India’s extreme poverty rate fell from 27.1% in 2011 to 2.6% in 2023, the World Bank has said in its October Poverty and Equity Brief. However, it added that income disparities remain wide, with the top 10% of the population earning a median income about 13 times more than the bottom 10%.

The World Bank sets the international extreme poverty line at $3 a day, or roughly Rs 284.9 per day.

“As poverty declined, it became increasingly concentrated among households with lower education, fewer assets, limited access to stable employment, and higher dependency ratios,” said the World Bank.

It added that the share of India’s population living below the lower-middle-income poverty line of $4.2, or Rs 398.8 a day, fell from 57.7% in 2011 to 16.1% in 2023, with an estimated 49.6 crore people moving out of poverty.

The World Bank attributed the decline mainly to “strong consumption growth, rising employment, especially among women and expanded social transfers, including food subsidies”.

Poverty also declined on non-monetary measures. The Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative’s Multidimensional Poverty Index fell to 16.4% in 2019-’21 from 53.8% in 2005-’06. The World Bank’s own measure put multidimensional poverty at 15.5% in 2022-’23.

However, poverty remained higher in rural areas. In 2023, 19.3% of the rural population lived below the $4.2 per day poverty line, compared with 8.6% in urban areas, said the World Bank.

It found that states in a belt stretching from Uttar Pradesh to West Bengal accounted for about 57% of India’s poor population.

India added about 13.4 crore employed persons between 2017 and 2023, which was nearly two times the increase in its working-age population. Much of this growth came from rural women taking up paid work, increasing the number of earners in households.

Despite the rise in employment, real earnings remained broadly unchanged, with employment growth concentrated in relatively low-productivity activities.

Youth unemployment also rose to 15.9% in April to June, from 14.6% in the same period in 2025, particularly among rural young women.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Sneha.

Six persons were killed after a helicopter they were travelling in from Badrinath Dham to Dehradun crashed near Joshimath on Friday, The Hindu quoted the Chamoli district magistrate as saying.

Earlier in the day, the India Meteorological Department issued an orange alert for Chamoli, predicting isolated thunderstorms accompanied by lightning, hailstorms, and gusty winds reaching speeds up to 50 km per hour, reported ANI.

The weather department had also forecast light to moderate rainfall in the district, with light rain and snowfall likely along the Badrinath-Joshimath sector.

Uttarakhand: A civil helicopter operated by Trans Bharat Aviation crashed in the Hathi Parvat area of Chamoli district on Friday while flying from Shri Badrinath Dham to the Sahastradhara helipad in Dehradun. Six people were on board, including five passengers and a pilot. All of… https://t.co/qmCbTjgXUf pic.twitter.com/qvNKKUf1Ks

— ANI (@ANI) October 30, 2026

The police received information about the helicopter crash at around 2.21 pm, The Indian Express quoted Sub-Inspector Manohar Kanyal, posted at Joshimath police station, as saying.

Prateek Jain, the chief executive officer of the Uttarakhand Civil Aviation Development Authority, said the helicopter carrying six persons had taken off from Badrinath at 1.14 pm and went missing soon after.

Those who died were identified as Captain Himanshu and five male passengers – Prathapa, Arun, Shankar Gowda, Sudheer K and HS Natraja, reported The Hindu.

The five passengers were from Bengaluru, reported Deccan Herald.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah said a Uniform Civil Code would be implemented in Uttar Pradesh if the Bharatiya Janata Party returns to power in the 2027 Assembly elections. Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav criticised the proposal, saying that a Uniform Civil Code was “not worth implementing”.

The announcement followed Shah’s statement in September that governments led by the BJP and its National Democratic Alliance partners in 21 states would introduce a Uniform Civil Code before 2029.

The Uniform Civil Code proposed by the BJP aims to introduce a common set of laws governing marriage, divorce, succession and adoption for all citizens. Read on.

‘Women’s rights’ are a convenient cover for UCC’s intrusive provisions, writes Divya Aslesha

The Madras High Court issued notice to Cockroach Janta Party convenor Saurav Das and the Union government, seeking their responses on a petition demanding an investigation into Das’ citizenship. The petitioner has sought that Das’ passport and Aadhaar card be cancelled if he is found to be a foreign citizen.

Further, the petitioner sought an investigation into the personal details of his parents. The plea also sought that Das’ social media accounts be blocked for his allegedly derogatory remarks about the judiciary. Read on.

The Supreme Court asked the Election Commission to take “corrective steps” against Form 7 applications filed in bulk to delete voters’ names during the special intensive revision in Uttar Pradesh. The bench asked the petitioners to submit a note detailing the alleged irregularities in the voter roll revision process in Uttar Pradesh to the poll panel.

It directed the Election Commission to examine “the factual aspects” of the allegations and file a compliance report before the court.

The poll panel acknowledged that Form 7 applications had been filed in bulk, but claimed that no action had been taken on them, as they were found to be false. Read on.

A flood caused by a glacial lake outburst in Bhutan prompted the authorities in West Bengal and Assam to issue flash flood alerts for districts along major rivers. Those residing in vulnerable areas downstream were being evacuated.

In West Bengal, Cooch Behar, Tufanganj and Busirhat districts along the Sankosh river and its tributaries were on high alert.

In Assam, settlements along the Brahmaputra river were also asked to remain alert. Read on.

How ‘glof’ became a common word in Sikkim – and why it haunts people two years later, reports Vaishnavi Rathore

The Supreme Court cancelled the bail granted to expelled Janata Dal (United) MLA Anant Kumar Singh in a case pertaining to the murder of Jan Suraaj worker in October. Singh was directed to surrender by December 1.

Dularchand Yadav was found dead inside a vehicle in Bihar’s Mokama constituency on October 30, 2025, days after a clash between alleged supporters of the two parties.

The court had directed the Bihar Police to complete the investigation into the killing within four months. Read on.

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The Supreme Court on Friday asked the Election Commission to take “corrective steps” against Form 7 applications filed in bulk to delete voters’ names during the special intensive revision in Uttar Pradesh, reported Bar and Bench.

Form 7 is used to object to the inclusion of a name or seek the deletion of an existing name from the electoral roll.

During the hearing, a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana asked the petitioners to submit a note detailing the alleged irregularities in the voter roll revision process in Uttar Pradesh to the poll panel.

It directed the Election Commission to examine “the factual aspects” of the allegations and file a compliance report before the court.

This came after the advocate appearing for the poll panel acknowledged that Form 7 applications had been submitted in bulk during the special intensive revision, Live Law reported.

However, he said no action had been taken on the applications, as they were found to be false.

The petitioners disputed the poll panel’s claim, saying that 32 voter deletion applications had been filed against members of a “particular community” in one constituency. They added that two of these forms were signed by booth-level officers.

“There are material inconsistencies and irreconcilable facts,” Bar and Bench quoted the petitioner’s lawyer as saying.

The petitioner further alleged that similar incidents had been reported in Telangana and Karnataka, where directions had been issued for the registration of first information reports, while no such action had been taken in Uttar Pradesh.

“Therefore, they became emboldened,” the lawyer added. “It is an orchestrated effort.”

HC seeks response over 32 voter deletions

Separately, the Allahabad High Court has sought a response from the Uttar Pradesh State Election Commission over the alleged illegal deletion of 32 persons’ names from the panchayat electoral roll in a village in Balrampur district, Live Law reported on Friday.

A bench of Justices Alok Mathur and Abdesh Kumar Chaudhary was hearing a petition filed by the persons who alleged that their names had been omitted from the final panchayat electoral roll.

The petitioners also alleged that the names of persons who did not reside in the village had been added to the voter lists.

The court directed the state election authorities to file a counter-affidavit explaining the basis for deleting the petitioners’ names and adding the others.

The matter has been listed for the next hearing on December 15, reported Live Law.

Earlier, the High Court had sought an explanation from the state election authorities over the omission of 138 residents of Amethi district from the final panchayat voter list, despite their names appearing in the draft roll, Live Law reported on Wednesday.

A contentious exercise

Since the exercise began in June 2025, the SIR has faced questions about the manner and pace of its implementation, amid concerns that it could deny genuine electors their right to vote and shape election outcomes, as Scroll has reported.

In May, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the exercise, but said that it does not mean that the Election Commission can decide on whether the person is an Indian citizen.

Despite this, Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states have cited the SIR to deny ration cards to those who have been eliminated from the rolls. In some cases, the police have denied permission for their passports to be renewed.

The Opposition and civil society groups have been demanding the removal of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over revelations in a September 23 report by The Indian Express.

The newspaper reported that two election commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, had formally objected 14 times in 10 months to the poll panel’s decisions about the SIR, saying that some had been taken without their knowledge.

Edited by Sneha.

The Supreme Court on Friday directed Bihar MLA Anant Kumar Singh, whom the Janata Dal (United) has expelled for six years, to surrender by December 1 in a case pertaining to the murder of a Jan Suraaj worker in October, reported PTI.

The worker, Dularchand Yadav, was found dead inside a vehicle in Tartar village in Patna on October 30, 2025, days after a clash between alleged supporters of the Janata Dal (United) and the Jan Suraaj. The area is part of Singh’s Mokama Assembly seat.

Singh had been arrested in the case on November 1 and was granted bail by the Patna High Court in March, reported PTI.

The bail had been challenged by JD(U) MLC Neeraj Kumar, who is the grandson of Yadav.

On Friday, a bench of Justices MM Sundresh and Prasanna B Varale cancelled the bail granted to Singh and directed the Bihar Police to complete the investigation within four months, reported The Indian Express.

Singh said he had faith in the judiciary and would abide by its directions, reported ANI. He also accused Kumar of getting his name added to the murder case.

The MLA accused Kumar of having got Yadav murdered, as well as making false witnesses testify in court.

On October 24, the JD(U) expelled Singh and his wife, Neelam Devi, for six years for “anti-party activities”, including campaigning for the Jan Suraaj party candidate in the recently concluded Legislative Council elections against Kumar.

Prior to the polls, Singh had accused Kumar, the JD(U)’s sitting MLC from the Patna graduates’ constituency, of framing him in several cases and vowed to ensure his defeat in the biennial polls.

Kumar won the constituency for the fourth consecutive time on Thursday.

Edited by Sneha.

In August 2024, Vikas Garg was appointed the convenor of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s economic cell in Delhi. Eight months later, his firms were raided by the Enforcement Directorate.

But the agency did not disclose what had prompted the action.

More than a year later, in a statement released on July 10, it has finally revealed that Garg is being prosecuted under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, for his involvement with “the Mahadev Online Book/Skyexchange illegal online betting case”. He was arrested in the case on Tuesday.

The Mahadev Book is a mobile app that claims to be a platform for “sports insights”. It has more than a million users. Skyexchange is a Dubai-based betting platform associated with Mahadev app.

Since 2022, central agencies have been investigating Mahadev’s promoters on charges that they used the app to run an illegal betting syndicate that laundered revenue through benami bank accounts, cryptocurrency and hawala networks, some of which was allegedly used to manipulate the Indian stock market.

The case first made national headlines in 2023 when the Enforcement Directorate alleged that the promoters of the app, Chhattisgarh-based businessmen Sourabh Chandrakar and Ravi Uppal, had paid nearly Rs 508 crore in kickbacks to then chief minister Bhupesh Baghel of the Congress party.

The revelations came months before the state assembly elections. Congress lost the election. Baghel has denied any wrongdoing.

Subsequently, the inquiry into the app by the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation extended to private Indian firms, foreign institutional investors and even Bollywood celebrities who had attended Chandrakar’s lavish wedding in Dubai in February 2023.

While most of these alleged connections made headlines, what went unnoticed was that a member of the BJP was also under the scanner.

Businessman Vikas Garg belongs to an old BJP family. His father, Nand Kishor Garg, has been elected three times from the capital’s Trinagar constituency on the party’s ticket.

Although the central agencies remained silent on the proceedings against him, Garg’s firms acknowledged the Enforcement Directorate investigation as part of their mandatory stock market disclosures in 2024. In their annual reports, the firms denied all the allegations.

When Scroll asked Garg for a response in April, his lawyers sent a notice, threatening legal action. “That the contents of your communication with regard to the proceedings of Enforcement Directorate, it is submitted that the same is sub judice,” it said. “My Client has NOT been convicted of any offence of money laundering and/or any other offence, till date.”

In its July 10 statement, the Enforcement Directorate has said that it has attached assets worth Rs 940.7 crore worth belonging to Garg, his family and his firms under the money-laundering law. The agency described the attachments as “proceeds of crime” from illegal betting operations that were “routed into the entities owned and controlled by Vikas Garg”.

Garg did not respond to a request for comment.

In March 2026, the Enforcement Directorate said that it had searched more than 175 premises across the country in connection with this case, arrested 13 people, chargesheeted 74 and frozen assets worth nearly Rs 4,336 crore in India and abroad. In its latest statement, it pegged the value of attached assets at Rs 3,800 crore.

The BJP connection

Garg is the promoter of Vikas Lifecare Limited and Vikas Ecotech Limited, which manufacture chemicals and are listed on the National Stock Exchange, Ebix Limited, a global digital and financial exchanges firm which is listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange, and Ebix Inc, which is listed on the American stock exchange Nasdaq.

On his social media profiles, he describes himself as “Convenor – Economic Cell, BJP”. A list of functionaries released by BJP Delhi in August 2024 also identifies him as holding this position.

Garg’s social media accounts showcase photos of him with senior BJP leaders, including Union Home Minister Amit Shah. The photos show him meeting Union Parliamentary Affairs minister Kiren Rijiju in April 2025, former Union minister Anurag Thakur in September 2024, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla in November 2022, and BJP’s former Delhi chief ministerial candidate Manoj Tiwari in November 2021.

In September 2025, Garg met Harsh Malhotra, the Union minister of state for corporate affairs and road transport and highways, and tweeted that they had discussed “key issues related to the economic cell and its functioning”. In May 2026, Malhotra became the president of the BJP in Delhi.

Raids and probes

The first time that Enforcement Directorate officials visited Garg and his firms was on April 16 last year, Vikas Lifecare disclosed in a filing to the National Stock Exchange on April 18.

The disclosure was made under regulation 30 of the SEBI (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2015, which mandates listed entities to disclose significant information to stock exchanges to ensure transparency and prevent insider trading.

The firm said that Enforcement Directorate officials had visited its office and Garg’s home and the office of one of his companies. It added that the investigation pertained to “third-party entities and transactions”.

On April 21, an Enforcement Directorate statement said that it had raided premises across several Indian cities on April 16 in the Mahadev betting app case.

It added: “During the searches, evidence has been recovered to suggest that the promoters of such companies collaborated/colluded with the accused persons to manipulate to share prices of such companies with the help of ‘tainted money’ to raise their company’s valuation using a string of agents and middlemen.”

The agency did not name any firms and promoters.

In its 2024-’25 annual report published in September 2025, Vikas Lifecare, said that the Enforcement Directorate had initiated proceedings “against various persons including officials of the Company” under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

It denied the allegations and said that it was in the process of moving the High Court to quash the proceedings. While Scroll could not find pleas filed by the firm against the Enforcement Directorate in the Delhi High Court in 2025 and 2026 on the e-courts website, court proceedings from April 2026 show that Garg has moved the Prevention of Money Laundering Act appellate tribunal against the Enforcement Directorate’s Raipur branch, which is investigating the Mahadev betting operation.

In a stock filing on June 24, Vikas Lifecare said that the Enforcement Directorate had attached immovable properties worth Rs 13 crore as part of its investigation into the Mahadev betting app. Ebix Limited put out a similar filing on June 23 which did not mention the value of the attachments.

“The Parent company has represented that it is neither involved in nor a beneficiary of the alleged activities under investigation and is contesting the attachment before the appropriate legal forums,” Vikas Lifecare said.

The Enforcement Directorate, in its July 10 statement, said Garg’s attached assets included residential properties, land parcels, equity shares and other securities.

The Dubai connection

Since 2022, the Enforcement Directorate has released more than a dozen press releases on its probe into the Mahadev betting app, naming the owners Sourabh Chandrakar and Ravi Uppal and several others as under investigation. It has named those it has arrested and searched, detailed the modus operandi of the accused, and stated the assets it has frozen.

In a press release in March 2024, the Enforcement Directorate stated: “It was found that one Hari Shankar Tibrewal who hails from Kolkata but currently residing in Dubai…has partnered with the promoters of Mahadev Online Book.”

It added: “The searches revealed that Hari Shankar Tibrewal owned and operated one of the illegal betting websites viz. skyexchange.”

In April 2024, the Enforcement Directorate filed a prosecution complaint in court – the third supplementary chargesheet in the Mahadev app case – naming Tibrewal as accused number 24 and charging him with money laundering under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002.

In the prosecution complaint, the Enforcement Directorate said: “Investigations had further revealed that the accused, Mr Hari Shankar Tibrewal had laundered the proceeds of crime emanating from the betting operations through multiple companies operating both in India and outside India.” It added: “The operations of Indian companies were managed by Mr Suraj Chokhani.”

In a petition before a district court in Delhi in 2024, Tibrewala denied any role in the Mahadev betting app. The court passed an injunction restraining news outlets from labelling him a “fugitive” or reporting that he had been arrested or was absconding. In a final order in August 2026, the court also said use of the term “hawala trader” or “one of the main accused in Mahadev betting” for Tibrewala was “per se defamatory”.

Questions emailed to Tibrewal and Chokhani about the Enforcement Directorate’s charges against them remain unanswered.

Filings with the National Stock Exchange show that in 2022 and 2023, Vikas Garg’s listed firms received investments from individuals and entities based in Dubai and Kolkata, which were accused of involvement in the Mahadev betting app in 2024.

For instance, Vikas Lifecare Limited’s shareholding disclosure from September and December 2022 shows that a Dubai-based investor, Ecotek General Trading LLC, had a 1.76% stake in it, valued around Rs 10 crore.

By March 2023, five other firms from Kolkata bought nearly 8% of Vikas Lifecare: Brilliant Investment Consultants Private Limited, Discovery Buildcon Private Limited, Dream Achievers Consultancy Services Private Limited, Forest Vincom Private Limited and Sawarnbhumi Vanijya Private Limited. This investment was worth nearly Rs 38 crore.

The common director in the Kolkata firms was Suraj Chokhani.

Sawarnbhumi Vanijya also owned 1.1 % shares of Vikas Ecotech as of September 2023, worth nearly Rs 5 crore.

National Stock Exchange data shows that towards the end of 2023, these investors sold their shares in Garg’s firms.

All six investors – the five Kolkata firms and the Dubai firm – have been accused of being part of the money-laundering operations of the Mahadev betting app, according to Enforcement Directorate documents. One is a March 2024 letter from the agency to the Chhattisgarh government’s Economic Offence Bureau and the Anti-Corruption Bureau. The other is a freezing order from February 2024.

The names of the Dubai and Kolkata firms also feature in a list shared by the Ministry of Finance as part of a Lok Sabha reply in August 2024. The list disclosed the names of 1,519 firms against whom the Enforcement Directorate had filed prosecution complaints – or chargesheets under the money laundering law – between 2019 and 2024.

The six firms in Kolkata and Dubai did not respond to emails seeking comment.

In a bail hearing in the Supreme Court last year, Chokhani’s counsel had argued that his alleged involvement in money-laundering operations of the betting app was comparatively minor and limited to managing companies, not owning or operating the app directly.

The counsel also argued that the Enforcement Directorate case relied on statements by the co-accused, which were inadmissible in court and purportedly under retraction.

Chokhani was granted bail by the court citing extended duration of his custody, the fundamental right to a speedy trial, and the absence of trial proceedings.

Indian authorities have been trying to extradite and prosecute the app’s promoters – Uppal was reportedly arrested by the United Arab Emirates police in December 2023 and fled custody in November 2025. Chandrakar is reportedly in Oman.

Corrections and clarifications: This article has been updated on October 30, 2026, to include details from the Enforcement Directorate’s prosecution complaint and from judicial orders. A paragraph that relied on a news report published in the India Today has been removed.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday said that a Uniform Civil Code would be implemented in Uttar Pradesh if the Bharatiya Janata Party retains power in the 2027 Assembly elections, The Indian Express reported.

“UCC has already been implemented in many states,” the newspaper quoted the BJP leader as saying. “If you form the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh, we will implement UCC in Uttar Pradesh.”

Shah made the remarks while addressing party colleagues at the BJP’s working committee meeting in Lucknow, PTI reported.

The Uniform Civil Code proposed by the BJP aims to introduce a common set of laws governing marriage, divorce, succession and adoption for all citizens. Currently, such personal affairs of different religions are based on community-specific laws, largely derived from their religious scriptures.

Introducing a common personal law has for long been on the BJP’s agenda and several states ruled by the party have been making advances towards implementing it.

The announcement on Friday follows Shah’s September statement that governments led by the BJP and its National Democratic Alliance partners in 21 states would introduce the Uniform Civil Code before 2029, when the next Lok Sabha elections are scheduled.

Reacting to the BJP leader’s statement, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav said a Uniform Civil Code was “not worth implementing”, ANI reported.

