The Supreme Court on Wednesday stayed for seven days further investigation into a case involving former Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, his daughter and son-in-law linked to alleged financial irregularities, the Hindustan Times reported.

The court was hearing their petition challenging a Kerala High Court order directing the registration of a criminal case against them over alleged irregularities in financial transactions between state-owned Cochin Minerals and Rutile Limited and Exalogic Solutions Private Limited, a company owned by Vijayan’s daughter Veena Thaikkandiyil.

The bench clarified that the stay applied only to further investigation and did not prevent the registration of the first information report. The Kerala Police registered the FIR on October 12 and had begun investigating the case.

On October 9, a single-judge bench of the Kerala High Court directed the State Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau to register an FIR against Vijayan, his daughter Veena, his son-in-law PA Mohammed Riyas and others, based on information provided by the Enforcement Directorate.

Vijayan, Veena and Riyas challenged the order before a division bench of the High Court. However, on October 15, the bench refused to permit them to proceed with the appeal because they were not parties to the original case in which the FIR was ordered. The bench said they could challenge the FIR itself after it was registered.

The three then approached the Supreme Court against the High Court’s direction to register the FIR.

The Supreme Court noted that the state had already constituted a special investigation team. It said that the High Court should not have acted in haste in ordering the registration of an FIR without first hearing Vijayan and the others, Bar and Bench reported.

The court also said it needed to examine whether a state agency was required to register an FIR in a corruption case based on a recommendation by the Enforcement Directorate.

“Don’t extend your hand beyond your statutory limits,” Bar and Bench quoted the court as telling the Enforcement Directorate. “We are making it very clear. Don’t use the process of statutory powers to meddle into the statutory domain of other entities.”

The case

The Enforcement Directorate is investigating whether Cochin Minerals and Rutile Limited, a private company, paid around Rs 1.7 crore to the firm run by Vijayan’s daughter between 2017 and 2021.

The mining company, in which the Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation has 13.4% stake, had allegedly made the payments to Thaikkandiyil’s Exalogic Solutions with no evidence of any services rendered in return.

In May, the ED carried out searches at about 12 locations in Kerala, including the homes of Vijayan’s daughter and son-in-law in Kozhikode. Offices linked to Cochin Minerals and Rutile Limited officials were also raided.

Shortly after, the ED officials who raided the houses were attacked and their vehicles vandalised allegedly by Communist Party of India (Marxist) workers.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday directed the Andhra Pradesh State Election Commission to defer publishing the final list of candidates contesting the local body polls in the state until October 25, reported Bar and Bench.

The direction followed allegations by the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party that the ruling Telugu Desam Party’s cadre and supporters had obstructed its candidates from filing nominations, reported The Indian Express.

The list was scheduled to be published on Wednesday, Bar and Bench reported.

A bench of Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana told the State Election Commission to look into the allegations by the YSRCP candidates, reported Live Law. The bench told the poll body to extend the deadline for filing nominations wherever it finds that a candidate was unable to do so due to a law and order situation.

“Such decision shall be taken by the Election Commission positively by tomorrow,” the bench was quoted as saying. “And wherever the Election Commission chooses to extend the time, such time shall be extended till not less than 48 hours from the date of taking a decision.”

The bench also told the director general of police to ensure that candidates are provided with necessary protection and that there are closed-circuit television cameras at the nomination centres.

The matter was listed for hearing next on October 27.

The election to 100 urban local bodies in Andhra Pradesh is scheduled to be held on October 28. Votes will be counted on October 30. Subsequently, the Mandal Parishad Territorial Constituency and Zilla Parishad Territorial Constituency elections are scheduled for November 3, with counting on November 5. Gram Panchayat elections will be held on November 26, November 29 and December 2.

*Democracy in Andhra Pradesh is alive and thriving.*

This is the situation in AP, before nominations the Police allegedly prevented most opposition council candidates from filing their nominations, clearing the way for ruling party candidates to be declared elected unopposed.… https://t.co/XRCsdN39CH pic.twitter.com/K1hQuMKLAv

— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) October 19, 2026

YSRCP’s allegations

On Monday, the YS Jagan Mohan Reddy-led YSRCP moved the Supreme Court, alleging that violence and intimidation had prevented several of its candidates from filing nominations.

During the hearing on Wednesday, the party’s counsel told the court that 63.5% of its candidates were not allowed to submit nominations in 19 of the urban local bodies, reported Bar and Bench.

In its petition, the YSRCP had alleged that its candidate’s nomination papers were snatched and torn at Kadapa. In Tirupati, the party alleged, the candidate was prevented from reaching nomination centres.

Nine candidates from Tirupati also filed affidavits saying they had been obstructed from filing their nominations.

On October 10, the party moved the Andhra Pradesh High Court, seeking to secure additional nomination centres. A single-judge bench had dismissed the plea on October 15.

Subsequently, it moved the High Court seeking that the deadline to file nominations be extended. On Sunday, the court rejected the plea, stating that any direction would amount to interference with the election process.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

India on Wednesday said that it opposed attempts to turn allegations of human rights abuses and “incomplete statistics” into a “negative characterisation” of the world’s largest democracy.

Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Ministry of External Affairs Deputy Secretary Barkha Tamrakar said that human rights should not be used as an instrument of political pressure or to selectively target countries.

The statement came a day after UN human rights experts flagged the repeated “heavy-handed police response to peaceful youth-led demonstrations” against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar for his handling of the special intensive revision of voter rolls.

The UN experts had noted that earlier this month, more than 7,000 persons, including journalists, human rights defenders, lawyers and political party members had been detained in New Delhi and taken to remote detention centres.

The experts described the crackdown as part of a “broader, troubling pattern”. They said that they had repeatedly alerted the Indian authorities about the “undue restrictions on peaceful assembly, excessive force, arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances and the targeting of student activists”.

However, Tamrakar said on Wednesday that India was “anchored in the rule of law” and had signed the Convention on Enforced Disappearances.

The treaty bans state-backed abductions and classifies widespread enforced disappearances as crimes against humanity. India signed the convention on February 6, 2007. However, it has not been ratified.

Tamrakar emphasised that Article 21, which assures the right to life and personal liberty, and an “independent judiciary provide safeguard against any alleged disappearance of citizens” in the country.

“The Right to Information Act has further strengthened transparency and accountability in governance, further supplemented by the presence of independent media and dynamic civil society,” she added.

The ministry official also said that the national and state human rights commissions in India offer effective avenues for complaints and redressal mechanisms where necessary.

She added that engagements with international human rights mechanisms should be based on dialogue, consultation, cooperation with non-selectivity and transparency.

The official added that New Delhi was prepared to clarify specific cases through established channels.

Written by Abeer Khan. Edited by Sneha.

The air quality in Delhi worsened to the “poor” level on Wednesday.

The Commission for Air Quality Management enforced Stage 1 restrictions under the Graded Response Action Plan in Delhi and the National Capital Region after the average Air Quality Index crossed 200.

As of 4 pm, the national capital recorded an average Air Quality Index of 244, showed the Sameer application that provides hourly updates published by the Central Pollution Control Board.

Forty-three of the 55 active monitoring stations recorded “poor” or worse air quality levels. At 328, the AQI in Pusa was the worst in Delhi.

This was the highest AQI in the national capital since mid-July.

In Uttar Pradesh, Ghaziabad recorded a “poor” AQI of 222, Greater Noida 248 and Noida 203, the application showed.

In Haryana, Gurugram recorded an average AQI of 204. Faridabad recorded an air quality level of 124, which is in the “moderate” category.

GRAP is a set of incremental anti-pollution measures that are triggered to prevent further worsening of air quality once it reaches a certain threshold in the Delhi-NCR region.

The first stage involves measures such as mechanical sweeping of roads and sprinkling water on them to keep dust from rising. It also bans some kinds of construction and demolition activities.

Under this stage, vehicles without a valid Pollution Under Control certificate will not be allowed to refuel, while parking charges will be doubled across Delhi, except at Metro parking facilities. Staggered working hours and work-from-home arrangements will also be introduced for Municipal Corporation of Delhi and government offices to reduce vehicular movement, NDTV quoted Delhi Environment Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa as saying.

