The Congress in Maharashtra on Saturday complained to the State Election Commission against a social media post by Bharatiya Janata Party leader and state minister Girish Mahajan announcing the disbursal of funds under the Ladki Bahin scheme ahead of the Makar Sankranti festival, The Times of India reported.

The festival falls on January 14, a day before polling is slated to take place for 29 municipal corporations in Maharashtra, including Mumbai.

The Ladki Bahin scheme, launched in June 2024, provides a monthly transfer of Rs 1,500 to women aged 21 to 65 whose families earn less than Rs 2.5 lakh a year. The scheme is said to have played a significant role in the Mahayuti alliance winning 230 seats in the 288-member Maharashtra Assembly in November.

The coalition comprises the Bharatiya Janata Party, Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s faction of the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party faction headed by Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar.

देवाभाऊंकडून लाडक्या बहिणींना मिळणार..
मकर संक्रांतीची मोठी भेट !

१४ जानेवारी पूर्वी लाडक्या बहिणींच्या बँक खात्यात डिसेंबर व जानेवारी महिन्याचे
३००० रुपये जमा होणार !#DevendraFadnavis #DevaBhau #MahaYuti #मुख्यमंत्री_लाडकी_बहीण_योजना pic.twitter.com/VEzpm7lczK

— Girish Mahajan (@girishdmahajan) January 7, 2026

On Sunday, Maharashtra Congress president Harshwardhan Sapkal alleged that Mahajan’s post announcing the release of installments for December and January amounted to an attempt to influence women voters and violated the model code of conduct, The Times of India reported.

State Election Commissioner Dinesh Waghmare told the newspaper that the commission would examine the complaint and take action in accordance with the law.

The commission has asked Chief Secretary Rajesh Agarwal to submit a report on Monday, PTI quoted unidentified sources as saying.

Commenting on the matter, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said that the Ladki Bahin Yojana is a continuous scheme of the state government and does not fall under the restrictions of the election code of conduct, PTI reported.

The Election Commission on Sunday said that official employment records of workers at tea gardens and cinchona plantations in north Bengal would be counted as a valid document to prove their identity for the ongoing special intensive revision of voter rolls in West Bengal.

This would be applicable for workers in seven districts of Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Jalpaiguri, Cooch Behar, Alipurduar, North Dinajpur and South Dinajpur, the poll body said in a letter to the chief electoral officer of West Bengal.

Many of these workers do not possess the documents mandated by the Election Commission for the voter roll revision process. The commission had earlier said that tea estate workers would be verified by district election officers, The Times of India reported.

Since October last year, Bharatiya Janata Party leaders have been making representations to the poll panel on the subject, The Telegraph reported.

Raju Bista, the party’s Darjeeling MP, had sent letters to the poll body in October and November highlighting that the North Bengal districts were home to large tea garden, tea tribe, and forest-dwelling communities who have been excluded from electoral rolls over the years.

“Historically, since the British era, and even decades after Independence, most workers in tea and cinchona gardens possessed no official documents other than their employment records,” he had said while pointing that many of them did not have land rights either.

In response to the poll body accepting the suggestion, Bista said the decision “will benefit thousands of citizens who have long been denied basic documentation and electoral inclusion”.

I am pleased to share that the Election Commission of India has approved the use of Tea Garden and Cinchona Plantation records for SIR verification.

In October 2025, I had written to the Hon’ble Chief Election Commissioner of India, Shri Gyanesh Kumar ji, and followed up in… pic.twitter.com/fLpDmesPi2

— Raju Bista (@RajuBistaBJP) January 11, 2026

The state’s draft electoral rolls were published on December 16. It showed that more than 58 lakh voters were removed after being marked dead, shifted or absent.

West Bengal is expected to head for Assembly elections in the first half of 2026.

Besides West Bengal, the special intensive revision of electoral rolls is underway in 11 other states and Union Territories.

In Bihar, where the revision was completed ahead of the Assembly polls in November, at least 47 lakh voters were excluded from the final electoral roll published on September 30.

Concerns had been raised after the announcement in Bihar that the exercise could remove eligible voters from the roll.

Also read: Single mother, BJP MLA, Marwari trader: The Bengal voters on EC’s SIR radar

The headmistress of a government school in the Raipur district in Chhattisgarh was suspended after a Class 4 English exam paper listed “Ram” as one of the possible answers to a question about the name of an individual’s dog, The Times of India reported on Monday.

The headmistress, Shikha Soni, said that she intended to write “Ramu” as an option, but inadvertently missed the letter “u'“.

A contractual assistant teacher who moderated the question paper, Namrata Verma, also said that she failed to spot the missing letter, The Times of India reported. In the wake of the controversy, proceedings are underway to terminate her services.

The incident took place at a school at Nakti in the Tilda block of Raipur district.

Both Soni and Verma maintained that they did not intend to hurt religious sentiments, and apologised for their actions.

Nevertheless, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal complained to the district collector and the police, after which a case was filed against unknown persons under a non-bailable section of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita that pertains to deliberate acts outraging religious feelings, The Indian Express reported.

District Education Officer Himanshu Bhartiya launched an inquiry into the matter. A five-member committee has been set up to investigate the complaint.

“Ram is a revered deity of the Hindu religion, and including ‘Ram’ as an option [for the answer] has hurt religious sentiments,” the education officer said, according to The Indian Express.

Bhartiya also issued warning letters to the block education officer of Tilda for failing to appoint an “experienced teacher” to set the paper and to the school principal for not selecting a proper moderator.

The Meghalaya Police has arrested three persons in connection with the killing of the member of a non-governmental organisation, Chief Minister Conrad Sangma said on Saturday.

The chief minister made the statement after the killing of the man led to tensions in the state’s West Garo Hills district, which borders Bangladesh.

The man, identified as Dilseng Sangma, died on Friday after unidentified assailants attacked a team of the non-governmental organisation ACHIK in Goalgaon village, The Shillong Times reported. Another member of the team was seriously injured.

The team had gone to the village in the Rajabala police station area to examine an allegedly illegal stone quarry.

The motive behind the attack was not clear.

“We can be specific after the investigation is over,” West Garo Hills Superintendent of Police Abraham T Sangma was quoted as saying by The Hindu.

On Saturday, the district and the broader Garo Hills region observed a shutdown to protest the killing of the man, The Hindu reported.

Chief Minister Conrad Sangma on Saturday condemned the killing.

He said that the police had conducted several raids in the district on Friday night, which led to the arrest of the three persons. He added that efforts were being made to apprehend others involved in the matter.

The chief minister urged the people of the district to ensure peace and communal harmony continues to prevail.

“There may be a lot of news circulating on social media,” he added. “Please filter them carefully.”

The deputy commissioner of the West Garo Hills district was holding discussions with civil society groups to form a peace committee to ensure that concerns are addressed through a dialogue, the chief minister said.

Rajabala MLA Mizanur Rahman Kazi said on social media that the administration’s priority was to maintain law and order. He added that the “overall situation is currently peaceful and the spirit of brotherhood prevails”.

British doctor Sangram Patil was on Saturday detained at the Mumbai airport in connection with allegedly derogatory social media posts about the Bharatiya Janata Party and its leaders, The Indian Express reported.

Patil, who is also a content creator, was later allowed to leave after he was given a notice under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita to join the investigation later.

The complaint, a member of the BJP, had alleged in December that the doctor had deliberately made allegedly defamatory and misleading posts about the Hindutva party and its leaders, according to Mumbai Tak.

The online posts could create feelings of enmity and hatred between groups, the complainant was quoted as having alleged.

A case had been registered against Patil by the cybercrime department under the Information Technology Act, Mumbai Tak reported. Following this, a lookout notice had been issued against him.

The lookout circular is used by law enforcement authorities to check whether a person entering or leaving the country is wanted by the police.

Patil’s YouTube channel has more than four lakh subscribers and 5.6 crore views, and his Facebook page has more than one lakh followers. His posts on the video platform and social media cover several topics, including political commentary. Some posts were critical of the Narendra Modi government.

Condemning the detention of Patil, Congress’ Maharashtra chief Harshwardhan Sapkal asked if democracy was still alive in India.

The condemnation of Patil’s detention “is not enough – it’s woefully inadequate”, Sapkal said on social media. “The arrest (sic) of Dr Sangram Patil, who takes bold political stances, is an international embarrassment for the country,” he added.

The Congress leader demanded that the Mumbai Police and the home ministry immediately clarify why Patil had been detained.

The Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday appointed a person accused in the Badlapur sexual abuse case as a co-opted councillor in the Kulgaon-Badlapur Municipal Council in Maharashtra’s Thane district, reported The Hindu.

As the decision triggered widespread criticism of the party, the order was revoked the same day, according to The New Indian Express.

A co-opted councillor is selected and appointed by an existing councilto fill a vacant seat, rather than being directly elected by the public.

Tushar Apte was the secretary of the educational institution where two four-year-old girls were sexually abused in 2024.

The girls were allegedly sexually assaulted by Akshay Shinde, a male attendant at their school, on August 12, 2024, with the complaint being filed four days later.

Shinde was arrested on August 17, 2024 and was killed on September 23, 2024, while being taken from Taloja Jail to the Thane Crime Branch, with police claiming he snatched a weapon and was shot in retaliatory fire

On January 20, 2025, a Thane magistrate told the Bombay High Court that five police officers were found responsible for Shinde’s custodial death.

Apte was charged in the case under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act section 21(2) for allegedly failing to report the assault, PTI reported. He was arrested 44 days after the case and granted bail within 48 hours. The case against him is sub judice.

Council chairperson Ruchita Ghorpade said that Apte had been selected as one of five co-opted councillors. Of the five, two were nominated by the BJP, two by the Shiv Sena and one by the Nationalist Congress Party.

Defending the appointment earlier, BJP councillor Rajan Ghorpade said: “Though he was named as an accused, his guilt has not been proven.”

“Apte worked actively for the party and contributed to the party candidate’s victory, and therefore, he was given this responsibility,” Ghorpade added.

However, state Revenue Minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule later said that Apte had submitted his resignation and that the party leadership would take action against those responsible for appointing him, The New Indian Express reported.

A man accused of having raped a woman with a mental illness in Assam’s Kokrajhar district was shot and injured in police firing after officials claimed that he tried to flee custody, The Assam Tribune reported.

The shooting occurred amid tensions in Kokrajhar town following protests and communal clashes linked to the alleged rape.

The police claimed that on Sunday, the accused man, Rafikul Islam, was being taken from a “safe zone” location to the court of the Chief Judicial Magistrate in Kokrajhar when he asked for a toilet break near the Rani Ghuli area.

During the stop, he allegedly snatched a weapon from an accompanying policeman, assaulted him and attempted to flee, The Assam Tribune reported.

The police claimed that they fired in retaliation, injuring Islam in the waist. Two police personnel were also reportedly injured.

Islam has been taken to hospital for treatment.

The woman was allegedly raped on Saturday, following which protests broke out in Kokrajhar town, India Today NE reported.

On Sunday night, an old mosque in Kokrajhar town was attacked by a group of people who shouted religious slogans while vandalising the structure.

A picnic bus named Ma Sarada was also attacked during the night. Several students travelling in the bus sustained injuries and were taken to hospital, India Today NE reported.

In view of the violence, the district administration subsequently imposed orders prohibiting public gatherings under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita.

When even an advocate who defends the rights of others every day ends up “completely helpless”, it lays bare crucial failures in laws and procedures meant to ensure women’s safety.

In July, a Chennai-based lawyer approached the Madras High Court after her former partner had secretly filmed their intimate moments during a relationship built on false promises of marriage. Without her knowledge or consent, he uploaded these videos across the internet.

These events formed the basis of the case X vs Union of India.

By the time a friend told her about the videos, the damage was widespread. The videos were on more than 70 platforms: pornographic sites, Twitter or X, Telegram channels, Google Drive links. The videos kept spreading with shifting URLs, multiple accounts and relentless re-uploads.

She took every step required. A first information report was registered on April 1. She made formal representations to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology in June, asking for removal under Section 67A of the IT Act. Still, by July, nothing moved. The videos kept circulating. As a lawyer, she found herself publicly and professionally shamed.

Reflecting upon the slow pace of action in this and other such cases, Justice N Anand Venkatesh noted that “the right to privacy and dignity guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution were being violated every second”.

If someone equipped with legal knowledge and access is helpless, what chance does anyone else have?

Structural pattern

Research across 10 countries shows that one in five people experience Image-Based Sexual Abuse, with women carrying the burden and suffering the harshest consequences.

In India, public exposure can mean familial disgrace, social ostracism and professional ruin.

On paper, Indian laws promise urgency: the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2025, require platforms to remove flagged content within 24 hours. But complainants wait weeks, sometimes months, for even the first takedown order. In the internet where “what’s online once is online forever”, 24 hours is already too late.

Images spread, screenshots multiply, re-uploads appear faster than any notice can reach them. Instead of swift protection, survivors have to deal with police apathy, unanswered ministry emails and endless legal processes. Platforms shrug off responsibility while perpetrators operate with near-total impunity.

Even in this case, despite registering an FIR, the advocate waited three months before the court intervened.

Law without protection

When the law refuses to acknowledge the gendered nature of the harm, it reproduces it, leaving women to absorb the fallout.

The IT Act frames such harms as “privacy violations” and “obscenity”. The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which has replaced the Indian Penal Code, scatters relevant offences across unrelated provisions as though the non-consensual sharing of intimate images is a technical problem rather than a targeted act of gendered abuse.

That framing makes a violation of trust, autonomy and dignity into a routine content issue. It also shapes institutional behaviour: police routinely dismiss these cases as “relationship disputes” and platforms treat them as terms-of-service infringements.

Platform accountability is an illusion. The IT Rules have a 24-hour removal requirement, but platforms have to take down only the specific links flagged to them. There is no statutory duty to prevent re-uploads, no requirement to use hash-matching, no obligation to coordinate with other platforms and no mechanism to track circulation across the digital ecosystem.

Survivors end up playing an exhausting game of whack-a-mole while platforms meet minimal compliance thresholds and perpetrators shift to the next space.

Most critically, India offers survivors no civil remedies at all. Criminal law is the only path and it depends on police cooperation, digital evidence that survives long enough to be collected and years of proceedings in an overburdened system.

Even when a conviction is eventually secured under the IT Act or Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, any fine imposed goes to the state, not to the woman who lost work, safety, relationships and mental health. The offender is punished symbolically while the survivor is left to deal with the real consequences.

Comparative models

Examples from Canada, Germany and Australia show that online safety for women demands proactive safeguards and institutions that understand the toll survivors carry long after images spread across the internet.

In 2016, an Ontario court awarded an 18-year-old woman $100,000 after she sued her former romantic partner for breach of privacy for sharing intimate videos of her on a pornography website. In addition to ordering takedowns, the court recognised measurable harm such as therapy costs, reputational damage, career loss and continuing psychological trauma. It noted the “permanent and irreversible” nature of online distribution.

Similarly, Germany’s Network Enforcement Act, 2017, imposes fines of up to 50 million euros on platforms that fail to remove illegal content, including non-consensual intimate imagery, within 24 hours of notification. The NetzDG law creates financial incentives for proactive content moderation systems, with mandatory transparency reports detailing complaint volumes and response times.

While criticised for potential over-removal, the model shows that financial consequences can encourage platforms to shift from minimal compliance to systemic investment in safety infrastructure.

In India, where platforms routinely resist compliance citing technical limitations or procedural ambiguities, Germany’s deterrent-based framework shows how to bring about enforceable accountability.

In 2015, Australia established the world’s first eSafety Commissioner, with dedicated powers to issue removal notices for image-based abuse. The commissioner can order platforms to take down content within 24 hours and levy penalties up to 111,000 Australian dollars for non-compliance.

It is a survivor-centered procedure: victims report to one authority rather than navigating multiple platforms and the commissioner coordinates takedowns across platforms simultaneously, preventing the exhausting pattern of content reappearing on new platforms.

This contrasts with the case of the Indian lawyer who had to separately approach the information and technology ministry, the police and more than 70 platforms while content continued spreading.

Systemic accountability

Rather than sweeping new laws to protect women online, India needs a legal and practical system that works as promised.

India can learn from other countries to build its own version by creating a unified framework, placing responsibility on platforms rather than victims, and ensuring compensation and timely support.

Digital safety is a human rights concern that cannot be addressed with technical fixes. Shifting the burden of proof from survivors onto platforms and perpetrators can help make online spaces where women are equal participants.

Vidya Kakra is a lawyer working to support women survivors of sexual and gender-based violence at the Migration and Asylum Project.

Ten persons were arrested after communal clashes broke out on Saturday in Tripura’s Unakoti district over the collection of donations for a local temple, PTI quoted the police as saying on Sunday.

Superintendent of Police Avinash Kumar Rai told PTI that four police personnel and six civilians were injured in the clashes.

“Prohibitory orders under section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita remain in force in the area,” Rai said. “Internet service continues to remain suspended.”

Paramilitary forces are conducting foot patrols in sensitive areas and no fresh violence has been reported in the district, the police officer said.

The violence began after members of a local club stopped a truck allegedly transporting smuggled timber and sought money from the driver in the name of a festival, The Times of India reported. The driver refused to pay the money, leading to an altercation.

The violence triggered a political row, with Leader of the Opposition Jitendra Chaudhury of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party-led state government of failing to protect the lives and properties of persons belonging to the minority community.

“When Kumarghat [town in Unakoti district] was burning, the chief minister was busy leading a roadshow in Kanchanpur in North Tripura,” PTI quoted him as saying. “He has not made any statement against the communal violence.”

State BJP president Rajib Bhattacharjee condemned the violence and praised the police for taking action against those responsible.

It had been a long day at work for Sumana, but she still decided to visit her booth-level officer’s home in a South Kolkata neighbourhood that December evening. The officer had not been answering her phone calls, making the 45-year-old restless.

She was worried because the Election Commission had categorised her daughter, 19, as an “unmapped voter” in the ongoing special intensive revision of West Bengal’s voter lists. This means her daughter was unable to show that either she or her close relatives were voters back in 2002.

Neither Sumana nor her late husband were registered to vote at that time so she could not provide their information in her daughter’s enumeration form. There are close to 32 lakh so-called unmapped voters across the state.

Starting from the last week of December, the commission has held hearings to examine their documents and determine their eligibility to vote in the future. Bengali war veterans, international cricketers and even former ministers have been summoned so far.

Sumana – who requested that her actual name not be disclosed in this report – wanted to save her daughter from this ordeal. So she scanned scores of voter lists from 2002 till she finally found the names of her in-laws, who live in north Bengal and are no longer in touch with her. Then, she gathered her daughter’s papers and set off for her booth-level officer’s home around 8.30 that night.

When she got there, the officer’s husband stepped out. “You think you can come here whenever you like?” he asked her angrily. “What do you think of yourself?”

Sumana was shaken. “If you knew what I have been through in life, you would not have spoken to me like this,” she said to him.

Sumana is estranged from her late husband’s family. In the fourteen years since his demise, she has worked hard in her job with a private company in Kolkata to provide for her daughter.

“It is a chapter of my life that I wanted to forget,” she told Scroll. “Just because of this SIR, I had to go through it again. It reminded me of all the past memories that I had set aside to move forward in life.”

The SIR has made Sumana bitter about politics. “I will not vote for anybody from now on,” she said. “What difference does my vote make? Some illiterate people come to power and play with our lives.”

The Election Commission has pushed the SIR on war-footing, citing the alleged mass inclusion of foreigners in India’s voter lists as one of its reasons for carrying out the exercise. Bharatiya Janata Party leaders, too, have repeatedly demanded an SIR in West Bengal, claiming that there are over one crore “Bangladeshis, Rohingyas” on the state’s voter rolls.

Yet, the actual process on the ground is more complex. Many of the so-called unmapped voters are Hindi-speaking migrants and Hindu refugees from Bangladesh, according to an analysis conducted by the Sabar Institute, a Kolkata-based public policy research organisation.

Scroll also found that people from these backgrounds have been called for the Election Commission’s hearings. Most interviewees said that the SIR has turned out to be stressful, and even traumatising, for them.

Trinamool using SIR to ‘strike off Hindi-speaking voters’

Navratan Jhawar, 64, moved to Kolkata decades ago. Born in Rajasthan’s Parbatsar town, he came to the city at the age of 19 and settled in Kolkata’s Burrabazar area, a business hub teeming with traders from northwest India. For years, he ran a business sourcing mustard oil from Alwar and Bharatpur and selling it in Kolkata.

Jhawar has voted regularly in elections over the years. He claims his name is on the 2002 voter list as well. Still, the Election Commission tagged him as an “unmapped voter” and called him for a hearing on January 2.

The reason? Jhawar changed his first name from Noratmal to Navratan in 2006. He did so, he claims, because Bengalis would find it difficult to pronounce his original name. He said he followed the legal process for changing his name at that time.

But at the hearing, the commission asked him to show a government gazette notification and two newspaper cuttings to prove that he had publicised the change in his name. Alternatively, Jhawar could also re-register himself as a new voter. However, he is vehemently opposed to the idea.