The Opposition leader also said that despite the Lok Sabha passing the women’s reservation legislation, the BJP government had failed to implement it.

In April, the Union government introduced the 2026 Constitution 131st Amendment Bill in the Lok Sabha to amend the 2023 Women’s Reservation Act and redraw the boundaries of electoral constituencies.

The bill, one of the three draft legislations that were introduced, required a two-thirds majority of votes in Parliament to pass. The ruling National Democratic Alliance does not have a two-thirds majority of MPs in any House. Therefore, it required the support of Opposition parties to pass the amendment.

The consideration of the bill was rejected by the Lok Sabha with 298 MPs voting in its favour and 230 against.

In January 2025, Uttarakhand became the first state to implement the Uniform Civil Code after Independence when it brought the code into force. Gujarat, Assam and Madhya Pradesh have passed similar legislation but are yet to receive the president’s assent. Committees have been set up in Maharashtra, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh to draft proposals. In Rajasthan, the Cabinet approved a bill to introduce the code in August.

A common civil code has been in place in Goa since the Portuguese Civil Code was adopted in 1867.

Assam forms panel to frame rules for UCC

Meanwhile, the BJP government in Assam has formed an eight-member committee to frame rules for the implementation of the Uniform Civil Code in the state, PTI reported on Friday.

According to a notification issued by the state’s political department, the committee is expected to submit its draft rules within a month.

The state Assembly passed the bill on May 27 and it has since been sent to the Centre for the president’s assent.

Edited by Sneha.

Also read: ‘Women’s rights’ are a convenient cover for UCC’s intrusive provisions

A flood caused by a glacial lake outburst in Bhutan on Thursday prompted the authorities in West Bengal and Assam to issue flash flood alerts for districts along major rivers and evacuate persons in vulnerable areas downstream.

In West Bengal, Cooch Behar, Tufanganj and Busirhat districts along the Sankosh river and its tributaries were on high alert, Reuters reported.

In Assam, settlements along the Brahmaputra river were also asked to remain alert, The Indian Express reported.

Glacial lake outburst floods occur when a lake fed by glacial melt breaches suddenly.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said the state was monitoring the impact of the glacial lake outburst in vulnerable areas of Dhubri and Kokrajhar districts.

The state’s teams were coordinating with the National Disaster Response Force and other agencies, Sarma said on social media. “Residents are requested to stay alert, follow official updates and cooperate with local officials,” he added.

West Bengal Water Resources Minister Nisith Pramanik said that persons living near tea gardens in the northern part of the state and riverbeds “must evacuate immediately”, reported The Indian Express.

The glacial lake outburst occurred in the Sintaphu lake near Wakila mountain in Bhutan.

On Thursday night, the Union water resources department said that the flood water would flow downstream and reach the Bhutan-India border in six to eight hours, and was likely to impact districts in West Bengal and Assam.

#WATCH | Alipurduar, West Bengal: On the preparedness for the effect of a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) at Shintaphu Lake in Bhutan, SP Amit Kumar Shaw said, "First of all, I would like to tell the residents of the district that there is absolutely no need to panic. The… pic.twitter.com/sEBpEF9O3L

— ANI (@ANI) October 30, 2026

The large artificial lake is building up as we speak. pic.twitter.com/l6WsYzctMT

— Tenzing Lamsang (@TenzingLamsang) October 30, 2026

Glacial lake outbursts are becoming increasingly common across the Himalayas. Scientists point out that warming temperatures have rapidly caused more snowmelt, increasing the number and size of glacial lakes.

In Sikkim alone, there are almost 700 such lakes, of which 21 have been identified as “potentially dangerous with a high outburst probability”. The number of glacial lakes in Himachal Pradesh has increased by over 500% since 1990.

In August, nearly 1,500 persons were killed, over 9,200 injured and 5,000 missing in Nepal after a flash flood triggered by a glacial lake outburst on the country’s border with China.

Written by Abeer Khan. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

• Nepal: Warming may have induced glacial floods, but the damage downstream is manmade
• How ‘glof’ became a common word in Sikkim – and why it haunts people two years later

The Madras High Court on Friday issued notice to Cockroach Janta Party leader Saurav Das and the Union government, seeking their responses on a petition demanding an investigation into Das’ citizenship and background, Bar and Bench reported.

The petition also asked for Das’ accounts on social media platforms Instagram and X to be blocked for his allegedly derogatory remarks about the judiciary and judges of the Supreme Court.

The petitioner has sought that Das’ passport and Aadhaar card be cancelled if he is found to be a foreign citizen.

The plea is also seeking an investigation into personal details of his parents, the legal news outlet reported.

A division bench of Chief Justice SA Dharmadikari and Justice G Arul Murugan will hear the matter again after six weeks.

The Cockroach Janta Party political campaign had named Das, an investigative journalist, as its chief spokesperson on June 3, days ahead of its protest demanding the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, the Union education minister at the time, over alleged irregularities in conducting competitive examinations.

Pradhan resigned on July 25 after the protest spread to other parts of the country following police crackdown on demonstrators in Delhi.

Das was a key leader of the protests and held discussions with the Union government, along with another spokesperson of the campaign, Ashutosh Ranka.

Das and Ranka were also detained on October 13 after they trespassed on Jantar Mantar and waved the national flag amid protests against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over the functioning of the Election Commission and the alleged irregularities in how the voter roll is being revised.

They had “sneaked into” Jantar Mantar to oppose the authorities’ decision to denotify the area as a designated protest site. They were arrested a day later and released on October 21.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read: ‘Impinges on freedom’: Former Delhi HC Justice S Muralidhar on CJP leaders’ custody

The Arunachal Pradesh Police has sought a search warrant against journalist Tongam Rina in connection with the violence that broke out in Pasighat town during a protest against the Upper Siang dam project.

Several organisations have been protesting against the proposed 12,500-megawatt power project on the Siang river. It will be built by the government-owned power company National Hydroelectric Power Corporation.

The police had arrested 69 persons and detained four after protesters on October 23 vandalised and set fire to an office of the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation and a police station in Pasighat following the use of tear gas by security personnel during the agitation.

Along with Rina, the deputy editor of The Arunachal Times, the police application on Tuesday also urged the chief judicial magistrate to issue search warrants against youth leader Otul Jerang, activist Tajong Talom and lawyer Sunny Tayeng.

Jerang, Talom, and lawyer and activist Ebo Mili were arrested in connection with the violence and are in judicial custody.

On Thursday, Rina said that the “intimidation” would not “stop me from writing or my activism”. She said that the violence in Pasighat would not have happened if the police and the government had handled the protests better.

What happened in Pasighat would not have happened had DGP Jamwal, SP Lamba, and the government handled it well. At this point, I have nothing to say about the police action against me and Sunny Tayeng, and their illegal surveillance. I just wish they had asked lawyer Sunny…

— Tongam Rina (@tongamrina) October 29, 2026

“At this point, I have nothing to say about the police action against me and Sunny Tayeng, and their [state’s] illegal surveillance,” she wrote on social media. “More power to the people of Siang valley and Arunachal. We owe it to Siang and her people.”

In a joint statement released on Thursday, the Arunachal Pradesh Union of Working Journalists and Arunachal Press Club condemned the inclusion of Rina’s name in the application for the search warrants and said that the move was “a serious threat to press freedom”.

The media bodies said that the action raised “grave concerns over the possible misuse of investigative powers to intimidate journalists reporting on contentious public issues”.

The statement also condemned the violence in Pasighat.

“…criminal investigations must never become instruments to intimidate journalists, suppress uncomfortable reporting or silence critical voices”, it said.

The media bodies demanded that the Arunachal Pradesh Police and state government “clarify the specific grounds for Rina’s inclusion in the proceedings, ensure an urgent review and take corrective action if her inclusion is found unjustified”.

Surveillance, search must be lawful, says Tayeng

On Friday, Tayeng said she had reasons to believe she was “being subjected to continuous surveillance” in connection with my legal work relating to the dam project, in which she represents Jerang, Talom and Mili.

“These developments are concerning, particularly in the context of my professional responsibilities as counsel,” Tayeng said about the police seeking a search warrant against him.

The developments “raise legitimate questions about the privacy of my professional activities, the confidentiality of lawyer-client communications and the safeguards that must be respected when an advocate’s chambers and professional work are involved in an investigation,” she said.

Any surveillance or search must have a lawful basis, Tayeng added.

Siang dam

The Siang flows into Arunachal Pradesh from Tibet and is the Brahmaputra’s main tributary.

The Siang Upper Multipurpose project was first proposed in 2017 by the Union government’s think-tank NITI Aayog and was meant to counter the threat posed by Chinese hydropower projects being developed on the Yarlung Tsangpo river upstream. The Siang is known as Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet, where it originates.

The Siang Indigenous Farmers’ Forum estimates that 27 villages along the river – in Siang and Upper Siang districts – will be affected because of the proposed dam. For years, the residents of the area have opposed the project.

Inputs by Rokibuz Zaman. Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read: ‘Threats, detentions, militarisation’: How Arunachal government is choking anti-dam protests

The Election Commission on Thursday extended the deadline for filing claims and objections in the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Delhi and Maharashtra, and expanded the processing window in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana and Nagaland.

The poll panel also postponed the date of publication of the final voter lists in the five states and Delhi. The final voter list in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Haryana and Nagaland will be published on November 30 and in Delhi on December 22.

The decision came a day after the Supreme Court, while hearing a petition concerning the voter roll revision in the national capital, asked the Election Commission to consider extending the October 30 deadline for filing claims and objections. The window has been extended till November 25.

The extensions also followed requests from the state poll panels.

The date for disposal of the claims and objections in Delhi has been extended till December 15 from November 30.

In Maharashtra, the period for filing claims and objections had ended on October 26. It has now been reopened till November 13. The window for disposing of the claims will close on November 25 instead of November 10.

The names of more than two crore persons were removed from Maharashtra’s draft voter list in August as part of the electoral rolls revision. The electors excluded from the draft account for 21.1% of the state’s previous voter base.

In Delhi, 47.7 lakh names were deleted from the draft voter list. The names account for 33% of the Union Territory’s electorate.

The window for disposing the claims and objections has been extended till November 20 in Andhra Pradesh and Haryana, November 25 in Nagaland and November 26 in Telangana.

The five states and Delhi are among the 19 states and Union Territories where the voter roll revision is being carried out in the third phase of the special intensive revision.

A contentious exercise

In 2025, the first phase of the exercise was conducted in Bihar. It was extended to 12 states and Union Territories in the second phase in late 2025 and the first half of 2026.

Since the exercise began, concerns have been raised that the revision could eliminate genuine voters from the rolls and even shape electoral outcomes, as Scroll has reported.

In May, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the revision. But it said that the exercise does not mean that the Election Commission can decide on whether the person is an Indian citizen.

Despite this, Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states have cited the SIR to deny ration cards to those who have been eliminated from the rolls. In some cases, the police have denied permission for their passports to be renewed.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

• Follow Scroll’s coverage of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls here.
• Explainer: Why the Election Commission’s Form 6 for new voters has triggered a legal row
• SIR explained: Why the voter roll revision has become so controversial

The Bombay High Court on Tuesday ruled that the re-arrest of activist Arun Ferreira by the police in 2011, as he was being released from the Nagpur Central Jail, had violated his fundamental rights. It directed Maharashtra, not the police personnel held responsible, to pay compensation of Rs 2 lakh to him.

Ferreira was arrested in May 2007 and spent more than four years in jail for his alleged involvement in Maoist activities.

On September 27, 2011, when Ferreira was being released after his acquittal in eight cases against him at the time, he was re-arrested near the jail’s gate.

Ferreira said that he had been taken into custody by a “group of unknown civilians” who “shut his mouth, lifted him and took him in a numbered vehicle”.

Six of the unknown persons “carried him, which was an act of forcible abduction”, he contended.

Ferreira said that he was intentionally shown to be absconding despite having been in jail between 2007 and 2011.

He was later informed that he was being held in two old cases related to Maoist violence in 2007. But at the time, Ferreira was not informed about the accusation against him and the grounds of arrest, read his petition.

The additional public prosecutor opposed Ferreira’s contentions and argued that due process had been followed during the arrest.

He was released on bail in January 2012 before being acquitted in 2014 in all cases against him at the time.

On Tuesday, the court upheld a petition by Ferreira that his re-arrest had violated Article 21 and Article 22(1) of the Constitution.

Article 21 guarantees personal liberty. Article 22(1) provides a person being arrested with the fundamental right to be informed of the grounds for being held as soon as possible and the right to be defended by a legal practitioner.

The court said that while the prosecutors had argued that the police had complied with legal processes, neither the general diary entry nor the arrest memo showed that Ferreira or his relatives were told why he was being arrested again.

The court held the Gadchiroli superintendent of police and police sub-inspector who had arrested him responsible for violating the law.

It directed the state to pay the compensation of Rs 2 lakh within eight weeks.

Ferreira was also among the 16 activists, academics and lawyers who were charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act for their alleged role in instigating caste violence at Bhima Koregaon near Pune in January 2018.

He was arrested in August 2018 and spent almost five years in custody before the Supreme Court granted him regular bail in July 2023, with certain conditions.

The violence broke out a day after a conclave called the Elgar Parishad was organised to mark the 200th anniversary of the battle of Bhima Koregaon. One person was killed in the violence and several others were injured.

The National Investigation Agency has alleged that the Elgar Parishad was part of a larger Maoist conspiracy to stoke caste violence, destabilise the Union government and assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In April 2024, the Maharashtra State Human Rights Commission asked the state government and the superintendent of the Taloja jail in Navi Mumbai to pay compensation of Rs 2 lakh to Ferreira for failing to send his mother a letter he had written to her while in custody.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Sneha.

Also read:

• ‘As I stepped into freedom, the police abducted me from the gates of Nagpur jail’
• After almost five years in jail, alleged Maoist leader is found innocent

Students at Jamia Millia Islamia university in Delhi ended their 18-day protest on Thursday after the institute’ administration agreed to their demands, including setting a timeline for restoring the students’ union.

In an order issued on Thursday evening, the administration set May 15 as the deadline for approving and implementing the university’s student union constitution. Elections would be held within six weeks of the start of the next academic session, or by the end of August, the order added.

The university has not held student union elections since 2006. Students had been protesting on the campus since October 12, with five of them going on hunger strike, to demand the restoration of the union.

On October 16, the university rusticated one of the students on hunger strike, suspended two and banned all three from entering the campus for a year.

However, on Thursday it revoked all disciplinary action against protesting students.

The university also said that in-person classes for all courses would resume on Monday and end-semester examinations would also be held offline.

In an order issued on Wednesday, it had announced that end-semester examinations would be held online. Regular classes were also continuing in online mode.

On Monday, the university announced that the students’ union elections would be held within 15 days of the forum’s constitution being approved.

However, students had continued their protest saying that the administration had not addressed all their demands, with the lack of a specific deadline being a point of contention between them. They alleged that they had been pressured into signing the agreement.

They also said that the Delhi Police had detained more than 70 students since October 12.

A first information report was registered on Thursday in connection with alleged vandalism near a campus gate, based on a complaint by the university, the Hindustan Times reported.

This came a day after the university accused protesting students “along with locals” of vandalising university property and breaching security on the previous night.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

I have spent much of my professional life looking at cities from two directions: India, where I grew up, and New York, where I now practice architecture and urban design.

This has made one thing clear: cities do not become successful because they possess the right collection of infrastructure. They become successful because their infrastructure, land, housing, economy, public spaces and institutions work in relationship with one another.

This distinction matters enormously for India today. The country is entering one of the largest episodes of urbanisation in its history. The World Bank estimates that India’s urban population could rise from roughly 480 million in 2020 to 951 million by 2050.

India is building metros, expressways, airports, industrial corridors, housing, logistics infrastructure and digital systems at a pace that would have been difficult to imagine a generation ago.

But what kind of city are we building through all this infrastructure?

Infrastructure is not the same thing as urbanism – the unique social and cultural patterns that emerge when residents of a city interact with their built and natural environments.

India’s problem may not be that it is building too little. It may be that we are building the pieces of the city faster than we are designing the relationships between them.

The project has become the city

The contemporary Indian city is increasingly being produced through projects: expressways, riverfronts, airports, townships. Projects are attractive to governments because they are visible and measurable. They have budgets, contractors, completion dates and inauguration ceremonies. But cities are cumulative, made from millions of public and private decisions that interact over time.

New roads change land values, housing districts change commuting patterns, new employment hubs change where people want to live. Urbanism begins where these relationships begin to matter. However, planning systems often evaluate each intervention separately.

Boundaries of the city

Perhaps the deepest problem is that India continues to organise much of its planning around city units administered by municipalities but urban life increasingly spills far beyond these limits.

People live in one jurisdiction and work in another. Goods move across several municipal areas. Pollution and watersheds certainly do not respect municipal limits.

Yet institutional responsibility remains fragmented: transportation is governed by one agency, land and water by others. Metropolitan regions, meanwhile, have no single coherent administrative agency.

The 74th Constitutional Amendment, passed in 1992, envisioned stronger urban local governments. More than three decades later, the devolution of functions, authority and resources to municipalities remains incomplete.

When responsibility for land, transportation, water and housing is fragmented, the physical city becomes fragmented too.

Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi

Bengaluru offers perhaps the clearest example of what happens when the economy outruns the city. Jobs were concentrated in parts of the region, housing followed unevenly, transportation struggled to keep pace, ecological systems came under enormous pressure. The institutions capable of coordinating the city’s growth did not evolve at the same speed as its economy.

In Mumbai, land is scarce, housing is extraordinarily expensive and the formal economy depends heavily on people who cannot afford the formal housing market. The result is a city in which formal and informal systems are deeply interdependent.

When domestic workers, delivery workers and street vendors are pushed to the edge of the city in the name of formalisation, the city becomes more expensive and dependent on long-distance travel. The informal city is not simply a planning failure. It is a response to the failure of the formal city to provide affordable access to land, housing and opportunity.

Density with urbanity

India should also question the assumption that increasing density in cities is the solution.

Unless it is accompanied by adequate transit facilities, density will result in congestion. Without affordability, density would be exclusionary. What kinds of density can create better access to opportunity, public life and greater environmental resilience?

The most urgent change in thinking concerns the relationship between cities and nature. For generations, urban development has often treated landscape as something to be overcome. Wetlands are viewed as land that can be developed, rivers as channels. When flooding or heat becomes a crisis, another layer of infrastructure is built to compensate.

Climate change makes this increasingly untenable. Heat is much an issue of urban form, just as flooding is of land use. The ecological system should help determine where and how the city is designed.

Lessons from New York

New York is frequently presented as a model of density and transit. What interests me about New York are its interconnected urban systems: Density is supported by transit and supports local commerce, public spaces nurture civic life.

These relationships are imperfect. But they demonstrate that the city works through connections between systems, not through the isolated excellence of individual projects.

Indian cities do not need to become New York. But they need to ask which relationships are transferable, which are not and which must be invented for Indian conditions.

India needs a different approach to the way cities are conceptualised. Instead of asking, “What project should we build?”, we should ask, “What relationship are we trying to create?”

The 20th-century master plan assumed that the future city could be sufficiently predicted to be drawn in advance. India’s urban reality is too dynamic for that confidence. Yet another master plan is not the answer. But abandoning planning in favour of market-driven growth is equally dangerous.

What India needs is an urban framework that would establish the relationships that must remain resilient even as individual buildings and developments change. Where should growth occur – and where should it not? Where should transit concentrate density? Which communities should be protected from displacement?

These are questions about what kind of society the city is intended to support.

India’s urban question cannot simply be: how much can we build? It has to be: what kind of city are we building?

Viren Brahmbhatt is a New York-based architect, urban designer, and Principal of de.Sign Studio | New York.

About 1,600 persons identified as foreign citizens were found on electoral rolls in six states during the special intensive revision, the Hindustan Times reported on Thursday.

After the voter roll revision, the six states have about 9.86 crore electors.

While launching the first phase of the exercise in June 2025, the Election Commission said that the “inclusion of the names of foreign illegal immigrants” was one of the reasons for conducting the revision.

The Hindustan Times sent queries to the chief electoral officers of 26 states and Union territories where the special intensive revision had been completed or draft rolls had been published. The officials from 11 states responded.

Six states – Karnataka, Jharkhand, Meghalaya, Kerala, Goa and Mizoram – provided the figures for foreign citizens. Four said they did not maintain such data. Odisha said that it had found such cases but did not record the number.

The Election Commission said that it had never asked states to collect such data separately.

“We also don’t have combined or state-wise data on this,” a poll body official was quoted as saying. “If any such cases came up, they were placed under the ‘Others’ category in ASDDO [Absent, Shifted, Dead, Duplicate, and Others].”

State-wise figures

Karnataka accounted for the largest number of foreign citizens among the six states.

The authorities identified 716 foreign citizens for removal, including 545 Nepalese citizens in Bengaluru North, a state poll official told the Hindustan Times.

The names of more than 99.3 lakh voters were deleted from Karnataka’s final voter list published on Tuesday.