An index value between 0 and 50 indicates “good” air quality, between 51 and 100 indicates “satisfactory” air quality and between 101 and 200 indicates “moderate” air quality. As the index value increases further, air quality deteriorates. A value of 201 and 300 means “poor” air quality, while between 301 and 400 indicates “very poor” air.

Between 401 and 450 indicates “severe” air pollution, while anything above the 450 threshold is termed “severe plus”.

Stage 1 of GRAP is activated when the AQI is in the “poor” category. The second, third and fourth stages are activated when the AQI crosses the “very poor”, “severe” category and “severe plus” category.

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.

VIDEO | Delhi: A layer of haze covers parts of the capital city. Morning visuals from India Gate, Kartavya Path areas.#DelhiWeather #WeatherUpdate

(Full video available on PTI Videos - https://t.co/d8jp61yd2p) pic.twitter.com/1tXkV7y0MI

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) October 21, 2026

Written by Nachiket Deuskar and Tanya Shrivastava. Edited by Anamika Pathak and Sara Varghese.

Also read:

• Why some Delhi residents leave the city during Diwali
• How Delhi’s rich are escaping air pollution

The Central Bureau of Investigation has taken over the probe into the murder of Punjab’s anti-drug activist Parvinder Singh Jhota, The Hindu reported on Wednesday.

Jhota was shot dead inside a medical store in Mansa district on October 13. He was hosting a Facebook Live session when the medical store owner shot him after the activist confronted him for allegedly selling drugs to an elderly man.

The store owner accused in the matter, Ashwani Kumar, was arrested from Rajasthan’s Salasar on October 14, PTI reported.

Jhota’s post-mortem and cremation are yet to be carried out. His family and supporters have refused to allow the funeral until they get justice.

On Tuesday, Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann said that the Punjab government would hand over the case to the CBI, as demanded by Jhota’s family. Later in the day, a team of the central agency arrived in Mansa to take over records and evidence seized in the case.

After taking over the case, the CBI said that Jhota’s post-mortem will be conducted at a medical institute in Chandigarh, The Hindu reported.

Soon after the incident, the state’s ruling Aam Aadmi Party had said that the incident was condemnable but a result of “personal enmity”.

On Tuesday, Union Home Minister Amit Shah met Jhota’s family and alleged that drug trade had reached “its peak” in Punjab under the AAP government.

The Assembly elections in Punjab will be held in the first half of next year.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read: Punjab’s prisons are awash with de-addiction pills. But is that good news?

On October 13, the Delhi Police had detained Cockroach Janta Party Co-Convenors Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das for staging a symbolic protest with the national flag in Central Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, the day after it was denotified as a protest site.

The two have since then been in Tihar Jail because an executive magistrate found them to be in breach of their peace bonds. They had signed these bonds after the police detained them at Delhi airport ahead of their protest against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on October 10.

Section 126 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita empowers executive magistrates to ask suspects to sign such bonds. Executive magistrates are usually police officers appointed by state governments to decide cases of preventive arrest.

However, lawyers and activists have long complained that the police misuse this provision to appropriate powers that are otherwise vested solely in the judiciary. In 2018, Justice S Muralidhar pulled up the government of Delhi for using the provision to illegally arrest a resident named Narender and send him to judicial custody.

In his judgement, the judge said that such officers could send suspects to custody for no more than seven days. In addition to that, he had categorically mentioned that police officers serving as executive magistrates could not extend suspects’ custody on technical grounds, such as claiming to need more time to verify their paperwork.

That is exactly what was done to Ranka and Das on Monday, when the executive magistrate extended their judicial custody for two more days. Muralidhar told Scroll that there was something “radically wrong” with the provisions that the police had invoked against them.

“The executive is the complainant, the judge and the executioner,” Muralidhar stated. He asserted that the police were bypassing the standard criminal procedure, which would require a first information report to be filed and, eventually, prove that a crime had been committed.

Muralidhar called for the Delhi High Court, which is expected to take up the case on Wednesday, to strike down this provision.

Edited excerpts from the conversation:

The case of Ranka and Das has put the spotlight on the office of the executive magistrate. You had gone into this issue at length in your 2018 judgement. Could you explain what this office is?

It is basically a peacekeeping kind of a function. Sometimes the executive might, on the basis of credible information, apprehend that there could be a breach of peace by certain persons. In order to ensure that such persons do not do that, a bond is taken from them containing an assurance.

It is a preventive function. It is not meant to be punitive. The entire purpose of preventive custody is only about an apprehension regarding the possible commission of a crime. It is not about the actual commission of a crime. So, a mere apprehension regarding the commission of a crime should not per se lead to sending a person to judicial custody.

But this is a potent weapon in the hands of the executive and has its vestiges in colonial times. It was extensively used by the British since the 19th century. Given the spirit of Articles 21 and 22 of our Constitution [which guarantee the right to life, personal liberty and protection from arbitrary arrest], these provisions were not expected to survive in free India.

There was no reason to keep them in the statute book at all. And yet, not only were they continued, but have been persisted with and used extensively across the country in the eight decades after freedom. They appear to have a robust afterlife.

Executive magistrate sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? You, in fact, wanted them to be called executive officers because they are usually police officers.

What is the purpose of this kind of provision? There is no first information report. It begins with the police giving a complaint to itself. The kalandara [complaint note] is written by a sub-inspector or a constable. It is addressed to the executive magistrate, who is also a policeman, but of a high rank like a deputy commissioner of police.

This kind of a function, where an opinion has to be formed on whether the apprehension regarding breach of peace is based on reasonable grounds, should not be entrusted to the police for the simple reason that in these situations, the police itself is the complainant. The senior police officers taking a decision on such a complaint cannot possibly be expected to be impartial or objective.

The police officers entrusted with such functions ought not to be called “magistrates” as they do not form part of the judiciary. They should be called “officers”. The petitions presented to them address them as “courts”, which they are not.

In this case, the executive magistrate has decried Ranka and Das for being habitual offenders with “no respect for law” because they protested at Jantar Mantar.

I think what he is missing is this: even in the first instance, when the police arrested them and got a bond from them, it was not for the commission of an offence. It was for the apprehension of the commission of an offence. This officer and the people who have been commenting on the case seem to lose sight of this.

If there was an offence committed, by now there should have been a first information report citing the precise provision of the criminal law, right? If we view it objectively, in the first instance, there was an apprehension of breach of peace and a bond was sought. That apprehension has only remained an apprehension.

Till now, no first information report has been registered saying that an offence has been committed. The police appear to know that even if an offence had to be booked against Ranka and Das, it would have been the offence of trespass simpliciter [simply] without an intention to commit theft. And the police are well aware such an offence is bailable.

In such an event, they will have no excuse to continue to keep the person arrested in custody. So, they have consciously avoided going down that route. They have avoided registering the first information report and naming the offence.

And they have given themselves a justification by simply saying that they need time to verify sureties [bonds filed by those who know a suspect to assure the authorities of future cooperation].

This is precisely what the judgement of the Delhi High Court in Aldanish Rein [Muralidhar’s 2018 judgement] had anticipated and had directed that the excuse of verification of sureties cannot justify the extension of judicial custody. It specifically directed that pending such verification, the arrested person should be released on a personal bond.

I don’t think this particular magistrate was prepared to even acknowledge the Delhi High Court judgement, much less follow it.

Ranka and Das have already spent seven days in custody. Is this lawful and just?

It is a total abuse of the law by the police to extend somebody’s judicial custody like this for seven days with not even a first information report.

The executive magistrate has said that they are in breach of their bonds.

Even if this is true, the most he can do is say, “You gave a bond. You have not adhered to the terms of the bond.”

The provision [Section 126 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita] does not say that because a person did not adhere to the terms of an earlier bond, he can be remanded to judicial custody for over five days. Because it is a liberty-depriving provision, one has to read it very strictly and very carefully.

