Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday told the Lok Sabha that India has effectively become free of Maoist violence.

He said the Union government had set March 31 as the deadline to eliminate Maoism and claimed that the target had been achieved.

Shah added that he would inform the country formally after reviewing the situation.

The home minister said that between 2024 and March, 706 Maoists were killed in gunfights. During this period, 2,218 cadres were arrested and 4,839 surrendered, he added.

Shah also claimed that the central leadership, including politburo members, had been wiped out in Telangana, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh.

In the course of the Union government’s anti-Maoist offensive in 2025, key Maoist leaders like Ganesh Uike and Madvi Hidma have been killed, while others like Vikas Nagpure, alias Anant, and Mallojula Venugopal Rao, alias Bhupathi, have surrendered.

A report by Malini Subramaniam for Scroll on Hidma’s killing noted that in the Andhra Pradesh village closest to where he was killed, no one heard gunfire.

She had earlier reported that while many of those killed in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region in 2024 were declared by the police to be reward-carrying Maoists, several families dispute the claim. The families claim that the persons killed were civilians.

Civil liberties groups and Opposition parties have also questioned some of these killings, alleging that they constitute “fake encounters”.

Also Read: House numbers, drones, family registers: Bastar villages under web of surveillance

A recent report by the Auditor General of Canada has found that countries with a high risk of fraudulent student visa applications usually have low approval rates, with India being an “important exception”, The Indian Express reported on Monday.

The March 18 audit noted that India’s share of new study permits had fallen sharply to 8.1% by September from 51.6% in 2023.

However, approval rates under the Student Direct Stream, a fast-track programme for countries including India, rose to 98% in 2024 from 61% in 2022.

This was despite internal warnings that the scheme was being targeted by non-genuine applicants. The fast-track feature of the programme was withdrawn by the end of 2024.

The audit on the International Student Program reforms found that “almost all approved applications in the Student Direct Stream originated from India” between 2022 and 2024.

But, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada was slow to act on integrity concerns, including higher rates of fraudulent documents, students not actively pursuing studies and increased asylum claims.

The report also highlighted cases of fraud across applicants, noting that 800 study permits issued between 2018 and 2023 involved false or misleading documents, including claims of attending “non-existent” institutions.

Despite this, the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada took limited action and 92% of these applicants were either approved or still awaiting decisions on further immigration applications, the report said.

It added that study permit extensions, which are usually reviewed less strictly, remained a risk due to the high number of existing Indian students.

The Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said that it would apply a renewed risk assessment to extensions from former Student Direct Stream applicants and create alerts for persons of concern in future applications.

It also said that cancelling the fast-track programme was part of a broader plan to diversify Canada’s international student population and reduce over-reliance on a single country.

The report noted that while a tool to verify school acceptance letters had been implemented successfully, other integrity controls were weak.

About 1.5 lakh cases were flagged internally for potential non-compliance in 2023 and 2024, but only 4,000 were investigated due to funding limitations.

Of these, around 1,600 were closed as inconclusive after students failed to respond to immigration authorities.

Ana Gracias and Govind Shirodkar gaze out at the main source of water for agriculture in Chimbel village, North Goa.

Growing up, Shirodkar would swim in Toyyar Lake, nestled between forested hills in an area largely inhabited by Gauda Indigenous communities.

“Our ancestors settled here because of the water body,” he explains. “A canal runs into the village from the lake, carrying water for irrigation. The surrounding hills are [still] used for foraging and other traditional gathering activities.”

The hills are aquifers that feed into the lake and create natural springs in the nearby villages, including Chimbel. The lake supports local farming, recharges wells and groundwater systems in the area, acts as a flood control zone, and sustains wild bird and boar populations.

It is also a “notified wetland”, meaning its use is subject to government regulations. But controversial demarcation of its boundaries allowed construction work to begin on what would have been Goa’s tallest building, as well as a sprawling mall for local art and crafts, on one of its surrounding hills.

The structures will no longer be built following one of the state’s longest and largest peaceful public agitations in recent years – a 44-day action, which ended in early February and included a chain hunger strike. Over 1,000 locals from Chimbel were involved in the push to relocate the projects, says Gracias.

“The government ultimately decided to shift the project, keeping villagers’ sentiments in mind,” Pradip Sarmokadam tells Dialogue Earth. He is the head of nodal agency for the Goa State Wetland Authority, which is responsible for regulating wetlands.

The Toyyar Lake action is just one in a wave of recent protests against the threat of development in eco-sensitive parts of Goa. Villagers in nearby Santa Cruz have been demanding clear demarcations of a lake boundary. Meanwhile, residents of Palem-Siridao took to the streets to call for the scrapping of a regulatory amendment they say could enable the development of swathes of land without robust community consultation.

Behind this rampant construction, protestors say, is the desire to accommodate more tourists, settlers and digital nomads in the area, which is famed for its beaches.

Goa’s wetlands are particularly vulnerable to this push for concretisation. The national Wetlands Rules of India’s Environment Act prohibit the conversion of wetlands and the setting up or expanding of industries.

But authorities often fail to enforce these protections. In the case of Toyyar Lake, the relevant authority set boundaries for the wetland area that were significantly smaller than those recommended by a research body.

Unclear boundaries

Across Goa, even when wetlands are notified, authorities do not clearly demarcate their boundaries, and permissions are granted for construction activities close by. But these boundaries are vital to protect the recharge zones for water supplies.

Shirodkar is chairperson of two village-level statutory bodies formed to promote conservation – Chimbel’s committees to manage biodiversity and wetlands.

Both committees were blindsided by the announcement in early 2025 of the proposed tower and mall near Toyyar Lake, he says, noting they were not consulted about the projects. In January of this year, a North Goa court ordered a halt to construction work after Shirodkar filed a petition challenging the validity of the construction permissions granted for the projects. Villagers had begun their peaceful agitation and hunger strikes a few days before the ruling.

Sarmokadam of the Goa State Wetland Authority says the land around the lake where the projects were to be built belongs to the government.

He told Dialogue Earth that, “after following due process and conducting surveys”, the proposed construction sites were determined to fall “well beyond” the 50-metre buffer zone required by Goan state law for wetlands. The buffer zone starts from a water body’s high water mark. They sit within a lake’s wider “zone of influence”, the catchment area in which development is considered likely to harm the functioning of the ecosystem.

Tahir Noronha, a Goa-based architect, planner and PhD researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, has been tracking government records of proposed and completed land conversions. He notes that Goa State Wetland Authority mapped Toyyar Lake’s zone of influence more tightly than the National Institute of Oceanography, which conducts scientific assessments of areas proposed for wetland notification. Dialogue Earth has found the difference in the zones mapped by the two organisations amounts to a 33% decrease in size.

Both mappings were undertaken before the announcement of the construction projects. Noronha points out that the wetland authority has the mandate to adopt NIO’s recommendations in full, in part, or reject them. At Toyyar Lake the discrepancy between the two maps show they were accepted in part, he says.

He adds that a large portion of the land parcel which includes the site of the two projects, was included in NIO’s zone of influence but left out of the map of the Goa State Wetland Authority. According to his assessment, the site of the mall was on the fringe of NIO’s zone of influence, making it difficult to determine with certainty whether the site was in or out of the map, he says.

Noronha says around the same time the recommendations were accepted, the land was transferred to the tourism department that proposed the projects, citing a deed of conveyance Shirodkar obtained via a Right to Information request. In October 2025, the Goa State Wetland Authority issued a clearance document, seen by Dialogue Earth, for the mall stating the site was outside the notified wetland area.

The villagers of Chimbel thought otherwise, insisting the projects were within Toyyar Lake’s zone of influence. They pushed for a new survey to be conducted in late January this year measuring the lake’s zone of influence and features like vegetation cover and sub-surface water flows. Just days after the survey was complete, the government announced the projects would be moved elsewhere.

Sarmokadam notes that under the Wetlands Rules, a zone of influence only covers part of a catchment and not its entirety. “Though activities in the catchment can influence the wetland, this can be mitigated with the right technology to prevent contamination,” he insists.

He adds that despite the wetland authority’s jurisdiction not extending beyond the 50-metre buffer, it “still imposed conditions like proper sewage and waste management, and measures such as groundwater development to offset the area being concretised”.

In North Goa, it is not just Toyyar Lake facing boundary irregularities. Villagers in nearby Santa Cruz are demanding clear demarcation of the zone of influence around the protected Bondvoll Lake before any construction is allowed.

Dialogue Earth found a 77% decrease in the size of the lake’s zone of influence in the official notification for the lake compared to the NIO’s recommendation report. Alongside the demarcation, they are seeking the suspension of construction licences issued without ecological assessment or consultation with local biodiversity management committees.

The government has instructed the Town and Country Planning Department not to permit any construction activity within a 200-metre radius of the lake until the wetland authority clarifies the official status of the zone.

Pushback has been successful in the past, with the lake being designated a wetland in 2022 after sustained public pressure.

Rezoning threat

As more people visit Goa, short holidays turn into extended stays and second homes, incentivising the construction of additional hotels, resorts, villas and residential colonies.

“The biggest crisis in Goa is rampant, indiscriminate construction, with absolutely no regard for the people who live here,” says Noronha.

Section 39A is one thing enabling this construction. This 2024 amendment to Goa’s Town and Country Planning Act allows the chief town planner to modify land-use zoning even for areas marked as not for development, with a 30-day window for public objection.

In February, hundreds of villagers in Palem-Siridao took to the streets to demand the scrapping of the amendment. They claim it is allowing the authorities to rezone over 84,000 square metres in their area as settlement land, permitting construction.

Protestors say the amendment could enable the conversion of Goan orchards, hills and even wetlands, into construction-ready land, all without sufficient community consultation.

Wetlands in Goa are actively being threatened. For instance, rezoning under Section 39A is also being proposed around Savlem and Zuari lakes, respectively a notified wetland and one being proposed for notification.

Section 39A is currently being discussed in Goa’s legislative assembly. In the meantime, the Town and Country Planning Department has reportedly offered to convert over a dozen tracts of land across Goa for settlement use. Among the proposals is an application by a construction company seeking conversion of land partly classified as orchard and natural cover, including a section marked as being not for development, reported the Times of India.

The Goan government has commemorated World Wetlands Day and participated in nationwide wetlands conservation campaigns. Yet its actions suggest different priorities.

As of May 2025, Goa had 34 notified wetlands, according to the Navhind Times, but several ecologically critical areas remain unprotected. One example is Torda Creek in the village of Salvador do Mundo, parts of which fall under CRZ-I, the highest level of protection within India’s coastal regulation framework.

Under a national tourism ministry project, this site has been proposed for development as a tourist promenade. Locals and campaigners fear such concretisation will choke mangroves, disrupt tidal flow and damage the wetland’s natural flood-control functions.

“The proposed beautification is neither sustainable nor eco-friendly,” says Anthony D’Souza, an activist pushing for official wetland notification for the creek with the group Goa Worth A Fight. He fears the project, which estimates tourist footfall in the proposed tourism area that includes Torda Creek to grow from just over 72,000 this year to 111,000 in 2029, does not account for the ecological limits of the land.

Dialogue Earth reached out to the tourism ministry on this matter but received no response.

While talking about the long-term ecological impacts of construction on wetlands in Goa, D’Souza points to the mangroves along the Panaji-Merces highway, which, he says, “have died because highway construction and related concretisation blocked the natural flow between creeks and rivers”.

Noronha notes how India’s Supreme Court compelled state governments to identify and protect wetlands. “If not for this judgment, states would not be required to identify and notify wetlands at all,” he says. “State governments do not necessarily prioritise wetland protection, but they also cannot afford to be in contempt of court.”

There are also larger interests shaping the decisions of the wetland authority, he notes. “Planning is built on assumptions, and almost any decision can be justified through a set of assumptions,” Noronha says. “It is important to view regulatory bodies through a political lens alongside power structures that shape it to understand how decisions emerge.”

Lisann Dias is an independent journalist based in Mumbai and Goa who writes about the climate, environment, development, travel and food. Her work has appeared in publications including The Hindu, The Federal, Mongabay and IndiaSpend.

This article was originally published on Dialogue Earth under the Creative Commons BY NC ND licence.

Mining group Vedanta has moved the Supreme Court seeking a stay on the proposed takeover of the now-insolvent Jaypee group’s assets by billionaire Gautam Adani’s Adani group, Moneycontrol reported on Monday.

The case is expected to come up for hearing in the next couple of weeks, unidentified persons told the news outlet.

The plea was filed days after the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal declined to grant an interim stay on the National Company Law Tribunal’s approval of Adani Enterprises’ resolution plan, the Economic Times reported.

The Committee of Creditors had approved the Adani bid, which was subsequently cleared by the National Company Law Tribunal.

The Anil Agarwal-led company, has argued that its offer for Jaiprakash Associates Limited was higher. It has also questioned the fairness and transparency of the bidding process.

On Sunday, in a social media post Agrawal said that his company was declared the highest bidder during the insolvency proceedings and was informed in writing that it had won, before the outcome was later changed.

He added that Vedanta had “no attachment” to the asset and would place the facts through due process.

This morning, I was reading Chapter 15 of the Bhagavad Gita. One thought stayed with me. “Have courage. Stay humble. Do your duty without attachment.” Life tested this.

Some years ago, Shri Jaiprakash Gaur, who built Jaypee Group, came to meet me in London. He had built an… pic.twitter.com/aEPQet0WQH

— Anil Agarwal (@AnilAgarwal_Ved) March 29, 2026

The dispute

The dispute centres on the resolution of Jaiprakash Associates Limited, which entered insolvency in June 2024 after defaulting on loans exceeding Rs 57,000 crore, Economic Times reported.

Competing bids were submitted by Vedanta and Adani Enterprises. Vedanta offered Rs 16,726 crore, higher than Adani Enterprises’ Rs 14,535 crore, Economic Times quoted submissions before the appellate tribunal as having said.

However, the Committee of Creditors approved Adani’s plan, which proposed about Rs 6,000 crore upfront and a faster repayment timeline of around two years, compared to Vedanta’s payout period of up to five years, the news outlet reported.

Moneycontrol reported that Vedanta’s initial bid was Rs 17,000 crore, including roughly Rs 4,000 crore in upfront cash, with the remaining amount payable over six years.

Creditors have maintained that under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, bids are not assessed on value alone but also on factors such as “upfront cash, execution feasibility, and payment timelines”, Economic Times reported.

They also reportedly rejected Vedanta’s revised offer, saying that it was submitted after the bidding deadline and could not be considered without restarting the process.

Jaiprakash Associates holds a significant portfolio, including real estate developments in Uttar Pradesh’s Noida and Greater Noida, infrastructure assets, cement capacity and projects such as Jaypee Greens and the Jaypee International Sports City near the Jewar airport, Economic Times reported.

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Mining company Vedanta moved the Supreme Court seeking a stay on the proposed takeover of the now-insolvent Jaypee Group’s assets by billionaire Gautam Adani’s Adani Group. The Anil Agarwal-led company has argued that its offer for Jaiprakash Associates Limited was higher, and questioned the fairness and transparency of the bidding process.

The plea was filed days after the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal declined to grant an interim stay on the National Company Law Tribunal’s approval of the resolution plan submitted by Adani Enterprises. The Committee of Creditors had approved the Adani bid, which was subsequently cleared by the National Company Law Tribunal.

Vedanta chairperson Agrawal claimed that his company was declared the highest bidder during the insolvency proceedings and was informed in writing that it had won, before the outcome was later changed. Read on.

The stock market continued to slide amid concerns surrounding the conflict in West Asia and surging energy prices. The benchmark Sensex fell more than 1,600 points, or 2.2%, while the Nifty dropped over 480 points, or 2.1%, at the close.

The value of the Indian rupee improved marginally in early trade after the Reserve Bank of India tightened restrictions on onshore position limits, amid weeks of foreign funds outflow and falling stocks. However, it sank to 94.8 against the United States dollar by the time the session ended, matching the record low it had fallen to on Friday.

The benchmark Brent crude was trading at nearly $115 per barrel. Read on.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar resigned as a member of the state’s Legislative Council after being elected to the Rajya Sabha. Monday was the last day for Kumar to resign as an MLC as he was elected to the Upper House of Parliament on March 16 for the first time.

His current Legislative Council term, the fourth consecutive one, was to end in 2030. Kumar remains the chief minister for now as Article 164(4) of the Constitution permits a person to hold the office for up to six months without being a member of the state legislature.

It has been speculated that he would step down as the chief minister after being elected to the Rajya Sabha. However, it is unclear who will replace him and when. Read on.

As Nitish Kumar quits as Bihar chief minister, what will happen to his politics of social justice, writes Ashwani Kumar

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that Pakistan’s forums on the West Asia conflict were its own and that Tehran was not involved. “Regional calls to end war are welcome, but remember who started it!” the statement said.

It added that Iran has had no direct talks with the United States, receiving only “excessive, unreasonable demands via intermediaries”. The remarks came a day after Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar met his counterparts from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey in Islamabad to discuss de-escalation in the region. Read on.

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The Congress on Sunday announced five guarantees for poll-bound Assam, including a promise of “justice for singer Zubeen Garg within 100 days” if voted to power.

Addressing a rally in Naoboicha in Lakhimpur district, party president Mallikarjun Kharge said the Congress would investigate who “murdered” the Assamese singer and present the findings within the specified time, The Hindu reported.

Garg died on September 19 during a yacht trip in Singapore, a day before he was scheduled to perform at the North East India Festival there.

On Wednesday, a Singapore coroner’s inquiry ruled that the singer died of accidental drowning.

However, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has repeatedly claimed that the singer’s death was not accidental but was a murder.

Seven persons in India have been arrested in connection with the singer’s death. A Special Investigation Team filed a chargesheet on December 12, accusing four of the seven persons of murder.

On January 14, the authorities in the southeast Asian country said that Garg was “severely intoxicated” and had refused to wear a life jacket when he drowned while swimming in September.

On Wednesday, State Coroner Adam Nakhoda said that there was no reason to disagree with the Police Coast Guard’s conclusion after analysing the evidence before him.

In addition to investigating Garg’s death, the Congress on Monday also said that it would provide an “unconditional monthly cash transfer” to women to start or expand businesses.

It announced Rs 25 lakh in cashless health cover for families and a monthly pension of Rs 1,250 for senior citizens.