“This is not merely about my vote,” he explained. “Today my voter ID is being declared invalid, tomorrow it could be my Aadhaar. It is possible that the registry office will freeze my properties next. These things cannot be taken lightly.”

Though Jhawar still supports the SIR in principle, he is concerned about how the process is panning out in West Bengal.

“The ruling party [Trinamool Congress] is pressuring state government officials to strike off names of Hindi speakers and Hindu refugees who support the BJP,” he alleged. “The Election Commission is unable to help us.”

‘Refugees are under stress’

One such refugee is Ashis Kumar Biswas, the BJP MLA from Krishnaganj in the border district of Nadia. Biswas, 59, is a Namasudra, a Scheduled Caste, who came to West Bengal with his parents in order to flee religious persecution in what was then East Pakistan.

He recalled how he worked his way up in life as a landless refugee. He attended a government school and later enlisted in the Indian Air Force as a sergeant. The job took him to 14 states across India, he remembered. After retiring from the air force, he joined the BJP and became an MLA in 2019.

On December 30, Biswas, too, was called in for an SIR hearing. But he sought to downplay the impact of the experience.

“The hearing was only to clarify why my name was not in the 2002 voter list,” he said. “I explained that I was in a transferable government job so I was not available in West Bengal then. I showed them my PPO [Pension Payment Order] and caste certificate. That was the end of it.”

While the BJP MLA did admit that the SIR was causing panic among Hindu refugees, he blamed Trinamool for politicising the issue.

“They [Trinamool] are creating terror in the minds of refugees,” he contended. “The refugees who came after 1971 are under stress. The government of India is making arrangements to help them.”

Notably, Biswas differs with many of his partymen in how he views the SIR. “Finding Bangladeshis is not the Election Commission’s job,” he stated.

‘Grating’ but need to stop ‘illegal migration’

Even so, some Hindu voters such as Tushar Laddha, a Kolkata-based entrepreneur, are putting up with the “grating” SIR process precisely because they view it as a step against illegal migration.

“Many people have come here just to live off the land,” Laddha said. “I see it across the canal from my house. And it causes problems for me daily, whether it is in terms of traffic congestion or littered streets. So most people in my family are happy that at least something is being done about this.”

The 30-year-old manufacturer of plastic additives traces his roots to Rajasthan. He estimated that his family had lived in Kolkata for seven or eight decades. When the Election Commission first rolled out the SIR in November, the Laddhas were plunged into confusion.

They dialed up about a dozen old neighbours and distant relatives with whom they had lost touch over the years. At one point, Laddha assigned two of his employees the task of scanning the 2002 voter list for their names.

Eventually, they realised that their names were missing from the old list because they had shifted homes around that time. In the late 1990s, the family left their small apartment in the modest north Kolkata neighbourhood of Phoolbagan and moved into a bungalow in the posh suburb of Salt Lake.

On January 8, Laddha and five of his relatives attended an SIR hearing in Kolkata. He described the experience as “smooth”.

‘Profound insecurity’ of hauling up a 72-year-old poet

For many others, the hearings have been anything but smooth. Sahitya Akademi Award-winning Bengali poet Joy Goswami, 72, was summoned on January 2 because his name was not in the 2002 voter list.

He could not appear for the hearing as he underwent multiple surgeries only in November, his daughter Debotri Goswami, who also goes by the name of Bukun Chorai, told Scroll. His doctors have mandated bed rest for him, she added.

Ever since the Election Commission began with physical hearings for so-called unmapped voters last month, the question of whether elderly people should be spared has repeatedly made the news. In the face of public outrage, the commission decided to allow officials to visit elderly voters’ homes and verify their details. However, the relief was extended only to voters aged 85 or above.

The septuagenarian Joy Goswami could not avail this option. In an interview Bukun gave to The Times of India, she said that she was withholding news of the hearing from her ailing father because she feared it would “hurt” him.

She, too, has been asked to attend a hearing, given that the names of both her parents are not in the 2002 voter list. That her father was a well-known public figure did not stop the Election Commission from summoning him and his daughter. Both are facing scrutiny from the commission only because her father chose not to be a voter in the past.

“Such scrutiny does not strengthen democracy. It exposes a profound insecurity within it,” Bukun said. “The central issue is not why my father made a particular choice, but why the state assumed the right to demand an explanation in the manner that it did.”

‘I feel helpless’

A banker by profession, Girish Dubey came to Kolkata from Sultanpur, Uttar Pradesh, when he was four. He received all his education in the city and takes great pride in his knowledge of Bengal’s geography and culture.

While his work has taken him to various parts of eastern India, Kolkata is the only home he has ever known. The 56-year-old claims to have voted in as many as seven state and national elections before 2002 and many more after that.

This is why he was shocked to discover that his name was missing from the 2002 voter list uploaded online by the Election Commission. He could not tell why with certainty, but he suspects politics had something to do with it.

“In those days, we Hindi speakers were considered Congress voters so the communists wanted to strike off our names,” Dubey said. “Now we are believed to be BJP voters. I feel helpless when people develop such preconceived ideas without understanding how I think or what my ideology is.”

Dubey’s hearing is scheduled for January 19. He will go for it with all his documents, especially his old voter card that was rendered invalid after 2002. He worries the day will be “painful” for him. Yet, he is determined to have his name included in the final voter list.

Social media platform X has accepted lapses in its content moderation, blocked 3,500 posts and deleted more than 600 accounts after the Union government directed it to remove sexually explicit content generated by its artificial intelligence chatbot Grok, PTI quoted unidentified officials as saying.

The social media platform reportedly told the government that it will comply with Indian laws and that it will not allow explicit imagery on the platform, ANI reported.

On Friday, the platform limited Grok’s image-generation feature to paid subscribers, which effectively meant the names and payment information of those using the feature would be on file.

Grok had earlier allowed requests by users to digitally manipulate photos of real persons – mostly women – by undressing them and sexualising their images without their consent. It had been creating thousands of such images every hour, Bloomberg reported.

Even after the feature was limited on X, the standalone Grok app was still allowing users to generate such images without subscribing, according to the social media platform.

On January 2, the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology told X to “undertake a comprehensive technical, procedural and governance-level review” of Grok to ensure that it does not generate content that contains nudity or sexually explicit material.

The Centre warned the social media platform that not complying with the directive could lead to action against its officials under the Information Technology Act, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita.

In the letter to X’s chief compliance officer in India, the Union government said that users were misusing Grok to create fake accounts to generate and share obscene photos and videos of women with the intent of denigrating them.

“Importantly, this is not limited to creation of fake accounts but also targets women who host or publish their images or videos, through prompts, image manipulation and synthetic outputs,” the ministry said.

Hosting or publishing obscene and sexually explicit content, including through AI-enabled tools, is invasive of bodily privacy and attracts serious penal consequences, the Centre said.

The government also directed X to submit an action taken report within 72 hours, detailing the measures undertaken to oversee the Grok application, the oversight exercised by the chief compliance officer, the action taken against offending content and the mechanisms put in place to comply with mandatory reporting requirements.

Amid criticism, X owner Elon Musk said on January 3 that “anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content”.

The 70 million citizens of India’s national capital region and its extended districts are choking on air pollution. Freshwater underground is depleting rapidly in the NCR with the pressure of urbanisation. Delhi’s 70 million are not alone in their environmental misery. India, with its 1.5 billion population, is the most environmentally-stressed large economy in the world.

Environmental stress is a global problem: the air above and aquifers underground, cross state and national boundaries. Nations are unable to cooperate to arrest global climate change. The US, the wealthiest nation, and the largest polluter per capita, has backed away from global climate agreements. Even wealthy, “green conscious” European nations are avoiding the “polluter pays” principle. They want to impose a carbon tax on poor countries, who have suffered the most from the Western, techno-centric, free market driven model of economic growth that has been imposed on all.

“Decarbonisation” is not happening fast enough to reverse the addition of more carbon into the atmosphere. Global temperatures will continue to rise for much longer than they should to attain the moonshot goal of “net zero”.

Albert Einstein, who upended the physical sciences in the 20th century with his theories of relativity, said that it is madness to continue solving problems with the same thinking that may have caused them. Even scientists now admit that the present approach to arresting climate change is not working. The time has come to take a much broader systems view and to reexamine the physics and economics of climate change.

The physics of climate change

Runaway climate change is fuelled by the relentless drive to increase the “productivity” of economies and humans by replacing the energy of humans with energy extracted from the Earth’s resources. Obtaining energy by burning wood was the first technological advance of humans over other animals. Coal was tapped next, a denser source of energy which required more technology but produced more energy.

Then came the extraction of energy from hydrocarbon sources and its use for driving machinery and transportation equipment, with which the pace of industrialisation and economic growth accelerated. These combined factors have led to the climate crisis, and the search for “renewable” sources of energy.

Today’s artificial intelligence algorithms operating in the cloud are supported by large server farms on earth, running on massive amounts of electricity.

There is no escape from the universal law of conversion of material energy. All energy is derived from materials. The amount of energy that can be extracted from materials is limited by Einstein’s famous formula, E=MC2.

The Earth is a complex system of materials and energy. The extraction of so-called renewable energies, whether nuclear, hydro or wind, alters the configuration of the Earth’s material structures with long-term consequences. Large dams affect geological structures while irrigation systems alter the chemistry of soils. Though immediately increasing the availability of low-cost energy and improving agriculture productivity, these large-scale Earth-altering solutions harm livelihoods and lives in the medium and long term.

The production of “clean” nuclear energy, by radically transforming basic materials, produces dirty materials, the safe disposal of which is an existential hazard. Finally, the only additional “new energy” for increasing productivity that comes from outside the Earth’s bio-sphere is solar energy from the Sun.

Energy is not the only resource that humans need for their existence. Water is fundamental for the sustenance of life. Scientists are looking for signs of water on other planets to determine whether other planets may be habitable for humans in the future. Large-scale industrial, and even clean energy projects like nuclear, impact the availability and quality of water while harming the lives of communities around them.

Tribes and nations, even states within nations, demand their fair share of the Earth’s water resources. For centuries, populations have warred with changing geographies of water availability and soil fertility caused by changes in climate patterns; large-scale migration, in search of better livelihoods, has caused immense human suffering and continues to.

The resort to narrow scientific solutions to the many problems affecting humanity simultaneously – carbon in the air, dwindling freshwater availability and increasing soil infertility – are affecting the sustainability of the whole ecosystem. Systemic solutions are necessary for the sustainability of livelihoods and economic growth, which will ensure the self-sustainability of the Earth as a self-adapting complex system.

Therefore, a new systems science must be applied.

The economics of climate change

An intractable problem for economic policymakers is how to finance “green energy” technological solutions. Finance is available with the richer countries in the West, who have accumulated their resources and also increased their geo-political power, with their scientific, technological advances. But they are reluctant to share their technologies without adequate protection of their intellectual property and compensation. They are also unwilling to share their wealth with the poorer and, so far, less technologically-advanced nations who need new technological solutions.

Food, clean water and energy are basic human needs to sustain life. The United Nations’ sustainable development goal, SDG 7, on affordable and clean energy’ “aims to ensure universal access to modern, reliable, and sustainable energy by 2030”. Even the poorest human beings, who may have no income or wealth, are entitled to adequate and affordable clean energy. Here lies a core problem of 21st century economics. Who will pay for the energy they must have if they cannot pay for it themselves?

A private business should not be expected to bear a social burden. The business of a business must be only business. It must stay focused on improving its internal efficiency and producing better returns for its financial owners and investors.

Social investments should be made by governments who must provide for those who are not earning enough to pay market prices for their basic needs. However, 21st century economics is making this difficult, by insisting that governments balance their own budgets and also insisting that governments must not tax the rich and private corporations because it would curb their animal spirits to make more profits for themselves.

If their governments will not pay, and the people themselves cannot, then how will they sustain their lives amidst the many ecological and economic crises listed in the 17 sustainable development goals, all of which were aimed to be achieved by 2030?

The privatisation of the financial sector has gone too far with the swing away from “socialist” and more humanist economic models towards the new millennium’s free market, private capital-driven models. They are driven by the late 20th century “Washington Consensus”, with American control of the global financial system.

India’s policymakers must break out of the Western, techno-economic paradigm of progress to find a new path for socio-economic progress with equitable improvement of living conditions of all Indian citizens. They should look East, and search inwards for native wisdom for a new paradigm of progress.

China, for example, is the world’s leader in green technologies. China’s exports of green technology products now exceed exports of the US hydrocarbon industry. Moreover, China has lifted its billion-plus citizens much faster and much further out of poverty than India has.

India should give up slavishly following Western models but must not blindly imitate China either. India must find its own, ecologically sustainable way to its tryst with destiny, to provide poorna swaraj – equal, political, social and economic freedom – for all its citizens. Local systems solutions, cooperatively implemented by communities, is the only way global systemic problems of climate change and persistent poverty can be solved sustainably. We can learn a lot within India and don’t have to rely on imported solutions.

Arun Maira is the author of Reimagining India’s Economy: The Road to a More Equitable Society.

The Delhi Police on Friday night arrested three more persons in connection with the clashes that broke out during an anti-encroachment drive near a mosque and a graveyard at Delhi’s Turkman Gate on Wednesday, reported The New Indian Express.

With this, the total number of arrests in the case reached 16.

The clashes had broken out when the Municipal Corporation of Delhi was carrying out a demolition drive on land adjoining the Faiz Elahi Mosque and a nearby graveyard.

An unidentified official of the civic body claimed that the mosque was not damaged during the drive.

However, unidentified police officials told PTI that the situation escalated after social media posts claimed that the mosque was being demolished, leading to a large crowd gathering at the site.

They claimed that around 150 to 200 persons were involved in the violence, and six police personnel, including the local station house officer, were injured.

Those arrested on Friday were identified as Mohammad Naved, Mohammad Faiz and Mohammad Ubaidulla. They have been remanded to judicial custody till January 21.

“Further investigation is underway,” Delhi Police Additional Commissioner Nidhin Valsan was quoted as saying by The New Indian Express.

He added that the police were searching for 10 more persons suspected to be involved in the violence, The Indian Express reported.

On Friday, a Delhi court remanded eight of those arrested to 12 days of judicial custody, stating that, prima facie, their presence at the site of violence was apparent, PTI reported.

Five others sought bail, alleging assault inside jail premises, following which the court issued notices to the Delhi Police and the jail superintendent, and sought medical records. The case will be heard next on Tuesday.

Police have invoked Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita provisions related to rioting and obstructing public servants, along with section 109, pertaining to attempt to murder.

The demolition drive followed a December 22 order of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi declaring that structures beyond 0.19 acres of land around the mosque were encroachments and liable to be removed.

The civic body said that no documentary evidence had been produced to establish ownership or lawful possession of the land by the mosque’s managing committee or the Delhi Waqf Board. The mosque is located within the 0.19-acre land.

The corporation’s order was issued after a November 12 direction of a division bench of the Delhi High Court, which granted the civic body and the Public Works Department three months to clear 38,940 square feet of encroachments near Ramlila Ground at Turkman Gate.

However, on January 6, the Delhi High Court said that the matter “requires consideration” while hearing a plea filed by the mosque’s managing committee challenging the December 22 order.

The Supreme Court has urged the Union government to consider introducing a “Romeo-Juliet” clause to protect consensual adolescent relationships from criminal action under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.

The court said on Friday that such a clause should exempt “genuine adolescent relationships from the stronghold of this law” and should put in place a mechanism enabling the prosecution “of those persons who, by the use of these laws, seeks to settle scores, etc”.

A “Romeo Juliet” clause is a legal exemption to statutory rape laws where the age difference between the persons involved is low and the relationship is consensual.

A bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and NK Singh made these observations while setting aside a set of directions issued by the Allahabad High Court in a bail case under the POCSO Act.

The High Court had directed that in cases under the Act, the police must conduct medical tests to determine the age of the victim at the very start of the investigation. Bail courts should assess these medical reports, and determine the credibility of age-related documents such as school or birth certificates, the High Court had said.

The Supreme Court, however, said that the High Court exceeded its jurisdiction by passing such orders in response to a bail petition. The top court said that the directions contravened the provisions of the Juvenile Justice Act.

Section 94 of the Juvenile Justice Act says that age of a person should be determined on the basis of a matriculation or equivalent certificate from the school, failing which a birth certificate issued by a municipal body or panchayat can be relied upon. Medical tests such as ossification tests should be ordered only in the absence of these documents, the provision states.

Although the Supreme Court on Friday set aside the directions on age determination, it did not interfere with the High Court’s order granting bail to a man accused of kidnapping a minor and sexually assaulting her.

The bench said that courts have repeatedly seen cases in which the age of a woman is falsely shown to be below 18 years so that the provisions of the POCSO Act can be invoked against the man.

The misuse of the POCSO Act “highlights a grim societal chasm”, the court said.

“…On the one end children are silenced by fear and their families are constrained by poverty or stigma, meaning thereby that justice remains distant and uncertain, and on the other hand, those equipped with privilege, literacy, social and monetary capital are able to manipulate the law to their advantage,” the court said.

The bench directed that a copy of the judgement be sent to the Union law secretary so that the ministry could “consider initiation of steps as may be possible to curb this menace”.

Also read: Why the protection of teenagers needs to be balanced with respecting their sexual autonomy

A 22-year-old man allegedly killed a Dalit woman and abducted her daughter in a village in Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut district earlier this week, PTI reported.

The killing and abduction allegedly took place on Thursday morning in the Kapsad village. The 20-year-old daughter was rescued from Haridwar in Uttarakhand on Saturday, the Hindustan Times reported.

The crime sparked protests from opposition leaders, due to which additional security personnel were deployed in the area.

The police alleged that a man named Paras Som and his aides attacked the woman with a sharp-edged sugarcane-cutting weapon when she was trying to shield her daughter. The men subsequently fled with the daughter, while her 45-year-old woman succumbed to her injuries, according to the Hindustan Times.

Som worked as a compounder for a local doctor, and lived in the same village as the woman. The police have not yet ascertained the motive for his alleged actions.

Senior Superintendent of Police Vipin Tada said that the 20-year-old woman has been rescued, and the main accused man has been arrested, the Hindustan Times reported. Both of them were being brought to Meerut, the official said.

The family of the woman was given a compensation cheque of Rs 10 lakh from the chief minister’s office. The authorities were also considering giving them an arms licence considering their security concerns, PTI quoted District Magistrate VK Singh as saying.

The 45-year-old woman was cremated late on Friday evening after hours of negotiations between her family and officials. Earlier, the family had refused to conduct the last rites, demanding that the accused men be arrested and action be taken against their allegedly illegal properties.

The 45-year-old woman’s death sparked protests, during which members of the Bhim Army demanded the immediate arrest of the accused, leading to brief altercations with the police, PTI reported.

On Saturday, Samajwadi Party MP Ramji Lal Suman and other members of the party were stopped at a toll booth while they were on their way Meerut, the Hindustan Times reported. This sparked protests and led to the Rapid Action Force being deployed. The MP and his supporters were later convinced by the police to return.

Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati described the crime as “extremely heartbreaking, shameful and worrisome”.

She called on the government to take crimes against women seriously and ensure strict action against those responsible.

यूपी में मेरठ के सरधना थाना अन्तर्गत दलित माँ की हुई हत्या तथा बेटी के अपहरण की ताज़ा घटना अति-दुखद, शर्मनाक एवं चिन्तनीय। महिलाओं की इज़्ज़त-आबरू से खिलवाड़ और फिर हत्या आदि की घटनाओं को सरकार पूरी गंभीरता से लेकर दोषियों के खिलाफ तत्काल सख़्त कार्रवाई करे ताकि आपराधिक तत्वों…

— Mayawati (@Mayawati) January 8, 2026

The Indian cricket board last week instructed the Indian Premier League’s Kolkata Knight Riders team to drop Mustafizur Rahman from its squad. It cited “recent developments that are going on all across” but the reason was evident: he is a Bangladeshi.

In response, the interim Bangladeshi government banned the broadcast of the 2026 IPL tournament, saying that no reason had been communicated for excluding Rahman. The Bangladesh Cricket Board on its part declared that its team would not travel to India for the Twenty20 World Cup scheduled to begin in February, citing the purportedly “violent communal policy” of the Indian cricket board.

After the International Cricket Council rejected Bangladesh’s request to play its matches in co-host Sri Lanka (just like Pakistan will do), Dhaka said that it was concerned about the safety of its team in India.

The world cup matches will take place around the time Bangladesh heads for its first national election since the ouster of the Sheikh Hasina government in August 2024. A tense political situation could cause passions on both sides of the border to run high.

The removal of Rahman – the only Bangladeshi picked in the 2026 IPL edition – was not abrupt. It came amid diplomatic tensions between New Delhi and Dhaka after the killing of a Hindu man in Bangladesh in December.

The decision was reportedly taken at the highest level of the Board of Control for Cricket in India.

