US may push India to lock in 18% tariff deal, offer Section 301 relief DEAL DYNAMICS. It may seek deeper tariff cuts; India wants assured trade advantage Amiti Sen New Delhi
To clinch an early free trade deal with India, the US is likely to press New Delhi to accept a tariff package that locks in import levies on Indian goods around 18 per cent, as agreed to in the February framework deal. This will be backed by an assurance that more penalties won’t be added after the ongoing Section 301 investigations against India conclude, sources said.
The high-level US trade team visiting India on June 1-4 to push negotiations to conclude the interim trade deal may also throw in a sweetener, guaranteeing further tariff reductions in the future aligned with the reduction in America’s trade deficit with India, a source told businessline.
TARIFF LOCK-IN “The US is keen to close the deal very soon, but it may take a while for its domestic tariff situation to settle down. That is why negotiators are likely to lock in a tariff rate around the 18 per cent level agreed to in February. This means additional penalties will not be imposed even if the Section 301 investigations result in an adverse verdict for India in the coming months,” the source explained.
However, India remains uncertain about what tariffs competitors like Vietnam, Bangladesh, Indonesia or Cambodia will face, which determines how good its own deal is.
“Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal has stated that while India looks forward to sealing a bilateral pact, its primary objective remains securing a competitive advantage over other economies. If India agrees to a tariff level now, it needs to be sure it fares better than others,” a second source said.
PACT FRAMEWORK While this interim deal will focus mainly on tariffs and non-tariff barriers, the pact will subsequently expand to include elements like intellectual property, government procurement, investment protection, data flows, and customs and trade facilitation.
Under the February 2 framework, the US offered to lower reciprocal tariffs to 18 per cent from 25 per cent and remove the 25 per cent penalty for buying Russian oil, over and above the normal MFN tariffs. In return, India agreed to significantly reduce tariffs on US industrial and agricultural products. The US removed the oil tariffs, but reciprocal tariffs remained.
However, a landmark February 20 US Supreme Court judgment invalidated those reciprocal tariffs, leaving most countries facing a temporary 10 per cent global tariff above regular MFN rates.
The US’ counter-argument to India’s caution is that its competitors also face Section 301 investigations. “Every country realises Section 301 penalties could be huge. It will suit competitors to implement older trade deals clinched before the reciprocal tariffs were invalidated. The US is starting talks with many of them,” the first source said.
India’s trade surplus with the US declined in FY26 to $34.41 billion from $40.88 billion in FY25 as imports of American goods increased. However, the US remained India’s largest export market in FY26 at $87.31 billion.
TRADE BARGAIN
- US wants India to accept capped tariffs of 18% that it had agreed to in the February framework.
- It is likely to offer a guarantee that additional penalties under Section 301 will not be slapped.
- Further tariff rollbacks for India, tied to the narrowing of the US trade deficit, may be proposed.
- New Delhi wants assurance of tariff advantage over competitors such as Vietnam and Bangladesh.
- Interim deal to focus on tariffs and non-tariff barriers, and will be expanded to include investments, IPR and government procurement.
CBSE admits that there are vulnerabilities in evaluation portal, more than week later Meenakshi Verma Ambwani S Ronendra Singh New Delhi
Days after asserting that its online answer sheet evaluation system had been “neither compromised nor suffered from vulnerabilities”, the CBSE on Sunday acknowledged that weaknesses had been identified in the OnMark portal operated by its service provider and said that they had been contained.
In a statement posted on X, the Board said: “We have been closely monitoring the vulnerabilities in the On-Mark portal of our service provider that are being flagged in the public domain. An expert team of cybersecurity professionals has been deployed over the last few days from across various arms of the government and IITs to fortify these systems, including taking them over to a more secure setup. The identified vulnerabilities have been contained, and other exploitable weaknesses are being ruled out.”
The Board also said: “We are grateful to all alert citizens and ethical hackers pointing out such weaknesses, and have gotten in touch with some of them directly. We request any others to reach out to our security teams at secy-cbse@nic.in for any further inputs.”
However, 19-year-old ethical hacker Nisarga Adhikary, who has been publicly flagging the alleged security flaws in the system, disputed the CBSE’s assertion that it had reached out to those raising concerns.