The Congress also promised land rights for 10 lakh tribal persons, including converting certain land holdings into permanent ownership.

The polls are scheduled to take place in a single phase on April 9. Votes will be counted on May 4 alongside those in West Bengal, Kerala, Puducherry and Tamil Nadu.

Also read:

Why musician Zubeen Garg’s death has unleashed a storm of anger in Assam

The stock market continued its slide on Monday amid concerns surrounding the conflict in West Asia and surging energy prices.

The benchmark Sensex fell more than 1,600 points, or 2.2%, while the Nifty dropped over 480 points, or 2.1%, at the close.

Stock markets had begun to slide on March 2 after the conflict began.

The India VIX index, which measures volatility in the market, spiked over 4% on Monday.

Major Asian stock indices also continued their fall on Monday. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was down 0.8%, South Korea’s Kospi had fallen 2.9% and Japan’s Nikkei 2.7%. The China’s Shanghai Composite recovered 0.27% by the end of the day after opening the session in the negative.

Rupee slides

The value of the Indian rupee improved marginally on Monday after the Reserve Bank of India tightened restrictions on onshore ​position limits, amid weeks of foreign funds outflow and falling stocks.

The Indian currency was trading at 94.8 against the United States dollar at 6 pm on Monday, matching the record low it had hit at the close of trading on Friday.

On Friday, the Indian central bank directed banks ‌to limit their net open rupee positions in the foreign exchange market at $100 million by the end of each business day, Reuters reported.

Global energy prices

Global oil prices have increased by more than 50% since the conflict began.

The benchmark Brent crude was trading at nearly $115 per barrel on Monday. The price was $78 per barrel on February 27, a day before the conflict started.

The US WTI crude was trading at $101 per barrel. The price was $67 per barrel on February 27.

Iran has effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz for most international commercial vessels since the conflict began. About 20% of global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint.

Follow top updates from the conflict in West Asia here.

The spokesperson of Iran’s Foreign Minister on Monday said that Pakistan’s forums on the West Asia conflict were its own and that Tehran was not involved in them.

“Regional calls to end war are welcome, but remember who started it!” the statement said.

It added that Iran has held no “direct talks” with the United States and had only received “excessive, unreasonable demands via intermediaries”.

Here are more top updates from the conflict in West Asia:

• The statement came a day after Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar met his counterparts from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkiye in Islamabad “for consultations on efforts aimed at de-escalation in the region”. Following the meeting, Dar said Pakistan would be “honoured to host and facilitate meaningful talks” between the US and Iran in the coming days for a “comprehensive and lasting settlement” of the conflict.
• Spain has closed its airspace to US planes involved in attacks on Iran, Reuters quoted Defence Minister Margarita Robles as saying on Monday.  “We do not authorise either the use of military bases or the use of airspace for actions related to the war in Iran,” the news agency quoted Robles as saying. 
• Spain and the US are both members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a defence alliance in which countries cooperate on security and military operations. Monday’s announcement goes a step further than Spain’s earlier decision to deny the US the use of jointly-operated military bases.
• An Indian citizen was killed in an Iranian missile attack on an electricity power station and a water distillation plant in Kuwait, the country’s government said on Monday. With this incident on Sunday, eight Indians have been killed in the conflict in West Asia so far.
• United States President Donald Trump told the Financial Times on Sunday that he wants to “take the oil in Iran” and could seize the country’s export hub of Kharg Island. “To be honest with you, my favourite thing is to take the oil in Iran but some stupid people back in the US say: ‘why are you doing that?’ But they’re stupid people,” he was quoted as having said. The comments came as thousands of US soldiers reached the region over the weekend.
• Trump said that Washington’s indirect talks with Iran through Pakistani “emissaries” was progressing well, the Financial Times reported. He has set an April 6 deadline for Tehran to accept a deal to end the conflict or face US strikes on its energy infrastructure.
• The US president also claimed that there had already been a “regime change” in Tehran as the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several other senior officials had been killed when the war started and in subsequent attacks. “The people we’re dealing with are a totally different group of people . . . [They] are very professional,” Trump told the Financial Times.
• On Monday, Trump said that the US military had “taken out” and destroyed “many long sought targets” in Iran, adding that it was a “big day” in the conflict.
• While responding to a reporter’s question about whether Iran had responded to his 15-point ceasefire plan, Trump said on Sunday: “Yeah... They gave us most of the points. Why wouldn’t they?...And just to prove that they’re serious, they gave us all of these [oil] boats.”
• It is unclear which ships Iran was referring to. On Friday, Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar had said on social media that Iran has agreed to allow 20 more Pakistani-flagged vessels to pass through the Strait of Hormuz and that “two ships will cross the strait daily”. This announcement had been reposted by Trump on social media platform Truth Social. 
• The Indian government on Sunday made an ad hoc allocation of Public Distribution System kerosene to states and Union Territories for household use as a 60-day emergency measure to ease pressure on liquefied petroleum gas. The kerosene can be used for cooking and lighting needs. The allocation includes the 21 states and Union Territories that had previously been declared Public Distribution System Superior Kerosene Oil-free.
• The benchmark Brent crude was trading at $115 per barrel on Monday. The price was $78 per barrel on February 27, a day before the conflict started.
• Major Asian stock indices also continued their fall on Monday. The Indian stock market had fallen about 1.5% as of 11 am. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was down 1%, South Korea’s Kospi had fallen 2.9% and Japan’s Nikkei 3.2%. The China’s Shanghai Composite had recovered 0.09% after opening the session in the negative.
• More than 6,000 persons have been injured in Israel since the war started, the country's health ministry said on Monday.

The conflict

The US and Israel launched an attack on Iran on February 28, claiming that Tehran’s action posed an existential threat to Israel. Washington acts as a guarantor of Israel’s security. Iran has retaliated by striking Israel and US military bases in the region and targeting major cities in Gulf countries.

Tehran has also effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterbody connecting the Gulf to the Arabian Sea, for most international commercial vessels, triggering a global energy crisis. About 20% of global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint.

Israel has been claiming that Iran is close to obtaining a nuclear weapon, which could alter the regional security balance. Tehran has long maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes.

Couples in live-in relationships who consider their partnership a “stable union” will be treated as married during Census 2027, according to a response to one of the frequently asked questions published on the self-enumeration portal.

The self-enumeration portal has been opened for persons opting to submit their Census details on their own, instead of providing the information to an enumerator during a household visit. It will be used in both phases of the exercise: the Houselisting and Housing Census and the Population Enumeration.

The first phase, scheduled to begin on Wednesday, involves collecting data about housing conditions and household assets, such as the structure of the house, access to basic and modern amenities, types of vehicles owned, among others.

It will also record the number of persons residing in the household and details of the head of the household, including name, gender, whether they belong to the Scheduled Caste, the Scheduled Tribe or other communities and ownership status.

The second phase, expected to begin in February 2027, will capture demographic information about individuals, including age, gender, education, occupation and other socio-economic details.

The last decennial Census exercise was held in 2011. In 2020, India was set to begin the first phase of the exercise, but it had to be delayed as the coronavirus pandemic hit.

The Telangana Assembly on Sunday passed a bill to deduct the salaries of private and public sector employees deemed to be neglecting and failing to support their parents, The Indian Express reported.

The 2026 Telangana Employees Accountability and Monitoring of Parental Support Bill allows salary deductions of up to 15% or Rs 10,000, whichever is lower. The provision will also be applicable to MLAs and MPs, as well as nominated members and elected representatives of local bodies.

It is unclear if the Legislative Council has cleared it.

Speaking in the Assembly, Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy said that the bill marked an important step toward providing protection for elderly parents, The News Minute reported. The Congress leader added that the proposed legislation is intended to instil fear among persons who have no respect for their parents.

Reddy added that people have forgotten human bonds and emotional ties, and have become immersed in a relentless pursuit of material comforts, financial gain and wealth.

“The rights of parents should be protected by goodwill,” The Indian Express quoted the chief minister as saying. “But the bill makes sure that the law is on the parents’ side when they are neglected.”

In a statement explaining the bill’s objectives, the state government said that instances of neglect of elderly parents are increasing and added that enforceable measures are required to reinforce family responsibility in a changing socio-economic context, The News Minute reported.

Noting that Article 21 of the Constitution asserts that the right to life includes the right to live with dignity, the bill added that parents are an inseparable part of the Indian family system.

“It is therefore considered necessary to provide enforceable norms among employees who neglect their parents and to ensure that every employee acts as a role model in society,” the proposed legislation added.

The bill allows senior citizens neglected by their children to file an application before the district collector, who has been made the designated authority to adjudicate cases, The Indian Express reported.

In their application, the complainants must state their reasons for seeking apportionment and disclose details of their income from all sources.

As per the bill, the district collector has 60 days to decide on the applications after hearing the parents and the children, the newspaper reported.

Subsequently, the authorities are to issue an order about the amount to be deducted, which will be credited to the parents’ bank account. The provision extends not only to biological parents but also to adoptive parents.

Sugar-free products that contain sugar. ‘Real’ fruit juices made of artificial ingredients. Energy drinks with hazardous compositions. Unproven remedies claiming to control diabetes. Health drinks for children loaded with excess sugar.

These products have one thing in common: their advertisements were flagged as misleading by India’s food safety regulator. And almost none of them were ever acted upon.

Scroll has accessed the food safety regulator’s internal database of 170 advertisements identified as deceptive and likely in violation of the law. Our analysis reveals a serious failure of enforcement at a moment when ultra-processed foods high in sugar and fat are fuelling a rapid rise in chronic diseases across the country, threatening your health and that of millions of other Indians.

This is India’s first systematic investigation into food advertising regulation.

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Photographs and reports from Great Nicobar Island last month suggest that sea turtles, including the Giant Leatherback, have nested on the beaches of Galathea Bay in record numbers this season.

This is particularly significant given the February 16 order of the National Green Tribunal dismissing challenges to the construction of a mega-infrastructure project on the island and asserting that no part of the project site is a CRZ-1A area.

CRZ-1A is a category of coastal land that has maximum protection under law on account of its ecological importance – determined by the presence of marine turtle nesting beaches, ground nesting birds, mangroves and coral reefs, among others. Major development projects are explicitly not allowed in such areas.

The photographs show two turtle hatcheries at Galathea Bay with sticks and boards giving basic details such as date of nesting, the species of the turtle and the number of eggs collected. The most recent nesting record visible in the photograph is of February 13 with one each for two species of turtles – a Leatherback turtle and an Olive Ridley.

The most recent nesting record visible in the photograph is of February 13 with one each for two species of turtles – serial number 899 of a Leatherback turtle and serial number 900 of an Olive Ridley. This indicates that at least 900 nestings have taken place here already this season.

While the exact species-wise break up is also not currently available, 90% of these are likely to be Leatherback , given the recent history records of turtle nesting here (see table below).

While Leatherbacks in general are listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, particular sub populations like in the Pacific, for example are considered critically endangered.

A turtle hatchery is a common practice on many nesting beaches, where wildlife authorities relocate eggs laid by the turtles to protect them, particularly from predation by animals such as monitor lizards and feral dogs.

While the photographs are from mid-February, nesting was reported as late as the first week of March. This along with the fact that not all nests are always relocated to the hatcheries, suggests that the total number of nestings could be even higher.

The petition before the National Green Tribunal had challenged the November 2022 environmental clearance granted to the Rs 90,000-crore-plus mega infrastructure project with the centrepiece being the Rs 45,000-crore transshipment port in Galathea Bay.

The port entails the construction of multiple berths and breakwaters that will reduce the opening of the bay by 90% from the current 3 km to just 300 meters. The siting of the port here has raised serious concerns on account of the inevitable ecological damage that it would cause.

One of the main contentions of the National Green Tribunal order that dismissed objections and opposition was that no part of the project area including Galathea Bay “is in CRZ-IA area”.

From all available records Galathea Bay qualifies for this category on several counts – four species of sea-turtles nest on the beaches in the bay, there are luxurious stands of mangrove forests along the water’s edge and it also houses more than 20,000 coral colonies, according to the records of the Zoological Survey of India.

Galathea Bay had been declared a wildlife sanctuary in 1997, but was then denotified in 2021 to facilitate port construction here. It was listed as one of the country’s most significant turtle nesting sites in India's National Marine Turtle Action Plan published in 2021 and is also recognised as perhaps the most important Leatherback nesting site in the northern Indian Ocean.

Leatherback nesting numbers for Galathea Bay for the recent years obtained from the Andaman and Nicobar Forest Department confirm the same – 649 in 2022; 505 in 2023 and 619 in 2024. These figures are perhaps the highest since monitoring began here. about four decades ago (see table 2) This trend has continued this year as well.

“Turtle nesting in such larger numbers this season challenges the NGT claim that this is not CRZ-1A,” said a researcher aware of the ground situation. “It’s like the turtles decided that they had to stand up for themselves and ensure they were counted before it is too late.”

Queries sent to four different forest officials did not receive a response.

Pankaj Sekhsaria is the author/editor of seven books on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the latest being The Great Nicobar Betrayal (Frontline, 2024) and Island on Edge - The Great Nicobar Crisis (Westland, 2025)

The United States military on Saturday said that 3,500 more marines and sailors have arrived in West Asia amid the conflict.

This came as The Washington Post reported on Saturday, quoting unidentified officials, that the US Department of War is preparing for “weeks of ground operations” in Iran.

Here are more top updates from the conflict in West Asia:

• The US marines and sailors arrived in the US Central Command area of responsibility on board USS Tripoli. “The America-class amphibious assault ship serves as the flagship for the Tripoli Amphibious Ready Group/31st Marine Expeditionary Unit composed of about 3,500 Sailors and Marines in addition to transport and strike fighter aircraft, as well as amphibious assault and tactical assets,” the US military said.
• Possible US ground operations would not amount to a full-scale invasion and could instead involve raids by infantry soldiers or special forces, The Washington Post quoted the unidentified officials as saying on Saturday. In response to the report, the White House said that the Pentagon prepares to give the president “maximum optionality” and it does not mean that a decision about ground operations has been made.
• Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf on Sunday accused the US of plotting a ground attack despite talking about diplomacy, after a US warship with around 3,500 military personnel arrived in West Asia, AFP reported. Ghalibaf’s comments came ahead of talks between key regional players on Monday.
• US President Donald Trump has in recent days indicated an interest in ending the conflict, but has also threatened to broaden the scope of attacks on Iran.
• Pakistan Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar on Sunday met his counterparts from Egypt and Turkey in Islamabad ahead of a quadrilateral summit, which also includes Saudi Arabia, to discuss the ongoing conflict in West Asia and efforts to negotiate peace in the region, PTI reported.
• Two more Indian-flagged liquefied petroleum gas tankers, carrying roughly a day’s supply of the country’s cooking gas, have safely navigated through the war-hit Strait of Hormuz and are expected to reach Indian shores in the next couple of days, PTI reported on Sunday. “Two LPG carriers, BW TYR and BW ELM, carrying a combined LPG cargo of about 94,000 tonnes, have safely transited the region and are moving towards Indian shores,” the news agency quoted an official statement as saying.
• In a social media post on Friday, Dar said that Iran has agreed to allow 20 more Pakistani-flagged vessels to pass through the Strait of Hormuz and that “two ships will cross the strait daily”. It was reposted by Trump on social media platform Truth Social.
• Three journalists were killed in southern Lebanon on Saturday in an Israeli strike, Al Jazeera reported. A clearly marked press vehicle was attacked, killing Fatima Ftouni and her brother and colleague, Mohammed, of Al Mayadeen and Al-Manar’s Ali Shuaib, according to reports. Others were injured in the attack.
• The Israeli Defense Forces claimed that Shuaib was a member of the Iran-backed and Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah “who operated for years under the guise of a journalist”. He had “exposed IDF troop positions in southern Lebanon and maintained direct contact with Hezbollah operatives”, the Israeli military alleged.
• Lebanese Information Minister Paul Morcos said the killing of the journalists “constitutes a deliberate and blatant war crime against the media and the mission of journalism”, The Guardian reported.
• The World ⁠Health ⁠Organization said on Saturday that nine paramedics had been killed in five attacks on healthcare facilities in Lebanon.

The conflict

The US and Israel launched an attack on Iran on February 28, claiming that Tehran’s action posed an existential threat to Israel. Washington acts as a guarantor of Israel’s security. Iran has retaliated by striking Israel and US military bases in the region and targeting major cities in Gulf countries.

Tehran has also effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterbody connecting the Gulf to the Arabian Sea, for most international commercial vessels, triggering a global energy crisis. About 20% of global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint.

Israel has been claiming that Iran is close to obtaining a nuclear weapon, which could alter the regional security balance. Tehran has long maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes.

The Allahabad High Court has observed that a daughter-in-law is not legally obligated to maintain her parents-in-law under statutory provisions, Live Law reported on Saturday.

A bench of Justice Madan Pal Singh made the observation while dismissing a criminal revision petition filed by an elderly couple against their daughter-in-law.

The court said that the right to claim maintenance under Section 144 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita is a statutory one and is limited to the categories specified in the provision.

Section 144 empowers a magistrate to direct a person with sufficient means to provide monthly maintenance to their spouse, children or parents unable to support themselves. The provision replaced Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

Singh noted that parents-in-law do not fall within the ambit of the provision.

A moral obligation, however compelling it may seem, cannot be enforced as a legal obligation in the absence of a statutory mandate, the judge added. He added that the legislature, in its wisdom, has not included parents-in-law within the ambit of the provision.

“In other words, it is not the scheme of the legislature to fasten liability of maintenance upon a daughter-in-law towards her parents-in-law under the said provision,” Live Law quoted the court as saying.

The petitioners had challenged an August 2025 order of a family court in Agra that rejected their plea for maintenance under Section 144.

They said that they were elderly, illiterate and indigent, and had been dependent on their son during his lifetime.

They argued that their daughter-in-law, a constable in the Uttar Pradesh Police with an independent income, should be legally bound to support them, especially as she had received her husband’s service and retirement benefits.

The court, however, said there was nothing on record to show that her employment had been secured on compassionate grounds. It also noted that questions of succession to the deceased son’s property do not arise in summary maintenance proceedings.