Kolkata Knight Riders, whose co-owners include actor Shah Rukh Khan, had faced sharp criticism for picking Rahman from some in the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, spiritual leaders and others in the Hindutva ecosystem.

BJP leader Sangeet Som had on December 31 called co-owner Shah Rukh Khan a “traitor” for recruiting Rahman despite the attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh.

The Opposition Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) party described Bangladeshis as “enemies” and said that Khan did not understand the country’s sentiments.

There was a time when such grievances were reserved for Pakistan, which has not played a cricket match in Mumbai in 46 years and none in India – barring world championships – since 2012 following objections from Hindutva groups. Pakistanis have also not played in the IPL except for the inaugural season in 2008.

Dhaka’s manoeuvres

The public resentment, it seems, is mutual. Shifts in Bangladeshi sentiment about India have been starkly visible since the Hasina government was ousted.

Some public hostility against India has been fuelled by the fact that Hasina, who faces a death sentence in Bangladesh, has been allowed to live in Delhi. Her seeming impunity adds to the friction in recent years between a more Islamised Bangladeshi society and strident Hindutva in India.

Religious minorities in Bangladesh are being attacked in a manner that New Delhi has described as “systematic persecution”. The attacks include the lynching in December of a Hindu man, which triggered the latest diplomatic crisis.

New Delhi has also been troubled by strategic moves by the Muhammad Yunus government to improve military cooperation and cultural ties with Pakistan – the country against which Bangladesh fought for freedom. Dhaka’s talks to purchase the JF-17 fighter jets from Pakistan (jointly developed with China) have only added to India’s anxieties.

In New Delhi’s view, this could hurt regional balance and possibly open up another front that is unstable, if not outright hostile, for India to tackle.

‘Bangladesh is not Pakistan’

But there is a contrary view: despite Dhaka’s decisions, Bangladesh is not Pakistan.

Shashi Tharoor, the chairperson of India’s parliamentary committee on external affairs, wrote in The Indian Express that what differentiates Bangladesh from Pakistan is that Dhaka has not made “the export of terror a pillar of state policy”. Imposing a “‘Pakistan-like’ isolation” on it means ignoring the nuances of geopolitics, he contended.

“To conflate the complex internal dynamics of Bangladesh with something like the state-sponsored hostility of Pakistan is not merely a visceral overreaction; it is a diplomatic blunder that reveals a profound failure of imagination,” the Congress leader said.

While there are groups in Bangladesh whose actions deserve condemnation, a blanket boycott of their cricketers “is to play into the hands of the extremists” and a “troubling departure from…strategic common sense”, Tharoor said.

Even some among BJP’s key allies understand this.

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

No bail. The Supreme Court denied bail to activists Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam, who are accused of being part of an alleged larger conspiracy behind the 2020 Delhi riots. The bench, however, allowed the bail applications of Gulfisha Fatima, Meeran Haider, Shifa-ur-Rehman, Shadab Ahmed and Muhammad Saleem Khan.

The court said that Khalid and Imam can file bail applications after all protected witnesses are examined or after one year. It said that there were reasonable grounds to believe that the conduct of the two men was prima facie a terrorist act as defined under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

The activists were arrested between January 2020 and September 2020. The police have claimed that the February 2020 violence in North East Delhi, between supporters of the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act and those opposing it, was part of a larger conspiracy to defame the Narendra Modi government and planned by those who organised the protests against the amended law.

Ratna Singh explains why the Supreme Court denied bail to Khalid and Imam, but granted it to the five other activists.

The state of India-US relations. The proposed trade deal between India and the United States was not finalised because Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not call US President Donald Trump, the country’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick claimed. He claimed that India was “uncomfortable” with this step and that the call never happened.

Lutnick said that the conditions under which India and the US had earlier appeared close to finalising a deal were no longer available. However, he added that “India will work it out”.

New Delhi said that Lutnick’s characterisation of the trade discussions was not accurate.

Without a trade deal with Washington, Indian goods are facing a combined US tariff rate of 50%. The punitive levies on India and others had been introduced as part of Trump’s pressure campaign against countries buying discounted Russia oil amid Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

Lutnick’s comment came a day after Senator Lindsey Graham said that Trump had approved a bill that could pave the way for tariffs of up to 500% on countries such as India for buying Russian oil. The bill could be put to vote in the Congress next week.

To argue that the tariffs worked as intended, Graham had on January 4 quoted the Indian ambassador as having told him in a private conversation that India was buying less Russian oil, and had urged him to request Trump to relax tariffs linked to such imports. Reacting to Graham’s comments, Trump said that the US could raise tariffs on India if New Delhi does not cut Russian oil imports.

Strange alliances. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s post-poll alliances with the Congress in Thane district’s Ambernath and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen in Akola district’s Akot were unacceptable. “It will have to be broken,” he said.

The local alliances were formed after the municipal council elections in December. Fadnavis said that disciplinary action will be taken if party workers are found to have violated orders.

The Congress dissolved its Ambernath block committee and suspended 12 of its corporators for allying with the BJP without the approval of the party’s state leadership.

Tabassum Barnagarwala writes about why Opposition workers are crying foul in Maharashtra civic polls.

Also on Scroll last week

• India repeatedly forced 14 members of Bengali Muslim family from Odisha into Bangladesh, says kin
• ‘As helpless as a common man’: Why Jammu and Kashmir’s MLAs say they are powerless in the new regime
• On the road to Chardham, a landslide every two kilometres
• India’s car-first cities should prioritise walking to help tackle smog
• The spectacle of justice in the Delhi riots case is cover for polarisation and violence
• Ramachandra Guha: In praise of Dr Umar Khalid, from one historian to another
• MGNREGA gone, Centre is puppet master of new scheme with no guarantees
• What the US invasion of Venezuela reveals about international law
• US intervention in Venezuela was wrong – but now, a Japan-style rebuilding plan must unfold
• Sriram Raghavan interview: The ‘certain ache in the heart’ that led to ‘Ikkis’

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The recent crisis involving IndiGo has exposed deep structural problems in India’s aviation sector.

What unfolded early this year was not merely an operational lapse or a temporary disruption, but a reflection of the power imbalance in a high demand aviation market with two dominant players.

Sixty percent of India’s domestic market share is held by IndiGo; out of nearly 900 domestic routes, IndiGo is the only carrier on 514 routes.

Together with Air India, the two carriers control a staggering 86% of the market.

By itself, high market concentration is not proof of monopoly. But it does create grounds for business practices that may fall under the Abuse of Dominant Position clause in India’s Competition Act, 2002.

For instance, in the recent crisis, it created a situation where the airline made decisions that severely inconvenienced passengers and compromised their welfare – flight cancellations and subsequent charging of exorbitant prices – without worrying that it would lose customers.

The Competition Commission of India has decided to investigate IndiGo under this clause.

The immediate reason for the crisis lay in the airline’s non-adherence to the Flight Duty Time Limit regulations, announced early January. These guidelines were designed to ensure safety by preventing pilot fatigue, a critical concern in aviation worldwide.

Airlines such as IndiGo had enough time to prepare for the transition, adjust crew schedules, hire appropriately, and strengthen operations. Yet, they delayed implementation, creating a situation where operational capacity was strained to the breaking point.

By failing to prepare for a well-anticipated regulatory change, IndiGo and other carriers left regulators with no option but to put Flight Duty Time Limit regulations in abeyance.

Trouble in the skies

If found guilty by the Competition Commission of India, under Section 4 of the Competition Act, IndiGo can be penalised for up to 10% of its total revenues, and depending on the findings, the Commission can also order structural remedies, including changes to business practices or removal of certain routes from its network.

Here, one might be reminded of IndiGo’s past encounters with the CCI, where no anti-competitive intent could be established. In 2015, when IndiGo was accused of poaching pilots from other airlines, the matter was investigated under Section 4 of the Competition Act. The regulatory body concluded that there was no evidence of anti-competitive intent.

In 2018, in a separate case against IndiGo, Spice Jet and Jet Airways, the CCI found that they had colluded over fuel surcharge rates on cargo flights, and fined them.

In 2020, in yet another case, the Competition Commission of India found no evidence of collusion over ticket prices by IndiGo, SpiceJet, GoAir, Air India and Jet Airways.

Monopoly practice or policy failure?

Post-liberalisation, with the entry of several private players, the monopoly of Indian Airlines and Air India on air transport was diluted.

As of January 2008, there were 14 scheduled and 70 non-scheduled airlines in India. This included several low-cost carriers such as Deccan, Go-Air, and Spice-Jet.

IndiGo entered the market in 2006.

These low-cost carriers changed the aviation industry: multiple slab tariffs allowed the entry of a whole new segment of air travellers.

Increased passenger volumes compelled incumbent full-service airlines to revisit their cost structures and pricing strategies.

The market share of nine major airlines ranged from 1% to 23%, with IndiGo accounting for 9%. In terms of fleet size, Jet airways was the biggest player next to Indian Airlines, with IndiGo operating just seven aircrafts in 2007.

From that modest beginning, to today’s position of a dominant carrier, IndiGo’s journey is about business acumen and well thought out strategies that helped the carrier outlive a policy space that failed to adapt to the emerging competitive environment.

In the early 2000s, the aviation sector faced several structural challenges.

Though the modernisation and privatisation of airports improved infrastructure, it was accompanied by extremely high user fees and airport development fees. The User Development Fees varies across airports and is passed on to both the passengers and carriers, affecting profitability of carriers.

ATF accounts for more than 40% of the operating expenses of carriers, and volatility in ATF prices have implications for profitability. Add to this the stringent compliance regime and multiple administrative reporting procedures for The Directorate General of Civil Aviation, Airports Authority of India, and the Ministry of Civil Aviation.

In short, the Indian aviation sector can be described as high on investment, and low on what is referred to as “ease of doing business”.

At play was also IndiGo’s business strategy of aggressive bulk purchases and advance ordering, that locked airplane manufacturer discounts, and ensured an inventory of new fuel-efficient aircrafts in a volatile fuel cost environment. This enabled IndiGo to achieve significant cost advantages over competitors and maintain consistently low operating expenses.

A modern, fuel-efficient fleet also meant higher reliability and quicker turnaround times.

The carrier was consistent on its low cost approach and maintained a highly homogenised single-type fleet. The dividends came in the form of simplified training requirements, savings on training costs and overall cost efficiency.

The airlines also took advantage of the emerging markets, and continued to deliver on its brand positioning as a reliable and cheap option.

Other airlines failed to respond to the new competitive environment and the adverse policy landscape. Their exit, including that of Jet Airways, created a vacuum that IndiGo swiftly filled.

Thus IndiGo’s growth is an outcome of tight financial prudence and a competitive edge despite an unfavourable aviation policy regime.

The going was good, until it was not.

Healthy competition

A recent estimate pegs the growth of the Indian airline industry at 104.24%, and passenger capacity at 1 billion per annum.

With the government’s UDAN scheme democratising air travel and bridging the infrastructure gap, passenger traffic in the country is expected to grow six-fold. By 2040, the airline fleet is predicted to grow to 2359 – it stood at 400 in 2014 – and generate 25 million jobs by 2040.

But consumer welfare in aviation – or any other industry – depends on healthy competition. Ideally, India needs at least three to four strong players to absorb shocks, maintain service standards, and give customers viable alternatives.

With air travel becoming essential for millions of Indians, this is no longer just a business concern. It is a public interest issue.

Besides, the recent crisis raises concerns not just about airline accountability, but also regulatory oversight.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) must enforce stricter compliance, monitor airline preparedness, and act decisively when service lapses cause widespread public hardship.

IndiGo’s dominance may have grown organically, but its responsibilities have grown equally. It cannot be allowed to evade accountability for the turmoil it created.

Only then can the aviation sector function with reliability, fairness, and resilience.

Sangita Dutta Gupta is Professor, Economics at BML Munjal University, Haryana. M Manjula is Faculty, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. Tania Ghosh is Assistant Professor, Shri Shikshayatan College, Kolkata.

Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami on Friday announced that the state government has recommended a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into the 2022 Ankita Bhandari murder case, The New Indian Express reported.

Bhandari worked as a receptionist at a resort in Uttarakhand’s Rishikesh that was owned by Pulkit Arya, son of former BJP leader Vinod Arya. She went missing on September 18, 2022. A day later, Pulkit Arya, resort manager Saurabh Bhaskar and assistant manager Ankit Gupta filed a missing person report.

However, they later confessed to killing Bhandari by pushing her into a canal after an altercation. Bhandari’s body was recovered from the Chilla Canal in Rishikesh six days after she had gone missing.

The BJP expelled Vinod Arya and his other son Ankit Arya after the matter came to light.

Evidence recovered later, such as WhatsApp messages from Bhandari to a friend, seemed to show that the men were allegedly trying to force Bhandari into prostitution. It was claimed that she was killed for refusing to provide “special services” to a “VIP”.

In May 2025, Pulkit Arya, Bhaskar and Gupta were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Dhami’s announcement on Friday came two days after a meeting between the Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Bhandari’s parents. During this meeting, the parents handed Dhami a letter requesting a CBI investigation into her death under the supervision of a Supreme Court judge, The Times of India reported.

The parents, in the letter, alleged that their daughter had been killed because of a “VIP” whose identity was still not known.

The Opposition Congress and several civic groups have also held protests in recent days over the matter.

In a statement on Friday, the chief minister said that the state government had approved the recommendation for a CBI investigation “respecting the request and deep sentiments” of Bhandari’s parents.

He added that the state government remained committed to ensuring justice in a manner that was fair, transparent and sensitive, PTI reported. Swift action had also been taken earlier after the incident, including the setting up of a Special Investigation Team, he added.

“All the accused were promptly arrested, and strong legal representation was ensured, as a result of which no bail was granted during the investigation or trial,” the news agency quoted Dhami as saying.

The chief minister further said that separate first information reports had been filed in connection with audio clips circulating on social media, which were being investigated.

In December, actress Urmila Sanawar uploaded videos and an audio recording of her alleged phone conversation with her supposed former husband in which a senior leader of the BJP was allegedly mentioned.

Following the social media posts, the Congress and other Opposition parties had demanded a CBI investigation in the matter.

On Wednesday, the High Court, while hearing in a defamation petition, ordered the Congress, the Aam Aadmi Party, Sanawar and the others to take down the allegedly defamatory posts linking the senior BJP leader to the case. The matter will be heard next on May 4.

On Friday, Uttarakhand Congress chief Ganesh Godiyal said that the decision on the CBI probe was a “partial victory” but raised concerns about the impartiality of the investigation.

“The CBI is controlled by the same party [BJP] that rules both the Centre and the state,” the news agency quoted him as saying. “Questions regarding the agency’s credibility are therefore natural.”

Godiyal said that the case warranted monitoring by a sitting judge of the High Court or the Supreme Court. Only such supervision could ensure that the full truth comes out, he added.

Many of us who were born in independent India and taught social sciences in universities until recently had taken academic freedom for granted (“‘Be with us again, in freedom, Sharjeel and Umar’: A JNU teacher’s message for her jailed students”). We had often forgotten that others suffered so that we could live in a better country and enjoy the freedoms that we hold dear to our heart and are considered essential for our academic pursuit.

Some of us fought for freedom during the Emergency and encouraged our students to put in practice what we taught them in classes or made them read about the basic values of democratic societies.

With the emergence of communal fascism in the country, academic freedom has become virtually absent. Fighting for the freedom of thought and expression has not only become difficult but necessary. We need to stand up for the heroes of our time, Umar and Sharjeel, and also celebrate their fight. – Apurba K Baruah

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This was a touching write-up. I enjoyed reading every word of the article. – HG Jayalakshmi.

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Brilliant review (“Ramachandra Guha: In praise of Dr Umar Khalid, from one historian to another”). It is very sad that Dr Umar Khalid has been denied bail once again. – Nagaraj NP

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How courageous is Ramachandra Guha. It is unfortunate that this country is fast becoming a fascist regime. – A Rajamohan

India and Venezuela

This is an insightful assessment of India’s spineless stance on the American annexation of Venezuela (“A school in West Bengal is a testament to why India must speak up for Venezuela”). It uncovers the mask of the “Vishwaguru” who hides under the table whenever anybody mentions the name of Donald Trump. This is a sham on our legacy. – Santosh Kumar

Independent journalists are anti-national

Dear independent journalists, you are just anti-Indian (“Over 50% drop in communal riots in 2025, but violence shifted to more systemic forms: Study”). You are not addressing the truth but want to satisfy those who are against the government. For example, those denied burial in tribal areas of Chhattisgarh were tribals not Christians. You should address the main discourse and punish missionaries who convert poor people

Similarly, Muslims don’t gel with Indian culture. Hindus have been oppressed by earlier government for vote politics.

As independent journalists, you must address the root cause and support nation building. But you want financial support from Europe and western countries. – Sunil Nair

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This biased writing is no different than the Islamic State’s propaganda in Syria or Hamas in Palestine (“Assam’s agenda for Muslims goes national”). This is evident to every patriotic individual from the article and the intent of this anti-national mentality is easily perceived. – Tipparaju Venu Prakash Rao

Honouring Shanta Gokhale

Ipshita Mitra’s latest review left me viscerally moved (“‘The Way Home’: Everyday tensions of social belonging and personal truth in Shanta Gokhale’s stories”). What a finely attuned response to a sublimely talented writer! I love the way she has inhabited the subtexts of the stories and their philosophical underpinnings. I am also inspired by the candid projections of her own humanity into Shanta Gokhale’s understated and deeply nuanced depths. It is a joy to encounter such dialogic flow that reaches the heartspace.

Thank you for honoring the legendary Shanta Gokhale with your review, and for creating an illuminative invitation to her book’s offerings. – Shabnam Mirchandani

The administration in Uttar Pradesh’s Ayodhya on Friday banned the delivery of non-vegetarian food within a 15-km radius of the Ram temple, The Times of India reported.

The decision came following complaints about food apps delivering non-vegetarian food in areas marked as the “panchkosi parikrama”, a 15-km spiritual circumambulation path around Ayodhya, PTI quoted unidentified officials as saying.

The administration also issued a warning to hotels and homestays serving non-vegetarian food and alcoholic drinks to guests, The Times of India reported.

Manik Chandra Singh, the assistant food commissioner in Ayodhya, told the newspaper that complaints had been received about online platforms delivering non-vegetarian food.

This was happening despite a ban imposed in May 2025 on the sale of meat and liquor along the 14-km Ram path, which is the route connecting Ayodhya and Faizabad.

Singh said that the ban has now been extended to the delivery of non-vegetarian food by online platforms.

“All hotels, shopkeepers and delivery companies have been informed of the ban order,” The Times of India quoted the assistant food commissioner as saying.

He added that continuous monitoring would be done to ensure compliance.

The Babri Masjid in Ayodhya was demolished in December 1992 by Hindutva extremists because they believed that it stood on the spot on which the deity Ram had been born. In January 2024, the Ram temple was inaugurated at the site in a ceremony led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Five migrant workers from Jharkhand who had been abducted in Niger in April were released and have returned to India, The Indian Express quoted the state government as saying on Friday.

The workers, Sanjay Mahto, Raju Mahto, Chandrika Mahto, Faljit Mahto and Uttam Mahto, are residents of Giridih district.

They had migrated to the West African country in January 2024 to work for Kalpataru Power Transmission Limited.

The five workers were kidnapped on April 25 after an armed group raided the camp where they were working. They and a resident had been taken away at gunpoint after the armed group killed 12 security personnel deployed at the site.

On Friday, Shikha Lakra, team leader of Jharkhand State Migrant Control Room, said that the five workers have arrived in Mumbai, NDTV reported.

They were undergoing mandatory health checks and completing legal formalities, Lakra said, adding that the persons will return to homes on Wednesday.

Giridih Deputy Commissioner Ramniwas Yadav said that coordination between the Jharkhand government, the state migrant control room and the Ministry of External Affairs had helped ensure the return of the five workers, NDTV reported.

The Punjab Police on Friday filed a first information report in connection with the uploading and sharing of an allegedly doctored video purportedly showing Aam Aadmi Party MLA Atishi insulting Guru Tegh Bahadur in the Delhi Assembly, The Hindu reported.

The video was uploaded by Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kapil Mishra.

However, the police did not specify who or how many persons have been named in the FIR.

The police commissionerate in Jalandhar registered the case based on a complaint filed by a person named Iqbal Singh, India Today reported.

Unidentified police officers said that a forensic examination of the video posted by Mishra showed that the word “guru” was “not uttered” by Atishi, The Hindu reported.

On Tuesday, a row erupted after the BJP accused Atishi of making insensitive remarks about the Sikh spiritual leader during a special discussion in the Delhi Assembly to mark the 350th martyrdom anniversary of Guru Tegh Bahadur, observed in November.

A video of the alleged comments was uploaded by Mishra and shared by others on social media.

Atishi had, at the time, rejected the allegations and said that she was talking about the BJP running away from a discussion on the worsening air pollution in the national capital and about their protest in the Assembly on the matter of stray dogs.

“But the BJP deliberately added a false subtitle and inserted the name of Guru Tegh Bahadurji into it,” the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly said on Thursday.