ETHICAL HACKER’S REPLY “I mailed their security team hours ago,” Adhikary told businessline. “I haven’t heard back,” he said, adding that “no one has contacted me”. He alleged that “they are still being dishonest and deceiving”.
In his post on X on Sunday, Adhikary alleged that an AWS bucket containing 2026 answer sheets and question papers could be accessed without authorisation.
“CBSE people didn’t configure their AWS bucket properly and now we can paginate & enumerate all their media, which has 2026 answer sheets and question papers. ListObjectsV2 works without any auth, and the bucket root is listable too — anyone on the internet can download any scanned booklet — across institutions. Multiple institutions are using the same bucket, insanely insecure. (sic),” he said.
CHECKS UNDERWAY CBSE did not specifically address these latest allegations but maintained that the vulnerabilities identified in the system had been contained and that checks were underway to rule out other exploitable weaknesses.
Fire at Hyundai Mobis plant near Chennai; no casualties reported T E Raja Simhan Chennai
A major fire broke out on Sunday at the Hyundai Mobis facility near Hyundai Motor India’s manufacturing plant at Irungattukottai on the outskirts of Chennai. No casualties were reported, though firefighting operations continued for several hours as the authorities worked to bring the blaze under control.
According to sources, the fire is believed to have originated in the soldering line of the assembly section before spreading rapidly through the plant. Multiple fire tenders were deployed to contain the flames, with firefighters continuing efforts even as the report was filed.
The facility supplies audio and electronic components to Hyundai Motor India and is located in close proximity to the automaker’s manufacturing complex at Irungattukottai. Company sources said it was too early to assess the extent of the damage.
Officials indicated that a detailed evaluation would be carried out once the fire was completely extinguished and the site declared safe for inspection. It will take a day or two to get full details, according to sources.
The cause of the blaze is yet to be officially determined, and an investigation is expected to be launched to ascertain the circumstances leading to the incident.
The fire has raised concerns about disruptions to component supplies, although there was no immediate word on whether production at Hyundai Motor India’s plant would be affected. The company has not yet made an official statement.
The protein-peptide bonds that heal JOINT ENDEAVOUR. Researchers at IIT-Bombay engineer stapled peptides to aid in the fight against cancer and other diseases K Bharat Kumar
Peptide-based drug discovery has gained currency in the past decade. This branch of pharmaceuticals promises solutions to tricky health issues such as cancer. Now, two researchers from IIT-Bombay and one from the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany, have reported work that suggests ways to improve peptide-based drug discovery.
Inside every living cell, thousands of proteins constantly interact with one another, switching genes on and off, repairing damage, carrying signals and deciding whether a cell should live or die. Many diseases, including cancer, arise when some of these protein–protein interactions go wrong.
One such interaction involves two proteins called p53 and MDM2. Normally these two proteins function together in a checks-and-balance manner. The p53 protein is a sort of sentinel — it triggers the destruction of cells that have gone bad, such as with cancer. Excess of p53 can be a problem. MDM2 comes in and suppresses p53. This is fine but sometimes p53 is less or MDM2 is more; when this happens, MDM2 prevents p53 — the guardian angel — from doing its job. Keeping track of such happenings in cells has given rise to the study of ‘protein-protein interaction’.
PRECISE STAPLING Scientists have discovered that stapled peptides can bind themselves to MDM2 and prevent it from suppressing p53. This is because scientists have engineered the stapled peptides to resemble p53, and MDM2 attaches to them. This leaves p53 free to do its job, without hindrance from MDM2.
Drug discovery is about making the right kind of stapled peptide. In a paper, the three researchers have used computer simulations to demonstrate that medical researchers should look not just at protein combinations but also the behaviour of the molecules in the solvent in which the proteins are immersed. In their study, the researchers focused on the behaviour of water molecules — the solvent — in the presence of stapled peptides.
They found that stapled peptides also altered the behaviour of water molecules. When a stapled peptide binds to its target protein, the water molecules gain ‘entropy’ or freedom, while the peptide itself becomes more stable and rigid. The behaviour of the water molecules could be manipulated to create more effective and ‘stickier’ medicines. Put simply, this means medicines (stapled peptides) can be made more effective by controlling how a drug interacts with the water molecules rather than by focusing only on the drug molecules’ shape and binding capability.