In Kerala, the authorities found around 500 people who held foreign citizenship but remained on the electoral rolls, a state poll official was quoted as saying.

The names of more than 8.9 lakh voters were deleted from Kerala’s final voter list published on February 21.

In Goa, 419 foreign passport holders were found in voter lists, state Chief Electoral Officer Sanjay Goel told the Hindustan Times.

The names of more than 1.2 lakh voters were deleted from Goa’s final voter list published on February 21.

In Jharkhand, the authorities identified three foreign citizens, all from Afghanistan, a state poll official was quoted as saying.

The names of more than 43.6 lakh voters were deleted from Jharkhand’s draft voter list published on August 5. The final voter list is scheduled to be published on November 30.

In Meghalaya, two men of Nepalese origin, both married to Indian women, were found on the electoral rolls, state Chief Electoral Officer BDR Tiwari told the Hindustan Times.

The names of more than 1.6 lakh voters were deleted from Meghalaya’s final voter list published on October 26.

Mizoram reported no such cases. Around 39,000 names were deleted from the state’s final roll published on September 7.

The total comes out to be 1640 persons identified as foreign citizens in these six states.

A contentious exercise

In 2025, the first phase of the exercise was conducted in Bihar. It was extended to 12 states and Union Territories in the second phase in late 2025 and the first half of 2026.

Since the exercise began, concerns have been raised that the revision could eliminate genuine voters from the rolls and even shape electoral outcomes, as Scroll has reported.

In May, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the revision. But it said that the exercise does not mean that the Election Commission can decide on whether the person is an Indian citizen.

Despite this, Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states have cited the SIR to deny ration cards to those who have been eliminated from the rolls. In some cases, the police have denied permission for their passports to be renewed.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Thursday said that 564 persons had been arrested and 481 cases registered in the “latest” crackdown against alleged child marriage in the state.

Sarma did not specify the period during which the arrests had taken place.

He said that the operation would continue until the practice is eradicated from the state.

In September, the chief minister said the state’s campaign against child marriage over the past few years had resulted in more than 12,000 cases being registered and over 11,000 arrests.

He also claimed that child marriages had declined by 81% in 20 districts of Assam.

In May 2025, Sarma announced that Assam would be completely free of the practice by 2026.

The Bharatiya Janata Party government in the state has launched several campaigns against alleged child marriages over the past four years.

Thousands of women across the state have protested against the crackdown, saying the arrested men are the sole breadwinners of their families. Police data seen by Scroll shows that districts with high Muslim populations have seen more arrests than others.

In February 2023, the Gauhati High Court observed that police action was causing havoc in the state. The court made the observation while granting anticipatory bail in four separate cases of child marriage, noting that charges under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, might not be justified.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Sneha.

Also read:

• In Assam, a police crackdown on child marriage leaves a trail of crying women and broken families
• India’s child marriage crisis is far from over, shows latest data

Was Mahatma Gandhi a racist? Did he support the caste system? Do his various arch-critics over the years – Dalit activists, Hindutva supporters, Marxists, and intellectuals ensconced in their ivory towers – have valid points?

Perhaps. With Gandhi, however, there are never easy answers. During his lifetime, Gandhi warmly encouraged criticism and debate. After his death, and despite all of the posthumous veneration and encomiums, the Mahatma has remained a lightning rod for controversy. In this episode of Past Imperfect, Ramachandra Guha takes us through these controversies to help us separate fact from fiction.

In Arguments with Gandhi, his latest book, Guha states that it is impossible to assign neat black-and-white binaries to the Mahatma and his ideas. “The geographical range of Gandhi’s life, the thematic range of his activities and the furious arguments his work evoked (and continues to evoke) make him a figure without parallel in the modern world,” he writes.

Gandhi, after all, was not simply an Indian leader. He engaged with people from a dizzying range of countries and cultural and religious backgrounds. Throughout his life he waded into some of the world’s most furious debates. And he kept on evolving his ideas: his views about certain subjects, like gender relations or the economy, can seem maddeningly inconsistent. But there was a logic to his inconsistency – a general pattern of progressive movement.

Take race as an example. While, as Guha acknowledges, Gandhi made comments towards Africans in the 1890s which were quite racist, by the 1930s and 1940s he had embraced antiracist principles (while castigating fellow Indians for making disparaging remarks towards Africans). What makes Gandhi so fascinating – and, at the same time, such a difficult person to truly understand – is the utter complexity of the evolution of his thought.

Gandhi’s changing attitude towards race was mirrored, to a certain degree, by his views on gender and caste.

The Mahatma certainly imbibed many of the patriarchal norms of traditional Indian culture. But, compared with most of his nationalist peers, he could also strike out against them with remarkable effect. As Guha notes here, Gandhi was also deeply influenced by the example of female suffragists in early 20th-century Britain, urging Indians in South Africa to emulate their methods and bravery.

On caste, Guha recognises the very real need to critique Gandhi’s views but he finds the savage attacks against the Mahatma, made by many current-day Dalit activists, “unproductive.” Such attacks do not acknowledge the fact that, amongst the Congress Party leadership, Gandhi was almost alone in fighting against untouchability and that he was viciously attacked by orthodox Hindus for views.

Guha does not limit his account to Gandhi’s lifetime. After his assassination in 1948, people around the world engaged with his ideas and developed his methods. This was true in the American South during the Civil Rights Movement, when a remarkable number of leaders adopted – and adapted – Gandhian principles of nonviolence. It was also true in apartheid-era South Africa. Many of the children and grandchildren of the Mahatma’s South African colleagues took his activism in new directions. A few of them even felt justified to eschew nonviolence, joining uMkhonto weSizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress.

Some of Gandhi’s most controversial views concern ideas of human progress. During and after his lifetime, countless critics have excoriated the ideas propounded in Hind Swaraj, declaring the Mahatma as against modern civilisation, industry, and even science itself. Guha directs us to other sources: once more, Gandhi’s beliefs underwent steady evolution. He saw the indispensability of science and industry, but he wanted to make sure these were in the service of villagers, the poorest of the poor.

More careful readers of Gandhi’s oeuvre notice an “ethic of environmental responsibility”. He promoted sanitation, afforestation, and something like what we today term sustainability. It was no mistake, therefore, that some of the pioneers of the modern environmentalist movement, like EF Schumacher, were inspired by the Mahatma’s writings. Within India, of course, Gandhi has both directly and indirectly influenced everything from the Narmada Bachao Andolan to the Chipko movement.

For all those who, since 1948, have been inspired by Gandhi, equally vociferous constituencies have been repulsed by his legacy. The Mahatma has the unique distinction of attracting critics from both the extreme left and extreme right. In the decades after independence, Indian communists, and especially Naxalites, assailed Gandhi as a sworn class enemy, a tool of the bourgeoisie. Advocates of Hindutva recoiled against Gandhi’s ecumenicalism and his calls for Hindu-Muslim unity. While in power over the past decade, they have walked a more careful line, appropriating elements of the Mahatma’s legacy while ignoring others.

And yet, Gandhi has been out on the streets in the past few years, a symbol of resistance embraced by protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act and, more recently, by the Cockroach Janata Party. Despite efforts to rewrite history and retool the very fabric of the country, it is probably premature to entirely count out the Mahatma’s influence in modern India. As Guha concludes, “The arguments shall continue.”

Dinyar Patel is an associate professor of history at the SP Jain Institute of Management and Research in Mumbai. His award-winning biography of Dadabhai Naoroji, Naoroji: Pioneer of Indian Nationalism, was published by Harvard University Press in May 2020.

Past Imperfect is sponsored and produced by the Centre for Wisdom and Leadership at the SP Jain Institute of Management and Research.

Chief Justice Surya Kant asked why Indians continue to fall prey to digital arrest scams despite public awareness campaigns, media coverage and judicial intervention. “What is wrong with victims?” added Kant. “Are they not normal persons?”

The bench also criticised banks and other agencies for failing to put adequate safeguards in place to prevent suspicious transactions resulting from cyber fraud.

The court indicated that it was considering directions to hold banks accountable for losses caused by cyber fraud where they had failed to exercise due diligence. The government opposed this, saying that this should be addressed by the central bank through an appropriate regulatory framework. Read on.

I travelled to ground zero of the cyber scams targeting India. Here is what I found, writes Ayush Tiwari

The demolition of a heritage mosque near Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s official residence in Delhi has been put on hold for four weeks. The government informed the court that the Land and Development Office will decide on a representation by the Delhi Waqf Board during this period.

However, the government opposed allowing access to the mosque, citing safety concerns because of the demolitions in the area.

The mosque, which the government claims is “unauthorised”, is listed as a heritage property on the municipal council’s website. It had received an eviction notice on October 19, amid a wider demolition drive in the Race Course Road area, including the removal of slum dwellers. Read on.

The Bharatiya Janata Party regime in Uttar Pradesh has announced that people involved in violent activities aimed at bringing about a “regime change” may be deemed ineligible for state government jobs. “...Individuals who are members of an organisation whose stated objective is to change the existing system of society through violence will be considered ineligible for appointment under the government,” said an order.

It added that participation in such activities within the three years preceding verification and after the individual turns 21 may be considered evidence of their continued involvement in such activities Read on.

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief MK Stalin condemned the brief detention of an economist named A Kalaiyarasan and demanded an apology from Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay. Kalaiyarasan had been detained over an allegedly abusive Instagram comment about a Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam MLA made by a fake account purportedly using his photograph.

An associate professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, he alleged that police personnel in plain clothes arrived at his Chennai home and took him away in a rented car.

Kalaiyarasan was told that he was needed for an inquiry at a police station in Chennai’s Pammal suburb for an allegedly abusive Instagram comment targeting J Kamatchi, the TVK MLA from Pallavaram. Read on.

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Chief Justice Surya Kant on Thursday asked why Indians were continuing to fall prey to digital arrest scams despite public awareness campaigns, media coverage and judicial intervention, Live Law reported.

A Supreme Court bench of Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana was hearing a suo motu case concerning the growing prevalence of such cyber frauds.

During the hearing, advocate NS Nappinai, appointed as amicus curiae, informed the bench of a recent case in which a woman lost Rs 2.5 crore to a digital arrest scam.

An amicus curiae is an impartial legal expert appointed by the court to assist it in complex legal matters, public interest litigation, or cases where a party is unrepresented.

Expressing concern about the prevalence of digital scams, the chief justice asked: “What we are shocked about – why are people not realising.”

“What is wrong with victims?” added Kant. “Are they not normal persons?”

He further remarked: “What kind of person [are you] in a democratic country if you think you are getting arrested on mobile? Hit the mobile on the wall and the arrest goes.”

The amicus curiae submitted that the fear of arrest was a major factor driving persons to comply with the demands of fraudsters. She added that some psychologists had described the pressure exerted on victims as a form of “hypnosis”.

The bench criticised banks and other agencies for failing to put adequate safeguards in place to prevent suspicious transactions linked to cyber fraud.

Kant questioned why banks could not intervene when transactions appeared inconsistent with an account holder’s usual spending patterns, particularly when they had access to the customer’s transaction history.

He asked whether existing regulations permitted banks to temporarily withhold unusual transactions, inform the local police and verify the legitimacy of the transactions before processing them.

Kant emphasised that preventive action was necessary instead of relying primarily on reports after the money had already been lost.

“Report will only be post-mortem,” Live Law quoted him as saying. “What about prevention? [The] moment a transaction comes, why can't it be withheld?”

Attorney General R Venkataramani, representing the government, told the court that steps were being taken to strengthen the system for identifying suspicious transactions. He said banks had improved their ability to flag such transactions in the last six months and that discussions had been held with the Reserve Bank of India to expedite the necessary rule-making.

The Supreme Court indicated that it was considering directions to hold banks accountable for losses caused by cyber fraud where they had failed to exercise due diligence.

Kant said the court was proposing that banks be required to compensate such persons and face prosecution where fraud occurred because of their failure to take appropriate precautions.

The attorney general opposed the proposed approach, submitting that the question of banks’ liability should be addressed by the central bank through an appropriate regulatory framework.

‘Digital arrest’ scams

In cases of “digital arrest”, criminals usually orchestrate the fraud by posing as law enforcement officers, often wearing uniforms and making video calls to victims from locations made to resemble government offices or police stations. They demand money for a “compromise” and “closure of a case” against the victims.

In some cases, the victims are “digitally arrested”, with the scammers claiming that the persons are required to be visible until their demands are met.

In January 2025, Scroll published a series of extensive reports about Chinese crime syndicates that run cyber crime centres from Southeast Asia, mainly Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos. These highly sophisticated “scam compounds” are staffed with thousands of people, many of them from India, who are lured with fake job offers and then forced to work on scamming people back home.

Edited by Sneha.

Also read:

• My father lost Rs 10 lakh in a digital arrest scam. Here’s how he got some money back

• ‘Felt like I was under hypnosis’: How digital arrest scams dupe Indians of their hard-earned money

Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Wednesday claimed that the 2023 Digital Personal Data Protection Act does not infringe on press freedom, adding that journalistic independence is guaranteed under the Constitution, The Hindu reported.

His remarks to reporters came a day after the Supreme Court issued notice to the Union government seeking its response to a petition challenging the Act and its rules.

The Digital News Publishers Association, which represents 21 media publishers, including those owned by businesspersons Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, challenged the law on October 6.

In its petition, the association said that the law “threatens the full spectrum of journalistic activity carried out by journalists, ground reporters, citizens, whistleblowers, Right to Information activists and other stakeholders”.

The law “impermissibly restricts” the fundamental right to information, and freedom of speech and expression, the association contended.

On Wednesday, Vaishnaw, the Union minister of electronics and information technology, claimed that the Act “absolutely maintains, fully maintains the journalistic freedom, the Constitution guarantees”, and was aimed at protecting personal data.

“There is not even an intention to affect the journalistic freedom,” The Hindu quoted him as saying. He also invited editors and media professionals to hold discussions with the government to address concerns about the law.

What the law says

The 2025 Digital Personal Data Protection Rules were notified by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology in November 2025, bringing into effect the 2023 Digital Personal Data Protection Act.

Section 44(3) of the Act imposes a blanket ban on the disclosure of personal information without defining what constitutes “personal information”.

The rules had clarified how organisations processing personal data should handle it, notify individuals of data breaches and obtain consent for data collection.

The organisations, which the Act categorises as data fiduciaries, must provide notices to users that are easy to understand, explaining why they are collecting data and how it will be used.

A “data fiduciary”, according to the Act, is any entity that processes any personal data.

The notices must explain the types of data being collected​. Moreover, for users, withdrawing consent for their data to be used should be as simple as granting it, the law mandates.

After the rules were notified last year, press bodies had expressed concern about them, saying that the “ambiguous obligations” they impose could open the door for indirect censorship.

Critics have described the law as a serious threat to the principles of transparency and accountability that the Right to Information Act was designed to uphold.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read: Why the draft personal data protection rules are contentious

The Chennai Police on Wednesday briefly detained an economist named A Kalaiyarasan over an allegedly abusive Instagram comment about a Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam MLA made by a fake account purportedly using his photograph, The Indian Express reported.

Kalaiyarasan, an associate professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, alleged that police personnel in plain clothes arrived at his Chennai home at around 5 am and took him away in a rented car, the newspaper reported.

“They did not furnish any document authorising the inquiry, not even a copy of the complaint or first information report,” Kalaiyarasan later wrote in letter complaining to the Tamil Nadu police chief.

He said he was not allowed to inform his family before being detained.

“I felt deeply harassed and humiliated by the way I was treated, without being given even a reasonable opportunity to explain myself,” The News Minute quoted Kalaiyarasan as saying in his complaint.

After being picked up by the police, Kalaiyarasan was told that he was needed for an inquiry at a police station in Chennai’s Pammal suburb for an allegedly abusive Instagram comment targeting J Kamatchi, the TVK MLA from Pallavaram, The Indian Express reported.

TVK leads the ruling coalition in Tamil Nadu.

Kalaiyarasan denied having an Instagram account or knowing the MLA.

According to his complaint to the Tamil Nadu director general of police, the vehicle in which he was being detained stopped near Pallavaram for about 45 minutes during which the police personnel made and received phone calls to establish his non-involvement.

During the return journey, the officers showed him a screenshot of the comment posted by an account named @youvijayamani that allegedly used his photograph.

Kalaiyarasan said he had no connection with the account and suspected that his photograph had been taken from the website of Harvard University, where he had worked as a research affiliate, The News Minute reported.

He was also asked to submit a written statement denying any association with the account.

In his complaint, Kalaiyarasan has sought action against the personnel involved, as well as those responsible for misusing his photograph and publishing allegedly derogatory comments using his identity.

The incident drew criticism from Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief MK Stalin who condemned the police action, and demanded an apology from Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay and the police.

The former chief minister alleged that the academic had been “illegally arrested for exposing the unprecedented rise in prices under the current administration” and called it “a peak display of fascism by the government!”

The detention came days after Kalaiyarasan appeared in a television interview discussing inflation in Tamil Nadu, The News Minute reported.

Stalin also referred to Kalaiyarasan’s academic work, including his role as co-author of The Dravidian Model, and questioned whether the action had been approved by the chief minister.

The TVK has denied allegations of political vendetta and said that the police inquiry was unrelated to Kalaiyarasan’s remarks about rising rice prices.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Special Intensive Revision of India’s voter rolls has sparked concerns about the widespread disenfranchisement of eligible voters and that it is becoming a citizenship test. Its method is not new, but what is different this time is that it threatens the right to vote.

Digital tools have served the rolls since the 1990s: voter identity cards from 1993, computerised rolls, voting machines in every constituency by the 2004 general election and photo rolls nationwide by 2009. Through those years, rolls were corrected one application at a time, with officers deciding each case – former Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi says they were already about 99% accurate. From 2015 the Commission set out to “purify” the rolls by matching them against Aadhaar records.

The SIR, which began in Bihar in June 2025, completes the turn. It denies the roll on which the 2024 general election was held any presumption of eligibility, and presumes eligible only those found on a roll two decades old, so that everyone under about 40 can be linked only through a parent or grandparent or by producing supporting documents.

On September 23, The Indian Express reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had objected on record 14 times in 10 months to steps taken under the Chief Election Commissioner in the SIR, from keeping them in the dark to adding and deleting voters.

By September 1, 13.37 crore names were missing from draft rolls – some of these were voters who had died, were absent during verification or had moved homes. But those who cannot be linked to the old roll, increasingly after software verification, must produce documents such as proof of citizenship or risk being struck off.

In 2025, the Association for Democratic Reforms and others challenged the SIR in the Supreme Court, arguing that the commission’s task is to enrol citizens, not to adjudicate citizenship.

On May 27, the court disagreed, allowing a “limited enquiry into citizenship”. It held that the deletion of a voter is not a finding that someone is not a citizen but only a sign of the commission’s “inability to be satisfied”. It said this consequence was “correspondingly limited”, while acknowledging that it affects a person’s “right to participate in the electoral process”.

Citizenship is for an authority under the Central Government to decide, “in any event” before the next election, says the judgement. But in the directions, which are the actual orders, the court only says the decision must be taken “preferably” before the election.

No Aadhaar, no food rations: 11 stories that show the Jharkhand starvation death was no aberration https://t.co/f0vqqwxUYy via @scroll_in

— naresh fernandes (@tajmahalfoxtrot) October 20, 2017

Aadhaar-voter ID link

The method of “purifying” voter rolls was tried on voters in 2015 and has been refined on welfare lists over the decade since. On March 3, 2015, the commission launched a national drive to link voter cards with Aadhaar, the 12-digit biometric ID. Linking was optional.

In Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, where the drive was first tried, software matched the rolls against a database of residents’ records sourced from the Aadhaar authority, according to the Andhra Pradesh chief electoral officer in 2018. Homes found locked on three visits were reported as shifted, dead or duplicate voters.

In August 2015 the Supreme Court confined Aadhaar to being used for ration and cooking-gas subsidies. The Election Commission suspended the linking, though not the rest of its “purification” programme.

The researcher Srinivas Kodali, alleging 46 lakh deletions in the two states, had asked the courts for the algorithm, the deletion logs and the source code. The Telangana High Court dismissed his petition in 2022 for want of documentary proof, without seeking those records. His appeal, which the Supreme Court called “an important issue”, has awaited a hearing since December 2022.

Experts pointed out that the exercise could make it impossible for voters to refuse linking their voter ID card to the Aadhaar database, making the biometrically linked identity project voluntary only in name but mandatory in effect.https://t.co/xyXmSoROem

By Ayush Tiwari pic.twitter.com/uxG2jo8s3i

— Scroll.in (@scroll_in) April 2, 2025

Food security, welfare

Around the time the Election Commission began its drive to link Aadhaar with voter IDs, the Centre capped food welfare beneficiaries.

The National Food Security Act, 2013 makes subsidised grain a legal right for up to 75% of rural and 50% of urban residents, based on Census population estimates.