The allegations against Atishi had led to a ruckus during the Winter Session of the Assembly, with both the BJP and the AAP accusing each other of insulting Guru Tegh Bahadur. On Thursday, Speaker Vijender Gupta also ordered a forensic investigation of the video.

On Friday, a spokesperson for the Jalandhar police commissionerate said in a statement that “several social media posts containing a short video clip showing…Atishi allegedly making derogatory and blasphemous remarks against [Sikh] Gurus with highly inflammatory captions have been uploaded on social media platforms”, PTI reported.

The statement said that an investigation had been conducted scientifically and the video containing Atishi’s audio had been “downloaded from a social media platform of Delhi Minister Kapil Mishra”.

It added that video had been forwarded to a forensic science laboratory to be examined.

In the Delhi Assembly on Friday, BJP MLAs raised the filing of the FIR in Aam Aadmi Party-ruled Punjab, The Hindu reported. Gupta said that the move amounted to a “breach of privilege”, as video recordings from inside the Assembly “belong exclusively to the House”, the newspaper reported.

He added: “The House takes cognisance of the matter formally and will consider appropriate action against the police commissioner of Jalandhar”.

Meanwhile, the Punjab Congress on Friday claimed that its MLAs Sukhpal Khaira and Pargat Singh had been booked for sharing the allegedly doctored video, PTI reported.

In a social media post, Khaira said that the “false FIR” filed by Jalandhar Police against Singh and him was the “most shocking and blatant case of extreme political vendetta” by the Bhagwant Mann government.

Five Opposition parties in Assam on Friday filed a police complaint accusing the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party of conspiring to delete the names of a large number of genuine voters from the state’s electoral rolls, The Hindu reported.

The parties are the Congress, the Raijor Dal, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) and the Assam Jatiya Parishad.

The complaint was filed at Guwahati’s Dispur police station.

The parties claimed that Assam BJP president and MP Dilip Saikia was involved in the alleged conspiracy and had directed party MLAs to ensure the deletion of the names of “anti-BJP voters” in at least 60 of the state’s 126 Assembly constituencies, The Hindu reported.

The allegations came amid the “special revision” of electoral rolls in Assam ahead of Assembly elections, expected to be held in March-April.

On December 27, the Election Commission said that the names of more than 10 lakh voters were identified to be deleted in Assam after a house-to-house verification process under the ‘special revision’ exercise. The final list will be published on February 10.

Unlike in 12 states and Union Territories, the Election Commission is not conducting a special intensive revision exercise in Assam. Instead, on November 17, it had directed the state chief electoral officer to conduct a “special revision” of electoral rolls.

The door-to-door verification took place in the state between November 22 and December 20. The process did not involve document verification, unlike the special intensive revision.

In their complaint on Friday, the Opposition parties alleged that Saikia discussed the deletion exercise with Health Minister Ashok Singhal during an online meeting held on January 4.

They urged the police to secure the footage from the meeting and to book the “culprits and conspirators” for a free, fair and transparent special revision in the state, The Hindu reported.

Separately, Raijor Dal chief and Sivasagar MLA Akhil Gogoi wrote to the Election Commission on Friday seeking a high-level, independent probe into the January 4 online meeting held allegedly for the purpose of “voter list management”, the newspaper reported.

Gogoi asked the poll panel to secure all digital records and communication logs of the BJP leadership linked to the alleged directive of deleting “10,000 votes per constituency”, The Hindu reported.

He also sought an audit of Form 7 applications filed over the past three months in the state and demanded that the “special revision” process be halted until the matter was resolved.

Form 7 is used to object to inclusion of the name of other persons on the voter list.

The BJP rejected the allegations.

Party spokesperson Jayanta Kumar Goswami said that Gogoi had misrepresented the deletion of names during the revision exercise.

“More than 11,000 Muslims were evicted following the eviction drive carried out at Uriamghat in Sarupathar Assembly constituency of Golaghat district,” The Times of India quoted Goswami as saying. “During the ongoing SIR, names of around 11,000 persons from the constituency were deleted.”

Goswami alleged that the Opposition parties had filed the police complaint to “indulge in Miya appeasement”. “Miya” is a derogatory term for Bengali-speaking Muslims.

Quick commerce and delivery platforms have become the lifeline of urban consumers. The delivery rider, zipping through chaotic traffic, is now a ubiquitous symbol of urban convenience. However, a troubling paradox defines this sector: the very speed with which workers take up gig work is matched by the rate at which they abandon it.

Beneath the glossy facade of the sector’s “flexibility” and “earning potential” is the reality of financial instability, physical risk and systemic neglect that pushes a vast majority of riders to exit in a matter of months.

The strikes by riders across India during Christmas and New Year protesting against unrealistic promises of 10-minute delivery and slashed payments highlight the growing collective frustration.

In response, Deepinder Goyal, the founder of Zomato’s parent company, claimed that gig work is “one of the largest organised job creation engines in India” and that this work allows riders to build a better future, secure jobs in the formal sector and educate their children.

It would “bring more people into the fold, who will be able to earn some money, upskill themselves and later join India’s organised workforce”, he declared pointing to the high churn rate in the sector as evidence of this.

The high churn rate is certainly true. Over half of all riders quit every week, replaced by new entrants. As a gig worker myself, I can testify that the claim of gig work being a stepping stone into the formal sector holds true only for a small percentage of riders, those who already enter the workforce with education and specific skills.

For everyone else, delivery work is primarily a means of desperate survival, a dead-end trap with no scope for career progression or skill development relevant to the formal economy.

The sector attracts individuals from diverse backgrounds from Class 12 pass-outs, graduates, ITI dropouts to former factory workers. What unites them is not educational qualification or class but economic necessity, the lack of alternative job opportunities and the alluring myth that this work offers freedom.

The journey often begins with attractive incentives and bonuses, painting a picture of a promising future. But the actual experience quickly reveals a harsher truth. The platform economy promotes an ideal worker – one who can work like a machine for 16-18 hours non-stop, unburdened by social or familial responsibilities.

A tiny fraction of riders who can withstand this model might manage to save a little money. For the vast majority, their earnings barely cover two meals and the monthly rent.

A primary driver of this high attrition is the constant decline and extreme volatility of income. Raghav, a 27-year-old graduate from Agra who moved to Ghaziabad, turned to delivery work for Blinkit after losing his job during the Covid lockdown. As the sole earning member supporting his father, who had retired from the army, his housewife mother and a younger brother, the initial promise soon faded.

“It seemed okay at the start, but I would end up with only about Rs 7,000 a week,” he said. He worked for eight to nine months before quitting, due to falling payment rates, increasing targets and no future.

Surjeet, from Delhi, who worked for Swiggy for five years, drove himself relentlessly for 18 hours a day to support his wife, children and siblings. He even received an award from the company for his flawless record, but the post-lockdown changes broke his resolve.

“After the lockdown, the company cut the pay... earnings started decreasing and I was forced to leave the job,” he said.

Companies often make promises such as “earn Rs 40,000 a month” but Vijender, a 25-year-old from Delhi studying for a Bachelor of Computer Applications degree while shouldering family responsibilities after his father’s death, found the promise hollow.

“To earn Rs 40,000, you have to work 17-18 hours,” he said.

The uncertainty of not knowing how many orders will come each day nor how much time will be wasted searching for addresses, creates permanent anxiety. Income fluctuates wildly while costs like fuel, vehicle maintenance and mobile data are. This is the economic mill that grinds down riders' savings and traps them at a bare subsistence level.

The physical dangers of the job add another layer of peril. Sameer, a 22-year-old from Bihar living in Delhi, had to leave his ITI course in motor mechanics due to family circumstances. He took up work with a delivery service hoping for flexibility, but found the costs and risks overwhelming.

While delivering a parcel in Noida, a car hit him, leaving his vehicle destroyed and his leg fractured. His plea to the company for help went unanswered. It was a kind customer who assisted him. Worse, when he recovered and returned, the company slapped him with a Rs 15,000 penalty for the damaged vehicle.

Vijender faced a similar ordeal after his accident in Greater Kailash in Delhi. “I asked the company for help, they didn’t help at all,” he said. It was a fellow rider who took him to the hospital.

Though platforms call their riders “partners”, in times of crisis, they offer no health insurance, financial aid or even basic human empathy. The rider is left to their own devices and, occasionally, the mercy of generous customers.

Beyond the economic and physical risks, there is also immense psychological pressure. Riders are caught in the twin grind of customer ratings, complaints and the app’s stringent, often opaque, rules. A small delay or mistake perpetuates the constant fear of their ID being blocked, leading to the loss of livelihood.

Working 18-hour shifts makes spending time with their families nearly impossible. Vijender explained the worry he caused at home: “My family was also constantly worried about me... what if I have an accident?”

For Surjeet, the breaking point was his mother’s emotional plea. “Son, we don’t even see your face anymore,” she said. This pressure is crushing for riders who are the sole breadwinners in their families.

Where do riders go after they quit? Their destination depends on their educational and economic capital. Riders such as Raghav, a graduate with previous skills, leveraged his education when his former manager offered him a position. He found a better role as a field manager within the same platform ecosystem.

On the other hand, riders like Sameer, whose education was interrupted and who possesses no specialised skills, often return to their previous occupations. Sameer is back to working at a factory, earning Rs 13,000.

Some, like Surjeet, shift to traditional sectors. He now drives an auto-rickshaw for Rapido and Uber, where earnings might be lower but he has more control over his time and family life.

The most tragic situation is that of riders like Vijender, who, after quitting on his mother’s insistence and following his accident, found himself completely unemployed, dependent on his brother to start a business, a dream with no clear path.

The dream of self-employment is almost universal among riders, it materialises only for those few, like Surjeet, who could save something after years of working for 18 hours a day. For the rest, the gig economy is a cyclical trap: easy to enter, but incredibly hard to escape or advance within.

The high turnover rate in the delivery sector is an inevitable outcome of a system designed for maximum flexibility with minimum responsibility to the companies.

This work has become a stop-gap solution for immediate economic distress and is no way a sustainable livelihood. The fundamental reason behind riders entering and exiting is the same: the compulsion of subsistence.

Their departure is just a “churn rate” statistic for the companies, but stories like those of Raghav, Sameer, Surjeet, and Vijender paint a picture of the human reality behind numbers: broken limbs, lost dreams and strained families.

Finding a solution to this crisis cannot rely solely on the perceived resilience of the riders. It requires a concerted effort from platforms, the government and society to build policies that guarantee a fair minimum wage, comprehensive accident and health insurance, social security benefits and humane working conditions.

Only then can gig work transform into a genuine livelihood option with dignity, rather than a quicksand trap where workers struggle against exhaustion, uncertainty and despair.

Javed is a gig worker and organiser. This article was compiled and translated by Ambika Tandon, who is affiliated with Rajdhani App Workers Union of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions.

Last week, Dr Cyriac Abby Philips, better known by his social media, moniker @liverdoc, caused quite the stir on social media by revealing the results of a crowdfunded study that he had conducted on the quality of generic drugs sourced from various outlets, especially government funded pharmacies or schemes like the Jan Aushadi programme, rebranded as the Pradhan Mantri Bharatiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana by the present government.

While the peer-reviewed publication of the study is still awaited, the big takeaway from @liverdoc’s Twitter thread is that each and every of the 131 generic drugs he tested, including those from government supplied pharmacies passed every quality parameter laid down by the Indian Pharmacopeia Commission in its official publication, the Indian Pharmacopeia.

These results, especially the ones pertaining to government-funded pharmacies are quite incredible since historically the government’s own data has revealed chronic problems with generic drugs sold through these outlets.

For example, in 2017, a government-funded survey of drug quality in India involving 47,954 samples from various sources revealed that 10% of drugs sampled from government pharmacies failed testing in government laboratories. For the rest of the market, the rate of failure of drugs was approximately 3.16%.

The survey did not include fixed-dose combination drugs that contain two or more active pharmaceutical ingredients. These constitute the majority of the nation’s drug supply. There are other reports like one by Comptroller and Auditor General from 2012 which claimed that 25% of locally sourced drugs by the Armed Forces Medical Services Depot failed quality tests.

Similarly with the Jan Aushadhi programme, there have long been complaints from patients and doctors of poor quality outcomes from taking these drugs. In the last Parliamentary session, in December, the government disclosed that between 2020 and 2025, a total of 206 prosecutions were filed by state drug controllers against pharmaceutical manufacturers because samples of their drugs drawn from the Jan Aushadhi programME failed testing in their laboratories.

Given that state drug controllers prosecute only the worst cases of quality failures, the actual number of Not of Standard Quality drugs are likely much higher.

For example, if a drug has only 75% of the active ingredient, the prosecution guidelines laid down by the government prohibit criminal prosecution. Only if that number falls below 70% are state drug controllers required to prosecute. So the figure of 206 prosecutions disclosed in the Parliament represents only serious cases of Not of Standard Quality drugs, not every drug which failed quality testing.

Previous tests

There is then also regular news in the press of other drugs, drawn from private pharmacies and hospitals failing testing in government laboratories. In 2024, over 3,000 samples failed testing in government laboratories. In February 2025, the state government of Himachal Pradesh informed the state legislature that 1,683 samples of drugs manufactured within the state had reportedly had failed quality testing in the previous two years.

Given this weight of history, the results published by Philips are astounding and we look forward to the peer-reviewed publication of this study that hopefully provides more details on the design of the study and actual test results.

For example, were the samples which were sent for testing adequately “blinded”? This is crucial in today’s India because private laboratories are aware of the possibility of government backlash if they were to report a large number of drugs from the government’s flagship scheme failing quality testing.

In 2014, the government of India threatened to sue a group of American academics who had concluded on the basis of testing “made in India” generic drugs that the Indian pharmaceutical industry was more likely to sell poor quality generics in Africa. That study did not even mention the names of any Indian companies and yet it attracted a threatening legal action.

Blinding the lab to the source of the drugs was therefore a crucial requirement.

Similarly, the statistical model for the sample size of 131 samples included in the study. If one were to model based on the government's own Not of Standard Quality data, the number of samples from Jan Aushadhi stores would have to be more than twice that of the sample size to give a 90% confidence to an assertion that all samples sourced pass quality test.

Lastly, there has to be some disclosure on how exactly the laboratory procured “reference samples” from the Indian Pharmacopeia Commission. These “reference samples” are basically small quantities of the pure active ingredient against which the sample is tested in order to establish purity of the assay.

We raise this issue because there have been several complaints from state run laboratories regarding long delays by the Indian Pharmacopeia Commission. in supplying reference samples.

A couple of drugs mentioned in the doctor’s Twitter thread, (rifaximin and febuxostar) do not feature in the list of available reference standards published on the Indian Pharmacopeia Commission’s own website. An explanation of how the lab procured reference standards from Indian Pharmacopeia would go a long way in establishing the credibility of the study.

Critical issues

In addition to the above, we feel it is necessary to clarify some critical issues pertaining to the claim that pharmacopeial testing is all that matters for the purposes of establishing quality.

This is not completely true. In the 1960s, when the first antibiotics were going off patent in the United States, the country’s regulator was faced with the question of how exactly to validate the quality of generics. Repeating clinical trials was an expensive proposition and also unethical since some patients would have to be given a placebo.

The other option was to rely on pharmacopeial testing in the laboratory. However, this option was not considered a reliable indicator of the ability of a drug to dissolve in the stomach and permeate the intestinal lining of a patient in order to enter a patient’s bloodstream.

This is important because although both the innovator and generic use the same active ingredient, the other excipients such as the binding agents may differ from one another, affecting the ability of the generic to dissolve at the same rate as the innovator.

For this reason, the US Food and Drug Administration made it mandatory for generics to conduct bioequivalence testing – the generic drug would be given to healthy volunteers and the rate at which the drug became bioavailable in the human body would be measured in the volunteers’ blood and urine. If the dissolution curve matched the curve of the innovator drug, it was considered bioequivalent to the innovator and hence interchangeable.

The World Health Organisation released a technical recommendation regarding bioequivalence testing in 1996. India made it mandatory only in 2017, except that the rules were so vaguely formulated that we still do not know if the requirement extended to previously authorised generics. We also do not know the parameters of the waiver provided to generics that are highly soluble and permeable.

As a result, we do not know which generics in India are bioequivalent. In other countries such as the United States, the regulator publishes an “Orange Book” that allows patients and doctors to check the generics which have been rated to be “bioequivalent”. India does not do this.

We have been asking the government for quite sometime now to at least force the manufacturers to indicate on their labelling whether their drugs have been declared bioequivalent.

To return to Philips’ study, doctors should recognise that even if the drugs in question have all passed pharmacopeial testing, there is no guarantee these drugs will have the same effect in patients unless these drugs have also been established to be bioequivalent.

This is especially true for Narrow Therapeutic Index drugs. These are drugs where even a small change in bioavailability can have a significant effect in treatment outcomes. Examples of such drugs include Tacrolim, which is used to suppress the immune system after organ transplantation surgeries and drugs such as Levothyroxine, which is used to treat thyroid deficiencies. There are many documented studies of how generic Levothyroxine has caused poor treatment outcomes in patients due to bioavailability issues.

That the Indian pharmaceutical industry has had an issue with bioequivalence is not a secret. In fact, faked bioequivalence studies was one of the starting points of the scandal at Ranbaxy. Similar allegations were made against GVK Bio by international regulators.

There are also studies conducted by doctors at PGIMER which demonstrated with clinical trials that bioavailability of generic Tacrolimus and generic Itraconazole varied significantly from the innovator brands. For the second study, these brave government doctors were rumoured to have received backlash from the powers that be in Delhi.

Batch-to-batch consistency

Two more issues before we conclude.

The first is that surveys based on drug samples drawn from the market have limited value for the simple reason that such surveys rarely capture batch-to-batch consistency issues: the toughest part of pharmaceutical manufacturing is ensuring batch-to-batch consistency. In addition, testing of limited samples fails to capture contamination problems that are not consistent across batches.

It is precisely for this reason that regulatory practices in the West focus more on compliance with Good Manufacturing Practices – adherence to processes is the surest guarantee of quality. On this count, we have a huge mountain of evidence in American and European drug inspection reports of Indian facilities failing to comply with Good Manufacturing Practices standards. The rigour expected of the pharmaceutical industry in India is simply missing.

The second is that bulk procurement conducted by public agencies or private hospitals tend to deal with larger companies. They also have their own testing requirements before the release of drugs into the market. As a result, most of the drugs sampled as part of the Philips study had already cleared one round of testing that likely weeded out many poor quality manufacturers as evident from “blacklists” published by government agencies.

We suspect that results may have been very different if samples tested were procured from the smaller private pharmacies and government hospitals that follow a localised procurement strategy rather than a centralised bulk strategy. The former attracts more smaller manufacturers.

To conclude, while we are surprised by the results presented by Philips on Twitter, he has started an important public debate on the quality of generic drugs.

A peer-reviewed publication must now follow to establish the study’s credibility and hopefully, we will see more such studies in the future along with the necessary caveats. At stake are important issues of public health and the cost of access to medicine.

The writers are co-authors of The Truth Pill: The Myth of Drug Regulation In India.

India on Friday accused Bangladesh of downplaying a “disturbing pattern of recurring attacks on minorities” and urged Dhaka to act “swiftly and firmly” against communal violence.

Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said, “We have observed a troubling tendency to attribute such incidents to personal rivalries, political differences or extraneous reasons.”

Bangladesh’s disregard of such incidents “only emboldens the perpetrators and deepens the sense of fear and insecurity among minorities”, he said at the weekly media briefing.

Several attacks on minorities in Bangladesh were reported in the aftermath of widespread unrest following the death of student leader Sharif Osman Bin Hadi. Hadi succumbed to gunshot injuries at a hospital in Singapore on December 18.

He was a prominent leader in the 2024 student protest that led to the ouster of the earlier government headed by Awami League leader Sheikh Hasina.

On Tuesday, the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council said that it has recorded 51 incidents of communal violence in December, NDTV reported.

These included 10 killings, 10 cases of theft and robbery, 23 instances of occupation of homes and business establishments, and incidents of looting and arson targeting temples, the association was quoted as saying.

On December 26, India condemned the lynching of a Hindu man in Bangladesh, saying that the “unremitting hostility” against minorities in the country was concerning.

Dipu Chandra Das, a factory worker, was beaten to death by a mob in Bangladesh’s Mymensingh district on December 18, after which his body was allegedly tied to a tree and set on fire. Eighteen persons have been taken into custody for the lynching.

Jaiswal had said at the time that continuing hostilities against minorities in Bangladesh, including Hindus, Christians and Buddhists, at the hands of extremists was a matter of great concern.

Two days later, Dhaka had rejected New Delhi’s remarks and described them as “inaccurate, exaggerated or motivated”.

SM Mahbubul Alam, the spokesperson for the Bangladeshi foreign ministry, had said at the time that the statements “misrepresent the country’s longstanding tradition of communal harmony”.

