effect — The light, sound or smoke effect a firework is made to produce.
Carriage Carriage — Any means of moving goods or passengers by land under the Act.
Background
A hartal has been called for November 6 by the Samyukta Kisan Morcha across those parts of Palakkad district that the sensitive area draft would cover, with a demand that the draft notification treating stretches of the Western Ghats as an Ecologically Sensitive Area be revised. A notification of that sort draws on one broad section of the Environment (Protection) Act. Under it the Central Government holds the power to take every measure it thinks necessary to protect and improve environmental quality and to prevent, control and abate pollution. The section then lists what those measures can include. One of them is the restriction of areas in which industries, operations or processes shall not be carried on, or shall be carried on only with safeguards, which is what a sensitive area notification does. Others are the laying down of environmental quality standards and of emission or discharge standards, which can differ from source to source, and procedures and safeguards for handling hazardous substances and for preventing accidents that cause pollution.
Act:
Environment (Protection) Act, 1986
Power holder:
Central Government
Hartal called by:
Samyukta Kisan Morcha
Why it matters for exams: Every Western Ghats notification question comes back to which Act and which power it is issued under, and that is a fixed, examinable fact.
Kerala PSCUPSC
In plain words
ESA Ecologically Sensitive Area — An area where industries and processes are restricted by notification.
Environment (Protection) Act Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 — The umbrella environmental law that gives the Centre these powers.