On the night of September 1, 1873, Pothum Janakummah Ragaviah, a wealthy woman from Madras, reached London’s Waterloo Station. It was 10.30 pm. She had travelled on a luxury liner via the Suez Canal, which had opened just four years earlier. The journey had taken six weeks – before the canal was inaugurated, it would have taken months.

As a first-time visitor, Janakummah expected the city to be dark and silent at that late hour. Instead, to her surprise, London was brightly lit by gaslights, brighter, she wrote, than moonlight. Beneath the lights, the “countless people of both sexes walking up and down” made for an energetic spectacle. It was as if she was witnessing the “true meaning of Fairyland”. Disembarking at Southampton, she had also noticed that it was women who were dispensing tickets and managing various administrative tasks.

In the late 19th century, a confluence of factors had made the journey between India and Britain easier than ever before. Besides the opening of the Suez Canal, the use of steam, rather than sails, had transformed shipping, making oceanic travel faster, safer, and no longer weather-dependent. Voyages could now be a leisurely experience rather than just transport. The Royal Mail Steamer Australia that Jankummah was traveling on had many “admirably devised comforts” including a carpeted deck and bathrooms fitted with marble tubs and showers: “a much better and easier process than the chemboo system of pouring water on the head,” Janakummah wrote.

Janakummah’s Pictures of England, published in 1876 – three years after her travels – is the earliest known English-language account by an Indian woman traveler. It also stands out because it declares the author’s name. While women were gradually becoming readers of various printed media – memoirs, books, magazines, travelogues – and some were also writing for publication, this was far from the norm. Janakummah had originally written her account in Telugu, but encouraged by her English friends, she produced an English version as well. It was especially “intended for native ladies”.

Janakummah was not the first Indian woman to make the journey to England – several had done so before her and soon, more would. She was, however, among a handful of early women travelers who wrote about their journeys. Travel to Britain was becoming popular among India’s educated elite, but it was mainly men who went. British women – colonial wives, missionaries, and curious travelers – were also traveling to India in growing numbers. Yet the traffic was largely one way.

Early middle-class women traveler-writers venturing to England, like Janakummah, were different from the others who had crossed the waters before them. Even in the pre-Suez Canal days, two groups of women did travel to Britain: queens and their entourages, and in a much larger numbers, domestic servants, or ayahs, brought back by returning British administrators.

The new travellers were instead part of an emerging professional elite – educated, connected, and of means. Their accounts can also be read through other lenses. They were written within a colonial framework and the women often depended on British patrons or reform-minded husbands. Janakummah’s trip, the scholar Arup Chatterjee has established, was funded by the British government. Ideas of nationalism, self-rule and independence were still nascent.

But this March, Women’s History Month, another theme seems worth following: what these women observed about the lives of women in Victorian England, and what it made them feel about the lives of women back home.

The Lady from Madras

In her account, Janakummah speaks plainly about the benefits of traveling abroad. She believes that the restrictions preventing upper caste Hindus from traversing the oceans had no historical basis. It had resulted, in fact, in “endless evils” and kept her people from attaining a “higher state of civilisation”. Clad in what she calls her “national dress” – almost certainly a sari – she moved through gaslit streets and visited parks, monuments, museums, theatres, and even factories; she was delighted by much of what she saw, save London’s notorious fog, smoke, and some dishonest hotel owners.

At the Crystal Palace, it was the Bee Showroom and the fact that their leader was one of their own species, the Queen Bee, intrigued her. At Madame Tussauds, she was so enchanted by the lifelike wax figures that she found herself making way for them in the crowd and mistaking motionless visitors for exhibits. The experience reminded her of the magical illusions described in the Mahabharata. But the Chamber of Horrors was another matter – its depiction of the 1857 “Cawnpore Mutiny” was so vivid she feared she might swoon, and left quickly.

What impressed her most about women’s lives in England was their social equality. Janakummah marveled, not just at women in public and professional roles, but also at the culture of physical activity available to them – swimming, skating, riding horses. Even the Queen took a daily drive or walk with her youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice, she wrote. So impressed was Janakummah with the benefits of exercise in England’s cold climate, she herself adopted the habit of long daily walks in Hyde Park with her husband.

She was equally struck by how highly educated English women were; their ability to converse intelligently on scientific subjects and matters of public concern – domains entirely closed to women back home – was something she felt her readers needed to know about. In her view, it was “female education” and the elevated status of women that were the primary reason England was the “most glorious country in the world.”

Even in the domestic sphere, she noticed something different: husbands treated their wives with care and respect, as companions and counselors. Married life was like a “mixture of milk and water”, mutual affection so complete that there was no cause for family dispute. In India, she wrote with evident sorrow, women were held inferior in every respect – treated not as advisers to their husbands but as slaves to their will. “When will my Indian sisters enjoy such a noble position in their household?” she wondered. She was certain the day would come.

From Calcutta to London in the 1880s

Krishnabhabini Das (1864-1919), was 18 years old and already a mother of two, when she traveled to England in September 1882. Das’s journey was a decade after Janakummah’s and she stayed for nearly eight years.

Her travelogue, Englandey Bangamahila (A Bengali Lady in England), published anonymously in 1885, was the first travelogue written and published in Bengali by a woman. It has only recently been translated into English by Somadatta Mandal.

In preparation for her travels abroad, Das even changed from her traditional sari to European-style clothing. But old habits were hard to shed. So accustomed was she to pulling her veil over her head that she would reach for it unconsciously and find her newly adopted cap there instead. It made her think about what the change in clothing meant beyond mere practicality. “I felt a little ashamed of myself for wearing different clothes,” she wrote. An acquaintance back home might fail to recognise her, or mistake her for a memsahib, an English lady, and either salute her or move away in fear. “Do clothes make such a difference?” she wondered.

Although the title of her book only mentions England, Das also went to Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France, and Scotland. While London was her base in the England years, she visited several other cities like Manchester, and Liverpool giving her readers a detailed account of what she saw on her excursions.

Das’s previously confined existence – she even wrote a verse about “breaking the cage” – pervades her travelogue. It is a fierce desire to see the world and shed her ignorance that drove her to brave the social opposition and the arduous journey. Addressing her readers directly, she writes: “My female readers! Maybe like me, many of you are curious to know about England – and to fulfill that desire I am dedicating this book to you.” Travel, for Das, was never purely personal. In verse, she calls out to the sisters she has left behind – she has cut off her shackles, she writes, but cannot feel happiness without them:

If you can taste a little happiness
Of independence in your captive lives
You will not want to stay in this prison
Or cover your face with a veil.

It is no surprise perhaps that her first impressions of women in England, like Janakummah’s, was the striking contrast between their vibrant public presence and her own restricted existence back home. Describing London’s residents enjoying their time in Hyde Park, for instance, she says: “I cannot explain how happy I feel when I see men and women moving around, rowing and riding horses freely together but I feel very sad at heart when I remember that I cannot see such sights back home in our country.”

It was not just women’s presence in public but their apparent equality that struck Krishnabhabini. English houses had no “inner” and “outer” divisions as in India which meant women managed the entire household, entertained guests, and kept the accounts. “The man is the head of the household, no doubt, but the wife is literally the queen,” she wrote.

Krishnabhabini Das had been married at nine – arranged matches like hers came with no guarantees of a supportive husband. But her husband, Debendranath, was a progressive. He was also a teacher of Sanskrit, Persian, and Bengali to employees of the British administrative services, well-versed in Greek, Latin, Italian, and French, and already familiar with England from a previous visit. Not only had he brought her with him despite his parents’ opposition, he also helped her navigate the unfamiliar country, and had supported her writing. This makes her grief for Indian women all the more pointed: she knew her own situation was the exception.

Beyond the home, English women performed what in India were considered “male jobs” – something that had struck Janakummah 10 years earlier too. They ran shops, worked as clerks, taught in schools, wrote books, and delivered lectures, and did so, she noted approvingly, very efficiently: “According to me, they are really the other half of men.” For Das, this was not mere admiration. It was an argument: if women leave their confinement and help men, India too can achieve great things.

Ultimately for Das, the freedom women enjoyed was both part of and the reason for England’s prosperity. The English were not inherently superior – they had “two hands and two legs” no different from the Indians, she pointed out. England was the land where the “goddess of independence” resided in every home. The more she saw of it, the more her “heart ached” for India. Her blood boiled, she wrote, when she saw Queen Victoria wearing the Kohinoor, a jewel that belonged to her motherland. India’s subservience, she argued, was its own fault: a lack of unity and resistance to change.

From Lahore to Queen Victoria’s Jubilee

Around the same time that Krishnabhabini Das was in England, a woman named Srimati Hardevi arrived from Lahore. She had come specifically to witness Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee celebrations in June 1887. Nothing had prepared her for the event. The imperial spectacle – the public procession, the crowds, the pageantry, the queen at its center – all of it overwhelmed her. She reached for the only vocabulary adequate to the moment: Puranic mythology. It was, she wrote, as if the goddess Lakshmi herself had descended, surrounded by the devtas, to grace London with her presence.

Hardevi was one of two women in a group of Indians that traveled from Lahore to London especially for the occasion. The Golden Jubilee celebrations were an intimate affair. Only some 50 foreign kings and princes, and the governing heads of Britain’s overseas colonies and dominions, along with rulers of the Indian Princely States were officially invited. But royal celebrations also had an element of public display, more so in an age of empire than they are today.

A well-connected woman – her husband was a barrister, her family reform-minded – Hardevi likely had the means and networks to visit the city to witness the historical event. She wrote two accounts of her trip in Hindi: one called London Yatra, and the other, London Jubilee. These accounts were addressed to women back home in Punjab and published anonymously in 1888.

Arti Minocha, who teaches at Delhi’s Lady Shri Ram College, recently traced Hardevi as their author through contemporary book lists and printed materials. In Minocha’s reading, Hardevi’s travels and reflections on Queen Victoria were never simple observations – they were also a way of reimagining what India and Indian women could become.

Hardevi also advocated travel as a way for women to expand their social and intellectual horizons. She recounts the rarity and disapproval she had to face from women friends and family for taking on the venture. In London Yatra, in which she describes her journey from Lahore to the imperial capital – the ship, the ports, the countries she passed through – Hardevi, goes further than our other travelers. She mourns the fact that even those who leave home for pilgrimages, do so in purdah, cut off from one another. What she wants, she tells her beloved women readers – pyaari pathikaon – are spaces where women can meet, exchange ideas, and hear each other’s stories freely.

Western Indian women in Oxford

The ease of travel brought another kind of traveler most familiar to us today into the mix – Indian students seeking degrees overseas. The first of these, Anandibai Joshi (1865-1887), went to America rather than England in 1883, graduating from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1886 as the first Indian woman to earn an MD.

By the late 1880s a small but significant number of Indian women also made their way to British universities. Among them was Cornelia Sorabji (1866-1954), a Christian from a Pune-based Parsi family, who arrived at Oxford’s Somerville College in 1889. Sorabji became not only the first Indian woman to study there, but the first woman ever to study law at Oxford.

She had landed in a country where nearly 90% of women could read. In India, according to the 1881 census, the figure was 0.6%. Yet despite these strides in primary education when it came to college, England in 1889 was barely opening up. At Oxford, women were not permitted to ask questions in class like the male students, were required to attend lectures with a chaperone, and until the final day of her exams, the university had not decided whether Sorabji would be allowed to sit them at all.

Cornelia Sorabji, the first woman to study law at Oxford University beginning in 1889, and an 1888 letter to the Times (London) that had advocated for her admission. pic.twitter.com/tEEAox1IUu

— alanigolanski.bsky.social (@alanigolanski) August 25, 2024

When Sorabji was in England, a handful of other western Indian women – mostly Marathi speakers – were also there, engaging in a variety of educational pursuits. Rukhmabai (1864-1955), who arrived from Bombay 1889 – Sorabji and she knew one another – enrolled in the London School of Medicine.

The two of them were also acquainted with Pandita Ramabai (1858-1922), a remarkable Sanskrit scholar and social reformer. Ramabai too had intended to study medicine but that dream remained unfulfilled. Instead, she pursued teachers training, and before heading for a longer stint in America, wrote Englandcha Pravas (Travel to England)— originally a letter written in Marathi describing her travel experiences to England in 1883, which was later published in book form.

A less known figure, who delivered her travelogue first as a public lecture on her return from England was Miss Mary Bhore (c1865-1913). Her Brahmin father had adopted the Christian faith and her sisters too had received a higher education – a reflection of western India’s reformist milieu. Bhore, like Sorabji before her, attended Somerville College. Somerville, one of Oxford’s first two women’s colleges, had opened in 1879, just two decades before Bhore began her degree in English literature in 1898. She spent seventeen months in England, including a year at Oxford followed by some time at London’s Froebel Training College, where she learned the progressive child-centric principles of kindergarten education, still novel even within liberal circles.

Back in India in 1900, Bhore was invited to give a public lecture at the Friends’ Liberal Association of Poona; it was also published that year as a slim volume in English titled Some Impressions of England, and subsequently as a serial in the Indian Ladies Magazine. The Association was a gathering of educated Indians who met every Saturday to hear speakers – mostly men – of some erudition. Bhore told her audience she preferred to speak of what interested her most as a woman: “the social life of the English, the Education of the Women, and their influence on the life of the nation.”

Speaking to her mostly male listeners, she described her astonishment on first arriving at Oxford where women attended the same lectures as men and socialised in mixed circles, “taking it as the most usual and natural thing.” She was equally impressed that a well-rounded education included both healthy minds and bodies – at Oxford, women played tennis, hockey, and rowed alongside their studies. These were not liberties she was familiar with in India. But where men and women were allowed to interact freely from an early age and were both educated, she observed, they met as equals and could even share healthy, mutually respectful friendships.

English women, she found, were highly literate. While more boys in India had started acquiring a formal education, the same was not true for girls: “statistics show,” she noted knowledgeably, “that to every ten boys who are educated, only one girl receives an elementary education.” While Indian women were not behind English women “in goodness of heart, in brightness of intellect and in natural strength of character,” they were not given the opportunity to develop these qualities. Instead, repressed, and rendered into submission and obedience at every step, the mass of Indian girls was kept “just where they were centuries ago.”

What happened to our women travelers?

Janakummah, who was already well-connected in British circles, received recognition for her travel account in the Athenaeum, a British literary magazine. Two of the writers discussed in this column published their travelogues anonymously – this tells us something about the social cost of visibility even for the privileged. They had family support and the financial means to venture abroad, and yet they still had to navigate their own doubts alongside those of the people around them.

On her return, Krishnabhabini Das dedicated much of her life to women’s education and to helping widows. She had never been to school or college, but educated herself so thoroughly that she was eventually appointed an examiner at the University of Calcutta. While she doesn’t mention it herself, the decision to travel came at a personal cost: on her father-in-law’s insistence, she had left her six-year-old daughter, Tilottama, behind in Calcutta. While she and Debendranath were away, Tilottama was married off at the age of 10. On Krishnabhabini’s return, the two were kept apart – living, says Mandal, “with different ideologies and on opposite paths.”

Besides publishing her two accounts of London, Srimati Hardevi also founded and edited a Hindi monthly for women in Lahore called Bharat Bhagini (Sisters of India) and wrote on matters related to women’s education. Sorabji got her degree despite the obstacles and returned home to spend her career fighting legal cases on behalf of women in purdah who had little access to the law.

When she gave her talk in Pune, Bhore was already First Assistant at the Poona High School for Native Girls. She would go on to become Directress of Female Education in Baroda and head of the Female Training College at Poona – a trajectory that shows what education could open up, even for an Indian woman, in colonial India.

Our writers from four corners of the subcontinent challenged societal norms, traveled despite the taboos, and wrote of their experiences and hopes for women back home. But the world they were writing for barely shifted during their own time. According to the 1901 census only six in every thousand women were literate – the same figure as when Janakummah had first set sail. In the three decades that separated her journey from the women students from western India, not much had changed.

A century and a half after these women traveled, the picture is more complicated than comforting. India’s female literacy rate of roughly 75% has come a long way since 1901 but remains measurably below the global average. Only four in 10 women are in the labour force versus eight in ten men – and strikingly, women with a higher education are more likely to be out of the labour force than women with no education at all.

Research shows that Indian women and girls often choose inferior educational institutions out of fear of unsafe routes to school and college. India ranks 129th out of 146 countries on the global gender gap index.

In a country as large as India, there are always reasons for hope and pockets of positive change. “Male jobs” have seen surprising surges for instance – India today has the highest percentage of women pilots, outpacing richer nations, and nearly half of all Chartered Accountancy exam qualifiers are now women, up from just 8% two decades ago. Yet, the statistics are too bleak for a “glass half full” view of the situation. The positive change is undeniable but too slow to suggest the gap is closing.

The 19th century women’s travelogues are a grim reminder that the basic freedom and dignity that all our travelers hoped for remains elusive. It is a failure hard to measure by any single number or index but easy to observe – the simple right for all women to move through the world as equals.

Aparna Kapadia is professor of history at Williams College. In 2025-26 she is a fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, New York Public Library.

Actor-politician Vijay on Sunday announced that he will contest from the Perambur and Trichy East Assembly constituencies in the upcoming Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu.

Vijay, the chief of Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam, will be making his electoral debut in the polls that will be held on April 23. The counting of votes will take place on May 4.

In Perambur, he will face RD Shekar of the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. In Trichy East, he is up against DMK candidate Inigo Irudayaraj, ANI reported.

At a meeting of party functionaries in Chennai, Vijay also announced that the party’s general secretary N Anand will contest from T Nagar, and its treasurer Venkat Ramanan from Mylapore.

He added that party leader VS Babu will contest from Kolathur against Chief Minister and DMK president MK Stalin. Another party leader, Selvam, will contest from Chepauk against Deputy Chief Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin.

The Election Commission on Saturday published the third supplementary voter list in West Bengal following adjudications as part of the special intensive revision exercise of the electoral rolls in the poll-bound state, PTI reported.

However, the poll panel did not specify how many cases had been resolved in the third list, or the number of voters were added to or removed from the electoral rolls. Booth-wise lists were made available on the website of the Election Commission at around 11.30 pm.

The first list, released on March 23, covered about 10 lakh cases and the second around 21 lakh, PTI quoted an unidentified Election Commission official as saying.

The number of voters who were added to or dropped from the rolls in the first two lists was also not disclosed by the poll panel.

State Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal had earlier said that persons whose names are excluded can challenge the decision before appellate tribunals to be set up by the Calcutta High Court.

West Bengal is among the 12 states and Union Territories where the special intensive revision of the electoral roll was undertaken.

On February 28, the Election Commission published the final electoral roll for West Bengal, showing that more than 61 lakh voters had been excluded.

However, the process continued with about 60 lakh “doubtful and pending” cases remaining under adjudication based on their objections to their exclusions from the draft rolls published in December.

On February 20, the Supreme Court ordered that judicial officers of the rank of district judge or additional district judge be appointed to help complete the revision exercise in the state amid a tussle between the Trinamool Congress government and the Election Commission.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had moved the Supreme Court against the exercise, raising concerns that voter roll revision poses an immediate and irreversible risk of mass disenfranchisement of eligible electors in the Assembly elections. She sought the court’s direction that the elections be conducted on the basis of the existing electoral rolls prepared last year.

The state polls will be held in two phases on April 23 and April 29. The votes will be counted on May 4, alongside those in Assam, Kerala, Puducherry and Tamil Nadu.

Businessperson Anil Ambani has filed a defamation suit in the Bombay High Court against Republic TV and its editor Arnab Goswami claiming that the reports on the news channel about his financial transactions caused irreparable damage to his reputation, Bar and Bench reported on Saturday.

Justice Milind Jadhav is expected to hear the petition seeking a temporary injunction against ARG Outlier, the company that owns Republic TV, Goswami and other unknown entities on Wednesday.

In his suit, Ambani claimed that he is aggrieved by articles authored and published by the defendants, and circulated through their news channels and social media platforms, Live Law reported.

The allegedly “offending publications and offending statements” claim to report on the regulatory proceedings initiated by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with Reliance Communications Limited, Reliance Home Finance Limited and Reliance Commercial Finance Limited, the suit was quoted as saying.

The suit added that Republic TV and Goswami were aware that Ambani had ceased to be the non-executive director of Reliance Communications Limited in November 2019 and never held any managerial or operational position in either of the companies, Live Law reported.

“The companies were distinct entities, and the applicant was not involved in the day-to-day management and decision-making operations of the companies,” the legal news portal quoted the suit as saying.

It added: “Despite knowing these facts, the defendants have chosen to maliciously, falsely and irresponsibly impute a libelous/slanderous/damaging personal connection between the allegations under investigation with respect to the companies and the applicant.”

Ambani stated in his suit that the defendants had repeatedly, through their publications, falsely portrayed him as being personally responsible for the alleged financial misconduct, including by using sensationalised headlines, allegedly defamatory commentary and allegedly derogatory insinuations, Live Law reported.

The police in Bengaluru filed a suo moto case against a professor at the PES University in the city for allegedly calling a Muslim student a “terrorist” in the class, The Indian Express reported.

The video of the incident, which occurred on Tuesday, was recorded by another student and widely shared online. It led to protests by student groups.

The adjunct professor in the commerce department, Muralidhar Deshpande, allegedly made Islamophobic remarks about the student during the class attended by about 60 students, the newspaper reported.

It was unclear what had triggered the incident, but The News Minute reported that the professor started shouting after the student sought his permission to step out of the class.

The university suspended the professor on Friday pending an inquiry, The News Minute reported.

University Chancellor Jawahar Doreswamy told India Today that the institute is verifying the authenticity of the video and examining the circumstances surrounding the incident.

“We have CCTV in every classroom and we have told our technical team to look at this and authenticate the video,” Doreswamy was quoted as saying. “We have immediately placed the faculty member under suspension and the disciplinary committee of the management will look through the evidence.”

In PES University, Bengaluru, a professor allegedly verbally abused a Muslim student named Affan in class. Dr. Muralidhar Deshpande reportedly called him a "terrorist" 13 times and said, "Iran war happened because of people like you," "Trump will take you away," and "You are… pic.twitter.com/EQtYAHoY9I

— The Observer Post (@TheObserverPost) March 27, 2026

The Giri Nagar Police initially filed a non-cognisable report based on a complaint by the National Students’ Union of India, the students’ wing of the state’s ruling Congress. However, a suo moto case was registered against the professor on Saturday, The Indian Express reported.

The case was filed under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings and intentional insult to provoke a breach of peace.

The professor had also told the student that the “Iran war happened because of people like you” and “Trump will take you away”, the newspaper quoted the complaint as having alleged.

These comments could not be clearly heard in the video widely on social media because of the ambient noise.

Suo Moto FIR against College Prof. Muralidhar Deshpande filed by Police. Police spoke to Affan to file FIR, but he was scared to lodge a complaint saying the college may suspend him.
The Girinagar Police of Bengaluru South Division have registered a Suo Motu FIR against a… https://t.co/NUfzzN7yxV pic.twitter.com/ZSveRt5PEu

— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) March 28, 2026

The complaint also raised concerns about the alleged deletion of the security camera footage, alleging that the evidence could have been tampered with, The Indian Express reported. It was also alleged that several students who supported the Muslim student were suspended on disciplinary grounds.

The Karnataka unit of the Students Islamic Organisation of India condemned the incident, describing it as a case of Islamophobia in an academic institution, the newspaper reported.

Earlier this week, a 2019 document came back to haunt the Election Commission. It did not contain explosive, classified information – just harmless guidelines for election candidates.

The problem was that it bore the stamp of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The Opposition was quick to decry the document as the poll panel scrambled to explain the “clerical error” – the BJP had requested clarifications on the guidelines and an official had “inadvertently redistributed” the document to other parties as part of the request.

But as the document went viral online, journalists who had shared social media posts with an image of the guidelines began to get notices from the Kerala Police, which is reporting to the Election Commission with state polls just weeks away. The notice demanded that they remove the posts because they “insulted” the poll body and undermined communal harmony.

Instagram and Facebook blocked Scroll’s posts about the controversy citing a “legal request”.

Since the appointment of Gyanesh Kumar and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu to the Election Commission in March 2024, the poll panel has struggled to explain its actions to journalists. Its strategy to contain the resulting awkwardness had been to keep mum and move on.

In June 2024, on the eve of the general election results, I had a private meeting with Rajiv Kumar, the chief election commissioner at the time, along with Gyanesh Kumar and Sandhu, after a press conference. I asked them about the poll panel’s failure to rein in hate speech during the elections. The chief election commissioner did not have a good answer, but what struck me was Gyanesh Kumar and Sandhu’s total silence throughout the conversation. They sat on the adjoining sofa and did not utter a word.

When I asked Gyanesh Kumar about the police assault on Muslim voters in Sambhal, Uttar Pradesh, he simply smiled and walked away.

This attitude towards the press is now institutional. The poll panel does far fewer press conferences and takes much longer to divulge information. Earlier, journalists could enter an Election Commission press conference without needing Press Information Bureau accreditation. This was done away with before last year’s Bihar polls.

Moreover, any visit to the poll panel’s office requires a prior appointment. Even if they have obtained appointments, journalists are quizzed at the entrance by security personnel.

Some of this is clearly designed to save face. During the special intensive revision in Bihar last year, the press had badgered the poll panel for a copy of its 2003 order on the intensive revision in Bihar to double-check its overreach. The document went missing but magically surfaced once the revision and the election was over.

It is worse for Right to Information requests. I am yet to hear back about one that I filed in October to access data that was published publicly till 2019.

The recent flurry of takedown notices over the Kerala gaffe marks a new turn in this frosty relationship. It seems that since the Election Commission has learnt to ignore the press, it is now moving to suppress it.

It is unlikely that this method can work in the long run. A tough question, a leak, a surprise election, even a court matter – any of these could unravel the Election Commission’s zealous attempts to refashion itself as an opaque pro-government institution. By trying to bury inconvenient facts, it only guarantees greater embarrassment when they inevitably surface.

Gyanesh Kumar’s tenure as the chief election commissioner will end in early 2029. That gives him four long years to learn that an institution cannot simply outrun the truth.

Here is a summary of last week’s top stories.

Energy crisis. The Union government cut the special additional excise duty on petrol ⁠to Rs 3 per litre from Rs 13 per litre, and on diesel to zero from Rs 10. This is expected to help oil marketing companies keep petrol and diesel prices stable.

Fuel marketing companies in the country have been under strain as retail petrol and diesel prices remain frozen despite a nearly 50% surge in global oil prices since the conflict in West Asia began a month ago.

The government also levied an export duty of Rs 21.5 per litre on diesel and Rs 29.5 per litre on aviation turbine fuel to help maintain the availability of the products for domestic consumption.

The Indian rupee sank to a record low of 94.8 against the United States dollar amid continued outflow of foreign funds and weakened equity markets.

Indian diplomacy. With Islamabad mediating peace talks between the United States and Iran, the Congress said that the “colossal failure” in India’s diplomacy, outreach and narrative management had made a “broken country” like Pakistan a “broker country”. The statement came a day after External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that India does not view itself as a “dalaal”, or broker, like Pakistan.

Jaishankar reportedly made the comments at an all-party meeting convened by the government on the West Asia conflict. Responding to Jaishankar’s comments, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said that for Pakistan to “even be…considered for a mediating role is a most damning indictment of both the substance and style of…Modi’s diplomacy”.

Contentious legislation. A Supreme Court-appointed advisory committee wrote to Union Social Justice Minister Virendra Kumar, asking that the 2026 Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Amendment Bill be withdrawn. The bill was passed by Parliament on Wednesday and awaits the president’s assent.

Transgender, intersex and gender-diverse organisations have been protesting against the bill, stating that the changes remove the protections guaranteed under the 2019 Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Act. The proposed amendments focus on redefining who qualifies as a transgender person.

Also on Scroll last week

• Why an ‘inclusive’ tribal leader from Assam has joined hands with BJP for the Assembly poll
• Watch: Scroll Adda: How Iran managed to take on a superpower
• How the Iran war is ratcheting up cost of medical supplies
• Why the LPG crisis is reviving pandemic fears among migrant workers
• Interview: How the war in West Asia could change India’s energy calculus
• How a loan from a mysterious lender helped a distressed newspaper take over UNI
• Millions of Bengalis may lose their vote. Not over citizenship but due to clerical errors
• ‘Life is here now’: Sri Lankan Tamil refugees pin hope on Indian citizenship
• How India found common ground with Iran after the Shah’s fall in 1979
• ‘Project Hail Mary’ review: Ryan Gosling is caught between a cute rock and a hard place

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Vijaypat Singhania, an aviator and the former chairperson of the Raymond Group, died in Mumbai on Saturday. He was 87.

Singhania, an honorary air commodore in the Indian Air Force since 1994 and the 2006 sheriff of Mumbai, had led the textile giant between 1980 and 2000.

He is also known for setting a world record in 2005 as the oldest person to fly a hot air balloon to a height of more than 69,000 feet. He was 67 at the time.

Singhania was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India’s third-highest civilian honour, in 2006.

In recent years, he was involved in a public feud and a legal battle with his son Gautam Singhania.

The recommendation by a committee at Jammu University on March 22 to purge material about Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Syed Ahmed Khan and Muhammad Iqbal from the MA Political Science syllabus is a distressing signal about the state of higher education in India.

The decision has been framed as a response to public sentiment, but it is a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of a university. Aristotle once said that it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

By removing apparently “controversial” figures, the university is telling its postgraduate students, who are ostensibly being trained for high-level analysis, that they are not intellectually mature enough to study the architects of the subcontinent’s history without being “corrupted” by them.

The primary casualty of this erasure is critical thinking. Studying the Two-Nation Theory advanced by Iqbal and Jinnah, alongside Khan’s concepts of Muslim distinctiveness, is essential to understanding the evolution of Muslim political dynamics in South Asia. Not reading the primary proponents of those ideas is akin to studying the French Revolution without mentioning the Jacobins or the Cold War without reading Karl Marx.

When a curriculum is sanitised to include only thinkers deemed “acceptable”, it ceases to be a tool of education and becomes an exercise in indoctrination. If students are not exposed to conflicting, uncomfortable, and even antagonistic ideas, the classroom transforms into a sterile echo chamber.

Understanding Jinnah or Iqbal is a prerequisite for understanding the modern Indian state, its borders and its constitutional journey. To ignore them is to leave a vacuum in a student’s historical consciousness – a vacuum that will inevitably be filled by polemics rather than scholarship.

The recommendation to remove topics related to Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Syed Ahmad Khan and Mohammad Iqbal from the syllabus of MA Political Science has been forwarded to the Board of Studies, which will meet on Tuesday to discuss the matter.

Read more: https://t.co/wGdfOff3na… pic.twitter.com/B6JaiWaPQP

— Scroll.in (@scroll_in) March 23, 2026

The complex ‘Muslim mind’

The controversy often stems from a reductionist view of these figures as mere villains of Partition. However, scholarship suggests a far more nuanced and often contradictory reality. In her seminal work, Secular and Nationalist Jinnah, Ajeet Javed meticulously documents the secular aspects of Jinnah’s early politics.

Before Jinnah’s communal pivot, he was hailed as an “ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity”, a legal thinker who staunchly opposed the mixing of religion with mass politics. Students deserve to analyse this metamorphosis – not to praise the man, but to understand the political failures and the hardening of identities in the 1930s and ’40s that led to such a shift.

Similarly, Rajmohan Gandhi in Understanding the Muslim Mind provides a balanced lens on Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and Muhammad Iqbal. Gandhi illustrates that Khan’s primary impetus was the modernisation of the Muslim community through Western education and scientific temper.

The career of Iqbal, the “poet-philosopher”, is equally layered. While he is celebrated in Pakistan, his earlier poems, such as Tarana-e-Hindi, remain foundational to the Indian soul.

Department Affairs committee of Political Science Department Jammu University unanimously recommended removing topics related to Mohd. Ali Jinnah, Syed Ahmad Khan, and Mohd. Iqbal from the course of PG. https://t.co/7ixdHLpZQ6 pic.twitter.com/7qVhdfZGzn

— Gulshan Azad (@gulshan18761371) March 22, 2026

Iqbal and the ‘Imam-e-Hind’

To truly understand the “adventure of ideas” that defines the subcontinent, one must look at the syncretism that often defined these thinkers. Iqbal was a philosopher rooted in India.

In his famous poem Ram, featured in his book Bang-e-Dara, Iqbal elevates Ram to a position of supreme spiritual leadership, famously referring to him as Imam-e-Hind – the Spiritual Leader of India.

For Iqbal, Ram represented the pinnacle of ethical conduct. In removing Iqbal, the university removes the record of this syncretic heritage. Without exposure to such verses, students are left with a one-dimensional caricature, losing the chance to ask the vital historical question: How did a poet who praised Ram as the soul of India eventually come to envision a separate state? Engaging with this transition is the very “dissection” Aristotle spoke of.

Rafiq Zakaria, in Iqbal: The Poet and the Politician, notes that Iqbal’s transition from a poet of universalism to a proponent of a separate Muslim identity was a complex reaction to the socio-political anxieties of the 1930s. If a master’s student of political science is denied the opportunity to grapple with these contradictions, they are being denied the tools to understand the roots of South Asian political thought.

Rationalism and Heterodoxy

The removal of Syed Ahmed Khan ignores one of the most significant intellectual reforms in South Asian history. Long before he was a political figure, Khan was a champion of rationalism and a pioneer of scientific temperament. His approach to the Quran was radical for its time. He famously argued that the word of god (scripture) cannot contradict the work of god (nature). He insisted that if a traditional religious interpretation contradicted the proven laws of science, the interpretation must be re-evaluated. This “naturalist” (nechari) approach sought to bridge the gap between faith and the burgeoning scientific age.

For Khan, any religious belief that shackled the human mind or prevented the adoption of modern scientific education was a misinterpretation of the faith. In his Tafsir-ul-Quran, Commentary on the Quran, he challenged traditional dogmas. He was sceptical of supernatural phenomena that violated the laws of physics. He often interpreted Quranic accounts of miracles – such as the splitting of the sea or the nature of angels and jinns – as metaphors or psychological states, rather than literal, physical disruptions of the natural order.

He argued that many legal injunctions in the Quran were specific to the socio-historical context of seventh-century Arabia and were not intended to be immutable laws for all eternity. This distinction between the essential faith and accidental social laws was a landmark in modern Islamic reform.

This heterodoxy was the driving force behind the Aligarh Movement. When Khan founded Aligarh Muslim University in 1875, he wanted to create a “learned mind” that could, as Aristotle suggested, entertain modern, Western scientific thought without losing its cultural identity.

By removing Khan from the political science syllabus, the Jammu University is erasing the history of indigenous secularism and rationalist reform. Without understanding Khan’s appeal to reason, students lose the context of the internal debates that shaped the modern South Asian identity. To study the “Muslim mind” without its most prominent rationalist is to study a caricature. By erasing Khan’s philosophy, the university succumbs to demands of the modern-day echo chamber while denying students the tools to navigate the complexities of the past.

Academic autonomy

The head of the Political Science Department at Jammu University, Baljit Singh Mann, correctly argued that the inclusion of these thinkers is consistent with the norms and curricula of the University Grants Commission, followed by premier universities nationwide.

Universities must be spaces where diverse viewpoints are presented for critical evaluation instead of being sidelined fearing controversy.

Shielding students from the “unpleasant” parts of history, produces graduates who are ill-equipped to defend the democratic and secular values of India against uninformed critique.

Faisal CK is Deputy Law Secretary to the Government of Kerala. Views are personal.

Five Indians were injured after debris from intercepted ballistic missiles fell in Abu Dhabi, the city’s administration said. They sustained moderate to minor injuries.

The authorities in the United Arab Emirates’ capital city had earlier said that they were working to put out two fires caused by falling missile debris in the Khalifa Economic Zones, Al Jazeera reported.

On Thursday, an Indian citizen and a Pakistani citizen were killed in Abu Dhabi after debris from an intercepted Iranian missile fell on a street.