About 20 years ago, someone at Mumbai’s Philips Antiques learned that a unique album of photographs was going up for auction in London. He quickly contacted the theatre director Ebrahim Alkazi, who purchased the album for the Delhi-based Alkazi Collection of Photography. Although small and unassuming, the album, known as the Nursey album, has now helped a group of scholars tell some remarkable new stories about one of modern India’s most decisive turning points: the Civil Disobedience Movement, led by Mahatma Gandhi in 1930-’31.

Along the spine of the album runs a rather vague title, “Collection of Photographs of Old Congress Party – KL Nursey”. While the identity of KL Nursey remains a mystery, the 245 black-and-white photographs inside the album show the city of Bombay convulsed by nationalist protest and the mass manufacture of contraband salt.

Working with the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts and its curator, Rahaab Allana, two historians at Duke University, Avrati Bhatnagar and Sumathi Ramaswamy, have published a book and organised two museum exhibitions on the photographs. They now join Past Imperfect to discuss their work and how photography can reveal very different histories of a well-documented event.

Photographing Civil Disobedience: Bombay 1930-1931 (published by Mapin) features 150 photographs and essays by historians which unpack the stories captured on film nearly a century ago (full disclosure: I am one of the contributors to this volume). Once they first encountered the album, Bhatnagar and Ramaswamy were struck by its historical importance. Photography has a long and storied history in India, but here was something beyond studio portraits and staged pictures. The Nursey album’s pictures were live, raw, and pulsating with activity. Swarms of khadi-clad nationalists take over Bombay’s streets and several of its landmarks. Protesters clash with police officers and react to blows from bamboo lathis.

Above all, the photographs demonstrate how women participated, led, and even dominated street activity during the Civil Disobedience Movement. Historians have long recognised the Civil Disobedience Movement as a watershed moment for female political participation, but the Nursey album reveals, like never before, how women wielded power and stood up to colonial authority.

Who were these women? Some of them are easily recognisable. Sarojini Naidu, raising her fist, addresses a crowd of volunteers in crisp white Gandhi topis. Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay poses for the camera while hundreds of protesters are seated behind her.

But the Nursey album reveals thousands of ordinary female volunteers whose identities have been lost to time. Many of these women stare defiantly into the camera, conscious of being photographed and wanting their actions to be documented for posterity. A number of women bring their daughters into the frame, providing their very early induction into nationalist politics.

This mass female participation is all the more notable because, when Gandhi began his Salt March in March 1930, he urged women not to get involved in confrontational protests and salt-making activity. A number of female Indian National Congress leaders, like Chattopadhyay, convinced Gandhi to relax this prohibition. But the women of Bombay went several steps further by directing nationalist activity into new channels, on a hitherto unimaginable scale.

As Bhatnagar and Ramaswamy point out, many of the photographs show female protesters testing the limits of non-violence by defensively reacting to police activity. A group of desh sevikas, members of a Congress-aligned volunteer group, wrestle with a pith-helmeted British police officer who is trying to confiscate their national flag.

Violence, indeed, pulsates through the album’s photographs. Captured in film, perhaps for the first time, was visual evidence of what happened when throngs of urban protesters confronted phalanxes of policemen and soldiers. Bhatnagar and Ramaswamy speak about how this proves that the British Raj was a “lathi raj”, a regime propped up by brutal disciplinary action. Outside of the Bombay High Court, one Indian police officer raises a lathi, about to bring it down on a protester lying on the street. A jackbooted British superior officer stands in front, preventing the protester from moving. These photographs are populated not just by nationalists and colonial forces, but also by medics, ambulance drivers, nurses and thousands of curious onlookers.

Lastly, Bhatnagar and Ramaswamy speak about what the Nursey album tells us about the city of Bombay. In the 1930s, Bombay was very much a masculine space: male residents greatly outnumbered female ones and social conventions relegated most women far away from the public gaze. This male-dominated world came crashing down with the Civil Disobedience Movement. In several pictures, female protesters quite literally push men to the very edges of streets. In others, they commandeer the entrances to prominent landmarks, like the Town Hall and Bombay Municipal Corporation building.

Here is a city witnessing a revolutionary transfer of power. Colonial landmarks like Victoria Terminus and Fitzgerald Fountain are taken over by Congress volunteers, while other protesters block access to tony European department stores such as Whiteaway Laidlaw. Importantly, the loci of political activity shifts north from Fort, embracing places such as Bandra.

Numerous pictures feature nationalists’ “raids” on the salt pans in Wadala, with policemen on horses trailing behind. Salt became a symbol of political power in Bombay. “The resulting salt was not particularly high quality, but it did not matter,” Ramaswamy comments. “It was the fact that the illicit product was proudly made, and that a camera witnesses the act that was important.”

Aside from being republished in Photographing Civil Disobedience, these pictures are now on display at special exhibits in the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya in Mumbai and Duke University – exhibits timed with the hundredth birth centenary of the man who rescued them from obscurity, Ebrahim Alkazi. They provide a stirring visual testament to how a handful of contraband salt produced by Gandhi at Dandi Beach triggered incredible change in India’s most cosmopolitan city.

“Disobedient Subjects” runs at the CSMVS Museum in Mumbai through March 31 and at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University through January 19.

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.

A family of 14 men, women and children – all Bengali Muslims from Odisha’s Jagatsinghpur district – were allegedly forced into Bangladesh by the Border Security Force in December, a relative told Scroll. This was confirmed by Bangladesh border officials, who detained them in the no man’s land between the two countries.

The 14 people, belonging to one family, had been living in Odisha for over seven decades, their relative Saiful Ali Khan said. The eldest among them is a 90-year-old woman.

Their native village is in West Bengal’s South 24 Parganas district, according to a gram panchayat certificate that is in the family’s possession.

Two months ago, the family was detained in Jagatsinghpur on suspicion of being Bangladeshi citizens, Khan said. Among them was Khan’s 36-year-old niece Sabera Bibi.

On December 26, the 14 members were forced into Bangladesh by the Border Security Force, Khan told Scroll.

The Border Guard Bangladesh detained them on the same night in Chuadanga district, which shares a boundary with Nadia district in Bengal.

Bangladeshi authorities told news outlets in the country that the 14 were formally sent back to India on December 28.

Mehdi Hasan, the officer in charge of Darshana police station, confirmed the incident to Scroll, saying that the group of 14 old people, women and children were handed over to the Border Guard Bangladesh which later sent them to India.

“They had come from Odisha and were later sent to India,” Hasan told Scroll.

But Khan told Scroll that the group was shunted back and forth between the two countries four times, as the border officials on either side refused to let them stay.

The BSF pushed them into Bangladesh three times, while the Bangladesh border officials expelled them from their territory once. Nine members of the family, Khan said, are still in hiding in Bangladesh. The whereabouts of five others are unknown.

In a video shot when they were in the custody of Border Guard Bangladesh, one of the 14 is heard saying that BSF officials threatened to open fire on them if they tried to return to India.

Scroll sent an email to the Border Security Force spokesperson asking about the repeated expulsions of the family. The story will be updated if they respond.

The superintendent of police of Odisha’s Jagatsinghpur, Ankit Kumar Verma, told Scroll that a statewide drive against “Bangladeshi infiltrators” is underway but refused to divulge more. “I can’t verify like this,” he said. “These are all confidential and secret things. I can’t share anything related to this.”

Last year, Scroll had reported on how Bengali migrant workers had been detained in several states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party, including Odisha, and asked to prove they were Indian citizens.

The drives by the police ended up throwing several Indian citizens across the border, without giving them time or opportunity to prove their citizenship – in violation of the Centre’s own rules.

Last month, a heavily pregnant woman, Sunali Khatun, and her eight-year-old son Sabir were brought back to India from Bangladesh on the direction of the Calcutta High Court and, later, the Supreme Court.

Khatun, her child and her husband had been picked up from Delhi and “pushed” into Bangladesh, despite the fact that the family had land records in Bengal, going back five generations.

‘If you come back, we will open fire’

The family detained from Odisha is originally from South 24 Parganas district, Khan said.

Among the members of the family expelled include 90-year-old Guljan Bibi, her daughter and son-in-law, four grandsons and three granddaughters-in-law and four great-grandchildren.

Khan’s niece, Sabera Bibi, is married to Bibi’s grandson Sheikh Ukil.

The family had been living in Berhampur village under Balikuda Tehsil of Odisha’s Jagatsinghpur district for the last seven decades, Khan, who lives in the same district, told Scroll.

“Two months ago, the police came, demolished their homes and arrested them as they were speaking Bangla,” he said.

According to Khan, the family was detained for one month and five days, despite showing the Odisha police their identity documents, including voter and Aadhaar cards.

On December 17, the pradhan of West Bengal’s Moushuni gram panchayat in South 24 Paragnas issued a certificate, declaring that Sheikh Hosen – Bibi’s husband – was a permanent resident of Baliara village of the district, but now lives with his family at the Berhampur village in Odisha.

“After over a month of detention, they were made to cross the India-Bangladesh border and pushed into Chuadanga in Bangladesh on December 26,” Khan said. “They walked about 4 km but were later detained by the Bangladeshi police and Border Guard Bangladesh at Darshana bus stand in Chuadanga.”

He said he got to know of the family’s plight when one of them called him on January 7, having borrowed a phone from someone in Bangladesh.

In a video filmed when the family was in the custody of Border Guard Bangladesh, Sabera Bibi’s husband, Sheikh Ukil, is heard telling the officials in Hindi: “We were first brought to Kolkata from Odisha and then to the border where we were made to roam for three days before being pushed into Bangladesh.”

Scroll accessed the 3.37 minute video, and asked Saiful Khan to confirm the identity of the speakers. He identified them as his relatives.

Ukil is heard recounting in Hindi how they came to be in Bangladesh. “We showed Aadhaar and voter cards to the BGB,” he said. “Then the BGB people took us to BSF and handed us over to BSF. The BSF provided us food and they again threw us here. The BSF told us if you come back, they will open fire. Where will we go?”

The Budget Session of Parliament will start on January 28 and conclude on April 2, said Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju on Friday.

“On the recommendation of the Govt of India, Hon’ble President of India, Smt. Droupadi Murmu ji has approved the summoning of both the Houses of Parliament for the Budget Session 2026,” Rijiju said on social media.

The minister added that the first phase of the session will conclude on February 13, after which Parliament will reassemble on March 9 and end on April 2.

On the recommendation of the Govt of India, Hon’ble President of India, Smt. Droupadi Murmu ji has approved the summoning of both the Houses of Parliament for the Budget Session 2026.
The Session will commence on 28 January 2026 and continue till 2 April 2026.

The first phase… pic.twitter.com/FxGYCL7keq

— Kiren Rijiju (@KirenRijiju) January 9, 2026

This break will be used to review the Budget proposals, during which discussions on the ministries’ demands for grants will take place, completing the budgetary process.

As per convention, the Union Budget for the financial year 2026-’27 is likely to be presented on February 1 by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. The Economic Survey is likely to be presented on January 30, PTI reported.

The two Houses will not meet on January 29 due to the Beating Retreat ceremony.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday registered two police complaints against the Enforcement Directorate in connection with its searches at several locations in the state, including the office of political consultancy I-PAC a day earlier, PTI reported.

An unidentified police officer told the news agency that the Kolkata and Bidhannagar Police have registered first information reports and initiated an investigation based on the two complaints.

This came on the same day that the Delhi Police detained Trinamool Congress MPs protesting outside Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s office against what the party alleged were illegal searches by the central agency. The MPs were released from the Parliament Street police station later in the day.

On Thursday, the ED conducted searches at I-PAC’s office in Kolkata’s Salt Lake area, the residence of the firm’s head Pratik Jain and the office of a trader in the city’s Posta neighbourhood in connection with an investigation into alleged money laundering.

I-PAC, or the Indian Political Action Committee, has managed the Trinamool Congress’ election campaigns, including in the 2021 Assembly elections.

Banerjee arrived at Jain’s home around noon while the search was underway and stayed for about 20 to 25 minutes. She then came out with a green file and claimed that the central agency’s officials were “taking away” party documents ahead of the Assembly elections.

The state is expected to head for polls in the next three to four months.

Banerjee alleged that the ED was confiscating the Trinamool Congress’ “documents and hard disks, which has details about our party candidates” for the elections.

On the other hand, the central agency on Thursday accused Banerjee of entering Jain’s residence and taking away “key evidences including physical documents and electronic devices”.

It stated that the searches had been conducted in a “peaceful manner” until Banerjee arrived at the site. It claimed that the “search is evidence-based and is not targeted at any political establishment”, and said that no party office had been searched.

On Friday, Banerjee filed one complaint against unidentified ED officials and Central Reserve Police Force personnel at the Shakespeare Sarani police station in connection with the searches at Jain’s Loudon Street residence.

She filed a second complaint against unidentified ED officials at the Electronic Complex police station under the Bidhannagar Police in connection with the searches at I-PAC’s office in the Salt Lake area.

A police officer told PTI that the case at the Shakespeare Sarani police station had been filed under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to criminal intimidation, theft and criminal trespass, as well as under Section 66 of the Information Technology Act.

This section deals with computer-related offences, criminalising dishonest or fraudulent acts like unauthorised access or data damage.

Similar sections were invoked in the FIR based on the chief minister’s second complaint.

Additionally, the police also filed a suo motu case at the Shakespeare Sarani police station against the ED on Thursday evening, according to the news agency.

The searches on Thursday were based on a first information report filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation into an alleged coal smuggling syndicate that was used to “steal and illegally excavate coal from ECL [Eastern Coalfields Limited] leasehold areas of West Bengal”, the ED said.

Hours after the raids by the ED, the Trinamool Congress and I-PAC moved the Calcutta High Court challenging the legality of the searches at several locations linked to the political consultancy in Kolkata and Bidhannagar.

The ED also approached the court, alleging “illegal interference” during its search operations.

During the hearing of the matter on Friday, Justice Suvra Ghosh rose from her chair as there was chaos in the courtroom before she could hear the petitions filed by the ED and the Trinamool Congress, The Indian Express reported.

The court listed the matter for hearing on January 14.

Mamata attends protest rally against ED raids

Banerjee on Friday also took part in a protest rally against the ED raids, saying that one cannot have the Bharatiya Janata Party rule India, the Hindustan Times reported. The Trinamool Congress chief added that the Opposition needs to “win Delhi” after winning the Assembly elections in West Bengal.

Defending her arrival at Jain’s home when the central agency was conducting its raids on Thursday, the chief minister said that she had “every right to protect” herself and repeated her allegations of theft of confidential data.

“Whatever I did yesterday, I did as the All India Trinamool Congress chairperson,” the newspaper quoted her as saying. “I did nothing wrong…Why did they [ED] come like thieves? They were stealing our party’s confidential data from the I-PAC office, which we had authorised.”

Banerjee also threatened to “reveal” confidential information about the BJP if she was targeted.

Today, Bengal showed the streets what its roar truly sounds like. Row after row, people poured out in numbers that left no room for doubt.

Answering the call of Hon’ble Chairperson Smt. @mamataofficial, ordinary citizens stepped forward to give a fitting reply to every… pic.twitter.com/Z3d8ACxX4v

— All India Trinamool Congress (@AITCofficial) January 9, 2026

India stated that the characterisation of the trade discussions between New Delhi and Washington by United States Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick during a podcast was “not accurate”. Lutnick had claimed that the proposed trade deal between India and the US did not materialise because Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not call US President Donald Trump.

He claimed that India was “uncomfortable” with Modi calling Trump to finalise the deal, and so the US moved on and concluded trade deals with other countries. Lutnick said that the conditions under which India and the US had earlier appeared close to finalising a deal were no longer available.

Responding to this, India’s Ministry of External Affairs stated that New Delhi and Washington have held multiple rounds of negotiation “to arrive at a balanced and mutually-beneficial” trade deal. “Incidentally, prime minister [Modi] and President Trump have also spoken on phone on eight occasions during 2025, covering different aspects of our wide-ranging partnership,” said ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal. Read on.

Responding to New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani writing a note to jailed activist Umar Khalid in December, the Indian government said that public representatives are expected to respect the independence of the judiciary in other democracies. “Expressing personal prejudices do not behove those in office,” said Jaiswal.

Mamdani had written a note to Khalid, saying that he often thought about the activist’s words on bitterness and the “importance of not letting it consume one’s self”. “We are all thinking of you,” the note added. Read on.

Ramachandra Guha: In praise of Dr Umar Khalid, from one historian to another

The Delhi Police detained several MPs of the Trinamool Congress while they were protesting outside the office of Union Home Minister Amit Shah. The MPs were protesting against what the party alleges were illegal searches by the Enforcement Directorate at several locations in West Bengal, including the office of political consultancy I-PAC.

They were released later. I-PAC has managed the Trinamool Congress’ election campaigns, including in the 2021 Assembly elections.

The party said that the action against its MPs was “undemocratic, unconstitutional, shameful”. TMC chief Mamata Banerjee had claimed that the ED officials, during the searches, were “taking away” party documents ahead of the Assembly polls. Read on.

Social media platform X appeared to have limited the image-generation feature of the company’s artificial intelligence application Grok to subscribers. This came after the tool drew condemnation for creating non-consensual sexually explicit photos.

Grok had allowed requests by users to digitally manipulate photos of real persons – mostly women – by undressing them and sexualising their images without their consent. The change limiting the use of the feature to subscribers came after the United Kingdom government on Friday asked regulator Ofcom to use its powers, including an effective ban, against the social media platform.

However, the standalone Grok app was still allowing users to generate such images without subscribing. The Indian government had on January 2 directed X to remove sexually explicit content generated by Grok. Read on.

A Delhi court on Friday framed charges against Bihar’s former Chief Minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal president Lalu Prasad Yadav in a money-laundering case linked to an alleged land-for-jobs scam. Charges were also framed against his son and party leader Tejashwi Yadav.

A total of 103 persons had been named as accused in the case by the Central Bureau of Investigation, of which five have died. Of the remaining 98, the court discharged 52. Read on.

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A Delhi court on Friday framed charges against Bihar’s former Chief Minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal president Lalu Prasad Yadav in a money-laundering case linked to an alleged land-for-jobs scam, Live Law reported.

The case centres on allegations that between 2004 and 2009, when Yadav was the Union railway minister, land was illegally acquired at reduced prices in exchange for appointments to Group-D positions in the Indian Railways.

The Central Bureau of Investigation filed its chargesheet in the matter on October 10, 2022, naming Yadav and his wife Rabri Devi, among several others.

On Friday, Special Judge Vishal Gogne of the Rouse Avenue Courts said that Yadav and his family acted as a criminal syndicate, Live Law reported.

“The court finds on the touchstone of suspicion that there existed an overarching conspiracy by Lalu Prasad Yadav towards using public employment as a bargaining chip for receiving immovable properties for his family (daughters, wife and sons),” the legal news portal quoted the judge as saying.

Gogne added that the chargesheet filed by the central agency indicated Yadav’s close associates were also facilitated as conspirators. He rejected the petition for discharge filed by Yadav and his family, saying that it was completely unwarranted.

A total of 103 persons had been named as accused in the case by the Central Bureau of Investigation, of which five have died, The Indian Express reported.

Of the remaining 98, the court on Friday discharged 52. These included the Group-D railway substitutes who had not parted with their land and railway officials.

However, charges were framed against the remaining persons accused in the matter, including Devi and Yadav’s son, Tejashwi Yadav.

The Central Bureau of Investigation has alleged that land parcels were transferred to Yadav’s family members, including his wife and daughters Misa Bharti and Hema, at prices significantly below the market value. Those who transferred the land parcels to Yadav’s family were allegedly given jobs in return.

The transfers to Yadav’s family led to them acquiring more than one lakh square feet of land for just Rs 26 lakh, compared to a circle rate of more than Rs 4.39 crore, the probe agency has alleged.

Four of the holiest shrines for Hindus lie high up in the Uttarakhand Himalayas. Travelling to the Chardham – as the shrines are collectively called – always meant braving some risk.

But an expert committee warned in 2020 that the risk would multiply if the government went ahead with its plans to widen the existing roads into double-lane highways, which would leave the mountains unstable.

The Modi government ignored the warning.

And now, the fallout is being felt on the ground, with an increased number of landslides being reported along the Chardham route.

Over 300 km, driving between Rishikesh and Badrinath, we used a GPS app to tag the location of every landslide that we encountered. The number of landslides we recorded was startling – as were the stories of loss and damage we collected along the way.

Watch our report to find out more.

Also read: On the road to Chardham, a landslide every two kilometres

Responding to New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani writing a note to jailed activist Umar Khalid in December, the Indian government on Friday said that public representatives are expected to respect the independence of the judiciary in other democracies.

“Expressing personal prejudices do not behove those in office,” Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said during a press briefing. “Instead of such comments, it would be better to focus on the responsibilities entrusted to them.”

On January 1, Khalid’s partner Banojyotsna Lahiri said on social media that Mamdani had sent a handwritten note to the jailed activist. The letter was handed to Khalid’s parents during their visit to the United States in December.

Mamdani wrote that he often thought about Khalid’s words on bitterness and the “importance of not letting it consume one’s self”.