So, again, there has to be a clear forming of an opinion on the likelihood of the breach of peace as a result of the earlier bond’s terms not being adhered to. And all he can do is ask for another bond.

Executive magistrates cannot assume powers that they do not have under the provision. Unless there is a check on their power, it becomes open to abuse.

These two are high-profile cases. Let us say if this was a rickshaw puller, he would have lost seven days of wages. His family would have starved.

You had in your 2018 judgement directed that all these executive magistrates must be made to undergo training. You also wanted the Delhi government to set up an oversight mechanism to review their functioning. Was any of this done?

I am not aware if those directions were complied with. Not only the Delhi High Court, other High Courts too had issued similar directions, some of which were referred to in the 2018 judgement. Across India, this is a serious problem.

The new Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, projected as a decolonising exercise, has, far from doing that, retained the provisions of preventive arrests in full measure, word for word. This has only further entrenched the colonial legal architecture under which the criminal law was weaponised to stifle dissent and peaceful protests.

Whatever may have been the political and administrative compulsions of the coloniser, faced with protests for grant of independence from colonial rule, these provisions empowering the executive to make “preventive” arrests cannot be continued in a free and democratic India.

The rampant abuse of this power by successive governments, both at the Centre and in the states, is by itself reason to revisit the earlier judgments of the Supreme Court, which upheld the constitutional validity of these provisions.

The premise in those judgments is that mere possibility of abuse of a provision of law is not a justification for invalidating it. This is a common trope. You will find it in many judgments dealing with challenges to the constitutional validity of liberty-depriving provisions.

But now you have enough empirical evidence, across decades, that these provisions have been repeatedly misused and abused by the executive to give to itself powers that it does not have.

The lack of any judicial training and the impracticality of these powers having to be exercised by police officers, amidst their various other duties, makes them totally ill-equipped to undertake this task. No wonder they end up invariably passing cyclostyled type of orders.

How common is the misuse of the executive magistrate’s powers to take away someone’s liberty arbitrarily?

When a foreign dignitary visits, they pick up people who they think are likely to protest outside the venue of the meeting. They just pick them up and lock them away for a day or two, sometimes more, using this power. Those arrested in this way are not people who have actually even come out to protest.

So, the very existence of these provisions and their demonstrated misuse directly impinges on our freedoms, on the right to life and liberty.

Why is this still a thing in 2026? And why is it being used against political activists?

Because it is a potent power in the hands of the executive. The substantive and procedural criminal law in our country has provisions that are likely to be used by the executive to target political activists opposed to the dispensation in power. Throughout the freedom movement, they were used. And post-freedom also they continue to be used.

It is not being misused only by the current dispensation. It has been misused by every dispensation. And it is being misused by state governments as well.

And no government would be willing to give up this power. So, unless you have political parties who while being in power are willing to let go of it, you are not going to see any change.

If the executive fails to discharge its powers in accordance with the Constitution and the laws, the judiciary is expected to check that abuse. Unless the judiciary strikes down the provisions as unconstitutional, neither the executive nor the legislature is going to let it happen.

Let me give you an example: if the judiciary had not stepped in to direct the mandatory submission of affidavits by prospective candidates in elections to the Parliament and State Assemblies disclosing their criminal antecedents and wealth, there is no way the Parliament would have legislated it on its own. And at the first opportunity thereafter, the Parliament brought out a largely diluted version [of this legislation].

But then, we had a strong Supreme Court, which came back and said we will not allow this kind of legislation that undermines our judgment. So, if the judiciary had not stepped in, that change would never have happened.

Sections 126 and 170 [peace bond and preventive arrest provisions] are not casual provisions. These are liberty-depriving provisions that directly and adversely impact the daily lives of common people. These are provisions that directly challenge our freedoms – the freedom of movement, the freedom of speech, the freedom to assemble, the freedom to protest.

Even a genuine, peaceful protest can be dubbed as a likelihood of breach of peace and get snuffed out. So, where is democracy if you cannot protest peacefully and criticise your government? Where is democracy if you cannot challenge the authority of institutions?

And if that can get taken away by two provisions which have survived their colonial legacies, we need to question the need for retention of these provisions. It is no longer about the possibility of misuse of these provisions. There is abundant empirical evidence of the extensive abuse of these provisions.

Some in the Cockroach Janta Party have called for the office of the executive magistrate to be abolished. Do you see any merit in that demand?

First of all, I think the moniker “magistrate” as a suffix to “executive” should go. That office does not have any trappings of a court.

More importantly, if we defang these provisions, that is, if we don’t give the executive officer the power to remand anyone to judiciary custody, that would serve the purpose.

Section 170 already empowers a police officer to arrest without a warrant if a cognisable offence is likely to be committed. But if that cognisable offence is bailable, it will not permit the person arrested thus to to be kept in custody once he furnishes the bail bond.

If a police officer is satisfied that an offence has been committed, he can activate the regular criminal law process. He is in no way prevented from registering a first information report and mentioning what is the offence committed. If he does that, he takes responsibility for what he states in the first information report in writing.

When he exercises the power of preventive arrest, he is under no such compulsion. He merely has to say that he apprehends a possible breach of peace.

There were times in the Punjab militancy years when people would go to the police station and plead with the officers to get a first information report registered under the draconian Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act of 1987 against their close relative who was picked up. Why would some family whose son has been picked up go to the police station and plead for this?

Because then there would have to be a record. The police would have to write down the date and time of the commission of the crime, the precise provision of the criminal law attracted, and so on. The police had to then take responsibility for what happened thereafter. They could not simply say the person had “disappeared”.

When it is a “preventive” arrest, the police has to merely state that a breach of peace is apprehended and lock away a prospective protester.

This has been happening for several decades and in plain sight. While we may not know the precise numbers of those arrested over the years – it is definitely in the thousands – we can say with some certainty that they largely belong to the sections of our population that are too weak to defend themselves. They could include porters, loaders, casual workers, peaceful protesters and even bystanders.

There is this view that Ranka, Das and Abhijeet Dipke made a mistake by signing these bonds. Neha Bora refused to do so and moved the High Court, which Ranka and Das have also done now. What do you make of this?

It is not about making a mistake. It is about the misuse of these provisions by the executive. If Ranka and Das chose to abide by the law and furnish bonds, we cannot possibly say that they made a mistake.

Gandhi was among the pioneers who practiced civil disobedience. He said: “The British laws are unjust, so I will not bow to them.” These two are not going that far.

Let us see it for what it is. It is a question of the executive misusing the law. It is stretching the law to permit an abuse of it. That should not be countenanced.

Two strong boys, one fearless spirit always putting the country before themselves and reminding us what true dedication looks like. 🇮🇳 pic.twitter.com/Wdx8cYAIVi

— Cockroach Janta Party - CJP (@Cockroachisback) October 19, 2026

Over the past couple of weeks, Delhi has witnessed thousands of other cases of preventive arrest which have caused a lot of controversy. How do you view Delhi Police’s handling of the situation?

Nobody in a police force acts individually or on their own. Within a police organisation, its personnel act on specific instructions from the top down to the bottom.

There is no gainsaying that what happened in Jantar Mantar and elsewhere was also a political protest demanding accountability. As has happened in the past, the executive finds it convenient not to politically handle such dissent, but to lock away the dissenters using the criminal law and procedure.

Provisions such as Sections 126 and 170 make it convenient for the executive to invisibilise, at least temporarily, inconvenient political opponents with the least effort.

What legal remedy are citizens left with?

Unless we have a judiciary that responds effectively and stops such abuse of power by the executive, this will continue. And the judiciary has to respond in good time.

I would not be surprised if by the time the case is taken up in the High Court, the police would have released the two. If that happens, the High Court should not close the case saying it is infructuous, but go beyond it. They have to fix accountability for the executive not following the law.

Many worry that India is fast becoming a police state. Do you share this concern?

We have to go back in history. For some people, India had already become a police state a long time ago. And that scenario has not changed for them even after 80 years of our freedom.