Here are more top updates from the conflict in West Asia:

• US Vice President JD Vance on Saturday told American podcaster Benny Johnson that the country will get out of Iran “soon”. US President Donald Trump “is going to keep at it for a little while longer to ensure that once we leave, we don’t have to do this again for a very, very long time”, Vance said. The US vice president acknowledged that fuel prices have risen sharply because of the conflict, but added that they would come down soon. “This is a very, very temporary reaction to what is ultimately going to be a short-term conflict,” he added.
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said that he spoke with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and discussed the conflict. Modi said that he reiterated India’s condemnation of attacks on energy infrastructure in the region. “We agreed on the need to ensure freedom of navigation and keeping shipping lines open and secure,” he said on social media.
• Twelve United States troops were injured, of whom two were seriously wounded, in an Iranian attack on the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, The New York Times quoted two unidentified US officials as saying on Friday. The attack also caused significant damage to two KC-135 aerial refuelling planes, it added. The Iranian missile and drone attack was among the most serious breaches of US air defences since the war in West Asia began a month ago.
• Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen launched a ballistic missile towards southern Israel on Saturday, triggering sirens in areas including Beersheba, The Times of Israel reported. The Israeli military said it detected the launch from Yemen and was working to intercept it. This marks the group’s first such attack on Israel since the conflict started, Al Jazeera reported.
• The Houthis said on Saturday that they had targeted Israeli military installations and claimed that the attack was in response to strikes on infrastructure and civilian deaths in Lebanon, Iran, Iraq and Palestine, Al Jazeera reported. The group added that its strikes would continue until its stated objectives are achieved and “until the aggression against all resistance fronts ceases”.
• The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan will meet in Islamabad on Sunday and Monday to discuss ways to “de-escalate tensions” in West Asia.
• Operations at Oman’s Salalah port have been temporarily suspended after a drone attack, AFP quoted Danish shipping company Maersk said on Saturday. The attack had injured one worker and damaged a crane. Maersk, whose subsidiary runs the port, said that the operations could remain halted for 48 hours, the news agency reported.
• US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday that Washington DC expects its operation in Iran to end “in a matter of weeks, not months”, and claimed that it is progressing “very well”. Speaking with reporters after meeting foreign ministers from the Group of Seven forum, he asserted: “When we are done with them here over the next couple of weeks, they will be weaker than they’ve been in recent history.”
• Trump had claimed on Thursday that Iran was “begging” Washington to make a deal, even as Iran has reportedly dismissed a 15-point ceasefire plan proposed by the US. Trump on Thursday warned Tehran to “get serious” about negotiations, adding that if it becomes too late, “there is no turning back, and it won’t be pretty”.
• Nevertheless, Trump said on Friday that he wanted his legacy to be that of a “great peacemaker”. Addressing the Saudi-backed Future Investment Initiative Priority Summit in Miami, the US president claimed: “I settled eight wars. They were long-term wars and lots of people were being killed every year, so I’ve saved millions and millions of people.”
• Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said that his country will “exact [a] heavy price” for Israeli strikes, including attacks on “Iran’s largest steel factories, a power plant and civilian nuclear sites”. Noting Israel’s claim that it acted in coordination with the US, Araghchi said that the attacks contradicted Trump’s “extended deadline for diplomacy”.
• On Thursday, Trump said that he was once again postponing the deadline for Iran to fully open the Strait of Hormuz to shipping. Citing ongoing talks with Tehran to end the conflict, the president said that he would hold off for 10 more days before targeting the plants. Iran has, however, repeatedly denied that any negotiations are taking place to end the conflict.

The conflict

The US and Israel launched an attack on Iran on February 28, claiming that Tehran’s action posed an existential threat to Israel. Washington acts as a guarantor of Israel’s security. Iran has retaliated by striking Israel and US military bases in the region, and targeting major cities in Gulf countries and some ships.

Israel has been claiming that Iran is close to obtaining a nuclear weapon, which could alter the regional security balance. Tehran has long maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes.

The Ministry of External Affairs on Saturday refuted a report by The New York Times that billionaire Elon Musk had joined a telephone call between United States President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday, ANI reported.

“We have seen the story,” the news agency quoted the ministry spokesperson as having said. “The telephone conversation on March 24 was between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Donald Trump only.”

The discussion provided an opportunity “for exchange of views” on the situation in West Asia, the ministry added.

On Friday, The New York Times reported, quoting two unidentified US officials, that it was unclear what why Musk had joined the call and if he had spoken. The US-based newspaper described Musk’s alleged participation as an “unusual appearance by a private citizen on a call between two heads of state during a wartime crisis”.

Musk is not known to be currently associated with the Trump administration.

In May, he had quit as a special government employee of the US Department of Government Efficiency under the Trump administration. The advisory body – run by Musk at the time – had been created through an executive order by Trump on his first day in office in January 2025. It aimed to “modernise federal technology and software to maximise governmental efficiency and productivity”.

Once strong allies, Musk and Trump had a public feud in July.

Musk’s companies have investments in West Asian countries, the newspaper reported. The billionaire’s auto manufacturer Tesla started selling its cars in India in July and his satellite internet venture Starlink has been cleared to operate in the country. Musk also owns social media platform X.

He has not yet commented on the newspaper report.

Asked about The New York Times’ report, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Friday told PTI that Trump “has a great relationship with Prime Minister Modi, and this was a productive conversation”.

On Tuesday, New Delhi and Washington had confirmed the phone call between Modi and Trump, but had not mentioned Musk.

Claims pose ‘serious questions’, says Congress

The Congress had said on Saturday that The New York Times report about Musk having allegedly participated in the call poses “serious questions” and that the country “deserves clear answers”.

The Opposition party asked why a businessman was present when leaders of two countries were discussing a global crisis and what role Musk played in the conversation.

“Was this truly about the West Asia crisis, or was there another ‘business’ agenda?” the Congress had asked on social media before the external affairs ministry commented on the matter. “Why did the Modi government not disclose Musk’s presence? Why are we learning about this from another country instead of our own government?”

It added: “Trump spoke to leaders of different countries during the war, but no businessman was on any of those calls. Why did this happen only with Modi? The White House described the talks as productive. But productive for whom?”

The Congress alleged that Modi was “simply following Trump’s direction” and that “he’s more of a manager being controlled from behind the scenes than a leader”.

On Tuesday, Modi had said that he and Trump had a “useful exchange of views” on the situation in West Asia.

“India supports de-escalation and restoration of peace at the earliest,” Modi had said on social media. “Ensuring that the Strait of Hormuz remains open, secure and accessible is essential for the whole world. We agreed to stay in touch regarding efforts towards peace and stability.”

IT workers in India keep a lot of the world’s technology ticking over. They may be operating your company’s helpdesk, or responding to a query about your latest gadget.

They may also be working from home. And in India’s IT hubs, like Bangalore, Chennai or Hyderabad, this is likely to be from a cramped apartment filled with backup battery systems the workers have paid for themselves.

For despite often working for some of the biggest companies in the world, research I carried out with colleagues shows that working conditions for many of India’s IT workers are far from pleasant.

Ever since COVID, the pros and cons of remote working have been tested across the world. In some places, for some people, a switch to hybrid or fully remote working represents a degree of freedom and self-determination.

But not everywhere. So what does working from home actually look like for the 5 million Indian IT professionals who keep the digital infrastructure of big western companies running?

One of the biggest challenges is space. In India, more than half of the population live with members of their extended family. Many of the 51 workers we interviewed share their homes with children, parents, grandparents and in-laws – all squeezed into small apartments which now double up as offices.

For them, remote working means organising large family groups in small spaces so that one person can have a quiet corner in which to work.

A professional background for a video call required careful choreography in a crowded household with two rooms where babies might be crying next to elderly relatives with medical complaints.

For the workers we spoke to who had care responsibilities for various family members, the juggling required was extraordinary. We were told of profound knock-on effects for family life, with chaotic mealtimes and evenings hijacked by calls.

But perhaps the biggest challenge we learned about was to do with basic infrastructure. Power cuts are routine in many Indian cities. Internet bandwidth, shared among other family members working or studying from home, is often unreliable.

We met many IT professionals, doing identical work to their counterparts in London or San Francisco, who had spent their own money on domestic backup power systems so they could stay online.

During home visits, we saw battery units occupying valuable domestic space on balconies, in hallways and porches – equipment these homes were never designed to hold. A proper unit – the kind needed to run a laptop, router, and fan through India’s routine power cuts – costs up to £400, roughly equivalent to a month’s take-home pay for a junior IT worker.

Meanwhile, internet bandwidth had to be carefully rationed. Television schedules were reorganised around work calls. Most meetings defaulted to audio-only, with video reserved for special occasions.

Along with power supplies and other equipment, some said workplace surveillance had also moved into their homes. One 33-year-old male IT worker said his employer’s online system would “calculate how many hours you work, and which other websites you visit”. He added that lapses would “automatically trigger a [message to my] manager”.

The surveillance extended into absurd territory. When power cuts struck – a routine occurrence – some workers were expected to prove it. A 28-year-old male engineer told us: “The boss said ‘go out and take photos of your house and send it’. He needed proof.”

Working conditions

These frustrations are not going unheard. In 2025, hundreds of IT workers took to the streets in Bangalore carrying placards which read “We are not your slaves” and demanding a legal right to disconnect and the enforcement of limits on working hours.

When the state government proposed extending the maximum working day from ten to 12 hours, workers protested again. So far, India’s IT sector remains exempt from key labour protections, and no right to disconnect has been brought into law.

A key part of their protest was to do with workplace inequality – which had simply been relocated from the office into the home.

Organisations saved on office space, utilities and equipment. Those costs didn’t disappear – they were transferred to workers and their families.

In some countries that might mean buying a desk. To many of the Indian IT professionals we spoke to, who keep the digital infrastructure of big western companies running, it meant investing in domestic power backup systems, rationing internet bandwidth, rearranging entire households, and absorbing the emotional toll of work without boundaries – all while managing infrastructure failures.

A software developer in Bangalore with identical skills to one in Boston faces entirely different remote work realities. If remote work is to deliver on its promise, organisations and policymakers must recognise that “working from home” means fundamentally different things depending on where that home is – and who bears the hidden costs of making it work.

Vivek Soundararajan is Professor of Work and Equality, University of Bath.

This article was first published on The Conversation.

The Election Commission on Friday published the second supplementary voter list in West Bengal following adjudications as part of the special intensive revision exercise of the electoral rolls in the poll-bound state, The Hindu reported.

The first supplementary list, released on Monday, covered about 29 lakh cases, The Indian Express reported. An additional 8 lakh cases were reportedly resolved in the second list, taking the total to 37 lakh.

Of the 60 lakh cases, more than 23 lakh still need to be adjudicated by judicial officers deputed by the Supreme Court.

Booth-wise lists were made available on the poll panel’s website at 11.30 pm on Friday, but the pages showing details of deletions and inclusions were not accessible because of “technical glitches”, The Hindu quoted an unidentified official as saying.

The poll panel did not disclose the number of inclusions or deletions in the second list.

State Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal had earlier said that persons whose names are excluded can challenge the decision before appellate tribunals to be set up by the Calcutta High Court, The Indian Express reported.

Notably, the names of former High Court judge Sahidullah Munshi and his family members have been included in the list released on Friday, Live Law reported. On Thursday, Munshi said that his name had been deleted from the voter list after adjudication, while those of his wife and elder son remained under review and his younger son had applied as a new voter.

He described the experience as “very humiliating and painful”.

West Bengal is among the 12 states and Union Territories where the special intensive revision of the electoral roll was undertaken.

On February 28, the Election Commission published the final electoral roll for West Bengal, showing that more than 61 lakh voters had been excluded.

However, the process continued with about 60 lakh “doubtful and pending” cases remaining under adjudication based on their objections to their exclusions from the draft rolls published in December.

On February 20, the Supreme Court ordered that judicial officers of the rank of district judge or additional district judge be appointed to help complete the revision exercise in the state amid a tussle between the Trinamool Congress government and the Election Commission.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had moved the Supreme Court against the exercise, raising concerns that voter roll revision poses an immediate and irreversible risk of mass disenfranchisement of eligible electors in the Assembly elections. She sought the court’s direction that the elections be conducted on the basis of the existing electoral rolls prepared last year.

The state polls will be held in two phases on April 23 and April 29. The votes will be counted on May 4, alongside those in Assam, Kerala, Puducherry and Tamil Nadu.

The promotion of Hindi has not sufficiently encouraged the growth of other Indian languages, despite the constitutional commitment to linguistic diversity (“An English professor writes: Why Hindi is to blame for the decline of India’s other languages”).

The three-language policy across the country has also not been uniformly implemented. Students in South India are often required to learn three languages, but many regions in North India follow a bilingual approach.

A uniform bilingual policy may be considered across the country, wherein students learn their respective state language along with English. This will ensure fairness, reduce academic burden and promote effective communication. –ST Ramachandra

***

As members of the Singpho community in Assam, we communicate in Singpho. But we have also learnt to speak Assamese, Tai Khamti, Bengali, Hindi, Nepali, English and native tribal languages. This multilingualism is an advantage. Beyond our state, we can communicate in Hindi or English. But we are losing our indigenous languages, especially the younger generations. – Sonabor Duwania

***

This is a wrong narrative. English has sidelined local languages because it helps secure jobs and livelihood. Some states have replaced local languages with English or restricted the use of local languages within the premises. The decline in local languages is due to local governments and people themselves who have disregarded their own language and local culture. Hindi has remained in its place. – Satyanarayana JV

***

A national language was needed for ease in administration. But the imposition of Hindi was opposed by non-Hindi states for political reasons. Had they accepted Hindi in the 1950s as a second or third language in schools, everyone in India would have understood each other better.

Observations about local languages, such as Avadhi, Bhojpuri, Braj are immaterial when everyone is educated. Any child can learn three-four languages if taught in school. Every local language has its own charm and a common national language can never take it away.

We must encourage our children to learn English and Hindi along with regional languages taught in schools. The language debate will become defunct soon. Our smartphone will be the language of the future, not a language itself. – Girish Kanagotagi

‘Divisive’, ‘false narrative’

Recently Scroll published an article about the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh advocating Hindu extremism across the world. But everyone knows Scroll is trying to sell this false narrative.

Now, using the cover of an English professor, you are peddling another damaging false narrative about Hindi, which is India’s national language. It is a shame that many Indians are proud of knowing English. In no other country is such self-deceit happening in the name of democracy and freedom of speech. – Giridhar.

***

India is not Europe where every state is divided to a country itself. Sentiments of “my language”, “my culture”, and “my history” will divide the country. A future is possible when a country is united on all aspects. Such divisive tactics, which your organisation is always trying to promote, will not work with this educated generation. – Rahul Tiwari

The Allahabad High Court on Wednesday granted legal protection to a couple in a consensual live-in relationship, observing that a married man living with an adult woman does not constitute a criminal offence, The Hindu reported.

The case before the court was filed by the woman’s family, which objected to the relationship, arguing that the man’s marriage made it illegal.

A bench of Justices JJ Munir and Tarun Saxena rejected this contention, stating that there is no offence in a married man living with an adult in a consensual live-in relationship.

“Morality and law have to be kept apart,” Bar and Bench quoted the court as saying. “If there is no offence under the law made out, social opinions and morality will not guide the action of the court for protecting the rights of citizens.”

The court also noted that the woman had approached the Shahjahanpur superintendent of police, stating that she was living with her partner of her own free will and that her family had threatened her with death, the legal news outlet reported.

The court noted that no action had been taken on her complaint and underlined that it was the duty of the police to “protect two adults living together”.

The court directed that neither the woman nor her partner should be harmed or arrested. It also restrained her family from contacting them or entering their home, either directly or indirectly.

The court made the Shahjahanpur superintendent of police personally responsible for ensuring the couple’s safety and security, Live Law reported.

The bench has granted the state counsel two weeks to file a counter-affidavit.

A special court in Delhi on Friday granted the National Investigation Agency 10 days’ custody of seven foreign nationals accused of links to ethnic armed groups in Myanmar that are hostile to India, The Hindu reported.

The agency had sought 15 days’ custody of the accused persons.

Special Judge Prashant Sharma of the National Investigation Agency court cited the sensitive nature of the case and its potential international implications, and directed that the accused be produced again on April 6.

Of those arrested, one person – Matthew Aaron Van Dyke – is from the United States, while the other six – Hurba Petro, Slyviak Taras, Ivan Sukmanovskyi, Stefankiv Marian, Honcharuk Maksim and Kaminskyi Viktor – are Ukrainian citizens, according to The Hindu.

They were arrested earlier this month under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

According to the National Investigation Agency, the seven individuals were involved in supplying weapons and military equipment to ethnic armed groups operating in Myanmar, as well as providing them with training.

Investigators allege that the group had entered India on valid visas, but later travelled to Mizoram without the mandatory restricted area permit. They are further accused of entering Myanmar and meeting ethnic groups hostile to India.

Officials also alleged that the individuals received drone deliveries from Europe while in Mizoram.

They were reportedly arrested in Delhi, Kolkata and Lucknow while trying to leave India.

The accused on Friday moved a plea seeking that an independent translator be appointed to ensure fair proceedings, unidentified persons in the court told The Hindu.

In 1982, Rajesh Joshi wrote an evocative Hindi short story titled Somvar (Monday) capturing the changing dynamics of a middle-class household with the arrival of liquefied petroleum gas.

As if narrating our current predicament, the story depicts how an entire global regime of petroleum and rising oil prices subtly translates into mounting tensions in one home.

“The world was fighting over oil,” Joshi wrote. “The nation was watching the flow of oil. And our home was heating up from the gas that came from that flow of oil.”

Somvar is a reminder that crises around oil and gas are not new. What is different, though, is the manner in which the spectacle of crisis is circulating – as social media images, posts and reels.

The current anxiety around liquefied petroleum gas in India – rising prices, delayed cylinder deliveries – evokes a historical moment when energy shortages became prominent in public consciousness: the oil shocks of the 1970s.

The modern cultural script of energy scarcity was forged during the 1973 oil crisis, when an embargo by members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries led to a significant reduction in oil supplies and caused prices to soar.

A second shock followed in 1979 after the Iranian Revolution. These crises were economic events, but they quickly became cultural ones.

The #LPGgasShortage bas become a meme fest. Half the country is standing in #LPG lines for refill, the other half is busy making funny reels trolling the Modi govt.#LPGcylinder nahi ho gaya, Shahrukh Khan ho gaya. #IranWar‌ #Lpgcrisis #LPG_gas #Gassupply pic.twitter.com/gtstX6OpGx

— Vinay Kumar Dokania (@VinayDokania) March 15, 2026

As is evident from Somvar, uneven access to public goods, like LPG, shaped the thematic preoccupations of the short story. Shortages and interruptions, long part of everyday experience, registered not as an absolute lack of energy but as waiting and jugaad – informal arrangements to sort out the problem.