But the Targeted Public Distribution System (Control) Order issued on March 20, 2015 froze each state’s numbers at 2011 levels until the next Census estimates are made available. States were told to cross-check ration lists against the Election Commission’s voter lists, to eliminate “bogus or ineligible” cards as “a continuous exercise” and to report deletions to the Centre every quarter. No review could raise numbers beyond the ceiling.

As I have argued previously on Scroll, since 2023, free grain, priced and branded by the Centre, has raised what those on the list receive without letting the list grow. In 2020, economists such as Jean Drèze and Reetika Khera estimated that about 10 crore people had been left out.

In 2018, the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana, the national health insurance scheme fixed its pool at 10.74 crore families drawn from the 2011 Socio-Economic and Caste Census. The scheme’s grievance portal tells anyone unable to get a card to “first ensure that your name exists in 2011 SECC data as this scheme is based on this data only”. States that folded their own wider schemes into it received central funds only for families on that list.

In 2023, the Comptroller and Auditor General found that 87% of grievances related to the government’s insurance scheme were resolved late. I have called this design freeze-and-prune: where a past list is the test of present entitlement, fixed by a government order rather than a law. This list is subject to intense verification while correction is slow.

As #NREGA workers across India protest, economist Jean Dreze says the right-to-work programme has faced “3 big blows” in recent times: “compulsory digital attendance system, compulsory #Aadhaar-based payment and a big reduction in the Budget.” https://t.co/WhN7vdXqL5

— Article 14 (@Article14live) February 21, 2023

Form 6 controversy

Welfare beneficiaries may be capped. But every adult citizen has the right to vote.

The SIR instead demands that all voters establish a link to the 2002 or 2003 rolls when the exercise was last conducted. The 2003 revision’s guidelines, placed before the court by petitioners rather than the Election Commission, used the existing roll as the base and shielded everyone on it from citizenship checks unless someone objected.

The commission made 2003 its reference but not the method of verifying rolls. The court said that the choice was “neither arbitrary nor unreasonable”, on the grounds that intensive revisions verify more than summary ones. It did not weigh the more recent rolls on which the 2024 General Election was held.

The commission’s own record cuts against this. In February 2024 it certified a national roll of 96.88 crore electors after house-to-house verification, and from October 2024 it revised Bihar’s roll again. Its explanatory note, dated December 2024, ties a roll’s credibility to “continuous updation of previous data sets.” Six months later, SIR set those revisions aside for the roll of 2003.

From July 2026, a declaration on ECINet, the commission’s portal, asked new applicants whether they, a parent or a grandparent appeared on an earlier SIR roll.

It was added only to the online version of Form 6, the enrolment form prescribed by rules the Centre frames and lays before Parliament. The statutory form contains no such section, yet the online form could not be submitted without it.

Election Commissioner Joshi objected that statutory forms cannot be changed without amending those rules. Sandhu described the portal changes as “unauthorised/illegal.” On September 26, the Commission claimed the Supreme Court’s approval. But the May judgement had allowed citizenship enquiries without saying how they should be made, and on October 5, the court said it had not approved the modified Form 6 and called for the records.

The SIR creates at least four kinds of exclusion: names left off the draft roll as absent, shifted, dead or duplicate – about 65 lakh in Bihar; voters flagged for “logical discrepancies” and served notice to produce documents; voters who could not be matched to the baseline rolls; and voters enrolled after 2003, who must now link to a parent or grandparent.

The commission told the court that leaving names off the draft roll “does not amount to deletion”, that it need not list those removed or give reasons, and that they could apply afresh using Form 6. The Court later ordered the publication of voters declared absent, dead or shifted.

Flawed software and technology

The Election Commission’s 2018 handbook for Electoral Registration Officers – the officers who are legally empowered to add or delete names – called a roll healthy when every eligible citizen was on it, tested against projected population.

The SIR, however, tests the roll against its own records through unpublished software rules that flag “logical discrepancies” and “unmapped persons” for notices and deletion.

According to The Indian Express, the two Election Commissioners had flagged the centralisation of voter rolls, and Sandhu recorded that the Commission’s director-general for IT had no legal authority to restrict Electoral Registration Officers’ access to their database.

Judges in West Bengal’s appeal tribunals observed that the ECINet could not restore a deleted voter even when a judicial order required it. In Goa, according to the Express, 97 electors found eligible after court-ordered hearings were left off the final roll because the ECINet had no provision to put them back.

Unheeded warning

The concerns now raised by the SIR – centralisation, the exclusion of eligible citizens, opaque software – had already been voiced over welfare schemes, where access was fixed to outdated baselines and entitlement verified through Aadhaar.

After the 2015 order, ration lists were integrated into a national grid under central control. Aadhaar became mandatory for rations in 2017, and the gateway to Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana’s frozen 2011 list in 2018. The Centre’s systems flag; the states act.

These systems were implemented as technical upgrades and executive action, promising efficiency though presuming people to be suspect: “bogus or ineligible” cards, rolls in need of “purification”, the “logical discrepancy”.

The voter rolls were being rebuilt the same way. By 2016, the Election Commission’s manual described a single national roll database, with state servers reduced to backups.

In November 2021, the three commissioners joined an “informal interaction” with the Prime Minister’s Office to settle the final shape of reforms including Aadhaar linking.

A month later, the Lok Sabha took under half an hour to pass these reforms, with the Law Minister invoking the tests the Supreme Court’s judgment had set for when privacy may be curtailed: a law, a legitimate aim, proportionality.

Why did these patterns go unseen? The 2017 Puttaswamy judgment had declared privacy a fundamental right. Yet, in the 2018 ruling on Aadhaar, the Court freed bank accounts and phone connections from Aadhaar but upheld mandatory authentication for welfare. Celebrated as a victory for privacy by those who never queue for rations, the judgement let welfare’s exclusions pass as someone else’s problem.

The SIR now shows that a method built to freeze access to welfare has been extended to the vote, and now applies to every voter.

Veena Naregal is Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi.

The demolition of a heritage mosque near Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s official residence in Delhi was put on hold for four weeks after the authorities told the Delhi High Court that they would not take any coercive action against the structure during the period, The Indian Express reported on Thursday.

On October 19, the mosque received an eviction notice stating that the structure stands on government land and is “unauthorised”. The Land and Development Office had directed the mosque authorities to vacate the premises within six days.

The supply of electricity and water had also been disconnected, the mosque authorities said at the time.

The Land and Development Office functions under the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and is responsible for managing government-owned and leasehold properties, particularly in Delhi.

The notice to the mosque came amid a wider demolition drive in the Race Course Road area, where the prime minister’s official residence is located, including the removal of slum dwellers, The Wire had reported.

The Race Course mosque is listed as a heritage property on the New Delhi Municipal Council’s website.

On Thursday, the government informed the court that the Land and Development Office will decide on a representation by the Delhi Waqf Board during the four-week period.

However, the government opposed allowing access to the mosque, citing safety concerns because of the demolitions in the area, The Indian Express reported.

The court was hearing a plea filed by a worshipper against the demolition of the mosque and seeking access to the site.

On October 20, All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen MP Asaduddin Owaisi had sought intervention of Union Minority Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju, saying the mosque was a “gazetted waqf property” since 1977.

He argued that the mosque was protected under the Waqf Amendment Act as “waqf by user” – a term used for property that has been treated as a waqf on the basis of its long-standing use for religious purposes.

Owaisi said the properties that had been registered as waqf in the past continue to be protected under the amended law.

A waqf is an endowment under Islamic law dedicated to a religious, educational or charitable cause. Each state has a waqf board led by a legal entity vested with the power to acquire, hold and transfer property.

After the mosque was served the eviction notice, a delegation of the Islamic organisation Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind met Rijiju, urging him to intervene to protect the place of worship and its adjoining graveyard from demolition.

In a memorandum, the organisation cited the mosque’s inclusion in heritage records and sought that the electricity and water supplies be restored. It urged the minister to “ensure that worshippers could access the mosque and offer namaz without obstruction”.

Rijiju had assured the delegation that he would make efforts to address the problem, the organisation said.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Bharatiya Janata Party government in Uttar Pradesh has issued an order stating that people involved in violent activities aimed at bringing about a “regime change” may be deemed ineligible for state government jobs, The Times of India reported on Thursday.

The order lays down guidelines for verifying candidates selected for direct recruitment to posts in state government departments, corporations, councils and local bodies.

“...individuals who are members of an organisation whose stated objective is to change the existing system of society through violence will be considered ineligible for appointment under the government,” the newspaper quoted the order as saying.

The order said that participation in such activities within the three years preceding verification and after the individual turns 21, may be considered evidence of their continued involvement. This presumption can be reconsidered if there is concrete evidence of a positive change in the person’s conduct during the intervening period, NDTV reported.

The government also said that candidates cannot be declared ineligible solely on the basis of their political ideology. The filing of a first information report or the pendency of an investigation alone will not automatically disqualify an applicant, NDTV reported.

The order came against the backdrop of protests in parts of the state and rest of the country demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over the functioning of the Election Commission. In July, youth demonstrations were also held in the country over alleged irregularities in the conduct of competitive exams.

‘Unconstitutional’ order, say Opposition parties

The Congress and the Samajwadi Party have criticised the order, describing it as “undemocratic” and “reminiscent of the British colonial period”.

Congress leader Aaradhana Mona Mishra described the order as “unconstitutional” and said that students protesting peacefully for education or jobs should not be affected by it.

“The Constitution of this country gives people the right to peacefully express their views, protest and hold demonstrations,” she said. “Violating this right is unconstitutional. If someone makes provocative statements or tries to spread unrest, that is a different matter.”

Samajwadi Party leader Udayveer Singh said that the BJP government “operates with an intimidatory mindset”, NDTV reported.

He said that such orders were issued under British rule.

“In independent India, however, the right to protest is a Constitutional guarantee,” he said. “A change in regime occurs through legal, established processes…after every election, and anyone is free to participate.”

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Citing the Hindu scriptures Vedas and the religious text Manusmriti, a sessions court in Gujarat’s Gandhinagar has sentenced three Muslim men to life imprisonment for cow slaughter, the Deccan Herald reported on Wednesday.

In the initial four pages of its judgement, delivered on Monday, the court discussed the “importance of cows”. Citing ancient Hindu texts, it said that cows are “revered as the mother of the universe” and that 33 crore deities are believed to reside in them.

Additional Sessions Judge BR Rajput also referred to the Manusmriti, describing it as a text that recognises the cow “not merely as an animal but as an equal” and as the “axis” of dharma or Hinduism.

The court said that the three accused – Wasim Kureshi, Mohammad Rafiq Kureshi and Asfak Bahelim – knew that “cows are considered as mothers”, but still “mercilessly slaughtered” one, the newspaper reported.

“If such accused…are not punished as prescribed by law, the mother cows will become extinct with the passage of time,” the Deccan Herald quoted the court as stating.

The three were convicted under provisions of the Gujarat Animal Preservation Amendment Act and the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, among other charges. The court sentenced each of them to rigorous imprisonment for life and imposed a fine of Rs 3 lakh on each.

The three men bought old or non-milking cattle at low prices and slaughtered them for business, the Deccan Herald reported. The court said the police caught them while they were making arrangements to sell the meat and seized about 277 kg of beef.

Buffalo traders assaulted in MP

A group of alleged members of Hindutva outfits assaulted two Muslim men and a van driver who were transporting buffaloes in Madhya Pradesh’s Damoh district, The Hindu reported on Wednesday.

The group had stopped the traders, alleging that they had stolen the buffaloes. Videos of the incident show the mob tying up the two traders, dragging them through a field and beating them with sticks.

Unidentified persons have been booked for the assault.

Damoh Superintendent of Police Anand Kaladagi told The Hindu that the traders were also booked because the animals were being transported in poor conditions in a small van.

Some of the accused had been identified through videos of the incident and efforts were on to arrest them, he said.

Edited by Anamika Pathak.

The Delhi Police on Wednesday detained two members of the National Students’ Union of India from outside the Jamia Millia Islamia as protests continued on the campus to demand time-bound elections to the students’ union.

Public assembly has been banned around the campus under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita.

जामिया मिल्लिया इस्लामिया में पिछले 17 दिनों से छात्रसंघ चुनाव बहाली की मांग को लेकर भूख हड़ताल कर रहे NSUI साथियों की आवाज़ सुनने के बजाय दिल्ली पुलिस ने गेट नंबर 4 से NSUI के साथी फ़ैज़ान और ज़ीशान को हिरासत में ले लिया है और दोनों को अज्ञात स्थान पर ले जाया गया है।

छात्रसंघ… pic.twitter.com/6dyPIePvED

— VINOD JAKHAR (@VinodJakharIN) October 28, 2026

The university has not held student union elections since 2006. Students have been protesting on the campus since October 12, with five of them going on hunger strike, to demand the restoration of their union.

On October 16, the university rusticated one of the students on hunger strike, suspended two and banned all three from entering the campus for a year.

On Monday, the university administration announced that student union elections would be held within 15 days of the union’s constitution being approved.

The administration also revoked suspension and show-cause notices issued to students during the protest and said a committee would be formed to investigate the conduct of security personnel during the agitation.

However, students said the administration had not addressed all their demands. They also alleged that they had been pressured into signing the agreement early in the morning. Two students, Ebin Basil and Rehan Khan, continue their hunger strike over the lack of clarity in the university’s order.

On Wednesday, the NSUI, the student wing of the Congress, said that police took Faizan Ali Khan and Zeeshan Ahmad Khan into custody from Gate No. 4 and took them to an “unknown location”. The police took them to Fatehpur Beri before bringing them back to the Jamia Nagar police station, The Hindu reported.

Allegations of vandalism

On Wednesday, the university accused protesting students and locals of vandalising university property and breaching security on Tuesday night.

Jamia Millia Islamia

Press Release

Jamia Millia Islamia Subjected to Widespread Vandalism through the Night of October 27

New Delhi, October 28, 2026

Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) expresses profound shock, dismay, and deep concern over the widespread vandalism, destruction of… pic.twitter.com/CJEyi1LgLG

— Jamia Millia Islamia (NAAC A++ Grade Central Univ) (@jmiu_official) October 28, 2026

“…groups of protesting students along with locals had vandalised university gates and walls, brought down Gate No. 4 C, pelted stones, damaged CCTV control room, cameras, and disrupted their connections,” the university said in a post on social media. “A group of masked protesters also reportedly reached the university’s boys’ hostels in an attempt to mobilise additional support.”

The students denied the allegations and accused the administration of staging the vandalism to frame them.

“[The administration] had erected aluminium sheets, and by evening themselves got them broken and are blaming students,” The Hindu quoted one of the protesters as saying.

Students also alleged that university officials had harassed them in hostels by snatching their identity cards. They claimed that the mess had been ordered to shut from November 1 to pressure them into vacating the hostels.

They also said that Delhi Police had detained more than 70 students since October 12, The Hindu reported.

Exams to be held online

The university on Wednesday extended online classes until November 24 and announced that end-semester examinations would also be held online, saying that the campus situation was “not conducive for an academic environment”.

Earlier, it had shifted classes online until November 8.

Practical examinations will be held online from November 25 to November 30, followed by theory examinations from December 1 to December 24, the latest order said.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Jamia Millia Islamia on Saturday shifted all its classes online until further notice amid protests on campus demanding elections for the constitution of the students’ union, reported The Indian Express.

The announcement came soon after students alleged that the university administration had “attacked” those who have been on a hunger strike for 13 days and tried to dismantle the protest site.

The university has not held student union elections since 2006.

Jamia administration with the help of guards and Delhi police is trying to remove the peacefully protesting students from the campus using brutal force. Students have been on hunger strike and sit in for more than 10 days now in the campus demanding reinstating of Jamia Millia… pic.twitter.com/XVEiYQBtNt

— Adarsh.M.Saji (@Adarshmsaji) October 24, 2026

Since October 12, five students have been on a hunger strike to demand the restoration of the union.

On October 16, the university rusticated one of them, suspended two and banned all three from entering the campus for a year.

In a joint statement on October 17, student organisations in the university alleged that “more than 100” security guards had entered the protest site and “manhandled” the students on hunger strike, The Indian Express reported.

Protests on the campus have grown since then, with the students demanding an official notification announcing the schedule for elections to the Jamia Millia Islamia Students’ Union, withdrawal of disciplinary action against protesting students and removal of the institute’s chief proctor and security advisor.

The university cited the “safety and security” of students for the decision to shift all classes online.

Videos being shared on social media showed large-scale deployment of security forces outside the campus.

Earlier on Saturday, the university officials met the protesting students.

After the meeting, Mahtab Alam Rizvi, the university registrar, told reporters that a committee had been constituted to draft the constitution of its students’ union, reported ANI.

“They then asked for a deadline,” Rizvi was quoted as saying. “I told them that the sooner they complete the draft constitution, the sooner we will conduct the elections.”

He claimed that the students had agreed to this.

However, students had earlier said that the decision to constitute another committee to draft the union’s constitution by December 20 was a delaying tactic, reported The Hindu. They had said that their hunger strike would continue until the university released the election notification.

The institution has said elections were discontinued after recurring violent clashes, attacks on teaching staff and disruptions of classes, The Indian Express added.

Edited by Sneha.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday verbally remarked that the use of the “logical discrepancy” category during the special intensive revision of electoral rolls was permitted in West Bengal as an “interim arrangement” and that it was yet to decide on its legality, Live Law reported.

The Election Commission has been serving notices to crores of voters asking them to explain “logical discrepancies” to retain their names on the electoral rolls. Logical discrepancies refer to what the panel considers inconsistencies such as a mismatch with the spellings of names of the voters’ parents, an unreasonably low gap between the ages of parents and children or if parents have more than six children.

The court said that its May 27 judgement upholding the legality of the special intensive revision during the first phase of the exercise in Bihar could not be seen as a “binding precedent”, Live Law reported.

“Bihar is not a final determination of every question arising in these proceedings,” Bar and Bench quoted Justice Joymalya Bagchi as saying. “In Bihar, the Election Commission had not initially undertaken logical discrepancy as a category.”

A bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant was hearing petitions alleging a lack of transparency in the issuing of notices to voters in Delhi during the ongoing special intensive revision.

Of the 97.5 lakh voters included in the draft electoral roll, 33.1 lakh were issued notices, or about one-third of the total.

Of those issued notices, 13.7 lakh could not be linked to the electoral roll from the last special intensive revision, while 19.3 lakh were flagged for “logical discrepancies” in their enumeration forms. Even prominent persons, including Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, received notices during the revision.

On September 22, Kant said that there was scope to clarify what information was being sought from voters whose notices cited “logical discrepancies”.

On Tuesday, the Delhi Election Commission said that 31.2 lakh, or more than 94%, of those issued notices had been cleared for inclusion in the final electoral roll.

The final electoral roll is scheduled to be published on December 4.

A contentious exercise

In 2025, the first phase of the exercise was conducted in Bihar. It was extended to 12 states and Union Territories in the second phase in late 2025 and the first half of 2026.

Since the exercise began, concerns have been raised that the revision could eliminate genuine voters from the rolls and even shape electoral outcomes, as Scroll has reported.

In May, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the revision. But it said that the exercise does not mean that the Election Commission can decide on whether the person is an Indian citizen.

Despite this, Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states have cited the SIR to deny ration cards to those who have been eliminated from the rolls. In some cases, the police have denied permission for their passports to be renewed.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read:

• Delhi SIR: Why tell deleted voters to fill Form 6 when they were on 2026 rolls, SC asks EC
• Follow Scroll’s coverage of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls here.
• Explainer: Why the Election Commission’s Form 6 for new voters has triggered a legal row

Graham Stuart Staines, a Christian missionary from Australia, dedicated nearly 35 years of his life healing patients of leprosy in the forest interiors of Mayurbhanj district in Odisha. In that impoverished remote forest land, there were none more despised and dispossessed than those living with leprosy. Their only hope was Global Health Dermatology care, and the compassion and friendship of Graham and his wife Gladys.

One horrific cold winter night, on January 22, 1999, Staines and his two sons were burned alive by a mob of Hindutva workers. They set fire to the station wagon in which they were sleeping. Staines and his two sons, 10-year-old Philip and six-year-old Timothy all perished in the fire.

The youngest member of the mob that set the Christian missionary and his sons on fire was 13-year-old Chenchu Hansda. This is his story, of his conviction, his long and lonely years of incarceration, his torments and ultimately his unlikely conversion as an adult man to the Christian faith.

Chenchu Hansda

Sudarshan Hansda, known to villagers as Chenchu, was born to impoverished Adivasi parents in the village of Kendudiha in the Keonjhar district of Odisha. His father was a daily wage labourer, his mother a forest gatherer. Chenchu dropped out of middle school and became a cowherd, grazing cattle of the farmers of his village in the surrounding forest.

When he was around 13, he felt drawn to a charismatic and fiery activist who roamed the villages on his bicycle, exhorting young men to violently fight what he described as the dangers of Muslims slaughtering cows and missionaries converting the Adivasis to the foreign faith of Christianity. This man adopted the name Dara Singh, perhaps after the popular wrestler and film actor.