So, to generalise that the whole of India is going to become a police state might not be correct. But this much is evident: the respect for the law by the state has progressively deteriorated.

This is not the first time in history that this is happening. But this is definitely happening now. And that does not augur well for democracy.

The Constitution expects the judiciary to place checks on the abuses of power. That is the one institution that can stand up to this and protect the people. And it needs to stand up now. It can stem the slide.

The United States and India are “very, very close” to signing a trade agreement, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday.

“I would say we are about as close as you can be without having an executed agreement,” he told the reporters in Mumbai during his two-day visit to India.

Describing India as an important commercial and strategic partner, Rubio said that there were only a “small number of items to wrap up” and that the deal might “happen shortly”.

Rubio also said that during his visit to Jamnagar on Wednesday, he will hold talks with Reliance Industries about refining more Venezuelan oil. The US secretary of state is scheduled to meet Reliance Industries chairperson Mukesh Ambani in Jamnagar.

“They have done so in the past,” he said. “They have the capability to refine heavy crude.”

Describing India as a “refining superpower”, Rubio said that during talks in the past New Delhi sounded “willing to do it”.

Rubio said that the company has “pre-existing oil concessions” in the South American country. The concessions grant foreign companies the right to explore, extract, refine or sell a country’s crude oil in exchange for fees or royalties.

“We are going to go see what their hold-up is and what opportunities exist,” he said. “…this is a company that has had a presence in Venezuela in the past, and its refining capabilities are substantial.”

Reliance’s two refineries at the Jamnagar complex have a combined capacity to process about 1.4 million barrels of crude oil per day.

Venezuela’s oil production has risen after the US in January captured Nicolas Maduro, the country’s president at the time.

Reliance has become a major buyer of Venezuelan crude.

Rubio’s visit comes days after President Donald Trump on Friday issued an executive order waiving US sanctions and tariffs of up to 100% on India and other countries that continue to purchase Russian oil and gas.

On Tuesday, Rubio held a bilateral meeting with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar to discuss energy security and defence cooperation.

India-US trade deal

After an interim trade deal was agreed upon on February 2, US tariffs on Indian goods would have been reduced to 18% from a combined rate of 50%. The earlier rate of 50% had included a punitive levy of 25% imposed in August 2025 over India’s purchase of Russian oil.

However, negotiations on the final deal were hampered after the US Supreme Court on February 20 struck down global tariffs imposed by Trump, ruling that he had exceeded his authority.

In response, Trump imposed a temporary 10% tariff on goods imported into the US, citing his authority under the 1974 Trade Act. This has left the status of US’ trade deals with countries, including India, unclear.

On October 5, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that the trade talks between India and the US had reached a “plateau” and further concessions might be difficult.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

• Could two moves in Washington torpedo US trade deal with India?
• Rubio has ‘summoned his employee’ to Mumbai, says Rahul Gandhi ahead of US state secretary’s visit

The Delhi Police on Tuesday arrested four persons for allegedly supplying the weapons used to attack actor Tiger Shroff in Mumbai, The Indian Express reported.

On Sunday, Shroff escaped an assassination attempt as miscreants shot at him. Two persons, including the actor’s driver, were injured in the attack.

In a purported audio clip shared online, Anil Pandit, an alleged member of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang claimed responsibility for the attack. He said that Shroff was on the group’s target list as “he was not heeding our directions” and “was working with” actor Salman Khan.

Bishnoi, who is in jail in Gujarat, has repeatedly threatened to kill Khan.

The Rajasthan Police on Monday arrested three persons from Kota in connection with the firing.

Of the four arrested in Delhi on Tuesday, Radha and Babita were picked up at the New Delhi Railway Station, while Kunal and Sumit were held in Sonipat, Haryana, The Indian Express quoted an unidentified police officer as saying.

Kunal was recently released from prison on bail and was introduced to Pandit by a friend, the police said. He allegedly collected a pistol and 20 rounds of ammunition from Amritsar on Pandit’s directions.

Two months ago, Kunal convinced Radha to travel to Mumbai with the weapon, the newspaper quoted the officer as saying.

On October 15, Radha and Babita left Delhi for Mumbai on a train, carrying the pistol with them in a bag. Upon reaching Mumbai on Saturday, the two checked into a hotel. At about 11 am, a minor boy allegedly collected the bag from Radha.

After the incident, Pandit allegedly asked Kunal to help the shooters escape while Radha and Babita left Mumbai for Delhi, the police said.

The Maharashtra Police’s Crime Investigation Department has sought permission to interrogate the four persons held in Delhi.

Edited by Anamika Pathak.

Political cartoonist Satish Acharya’s Instagram account was restricted in India for the second time in three weeks on Tuesday.

A message displayed by the Meta-owned platform when users try to access the account says: “We temporarily restricted access to this account pursuant to legal requirements under India’s Information Technology Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code Rules.”

It was unclear what had led to the blocking order.

Acharya shared a screenshot of his blocked Instagram account on social media platform X.

“Saheb, people have elected you to bring achche din,” he wrote referring to the government. “You are wasting your term in blocking Instagram accounts!”

He added: “Who is so scared of cartoon!”

Acharya’s Instagram account had been restricted in India on September 28 after the platform received a legal request from the government under the 2021 Information Technology Rules. The rules require social media platforms to remove allegedly unlawful content within three hours of receiving directions from the government or a court.

It had been restored on October 5.

At the time, the work of another political cartoonist, Manjul, about the Election Commission was also restricted by Instagram to users in India “pursuant to a notice from the Government of India/Law Enforcement”.

Modi govt blocked my Instagram account in India, on 28th September 2026, for a week. They blocked it again on 20th October 2026. This 'PROTEST FRAME' will remain till they stop FEARING political cartoons. pic.twitter.com/orKiws2ugt

— Satish Acharya (@satishacharya) October 20, 2026

Also read: ‘Satire must remain free’: Cartoonists push back after Meta blocks works by Satish Acharya, Manjul

Among Acharya’s recent works were cartoons on the Delhi Police’s handling of the protests against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and the appointment of Bharatiya Janata Party leader Dushyant Kumar Gautam as Sikkim’s governor amid a murder probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation.

The Cockroach Janta Party political campaign, the Opposition and Left parties are holding protests against Kumar over the functioning of the Election Commission and the alleged irregularities in how the voter roll is being revised.

The restrictions on Acharya’s account come amid concerns about widespread use of blocking orders by the authorities in India.

The government issued nearly two lakh orders to social media platforms Instagram, Facebook and YouTube between March and July to take down content.

This amounts to nearly 1,275 orders every day. Each blocking order may cover hundreds of individual posts, pieces of content or accounts.

In comparison, 2,312 blocking orders were sent to 19 online platforms through the Sahyog portal, which facilitates the sending of blocking notices, between October 2024 and October 2025, The Indian Express quoted Right to Information records as having shown.

Most of the blocking orders were issued by central and state agencies through the portal, the newspaper reported.

Of the three platforms, Instagram received the highest number of blocking orders, nearly 1 lakh. While Facebook received about 80,000 orders, YouTube got nearly 15,000.

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has integrated its Application Programming Interface with the Sahyog portal to comply with the government orders.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

• The Art of Resistance: Satish Acharya, Manjul bring smiles (and insight) to a world of despair
• Shifting viewership and Centre’s fresh attempt to control news online
• Centre amends IT Rules to allow only senior officials to issue content takedown orders

Amid ongoing protests against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, United Nations human rights experts on Tuesday flagged the repeated “heavy-handed police response to peaceful youth-led demonstrations in New Delhi and other parts of the country”. They urged the Indian government to “cease the use of excessive force, rescind blanket assembly bans and refrain from the misuse of digital surveillance”.

The statement was issued by a group of special rapporteurs, independent experts and members of UN working groups appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to report on specific rights violations and country situations. They serve in their individual capacities and are independent of any government and the UN.

The experts noted that over the last months, “hundreds of thousands of students and their supporters have been gathering peacefully to protest in different parts of the country against government decisions regarding the education system, and more recently, voter-roll deletions which affect [13 crore] individuals, reportedly belonging to the Muslim minority, Scheduled Castes and Tribes”.