“We are all thinking of you,” the note added.

Lahiri shared Mamdani’s note on social media the day he was sworn in as the mayor of New York.

Lahiri said that Khalid’s parents, Sahiba Khanam and Syed Qasim Rasool Ilyas, were in the US to visit one of their daughters ahead of a family wedding.

In 2023, Mamdani had read out portions of a letter written by Khalid at an event in New York, in which the activist reflected on not becoming bitter about his circumstances.

Khalid was arrested by the Delhi Police in September 2020.

The activist has been booked in an Unlawful Activities Prevention Act case pertaining to clashes that had broken out in February 2020 among supporters of the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act and those opposing it in North East Delhi. The violence had left 53 dead and hundreds injured. Most of those killed were Muslims.

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.

On Monday, the Supreme Court denied bail to Khalid and another activist, Sharjeel Imam, in the case but allowed the bail applications of five others. The bench said that Khalid and Imam could file bail applications after all protected witnesses were examined or after one year.

It added that there were reasonable grounds to believe that the conduct of the two men was prima facie a terrorist act as defined under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

Earlier December 30, US Congressman James P McGovern and seven other lawmakers also wrote to Indian Ambassador Vinay Mohan Kwatra raising concerns about the “prolonged” pre-trial detention of persons charged in cases related to the 2020 Delhi riots, including Khalid.

Referring to the case, they said that human rights groups, legal experts and the global media had questioned the fairness of the investigation and legal process. They noted that independent inquiries by rights organisations “did not find evidence” linking Khalid to terrorist activity.

The letter highlighted that Khalid had not been found guilty of a crime and “yet the pre-trial treatment to which he has been subjected is punitive in and of itself”.

On January 2, the Bharatiya Janata Party accused Mamdani of interfering in India’s internal affairs after he wrote a note to Khalid. During a press conference, party spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia said that the country would not tolerate it “if any person supports an accused, comments on India’s internal affairs”.

“Each Indian citizen has complete faith in India’s judiciary,” he said, without naming Mamdani or Khalid.. “Who is an outsider to question our democracy and judiciary? And that too in support of someone who wants to break India into pieces? This is not right...”

The Delhi Police on Friday detained Trinamool Congress MPs who were protesting outside Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s office against what the party alleges were illegal searches by the Enforcement Directorate at several locations in West Bengal, including the office of political consultancy I-PAC a day earlier.

The MPs were released from the Parliament Street police station later in the day, PTI reported.

The Trinamool Congress said that the police action of forcibly removing eight of its MPs from a peaceful protest outside the Central Secretariat was “undemocratic, unconstitutional, shameful”.

The party’s Lok Sabha MP Mahua Moitra and Rajya Sabha member Derek O’Brien were among the leaders detained by the police, a video posted on social media showed. The MPs had been taken to the Parliament Street police station.

“This is an open assault on democracy and the Constitution,” West Bengal’s ruling party said on social media. “Only [the BJP]’s fear drives such reckless use of force.”

Shameless Amit Shah using Delhi Police to drag us away from peaceful protest at Home Ministry pic.twitter.com/6UHGvUZEwA

— Mahua Moitra (@MahuaMoitra) January 9, 2026

Hours after the raids by the ED, the Trinamool Congress and the Indian Political Action Committee on Thursday moved the Calcutta High Court challenging the legality of the searches at several locations linked to the political consultancy in Kolkata and Bidhannagar.

I-PAC has managed the Trinamool Congress’ election campaigns, including in the 2021 Assembly elections.

The ED also approached the High Court, alleging “illegal interference” during its search operations. The matter is scheduled to be heard on Friday.

The central law enforcement agency on Thursday conducted searches at I-PAC’s office in Kolkata’s Salt Lake area, the residence of the firm’s head Pratik Jain and the office of a trader in the city’s Posta neighbourhood in connection with an investigation into alleged money laundering.

Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee arrived at Jain’s home around noon while the search was underway and stayed for about 20 to 25 minutes. She then came out with a green file and claimed that the central agency’s officials were “taking away” party documents ahead of the Assembly polls.

The state is expected to head for polls in the next three to four months.

Banerjee alleged that the ED was confiscating the TMC’s “documents and hard disks, which has details about our party candidates” for the polls.

The ED on Thursday accused Banerjee of entering Jain’s residence and taking away “key evidences including physical documents and electronic devices”.

The agency stated that searches had been conducted in a “peaceful manner” until Banerjee arrived at the site. It claimed that the “search is evidence-based and is not targeted at any political establishment”, and said that no party office had been searched.

The searches were based on a first information report filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation into an alleged coal smuggling syndicate that was used to “steal and illegally excavate coal from ECL [Eastern Coalfields Limited] leasehold areas of West Bengal”, the ED said.

The Karnataka Cabinet on Thursday decided to move the Supreme Court against the 2025 Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, reported Deccan Herald.

In a resolution passed unanimously, the Cabinet stated that the Act violates constitutional provisions and undermines the nation’s federal structure, according to Hindustan Times.

The 2025 Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Bill was given assent by the president on December 21, two days after it was passed by Parliament amid protests by Opposition parties. The new rural employment law will replace the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.

The MGNREGA was introduced in 2005 by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance and aimed at enhancing the livelihood security of households in rural areas. The scheme guaranteed 100 days of unskilled work annually for every rural household that wants it, covering all districts in the country.

Under the new law, the number of guaranteed workdays will increase to 125, while states’ share of costs will rise to 40%. The Union government will continue to bear the wage component, with states sharing material and administrative expenses.

The legislation has drawn criticism from economists and labour rights experts.

Speaking to reporters after the Cabinet meeting on Thursday, Karnataka Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister HK Patil said the Union government’s withdrawal of MGNREGA had deprived those living in rural areas of their right to employment, PTI reported.

Patil said panchayats earlier had the authority to decide which work would be taken up in villages, but this power had been removed with the new Act. He added that the Karnataka government strongly opposed the legislation and would contest it politically and legally.

He also said that there was no clarity on how the new scheme would provide 125 days of work.

Patil added that several panchayats had urged the state government to approach the Supreme Court on the matter.

VIDEO | Bengaluru: "We will move court against Centre replacing MGNREGA with VB-G RAM G scheme," says Karnataka Minister HK Patil.

(Full video available on PTI Videos - https://t.co/n147TvrpG7)#Karnataka pic.twitter.com/LlHIkbd0wc

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) January 8, 2026

Meanwhile, during a meeting of Congress legislators, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Thursday said a special two-day session of the legislature would be convened to pass a resolution seeking the restoration of MGNREGA, Deccan Herald reported.

“The BJP-ruled Centre is denying the poor their right to employment,” he said. “By removing Mahatma Gandhi’s name from the new scheme, VB-G-RAM G, the Centre is deliberately creating confusion. The BJP is killing Mahatma Gandhi a second time.”

Also read:

• MGNREGA gone, Centre is puppet master of new scheme with no guarantees

• The end of MGNREGA is the undoing of a social revolution in rural India

A 46-year-old Muslim cattle transporter from Jharkhand’s Godda district was lynched allegedly by a mob on Wednesday near the state’s border with Bihar, The Indian Express reported. His family alleged that he was targeted because of his faith.

The incident took place at night in the Sugabathan area of Godda when Pappu Ansari, a resident of Ranipur village, was returning home from the Shyam Bazaar cattle market in Bihar’s Banka.

A first information report filed on Thursday based on a complaint by his wife Ayesha Begum, alleged that unknown persons had stopped Pappu Ansari’s vehicle and asked him questions.

The complaint alleged that the mob asked him his name and then assaulted him using sharp weapons, including an axe, a farsa and arrows, The Indian Express reported. He died on the spot and his body was dumped in a field nearby.

Pappu Ansari’s family told the newspaper that he had been involved in legal transport of cattle.

His brother-in-law, Furqan Ansari, said that he owned a pickup vehicle and worked as a transporter, moving cattle from one market to another. He added that Pappu Ansari had been doing this work legally for several years and had the necessary documents for it.

The brother-in-law added that Pappu Ansari had gone to the evening cattle market on Wednesday and was returning at night when the mob stopped the vehicle at about 11 pm. “The driver [also with Pappu Ansari] said there were nearly 25 people,” The Indian Express quoted Furqan Ansari as saying.

The vehicle was initially stopped by the mob on the pretext of questioning those inside.

However, the mob soon turned violent and Pappu Ansari asked the driver and others inside to leave with the vehicle, Furqan Ansari added. While others escaped, Pappu Ansari was caught and beaten, Furqan Ansari added.

He claimed that Pappu Ansari was assaulted after the attackers asked him his name and realised that he was Muslim.

“This has nothing to do with cattle theft,” The Indian Express quoted him as saying. “It is about religion.”

Godda Superintendent of Police Mukesh Kumar said that a case had been filed and an investigation was underway.

The proposed trade deal between India and the United States did not materialise because Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not call US President Donald Trump, the country’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick claimed on Friday.

Speaking on a podcast hosted by American venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, Lutnick said that he had set up the deal but finalising it required Modi to call Trump directly.

Lutnick claimed that India was “uncomfortable” with this step and that the call never happened. The US moved on and concluded trade deals with other countries, he added.

“I set the deal up,” he said. “But you had to have Modi call President Trump. They were uncomfortable with it. So, Modi didn’t call.”

BIG BREAKING: India trade deal isn't done because PM Modi did not call Trump, claims US Commerce Secretary Lutnick

"I set the deal up. But you had to have Modi call President Trump. They (India) were uncomfortable with it. So Modi didn't call." pic.twitter.com/gFiUGGaJRl

— Shashank Mattoo (@MattooShashank) January 9, 2026

He said that the US had assumed that the agreement with India would be completed before agreements with Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. The negotiations with those countries were conducted on that assumption, he added.

“So now the problem is, that the deals came out at a higher rate and then India claws back and says oh okay, we are ready,” Lutnick added. “I said ready for what?”

Lutnick said that the conditions under which India and the US had earlier appeared close to finalising a deal were no longer available. However, he added that “India will work it out”.

America went back on the trade deal it had agreed with India, confirms US Commerce Secretary Lutnick

"India remembers the deal we agreed to. I remember it. They tell me you agreed to this deal. I told them I agreed then. Not now" pic.twitter.com/fDEYSxg6ES

— Shashank Mattoo (@MattooShashank) January 9, 2026

Characterisation of talks in remarks ‘not accurate’, says MEA

Responding to Lutnick’s remarks, Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on Friday that the characterisation of the trade discussions in the reported remarks “is not accurate”.

India and the US “were committed” to negotiating the bilateral trade agreement since February 13, 2025, Jaiswal said, adding that the two sides have held multiple rounds of negotiation “to arrive at a balanced and mutually-beneficial” trade deal.

“On several occasions, we have been close to a deal,” he said.

“We remain interested in a mutually-beneficial trade deal between two complementary economies and look forward to concluding it,” the ministry spokesperson said. “Incidentally, prime minister [Modi] and President Trump have also spoken on phone on eight occasions during 2025, covering different aspects of our wide-ranging partnership.”

The comments by Lutnick on Friday came amid trade tensions between the two countries.

Without a trade deal with Washington, Indian goods are facing a combined US tariff rate of 50%. A 25% so-called reciprocal duty was imposed on August 7, followed by an additional 25% punitive levy on August 27.

The punitive tariffs were introduced as part of Trump’s pressure campaign against countries purchasing discounted oil from Russia amid Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

On November 10, Trump said that Washington will bring down the tariffs imposed on India “at some point” and claimed that New Delhi has substantially reduced its purchase of Russian oil. He also said that his country was getting close to a “fair deal” with India.

While India’s external affairs ministry had not commented on Trump’s claim, it has maintained that ensuring stable energy prices and secure supplies were the goals of the country’s energy policy.

After the punitive levies were announced, New Delhi had said it was “extremely unfortunate” that the US had chosen to impose additional tariffs on India “for actions that several other countries are also taking in their own national interest”.

Six rounds of negotiations have been held so far on a proposed bilateral trade agreement, Moneycontrol reported on Friday.

On December 15, Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal said that India and the US are “very close” to finalising an initial trade agreement on tariffs, but he did not specify a deadline.

Lutnick’s remarks on Friday also followed Trump’s approval of a Russia sanctions bill that could pave the way for tariffs of up to 500% on countries such as India for buying Russian oil. The bill could be put to vote in the Congress next week.

The Union government is considering lifting restrictions imposed in 2020 on Chinese companies bidding for Indian government contracts, the Congress alleged on Friday citing a Reuters report.

The report quoting unidentified officials, cited by the Congress, said that the Union finance ministry is planning to scrap the restrictions in view of “reduced border tensions”.

One of the officials told Reuters on Thursday that work was underway to remove requirements for Chinese bidders to register with a government committee. However, the officials were quoted as saying that the decision would require approval from the Prime Minister’s Office.

On Friday, Congress’ communications head Jairam Ramesh described the decision as a reversal of India’s China policy and demanded an explanation from Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the upcoming Budget Session of Parliament.

“This move follows earlier decisions allowing Chinese firms to invest in India’s electronics sector, liberally granting visas to Chinese workers, and comes amid a continuing rise in India’s record trade deficit with China,” Ramesh said on social media.

He said that the report about the restrictions being lifted had come just eight months after Beijing provided what he described as “full military backing (and fronting)” to Pakistan during Operation Sindoor in May, and after China was publicly described by the Indian military as one of its adversaries during the four-day conflict.

Ramesh alleged that the government proposal was part of a broader set of recommendations attributed to the NITI Aayog aimed at removing restrictions on Chinese trade and investments in India.

“This is nothing short of a calibrated capitulation to Chinese aggression, born out of the prime minister’s own weakness – as demonstrated most shamefully by his public clean chit to China on June 19, 2020,” Ramesh said.

Border tensions between India and China escalated in June 2020 when a violent face-off between Indian and Chinese soldiers took place in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley along the Line of Actual Control. It led to the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers. Beijing said that the clash left four of its soldiers dead.

Ramesh’s comment was an apparent reference to Modi’s claim on June 19, 2020, that Chinese soldiers had not entered Indian territory and no Indian posts had been taken over during the face-off.

The Congress leader said on Friday that the “humiliating kowtowing” was taking place despite what he described as continuing challenges along the Line of Actual Control, including restrictions on Indian soldiers from accessing traditional patrolling areas in the region, China’s military presence in eastern Ladakh, tensions over Arunachal Pradesh and Beijing constructing the Medog dam on the Brahmaputra river.

Beijing refers to Arunachal Pradesh as Zangnan. It lays territorial claims over a large portion of the state, claiming that it is “South Tibet”. India has rejected China’s claims.

Eight months after China gave full military backing (and fronting) to Pakistan during Operation Sindoor and was described by Deputy Chief of Army Staff Lt Gen Rahul R Singh as one of India’s “adversaries”, the Modi government is now proposing to lift five‑year-old curbs on…

— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) January 9, 2026

Following the military face-off in eastern Ladakh in June 2020, both countries deployed thousands of soldiers along with heavy artillery in the region.

New Delhi imposed trade restrictions that required Chinese companies seeking Indian government contracts to register with a committee, and secure political and security clearances.

Since the Galwan clashes, China and India have held several rounds of military and diplomatic talks to resolve their border standoff.

In October 2024, the two countries announced that they had reached a patrolling arrangement along the Line of Actual Control, “leading to the disengagement” of the two militaries in eastern Ladakh.

Initial rounds of disengagement occurred at several points of tension, including Galwan Valley, Hot Springs and Pangong Tso, but Demchok and Depsang had remained points of contention.

In July, the Indian Army said that Pakistan had been receiving real-time intelligence from China about India’s important military deployments during the four-day conflict in May.

Lieutenant General Rahul R Singh, the deputy Army chief (capability development and sustenance), had said that India was effectively up against three adversaries during the conflict with Pakistan leading the front, China offering extensive support and Turkey playing an important role by providing drones “along with trained individuals who were there”.

Also read: Modi in China: New détente or a progressive trajectory?

On a late July evening, Ashish Dimri wound up work at his hotel. He then retired to his home in the same building. As he and his family went into deep slumber, heavy rains started to batter their village, Kaleshwar, high up in the mountains in Uttarakhand.

Around midnight, Dimri woke up to desperate calls of help from outside. When he looked out of his window at the road outside, he saw that large boulders and a mass of mud had fallen and almost buried a car of tourists. Dimri rushed out to help them.

While the tourists were pulled out of the debris in time, in the next four hours, the road became unrecognisable – boulders blocked it and mud and trees continued to slide onto it.

At 4 am, realising that even his house was on shaky ground, Dimri moved his family and staff, and the tourists, whom he had sheltered, to a relative’s home 5 km away. That was the last night the family slept in their own home.

“The mountain had come down,” said Dimri, when we met him in late October.

This was no ordinary landslide.

The road on which Dimri’s hotel stood is part of the Chardham Pariyojana, a project to widen around 890 km of existing roads in the Garhwal Himalayas to 12-metre double-laned highways. The project, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched in 2016, was supposed to make it easier and quicker for pilgrims to commute to four Hindu shrines in Uttarakhand – Kedarnath, Badrinath, Yamunotri and Gangotri. A fifth road that falls under the project connects Tanakpur to Pithoragarh.

But early on, an expert committee had warned that widening roads in the region without adequately protecting slopes ran significant risks. Appointed by the Supreme Court in 2019 in response to a petition filed by an NGO challenging the project, the committee found that out of the 174 slopes that were cut along just one stretch of the project between Tanakpur and Pithoragarh, 102 had become prone to landslides. The committee made recommendations to limit the damage, but these were eventually not accepted.

Now, as the project gathers pace, the consequences are becoming clear. This year, the Chardham yatra was suspended several times during the monsoon because of heavy rains and repeated landslides. Three pilgrims were also killed in a landslide.

For many living along the route, the project is extracting a heavy cost.

In Silli, a town nestled on the banks of the Mandakini river, on the Rishikesh-Kedarnath route, residents recounted that they began noticing a worrying phenomena in the landscape after construction on the Chardham highway began in 2019.

Pradeep, an owner of a mechanic shop on the road, pointed towards a landslide a little ahead of his shed, and explained that while elsewhere around his village, rain had historically triggered minor rockfalls and landslides, this particular location had only seen a landslide after the road was cut, and that its intensity was much more severe than the others.

“If they keep cutting for the road here, then the mountain will come down completely,” said Pradeep. “This settlement will cease to exist.”

Dimri’s home was on the Rishikesh-Badrinath portion of the Chardham route. Four months after the landslide in Kaleshwar, boulders still lay in front of his home – at the same spot where they had fallen in July after, slamming into a wall, cracking it and leaving glass windows shattered. He said he had not received any compensation for the damage.

Two policemen were directing traffic alongside the debris, in one direction at a time. Around 15 minutes after we reached, a bulldozer arrived at the location, and began scooping up muck and levelling the potholes with it, as a temporary measure to make traffic movement easier.

“Ever since the widening work began here last year, we had told the authorities to at least make a concrete wall to prevent the mountain from sliding,” said Dimri. He pointed to some patches of a brick-and-mortar wall that were visible amid the rocks and mud of the landslide – such protection walls are sometimes built to provide support to slopes that are cut to widen the road. “They made a weak wall that did not hold the falling rocks at all,” Dimri added.

Indeed, authorities have failed to build sufficiently strong protective walls right from the initial years of the project’s construction – as the Supreme Court-appointed committee had observed in 2019. “The most important observation by all the members of the committee was that very steep slopes were being cut and the security walls were breaking,” said Ravi Chopra, the head of the committee, when we met him in Dehradun on our way to the hills.

Over the next 300 km, driving between Rishikesh and Badrinath, we used a GPS app to tag the location of every landslide that we encountered. Dimri’s hotel was the location of the hundred-and-ninth landslide. By the time we reached Badrinath, 10,000 feet above the sea level, the count had climbed to 164.

“This is the national highway, this is the Chardham yatra,” Dimri said, shaking his head in disappointment as the bulldozer worked. “So many people come for darshan, is this what they have to see on the way to it?”

This story is part of Common Ground, our in-depth and investigative reporting project. Sign up here to get the stories in your inbox soon after they are published.

Geologists have pointed out that the risks of cutting the mountains to widen roads are exacerbated by the Himalayas’ inherent geological vulnerabilities.

A key reason for this is that large portions of the Chardham road go through the lesser Himalayas, which are mainly made up of relatively weak sedimentary rocks. In contrast, the higher Himalayas are made up of harder rocks, including igneous rocks like granite.

Further, three main thrusts or faults lie between the two regions, where tectonic plates push into each other – these faults make the region seismically active, and continue to raise the height of the mountains. “This is why Himalaya are young fragile mountains that are still evolving,” said Chopra.

He also noted that the rocks of the Himalayas tended to be disjointed – this, combined with the region’s tectonic instability, encouraged the formation of cracks and fissures. “So even if the rock itself is hard, the slope is weak because it has fissures,” Chopra said.