These are not spectacular events but slow, familiar negotiations with scarcity.

This year’s LPG crisis in India is unfolding in a radically different media landscape from its previous iterations. Instead of in cinema and print fiction, much of the public conversation now takes place through social media platforms such as Instagram and short-form video formats like YouTube Shorts.

Memes and short reels dramatise everyday frustrations around LPG cylinder prices and availability. As visibility and irony shape the experience of shortages, queues have turned into content.

These videos often use a comic tone. Many reels depict exaggerated scenes of domestic improvisation, joking about returning to cooking with firewood or dramatising the moment when the cylinder is finally obtained by the household. The format is brief and performative. It translates economic strain into familiar domestic situations.

"Foreigner girl trolls Modi govt." 🔥

She made a reel on the viral Bhojpuri song "Dhokhebaaz Rajau" and highlighted how LPG prices are increasing in Indian market.

"Vishwa me Modi ji ka danka baj rha hai." pic.twitter.com/95J1uac21q

— Mission Ambedkar (@MissionAmbedkar) March 18, 2026

The authorities, however, are not amused. On March 14, a government school teacher in Madhya Pradesh’s Shivpuri district was suspended after a video surfaced of him making satirical remarks about LPG cylinder prices and mimicking Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

There is a quiet irony in this story. The teacher was also tasked with running a local Anand Bhavan (Happiness Centre). While the state prescribes positivity, it is far less tolerant of humour that registers discomfort or dissent.

India’s energy narrative in the last two decades has been about self-reliance, progress, digital transparency and a clean energy transition. Though middle-class India bought this line, the crisis has underscored its weaknesses, making it evident that the nation still relies enormously on fossil fuels.

These LPG reels are circulating an image of the crisis – but they redistribute visibility without acknowledging the dominant experience. Though reels tend to focus on the discomfort of middle-class India, the burden of scarcity has fallen disproportionately on small entrepreneurs and workers.

If digital media has made the shortage visible, it has also made it strangely weightless – circulating inconvenience as comedy. Beneath the comedy lies the harsher truth that our reliance on fossil fuels will ensure that disruption keeps returning to Indian homes – much like in Joshi’s short story.

"Cylinder Maharaj ki jay ho." 🔥

Content creators are making reels showing how much struggle people face just to get a gas cylinder. It now feels less like a basic need and more like a blessing of God. pic.twitter.com/EFti8cIxvL

— Mission Ambedkar (@MissionAmbedkar) March 12, 2026

Joya John teaches literature at Krea University.

The war in West Asia has cast a spotlight on India’s interests in the region. While the disruption of energy supply and maritime trade have taken precedence, the fate of 10 million Indians who work in Gulf countries has found little mention in public discourse.

The reason for this is not hard to ascertain. The overwhelming majority of Indians in the Gulf are low-income, blue collar workers.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Parliament on March 24 that 3.75 lakh Indians have returned from the region since the war began. The majority of them are white-collar professionals.

Experts warn that a continuation of the conflict could result in an economic slowdown in the region, resulting in fewer jobs and lower wages. Hence, blue-collar workers have decided to stay put, taking their chances with drones and ballistic missiles flying overhead. The Ministry of External Affairs said at least seven Indians have died in the Gulf states since the war began.

The immediate tasks for New Delhi are to increase diplomatic efforts towards ending hostilities in the region and working with its counterparts in the region to ensure Indians are safe. However, this episode highlights the policy neglect of Indian workers overseas.

A new bill

The main instrument governing labour migration overseas is the Indian Emigration Act 1983. In October, when the Ministry of External Affairs published the Overseas Mobility (Facilitation and Welfare) Bill, 2025, scholars and experts of migration hoped that the exploitation of Indian workers in foreign countries would finally be addressed.

Comments were invited on the draft in November.

Much has changed since 1983, when the Emigration Act was enacted, to liberalise colonial-era restrictions. The number of clearances and recruitment licences granted to agents increased under the Emigration Act, but the law failed to adequately protect the rights of migrant workers.

Since then, migration to West Asia alone has increased 12-fold, from eight lakh to one crore by 2025. Most of the 10 million Indians in the Gulf states are blue-collar workers employed in sectors such as construction, retail, hospitality, domestic and care work.

VIEWS/ SUGGESTIONS ON DRAFT OVERSEAS MOBILITY (FACILITATION & WELFARE) BILL, 2025 pic.twitter.com/vAr33pMAYM

— India in Philippines (@indembmanila) October 30, 2025

The money they send home contributes massively to the $135 billion in remittances India received in 2024 – the highest from any overseas workforce in the world.

Migration scholars and experts have established that these workers suffer gross rights violations: from work-related issues such as wage theft and extortionate recruitment fees to inhumane treatment resulting in avoidable death.

The new law is an opportunity to ensure the rights and dignity of millions of hardworking Indians who contribute to the country’s collective prosperity are protected.

Opaque management

Under the proposed law, the entire edifice of emigration governance will rest on a new, opaque bureaucratic body: the Overseas Mobility and Welfare Council, with a vast mandate. This council, comprising bureaucrats from several ministries, will be assisted by the Director General of Overseas Mobility with regional officers.

The Director General of Overseas Mobility is similar to the Protector General of Emigrants, the authority currently tasked with protecting the interests of Indian workers going abroad. With 16 offices across India, it can grant and revoke the licenses of recruitment agents.

The new council’s work will be expansive, from tackling irregular emigration, leveraging bilateral mobility agreements to studying overseas labour markets. The bill also vests the council with the powers to create and administer schemes for the welfare of emigrants and advise the government on all matters of emigration.

But the bill’s wording is ambiguous, stating that the council shall exercise powers and perform “all or any” of these duties. Essentially the bill will install a new centralised body atop the existing administrative structure. Such a design fails the test of accountability as well as efficiency in governance.

Rights-based approach

The Indian government’s attempt to overhaul the Emigration Act has been prompted by the growing labour shortages in developed and wealthy countries, due to ageing populations, skill shortages and the reluctance of native-born workers to take up precarious jobs.

The Indian government hopes that workers migrating to other countries will alleviate the unemployment crisis in India. The Ministry of External Affairs has signed labour mobility agreements with 20 countries since 2018.

While it is wise to pay attention to facilitating the mobility of workers, the crucial question is mobility on what terms? When a sovereign state approaches this question, its foremost concern must be to protect the rights of its citizens. Given that the Indian government has also acknowledged that workers are being exploited, any new law must place a rights-based approach at its heart.

The first step, then, is for the bill to commit to protecting the rights, dignity and agency of emigrant Indians. This means incorporating provisions through which workers become participants to the act – for instance, by designing insurance policies based on their experiences – not passive subjects on whom the law is enacted.

The guarantee of workers’ rights should result in “safe, legal, orderly and regular” mobility. Here, New Delhi should rely on the decades of experience of workers, administrators and activists troubleshooting the problems of millions of Indian workers overseas.

If the government is serious about the rights of Indian workers overseas, the bill must consider three priorities:

1. Regulating recruitment

When Indian workers find themselves in distress overseas, the problem is seen as occurring “over there”. But the process which delivers workers to such a situation begins in India. Licensed recruitment agents, concentrated in major cities, rely on a vast network of unregistered subagents for workers willing to take up difficult jobs in foreign countries.

Data for 2024 from the Ministry of External Affairs shows that 44% of recruitment agents were concentrated in Delhi and Mumbai. Only 5% of recruitment agents were based in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, even though these states accounted for 55% of all Emigration Clearances issued in 2024, based on my calculations from the ministry’s emigration clearance reports. Since low-income workers largely hold Emigration Check Required passports, when travelling abroad on employment visas they are required to seek clearance from the Protectors of Emigrants.

Adding to this geographical disparity is that licensed recruiters do not reach workers directly. There is a chain of intermediaries, with each link adding a charge that gets passed down to the individual worker. The government has capped recruitment service charges at Rs 30,000, but it is well-known that workers routinely spend up to five times that amount to get jobs overseas. This means that workers take on debt, almost always from non-institutional sources, before seeing a job offer.

Recruiters are often the only source of information about overseas jobs, handing them an advantage in a market with an excess supply of workers. Unscrupulous recruiters misinform workers about the terms of employment and even send workers overseas on tourist visas.

The result is contract substitution: where workers find out, after landing in a foreign country, that the job they were promised does not exist, and since they are already in debt, they are forced to take up employment on whatever terms they are offered.

Unregulated recruitment also results in a loss of state revenue running into billions of rupees annually. Such practices create a black economy robbing the state of crucial revenue while risking the lives of workers.

India must insist on the globally recognised “employer pays principle”, where all costs of recruitment are borne by the employer. Workers should have legal recourse if they are charged excessive fees.

Genuine subagents must be brought within the regulatory ambit while public sector overseas recruitment companies need to be encouraged to set industry standards. At present, the six state recruiters, which include the Telangana Overseas Manpower Company and the Overseas Manpower Corporation Ltd of Tamil Nadu, account for a miniscule share of the recruitment market.

A mutually reinforcing combination of these measures will result in an efficient and fair recruitment industry.

A guided exhibition of stalls by @MEAIndia licensed Recruiting Agents, Skill Departments and TN Cyber Security Police was inaugurated by @ProtectorGenGOI at the margins of TN Overseas Mobility & Employer Partnership Summit 2026.
1/2 pic.twitter.com/qlFSqbiVqB

— Protector General of Emigrants (@ProtectorGenGOI) February 16, 2026

2. Involve states

The Overseas Mobility Bill repeats the mistake of excluding state governments from the governance architecture. Instead, the proposed Overseas Mobility and Welfare Council must include representatives from states with high emigration. State governments such as Telangana and more recently Jharkhand have been working on their own policies to protect migrating workers.

Recruitment irregularities, pre-departure support and rehabilitation or reintegration for returning workers is handled by states. Attention to state level-differences in the composition of the emigrating workforce and corridors of migration is necessary for nimble policy design, which helps with context specific responses. These are crucial elements to consider when designing policies that affect millions.

While in the past workers from the South dominated migration, today every second Indian going to West Asia is from Uttar Pradesh or Bihar. Kerala accounts for less than 5% of emigrating workers, based on my calculations using the state-wise Emigration Clearance Reports published by the Ministry of External Affairs.

The proposed law should aim to facilitate knowledge transfers between states, ensure policy coherence and facilitate cooperation across administrative scales in implementation.

There is valuable experience in states such as Kerala, which created the Department of Non-Resident Keralites’ Affairs back in 1996. That should be leveraged by northern states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

3. Engage civil society

It is a common refrain among migrants to West Asia that Indian embassies and consular officials are unreachable and unsympathetic. There are obvious limitations to state capacities in foreign jurisdictions.

The state’s embassies and consulates act as nodes in foreign countries. But if these nodes were connected to the networks of civil society actors and had established protocols for dealing with them, they could fulfil their policy mandate.

Trade unions could also be important partners. India’s Central Trade Unions have representation at global labour forums and federations, such as the International Labour Organisation and International Trade Unions Confederation. International labour migration is a core focus for these bodies where Indian voices need to be strengthened.

India should follow The Philippines and recognise civil society actors as partners of the state rather than excluding a vast resource that could help realise policy goals.

Economic downturns in segmented labour markets, like the Gulf states, can result in a race to the bottom as migrants compete for fewer available jobs. If hostilities persist, India must work with other labour -sending countries to protect the common interest of all workers rather than pitting them against each other.

The Bharatiya Janata Party-led government projects itself as a vishwaguru, or world leader. But the true test of India’s global heft is its ability to protect Indian workers overseas. The bill, in its current form, is a long way from making that happen.

Usman Jawed is an independent migration researcher focusing on the Indo-Gulf migration corridor.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Friday said that his government would “break the backbone” of “Miyas” in the state if the Bharatiya Janata Party returns to power in the Assembly elections, PTI reported.

Speaking at a campaign rally in Dhakuakhana of Lakhimpur district, Sarma said that his government had worked for the “indigenous people of the state”.

“And those who came from Bangladesh and encroached on Assam’s land and homes, we broke their hands and legs politically,” PTI quoted the chief minister as saying.

He added: “This time, we will break the very backbone of the Bangladeshi Miyas, so that they cannot dare the Assamese people.”

In Assam, “Miya” is a derogatory word used to refer to undocumented immigrants and is exclusively directed at Muslims of Bengali origin. They are often accused of being undocumented migrants from Bangladesh.

Once a pejorative in Assam, from the common use of the honorific “Miya” among South Asian Muslims, the term has now been reappropriated by the community as a self-descriptor to refer to Muslims who migrated to Assam from Bengal during the colonial era.

In the past months, Sarma has made a series of remarks targeting Miyas, including claiming that it was his job to “make them suffer” and saying that he had directed BJP workers to file applications seeking to strike the names of Miya Muslims off the electoral rolls.

On February 26, the Gauhati High Court sought a response from Himanta Biswa Sarma on petitions seeking action against him for alleged hate speech against Muslims.

Earlier in February, the Supreme Court had declined to entertain petitions seeking registration of a first information report against him on similar allegations.

During the poll campaign on Friday, Sarma also said that his government had cleared 1.5 lakh bighas of encroached land from Miyas in the past five years, PTI reported.

Since the BJP came to power in Assam in 2016, multiple demolition drives have been conducted in the state, mostly targeting areas populated by Bengali-speaking Muslims.

Assembly elections in Assam will be held on April 9 and the results will be declared on May 4.

Also read: In Assam, ‘forged’ forms aimed at deleting thousands of Muslim voters ring alarm bells

The Kerala High Court on Friday directed the Election Commission to decide within two months a plea filed against Bharatiya Janata Party’s B Gopalakrishnan for making allegedly communal remarks during his campaign for the upcoming Assembly elections, Live Law reported.

Assembly elections in the state will be held on April 9 and the results will be announced on May 4.

In a now-deleted video, Gopalakrishnan, the BJP’s candidate from Guruvayur, could be heard purportedly asking why the constituency, which is an “international pilgrimage centre” does not have a Hindu MLA, reported The News Minute.

“I have been called on by Guruvayurappan to rescue the land from this half-century-long imprisonment in the hands of temple looters and temple-opposers,” the news outlet quoted him as saying in the video.

Guruvayur houses a prominent temple dedicated to the Hindu deity Krishna.

On March 22, the Guruvayur Temple Police registered a case against Gopalakrishnan under provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita related to provocation with intent to cause a riot, The Hindu reported. He was also booked under the Representation of the People Act section 125 for promoting enmity between groups during an election.

On Friday, Justice Bechu Kurian Thomas questioned the Election Commission about the impact of such remarks and directed it to act on the complaint “at any rate within two months”.

“Video has been removed, but what about the harm caused to the community, to the society and to the country,” Bar and Bench quoted Thomas as asking.

The court was hearing a plea filed by Gokul, a Kerala Students Union leader, who alleged that no action had been taken on his complaint regarding Gopalakrishnan’s communal remarks.

The Kerala Students Union is the Congress’s student wing in the state.

Gokul also argued that despite the FIR, the returning officer accepted Gopalakrishnan’s nomination papers instead of disqualifying him.

The High Court disposed of the plea after directing the petitioner to first approach the Election Commission, noting that the matter is pending before the chief election officer, Bar and Bench reported.

“Considering that the election process has already commenced, it is not appropriate for this Court to make any observations which may have a bearing on the proposed election,” the judge added.

The Union government on Thursday cut the special additional excise duty on petrol ⁠to Rs 3 per litre from Rs 13 per litre, and on diesel to zero from Rs 10.

Fuel marketing companies in the country have been under strain as retail petrol and diesel prices remain frozen despite a nearly 50% surge in international oil prices since the conflict began in West Asia on February 28. The reduction in the special additional excise duty is expected to help them keep petrol and diesel prices stable.

Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri said that the government “has taken a huge hit on its taxation revenues” to make sure that the losses of oil companies are reduced.

“At the same time, export tax has been levied as international prices of petrol and diesel have skyrocketed and any refinery exporting to foreign nations will have to pay export tax,” Puri said.

International crude prices have gone through the roof in the last 1 month from around 70 dollars/barrel to around 122 dollars/barrel. Consequently, petrol and diesel prices for consumers have gone up all over the world. Prices have increased by around 30%-50% in South East Asian…

— Hardeep Singh Puri (@HardeepSPuri) March 27, 2026

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that duties on exporting diesel have been set at Rs 21.5 per litre, while levies on exports of aviation turbine fuel have been set at Rs 29.5 per litre. Sitharaman said the decision will ensure adequate availability of these products for domestic consumption.

However, Congress leader Pawan Khera said that the announcement on the reduction of levies on petrol and diesel should not be interpreted as relief to common citizens, and noted that prices for dealers and consumers currently remain the same.

“Relief exists but only in the narrative – not in reality,” Khera said. “Instead of manufacturing headlines and fooling people, the government should focus on delivering actual relief to consumers.”

If you saw the headlines about petrol and diesel prices ‘coming down’ and thought the government had offered relief to your pocket – you’d be mistaken.

As of now, prices remain the same for dealers and for consumers.

What has actually been reduced is the ‘special additional… https://t.co/iZ95MEjOC5

— Pawan Khera 🇮🇳 (@Pawankhera) March 27, 2026

Amid the conflict, Iran has effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterbody connecting the Gulf to the Arabian Sea, for most international commercial vessels. About 20% of global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint.

India imports 88% of its crude oil needs and about half of its natural gas requirement. This mostly comes through the Strait of Hormuz.

Following a marginal drop in global oil prices on Wednesday amid the conflict, the benchmark Brent crude was again trading above the $100 per barrel-mark on Thursday. The price was $78 per barrel on February 27, a day before the conflict started.

On Friday, Brent crude was trading at $107 per barrel.

Rating agency Investment Information and Credit Rating Agency of India Limited had earlier said that if the average crude oil price goes up to $100-105 per barrel, fuel retailers would incur a loss of Rs 11 per litre on petrol and Rs 14 per litre on diesel, PTI reported.

Centre says India has oil for 60 days, LPG for a month

The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas on Thursday also said that crude oil supplies have been secured for the next 60 days, and supplies of liquefied petroleum gas for about a month have also been arranged.