They added that “despite the non-violent nature of the assemblies”, law enforcement agencies had reportedly used force against unarmed students, including lathi charges and prevented thousands from joining the protests.

Recently, more than 7,000 persons, including young persons, journalists, human rights defenders, lawyers and political party members, were detained in New Delhi and taken to remote detention centres, the UN experts noted.

“The phones of those who were detained were alleged seized and all protest-related material deleted,” they said. “Most were released 24 hours later, including protest leaders.”

The experts added that, according to information they had received, protesters had sustained injuries, with some reporting that they had been subjected to ill-treatment.

They also expressed concern about reports of “sexual violence and other forms of gender-based abuse in the protests and related detentions”.

The experts described the crackdown as part of a “broader, troubling pattern”. They said that they had repeatedly alerted the Indian authorities about the “undue restrictions on peaceful assembly, excessive force, arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances and the targeting of student activists”.

“These actions violate India’s core international legal obligations, including the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly, freedom of expression, liberty, security of the person, and the right to defend human rights,” the experts said. They added that any restrictions on peaceful assembly must be lawful, pursue a legitimate aim, and be necessary and proportionate.

Protests in India

Since October 2, Opposition parties, student groups and the Cockroach Janta Party campaign have been staging protests in Delhi and other parts of the country, demanding Kumar’s resignation over concerns about the Election Commission’s functioning and its handling of the voter roll revision.

Ahead of a demonstration on October 10, the police imposed several restrictions to deter protesters from gathering in the national capital, in what the organisers described as intimidation by the authorities. The measures include detaining persons, cancelling trains, closing 45 metro stations and suspending mobile internet in central Delhi.

The fresh round of protests in the national capital and parts of the country were triggered by a September 23 investigation by The Indian Express, which revealed that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected 14 times in 10 months to decisions by the poll panel related to the special intensive revision, saying some had been taken without their knowledge.

Earlier in June and July, demonstrations were held at Jantar Mantar against the alleged irregularities in the conduct of competitive examinations.

Written by Tanya Shrivastava. Edited by Sara Varghese.

Months after former cricketer and Lok Sabha MP Yusuf Pathan broke away from the Mamata Banerjee-led faction of the Trinamool Congress, the Gujarat government has proposed to “gift” him 500 square metres of a long-disputed municipal plot in Vadodara and offer the remaining portion at a concessional rate, PTI reported.

The proposal, submitted by the Vadodara municipal commissioner, will be placed before the standing committee of the Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled civic body for final approval on Friday.

The proposal came less than two months after Pathan withdrew his petition from the Gujarat High Court concerning the disputed land, the Deccan Herald reported.

Pathan had sought allotment of the 978-square-metre plot of land at market price in 2012, citing security concerns because of its proximity to his family home in Vadodara’s Tandalja locality. The Gujarat government rejected the proposal in 2014, but Pathan continued to occupy the plot. He said he was not informed of the rejection until he received an eviction notice in 2024, two days after his election to the Lok Sabha from West Bengal’s Baharampur constituency on a TMC ticket.

In 2025, the Gujarat High Court dismissed his petition concerning the land and described him as an “encroacher”, Deccan Herald reported. A division bench of the court subsequently refused to grant him relief and verbally warned that he could face damages for occupying public land without allotment. Pathan withdrew his petition in August this year.

In June, Yusuf and 20 Lok Sabha MPs from the undivided TMC had announced a merger with the Tripura-based Nationalist Citizens Party of India. The group has since been supporting the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance in the Lower House of Parliament.

The TMC has been beset by alleged coercion by the BJP after it lost the Assembly elections to the Hindutva party in May. About 60 out of the TMC’s 80 MLAs have defied the party leadership to choose Ritabrata Banerjee as the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly.

The Assembly speaker also recognised the group as the TMC’s legislature party in the House and Ritabrata Banerjee as the leader of the Opposition.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat alleged that “demonic forces” from the West were trying to “destabilise India”. The RSS is the parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

He asserted that “regime change will not happen” in India, adding that doing so would not alter circumstances or address fundamental problems.

“A storm has swept in from the West to destroy all that is decent, auspicious, and rooted in cultural and human values,” Bhagwat claimed. “Even the developed nations are afflicted by this storm.”

His remarks came amid protests by Opposition parties and student groups demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over alleged irregularities in the Election Commission’s special intensive revision of electoral rolls. Read on.

Two Indian citizens were charged with election fraud in the United States for unlawfully registering as voters and casting their ballots in the 2024 presidential polls. Amandeep Kaur and Kamlesh Shah were among 28 green card holders charged with election crimes in California.

A green card allows a foreign citizen to live and work permanently in the US. However, they do not have the right to vote in elections.

According to the US Department of Justice, Shah registered on election day in November 2024, while Kaur registered in December 2022 and voted in the presidential election.

Both face felony charges, although it was unclear whether they were among the 11 people arrested in raids across California. Read on.

A heritage mosque near Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s official residence in New Delhi has been issued an eviction notice. The Race Course mosque stands on government land and is “unauthorised”, the Ministry of Housing said.

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

The mosque authorities have been directed to vacate the premises within six days. Electricity and water supply have also been disconnected, they added. Read on.

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The Delhi High Court on Monday set aside a Central Information Commission order directing the Indian Air Force to provide information about foreign visits taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his predecessor Manmohan Singh, Bar and Bench reported.

The case arose from a petition by former Navy officer and Right to Information activist Lokesh K Batra, who had sought detailed records of foreign visits taken by the prime ministers on Indian Air Force aircraft between April 2013 and June 2018.

The information sought included details of the aircraft, crew and entourage, including the names of security personnel travelling with the prime ministers.

The matter has been before the court since 2020, when the Delhi High Court stayed the Central Information Commission’s order directing disclosure of the information.

The Indian Air Force had at the time challenged the information commission order, arguing that the details sought by the petitioner were “extremely sensitive in nature” as they related to the matter of the prime minister’s security arrangements.

On Thursday, the petitioner argued that the information concerned expenditure from public funds and was therefore in the larger public interest, Bar and Bench reported.

However, the court said that the mere fact that public funds had been spent on foreign travel did not, by itself, “justify disclosure of information which may compromise the security arrangements put in place for such visits”.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

A heritage mosque near Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s official residence in Delhi was on Monday issued an eviction notice stating that the structure stands on government land and is “unauthorised”, The Tribune reported.

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

The Land and Development Office has directed the mosque authorities to vacate the premises within six days.

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

Representatives of the mosque said that its electricity and water supplies had also been disconnected, the newspaper reported.

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

He argued that the mosque was protected under the Waqf Amendment Act as “waqf by user” – a term used for property that has been treated as a waqf on the basis of its long-standing use for religious purposes. Owaisi said properties that had been registered as waqf in the past continue to be protected under the amended law.

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

The race course masjid case needs @KirenRijiju’s urgent intervention.
1. Despite the masjid being a gazetted waqf property since 1977, the waqf board did not challenge the demolition order. Neither did it make any effort to resolve the issue
2. Even the Waqf Amendment Act…

— Asaduddin Owaisi (@asadowaisi) October 20, 2026

A delegation of the Islamic organisation Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind met Rijiju on Monday, urging him to intervene to protect the mosque and its adjoining graveyard from demolition.

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

Rijiju assured the delegation that he would make every possible effort to address the matter, the organisation said.

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

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat on Tuesday said that “demonic forces” from the West were trying to “destabilise India”, but asserted that “regime change will not happen” in the country.

The RSS is the parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

“A storm has swept in from the West to destroy all that is decent, auspicious, and rooted in cultural and human values,” Bhagwat said. “Even the developed nations are afflicted by this storm.”

His comments came against the backdrop of nationwide protests demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over alleged irregularities in conducting the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

Speaking at the Hindutva organisation’s annual Dussehra, or Vijayadashami, event in Nagpur, Bhagwat referred to protests in France over demands for better education, demonstrations against corruption in Albania, and violent unrest in Bangladesh in 2024 and Nepal in 2025.