Indeed, a 2018 circular by the ministry of road transport and highways, had taken note of this fragility and overruled an older 2012 notification of the ministry that had recommended the construction of two-lane highways in hilly regions. The 2018 circular observed that building two-lane roads was not advisable in the mountains since it could result in “destabilisation of hill slopes” and damage to “higher contours on hills due to excavation works”, and would entail “large scale felling of precious trees”.

Chopra explained that when the committee was on the site inspection tour, all members had noticed the problems of vulnerable slopes and their cutting.

But the question of the committee’s recommendations became deeply contentious, and led to a split within it.

Five members suggested that the route should only be widened to 5.5 metres and cited the 2018 notification in support of their recommendation. They stated that the terrain would become “extremely unstable” if roads were widened to accommodate increased traffic “without due care and attention to engineering geology”. They recommended a “critical reevaluation considering inherent geological and geomorphological constraints”.

Fifteen other members, most of whom were government officials, however, rejected this recommendation and instead suggested a 12-metre road. Both these recommendations were compiled in the same report. After a hearing in September 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the recommendation to limit the width of the road to 5.5 metres.

But just three months later, the ministry of defence filed an application in the court, seeking a modification of this ruling, stating that the region needed a 10-metre-wide two-lane road in the “interest of the security of the nation and for defence of its borders”. This was a U-turn: while the high-powered committee was preparing its report, the then chief of army staff had told the members that the Indian army’s requirements were fulfilled by the existing roads.

The court accepted this request and modified its earlier order, saying that “armed forces’ infrastructure needs have to be met to safeguard borders, and highways that are of strategic importance cannot be treated the same way as those in other hilly terrains”. It allowed the widening of roads on the Chardham route to resume.

Many residents of the region that we spoke with agreed that it needed better roads, but expressed concern about the pace and design of the Char Dham project. Whether it was for the movement of people or troops, “We need disaster resilient roads,” said YP Sundriyal, a Himalayan geologist and adjunct faculty at Doon University. But, he added, “These roads are causing disaster after another.”

As we travelled through the region, we saw first-hand how the road-widening process destabilised slopes.

Ascending from Rishikesh, we came to a stretch of about 8 km called Tota Ghati. Here, to widen the road, the mountain had been cut to leave steep slopes above – in some cases, completely vertical slopes.

The high-powered committee report had noted that Tota Ghati had been a stable region before the Chardham project, and that “haphazard cutting” converted the region “into a disaster prone passage for local and defence movement”.

“The dominant rock in Tota Ghati is limestone,” said Sundriyal. “When the machines were not able to cut this rock, engineers used JCB and blasting.” He explained that engineers often used dynamite to blast this stretch, which led to the formation of “vertical cracks” in the mountains.

Further, Sundriyal said, “If natural slopes are cut and made vertical without giving it support at the bottom, then the loose material will come down” as landslides.

An official from the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation, or NHIDCL, one of the implementing agencies of the Chardham project, agreed that cutting the mountain for the road had triggered landslides in the region. “If the slope is cut vertically, then sometimes they become stable over time, but many of them do not,” he said, requesting anonymity because he was not authorised to speak with the media.

He explained that scientifically cutting a mountain would entail creating a gentle slope rather than a vertical one. But, he added, such slope-cutting would require more land – in this region, that would include significant chunks of forest land, for the use of which approval from the forest department would be needed.

The official then showed us an exercise that he was carrying out similar to what we were attempting, to assess the roads after the monsoons – on a piece of paper, he had noted down latitudes and longitudes of landslides he had spotted on a 30-km stretch of the Chardham route for which he was responsible. He had marked at least 20 landslides.

Chopra explained that road widening also led to landslides when authorities did not create proper exit channels for water.

In an ideal scenario, he noted, after the road is cut, channels are also created that run along it, through which rainwater can flow, and which are directed down the slope through other channels at regular intervals – this helps prevent water from accumulating along roads, and weakening slopes. “The basic principle is that water is the enemy of the slope,” said Chopra.

In Gathra, a village in Chamoli on the Badrinath route, residents are suffering the consequences of this lack of drainage.

“If the road was made with a proper system, if they had provided us a drain, then any water, like rainfall, would go away on its own,” explained resident Anil Kumar. But after the road construction at the base of the mountain began around 2017, Kumar said, water collected along it without draining away. This eroded and weakened the mountain and led to it sinking.

Several homes in their village had developed severe cracks. “It’s not like this was some existing sinking zone,” said another resident who was on his morning walk. “People have been living here for ages without experiencing any sinking. This is a man-made issue.” He added, “Zyada vikas bhi vinash ho sakta hai” – too much development can be a disaster.

Along our 300-km journey, many locals articulated similar reasoning, which had led them to conclude that the widening work had caused landslides. “We see these landslides only on this national highway where the widening has happened,” said an electric appliance shop owner in Devprayag. “We don’t see them in the narrower state highways that connect our villages.”

In Karnprayag, Bhawan Singh Rawat’s home was one of 38 that had developed massive cracks in recent years.

Locals first noticed these cracks appear when the mountain on which their locality was built was carved out for a vegetable market. But after road-widening work began here in 2019, the appearance of cracks increased dramatically, especially in those homes on the portion of the mountain that was cut for widening.

Most of the impacted families moved out of the locality, either to relatives’ homes or, like Rawat, to rented accommodations. But every morning, Rawat walks to his home to spend the day there, before returning to the place he rented to sleep.

We spotted him on the morning we visited – he was sitting on a chair in the balcony of the third floor of his home, looking down at traffic. It seemed risky, given that the two floors below looked completely dilapidated.

“There is nothing to do there in the rented home, the rooms are so small,” said Rawat, who is almost 90.

Of the owners of 38 houses that developed cracks, the NHDCL has compensated only four. Mukesh Khanduri was among them. “Initially, they were not accepting that the sinking and cracks were because of them,” he said. He explained that the corporation argued that the problem could not have been caused by road-widening work since the construction was not directly impacting their homes.

But Khanduri and others argued that the work had destroyed the “roots” of the land in the area, “which were the large rocks, trees, and protection walls”. Once that base was weakened, Khanduri explained, the land started to sink, causing cracks in homes. A half-foot wide crack ran through a wall in his home, which he had filled with rocks in an attempt to provide some vertical support to the structure.

“Many disasters like earthquakes and cloudbursts are natural, we cannot do anything about them,” said Khanduri. “But this is unscientific work happening here. This is not natural.”

Khanduri first raised his complaint with officials in 2021, but only received the compensation early this year. His neighbour Purshottam Kothiyal, with whom he shares a boundary wall, was not compensated. “The houses are next to each other here,” said Kothiyal. “If my neighbour got the compensation, then everyone here should have gotten.”

Cracks run over the walls of his home too. We spotted a “crackometer”, a small plastic device that the administration had installed over a crack, like a band-aid, which measures the expansion of cracks over time. The device indicated that the crack had extended to almost 20 mm, or a little more than half an inch. “When they first put the crackometer two years ago it was very small,” said Kothiyal. He continues to live there with his wife.

In Silli, residents had another problem. This October, many residents woke up to notices on their doors that instructed them to vacate their homes in the next two days because the land would be needed to widen the road.

This came as a shock to many, since this work had begun in 2019, and one round of demolitions had already been carried out. “When they first demarcated it, they told us that around 14-metre-wide roads will be made,” said Manoj Benjwal, a resident.

Benjwal earlier had shops that fell within the land that was acquired for the widening work and hence were demolished – he believed that would be the last of his troubles. “But now about a month ago they told us that they will be demolishing up to 24 metres,” he said. Indeed, when we visited, several homes and shops were being demolished in Silli.

“Nowhere in the Rishikesh-Badrinath road has the widening been done up to 24 metres,” said Benjwal. “Everywhere else it is 12 metres, then why this much here?”

The NHIDCL official offered a clarification on this question. He said that although authorities only planned to widen the road to 12 metres currently, they typically sought to “acquire a right of way of 24 metres” – that is, to acquire rights to use this land for any associated work with the project. But, he added, at many places, this acquisition was stalled after residents protested.

Along our journey, we crossed several “landslide zones” – dusty stretches of road with boulders and debris on both sides, indicators that they had seen several landslides over the years. Many of these zones had existed even before road-widening under the Chardham project began.

Conversations with geologists and locals revealed that there was a contradiction inherent in authorities’ approach to some of these stretches, in contrast with their work on others.

For instance, one of the oldest such zones was Sirobagad, just short of Rudraprayag, which started seeing landslides around 1920. In 1969, the area saw such intense rockfall that the flow of the Alaknanda river, which runs parallel to the road, was blocked.

Incidents like this led the high-powered committee to term Sirobagad landslide the “most notorious” one “to affect Indian road network”. In 2020, the Supreme Court asked the committee to submit another detailed report examining the defence ministry’s application. In this submission, the committee noted that though the government had spent “crores of rupees” on trying to tackle the problem, it had not been successful – and that the landslide zone remained active today.

The committee found that authorities overseeing the road-widening work in the area took its history of landslides into account and, unlike on other portions of the Chardham route, carried out only minimal work on it.

But this caution did not extend to several other such “chronic” landslide and subsidence zones, the committee stated in its report. These “would have required special care and engineering treatment during the road widening by CD Pariyojana, but were ignored”, the committee observed.

Now, in the last year, the NHIDCL and the Public Works Department of Uttarakhand have been attempting different mitigation measures in many areas on the route, after most of the road widening has been completed. The most common measure we saw at work was “anchoring” – a process in which hollow iron poles between 10 and 15 metres long are drilled into the mountain, and concrete poured through them to fill cracks in mountains. This, authorities claim, can help stabilise a slope.

Sundriyal expressed doubts over whether this method was advisable. “Putting cement inside is dangerous,” he said. “This process is not making the rock any stronger.”

Another measure entailed covering mountain slopes with strong iron meshes intended to catch any large boulders falling onto the road. At a point between Totaghati and Devprayag, we had a short conversation with workers installing the iron mesh on the mountain face. “What is the advantage?” said one worker disinterestedly. “When large boulders fall into the mesh, the entire mesh will come down. We’ll have to put it up again.”

On mountain after mountain along our journey, we saw one of these two measures. “We have started to do these measures wherever we have noticed sliding happened because of the road cutting,” said the NHIDCL official. “Since we just started this year, we are yet to see how successful this measure would be.”

When we finally reached Badrinath, the Chardham season was coming to an end for the year, and only a thin stream of tourists were visiting the temple. The town’s few restaurants, hotels, and resthouses would soon wind up, and most locals would travel to Joshimath and Auli at lower altitudes to spend the winters.

A young prashad seller who was stationed on the path leading up to the Badrinath temple explained that this monsoon had seen roadblocks at several places in the area, especially in the last stretch from Joshimath to Badrinath, often leaving only a single lane operational. “We are looking forward to the next season,” he said. “This season was quite poor because of the rain.”

As we continued to drive downhill, we crossed the several landslides that we marked earlier, and passed through Joshimath, a town that has been in the news for its crisis of land subsidence, even as large hydropower projects come up near it, as well as a new railway line being built by blasting through the mountains from Rishikesh to Karnprayag.

As we drove through Karnprayag, dusk had fallen. We could not help but gaze up at 90-year-old Rawat’s dilapidated three storied home – there he was, sitting on his chair, peering down at the road.

This report was funded by Scroll readers.

The Delhi High Court has said that forcing a woman to continue with a pregnancy violates her bodily integrity and harms mental health, PTI reported.

The order was passed on Tuesday in a matter in which a man had filed a case against his wife after their separation for medically terminating her 14-week pregnancy.

While highlighting a woman’s autonomy to seek an abortion in cases of marital discord, Justice Neena Bansal Krishna said that the petitioner-wife could not be said to have committed an offence under Section 312 of the Indian Penal Code, which pertains to causing miscarriage.

The Indian Penal Code was replaced by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita in July 2024.

The court observed that freedom of choice is an essential facet of personal autonomy, and that the control over reproduction is a basic need and right of all women, PTI reported.

It also said that the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act does not require a woman to obtain her husband’s consent for terminating a pregnancy.

“If a woman does not want to continue with the pregnancy, then forcing her to do so represents a violation of the woman’s bodily integrity and aggravates her mental trauma,” PTI quoted the court as saying. “...which would be deleterious to her mental health.”

The court further said that there are “social, financial and other aspects” attached to a woman’s pregnancy, which, if “unwarranted”, can have serious repercussions, PTI reported.

“It undoubtedly affects mental health,” it added.

A speech by Ladakh-based activist Sonam Wangchuk calling for peace was illegally suppressed from the detaining authority under the National Security Act, lawyer Kapil Sibal told the Supreme Court on Thursday, according to Live Law.

A bench of Justices Aravind Kumar and Prasanna Varale was hearing a habeas corpus petition filed by Wangchuk’s wife Gitanjali Angmo, who argued that his detention under the National Security Act was illegal and violated his fundamental rights.

Appearing for Angmo, Sibal argued that the suppression of material favourable to the detainee indicated “malice”, which constituted grounds to invalidate the detention order, Live Law reported.

Wangchuk was arrested in Leh on September 26 under the National Security Act, two days after four persons were killed in police firing during protests seeking statehood for Ladakh and its inclusion in the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution. He was later taken to a jail in Rajasthan’s Jodhpur

On Thursday, Sibal argued that the detention order was founded primarily on two videos from September 10 and September 11 and two from September 24. While the grounds of detention were supplied on September 29, the four videos relied upon were not furnished to Wangchuk, which, according to Sibal, violated Article 22 of the Constitution, Live Law reported.

Article 22 of the Constitution guarantees the right of a person in preventive detention to be informed of the grounds of detention.

Sibal further submitted that the grounds of detention were supplied after a delay of 28 days, in clear breach of the statutory timeline.

He added that although the Centre claimed the material had been supplied, there was no proof to substantiate this claim.

What was eventually provided, he argued, were only links to the videos. A pen drive given on September 29 did not contain the four videos, and although a laptop was provided on October 5, this “did not cure the defect”, Live Law reported.

Sibal also informed the court that Wangchuk had repeatedly written from custody pointing out that the videos were missing and requesting copies, but they were never furnished.

With the court’s permission, Sibal then played a video of this speech in open court and highlighted that the activist could be clearly heard stating that the movement should be through peaceful means and “not through violence, stones or arrows,” Live Law reported.

Sibal told the court that the tenor of the speech was not one that threatened national security or propagated violence, but one was consistent with national unity and integrity.

“According to detention law, if the detaining authority is aware of a certain fact that is central to what happened on [September 24], which is a video relied upon to show that I am propagating violence, then in centrality it must also include a video which in fact states through Wangchuk’s words that he was against violence,” Live Law quoted Sibal as submitting before the court.

The court has listed the matter for further hearing on January 12.

On September 24, police firing and violence broke out in Leh. Demonstrators clashed with and threw stones at the police, and set fire to the Bharatiya Janata Party office and a police vehicle.

The Union government has claimed that the violence was incited by Wangchuk’s “provocative statements”.

In October, Angmo filed a petition before the Supreme Court challenging his detention. She has contended that the order relied on “stale, irrelevant, and extraneous” first information reports, many of which did not name Wangchuk.

Also read: Nine false claims about Sonam Wangchuk – and why they fall flat

The Trinamool Congress and political consultancy firm I-PAC on Thursday moved the Calcutta High Court, challenging the legality of searches conducted by the Enforcement Directorate at several locations linked to the firm in Kolkata and Bidhannagar earlier in the day, The Times of India reported.

Earlier in the day, the Enforcement Directorate also approached the Calcutta High Court, alleging “illegal interference” during its search operations. The matter is slated to be heard on Friday.

The central agency on Thursday conducted searches at I-PAC’s office in Kolkata’s Salt Lake area, the residence of the firm’s head Pratik Jain and the office of a trader in the city’s Posta neighbourhood in connection with an investigation into alleged money laundering.

Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee arrived at Jain’s home around noon while the search was underway and stayed for about 20 to 25 minutes. She then came out with a green file and claimed that the central agency’s officials were seizing party documents ahead of the Assembly polls.

On Friday, Banerjee will lead a protest in Kolkata against the Enforcement Directorate’s searches, ANI reported.

“Is it the duty of [Union] Home Minister Amit Shah and the ED to take away all my party documents?” she asked. “If I go to the Bharatiya Janata Party office, what will be the result?”

I-PAC, founded by political strategist Prashant Kishor, had managed the TMC’s campaign during the 2021 West Bengal Assembly elections, which the party won by a landslide. The state is expected to head for polls in the next three to four months.

The Enforcement Directorate on Thursday accused Banerjee of entering Jain’s residence and taking away “key evidences including physical documents and electronic devices”.

The central agency stated that searches had been conducted in a “peaceful manner” until Banerjee arrived at the site. It claimed that the “search is evidence-based and is not targeted at any political establishment”, and said that no party office had been searched.

The searches were based on a first information report filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation into an alleged coal smuggling syndicate that was used to “steal and illegally excavate coal from ECL [Eastern Coalfields Limited] leasehold areas of West Bengal”, the Enforcement Directorate said.

Banerjee alleged that the ED was confiscating the TMC’s “documents and hard disks, which has details about our party candidates for Assembly polls”.

“I have brought those back,” she said.

She also claimed that ED had “raided my IT sector office, and searched the residence of the in-charge of my IT sector”.

When the government framed the new Viksit Bharat – Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin), it seems to have borrowed the strategy that Greek philosopher Plato described in Republic of the captivating shadow play by puppet masters that conceals the real nature of reality.

Going by the sly acronym VB-G RAM G, the act hides the puppet strings that have effectively ripped a vital economic lifeline for the poorest Indians. It was hastily bulldozed through both houses of Parliament at the end of December.

For the last two decades, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which provided 100 days of guaranteed work a year to any household that requested it, has kept rural India afloat.

In 2025, the law provided employment to 79 million workers – nearly one of every three rural homes. It was the largest anti-poverty public works programme in the world.

VB-G RAMG has not only repealed MGNREGA in toto, but also squashed the legal guarantee to demand work.

MGNREGA was previously a centrally-sponsored scheme, with nearly 90% of the expenditure funded by the Centre, while the states were responsible for implementation.

Now, the central government, as the federal puppet master, while claiming that VB-GRAM G has increased the guarantee to 125 days of work per household, has in reality reduced its financial stake in the scheme.

Puppets of the gods

The new law violates the spirit of Indian fiscal federalism. The fine-print of the financial memorandum at the tail end of VB-GRAM G specifies that of the expected annual expenditure of Rs 1,51,282 crore (presumably for 2026-’27), the Centre will foot the bill for only 60%. The states will effectively have to shell out at least Rs 55,590 crore.

By contrast, in 2024-’25, states spent only Rs 10,120 crore on MGNREGA, mainly on material costs. Hundred percent of the wages of unskilled beneficiaries were funded by the centre.

In addition, VB-G RAM G offers sweeping powers to the central government. Now, the central government sitting in Delhi will not only decide how many workers can be employed by every state but also where they can work.

MGNREGA, on the other hand, was a universal guarantee that all rural families could claim across India, with no restrictions.

The new law will now be applicable only “in such rural areas in the State as may be notified by the Central Government”.

This effectively annihilates the universal guarantee to rural households across India to demand work. There is also no guarantee that the central government will actually pay its 60% share of the expenditure equally to all large states that run the programme.

It is now entirely at the Centre’s discretion to determine the “state-wise normative allocation for each financial year” based on supposed “objective parameters.” This could easily be used by the party in power in New Delhi to favour states that it governs, especially before elections.

Second, the Centre has consolidated its grip on the programme with a clause that all expansions beyond the earmarked budget will have to be borne “by the State Government in such manner and procedure as may be prescribed by the Central Government”.

Third, if employment is not provided to households that ask for it, the law places the financial burden of “unemployment allowance and delay compensation” entirely on the states.

Fourth, though the new law has on paper increased the employment guarantee from 100 days to 125 days, the promise itself is empty.

As experience has shown, rural households on average typically received only 50 days of work each year – half the guaranteed amount. In 2024-’25, for instance, only 7% of MGNREGA households received the full 100 days.

If the guarantee were to genuinely increase to 125 days for all households, the financial commitments from both centre and state would also have to be increased substantially.

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Lastly, since the introduction in late 2025 of the Single Nodal Agency - System for Prompt Release of Assistance for Development to receive real-time matching grants from the centre, states have to deposit their share of spending on centrally sponsored schemes in designated bank accounts in advance upfront.

But the ability of states to fulfil this increased burden is constrained, given that most are cash-strapped and have limited fiscal autonomy.

Fiscal autonomy

Between 2014 and 2025, the debt of all state governments has tripled from Rs 25 lakh crore to Rs 94 lakh crore.

Most states have already breached the debt-gross state domestic product ratio of 20% recommended by the 2017 Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Committee.

“Double-engine” Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states have a weighted average debt of 27% of their gross domestic state product. The average is weighted by the size of each state’s gross domestic product to reflect the size of its economy.

States ruled by National Democratic Alliance governments in which the Bharatiya Janata Party is a partner, have a debilitating load of 35%. States ruled by Opposition parties that were members of the INDIA alliance, meanwhile, have a load of 32%.