“Nearly two months of steady supply is available for every Indian citizen regardless of what happens globally,” it said. “Next two months of crude procurement has also been secured.”

The ministry also maintained that there is no shortage of LPG in the country. It said that domestic refinery production has been increased by 40% due to which the net daily import requirement has reduced to 30,000 metric tonnes.

This means that the country “is now producing much more than it needs to import,” the Centre said.

The Union government has cut the special additional excise duty on petrol ⁠to Rs 3 per litre from Rs 13 per litre, and on diesel to zero from Rs 10. This is expected to help oil marketing companies keep petrol and diesel prices stable.

Fuel marketing companies in the country have been under strain as retail petrol and diesel prices remain frozen despite a nearly 50% surge in international oil prices since the conflict began in West Asia on February 28.

While excise rates on petrol and diesel have been cut, the Centre has also decided to levy duties of Rs 21.5 per litre on exports of diesel and Rs 29.5 per litre on exports of aviation turbine fuel. This is aimed at ensuring the availability of these products for domestic consumption, Union minister Nirmala Sitharaman said. Read on.

Interview: How the war in West Asia could change India’s energy calculus

The Union government increased the commercial allocation of liquefied petroleum gas to 70% of pre-West Asia conflict levels, up from 50%. This additional supply of non-domestic LPG is intended to support industries such as steel, automobiles and textiles, Petroleum Secretary Neeraj Mittal told all states and Union Territories.

“Among these, priority shall be given to process industries or those requiring LPG for specialised heating purposes that cannot be substituted by Natural Gas,” added Mittal.

Meanwhile, Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri dismissed rumours of a lockdown in India due to the ongoing conflict. Read on.

Why the LPG crisis is reviving pandemic fears among migrant workers, reports Anant Gupta

Rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah was sworn in as Nepal’s prime minister. He is the youngest person to hold the post in decades.

Shah, better known as Balen, was sworn in a day after he released his first public statement since winning the elections, via a rap song called Jay Mahakaali.

The former Kathmandu mayor became prime minister after his Rastriya Swatantra Party won 182 out of 275 seats in the March 5 election. Read on.

After Nepal’s Gen Z uprising, the country’s communists face a crisis of relevance, writes Shreya Paudel

The Indian rupee fell to a record low of 94.82 against the United States dollar amid the conflict in West Asia. The rupee had opened at 94.18 in the interbank foreign exchange market and slumped 86 paise as foreign fund outflows continued and domestic equity markets weakened.

The benchmark Sensex fell 2.25% while the Nifty declined 2.09% on Friday. Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, was trading at $109.8 per barrel, up 0.53% in futures trade. Read on.

A group of opposition MPs has urged the Union government to direct the Central Board of Film Certification to examine the film The Voice of Hind Rajab “strictly in accordance with constitutional principles governing freedom of expression”. They called for the film to be granted certification.

The letter, dated March 24, came after media reports said that the film’s release had been blocked owing to fears that it will “break up” ties between India and Israel.

The Oscar-nominated film depicts the real story of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl who was trapped inside a car attacked by Israeli forces in Gaza and later found dead. Read on.

Why the voice of Hind Rajab needs to be heard, explains Nandini Ramnath

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The passage of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026, in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday has been accompanied by a familiar, almost predictable. justification: protection.

The bill will offer protection for “genuine” beneficiaries of state welfare programmes for transgender persons, supporters say, and protection against these schemes being misused by those falsely claiming transgender identity.

Articulating this logic, Bharatiya Janata Party MP Medha Kulkarni said in the Rajya Sabha that the amendments would ensure that benefits reach the deserving people in a proper manner. “She said there is a need for a law that brings justice to real transgender individuals and punishes fake ones,” All India Radio reported.

To ensure that benefits reach the “right people”, supporters say, the bill removes the right to self-perceived gender identity. It makes verification by medical and bureaucratic boards mandatory for obtaining a transgender certificate.

The spectre of “fraudulent claimants” is being used to legitimise additional layers of procedural control.

But it isn’t clear whom the government believes it is preventing misuse by.

For a community that faces exclusion from housing, employment, healthcare, and even the most elementary forms of social recognition, the suggestion that transgender identity has suddenly emerged as a lucrative site of opportunistic fraud is bizarre.

Are there really self-serving individuals who might decide to declare themselves transgender and voluntarily assume stigma and social ostracism to access often inconsistently provided welfare provisions?

Parliament passes Transgender Persons (Amendment) Bill, 2026. The law redefines “transgender” to exclude self-perceived identities and tightens certification via medical boards, while introducing stricter penalties for forced identity and exploitation. pic.twitter.com/cMMvySraVJ

— Bar and Bench (@barandbench) March 25, 2026

The claim of misuse recasts transgender persons as objects of suspicion instead of citizens with rights. The burden is no longer on the state to ensure inclusion, but on individuals to prove authenticity.

Identity, recognised by the Supreme Court in NALSA v Union of India in 2014 as intrinsic to personal autonomy, is now reduced to a claim to be verified, examined, and, if necessary, denied.

By removing self-identification and introducing mandatory medical and bureaucratic certification, the law effectively narrows the category of who counts as a transgender person. It excludes trans men, trans women, and non-binary persons in favour of a limited list of identities tied to socio-cultural and medical categories.

A law ostensibly designed to prevent fraud has ended up institutionalising an insidious form of misrepresentation by limiting lived identities.

The strategic invocation of misuse and protection deftly avoids the uncomfortable conversation about structural neglect of the trans community. It shifts attention away from inadequate welfare delivery and transforms a question of rights into a question of eligibility.

This isn’t an amendment—it’s erasure

The transgender rights amendment bill strips away the right to self-identify and pushes trans, non-binary, and intersex people back by decades, @mridulasee writes of the panic & fear

Subscribe to read our edit notes https://t.co/2XjoqhV8Hg pic.twitter.com/piUjNuLD6R

— Article 14 (@Article14live) March 21, 2026

The disappointment is not merely with the content of the bill, but with the impoverished imagination it reveals. In 2026, after decades of activism, jurisprudence, and scholarship, transgender identity continues to be approached through the lenses of suspicion and control.

The bill makes restrictive categories appear reasonable. It says that protection requires verification and that recognition must be earned through compliance.

However, what is truly in need of protection is the integrity of welfare delivery.

Swarupa Deb is a senior fellow at the Institute of Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru.

A sessions court has directed the Thane Central Jail authorities to admit dismissed Railway Police constable Chetan Singh, accused of shooting dead three Muslim passengers and his senior officer on a moving train in 2023, to the Regional Mental Hospital in Thane for evaluation and treatment, the Hindustan Times reported on Friday.

In an order delivered on Wednesday, the court directed that the hospital submit fortnightly reports on his condition, including an opinion on whether he is fit to stand trial and capable of conducting his defence.

The direction came during hearings on his second bail application.

On March 2, Singh’s lawyer, Pankaj Ghildiyal, argued that he should be granted bail because of his allegedly unstable mental condition.

The court had asked jail authorities on March 10 to submit a report on Singh’s behaviour in prison by March 25. However, no such report was filed.

Singh, who is in Thane Central Jail, had spent four months at the Regional Mental Hospital in Thane last year after authorities at Akola Central Jail raised concerns about his behaviour. He was let out in June, with the discharge papers describing him as “cooperative, communicative, oriented to time, place and person’’, the newspaper reported.

In December as well, Singh was examined at the Thane prison hospital on the court’s directions, soon after his second bail application was filed. The report described his condition as “stable”, with all his physical parameters normal, The Hindustan Times reported.

Singh’s first bail application, filed soon after his arrest in 2023, had also cited mental instability as grounds for bail. The court, however, rejected it in December 2023, noting that eyewitness accounts and his statements at the time of the incident indicated that he was in a “well-settled position and mind to commit the murder of the persons of the particular community”.

The case

On July 31, 2023, Singh killed Assistant Sub Inspector Tikaram Meena and three Muslim passengers – Abdul Kaderbhai Bhanpurwala, Sadar Mohammed Hussain and Asghar Abbas Sheikh – on the Jaipur-Mumbai Central Superfast Express.

Witnesses in the case had said that Singh walked through four coaches of the train to select his victims and asked them for their names before killing them.

After one of the Muslim victim’s body fell to the floor, Singh had asked the rest of the passengers in the coach to record a video as he made a speech in which he hailed Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath and, presumably, either Uddhav Thackeray or Raj Thackeray.

“If you want to vote, if you want to live in India, then I say Modi and Yogi, these are the two and your Thackeray,” he declared.

Singh was arrested and subsequently booked under the Indian Penal Code for murder as well as under the Arms Act. A week later, the police added charges of kidnapping and promoting enmity on grounds of religion against him.

Opposition MPs have urged the Union government to direct the Central Board of Film Certification to examine the film The Voice of Hind Rajab “strictly in accordance with constitutional principles governing freedom of expression” and grant it certification.

The letter, dated March 24, came after media reports said that the film’s release had been blocked.

On March 19, Variety quoted the film’s local distributor as saying that the Central Board of Film Certification has blocked the theatrical release of the film in the country owing to fears that it will “break up” ties between India and Israel.

The Oscar-nominated film, directed by Kaouther Ben Hania, depicts the real story of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl who was trapped inside a car attacked by Israeli forces in Gaza and later found dead.

The incident, which took place in 2024, occurred while Israel was carrying out unprecedented air and ground strikes on the besieged Palestinian enclave. The strikes, which began in October 2023, have left more than 70,000 persons dead.

In a letter to Information and Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, the MPs said that reports that the film board has “orally declined” certification to The Voice of Hind Rajab raise “serious concerns” about whether factors beyond the statutory framework for film certification had influenced the decision-making process.

They said that any decision on film certification and screening should not depend upon “perceived diplomatic relationships”.

Artistic expression cannot be curtailed through opaque or informal censorship.

Members of Parliament from across the political spectrum, including myself, have jointly written to the I&B Minister urging that the internationally acclaimed film “The Voice of Hind Rajab” be… pic.twitter.com/Uj4cnXNL9j

— John Brittas (@JohnBrittas) March 27, 2026

“It is a foundational principle of our constitutional democracy that artistic expression cannot be curtailed through informal or opaque mechanisms,” they added.

The MPs said that any “departure from this due process, including oral instructions or informal advisories that effectively result in denial of certification, undermines institutional credibility and erodes public confidence in regulatory bodies entrusted with protecting creative freedom”.

“India’s democratic strength lies in its confidence to permit diverse narratives to be examined and debated in the public sphere,” they said.

The letter read: “Reliance on considerations beyond the statutory parameters…including perceived geopolitical sensitivities would create an undesirable precedent inconsistent with the constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression.”

It was signed by Jairam Ramesh of the Congress, John Brittas of the Trinamool Congress, Ram Gopal Yadav and Javed Ali Khan of the Samajwadi Party, Manoj Kumar Jha of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Salma of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Sarfaraz Ahmad of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and Haris Beeran of the Indian Union Muslim League.

Also Read: ‘Please don’t leave me,’ Hind Rajab pleaded. Why her voice needs to be heard

The Union government on Friday increased the commercial allocation of liquefied petroleum gas to 70% of pre-West Asia conflict levels, up from 50%.

This additional supply of non-domestic LPG is intended to support industries such as steel, automobiles and textiles, which are “labour-intensive and provide support to other essential sectors”, Petroleum Secretary Neeraj Mittal wrote in a letter to chief secretaries of all states and Union Territories.

“Among these, priority shall be given to process industries or those requiring LPG for specialised heating purposes that cannot be substituted by Natural Gas,” the letter added.

Announcing the decision on social media, Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri said that while many countries have adopted strict fuel conservation measures, India continues to “remain an oasis of energy security, availability and affordability”.

On Saturday, the government had allowed an additional 20% allocation of commercial liquefied petroleum gas to states and Union Territories, taking the overall allocation to 50%.

Of the total amount, 10% was to be allocated, subject to states undertaking measures to facilitate the expansion of the piped natural gas network.

Energy supplies to India have been disrupted since the conflict in West Asia broke out on February 28. Since the hostilities began, Iran has blocked the Strait of Hormuz – through which about 20% of global petroleum liquids consumption passes – for most commercial ships.

India imports 88% of its crude oil needs and about half of its natural gas requirement. This mostly comes through the Strait of Hormuz.

Due to the disruption, the Centre had initially curtailed the supply of LPG to commercial establishments and had prioritised domestic supplies.

The conflict in West Asia began after Israel and the United States launched a joint operation to “degrade the capabilities” of the Iranian government. Tehran retaliated by striking Israel and US military bases in the region, and targeting major cities in other Gulf countries and some ships.

While Israel has been claiming that Iran is close to obtaining a nuclear weapon, Tehran has long maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes.

‘Lockdown rumours completely false’

In a separate social media post, Puri dismissed rumours of a lockdown in India due to the ongoing crisis in West Asia, calling them “completely false”.

“Let me state this clearly, there is no such proposal under consideration by the Government of India,” he said while warning those spreading rumours and creating panic.

“The global situation remains in flux, and we are closely monitoring developments across energy, supply chains, and essential commodities on a real-time basis,” the minister said. “India has consistently demonstrated resilience in the face of global uncertainties, and we will continue to act in a timely, proactive, and coordinated manner.”

He added that the government was taking all necessary steps “to ensure uninterrupted availability of fuel, energy and other critical supplies for our citizens”.

On Thursday, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas had said that crude oil supplies have been secured for the next 60 days and supplies of LPG for about a month have also been arranged.

The ministry also maintained that there is no shortage of LPG in the country. It said that domestic refinery production has increased by 40%, due to which the net daily import requirement has reduced to 30,000 metric tonnes.

Former Calcutta High Court judge Sahidullah Munshi on Thursday said that his name has been deleted from the voter list after the adjudication process during the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls in West Bengal, The Indian Express reported.

Munshi, who is currently serving as the chairperson of the West Bengal Board of Auqaf, told the newspaper that the names of his wife and elder son are still under adjudication, while his younger son has applied as a new voter.

“Till now, only my name has been deleted,” The Indian Express quoted him as saying. “It is very humiliating and painful…a lot of harassment. The unfortunate part is that they took the documents and said they would upload them, but no receipt was given.”

Munshi is waiting to appeal before an appellate tribunal.

The former judge on Thursday expressed surprise at his name being struck off, saying that he had submitted all required documents, The Indian Express reported.

“I do not know how they have adjudicated and how they have deleted,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. We were kept in the dark. Had we been informed that more documents were required, we could have submitted them. There was a list of documents, and any one should have been sufficient.”

Munshi, however, told the Hindustan Times that he does not blame anyone for his name being deleted.

“I think that, as everything was done in such a hurry, they may not have looked into the documents thoroughly,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “I submitted my passport so that it can’t be disputed.”

The former judge added that he is waiting for the official reason for his name being struck off before filing an appeal.

West Bengal is among the 12 states and Union Territories where the special intensive revision of the electoral roll was undertaken.

On February 28, the Election Commission published the final electoral roll for West Bengal, showing that more than 61 lakh voters had been excluded.

However, the process continued with about 60 lakh “doubtful and pending” cases remaining “under adjudication” based on their objections to their exclusions from the draft rolls published in December.

On February 20, the Supreme Court ordered that judicial officers of the rank of district judge or additional district judge be appointed to help complete the revision exercise in the state amid a tussle between the Trinamool Congress government and the Election Commission.

On Monday, a batch of names approved by the judicial officers was added to the rolls through the first supplementary list published. Of the 60 lakh pending cases, 29 lakh had been adjudicated.

However, the poll panel has not specified how many voters have been added to or dropped off the list.

Technical glitches

Earlier on Wednesday, the Trinamool Congress had alleged that the Election Commission website incorrectly showed that all voters in West Bengal were under adjudication in the claims process of the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls.

The ruling party in the state claimed that this has caused panic among the voters.

The Economic Times had also reported that when the supplementary list was made available online on Monday, there were technical glitches, server problems, downloads were slow and the PDF files could not be downloaded.

The Election Commission later said that the problem had been rectified.

Also read: Millions of Bengalis may lose their vote. Not over citizenship but due to clerical errors

The Madras High Court on Thursday temporarily halted proceedings in a case against former Tamil Nadu Minister K Ponmudy for his allegedly defamatory remarks about women and two denominations of Hinduism, Live Law reported.

Justice AD Jagadish Chandira passed the interim direction on Ponmudy’s plea seeking a halt on the proceedings till his pending plea to quash a magistrate court’s cognisance of the complaint against him, is dealt with.

The High Court also allowed Ponmudy’s plea to exempt him from further appearance before the magistrate, Live Law reported.

The proceedings against Ponmudy stem from his comments at an event in Chennai on April 6.

A widely shared video shows the former minister purportedly linking sexual positions to Hindu denominations Shaivism and Vaishnavism. The comments were made in the context of a joke involving a sex worker and her client.

Taking note of the matter on April 17, 2025 the High Court directed the Tamil Nadu police to register a first information report against Ponmudy. When no case was registered, the court initiated suo motu proceedings against the former minister, holding that his comments amounted to “hate speech”, Live Law reported.

On September 16, the court closed the proceedings after the Tamil Nadu government informed that all the complaints had been duly investigated and closed since there was no incriminating material, Live Law reported.

However the court allowed complainants to approach the concerned jurisdictional magistrates against the closure of complaints.

Following this, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Uma Anandan approached the Metropolitan Magistrate in Chennai holding that Ponmudy must be tried against sections of the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita pertaining to promoting enmity between different groups, deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class and disturbing religious assembly.

Despite Ponmudy’s counsel questioning the maintainability of the complaint, the magistrate took cognisance of the matter, holding that there was a prima facie case made out against the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader.

Ponmudy then approached the High Court against this action.

After outrage against his remarks, Ponmudy was sacked as deputy general secretary of the DMK by Chief Minister MK Stalin on April 11.

On April 27, he resigned as the state’s forest minister after facing criticism from the Madras High Court and within the DMK.

The Election Commission on Thursday said that over Rs 408.8 crore worth of illicit inducements have been seized over the past month ahead of Assembly elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Kerala and Puducherry.

The seized illicit inducements included Rs 17.4 crore in cash, liquor worth Rs 37.6 crore, drugs worth Rs 167.3 crore, precious metals worth Rs 23 crore and other freebies worth over Rs 163.3 crore, the poll panel said.