His real name was Rabindra Kumar Pal. From Etawah in Uttar Pradesh, he worked as a Hindi teacher in a private school. But his actual mission he saw as different. With his forehead smeared with his trademark long saffron tilak and his impassioned exhortations, his fame spread widely as a defender of the Hindu faith.

The Guardian wrote of the “legend of Dara Singh” that spread through the surrounding forest regions, stemming from “a violent campaign against suppliers of cattle to slaughter houses” which he and his men launched.

Even before the Staines murders, there were at least 10 criminal cases lodged against him and his men for intimidation, assault and looting, and for waylaying cattle trucks. Dara Singh would cycle from village to village and hold meetings claiming that the livestock of the villagers was unsafe and that religious conversion posed a threat to the Adivasi people.

He blocked trucks carrying cattle, thrashed the drivers and released the cattle. He beat up Muslim traders, and hectored local Adivasi people who had adopted Christianity.

This was not all. His gang turned up at Kendobandi village and beat up a Muslim cloth merchant. The next day, posters appeared on trees: “Muslims don't come here. Otherwise we will cut you into pieces.”

Dara Singh, often seen in rallies of the RSS, also campaigned for the BJP in the 1998 elections, and worked closely with its militant arm, the Bajrang Dal.

Chenchu would devotedly follow Dara Singh and his associate Mahendra Hembram whenever he could during his militant campaigns to radicalise Adivasi youth or attack cattle transporters. He felt elated when he was with them. His life now had found meaning. He felt he was contributing to the mission of protecting the Hindu faith.

On the night of the killings of Staines and his sons, Dara Singh and Hembram had gathered with their gang in a hut in the forest close to the Manoharpur village of Keonjhar district where Staines was camping. Chenchu was the youngest in the group, and, as always, was assigned menial responsibilities. He was sent that night to buy food from a roadside eatery for the gathered men as they planned their deadly assault.

Close to midnight, the team reached the house where Staines often spent the night during his travels. It was very cold, and the missionary had chosen to sleep inside their station wagon, with his two sons. It was warmer inside the wagon than in the unheated house.

Staines and his sons were fast asleep when the fire started. Dara Singh and his men, armed with sticks and machetes, poured petrol over the station wagon and set it on fire. Once the missionary and his sons realised what was happening they tried frantically to escape, but the men beat them and forced them to stay inside the car with their sticks. Their screams as they burned to death were to haunt Chenchu through much of his life.

It is unclear if Chenchu actually joined the gang as it burned the missionary and his sons, or was one of the onlookers. Witnesses testified that he was among the attackers. Chenchu himself changed his version about this over the years.

At some point, an uncle grabbed his hand and quietly pulled him away.

People stood watching the burning car and the dying family for a long time. When the morning dawned what was left was only the charred skeletal remains of the missionary and his two young sons and the incinerated car.

Chenchu’s punishment and incarceration

As the news of the gruesome killings travelled around the world, amidst global horror and outrage, police teams arrived from the state and national capitals and launched a massive manhunt for the killers. It would take more than a year and two more brutal killings for Dara Singh and Hembram to be arrested. But Chenchu was arrested within weeks and sent initially to an adult jail.

It is significant that the first person to be convicted for the murders was the teenaged Chenchu, not Dara Singh and his henchmen. Chenchu was arrested in April, and in just three months was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment.

Dara Singh was only arrested in January the next year, and convicted in 2003.

Gladys Staines chose to remain in Odisha even after the murders by burning of her husband and sons. “I stayed on because I wanted to care for the people”, she later explained.

She forgave the killers, and declared in an affidavit, “The Lord God is always with me to guide me and to help me try to accomplish the work of Graham, but I sometimes wonder why Graham was killed, and what also made his assassins behave in such a brutal manner ... It is far from my mind to punish the persons who were responsible for the death of my husband Graham and my two children. But it is my desire and hope that they would repent and be reformed”.

Those who attended the funeral of Staines and his sons recall the moving sight of large numbers of patients of leprosy, their faces and bodies ravaged by the dreaded malady, mourning the passing of the only man who had given them healing, dignity and love.

Housed initially in an adult jail for a few months, Chenchu recalls being treated like a slave by all the adult prisoners. He spent the days washing their clothes, massaging their bodies, and cleaning their toilets. It was hellish.

He was then sent to the Behrampur Observation Home in southern Odisha, closer to his parents’ village, while his trial under the Juvenile Justice Act 1986 was held. The juvenile court found him guilty of the crimes of unlawful assembly and causing murder by setting fire to the vehicle in which the victims were asleep. It sentenced him to 14 years imprisonment. He was transported to the more distant Angul juvenile jail in central Odisha. He was 14 years old at that time.

Legal experts decried Chenchu’s sentence as unprecedented in the legal history of the Indian republic. A child was being treated as an adult criminal. Child rights activists deplored this as a “travesty of justice”.

A social activist, Kasturi Mahapatra, in a public interest litigation appealed to the chief justice of the High Court to restore Chenchu's right to be treated as a child. He said the sentencing of Chenchu violated the convention on the rights of children.

Despite this, Chenchu’s detention continued for nearly nine years. His release required renewed efforts of child rights activists.

But the debates around his trial and punishment contributed to the passing of a far more progressive Juvenile Justice Act 2000, which prioritises care, reform and social reintegration of children who are in conflict with law over punitive prison sentences.

(Sadly, in more recent years, some of these elements in the law have been written down after the Nirbhaya rape and murder which included among the perpetrators a minor boy. Today courts can try children of 16 to 18 years who commit heinous crimes as adults based on an initial assessment of their mental and physical capacities).

What happened to Dara Singh

Meanwhile, what was Dara Singh’s fate? He and his associate Hembram escaped the dragnet of the police for over a year. During his year as a fugitive from law, he did not simply hide. He committed two more gruesome hate murders (for which he was convicted some years later in 2007).

What was surprising was his audacity in persisting with hate killings, that too in the same region, where a police team headed by an Inspector General of Police was searching for him, 300 policepersons scouring the forests each night, and a bounty of Rs 8 lakh was laid on his head.

The first of his murders as a fugitive from the law was on Raksha Bandhan day, August 26, in the festive village market in Padiabeda. Without warning, a gang of around 20 men with machetes appeared, burnt down the small stall of a cloth merchant Sheikh Rehman, hacked off his arms and then set him on fire.

Just days later, on Janmashatmi, a similar mob killed a Roman Catholic priest, Arul Doss, by shooting eight arrows into his chest while he was asleep. He too was then set on fire.

Observers detect a pattern in these three gang murders led by Dara Singh. One is that they were all on Hindu festivals – Staines was killed on Saraswati Puja, Rehman on Raksha Bandhan and Doss on Janmashtami. The second marker was of burning of all his victims: he was “cremating” them in the Hindu tradition, to deny them the traditional burial of Christians and Muslim dead persons .

Villagers denied to The Guardian that they harboured him because they support his violent mission. “We are afraid,” said one of them. “The police say we are feeding him. But I say we don't have enough food for ourselves.”

It was only on January 31, 2000, more than a year after the murder of Staines and his sons that Dara Singh and his associates were arrested from a forest hideout in Mayurbhanj. In September 2003, Singh was convicted and awarded the death penalty. (He was later, in 2007, sentenced to life in prison in two separate cases for the killing of the Muslim cloth trader Sheikh Rehman as well as the Catholic priest Arul Doss).

It is noteworthy that Dara Singh’s was the only instance of terror and hate killings by a person of Hindu identity that was punished with the death penalty in India after the hanging of the killers of Mahatma Gandhi.

However, the High Court reduced the sentence to life imprisonment, making some gratuitous remarks about the threats of religious conversions, which it expunged after outrage.

The Supreme Court upheld the reduced punishment, again with comments about religious conversion that could be interpreted as though these constituted extenuating circumstances for the brutal crime: “In the case on hand, though Graham Staines and his two minor sons were burnt to death while they were sleeping inside a station wagon at Manoharpur, the intention was to teach a lesson to Graham Staines about his religious activities, namely, converting poor tribals to Christianity. All these aspects have been correctly appreciated by the High Court and modified the sentence of death into life imprisonment with which we concur.”

Dara Singh initially never expressed remorse for the hate murders. He was defiant about their righteousness. In a sensational interview in 2000 to India Today, he said he had “no regrets” and “will never regret” killing Staines and his children. “When Hindus die, others don’t cry. Why should we weep when others die? Whatever has happened is right. Whatever will happen will also be right.”

Missionaries, he claimed, “have been targeting our religion. They have been converting Hindus by deceit and inducements. Our religion is under siege. As a true Hindu, it was my responsibility to oppose them.” If released from prison, he said, he would “go back to what I have been doing – oppose cow slaughter and conversions”.

His tone changed somewhat after he spent 24 years in jail. In his petition to the Supreme Court seeking remission for his life sentence, he said that he “has well understood and is repenting the consequences of his action taken in the fit of his youthful rage and at present seeks the mercy of this court so that he can give back to society through his service-oriented actions”. He “acknowledges and deeply regrets the transgressions perpetrated more than two decades ago”.

Dara Singh is celebrated as a hero by many in the Hindutva fold. The BJP president at the time, Kushabhau Thakre, reacted to the murders by declaring that Christians were “inviting trouble” through their activities, adding a warning to the missionaries that “they are sitting on a stack of hay. They better be careful.”

George Fernandes, a minister, spoke of the Staines murders as part of an “international conspiracy”. Narendra Modi, then general-secretary of the BJP, took the conspiracy theory even further, declaring, “After Pokhran [India’s nuclear blast], there are many forces that don’t want this government to remain. Someone had decided at some point of time that Staines had to be killed”.

His supporters have formed several organisations in his name, including Dharmarakshak Dara Singh Sahayta Samiti, Dara Singh Parijan Suraksha Samiti, (Council for Aiding the Family of Dara Singh), Dharmarakhyak Sri Dara Singh Bachao Samiti (Committee to defend Dara Singh, the Protector of our Religion), Dara Sena (Dara’s Army). They valourised him as the saviour of Hinduism.

They also circulating a 16-page booklet titled Mu Dara Singh Kahuchi (I am Dara Singh Speaking), on the alleged crimes of Staines and other Christian missionaries in Odisha and how Dara Singh saved the Hindus.

The relatively unknown BJP legislator Mohan Charan Majhi, who was handpicked as the first BJP chief minister of Odisha, is noted for his campaign for the release of Dara Singh, and for his sit-in protest along with the television anchor noted for his hateful commentaries against Muslims and Christians, Sudarshan TV’s editor Suresh Chavhanke, outside the jail in which Dara Singh was lodged in 2002.

The Director General of Police of Majhi’s BJP government recommended that Dara Singh’s remaining jail sentence be commuted. Dara Singh’s chief henchman Hembram was released and received outside the jail with garlands as a hero. The recommendation to release Dara Singh was finally withdrawn on the stated grounds of fear of “law and order” problems. He continues in prison at the time of writing.

Voices in the head

It took once again the intervention of child rights activists in Odisha to finally secure the release of Sudarshan Hansda, or Chenchu, from the children’s custodial home. Nearly nine years had passed.

The custodial home in Angul was more than 200 kilometres distant from his parents’ village. Travelling there required money that his father did not have. So Chenchu barely saw his parents during all those years of incarceration. He studied a little, and learned some trades. He would not tell us more about how those years were for him, except that the staff was not as brutal as in the adult jail where he spent his first year.

Back in the village, now a young man in his early 20s, he drifted into menial jobs like his father had when he was a child. Soon after his release, his parents got him married. Within a year, however, he lost his wife to an illness that he said he did not understand.

Over the next two years, there were several more deaths in his family, including of his father and his sister. He later remarried, but the child from his second marriage also died.

It was around this period, he said, that he began hearing voices. He described the voices as threatening and said they repeatedly told him that his entire family would die and that no one would survive.

His fellow villagers took him for spiritual healing. But even as the traditional Adivasi faith healer began his ministrations, the voices became louder, more insistent and increasingly threatening.

To escape these, he ran into a nearby forest. There he heard another voice. But, according to Chenchu, this voice was different. It was quieter, it was gentle. It told him to accept Jesus into his life. He then fainted and, upon waking, returned directly home. For a long time, he reflected on what had happened.

He then reached out to some of his Christian neighbours. They took him to meet a pastor. The pastor tried to help him make sense of his experience, but Chenchu did not convert at that time.

A few days later, he began hearing the voices again. This time he went to a local house church and converted to Christianity. Since then, he said, the voices have largely stopped troubling him. He still hears them occasionally, but he said that they are no longer threatening.

At last for the first time since he joined the gang that burned alive Graham Staines and his sons, he feels at peace.

I am grateful for the research support by Omair Khan. Omair and I met Chenchu and spoke to him together.

Harsh Mander, peace and justice worker and writer, leads Karwan e Mohabbat, a people’s campaign in solidarity and support to victims of hate violence. He is a visiting faculty in the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University. His recent books are Under Grey Smoggy Skies: Living Homeless on the Streets of India’s Cities; and A Matter of Life and Death: The Unfinished Journey to Secure Healthcare for All.

As the Ganga water-sharing treaty between India and Bangladesh ends this year, Bihar seeks to resolve its long-standing demands before the treaty is renewed.

The treaty, signed in December 1996, governs the sharing of the Ganga river’s water between upstream India and downstream Bangladesh, particularly during the lean season when river flows are low.

Under the treaty, during the lean period from January to June, if water at the Farakka barrage is less than 70,000 cubic feet per second (cusecs), India and Bangladesh each get half. If the water at the barrage is between 70,000 and 75,000 cusecs, Bangladesh will be assured 35,000 cusecs, and the rest will go to India. If the water is 75,000 cusecs or more, India will get an assured 40,000 cusecs, and Bangladesh will get the rest.

The agreement further says Bangladesh will get a guaranteed flow of 35,000 cusecs on the first and last ten days of April and 27,633 cusecs between April 11 and 20. If the Ganga’s flow falls below 50,000 cusecs in any ten-day period, the two governments will enter immediate consultations to make emergency adjustments.

For decades, Bihar’s political leaders have argued that the Ganga water-sharing treaty with Bangladesh does not adequately account for the state’s water needs.

Sanjay Jha, a member of parliament from Bihar’s ruling party Janata Dal United, said on August 6 during the Zero Hour in Rajya Sabha that renewing the treaty without adequately incorporating Bihar’s long-term water security, development needs, and water resource requirements would harm the state’s broader interests.

He further said that adequate availability of Ganga water is essential for Bihar’s agriculture, drinking water supply, industrial development and long-term water security, all of which depend on the Ganga basin.

Bihar government’s claim

Citing the data of second Bihar State Irrigation Commission report, prepared in 1994, two years before the Ganga water-sharing treaty was signed, Bihar government said in 1997 that the state has only about 16% of the Ganga’s total catchment area. Still, the state has to provide half of the water the Farakka Barrage needs during the lean period, and it gets this water from the Ganga’s tributaries that flow through the state.

Around a dozen rivers in Bihar join the Ganga, according to the Bihar disaster management department.

In December 2017, the Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation had organised the Vision Ganga programme, where Rajiv Ranjan Singh, the then water resource minister of Bihar, now a Union Minister, had said that at the entry point of the Ganga river in Bihar near Buxar district, the flow is only 14,126 cusecs. But Bihar is burdened with the national duty to deliver a minimum of 52,972 cusecs of water through the Ganga at Farakka under the Indo-Bangladesh Treaty.

However, a Bihar State Pollution Control Board document states that the Ganga’s flow at Chausa in Buxar district, where it enters Bihar, falls to just 400 cusecs during the lean period from February to April. At Kahalgaon in Bhagalpur district, the average flow during the same period is approximately 1,600 cusecs, four times the figure recorded at Chausa.

He demanded that the Ganga Basin States share joint responsibility for providing water to the Ganga to meet India’s obligation to Bangladesh.

Nitish Kumar, the then chief minister of Bihar, demanded in a written message to the programme an urgent mechanism to ensure “the release of proportionate/sizable amount of water into Ganga from the upper basin states in lean seasons.”

The Bihar government in 1997 demanded that upstream states curb the indiscriminate use of Ganga river water and that the central government ensure riparian states’ share in the waters of the Ganga.

Experts agree with the demand for regional allocation of Ganga water. “There should be proper study on how much Ganga water Bihar needs till 2050 and accordingly the state should be allocated assured quantum of water, during lean periods. The state’s population is rising, so are water demands. So, Bihar needs more water,” said Sunil Kumar Chaudhary, a former professor at Tilka Manjhi Bhagalpur University. He has researched the ecology of the Ganga.

The ruling party in Bihar, the Janata Dal (United), has been raising the issue and campaigning to raise public awareness of how the treaty and the Farakka Barrage affect the state. The state government has demanded 2,000 cusecs for drinking and industrial use during the lean period. But the internal committee set up to discuss the treaty renewal has recommended 900 cusecs for Bihar, as per the media reports.

Though Bihar’s water demand is increasing, experts do not accept claims that the treaty is affecting the state.

Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator at South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP), said, “The claim that there is pressure on Bihar regarding minimum flow is solely made by the Bihar government; there is no evidence to support it.”

“Secondly, Bihar possesses neither a dam nor any big storage facility where the state government could store Ganga water. Under these circumstances, the question of Bihar holding back or releasing Ganga water does not even arise,” Thakkar told Mongabay-India.

Currently, Bihar’s only Ganga-related project is the Ganga water supply scheme, inaugurated in 2022. Under this project, the Bihar government transports Ganga water via pipelines to storage tanks in Gaya and Rajgir for drinking purposes. However, Bihar is permitted to draw water from the Ganga only during the monsoon season, specifically from July to October.

Rajiv Sinha, professor at the Department of Earth Sciences in IIT Kanpur, said, “I do not think Bihar faces any water-related problem [due to the treaty]. The real issue is sediment. Sediment chokes the water channels, causing the water to spread across the surface. If this were removed, there would be no problem,” Rajiv Sinha told Mongabay-India.

“The Farakka Barrage was constructed neither for irrigation nor for drinking water supply; it was built for navigation. A water-sharing agreement with Bangladesh was done following the construction of the Farakka Barrage. Therefore, the question of how much Ganga water Bihar is receiving does not arise here. In any case, Bihar is a flood-prone region; it receives water from numerous rivers, including the Kosi and the Gandak,” Sinha said.

Bihar’s concern

Construction of the 2,245 metres Farakka Barrage, located at Farakka in Murshidabad district of West Bengal, began in 1961 and took 14 years to complete in 1975. The main objective of the Farakka Barrage was to increase the navigation depth of the Bhagirathi-Hooghly waterway and preserve and maintain Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Port (erstwhile Kolkata Port).

However, experts at the time of the Farakka Barrage’s construction had termed the project unnecessary. A study titled Management and Sharing of the Ganges, published in Natural Resources Journal, gives details of this account.

“In 1962, experts like A.T. Ippen and C.F. Wicker, after careful study of the Farakka Barrage project, concluded that the diversion of fresh water into the Hooghly river through construction of Farakka Barrage would not contribute to the solution but was likely to accentuate the serious shoaling problems in that river and to the preservation of the port of Calcutta,” the study has noted.

Researchers and experts say that the barrage has indeed impacted Bihar. “During my research in Bhagapur, I have seen that the upstream flow of the river has almost stopped and the Farakka barrage has a role in it. Due to the Farakka barrage, huge sediments have accumulated at both banks of the river, making it shallow,” Sunil Kumar Choudhary said.

“Sediment is not a bad thing. It is part of river hydrology. It has minerals and nutrients that support agriculture. But, for this, sediments should flow. This is not happening in Bihar,” he added.

Nitish Kumar, who was the Bihar chief minister then, had roped in IIT Kanpur to conduct an evidence-based study on siltation in the Ganga. Rajiv Sinha, a professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at IIT Kanpur, studied the 580-kilometre stretch of the Ganga from Buxar to Farakka and submitted a four-volume report to the Bihar government in 2018. The study didn’t go public, but a brief of it was published in Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, which clearly says that the Farakka barrage has impacted Bihar.

The study said that a large amount of silt started getting trapped upstream of the barrage, possibly soon after construction began in 1961.

It added that the Farakka barrage may have triggered siltation of 156 million tonnes (MT) of sediment annually.

Regional demands

Sanjay Jha, in his parliamentary speech, said India should not renew the Ganga water-sharing treaty, but practically it is not possible, as the Ganga is a transboundary river.

“India’s relations with its neighbours are already strained, so you cannot annul the treaty. Since the river flows from the Indian side into Bangladesh, you cannot simply say that you will hold back all the water here and not let it flow downstream. Not renewing the treaty will have international consequences,” Sunil Kumar Chaudhary said. “So for me, the treaty should be modified, and regional demands should be accommodated. It must shift from a bilateral release model to an inclusive basin-wide management approach,” he added.

Rajiv Sinha said that Bihar should be made a stakeholder in the treaty. He told Mongabay-India, “Renewal of the Ganga Waters Sharing Treaty without considering Bihar’s concerns related to siltation, erosion and also water availability will be a foolish act. It is a good time for Bihar to be a stakeholder in this treaty.” Additionally, he emphasised on expanding the treaty beyond water sharing. “There should be a clause on silt management in the Ganga Waters Sharing Treaty. If it is included in the treaty, the government will be forced to work on silt management,” he said.