Constitutionally, the states also have limited powers to raise taxes and determine expenditure. In 2025-’26, PRS Legislative Research estimates that half of state revenue receipts were spent on committed expenditure such as salaries, pensions and interest payments – which often crowd out other development expenditures.

Opposition-ruled states such as Himachal Pradesh (83%), Kerala (69%), Punjab (74%) and Tamil Nadu (62%) spent the most on these committed items.

Burden on states

Some states have attempted to create their own work-guarantee schemes. In protest against VB-GRAM G, the West Bengal government renamed its Karmashree scheme as Mahatmashree and doubled the guarantee from 50 days of employment to 100 days.

But the work guaranteed in West Bengal has largely been only on paper. For four years, a financial tussle between the central and state government over alleged corruption had led to MGNREGA work being stopped.

It was not restarted despite both the Calcutta High Court and the Supreme Court ordering the central and cash-strapped state government to do so.

With the change in name to VB-GRAM G, firmly associating the law with the ruling party’s Hindutva ideology, Opposition-ruled states are unlikely to be eager to fund the new employment programme.

To establish their direct connection to voters, many have already committed outflows as cash transfers to women, from Tamil Nadu’s Rs 1,000 per month Magalir Urumai Thogai to Jharkhand’s Rs 2,500 CM Maiyan Samman Yojana.

In the last decade, the relationship between the central government and the states has become increasingly fractious. The VB-GRAM G sets a new precedent by burdening states with substantial financial responsibilities against the spirit of fiscal federalism.

The Indian Constitution clearly spells out in Article 258(3) that states have to be financially compensated for additional responsibilities imposed, based on mutual agreement or arbitration. As a consequence, experts say, the new law could be interpreted as unconstitutional.

Nationwide protests

Many opposition-ruled states have already vociferously objected to the new law and may even challenge it in the courts. Punjab and Telangana have already passed resolutions in their assemblies for the restoration of the entire architecture of MGNREGA.

Workers, labour unions, civil society collectives, political parties, too, in their thousands have taken to the streets in state capitals, districts, blocks and villages to demand the restoration of MGNREGA.

As one worker at an online consultation evocatively summarised it, “Yeh pet pe laath, NREGA ko khatam nahi, majdooron ko khatam kar dega.” This kick in the belly will not kill NREGA, it will kill workers.

Swati Narayan teaches at the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, and is the author of Unequal.

India’s eminent ecologist Madhav Gadgil died on January 7. He was 83. His son Siddhartha Gadgil announced the death through a message to all those who had known and worked with Gadgil. His wife, Sulochana Gadgil, had predeceased him in July 2025.

Gadgil died in his home city Pune in Maharashtra. He had done his Bachelor’s from Fergusson College in Pune and Master’s from Mumbai University. He went to Harvard for his PhD on mathematical ecology and fish behaviour.

However, Gadgil did not restrict himself to being a purist academic, but also wanted to learn from the field and use his knowledge for the benefit of people and communities. His initial work involved the studying of sacred groves in the Western Ghats, after which he moved to studying forest and environment policies. In more recent years, he had become widely known for chairing a panel on the conservation of the Western Ghats.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), former environment minister Jairam Ramesh described Gadgil as a “top-notch academic scientist, a tireless field researcher, a pioneering institution builder, a great communicator, a firm believer in people’s networks and movements, and a friend, philosopher and guide to many for over five decades.”

Historian Ramachandra Guha, who had co-authored two books with Gadgil, summarises his unique qualities as a deep knowledge of his land and its people; profound intellectual originality; courage to oppose intellectual fashion; the ability to unite intellectual and practical agendas; strong democratic instincts; and an absence of cynicism.

Raghavendra Gadagkar, who has worked with Gadgil at the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, said: “Madhav Gadgil did pioneering work in life-history evolution under the mentorship of EO Wilson and William Bossert at Harvard University, as a PhD student. Returning to India, he rose to become India’s best-known ecologist and conservation biologist and founded the CES.

“Appreciation and conservation of nature was a way of life for Madhav Gadgil. He was deeply in love with the Western Ghats, its plants, its animals, its birds, its people, and its hills, and strove during his entire life to bring appreciation and respect to them.”

Confidence in democratic institutions

Though Gadgil’s contribution to ecological studies in India is enormous, he had become a household name because of the recommendations of the Western Ghats Ecology Experts Panel submitted to the Ministry of Forests, Environment and Climate Change in August 2011. The panel, chaired by Gadgil, had recommended that the entire Western Ghats mountain chain be declared as an ecologically sensitive area. However, due to impracticalities in such a classification, the panel had suggested demarcating ecologically sensitive zones within the Ghats.

With state governments and local communities registering their reluctance and opposition to the demarcation of ecologically sensitive zones, the panel report has become the topic of much polarised discussions in the Western Ghat states. What was forgotten, in all the acrimony that followed, was the recommendation of the panel to do this process of zoning democratically, with the involvement of the local self-government institutions such as the biodiversity management committees in the villages and urban areas.

Known for his excellent science and blunt articulation, Gadgil created a controversy in 2022, with his statement that the Wildlife Protection Act was anti-people and anti-constitutional. Environment lawyer BJ Krishnan, who was a co-panelist in the Western Ghats Ecology Experts Panel, said that though Gadgil was a “thoroughbred scientist, he promoted community-centric conservation that helped and enhanced the local livelihoods”. This is the guiding principle that reflected in his democratic approach towards the conservation of the Western Ghats and his strong views on the Wildlife Protection Act.

Krishnan remembers how Gadgil always had an abiding interest in the Western Ghats. He was involved with the movement to conserve the Silent Valley rainforests from being submerged under the reservoir of a hydroelectric dam in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Between November 1987 and February 1988, a group of environmental activists and citizens undertook the Save the Western Ghats March, which culminated in a meeting in Goa. At the meeting, Gadgil suggested that the march should result in a people’s movement to conserve the Western Ghats.

It is this spirit that got Gadgil involved in the proceedings of a meeting organised in Kotagiri in the Nilgiris district, Tamil Nadu, in 2010, in which Jairam Ramesh had participated. This meeting resulted in the formation of the Western Ghats Ecology Experts Panel. The untiring efforts of the panel led to the panel report which, according to Krishnan, was unparalleled in style, substance and depth.

Institution builder and mentor

Madhav Gadgil initiated the ecological research that led to the establishment of the Centre for Ecological Sciences in 1983. It was the first centre of excellence established by the then Department of Environment (which later grew into the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change). Over the next few decades, the Centre for Ecological Sciences did path-breaking ecological research and also groomed students who went on to become leaders in their own right.

Ecologist RJ Ranjit Daniels remembers him as the lead mentor for all those who came to study at the Centre for Ecological Sciences. Daniels joined Gadgil as a project assistant in 1983, helping his study of human impacts on biodiversity in Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka. In 1985, when the Centre for Ecological Sciences called for PhD students for the first time, Daniels applied and was selected under Gadgil’s guidance to study the birds of Uttara Kannada.

“Gadgil’s unique quality was that he was very open to new ideas,” said Daniels. “Even though he always brimming with ideas of his own, he never thrust any down the throat of his students. While he expressed his views strongly, he was open to others contradicting him.”

He encouraged his students to think independently. “Every time I had a new idea, I used to go to him with it. He used to listen to me patiently, and then pull out a paper or book from his personal library and asked me to read it. I learnt more and could polish my idea,” remembered Daniels.

Jayshree Vencatesan of the Care Earth Trust, who continued to receive mentorship from Gadgil even after she had completed her formal education, remembers him to be open to even diametrically opposite schools of thought. “On one hand he would be guiding students on mathematical ecology, while also discussing traditional knowledge.”

He was also open to his ideas being used by others without attribution, as long as they delivered results. After the publication of the Western Ghats Ecology Experts Panel report, Gadgil’s name became anathema to many state governments that had the Western Ghats running through them, for keeping aside areas for conservation is not an idea that administrators like. However, Vencatesan’s organisation could get policy action implemented by anonymising the ideas in their reports.

Gadgil was a recipient of multiple national and international awards and he was elected as a fellow in various academies of science. He received the Padma Bhushan in 2006. In 2021, a new species of plant from the Nelliyampathi hills of the Western Ghats was named in Gadgil’s honour – Elaeocarpus gadgilii.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

Judicial directions to reduce the Goods and Services Tax on air purifiers would be unconstitutional and violate the doctrine of separation of powers, the Union government has told the Delhi High Court, Bar and Bench reported on Thursday.

In an affidavit filed on Sunday, the Union government noted that the GST Council was the sole body empowered to make decisions on the indirect tax under Article 279A of the Constitution. It added that tax rates were determined through cooperative federalism while also balancing competing fiscal interests.

Any judicial interference in the matter would bypass this constitutionally mandated process, it said.

The affidavit was submitted in response to a public interest litigation filed by advocate Kapil Madan, seeking directions to categorise air purifiers as a “medical device” and lower the GST levied on them to 5% from 18%.

On December 24, the court had directed the GST Council to convene an urgent meeting and consider lowering the levies on air purifiers in view of the high levels of pollution in Delhi and the surrounding areas.

Two days later, the Union government told the court that reducing the GST on air purifiers to 5% from 18% without following due process will open up a “Pandora’s box”.

The case will be heard by the court on Friday.

In its affidavit submitted ahead of the hearing, the Union government said that any direction issued by the court “to modify GST rates, convene a meeting of the GST Council, or to compel the GST Council to consider or adopt a particular outcome, would amount to the Hon’ble Court stepping into the shoes of the GST Council, thereby, exercising functions that the Constitution has consciously and exclusively entrusted to the GST Council”, Bar and Bench reported.

It added: “Such an exercise would violate the doctrine of separation of powers and render the elaborate and well-defined constitutional role of the GST Council otiose.”

The affidavit also said that the classification of air purifiers as medical devices would subject their import, manufacture, sale, stocking and distribution under the 1940 Drugs and Cosmetics Act and the 2017 Medical Device Rules. This would make their availability in the market regulated, it added.

It described the public interest litigation as a “motivated attempt to secure regulatory reclassification under the guise of public interest”, Bar and Bench reported.

“Such a regulatory shift would have the effect to favour a limited class of entities possessing the requisite licences, registrations, and approvals, thereby creating conditions for monopoly rather than advancing public access,” the legal news portal quoted the Union government as saying.

It added this, in turn, raised serious concerns about who was “really behind the institution of the present petition”.

During the last hearing on December 26, the court had maintained that something should be done to bring down the cost of air purifiers in Delhi in light of the air pollution crisis in the national capital.

“Why can’t it be done?” the bench had asked. “Do whatever you have to do. Right now, an air purifier costs Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000. Why not bring down the GST to a reasonable level where even a common man can afford an air purifier?”

Air quality deteriorates sharply in the winter months in Delhi, which is often ranked the world’s most polluted capital. Stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana, vehicular pollution, along with the lighting of firecrackers during Diwali, falling temperatures, decreased wind speeds and emissions from industries and coal-fired plants contribute to the problem.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee accused the Enforcement Directorate of attempting to “take away” Trinamool Congress documents during searches at locations linked to the political consultancy firm I-PAC. The firm has managed the Trinamool Congress’ election campaigns.

The agency searched the firm’s office in Kolkata’s Salt Lake area, the home of the firm’s head Pratik Jain and the office of a trader in the city’s Posta neighbourhood. The operation was based on an FIR filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation into an alleged coal smuggling syndicate. The ED said that the “search is evidence-based and is not targeted at any political establishment”.

It accused Banerjee of entering Jain’s residence and taking away “key evidences including physical documents and electronic devices”. The agency moved the Calcutta High Court on Thursday, alleging “illegal interference” during its operations. Read on.

Activist Sharjeel Imam told a court that Delhi Police’s allegations that Umar Khalid, a co-accused in the alleged larger conspiracy behind the 2020 Delhi riots, is his mentor and guru are false. Imam said that he never spoke with Khalid during the five years they studied at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

To establish a conspiracy, it is necessary to show there had been an agreement between us, Imam said “But they have failed to show any agreement,” he said.

“There is only one meeting in which Umar and I are seen together,” Imam added. “But even the witness statement from that meeting shows that there was no discussion of violence.” Read on.

Why SC denied bail to Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam but awarded it to five other anti-CAA activists

United States President Donald Trump has approved a bill that could pave the way for tariffs of up to 500% on countries buying Russian oil, said Senator Lindsey Graham. “This bill would give President Trump tremendous leverage against countries like China, India and Brazil to incentivise them” to stop buying Russian oil, said the Republican senator.

The bill could be put to vote in the Congress next week, he said, adding that he is expecting bipartisan support for it.

Without a trade deal with Washington, Indian goods are already facing a combined US tariff rate of 50%. The punitive tariffs on India and others had been introduced as part of Trump’s pressure campaign against countries buying discounted oil from Russia amid Moscow’s war on Ukraine. Read on.

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said that the Union Territory’s government will accommodate the students hurt by the closure of the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence in other institutes through supernumerary seats. These are additional seats created in an educational institute over and above the intake approved by an authority.

The National Conference leader also said that accountability must be fixed if standards were not maintained at the institute. He added that the Union government must also reflect on the injustice done to the students’ futures by shutting down the institute. Read on.

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It is unusual for a slim family memoir to evoke a much larger nostalgia for an age we have left behind, in the way that Rajwati and Her Times succeeds. Through an endearing portrait of her grandmother, the author Madhu Bhaduri – a teacher of philosophy, a distinguished diplomat and a well-regarded Hindi novelist – recalls an age of social conservatism and catastrophic religious violence that was also one of steady reform, of shared living and inter-community trust. She writes of the idealism of the freedom struggle, of women emerging from the confines of domesticity, and of civility and social responsibility in public engagement.

Madhu was a child living with her extended family in Lahore when in 1947 Partition tore the country apart. Mulkraj, a reputed banker was her great-grandfather who refused to leave Lahore even as the city was tempestuously emptied out of its Hindu and Sikh residents. On the night of and August 14 and 15, when Jawaharlal Nehru in Delhi made his epochal Tryst with Destiny address to the Indian nation, Mulkraj died in Lahore, probably of a broken heart.

In the darkness of the night, his son Shivraj and daughter-in-law Rajwati dismantled a door of the house and silently built with it a pyre for his cremation. Theirs was one of the last families that had not fled Lahore. Liaquat Ali, destined to become Pakistan’s first prime minister and a close family friend, smuggled them to the safety of Delhi in his private plane.

Her great-grandfather was deeply influenced by the Arya Samaj: its opposition to idol worship, its support for women’s education but also its downside of antagonism to Muslims. However, he was stubbornly opposed to the division of the country on the basis of religion. In June 1947, Lahore was set on fire. Trainloads of refugees escaping the violence in both directions were slaughtered. His son Shivraj still rejected the counsel even of Nehru, who had told the Punjab Chambers of Commerce and Industry that Lahore was likely to be part of Pakistan so they should shift their factories and businesses to east Punjab. Mulkraj insisted on staying on in Lahore, even as most of the remaining family urged him to shift with them to the safety of that part of the country which would remain in India. Madhu’s grandmother Rajwati and grandfather Shivraj, a secular rationalist, continued in Lahore with their father, even as most friends and families fled. They were among the last to leave the city of their birth, on the private plane of the first prime minister of Pakistan, to build a new life in India.

A prosperous family, the freedom struggle had closely touched their lives in many ways. The great revolutionary Bhagat Singh was born in the house neighbouring that of Madhu’s great-grandmother, and he had played in her lap. Lala Lajpat Rai, a friend of Mulkraj, supported the education of her grandfather Shivraj in America. Raghu, Madhu’s father, after returning to India from his studies in the London School of Economics, joined the Congress Party and, influenced by Mohandas Gandhi, gave up wearing trousers and shirts and replaced these with khadi kurta pyjamas. Much harsher was the fate of another member of the family Balraj, who joined a revolutionary group. Shortly after Rajwati was married and entered her new home, Balraj was arrested for what came to be known as the Lord Hardinge bomb case. The target of the bomb, the viceroy escaped unhurt, but some others were injured. The Lahore High Court punished Balraj with seven years’ imprisonment in the dreaded penal colony in Port Blair in the Andaman Islands. There he suffered torture and isolation, and was released after five years.

Mulkraj raised his children with the teachings of the Arya Samaj, but he still was able to find space for respect for other beliefs and cultures. Shivraj, among his sons, was not religious. He chose to marry Rajwati Seth, from Lucknow. She did not speak Punjabi and was not Arya Samaji. Knowing that the Arya Samaj resolutely opposed idol worship, she hid a locket with Krishna’s image under her clothes. But her husband’s parents were gentle with the newlywed bride’s religious beliefs, as also with her choices of language and dress. Mulkaraj reassured her that she was free to worship in their home in the way she chose. Likewise, she wore her preferred sari to the Punjabi salwar suit, and people who could, conversed with her in Hindi rather than Punjabi.

There was also in wealthy business families respect for those who chose public service over commerce. When Mulkaraj’s younger brother Hansraj spoke to him of his dream of contributing to public education instead of the family’s business, he said he would free him from the responsibility of earning a living, and instead give to him a monthly allowance of forty rupees (which at that time was substantial) so he could pursue his mission unencumbered. This allowed Hansraj to set up a large string of DAV (Dayanand Anglo Vedic) schools and colleges in Punjab, and then in the United Provinces, other northern states, and later even in the Madras Presidency. Years after, Rabindranath Tagore was to dub him Mahatma Hansraj.

The soul of Madhu Bhaduri’s family memoir is accounts of how, even in times when women from privileged families were still expected to live confined to the kitchen and domestic responsibilities, Rajwati Seth still asserted – always with quiet dignity and grace – her agency and choice. Born in Lucknow in 1896, her father, a judge, withstood the social conservatism of the times to send his daughter to a prestigious missionary school. Teaching was in English in the Christian convent school.

Her elder sister was widowed at the age of 16. Rajwati watched with grief the social ostracism that was heaped on her because of her widowhood, that barred her from joining festivities in weddings and festivals like Diwali. It took many years for her father to muster the courage to break social norms to arrange the remarriage of his daughter to a widower.

We saw how Rajwati, married into a Punjabi Arya Samaji family, persisted with her religious beliefs including worshipping a Krishna idol. She would speak of being drawn to the Christian faith along with her devotion to Krishna. The Arya Samaj shared with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh a deep hostility against Muslims, but Rajwati and Shivraj welcomed many Muslim friends to their home. Madhu Bhaduri recalls that many decades later, when she was preparing to leave for her studies in Cambridge University, her mother tried to set these boundaries for her: “Marry anyone except a Muslim”. But her grandmother Rajwati gently took her aside and said, “If you find someone of your choice, don’t hesitate to marry him. Follow your instinct”. It did not matter if he is Muslim, she said. Your parents will ultimately accept him.

Her husband Shivraj encouraged Rajwati to learn to drive a car. Successful as a banker, he established many factories, and set about building his dream house on the upscale Race Course Road in Lahore. He established one of the first production units for electric fans in the country, and proudly told his wife that every room would have a ceiling fan. Until then, fans were large horizontal stretches of cloth or canvas that were manually operated by servants sitting outside the room with a rope. “Why do we need a fan in every room?” she remonstrated with her husband. “ Why can’t the whole family sit together under one fan? What is the need to show off?”

After fleeing Lahore in 1947, the family moved into a large house in civil lines in Rajpur Road in Delhi. At that time, there were 16 families uprooted from Pakistan sharing that house. The family thrived, but as she grew older she wanted to give up her life of luxury. She found solace and meaning in an ashram in Rishikesh on the banks of the Ganga. She lived there in a small austere room. Her husband would visit her from time to time, but missed non-vegetarian food and the conveniences of his city life. Madhu and her friends would also visit her. One of them remarked that when Rajwati spoke, it sounded like a shower of flowers.

During Madhu’s postings as a diplomat to distant countries – Vietnam and Mexico – her grandmother would regularly write to her, and to Madhu’s two young daughters.

The last time that Madhu met her was when she returned to Delhi for a brief vacation in 1984, shortly after the massacre of Sikhs in the national capital in unhinged retribution for prime minister Indira Gandhi’s assasination. Rajwati was deeply saddened. “Religion does not teach us violence", she said, shaking her head. She had borne witness to this violence many years earlier, in Lahore. And now, once again.

In spare and chiselled prose, Madhu Bhaduri, through her portrait of this remarkable woman, spans a century of monumental social transformation in India. She evokes through her writing the slow chiselling away of social conservatism that had denied women their rights of education, remarriage and agency. She calls forth a time of idealism and public service in the struggle for India’s freedom. She elicits a way of living in which deep religious faith did not exclude respect for other beliefs and faiths.

In these many ways, Rajwati’s story becomes a fable for our troubled times.

Harsh Mander is a peace and justice worker, writer, teacher who leads the Karwan e Mohabbat, a people’s campaign to fight hate with radical love and solidarity. He teaches part-time at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, and has authored many books, including Partitions of the Heart, Fatal Accidents of Birth and Looking Away.