A more stable peptide binds better with its target — its efficacy increases. “Peptide-based drug discovery is an emerging field... Using in-silico (computer-based) approaches, effective peptide drug candidates can be identified and filtered at early stages. However, the detailed thermodynamics at the binding interface are often overlooked,” the researchers say in a joint statement to businessline. They point out that in many ongoing drug discovery pipelines, the ‘entropic effects’ (freedom of movement of molecules) are largely ignored.
THERAPEUTIC PATHWAY If a peptide’s binding property is improved, will it translate into a drug that requires lower doses or has fewer side effects?
“Stronger binding affinity can provide several practical advantages, including lower therapeutic doses, reduced off-target effects and potentially lower treatment costs. Importantly, understanding how stapling affects both peptide structure and surrounding water dynamics provides a... basis for the rational design of more effective peptide therapeutics,” the researchers respond in their statement.
However, they caution that translating the computational insights into clinical applications calls for more extensive experimental and clinical validation. Interestingly, research into stapled peptides could well open the door to improved treatment for other diseases. “Researchers can identify optimal stapling positions and cross-linker chemistries that enhance binding affinity. This strategy expands opportunities for targeting challenging protein-protein interactions in areas such as oncology and immunology,” the statement says.
PROTEINS AND PEPTIDES
- Peptides are short chains of amino acids. In a sense, they are “dwarf proteins”.
- Most people know proteins as body-building molecules — which is true — but there are thousands of different proteins. For example, snake venom is a cocktail of proteins, as is haemoglobin.
- Both peptides and proteins are chains of amino acids. An amino acid is a molecule that has carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and a ‘side chain’ of molecules with other elements like sulphur. Since there are about 20 ‘side chains’, there are as many amino acids.
- Stapled peptides are two peptides linked by a chemical. They are, therefore, engineered molecules.
‘Over 600 State bills passed in 2025 with limited scrutiny’ Our Bureau New Delhi
The latest PRS report on Annual Review of State Laws 2025 reveals a disturbing trend of State Assemblies rushing through over 600 bills in 365 days of 2025, displaying a lack of severe legislative oversight over issues critical to democracy and government functioning. Instead of threadbare debates and discussions on legislation, many Assemblies have turned into rubber stamps, data compiled by the report in May 2026 suggested.
As many as 30 per cent of the bills were passed on the day they were introduced, with the Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Mizoram, Puducherry and Punjab Assemblies passing all legislation either on the day of introduction or the next. States that passed a higher number of bills often did so in a single sitting. Karnataka passed 17 bills in one sitting and 12 in another, while Assam passed 14 bills in a single sitting, flagged the PRS report.
Even though State legislatures passing over 600 bills in 2025 is worrisome, the number of legislation being cleared is on the rise. Notably, in 2024, the Assemblies had cleared a total of about 500 bills. Karnataka had passed the highest number of bills at 84 in 34 sitting days, followed by Assam at 60 bills in 21 sitting days.
NUMBER OF SESSIONS The number of legislative sessions held in Vidhan Sabhas and Vidhan Parishads have also seen a sharp decline. State Assemblies met for an average of just 24 days in 2025, pointed out the report. It, however, marked a marginal increase from 21 days in 2024 and 23 days in 2023. Of the average 24 days of Assemblies conducting businesses, in Nagaland, it met only for seven days. This stood at 43 days for Odisha.
Some States have set minimum targets for annual sitting days, either through legislation or the rules governing their procedures. Barring Himachal Pradesh, no State has met its prescribed target.
The Constitution requires no more than passage of six months between two sittings of a State Assembly. The report also stated that all States met this requirement in 2025. In several cases, this was achieved with the States meeting just enough to meet the requirement.
For example, Assam convened a one-day session in June, between March and November sessions. Gujarat, after adjourning in March, met for three days in September. In Rajasthan, the gap between two sessions was five months and eight days, while in Meghalaya, the interval was five months and 26 days.
Most sittings occur in the first quarter of the year when the States meet to discuss and pass their budget.