The poll panel also said that it held a meeting on March 24 with the heads of enforcement agencies, along with the chief secretaries, chief electoral officers, directors general of police and other officials from the five poll-bound states and Union Territories, as well as their 12 bordering states and Union Territories, to review readiness and enhance coordination.

The officials were directed to ensure “violence-free, intimidation-free and inducement-free elections”, the Election Commission said in a press note.

The Election Commission further said that 70,944 complaints had been lodged between March 15 and March 25 using the C-Vigil app in the poll-bound states and Union Territories. Of these, 70,831 had been disposed of and 67,899 complaints, or 95.8%, were resolved within 100 minutes.

The app allows users to send geo-tagged videos and images of any violations seen during elections.

Assembly elections will be held in Assam, Kerala and Puducherry on April 9, and and in Tamil Nadu on April 23. West Bengal will vote in two phases on April 23 and April 29. The results in all states will be announced on May 4.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party got 10 times more donations than the combined amount received by all other national parties in the financial year 2024-’25, the non-governmental organisation Association of Democratic Reforms said in a report on Thursday.

The BJP received more than Rs 6,074 crore from 5,522 donations, followed by the Congress, which received Rs 517.3 crores from 2,501 donations.

The Association of Democratic Reforms analysed all donations above Rs 20,000 received by national parties in the financial year 2024-’25.

In the report released on Thursday, the organisation said that there was a 161% surge in donations to national parties in 2024-’25 as compared to the previous year, rising by Rs 4,104.2 crore

The Aam Aadmi Party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the National People’s Party together received more than Rs 6,648 crore from 11,343 contributions, said the report.

The Bahujan Samaj Party declared that, like the last 19 years, it had not received any donations above Rs 20,000.

The AAP said that it received Rs 38.1 crore, which marked a 244% hike from the last financial year. The CPI(M) received Rs 16.9 crore, which marked a 122% hike, and the National People’s Party got Rs 2 crore, 1,313% higher than the previous financial year.

While the BJP’s collections jumped by 171%, the Congress’ donations increased by 84%.

The highest donations came from corporates, accounting for Rs 6,128.7 crore, or 92.18% of the total contributions. On the other hand, individuals contributed Rs 505.6 crore, making up 7.61% of the total.

The Prudent Electoral Trust was the top donor, sending a total of Rs 2,413.4 crore to the BJP, the Congress and AAP combined.

The trust donated Rs 2180.7 crore to the BJP, or 35.9% of the total funds received by the party. The Congress got Rs 216.3 crore, or 41.8% of the total, from the trust, while AAP received Rs 16.4 crore, or 43.08% of the total.

This is the second part of a debate on whether Hindi or English are weakening other Indian languages and constricting linguistic diversity. Read the first part here.

English has done remarkable damage to India’s linguistic progress by stifling other Indian languages. Instead, that blame is conveniently laid on Hindi. Blaming English forces one to confront a hard truth that India’s systems are designed to keep most Indians outside the gate. It is easier to blame Hindi, performing critique, while staying inside the inherited structure.

It is time to break this structure down.

India is a “linguistic surplus” nation. However, the main problem with Indians is that they are somewhat ignorant about what to do with this linguistic surplus, ability and strength. Indians are inherently multilingual, but live in a monolingually institutionalised world.

When I say monolingual world, I don’t mean that there is only one functioning language on earth. Don’t count the number of languages but look at how they operate in the post-industrial world and in the binary of the nation-state. Monolingualism is the favoured approach of colonial and post-colonial institutions. It is how institutions scale, status is produced and knowledge is certified in contemporary times.

India is a peculiar case because, in some exclusive quarters, it practices acute monolingualism, but at other socio-cultural levels it tries to retain its old multilingual character. The higher one climbs, the more the system demands that one abandons their linguistic plurality and kneel before one code. That code is English.

For instance, school education is multilingual, but as one progresses towards higher education, it starts becoming more and more monolingual – and that is by design.

When many Indians transition from cultural multilingualism towards institutional monolingualism, language attrition in Indian languages starts happening. Language attrition is the gradual loss of a language or parts of a language when someone stops using it regularly, or the degree of its usage changes.

But the real question is what kind of bilingualism is being demanded of Indians and what kind of linguistic recovery is possible post-language attrition in India?

Here is the hard science that people treat like poetry.

Cognate languages, which are descended from the same ancestral language, function differently. Hindi and “regional” languages, which are considered victims of Hindi, share genetic nativeness: they have the relatively same structures and syntax and share large sets of vocabulary.

The kind of bilingualism in Indian languages is fundamentally different from bilingualism with English. You can switch between cognate tongues with less cognitive effort and regain linguistic strength faster post-language attrition. English shares no such apparent properties with any Indian language.

Hindi is India’s linguistic modernity and political and civic ingenuity. Not because it is perfect on any linguistic parameters, rather, it is the first large-scale attempt at a shared public language that has neither historical priesthood and traditional (or cultural) exquisiteness, nor colonial power like English. That is why the rise of Hindi provokes scathing reactions from other Indians, such as anti-Hindi movements seen in some states. People are witnessing a language, ie, Hindi, claiming linguistic autonomy and strength in front of their eyes and this generates resistance.

The way many academics look at Hindi has made us believe that the real villain is Hindi and its rise. However, English remains the language of elite certification. It is still the language of the Supreme Court, the top bureaucracy, the “serious” university and the “world”.

Everyone more or less accepts the might and legitimacy of English. That itself should make one suspicious. When a gatekeeping tool is accepted as natural, it means people have internalised their place in the hierarchy.

Some will say Hindi has prestige too and it weakens mother tongues. To some extent that is true. Middle-classes shift their linguistic preferences, even for Indian languages. In Bhojpur, people shift to Hindi. But look carefully at the direction of aspiration. The Indian middle-class shifts to Hindi from their mother tongue only to go further to English. Hindi is a ladder. Because they don’t or can’t jump to English directly from Bhojpuri, they shift to Hindi. Hindi gives them the same linguistic feeling for a while, but the ultimate destination is English.

When one sees a Bhojpuri speaker becoming a Hindi speaker, don’t stop the story there and declare Hindi the murderer. Instead, see what higher education, the courts, corporate hiring and social prestige demand. The machine pulls one upward into English. Hindi is the corridor, English is the gate.

That is why a certain kind of anti-Hindi argument often feels incomplete. It critiques the corridor while keeping the gate untouched. Further, Hindi is probably the only language that has, post-independence, real democratic roots – in the sense that it grew as a mass public language in the modern political churn. It belongs to rallies, pamphlets, cinema, street speech, and everyday exchange across sub-regions. That doesn’t mean it is automatically innocent but that it carries a different social energy.

So what do we do with English? We start calling it what it is: a bottleneck. A colonial design and inheritance that still organises who gets to think and who gets to speak in India. Further, to strengthen the sister languages, don’t just fight Hindi. Build a structure where multilingualism is not punished as you climb. “Vernacularise” higher education without making it a tribal trophy. Make the apex institutions linguistically accountable.

Otherwise, Hindi can be replaced with a dozen regional prides and the gate will still be English. That gate will still turn linguistic surplus into linguistic shame or burden.

Finally, the real question is whether India can build a multilingual modernity or keep feeding a monolingual machine and blaming the corridor for what the gate does.

Krishna Kumar Pandey is an assistant professor of Linguistics at the Central Institute of Hindi, Agra. He has been a Fulbright scholar at the University of Michigan.

This is the second part of a debate on whether Hindi or English are weakening other Indian languages and constricting linguistic diversity. Read the first part here.

The noise around English and its role in India’s cultural disintegration has not subsided after 78 years of independence. Whenever someone discusses language extinction, English is invariably the villain of the story.

This characterisation of English is incongruent with lived reality. But the language serves the purpose of a common enemy.

The harrowing, brutal way in which it came to Indians and its role in the construction of the postcolonial Indian elite makes English a sore spot. It is also the language of a great many institutions with a pronounced British heritage. Understandably, the popular narrative renders English as the prime culprit driving the shrinking footprint of India’s native languages.

But if one looks closely at how local languages actually recede in everyday life, the story appears far more intricate. English is certainly the mighty queen in a globalised world-order, but Hindi is the local feudal lord that subdues a plethora of mother tongues.

Standardised Hindi, as it is taught in school and in which students are expected to speak and write, is the language that is learnt to sound respectable, educated and urban. In India’s hierarchical society, language dictates one’s place in the pecking order. Languages also arrange themselves on a ladder, depending on the status of their users.

Hindi is at the top in most parts of North India where users of other languages find themselves in a state of constant shame. To command respect, at least in the North, one may or may speak English but must speak polished Hindi. With Hindi, one can argue in most courts, read official documents and participate in higher education.

But one cannot be “just Bhojpuri” and claim the same benefits and status. A Bhojpuri speaker appears as much a dehati, or a country hick, to a Hindi speaker as they are to an anglophone elite. So, what does the Bhojpuri speaker do?

In the North, the desire for the provincials is to be recognised by Hindi counterparts as their equal. English remains the domain of a small and now exceedingly powerless elite. One needs English at the airport or at a fine-dining restaurant. But Hindi is the language one uses to communicate with their landlord, friends, teachers, the security guard – that is, the everyday world.

Hindi is certainly a factor in the decline of a host of languages such as Bhojpuri, Maithili, Braj and Awadhi. Hindi may be syntactically similar to these languages, but similarity does not ensure survival. The unnoticed shift away from these languages – at home, in the market, in school corridors – does not announce itself as the death of a language but assumes the face of “better manners”, “appropriate speech” and “dignity”.

Linguistic aspirations

Growing up in a migrant Kumaoni community in Agra, none of us learnt to speak in Kumaoni – and it is not because we were immersed in learning English or French. Our parents’ desire for us to speak in Hindi led to a distancing from our roots. We also saw our fellow Braj speakers in poor light. English was desirable but far too distant and perhaps even unattainable. It was only heard on a few channels on cable television.

Parents everywhere are aspirational, yes. But all linguistic aspirations in India do not culminate in English. There are local and immediate absorbers of desires.

Often the arguments made by the proponents of Hindi appeal to abstract notions of honour and nationalism, but their desire for supremacy stems, ultimately, from an envy of the anglophone elite who are seen as deracinated, their allegiance to India questionable and their access to power and status illegitimate.

It is said India should follow Japan or Germany in instituting one language that unites the country, making it a stable entity. But the comparison is inappropriate. Many countries in the world are strictly monoethnic and monolingual. Only other countries in South Asia can be compared with India, with caveats.

Recent history shows that language battles have caused civil wars in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, India’s closest neighbours. Urdu has failed to unite Pakistan’s varied ethnic and linguistic groups while in Sri Lanka, Sinhala nationalism often discriminates against Tamil-speakers.

A neutral language

India needs a language for administration and interstate and interregional communication that is equidistant from all native languages and which a vast majority of Indians are open to learning. Here, India can learn from Singapore, which found English a neutral language, in a multilingual country, that facilitates social cohesion.

This is not to say that English can perform the function of cultural transmission. For that, training in other Indian languages is an important feature of academic studies, but at least the Centre will not be seen promoting one regional language to the neglect and detriment of others.

If one leaves aside a tiny segment of Hindi political elites who eagerly await the triumph of Hindi for their vested interests, most Indians would prefer a two or three-language model in which English holds importance for managing domestic and global affairs.

It is said that Hindi is inclusionary while English excludes the vast majority. But, leaving aside non-Hindi speakers, even most Hindi speakers – here, speakers of “dialects” – find it difficult to make sense of official documents replete with Sanskritised phraseology. The idea that Hindi will be inclusionary is yet to be studied with rigour.

The statements made by powerful ministers in favour of Hindi and the government’s sly way of imposing the language do not do much except upsetting non-Hindi speakers. We need less government in the business of language.

A language becomes popular or obsolete despite politics in a market economy. Hindi has gained more popularity and speakers post liberalisation. This development should not be disturbed by announcing Hindi’s takeover. The battle for language is ultimately a battle for power, but it could snowball into major strife and destabilise all that we hold close to our hearts.

Suraj Gunwant is Assistant Professor, Department of English, Ewing Christian College, University of Allahabad.

This is the first part of a debate on whether Hindi or English are weakening other Indian languages and constricting linguistic diversity. Read part two here.

The Kerala police registered a case against X and a user on the social media platform for sharing an artificial intelligence-generated video about Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Election Commission. The police alleged that the video depicts Modi and the poll body in a “misleading and defamatory manner”.

It said that the allegedly defamatory content was brought to its notice through official channels, including the Election Commission. The Kerala Police is currently reporting to the Election Commission since the Model Code of Conduct is in force in the state ahead of the Assembly elections. Read on.

With Islamabad mediating peace talks between the United States and Iran, the Congress said that the “colossal failure” in India’s diplomacy, outreach and narrative management has made a “broken country” like Pakistan a “broker country”. The statement came a day after External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that India does not view itself as a “dalaal”, or broker, like Pakistan.

Jaishankar made the comments at an all-party meeting convened by the government on the West Asia conflict. Responding to Jaishankar’s comments, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said that for Pakistan to “even be…considered for a mediating role is a most damning indictment of both the substance and style of…Modi’s diplomacy”. Read on.

A Supreme Court-appointed advisory committee has written to Union Social Justice Minister Virendra Kumar, asking that the 2026 Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Amendment Bill be withdrawn. The bill was passed in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday and in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.

It will now be forwarded to the President Droupadi Murmu for her assent.

Transgender, intersex and gender-diverse organisations have been protesting against the bill, stating that the changes remove the protections guaranteed under the 2019 Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Act. The proposed amendments focus on redefining who qualifies as a transgender person. Read on.

Iran has allowed “friendly countries”, including India, to pass the Strait of Hormuz amid the conflict in West Asia, the country’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said. He added that vessels linked to Iran’s adversaries will not be allowed transit.

The other countries whose vessels were being allowed to pass through the maritime chokepoint are China, Russia, Iraq and Pakistan, Araghchi added. Read on.

US President Donald Trump said that Iranian negotiators “are very different and ‘strange’”. Tehran was “begging” Washington to make a deal, Trump claimed on social media. “...They should be doing [that] since they have been militarily obliterated, with zero chance of a comeback, and yet they publicly state that they are only ‘looking at our proposal’”, he said.

Reports a day earlier had said that Iran had dismissed the 15-point ceasefire plan proposed by the US and instead countered it with a proposal of its own.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has claimed that the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy Alireza Tangsiri was killed in a strike. Iran has not yet commented on the claim. Read on.

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A Supreme Court-appointed advisory committee on Wednesday wrote to Union Social Justice Minister Virendra Kumar, requesting that the 2026 Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Amendment Bill be withdrawn, The Indian Express reported.

The chairperson of the committee, former Delhi High Court judge Justice Asha Menon, confirmed this to the newspaper.

The bill was passed in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday and in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday. It will now be forwarded to the President Droupadi Murmu for her assent.

Transgender, intersex and gender-diverse organisations have been protesting against the bill, stating that the proposed changes remove the protections guaranteed under the 2019 Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Act.

The proposed amendments centre on redefining who qualifies as a transgender person.

The bill removes transgender persons’ right to a self-perceived gender identity and limits the law’s scope to those with certain biological or physiological characteristics, intersex variations, or specific socio-cultural identities such as kinner, hijra, aravani and jogta.

If it receives the presidential assent, transgender men, transgender women and genderqueer persons, who were recognised under the 2019 law, will be excluded from the definition of “transgender person”.

The bill was cleared in Parliament amid protests by the Opposition MPs who argued that it violates constitutional rights.

The advisory committee was constituted by the Supreme Court in October 2025 while hearing a matter involving a transgender woman who was terminated from employment as a teacher by private schools in Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat because of her gender identity, The Indian Express reported.

The court had noted the inaction by the administration in implementing the 2019 Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Act and formed the expert panel to identify statutory gaps, draft a comprehensive equal opportunity policy and recommend measures for the “reasonable accommodation” of transgender persons so that they can participate equally in society, the newspaper reported.

Also read: It took me decades to find myself. The trans bill erases me in one sweep

With Islamabad mediating peace talks between the United States and Iran, the Congress on Thursday said that the “colossal failure” in India’s diplomacy, outreach and narrative management have made a “broken country” like Pakistan a “broker country”.

The statement came a day after External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar was quoted as saying that India does not view itself as a “dalaal”, or broker, like Pakistan. Jaishankar made the comments at an all-party meeting convened by the government on the West Asia conflict.

During the meeting, the Union government said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made it clear to US President Donald Trump that India “wants to see the war coming to an end” and that it is “affecting everyone”, the Deccan Herald reported.

Responding to Jaishankar’s comments, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said on social media that the external affairs minister is “doing his best to cover up India’s extreme embarrassment and the setback to its regional diplomacy”.

For Pakistan to “even be…considered for a mediating role is a most damning indictment of both the substance and style of…Modi’s diplomacy”, said the MP.

“Even after the communally incendiary and poisonous statements of the Pakistan Army Chief General Asim Munir provided the oxygen for the terror attacks in Pahalgam…we have been unable to isolate Pakistan on the international stage,” Ramesh further said.

He added: “It has only emerged as a more relevant actor and after May 10, 2025, itself it has become clear that…Munir had become a favourite of President Trump and his team.”

Ramesh was referring to Trump hosting Munir at the White House amid heightened tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad.

The tensions between India and Pakistan escalated on May 7 when the Indian military carried out strikes – codenamed Operation Sindoor – on what it claimed were terrorist camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

The strikes were in response to the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, which killed 26 persons on April 22.

The Pakistan Army retaliated to Indian strikes by repeatedly shelling Indian villages along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. At least 22 Indian civilians and eight defence personnel were killed.

On May 10, India and Pakistan reached an “understanding” to halt firing following the four-day conflict.

‘Domestic LPG production increased’

The Union government also said at the all-party meeting on Wednesday that the domestic production of liquified petroleum gas has increased to 60%, which is up from 28% when the war started, the Deccan Herald reported.

Jaishankar said that till now, four India-bound ships had passed through the Strait of Hormuz and more are on the way.

Energy supplies to India have faced disruptions since the conflict in West Asia broke out on February 28. Iran has effectively blocked the strategic Strait of Hormuz for most international commercial vessels. About 20% of the global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint.

This has also affected LPG supplies in India. The country imports about 60% of its LPG demand, most of it from Gulf countries.

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