The protests in Bangladesh led to the ouster of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in August 2024, while youth-led demonstrations in Nepal in September 2025, triggered by a government ban on social media platforms and fuelled by wider anger over corruption and nepotism, led to the fall of former Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli’s government.

Bhagwat claimed that a stronger India would threaten the dominance of some global powers, making the country a target of attempts to “weaken and divide” it.

Regime change does not change circumstances or address fundamental problems, he said.

“They claim that changing a regime will change the situation, but that has never really happened,” Bhagwat said. “It did not happen earlier, and will not happen now.”

The RSS chief also urged protesters, the law enforcement authorities and political leaders to refrain from creating “conflict, hatred, bitterness, or division within our united society”. He said the actions of all parties involved must remain within the bounds of the Constitution and the law.

Bhagwat added that “protests are inevitable in a democracy”, but said that they should be “aimed at finding solutions”.

Protests could become political instruments when driven by objectives other than public welfare, fueling hostility towards individuals, groups or ideologies, he said.

SIR protests

Protests by Opposition parties, student groups and the Cockroach Janta Party campaign have been held in Delhi and other parts of the country since October 2, demanding Kumar’s resignation over concerns about the Election Commission’s functioning and its handling of the voter roll revision.

The trigger for this round of protests was a September 23 investigation by The Indian Express, which revealed that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected 14 times in 10 months to decisions by the poll panel related to the special intensive revision, saying some had been taken without their knowledge.

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

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Allahabad High Court has stayed the conviction in a murder case and life sentence of a person who wants to contest the upcoming Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections as an independent candidate or “if possible” on the Bharatiya Janata Party ticket.

In its October 5 order, the court said that the right to livelihood of a common citizen was no “less important” than a politician’s right to contest elections.

The conviction and sentence of the appellant “deserves to be stayed so that he may be able to survive for hearing the final verdict” in his appeal, the court said while granting bail to Nandan Lal Rai alias Babloo Rai.

The court was hearing a bail application moved by Rai in his pending appeal against the murder conviction.

He was convicted by a Varanasi court in April 2025 for the 2017 murder of Pramod Kumar Nigam, a member of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, Live Law reported. The movement, led by Hindutva groups, sought to build a temple dedicated to Hindu deity Ram at the site where Babri Masjid stood in Ayodhya. The temple was inaugurated in January 2024, more than 30 years after the mosque was demolished by Hindutva extremists.

Rai was associated with gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari, the legal news outlet reported.

A bench of Justices Siddharth and Vinai Kumar Dwivedi said that the Supreme Court has stayed convictions of public representatives noting that “politicians bear special duty” towards their constituency. It added that failing to secure a stay on his conviction can lead to a loss of opportunity for the politician to contest the polls.

The elections are expected to be held in the first half of 2027.

Rai’s counsel said that he was “a political person” and a worker of the BJP before he was convicted. He argued that Rai was “falsely implicated” merely on the basis of “suspicion and conjecture”.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The authorities ordering the takedown of a social media page must inform the user along with notifying the intermediary, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has directed.

In an October 5 order, the court said that though the 2021 Information Technology Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code Rules do not explicitly mention the need to inform the user whose content has been ordered by the authorities to be taken down, it is an obligation as per the “principles of natural justice”.

The bench was hearing a petition filed by Haryana 24 News Network against a takedown order issued by the superintendent of police in Yamuna Nagar, Haryana on August 21 to block its Facebook page in India.

The petitioner told the court that it had not been given prior notice before its Facebook page was blocked.

The police responded that one of the company’s directors was an accused in an extortion case and had been using the page to allegedly intimidate the victim and witnesses. Therefore, an order was issued to Facebook to disable the page, the police said.

However, the court noted that only an officer of the rank of deputy inspector general of police or higher can issue such a notice.

It observed that the notice issued by the superintendent of police violated the rules and ordered the the petitioner’s Facebook page to be restored.

Blocking orders

The directive comes amid concerns about the widespread use of blocking orders by the authorities in India.

The government issued nearly two lakh orders to social media platforms Instagram, Facebook and YouTube between March and July to take down content.

This amounts to nearly 1,275 orders every day. Each blocking order may cover hundreds of individual posts, pieces of content or accounts.

In comparison, 2,312 blocking orders were sent to 19 online platforms through the Sahyog portal, which facilitates the sending of blocking notices, between October 2024 and October 2025, The Indian Express quoted Right to Information records as having shown.

Most of the blocking orders were issued by central and state agencies through the portal, the newspaper reported.

Of the three platforms, Instagram received the highest number of blocking orders, nearly 1 lakh. While Facebook received about 80,000 orders, YouTube got nearly 15,000.

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has integrated its Application Programming Interface with the Sahyog portal to comply with the government orders.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

• Scroll Instagram posts on Kashmir pellet victims withheld in India, fourth block since June
• Shifting viewership and Centre’s fresh attempt to control news online
• Sahyog portal case offers clear view of government’s expanding role in regulating online content

In a show of strength on October 12, the Congress party and its allies led tens of thousands of protesters in a procession that was meant to culminate outside the Supreme Court of India.

The choice of destination was not arbitrary. Several Congress leaders told Scroll that the grand old party is trying to put public pressure on the judiciary through street protests demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.

The party’s intention is not limited to getting the top court to intervene in favour of the Opposition in the case challenging the special intensive revision of voter lists. It believes that putting pressure on judges will force them to function neutrally, ending what it alleges has been the Supreme Court’s tilt towards the Modi government for the past decade.

The party is hopeful that this, in turn, would help create a level-playing field before the next Lok Sabha elections in 2029.

Politics over judiciary

Rahul Gandhi himself spoke about the judiciary at a news conference the day after the march.

“We have extreme respect for the Supreme Court,” the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha said. “They have a role to play. We hope they will play that role. But we are also political people. No matter what happens, political resistance will continue.”

It was an unusual thing to say, given that Gandhi had filed a petition in the Supreme Court asking for an audit of the roll revision exercise just the previous day. But his Congress colleagues say that this was a well-thought-out strategy to signal to the top court that the country was changing politically.

“If you have to get a decent judgement from this judiciary now, you actually have to mount public pressure,” asserted a Congress politician from South India. “There is no other way.”

This person requested anonymity to talk freely about issues which the party had not authorised him to discuss with the press, as did most other Congress leaders interviewed for this piece.

He brought up the Supreme Court’s unwillingness to intervene during the special intensive revision in West Bengal. Eventually, the names of over 91 lakh voters, many of whom had attended hearings and submitted documents, were struck off the state’s rolls, helping the Bharatiya Janata Party come to power in the state for the first time.

“People who are in power are negotiating with the judiciary through power,” the politician alleged. “But if there is public pressure, it will become difficult for the judiciary to side with the executive. Public opinion will start to act as a counterbalance to the political power and pressure put by the executive.”

A battle beyond SIR

One of the things that Gandhi and other Opposition leaders have asked of the top court is an independent audit of the roll revision exercise. This audit would have to be conducted by a committee under the leadership of a retired Supreme Court judge, according to their petition.

Congress politicians believe that if this demand were to be accepted, the public perception that Gyanesh Kumar had engaged in wrongdoing would gain more ground, making it difficult for him to continue as the chief election commissioner.

But for the party, the issue goes beyond Kumar and the special intensive revision. In its view, the Supreme Court has leaned heavily towards the Modi government during the past decade. Street protests are meant to ensure that judges function more neutrally moving forward.

“It is very important to tell them that the nation is looking at them also,” explained an MP, who is a national-level office-bearer in the Congress. “They cannot keep acting in an arbitrary way.”

The demonstrations, he pointed out, were the party’s way of “signaling” to judges that they need not “comply” with the government’s wishes.

There is precedence for public pressure leading to judicial intervention in India’s recent political history, leaders of the party argue.

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government, which was in power at the Centre from 2004 till 2014, had come undone partly because of the role played by the judiciary. Back then, even ministers were compelled to resign because of the scrutiny they faced from the Supreme Court for alleged corruption.