The experts said that Bihar’s concerns about sedimentation and water availability merit consideration, but they also said that Bihar could have done a few things on its own.

“In my study, I had given names of hotspots of sediment production and deposition and proposed to make strategies and techniques of sediment management as well as comprehensive plans to utilise the removed sediments. Bihar could have done this without any treaty,” Sinha said.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

Twenty-two Indians have been killed in the ongoing war in West Asia since February, the Ministry of External Affairs said on Wednesday. Fourteen of them were seafarers.

“We are deeply concerned about the ongoing conflict in West Asia,” said Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal.

He added that the government was in close contact with the Indian community in the region.

The United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran on February 28, killing its supreme leader and other senior officials. Tehran retaliated by targeting US bases across the Gulf and restricting traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

Vessels carrying several Indian seafarers have come under attack in the region since the conflict began. Many of the sailors who died were working aboard foreign-flagged ships.

On June 15, the US and Iran arrived at an interim agreement to stop the fighting and reopen the Strait of Hormuz for commercial vessels. They also held talks in Switzerland aimed at reaching a final peace deal within two months.

However, on July 9, the US military launched fresh attacks on Iran hours after President Donald Trump said that the ceasefire was “over”. This came after Tehran’s alleged attacks on commercial ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has been retaliating by striking sites in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar.

Indians killed in Saudi

Separately, three Indians were also killed in Saudi Arabia, the foreign ministry spokesperson said on Wednesday.

Saudi Arabia has faced several attacks by Yemen’s Houthi militant group this month, including a strike on Riyadh’s international airport that marked the kingdom’s deadliest attack in years.

The attacks mark an escalation in the conflict between the Iran-backed Houthis, who are seeking to topple Yemen’s internationally recognised government, and Saudi Arabia, which backs the government.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Sneha.

The Supreme Court verbally asked the Election Commission why it was telling those enrolled in voter lists before the special intensive revision to use Form 6 after they were deleted from the draft rolls for not filling the enumeration forms during the exercise. Form 6, which is used to register first-time voters, requires applicants to declare that they have not been electors before, the court observed.

The bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant said that there would be several voters in Delhi who could not have been served enumeration forms as they may have changed their residential addresses or been travelling at the time. The court asked why voters cannot now be allowed to fill the enumeration form or Form 8, which is for changing addresses, instead of Form 6.

The counsel representing the Election Commission said that the authorities will examine the suggestions made by the court. Read on.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi accused the Union government of “criminally destroying” the Tata Group, the largest Indian conglomerate. While Gandhi did not specify what prompted his remarks, they came amid a dispute within the leadership of Tata Sons, the holding company of the conglomerate’s businesses.

The dispute revolves around the reappointment of N Chandrasekaran as the executive chairman of Tata Sons and the proposed listing of the holding company on the stock market.

Gandhi said that Indian businesses were not Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s “plaything”. Read on.

Three people were killed and 31 houses damaged in Andhra Pradesh as Cyclone Arnab made landfall. Heavy to very heavy rain was reported in several coastal parts of the state, with some areas recording more than 200 mm of rainfall.

The storm had weakened from a very severe cyclonic storm to a severe cyclonic storm after completing landfall along the coasts of Andhra Pradesh and Yanam in Puducherry. Read on.

Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri has been named as the Bharatiya Janata Party’s candidate for the November 12 Rajya Sabha bye-poll in Madhya Pradesh. He was not among the BJP’s candidates for the Rajya Sabha polls in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal earlier this month.

His candidature comes amid questions over his past meetings and email exchanges with Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted American sex offender. Puri has denied any link between their interactions and Epstein’s crimes. Read on.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu-led alliance was ahead of the Opposition bloc in the country’s general elections as the votes were being counted. As of 4 pm Indian time, the Netanyahu-led coalition was leading in 54 of the 120 seats in Parliament. A party or an alliance needs 61 seats to form the government.

The Opposition bloc was ahead in 49 seats. The Arab parties, which are supported largely by Israel’s Palestinian minority, were leading in 17 seats. More than 77% of the votes had been counted.

This was the first parliamentary election since the beginning of the conflict in Gaza three years ago and the Israel-United States’ war on Iran that started in February. Read on.

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The Supreme Court on Wednesday verbally asked the Election Commission why it was telling those enrolled in voter lists before the special intensive revision to use Form 6 after they were deleted from the draft rolls for not filling the enumeration forms during the exercise, Live Law reported.

Form 6, which is used to register first-time voters, requires applicants to declare that they have not been electors before, the court observed.

The bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant said that there would be several voters in Delhi who could not have been served enumeration forms as they may have changed their residential addresses or been travelling at the time, Live Law reported.

The enumeration phase of the exercise in Delhi was held in July.

The court asked why voters cannot now be allowed to fill the enumeration form or Form 8, which is for changing addresses, instead of Form 6.

The counsel representing the Election Commission said that the authorities will examine the suggestions made by the court.

The bench was hearing a petition filed by activists Anjali Bharadwaj and Amrita Johri, who have raised concerns about the voter roll revision.

Prashant Bhushan, the counsel for the petitioners, said that 43 lakh voters in Delhi had been deleted from the draft list for having shifted.

They were among the 47.7 lakh names deleted from the national capital’s draft voter list on August 31. The deletions account for 33% of the Union Territory’s electorate before the exercise began.

“All that they can do is fill Form 8, which is for shifted voters,” Live Law quoted Bhushan as having said. “But EC is saying that in this SIR, you can’t fill Form 8, you have to fill Form 6 to be included in the draft list.”

He added: “They are making people fill up a false declaration that they have not voted before.”

The use of Form 6

The bench’s observations came two days after the Supreme Court on Monday, in a separate matter, verbally assured voters that they would not be prosecuted for submitting Form 6 to restore their names after being excluded during the special intensive revision.

The petitioner’s counsel, in a matter pertaining to the voter roll revision in Maharashtra, had pointed out that “pre-existing voters misrepresenting themselves as fresh voters is an offence and liable for prosecution”.

In response, the chief justice had said: “Do not worry. Nobody will be prosecuted.”

On October 19, the Delhi High Court also said that a voter’s apprehension of being accused of making a false declaration by submitting Form 6 to restore his name to the electoral roll after being excluded during the exercise was “misplaced” as the direction to do so had come from the poll panel.

Earlier this month, the Election Commission directed poll panels in states where the voter roll revision had been completed to conduct an exercise to restore eligible voters who may have been wrongly excluded through Form 6.

However, former Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi had said at the time that Form 6 cannot be filled by deleted voters as it is only for new voters.

“All those who have been forced to fill it have committed a criminal offence carrying one year prison,” Quraishi said on social media. “EC officials who forced them are abetters to crime. This press note shows EC’s abetment!”

A contentious exercise

In 2025, the first phase of the exercise was conducted in Bihar. It was extended to 12 states and Union Territories in the second phase in late 2025 and the first half of 2026.

Since the exercise began, concerns have been raised that the revision could eliminate genuine voters from the rolls and even shape electoral outcomes, as Scroll has reported.

In May, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the revision. But it said that the exercise does not mean that the Election Commission can decide on whether the person is an Indian citizen.

Despite this, Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states have cited the SIR to deny ration cards to those who have been eliminated from the rolls. In some cases, the police have denied permission for their passports to be renewed.

Edited by Sneha.

• Follow Scroll’s coverage of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls here.
• Also read: Explainer: Why the Election Commission’s Form 6 for new voters has triggered a legal row

The Supreme Court on Tuesday said it could not conduct a broad inquiry into allegations that candidates of the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party were prevented from filing nominations for Andhra Pradesh’s local body elections, Bar and Bench reported.

Candidates claiming that they were wrongly excluded would have to establish that they had attempted to file their nomination papers but were prevented from doing so, said a bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant.

“These are disputed questions of fact,” the bench was quoted as saying.

On October 19, the YSRCP approached the Supreme Court after the Andhra Pradesh High Court declined to extend the deadline for filing nominations or to direct that additional nomination centres be set up.

The party had alleged that its candidates were intimidated in several places, including Kadapa, Tirupati, Punganur and Rayachoti.

The YSRCP alleged that cadres and supporters of the ruling Telugu Desam Party had obstructed its candidates from filing nominations. The TDP is part of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance at the Centre.

On October 21, the Supreme Court directed the state Election Commission to consider complaints from candidates who alleged that they had been prevented from filing nominations, including electronic evidence. It also directed the commission to extend nomination deadlines wherever candidates were found to have been prevented from doing so because of law-and-order problems.

When the matter was heard on Tuesday, the bench noted that the Election Commission had acted on the representations and extended nomination deadlines in some places.

Advocate Maninder Singh, appearing for the YSRCP, submitted that many candidates had been excluded despite approaching the authorities.

The court said it could not examine such allegations individually during the electoral process.

However, the court said it would consider laying down guidelines to safeguard the electoral process, including the preservation of CCTV footage.

Polling for 100 urban local bodies in Andhra Pradesh will be held on November 1, with counting scheduled for November 3.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Three persons were killed and 31 houses damaged in Andhra Pradesh as Cyclone Arnab made landfall on Wednesday, PTI quoted a National Disaster Response Force officer as saying.

The very severe cyclonic storm weakened into a severe cyclone after completing its landfall, the India Meteorological Department said.

Heavy to very heavy rain was reported in several parts of coastal Andhra Pradesh, with some areas recording more than 200 mm of rainfall, the Hindustan Times reported.

The landfall continued for six hours as the cyclone crossed the coasts of Andhra Pradesh and Yanam in Puducherry between 2 am and 8 am, with maximum sustained wind speeds of 125 km per hour to 135 km per hour.

The storm was likely to move north-northwestwards in the next 48 hours and weaken further gradually, the department said.

#WATCH | Machilipatnam, Andhra Pradesh: Strong gusty winds and heavy downpours trigger severe weather conditions across the region under the impact of cyclonic storm Arnab. pic.twitter.com/lN5CUrv0lJ

— ANI (@ANI) October 28, 2026

On Wednesday morning, the weather department said that the storm remained “practically stationary” for three hours over the same region, about 30 km east of Narsapur in Andhra Pradesh.

Several trees and electricity poles were uprooted and houses were damaged in Yanam because of strong winds, ANI reported. Teams of the National Disaster Response Force were working to remove the debris.

In Andhra Pradesh, stranded persons were rescued, The Indian Express reported. Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu directed officials to clear uprooted trees and restore power after conditions improve.

Odisha had also intensified preparedness, including the closing of schools and imposing restrictions on fishing, with the storm likely to bring heavy sustained winds, the newspaper reported.

Flight disruptions

IndiGo on Wednesday said that flights to and from Rajahmundry, Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam airports in Andhra Pradesh will “remain impacted” because of bad weather.

“Customers are advised to check their flight status before proceeding to the airport,” it said on social media.

Air India said that flight operations to and from Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam “may be affected” on Wednesday.

Trains cancelled

At least 64 trains scheduled to operate on Tuesday and Wednesday were cancelled as a precautionary measure.

The affected routes include Vijayawada-Rajahmundry, Vijayawada-Narasapur, Vijayawada-Machilipatnam, Visakhapatnam-Parvatipuram, Machilipatnam-Gudivada, Kakinada Port-Visakhapatnam and Guntur-Repalle.

Relief measures

The National Disaster Response Force on Tuesday said that it had deployed 31 teams in the states likely to be affected. Twelve teams had been deployed in Andhra Pradesh, nine in Odisha, four in Chhattisgarh, three in Telangana and two in Yanam.

Additionally, about 11 State Disaster Response Force teams had been deployed in Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, he said. In Odisha, 60 teams of the state’s disaster rapid action force had been deployed.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Para-athlete Neeraj Yadav, who had won three Asian Para Games gold medals before being suspended for a doping violation, died allegedly by suicide at his home in Delhi on Tuesday, PTI reported. He was 42.

Yadav, who was from Uttar Pradesh, had missed the Asian Para Games in Japan from October 18 to October 24 because of the doping suspension.

The National Anti-Doping Agency provisionally suspended him in October 2023 after he tested positive for stanozolol, an anabolic steroid. The medication increases strength and can give athletes unfair advantage in sporting events.

He competed in the F55 category, which includes seated field events such as shot put, discus and javelin. Yadav played wheelchair tennis from 2005 to 2012 before moving to para-athletics. He was diagnosed with post-polio residual paralysis at the age of seven.

S Satyanarayana, head coach of the Indian para-athletics team, said Yadav would have been looking forward to competing at the games. “Medals at the Asian Para Games can bring substantial government cash awards and opportunities for stable employment,” the Times of India quoted him as saying.

Yadav won three gold medals at the Asian Para Games. He won the javelin title at the 2018 Games in Indonesia and gold in both javelin and discus at the 2023 Games in China.

His two gold medals at the 2023 Asian Para Games in Hangzhou were later stripped following the doping violation.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

When Dharmendra Raghuwanshi and Kapil Khatiyan began farming decades ago, they did not imagine that their crops could contribute to India’s fuel needs. But eight years ago, an Indian government policy shift paved the way for just such a scenario.

Raghuwanshi is a farmer in the village of Patlon, in Madhya Pradesh’s Chhindwara district, who cultivates 32 acres of land. On about five acres, he grows sugarcane, while on the rest, he grows maize.

Khatiyan is a farmer in Uttar Pradesh’s Shamli district, around 110 km from New Delhi, who cultivates sugarcane on around 17 acres of land.

On paper, Raghuwanshi and Khatiyan both stood to benefit from a series of government moves, starting in 2018, that were aimed at encouraging the production of ethanol in the country. The key step that the Modi government took was the mandating of an increased blending of biofuels, like ethanol, with diesel and petrol. It said this would reduce India’s “dependence on imported fossil fuels” and save the country precious foreign exchange.

To ensure that oil marketing companies could meet mandated blending targets, the government modified rules to allow the use of food crops like sugarcane and corn to make ethanol. Earlier, it was largely made from molasses, a by-product of sugar manufacturing.

The government has specifically touted the benefits that these changes would bring to farmers. In July this year, it stated that ethanol production would provide maize farmers an “assured market” by “ensuring better prices”. Further, the government said that sugarcane farmers would benefit because the measures would “improve the liquidity position of sugar mills enabling them to clear cane price arrears of the farmers”.

This week, Hardeep Puri, the minister for petroleum and gas, claimed that the introduction of E20 – ethanol-blended fuel, with 20% ethanol and 80% petrol – had helped the government save Rs 1,60,000 crore, of which Rs 1,40,000 crore had been given back to farmers.

But, on the ground, there is little evidence of such gains accruing to farmers.

In September, Scroll travelled to Chhindwara, known as the “corn city” of Madhya Pradesh, and Shamli, Uttar Pradesh’s highest sugarcane producing district, to speak to farmers and understand if and how the government’s measures had affected their lives. None of the farmers that Scroll spoke to at either of the places had experienced any significant benefits from the changes. This is a story about two of them.

Raghuwanshi explained that maize farmers in his region were excited at first to learn that they could sell their crop for the manufacture of ethanol – particularly when they also learnt that four distilleries in their district were producing ethanol from crops procured from Chhindwara. They grew optimistic that they would begin to receive better prices.

While maize prices had gone up over the years, Raghuwanshi said they had never crossed the minimum support price – the amount announced by the government every year as the lowest price it would pay farmers if it bought the crop directly from them.

“In the last ten years, I do not remember selling corn at a price that was above the minimum support price,” he said.

The crop’s minimum support price was Rs 1,375 per quintal in 2016, and increased steadily to reach Rs 2,410 per quintal last year. But Raghuwanshi noted that between 2016 and 2026, “We have sold our crop between Rs 1,200 and Rs 1,400 per quintal, sometimes going down as much as Rs 1,100.”

To the farmers’ disappointment, this did not change even after distilleries around them began buying maize for ethanol production.

Experts believe that there are many reasons why maize prices have remained low. “In the last few years, the area under maize has increased sharply,” said Shweta Saini, chief executive officer of Arcus Policy Research. This led to an increased supply of maize in the market, she added, which kept the prices low till last year.

Additionally, in the last two years, the Food Corporation of India, or FCI, has had surplus stocks of rice, which have been increasingly allocated for ethanol production. As a result, she argued, the demand for maize for ethanol production has not increased as expected. “Besides, due to higher starch content, rice conversion to ethanol is higher than maize,” Saini explained. This, too, dampened the demand for maize, driving down prices.

She argued that “The benefits to farmers would have percolated in a longer run in a sustainable manner if policies stayed stable and predictable.”

“The government pushed for ethanol, the market and farmers responded to it,” she said. But, among other factors, its shift towards procuring rice for ethanol’s manufacture made “the value chain unpredictable” and led to “relatively lower prices for maize farmers”, she said.

On the ground, farmers said they have little power to negotiate with vyaparis, traders who buy produce from farms and sell to end users like maize processing factories. “Almost everyone here sells their crops to the vyapari,” said Raghuwanshi.

Selling directly to mandis, or wholesale markets, he noted, would mean incurring high costs of transport and queuing up for more than a day.

After harvest, most farmers are in a rush to sell their maize crop, so that they can prepare the land for the next crop of the season – wheat. Traders are aware of these hurdles, Raghuwanshi noted. “So, most farmers find themselves without any other option but to sell it to the vyapari at whatever price they quote,” he said.

Raghuwanshi also argued that farmers did not receive enough support from the government. “No agriculture officer came to explain to us that our crop will be used, or help us with what type of varieties we should grow that will lead to efficient production of ethanol,” he said.

Rather, he explained, farmers in his region first heard about the use of ethanol only last year, when they saw posts on social media about vehicles having reduced mileage and stalling after using the blended fuel. It was only after this that they learnt that the government had allowed the use of maize in the manufacture of ethanol, and about the distilleries near them that intended to do so.

In contrast, he recounted that in 2018, the government had organised a two-day “corn festival” to promote the crop, “There were stalls of different types of food made for corn, and other products, like textiles,” he said. “Our then chief minister Kamal Nath had organised the festival”.

The initiative helped the farmers meet representatives of industries that made products that used corn, like animal feed, cornstarch and canned sweetcorn. Raghuwanshi added that around this time, several factories came up in the district to process corn into some of these products. This allowed farmers to find some avenues to sell their crop at slightly higher prices – though even then, they did not cross the minimum support price, Raghuwanshi said.

Brajesh Bhardwaj, a social worker from Chhindwara who works closely with farmers on problems pertaining to agriculture and wildlife, argued that for the government’s ethanol push to benefit farmers, manufacturers should work closely with farmers. They “could work with farmer cooperatives, provide technical guidance, quality standards and advance information on procurement requirements”, he said.

Raghuwanshi suggested that alternative purchasing arrangements could help farmers. “We will support ethanol production, but for benefits to reach us, the distilleries should buy directly from us, instead of from vyaparis,” he said. “That could possibly give us better rates.”

About 100 km from Raghuwanshi’s farm, a distillery, Gulshan Polyols, has been doing just that – procuring maize from about 200 farmers in a 20 km radius to make ethanol. A mill official explained that the firm buys the crop at mandi rates, which are typically around Rs 100 per quintal higher than rates at which vyaparis buy. Gulshan Polyols also gives a handful of farmers, selected through a lottery system, bags of maize seeds “to encourage them to grow corn”.

In the conversation with Scroll, the mill official outlined the challenges of such an approach. The mill started producing ethanol in 2019, but the quantity it can purchase locally is not enough to meet its requirements.“We still have to buy corn from the rest of Chhindwara and other districts in the state, and sometimes even from Bihar, through vyaparis.” He explained discussions were underway to increase the number of farmers the company reached.

Farmers’ disappointment with the fact that they have not seen benefits from increased ethanol production was exacerbated by the fact that on paper, the government’s push to produce ethanol from maize has seen strong results. In 2026, as of the end of August, India produced 895 crore litres of ethanol, as per data of All India Distillers Association. Of this, nearly 70% is made with grains, primarily maize. The rest is being made with sugarcane.

“If there was truly a benefit for these farmers due to their crop being used in ethanol, our incomes should have increased,” said Raghuwanshi. “That has not happened.”

His uncle, who had now joined the conversation, added that in this matter, “Dilli abhi door hai” – Delhi is still far.

Like Raghuwanshi, when Khatiyan heard about the government’s ethanol push, he, too, hoped it would help sugarcane farmers like him sell their crop at higher prices.

Since 1996, Khatiyan’s family had been selling between 1,000 and 1,500 quintals of sugarcane each year from their approximately 17 acres of land to the mill closest to them, currently operated by Superior Foodgrains, for the manufacture of sugar.

After the 2018 policy and other subsequent initiatives were announced, the mill decided to expand into ethanol production. In 2020, the government approved a loan under its schemes for Superior Biofuels, a subsidiary of Superior Foodgrains, for an ethanol manufacturing unit with a capacity of 150 kilolitres per day. The sugar mill and the ethanol distillery would run adjacent to each other.