The grand old party, now in its thirteenth year out of power, is looking to recreate similar conditions for the Modi government.

Eyes on 2029

The Supreme Court has picked up on what the Congress is trying to do – and has reacted angrily. “Nobody can browbeat the judiciary,” Chief Justice Surya Kant said on Thursday while hearing the Opposition’s petition. The next hearing is scheduled for October 27.

Congress leaders seemed undeterred, though. The MP quoted earlier bluntly stated that there could be “a lot of arrests” if the party continued to go down the path of street protests and civil disobedience. But the campaign would continue.

“Next, we will go and meet deleted voters in their villages,” he added. “That will have a much larger impact. The ‘vote chori’ narrative is making people want to remove the ‘chor’, thief, from power. That will reflect in the 2029 elections. By that time, if our organisation becomes sharper, we will fight a very good election.”

Anshul Trivedi, who is the coordinator of the Congress party’s student wing, argued that the allegations of rigging had put a question mark over the legitimacy of the prime minister itself.

“Narendra Modi uses election victories to justify all his actions,” he reasoned. “He rarely claims that his policies are legitimate on moral grounds. He seeks legitimacy only on the basis of his popularity. Now, even his electoral victories are under a cloud of suspicion. Even that last shred of legitimacy has been taken away from him.”

Such rhetoric motivates Congress workers and volunteers who are otherwise jaded after the string of electoral defeats suffered by their party, according to another Delhi-based office-bearer of the party.

The Congress had taken up the issue of rigging in a big way ahead of the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections as well. However, the campaign did not prove to be successful at the time. The party ended up winning just six of the state’s 243 seats.

“So long as we were the only ones talking about it, few people believed us,” he complained. “This changed only after the investigation in The Indian Express.”

But he worried that the government would clamp down on Opposition protests before they could achieve their goals. “Modi and [Amit] Shah are not going to give up power easily,” he alleged.

Actor Tiger Shroff escaped an assassination attempt in Mumbai on Sunday as unidentified miscreants shot at him.

Two persons, including Shroff’s driver, were injured in the attack that occurred at about 7 pm when the actor was leaving a football ground in Juhu, The Hindu reported.

The other person injured in the incident was a bystander, the police said. Both were being treated in hospital.

Videos of the incident widely shared online show several gun shots being fired at Shroff’s car as it left the venue.

Shroff was seen with bandages in videos of him meeting Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde after the incident. However, the police said that the actor was not hit by any bullet and was safe.

The Rajasthan Police on Monday arrested three men in connection with the firing, ANI reported.

The suspects were travelling on the Pune-Jaipur Express when they were apprehended at Kota railway station following inputs from the Mumbai Police.

Two of the three suspects allegedly opened fire, while the third was a bike taxi driver, Kota Superintendent of Police Tejasvini Gautam said.

The Rajasthan Police had initially reported that a minor was among those detained, but the Mumbai Police later clarified that all three suspects were adults, The New Indian Express reported.

The assailants fired five to six rounds at Shroff’s car and the motive behind the attack remained under investigation, Mumbai Deputy Commissioner of Police Raj Tilak Roshan said. No weapon was recovered from the suspects, he added.

Earlier in the day, the Mumbai Police had detained a separate person in the matter and registered a first information report against three unidentified persons.

Mumbai - Bollywood actor Tiger Shroff has reportedly been injured in a shooting incident, in which another person was also injured. According to the initial information provided, an unidentified individual opened fire at the actor. The motive behind the shooting remains unclear.… pic.twitter.com/KeZ4G5PV4S

— NextMinute News (@nextminutenews7) October 18, 2026

In a purported audio clip shared online, an alleged member of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang claimed responsibility for the attack, NDTV reported.

A man who identifies himself as Anil Pandit and claiming to be a member of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang said that Shroff was on the group’s target list as “he was not heeding our directions” and “was working with” actor Salman Khan, NDTV reported.

Bishnoi, who is in jail in Gujarat, has repeatedly threatened to kill Khan.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Mohit Garg declined to comment on the social media post by the Lawrence Bishnoi gang claiming responsibility for the attack, The Hindu reported.

#WATCH | Mumbai | Visuals from inside the residence of Tiger Shroff as Maharashtra Dy CM Eknath Shinde arrived to visit him following an incident of firing at his car, injuring his driver

The actor is safe and has not sustained any gunshot injuries, as per Mumbai Police… pic.twitter.com/YNuLTWCNeC

— ANI (@ANI) October 18, 2026

Shinde condemned the incident and said that the police have formed several teams to track the suspects. He said that the state government will assess threats to other celebrities as well.

“…they [suspects] will be apprehended and given a response in their own language,” ANI quoted him as saying. “Our current priority is to keep Mumbai and its citizens safe.”

He added that the city has seen “large-scale gang wars” in the 1990s and the Mumbai Police handled the situation effectively by dealing with the perpetrators “in their own language”.

The All Indian Cine Workers Association said that gangsters were deliberately targeting persons related to the film industry to create an “atmosphere of fear” and “extort money” from celebrities.

The association added that the government and the police “have failed to stop these attacks and to protect the people of Bollywood”.

Since January 2018, Khan has been on the radar of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang. Khan is accused of hunting an endangered blackbuck in Kankani village near Jodhpur during the shooting of the film Hum Saath Saath Hain in 1998. The prosecution relied on the statements of the Bishnoi community, which lives in the area and protects the blackbuck.

While Bishnoi remains in Ahmedabad’s Sabarmati jail facing charges including attempted murder and extortion, suspected members of his gang fired shots outside the actor’s Bandra residence in April 2024.

Bishnoi’s group had earlier sent threats to Khan in connection with the blackbuck poaching case.

The National Investigation Agency said in 2023 that Khan was named in a list of people whose lives were under threat by Lawrence Bishnoi, as the actor’s involvement in the blackbuck poaching case had offended members of the Bishnoi community.

A few weeks after the attack on Khan’s home in April 2024, the Navi Mumbai Police said they had uncovered another plan by the Bishnoi gang to assassinate Khan during one of his visits to his farmhouse in Panvel, near Mumbai.

The Mumbai Police has also alleged that former Maharashtra minister and Nationalist Congress Party leader Baba Siddique’s murder in October 2024 was carried out by three men allegedly linked to the Bishnoi gang, for the politician’s perceived proximity to Khan.

Edited by Anamika Pathak and Nachiket Deuskar.

Two activists working with Adivasi and Dalit communities in southern Odisha were arrested in Bhawanipatna town in Kalahandi district on Friday in connection with a case linked to an April clash between police and residents in the Rayagada district.

Randall Sequeira and Laxman Naik were taken from Sequeira’s home in Hill Town at around 10.45 pm, activists and the Right to Food Campaign said.

The police allegedly seized their mobile phones and took them to the Town Police Station without explaining the grounds for their arrest or producing a warrant.

The two were reportedly kept in custody overnight without access to their lawyers or families. They were taken to Rayagada the following day and produced before a sub-divisional judicial magistrate at around 6.30 pm, after which they were sent to the Rayagada Sub Jail, Countercurrents reported.

Neither Sequeira nor Naik is named in the first information report related to the April incident, the activists have alleged.

April clashes

The case relates to a clash in Kantamal on the night of April 6 and April 7, when police entered a village in Rayagada, amid protests against a road project linked to Vedanta Limited’s proposed Sijimali bauxite mine.

The residents were opposing the construction of a roughly 3-km road from Purlong to Sagabari Ghat, which would provide access to the mine in the ecologically sensitive Sijimali hills. Vedanta secured the bauxite block through an auction in 2023.

The project has faced opposition from residents, mainly belonging to the Adivasi community, who have said that the mining threatens their land, livelihoods and the environment.

During the protests, the police used tear gas and lathis to disperse the crowd.

The police had said that they had entered the village to execute a non-bailable arrest warrant against a resident and that protesters attacked personnel with stones and sharp weapons. More than 50 persons, including 33 police personnel, were reported injured in the clash.