Khatiyan noted that more than 12,000 farmers had been selling their crop to the mill. “When they discussed ethanol production with farmers in initial conversation, we were told that the sugarcane for this mill would come from farmers here,” said Khatiyan. “We had hoped that it would also benefit us farmers by increasing the market for our crop and bringing us better rates.”

Prices of the crop have risen over the years – last year, for instance, the Uttar Pradesh government increased the state advised price, or SAP, by Rs 30 per quintal, from Rs 370 to Rs 400. But Saini argued that these were linked to other economic trends. The SAP, “for sugarcane has been rising over the years even without the additional burden from ethanol production”, she said. “The government wants enough sugarcane that could meet its food demands and also demands of ethanol.”

The government also took into account factors in the country, such as drought and El Nino conditions, which it sees between every 3.5 and four years. Lower rainfall during these periods reduced sugarcane yield. In such situations, the government sometimes offers a “remunerative price” for sugarcane, Saini explained, “which now also accounts for the price of sugar, and value of cane by-products”.

The farmers’ demand for better prices, beyond these increases, is consistent with a 2012 report of the Rangarajan Committee on the “Regulation of Sugar Sector in India”, which had suggested a “revenue sharing formula” of value generated in the sugar supply chain between “farmers and millers in a fair and equitable manner”. The report recommended that “70 percent of the value of sugar and each of its three major by-products, namely bagasse, molasses and press mud” must be paid to the farmers. While Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu have adopted such a formula, reports suggest that it has remained largely on paper.

Farmers have also been struggling with massively delayed payments, which have plagued Uttar Pradesh for decades. For instance, the crushing season last year ended in April, but Khatiyan received the payment only in January, after a delay of nine months.

This year, though the situation improved, payments were still significantly delayed – after concluding the season, Khatiyan’s family received the payment in September, five months later.

An official of Superior Biofuels told Scroll that the slight reduction in the delay of payments to farmers this year was a result of the additional revenue the mill was now earning by selling ethanol to oil marketing companies like Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum. “Paying the farmers was our priority,” he said, requesting anonymity since he was not authorised to speak with the media. “So we started diverting our revenue from ethanol production to making their payments.”

But even this relatively faster payment ran contrary to a December 2021 Allahabad High Court order that sugar mills make payments for sugarcane within 14 days, and that any later payment would incur an interest rate of 15% per annum. “As long as we don’t get payments within 14 days, how can we say it’s a benefit?” Khatiyan said.

Further, Khatiyan noted that some payments to farmers in the region remained to be cleared. Data indicate that this is the case at the statewide level too – this year, Uttar Pradesh ranked third among states that owe cane payments, and as of this February, 121 mills owe Rs 3,300 crore to farmers.

Khatiyan and other sugarcane farmers have also faced setbacks because of the government’s greater emphasis on grains such as maize as source crops for ethanol.

Apart from allowing the use of these crops, in 2021, the ministry extended incentives that were initially aimed at mills producing ethanol from sugarcane to grain-based ethanol producers. For instance, Siraj Hussain explained that government-owned oil marketing companies buy ethanol made by grains at a higher price than ethanol made from sugarcane.

Indeed, according to a reply to a question in the Lok Sabha in July, the government was paying Rs 71.86 per litre for ethanol made from maize, but only Rs 65.61 for ethanol made from sugarcane.

Unsurprisingly, Superior Biofuels applied for a loan under such schemes for a 150-kilolitre “dual feed” plant – the loan was approved in 2022. By 2023, the capacity of the planned plant had increased – a proposal for environmental clearance noted that the mill was applying for a “cane juice/sugar syrup/grain based distillery” with a capacity of 300 kilolitres per day to produce ethanol, among other products.

But in fact, the mill’s official explained to Scroll that since last year when the ethanol production in the mill began, it has only used grains for the manufacture, and has used the sugarcane it procured primarily to produce sugar.

Apart from government incentives, another factor in this decision was the relative unpredictability of sugar and sugarcane as commodities. “Sugar is an uncertain feedstock for ethanol,” he said. In August, a month before Scroll spoke to the official, sugar prices across the country had risen dramatically from Rs 48 per kg in July to Rs 56 per kg in August. In such a scenario, the official explained, to control prices, the government was considering restricting the use of sugarcane for ethanol, and instead prioritising its supply for the manufacture of sugar. Such measures tended to make sugarcane a less predictable raw material, he explained.

In fact, the government announced just such a measure on October 16, declaring that oil marketing companies would not be procuring ethanol made from sugarcane juice, as well as from sugar syrup, and certain kinds of molasses for the upcoming 2026-’27 year. The move is intended to strike a balance between protecting domestic sugar supplies while sustaining the petrol-blending programme. At the same time, the government has also reduced the incentives for maize based ethanol by lowering its procurement price from Rs 71.86 per litre to Rs 68.86.

When Khatiyan learnt that the Superior Biofuels mill was using their sugarcane for producing sugar, but grains to produce ethanol, he lamented that this was a way for the mill to “evade being accountable for the sugarcane farmers’ demands and bring them any benefits from the ethanol”. Another farmer joined in the conversation, and the two began discussing where the mill might be sourcing grains from.

The mill official later made it clear. He said that the maize they procure for the ethanol production comes from across states, chiefly from Madhya Pradesh – where farmers like Raghuwanshi have been growing the crop.

Given that farmers have seen limited changes to their fortunes, Raghuwanshi wondered who was truly benefitting from the ethanol push. “Perhaps the only ones benefitting from this ethanol production are vyaparis and distilleries,” he said.

Indeed, apart from maize and sugarcane farmers, others are also now anxious about how the government’s ethanol push has unfolded.

Among them are poultry farmers – as vyaparis started buying increasing quantities of corn to sell to ethanol distillers, corn became difficult to procure for these farmers, who needed corn as chicken feed.

Manoj Kadwe has been rearing cockerel for the past eight years in Chhindwara district. He feeds his chickens with a mix of around 50 kg of supplements with around 150 kg of corn every month. He has no problem procuring the corn, since his family grows the crop – if he runs out, he buys more from his family members nearby who also grow it.

But he noted that procuring the crop had become difficult for other, landless, poultry rearers. Kadwe explained that when vyaparis buy corn from farmers, often, they make an advance payment to reserve their crop. “Vyaparis that sell corn to ethanol factories after buying them from farmers often do this,” he said.

This has driven up prices for poultry farmers who need to buy corn, he explained. “This price increase is okay as long as it is reflective in the market prices of eggs and chickens, so that the poultry farmer can earn his profits,” Kadwe said. This partly explains the increase in chicken and egg prices in recent years.

A 2024 strategy paper by the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences noted the risks of such an outcome. It observed that the “major driver of maize demand comes from poultry feed”. Thus, any “shift in its use must consider feed/food security implications”, since it could “impact feed/food availability and prices”.

Meanwhile, some who sought to capitalise on the shift towards ethanol are now grappling with a new fear.

Among them is Anil Rathi, a jaggery mill owner in Chhindwara. Rathi has been making chemical-free jaggery in his unit in Chhindwara since 2018. This year onwards, he will be stepping into grain-based ethanol production – the machinery is all set, and production is set to begin in December.

But Rathi is worried by a dip in demand for ethanol that he has observed. “Now suddenly, the scope of an ethanol market does not seem much,” he said in his office in Chhindwara city. He explained that over the last year, the oil marketing companies had been buying reduced quantities of ethanol from distilleries.

Economic Times also recently reported this phenomenon: citing industry experts, it explained that the reason for it was that India had begun producing more ethanol than it needed. Compared to the annual requirement of 11 billion litres, ethanol capacity in the country has reached around 20 billion litres. This has led to a “severe oversupply crisis” the report said, adding that “nearly 7 billion liters are without a clear market.”

The Gulshan Polyols official confirmed this, adding that over the last year, they have been able to sell less of their ethanol, but still have to incur the same costs of running the distillery. “Our profit margins have reduced,” the official said.

Rathi argued that the situation could only improve with a policy change from the government – for instance, if it went ahead with plans to increase the blending of ethanol with petrol. While currently, oil marketing companies are mandated to sell petrol with a 20% blend of ethanol, the government has cleared the way for future increases to 30%.

These plans, however, have been facing pushback from vehicle owners, who say that, among other problems, the blended fuel is less efficient. If the government saw its plans through despite facing this opposition, Rathi said, “it will once more demand ethanol from people like us”.

Back at Raghuwanshi’s farm, his maize crop with golden tips swayed gently in the wind. Raghuwanshi is looking forward to the harvesting season, hoping for better prices. Some of his relatives, also farmers, join in the discussion. As they chatted among themselves, Raghuwanshi smiled and said, “I grow both sugarcane and maize. If ethanol was truly benefitting farmers I would have been in a great position!”

Two men accused in separate criminal cases were killed in alleged gunfights with police in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled West Bengal within 24 hours on Tuesday, the Hindustan Times reported.

Samiul Sheikh, the main accused in the murder of BJP worker Sujit Mondal, was shot dead in Murshidabad district while allegedly trying to escape custody, the police said.

Sheikh and two other persons were arrested after Mondal went missing on August 28, the Hindustan Times reported. The police later recovered parts of Mondal’s body from a canal.

On Tuesday, a team of the Criminal Investigation Department took Sheikh to the Old Dak Bungalow area in Samserganj to reconstruct the crime, a police officer told PTI.

The officer said that Sheikh tried to escape while returning from the spot, snatched a firearm from a police officer and opened fire at the team.

Sheikh was injured in retaliatory firing and taken to hospital, where doctors declared him dead, the officer said.

The Samserganj incident followed another such gunfight shortly before midnight on Monday in Gaighata, North 24 Parganas.

Prahlad Das, accused of raping and murdering a Class 11 student, was shot dead after allegedly snatching a firearm from the police and opening fire.

Das was arrested on Sunday, a day after the girl went missing. Her body was recovered the following day. He had confessed to the crime during interrogation, the police said.

In a similar incident in July, a man accused of the rape and murder of a minor in Baruipur in South 24 Parganas district was killed in an alleged gunfight with the police.

‘Alien culture being brought to Bengal’: Opposition

The Opposition parties asked whether the practice of extrajudicial killings linked to Uttar Pradesh under Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath were being replicated in West Bengal, The Telegraph reported. They described it as an “alien culture”.

Trinamool Congress MLA from former Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s faction Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay said that “encounters” were a “source of publicity”.

“But there ought to be a rule of law in the country,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.

Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Mohammed Salim described the shootings as “staged encounters” and raised concerns about the law-and-order situation in the state.

Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury asked how the accused could allegedly seize police firearms in both incidents.

“Should we consider the state police competent, or should we think about giving them new training?,” the newspaper quoted Chowdhury as saying.

Meanwhile, BJP leader Dilip Ghosh said that the police sometimes have to take “unpopular” steps to restore public trust, The Telegraph reported.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Delhi Election Commission on Tuesday said that 31.2 lakh, or more than 94%, of the 33.1 lakh voters who received notices during the special intensive revision had been cleared for inclusion in the final electoral roll, The Hindu reported.

The 33.1 lakh voters who received notices account for about one-third of the 97.5 lakh voters included in the draft electoral roll. Of those issued notices, 13.7 lakh could not be linked to the electoral roll from the last special intensive revision, while 19.3 lakh were flagged for “logical discrepancies” in their enumeration forms.

Even prominent persons, including Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, received notices during the revision.

The deadline for disposing of notices is November 30, while the final electoral roll is scheduled to be published on December 4.

Booth-level officers have been visiting homes across constituencies to collect documents from the 33 lakh people who received notices, the Delhi chief electoral officer had said earlier this month.

On September 22, the Supreme Court had taken note of concerns that notices issued to voters on the “doubtful” list did not provide sufficient reasons or details. It said voters needed clarity when they were served notices for “logical discrepancies” and observed that the notices appeared to have been issued “almost mechanically”.

Delhi had around 1.4 crore electors before the voter roll revision exercise. Of these, 47.7 lakh voters were removed from the draft electoral roll published on August 31.

Those removed from the electoral roll were marked as permanently shifted, deceased, absent, duplicate entries or placed in the “other” category. It was unclear what the “other” category referred to. The period for claims and objections, which began on August 31, will end on Friday. Electors can apply for inclusion in the electoral rolls or file objections to names appearing on them until then.

A contentious exercise

Since the exercise began in June 2025, the SIR has faced questions about the manner and pace of its implementation, amid concerns that it could deny genuine electors their right to vote and shape election outcomes, as Scroll has reported.

In May, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the exercise, but said that it does not mean that the Election Commission can decide on whether the person is an Indian citizen.

Despite this, Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states have cited the SIR to deny ration cards to those who have been eliminated from the rolls. In some cases, the police have denied permission for their passports to be renewed.

Since October 2, protests have been held in several parts of the country against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over alleged irregularities in how the voter roll is being revised.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read: SIR explained: Why the voter roll revision has become so controversial

A cheetah cub at Kuno National Park died from pellet injuries on Monday, a day after it was found wounded in the forests of Madhya Pradesh’s Morena district, The Indian Express reported.

Dr Shobha Jawre, from the College of Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry in Jabalpur, confirmed to the newspaper that the 19-month-old male cub had died because of pellet injuries. “The pellets were removed from the cheetah cub’s body during an operation,” the doctor was quoted as saying.

A report has been submitted to the wildlife department.

It is the first killing, and the 25th death, of a cheetah since the wild animal was reintroduced in the country in 2022.

The cub was found injured by a monitoring team on Sunday in the Morena territorial forest division, the newspaper reported. The cub was taken to the veterinary institute in Jabalpur.

The State Tiger Strike Force, a wildlife crime investigation unit, is identifying persons responsible for the cheetah’s killing, The Indian Express reported.

The unit was focussing on a suspected poaching attempt besides human-animal conflict, the report added.

In September 2022, cheetahs from Namibia and South Africa were reintroduced to India seven decades after the species was declared extinct in the country.

The cheetah had been officially declared extinct by the Indian government in 1952. Before their reintroduction, the wild cats were last recorded in the country in 1948, when three cheetahs were shot in the sal forests in Chhattisgarh’s Koriya District.

There are now a total of 54 cheetahs in India, of whom 50 are in the Kuno National Park and four are in the Gandhi Sagar Sanctuary.

Edited by Sneha.

Also read:

• A new irrigation project threatens to displace both cheetahs and humans in Kuno
• Did the government gravely underestimate the space needed for Project Cheetah?

The names of more than 99.3 lakh voters have been deleted from Karnataka’s final voter list following the special intensive revision of electoral rolls. The number of voters fell to 4.5 crore from the 5.5 crore that were on the state’s electoral rolls before the exercise began.

In the final stage of the exercise, more than 8.6 lakh names were reinstated to the draft list. In August, the draft list had excluded over one crore voters.

Persons who applied for inclusion through Form 6 after Friday, when the period for claims and objections ended, will be added through supplementary lists to be published on a quarterly basis. Read on.

Follow Scroll’s coverage of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls here.

The Supreme Court issued notice to the Union government seeking its response to a petition challenging the Digital Personal Data Protection Act and its rules. The petition has been filed by the Digital News Publishers Association, which represents 21 media publishers, including those owned by businesspersons Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani. They said the provisions of the act violated journalistic freedom.

The publishers said that the law “threatens the full spectrum of journalistic activity carried out by journalists, ground reporters, citizens, whistleblowers, Right to Information activists and other stakeholders”.

The law “impermissibly restricts” the fundamental right to information and freedom of speech and expression, they added. Read on.

Why the draft personal data protection rules are contentious, explains Vineet Bhalla

The Bombay High Court put on hold the Leave India Notice issued to actor Imran Khan. The hearing was adjourned till Monday after the Union government said that no coercive action would be taken against Khan until then.

On October 15, the Foreigners Regional Registration Office directed Khan, a citizen of the United States, to leave the country by October 28 allegedly for participating in the protests against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar in Mumbai earlier this month. Read on.

Sixty-nine persons have been arrested and four detained under the Arunachal Pradesh anti-terror law for their alleged role in the violence that broke out on Friday in Arunachal Pradesh’s Pasighat during a protest against a proposed dam, said Inspector General of Police Hibu Tamang. The arrests and detentions were made in Upper Siang, Siang and East Siang districts under the Arunachal Pradesh Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

Those arrested face charges of rioting, torching of vehicles, as well as vandalism of office buildings and residential houses.

Several organisations have been protesting against the proposed 12,500-megawatt power project on the Siang river. On Friday, protesters vandalised and set fire to an office of the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation and a police station. Read on.

Very severe cyclonic storm Arnab is expected to cross the coast of Andhra Pradesh in the early hours of Wednesday. The cyclone is expected to make landfall between Bapatla and Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, close to Puducherry’s Yanam town, with the maximum sustained wind speed of 125 km per hour to 135 km per hour, with gusts of up to 150 km per hour, the weather department said.

In Andhra Pradesh, nearly 89,000 persons living on the Kakinada coast were being shifted to relief camps. Odisha was planning to shift 48,000 persons. The National Disaster Relief Force said that 31 of its teams had been deployed.

More than 60 trains have been cancelled as a precautionary measure. Read on.

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A century has passed since the publication of the autobiography of TE Lawrence, popularly known as Lawrence of Arabia. The title Seven Pillars of Wisdom is drawn from the Book of Proverbs in the Bible: “Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars.”

How appropriate, then, that in their wisdom, the founders of our Constitution went in for democracy as the form of government that would guide independent India’s destiny.

As it transpires, the structure of democracy in India rests on seven pillars, namely (i) legislature (ii) executive (political and bureaucratic) (iii) political parties (iv) judiciary (v) independent institutions (vi) media and (vii) civil society.

As of today, all the pillars appear shaky, threatening the future of democracy, although it could be argued that structural weaknesses in the Indian democratic edifice have existed right from 1947.

I Legislature

Let us start with the legislatures, both at the union and state levels. Cracks appeared in the post-Nehruvian era. The “aya Ram gaya Ram” phenomenon of politicians switching parties started in 1967, a legacy that continues to the present day. Reminiscent of Indian Premier League auctions, legislators are tempted by the highest bidders, though other pressures such as the fear of investigative agencies can also act as triggers for crossovers.

Disconcertingly, it is no longer just individual bait: shoals of legislators are willing to defect en masse, lured by the attractions of power and patronage and the fear of state action.

The anti-defection provisions in the Constitution have become a dead letter: in no case have presiding officers ruled against defectors. Major legislations are rushed through without adequate public debate and reflection. The quality of discussions in legislatures, especially Parliament, has taken a deep dive.

Presiding officers often give short shrift to Opposition demands for discussion or to notices for legislative intervention, as in the cases of the proposed impeachment of the chief election commissioner and a former High Court judge.

II Executive

At both the political and bureaucratic levels, there is inadequate engagement with public opinion, especially on crucial policy matters. The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, the farm laws and the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls are just some of the glaring instances. Dissent and criticism are brushed off as the handiwork of “urban naxals”, “dimagi naxals” and “anti-nationals”.

The use of civil servants, especially those in the investigative agencies, to lodge cases and subject dissenters and political opponents to harassment has become commonplace. More disturbing is the fact that civil servants, in violation of the oath to the Constitution they take when joining public service, are more than willing and enthusiastic to implement the orders of their political masters, be it the sudden demolition of structures (by a curious coincidence, mostly owned or occupied by the Muslim community), the interference in prayer meetings of the Christian community and the harassment of interfaith couples on the bidding of lumpen vigilante groups.

It seems that the senior bureaucracy of the various services has virtually abdicated its role of pointing out to the political executive the absence of legality in the orders it is asked to carry out.

Infrastructure and mineral resource extraction projects are being given virtually blanket permissions, ignoring the voices of caution from environmental experts and groups and bypassing local consultation with affected stakeholders. The ecological consequences are becoming visible, with repeated hill landslides and flash floods, apart from growing desertification of arable lands.

III Political parties

The initial years after Independence saw many stalwarts from different political parties serve with distinction in Parliament and state legislative assemblies and councils. The watershed year was 1967, when the lure of pelf and patronage led to the mushrooming of political parties, many of them dominated by one family. The Indian National Congress was no exception.

Sycophancy became the path for political advancement, with genuflections to the ruling deities in various parties. The system of hereditary succession took firm root in nearly all parties. With hard work and meritorious performance receiving no returns, the decades from the 1990s saw wannabe politicians jumping ship whenever they felt the reward for switching loyalties was higher.

Loyalty to the ruling coterie in a party was the sole criterion for political survival. Criminals and carpetbaggers freely entered the political arena. Winning elections and deriving the benefits from exercise of power has become the sole preoccupation of politicians. Governance, legislative debate and the quality of enacted legislation have suffered grievously.

Today, India seems to live from election to election: what happens in the five-year interregnum between polls seems to concern neither the politician nor the ordinary citizen.

IV Judiciary

The judiciary, given the constraints of manpower and the burden of litigation, has often been the lumbering elephant in the room. What has been particularly disconcerting in recent years has been its propensity, especially at the highest levels of the Supreme Court and High Courts, to take an agonisingly long time in deciding issues that impact the life and liberty of the individual as also matters that have a crucial bearing on constitutional issues and on the lives of ordinary citizens.

Bail pleas are deferred for months on end, with the draconian provisions in laws like the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and Prevention of Money Laundering Act, ensuring that the process itself becomes the punishment. It took years for the accused in the Bhima-Koregaon and the Delhi riots cases to get bail, with some still in judicial custody after more than six years. Chargesheets are yet to be filed in these cases.

Stan Swamy and GN Saibaba were instances where the rigours of incarceration led to their deaths.

And who can forget most of the Aam Aadmi Party leadership in jail before and at the time of the 2025 Delhi elections, denying them the right of participating in election campaigning? The executive has also got away with omnibus clearances of projects that affect the environment, in the absence of meaningful judicial intervention.

V Independent institutions

At the heart of the crisis today is the severe weakening of nearly all independent institutions, meant to serve as the guardians of democracy. We are witnessing the continued unrest arising from the SIR, with the names of 130 million citizens being deleted from the rolls.

The functioning of the Election Commission has come in for scathing criticism. But it is by no means the only institution that has suffered a dent in its reputation. Information Commissions, the Lokpal, the National Green Tribunal, the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, the National Commission for Women and the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights have proved ineffective in acting as a check and balance on executive action/inaction.

VI Media

In a cruel twist of irony, Lal Krishna Advani, one of the founders of the Bharatiya Janata Party, observed about the media after the Emergency: “When they were asked to bend, they crawled.” Today, large sections of the media, both print and electronic, need no such suggestions. They readily genuflect to authority and are more than willing to carry the messages of the government of the day, forgetting their duty of speaking truth to power.

The fear of losing government advertising revenues, the apprehension of coercive action and the outright purchase of independent news channels by powerful corporate interests have silenced the media.

News anchors and editors compete in displaying their loyalty to the powers that be. Responses of opposition leaders and prominent dissenters are given little coverage, if at all. Independent web-based channels face the inquisitions of investigative agencies, while their news reporters have to run the gamut of defamation cases galore.

All this while media channels that actively promote hate speech and incendiary comments get away freely. Little wonder then that a substantial section of thinking citizens have trashed both newspapers and television and rely only on internet-based independent media.

VII Civil society

It is difficult to decide whether civil society is civil anymore. Paraphrasing Mahatma Gandhi on Western civilisation, one must say that civil society in the India of today would be a good idea. Whether on TV channels or on social media, haranguing and shrill accusations are the order of the day. Communities, families and friendships have been split down the middle. Dialogue and discussion have been replaced by partisan postures, with each side retreating into their respective echo chambers.

The polarisation of society, probably dormant before 2014, has come into the open in recent years, with disturbingly large sections of the “educated” majority community “othering” the Muslim community and lumpen groups and the arms of the state harassing the Christian community on the grounds of alleged religious conversion.

Governments may change in the future, but the damage to the ruptured social fabric may take far longer to repair.

Civil society stakeholders – corporate bigwigs, politicians, bureaucrats, academics, media persons, not to mention the large army of WhatsApp uncles and aunties – have enthusiastically espoused the ruling majoritarian ideology.

It might be out of blind adoration, bringing to mind Babasaheb Ambedkar’s warning that in politics, bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship. In many cases, ambition dictates obedience, as well as the apprehension of consequences and/or sheer apathy in the garb of self-interest.

What then?

It is becoming painfully evident that the ailment affecting Indian democracy is not one that a simple medicine of change in government is going to cure. We in India have drifted far away from the noble principles of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity enunciated in the Preamble to the Constitution of India, which alone give substance to the seven pillars above.

Unless there is the fullest commitment to these four principles, heart and soul, a just, equitable, free and harmonious society visualised by the framers of the Constitution cannot come into being.

Attaching these pillars firmly to the superstructure of democracy is the cement of trust, a trust that has significantly eroded today – between citizens and the state, citizens and the institutions charged with the protection of their fundamental rights and, indeed, between citizen and citizen. Restoring this trust is the sine qua non for the health of Indian democracy.

V Ramani is a retired IAS officer of the Maharashtra cadre and a member of the Constitutional Conduct Group. This article first appeared on his blog.

Very severe cyclonic storm Arnab is expected to make landfall along the coast of Andhra Pradesh on Wednesday, the India Meteorological Department said on Tuesday.

The cyclone will make landfall between Bapatla and Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, close to Puducherry’s Yanam town, with the maximum sustained wind speed of 125 km per hour to 135 km per hour, gusting up to 150 km per hour, the weather department said. It is expected to make landfall in the early hours of Wednesday.

As of 2.30 pm Indian time on Tuesday, the cyclonic storm was centred about 170 km south of Vishakhapatnam.

Heavy rainfall

The cyclone will likely lead to isolated but extremely heavy rainfall in coastal Andhra Pradesh, Yanam, Odisha and Chhattisgarh on Tuesday and Wednesday, the weather department said.

It advised residents in these areas to remain alert, follow official weather updates and adhere to the advisories issued by the authorities.

Sea conditions will remain rough till at least Thursday morning, it added.

Relief measures

In Andhra Pradesh, nearly 89,000 persons living on the Kakinada coast were being shifted to relief camps, The Hindu reported.

Odisha was planning to shift 48,000 persons by Tuesday evening, PTI reported.

The National Disaster Relief Force said that it had deployed 31 teams in the states likely to be affected. Twelve teams had been deployed in Andhra Pradesh, nine in Odisha, four in Chhattisgarh, three in Telangana and two in Yanam, ANI quoted NDRF Deputy Inspector General Mohsen Shahedi as saying.

Additionally, about 11 State Disaster Response Force teams had been deployed in Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, he said. In Odisha, 60 teams of the state’s disaster rapid action force had been deployed.

Trains cancelled

At least 64 trains scheduled to operate on Tuesday and Wednesday were cancelled as a precautionary measure, The Hindu reported.

The affected routes include Vijayawada-Rajahmundry, Vijayawada-Narasapur, Vijayawada-Machilipatnam, Visakhapatnam-Parvatipuram, Machilipatnam-Gudivada, Kakinada Port-Visakhapatnam and Guntur-Repalle, the newspaper reported.

Union Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that about 600 km of tracks were being closely monitored. Relief wagons with repair material had been stationed at several locations, he said on social media.

The heavy rainfall and strong winds may also hamper flights to and from the Alluri Sitarama Raju International Airport in Visakhapatnam, the airport operator said. It was unclear if flights had been cancelled.

Edited by Sneha.

The names of more than 99.3 lakh voters have been deleted from Karnataka’s final voter list published on Tuesday following the special intensive revision of electoral rolls, the Hindustan Times reported.

The number of voters fell to 4.5 crore from 5.5 crore that were on the state’s electoral rolls before the exercise began. This amounts to a decrease of about 17.9%.

In the final stage of the exercise, more than 8.6 lakh names were reinstated to the draft list, which had excluded over one crore voters in August.

Persons who applied for inclusion through Form 6 after Friday, when the period for claims and objections ended, would be added through supplementary lists to be published on a quarterly basis, The Hindu reported. Form 6 is used to register new voters.

Also read: Karnataka poll officials sought deletions of 61,000 voters without citing reasons: ‘The Hindu’

Karnataka is among the 19 states and Union Territories where the voter roll revision is being carried out in the third phase of SIR.

The enumeration phase of the exercise in Karnataka began on June 30.

At the end of the draft stage, 65.4 lakh voters had been marked as permanently shifted, 12.3 lakh as dead, 15.1 lakh as absent and 7 lakh as duplicate entries. The highest deletions were recorded in Bengaluru’s urban districts.

The state Election Commission had said at the time that notices would be sent to 43 lakh persons whose enumeration forms either had anomalies or those who had not been mapped.

In 2025, the first phase of the exercise was conducted in Bihar. It was extended to 12 states and Union Territories in the second phase in late 2025 and the first half of 2026.

Since the exercise began, concerns have been raised that the revision could eliminate genuine voters from the rolls and even shape electoral outcomes, as Scroll has reported.

In May, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the revision. But it said that the exercise does not mean that the Election Commission can decide on whether the person is an Indian citizen.

Despite this, Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states have cited the SIR to deny ration cards to those who have been eliminated from the rolls. In some cases, the police have denied permission for their passports to be renewed.

Since October 2, nationwide protests have been held calling for Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation over concerns about the functioning of the Election Commission and the alleged irregularities in how the voter roll is being revised.

Edited by Sneha.

Follow Scroll’s coverage of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls here.

SIR explained: Why the voter roll revision has become so controversial

The Delhi High Court on Tuesday refused to stay the investigation into a first information report against a woman journalist whom Delhi Assistant Commissioner of Police Vivek Bhagat had accused of making casteist remarks about him, days after she alleged he had sexually harassed her, reported Live Law.

The journalist had alleged that Bhagat groped her while she was making a video of student leader Neha Bora being detained during protests demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on October 3.

In his complaint filed on October 13, Bhagat, who is a member of a scheduled caste community, alleged that the journalist had made derogatory remarks about his caste group during the protests.

During the hearing on Tuesday, advocate Tanvir Ahmed Mir, appearing for the journalist, said that the complaint by Bhagat was “nothing but a retaliated and revengeful action”, reported Live Law.

Mir also pointed out that the journalist is a member of the Lyngdoh community of Nagaland, which is a scheduled tribe group.

Justice Mini Pushkarna issued notice on the journalist’s petition.

“I will hear it on merits once [police] reply is there,” the judge was quoted as saying. “[The] investigation will continue.”

The court scheduled the matter for final hearing on November 17.

Bhagat had claimed in his complaint that on the evening of October 3, the journalist and her colleagues staged a protest outside the Parliament Street police station and described him as a “sexual predator” and “potential rapist”.

The police officer said that the alleged casteist remarks and accusations of sexual harassment against him had caused him mental distress and damaged his reputation

The FIR also mentioned that the sexual harassment complaint against him had been transferred to the Delhi Crime Branch.

On October 15, the Supreme Court granted interim protection to the journalist.

Edited by Sneha.

The Bombay High Court on Tuesday put on hold the Leave India Notice issued to actor Imran Khan, The Indian Express reported.

The hearing was adjourned till Monday after the Union government said that no coercive action would be taken against Khan until then, Live Law reported.

On October 15, the Foreigners Regional Registration Office directed Khan, a citizen of the United States, to leave the country by October 28 allegedly for participating in the protests against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar in Mumbai earlier this month.

A Leave India Notice is a directive issued by the authorities requiring a foreign citizen to exit the country within a specified time period. Failing to comply with the order could lead to detention, deportation or blacklisting.

Khan holds an Overseas Citizen of India card, which is an immigration status that allows foreign citizens of Indian origin to live and work in India indefinitely.

The actor had moved the High Court against the notice, with his lawyer saying that rules do not prohibit Overseas Citizen of India cardholders from participating in a protest.

Khan had been detained during the protest at the August Kranti Maidan in Mumbai on October 10.

Speaking at the protest, the actor had said that he was attending in his capacity as a resident of Mumbai and was not affiliated with any organisation.

“I am here as a citizen, as a person who lives in this city,” he had said. “I am here to see why freedom of movement is being restricted. Why are people’s voices being suppressed?”

Edited by Sneha.

Also read: In Modi’s India, only ‘good’ OCIs are welcome

Sixty-nine persons have been arrested and four detained for their alleged role in the violence that broke out on Friday in Arunachal Pradesh’s Pasighat during a protest against a proposed dam, Inspector General of Police Hibu Tamang told Scroll on Tuesday.

Several organisations have been protesting against the proposed 12,500-megawatt power project on the Siang river. It will be built by the government-owned power company National Hydroelectric Power Corporation.

On Friday, protesters vandalised and set fire to an office of the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation and a police station in Pasighat after security personnel fired tear gas during the agitation.

An Itanagar-based senior police officer had told Scroll at the time that the homes of Pasighat West MLA Ninong Ering and Mariyang-Geku legislator Oni Panyang had also been vandalised, along with that of Kaling Moyong, the Bharatiya Janata Party state chief and former Pasighat East MLA.

On Tuesday, Tamang told Scroll that the police had filed 55 cases in connection with the violence. The arrests and detentions were made in Upper Siang, Siang and East Siang districts under the Arunachal Pradesh Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

Those arrested face charges of rioting, torching of vehicles, as well as vandalism of office buildings and residential houses.

Twenty-six criminal cases have been registered in Upper Siang, 21 in Siang and six in East Siang district.

Tamang said that additional forces had been deployed in the Siang Valley in the wake of the protests.

“Earlier, we had 21 companies of Central Armed Police Forces,” said the police officer. “Now, nine more have come. A total of 30 companies of CAPF and three companies of Assam Police are deployed apart from the Arunachal Police personnel.”

Residents of the Siang Valley say that the BJP government in the state has taken extraordinary measures in the last month to shut down the protests against the proposed dam project.

The government has detained activists, arrested protesters and flooded the villages in Upper Siang with paramilitary personnel, turning villages into “military zones”, said residents.

Since 2025, at least 40 first information reports have been filed in connection with protests against the dam, lawyers and activists have said.

On Monday, protests were also held against the proposed Subansiri Upper Hydroelectric Project, known as Menga Dam, as well as elsewhere in the state, The Hindu reported.

Several student and community-based organisations had called for a 12-hour shutdown in Upper Subansiri district, leading to the cancellation of a public hearing on the proposed project.

Also read: ‘Threats, detentions, militarisation’: How Arunachal government is choking anti-dam protests

Siang dam

The Siang flows into Arunachal Pradesh from Tibet and is the Brahmaputra’s main tributary.

The Siang Upper Multipurpose project was first proposed in 2017 by the Union government’s think-tank Niti Aayog and was meant to counter the threat posed by Chinese hydropower projects being developed on the Yarlung Tsangpo river upstream. The Siang is known as Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet, where it originates.

The Siang Indigenous Farmers’ Forum estimates that 27 villages along the river – in Siang and Upper Siang districts – will be affected because of the proposed dam. For years, the residents of the area have opposed the project.

Inputs by Rokibuz Zaman. Written by Abeer Khan. Edited by Sneha.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday issued notice to the Union government seeking its response to a petition challenging the Digital Personal Data Protection Act and its rules, Bar and Bench reported.

The 2025 Digital Personal Data Protection Rules were notified by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology in November 2025, bringing into effect the 2023 Digital Personal Data Protection Act.

Section 44(3) of the Act imposes a blanket ban on the disclosure of personal information without defining what constitutes “personal information”.

The Digital News Publishers Association, which represents 21 media publishers, including those owned by businesspersons Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, has challenged the law, citing violation of journalistic freedom, The Hindu reported.

The petition said that the law “threatens the full spectrum of journalistic activity carried out by journalists, ground reporters, citizens, whistleblowers, Right to Information activists and other stakeholders”, The Hindu reported.

The Act was contrary to the Supreme Court’s privacy judgement, which recognised the right to privacy as inviolable and fundamental to human dignity and life, the association contended.

The law “impermissibly restricts” the fundamental right to information, and freedom of speech and expression, the newspaper quoted the petition as saying.

The rules had clarified how organisations processing personal data should handle it, notify individuals of data breaches and obtain consent for data collection.

The organisations, which the Act categorises as data fiduciaries, must provide notices to users that are easy to understand, explaining why they are collecting data and how it will be used.

A “data fiduciary”, according to the Act, is any entity that processes any personal data.

The notices must explain the types of data being collected​. Moreover, for users, withdrawing consent for their data to be used should be as simple as granting it, the law mandates.

The petition said that the rules give the Union government an “unbridled and standardless authority to requisition any information from any data fiduciary or intermediary”, without any judicial oversight.

“Such a power is capable of being turned to the identification and targeting of journalistic sources and is thus constitutionally infirm,” it said.

After the rules were notified last year, press bodies had expressed concern about them, saying that the “ambiguous obligations” they impose could open the door for indirect censorship.

Critics have described the law as a serious threat to the principles of transparency and accountability that the Right to Information Act was designed to uphold.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also Read: Why the draft personal data protection rules are contentious

The Election Commission on Monday told the Supreme Court that appeals against the inclusion of voters in West Bengal’s electoral rolls during the special intensive revision were filed by state poll officials, Bar and Bench reported.

The special intensive revision in West Bengal was carried out ahead of the Assembly elections in April. The final rolls published in February initially excluded more than 61 lakh voters, with the process continuing through supplementary lists and adjudication of about 60 lakh “doubtful and pending” cases.

By April 6, ahead of the Assembly elections, about 91 lakh voters, nearly 11.9% of West Bengal’s electorate before the revision process began, had been removed from the electoral rolls.

Appeals were allowed to be filed before tribunals against decisions taken during the exercise.

Of the 38.2 lakh appeals filed, 22.2 lakh were filed by voters whose names had been deleted from the electoral rolls. These 22.2 lakh appeals make up around 82% of the 27 lakh voters whose names were deleted and placed under adjudication during the revision ahead of the Assembly polls.

Meanwhile, at least 16.1 lakh appeals challenged the inclusion of voters, the poll panel had submitted in the Supreme Court. The Election Commission had at the time not specified who had filed the appeals.

On September 23, The Indian Express reported that Election Commissioner Sukhbir Singh Sandhu had written to officials asking who had authorised the filing of the appeals “on behalf of [the Election Commission] and by whom” and “who actually filed these appeals on behalf of [the poll panel]”.

Sandhu had recorded that neither he nor the other commissioner Vivek Joshi nor the West Bengal chief electoral officer had been informed about the basis or process for filing the appeals, the report said.

On Monday, the Election Commission said that the appeals were filed by officials of the West Bengal chief electoral officer’s office in their capacity as authorities under the Representation of the People Act, 1950. The state chief electoral officer’s office conveyed this to the poll panel in a letter dated October 22, Bar and Bench quoted the affidavit as stating.

The poll panel said the voters against whom the appeals were filed were already on the electoral rolls and were entitled to vote in the West Bengal Assembly elections held in April.

The disclosure is part of an affidavit filed by the Election Commission in response to petitions alleging unilateral decision-making by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar during the special intensive revision.

Scroll’s analysis of the Assembly election results in West Bengal found that in half the seats that the Bharatiya Janata Party won, the total deletions that took place during the voter list revision exercise outnumbered the victory margin. While the BJP won 207 seats in the 294-member Assembly, the Trinamool Congress won 80.

Also read: All SIR decisions were taken unanimously, EC tells Supreme Court

A contentious exercise

Since the exercise began in June 2025, the SIR has faced questions about the manner and pace of its implementation, amid concerns that it could deny genuine electors their right to vote and shape election outcomes, as Scroll has reported.

In May, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the exercise, but said that it does not mean that the Election Commission can decide on whether the person is an Indian citizen.

Despite this, BJP-ruled states have cited the SIR to deny ration cards to those who have been eliminated from the rolls. In some cases, the police have denied permission for their passports to be renewed.

Protests have been held in the country since October 2 against Kumar over alleged irregularities in how the voter roll is being revised.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read: Before election commissioners flagged ‘centralisation’ of voter rolls, it was done in Bengal SIR

A book by activist Umar Khalid has been removed from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Pune library to “avoid any misunderstanding or unrest”, The Indian Express quoted the administration as saying on Sunday.

Khalid has been in prison for more than six years without trial in connection with the 2020 Delhi riots conspiracy case.

The book, Fractured Communities: Adivasi Histories and the Politics of Power, was published earlier this year. It is based on Khalid’s PhD thesis at Jawaharlal Nehru University and examines the history of Adivasi societies in Singhbhum region of Jharkhand under British rule.

The book was removed after a social media account called Gems of Indian Academia shared a photograph showing it as a new addition to the institute’s library, The Indian Express reported.

Madabhushi Madan Gopal, chairperson of the institute’s board of governors, said on social media that he was “shocked” to learn that the book had been added to the library.

“This is retracted last night and action is initiated on those who played this mischief, I assure such things will not happen again in IISER Pune,” he said.

As incharge Chairman,BoG,IISER Pune,I am shocked to know this, this is retracted last night&action is initiated on those who played this mischief,I assure such things will not happen again in IISER Pune,Prof.Sunil Bhagwat,Director has taken immediately steps,we need to be alert

— Madabhushi Madan Gopal (@Madabhushi2) October 25, 2026

Delhi riots conspiracy case

The police had arrested Khalid in connection with the communal violence that broke out in North East Delhi in February 2020 between supporters of the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act and those opposing it. The violence had left 53 dead and hundreds injured. Most of those killed were Muslims.

Khalid, activist Sharjeel Imam and the others accused in the matter have been charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act, the Arms Act and sections of the Indian Penal Code.

The police have claimed that the violence was part of a larger conspiracy to defame the Narendra Modi government and was planned by those who organised the protests against the amended Citizenship Act.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read:

• Mumbai Police pressured 2 venues into cancelling Umar Khalid film screening, allege organisers

• IIIT Hyderabad cancels screening of documentary about Umar Khalid after censor board objection

• Umar Khalid’s five years of incarceration: ‘Do I even know the world any more?’