Written by Tanya Shrivastava. Edited by Sara Varghese.

A Delhi court on Monday extended by two days the judicial custody of Cockroach Janta Party leaders Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das, Bar and Bench reported.

The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Wednesday.

Ranka and Das, along with another campaign leader, Ajinkya Shinde, were detained on October 13 after they trespassed on Jantar Mantar and waved the national flag. They had “sneaked into” the Jantar Mantar to oppose the authorities’ decision to denotify the area as a designated protest site.

On October 14, Ranka and Das were sent to judicial custody for five days. Shinde was released on a personal bond.

After the custody period ended on Monday, they were produced before a special executive magistrate, where the Delhi Police sought an extension, Bar and Bench reported.

The magistrate allowed the request, extending their judicial custody by two more days.

Cockroach Janta Party leader Ratna Singh described the decision as a “mockery of the justice system”.

Abhik Chimni, the lawyer representing the CJP leaders, said that the proceedings were preventive in nature and that the court had itself observed that there was no need to send them to judicial custody.

#WATCH | Abhik Chimni, representing Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das, says, "We are very disappointed. This is a matter of preventive custody and it is also a matter of fact that the Court itself said that they don't deem it necessary for the person to be sent to judicial custody.… https://t.co/J2kpBMgDyn pic.twitter.com/Vu8ovZ7MNE

— ANI (@ANI) October 19, 2026

The Cockroach Janta Party had earlier alleged that there was a “deliberate delay” in the release of Ranka and Das, accusing the authorities of prolonging their bail proceedings and rejecting bail sureties.

The allegations came after the Delhi Police registered a first information report against unidentified persons for allegedly threatening the special executive magistrate scheduled to hear the leaders’ bail applications.

On October 11, Jantar Mantar was denotified as a designated protest site in the national capital, based on recommendations from a committee constituted by the Union home ministry. The police order was reported on October 12.

The police order came against the backdrop of protests in the national capital by the Cockroach Janta Party, the Opposition parties and student groups to demand the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over concerns about the functioning of the Election Commission and its handling of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read:

• Watch: A generation’s revolt against Modi

• ‘Private parts kicked, phones taken away’: Detained Delhi protestors allege assault in police vans

• Delhi Police arrested thousands far away from Jantar Mantar. What this legal?

The Union government has asked Meta to ensure that the algorithms on its social media platforms do not disproportionately amplify “a single or limited set of narratives”. It also asked the technology company to monitor posts that could trigger public disorder, incite violence or fuel other unlawful activity.

The advisory came amid protests demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over concerns about the functioning of the Election Commission and its handling of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls. Although the advisory did not explicitly mention the protests, it referred to “periods of heightened public-order sensitivity” and “ongoing public events”.

Digital rights organisation Internet Freedom Foundation said such measures could enable the “suppression” of reporting on the demonstrations and called for the directive to be withdrawn. Read on.

Student leader Neha Bora has moved the Delhi High Court challenging a notice directing them to furnish a Rs 10,000 bond to maintain peace during an inquiry. The case concerns allegations of their involvement in protests against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar in Delhi.

The president of the All India Students’ Association was detained on Friday during a protest near Barakhamba Road. They were released at 6 am the following day after being held overnight at the RK Puram Police Station.

The notice cited allegations of shouting slogans, repeatedly protesting despite prohibitory orders and instigating people to join a protest at Connaught Place. Bora has disputed the allegations, arguing that the notice does not establish any likelihood of a breach of peace. They have also said the proceedings violate their fundamental rights to freedom of speech, assembly and personal liberty. Read on.

Protesters in Manipur placed the bodies of two men outside Chief Minister Yumnam Khemchand Singh’s home in the state capital after they were killed by suspected militants near the border of Imphal East and Kangpokpi districts. A group had brought the bodies to Imphal to protest the continuing violence in the state since 2023.

The two, identified as 35-year-old Arubam Ronil and 51-year-old Lairenlakpam Inaobi, were among a group of firewood collectors who came under fire near the boundary of Imphal East and Kangpokpi districts. Four persons were injured in the attack.

One of the injured men, 32-year-old Ksh Sushil later succumbed to his injuries, taking the toll in the incident to three. Read on.

The Opposition has accused the Maharashtra government of allowing “jungle raj” or lawlessness in the state after unidentified gunmen opened fire on actor Tiger Shroff’s vehicle in Mumbai. The actor was safe, but two persons, including his driver and a bystander, were injured in the attack on Sunday night.

Congress state chief Harshwardhan Sapkal demanded that Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis take moral responsibility and resign. He said that criminals in Maharashtra “no longer fear the law”.

Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Sanjay Raut said that “President’s Rule was the only option” and called Fadnavis a “failed” home minister.

Two persons were arrested and a minor detained in Kota, Rajasthan in connection with the attack. In a purported audio clip shared online, an alleged member of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang has claimed responsibility. Read on.

If you haven’t already, sign up for our Daily Brief newsletter.

Protesters in Manipur on Monday placed the bodies of two men outside Chief Minister Yumnam Khemchand Singh’s home in Imphal after they were killed by suspected militants near the border of Imphal East and Kangpokpi districts.

Imphal East is predominantly inhabited by Meiteis, while Kangpokpi is a Kuki-majority district.

A group had brought the bodies to Imphal to protest the continuing violence in the state since 2023. An eyewitness told Scroll that the police fired several rounds of tear gas to disperse the protesters, following which the bodies were taken to the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Medical Sciences.

The two persons who died were identified as 35-year-old Arubam Ronil and 51-year-old Lairenlakpam Inaobi. They were among a group of firewood collectors who came under fire near the boundary of Imphal East and Kangpokpi districts. Four persons were injured in the attack.

One of the injured men, 32-year-old Ksh Sushil later succumbed to his injuries taking the toll to three in the incident.

Ethnic clashes had first broken out in Manipur in May 2023 between the Meitei and the Kuki-Zo-Hmar communities.

The state was under President’s Rule between February 2025 and February 2026 after Bharatiya Janata Party leader N Biren Singh stepped down as the chief minister amid allegations from Kuki-Zomi-Hmar groups that his response to the violence had been partisan and that he had stoked majoritarianism.

Yumnam Khemchand Singh became the chief minister on February 4 this year.

He informed the Assembly in September that at least 306 persons have been killed and 49 are missing in Manipur since the beginning of the ethnic violence in the state in May 2023 60,000 persons were displaced during the violence, which he described as an “unprecedented crisis”. Of them, 36,000 internally displaced persons had been resettled and 24,000 remained in relief camps across Manipur.

Inputs from Rokibuz Zaman. Written by Tanya Shrivastava. Edited by Sara Varghese.

Student leader Neha Bora has moved the Delhi High Court against a notice issued by a special executive magistrate directing them to furnish a bond to maintain peace during an inquiry against them, Bar and Bench reported on Monday.

Bora, the president of the All India Students’ Association, was detained on Friday while participating in a flash protest by the student group near Barakhamba Road demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.

The student leader has alleged that they were taken to an undisclosed location and later to the RK Puram Police Station. Bora was held at the police station overnight before being released at 6 am, the following day.

The notice, issued on Saturday, invoked Section 126 and Section 130, read with Section 135(3), of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita. These provisions allow a magistrate to require a person to show cause why they should not be asked to furnish a bond to maintain public peace and, in certain circumstances, require them to furnish one while an inquiry is pending.

The notice directed Bora to appear before the special executive magistrate on Monday and furnish a personal bond of Rs 10,000 with a surety to “maintain peace during the period of inquiry”.

The notice cited allegations that Bora had shouted slogans at Mandi House, repeatedly protested near Jantar Mantar despite prohibitory orders under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, and instigated people to participate in a protest at Connaught Place.

Bora has disputed these allegations. They have argued that the notice does not disclose any material establishing a likelihood of a breach of peace or identify a specific event or period during which such a breach is apprehended, Bar and Bench reported.

The All India Students’ Association chief also contested the allegation concerning a protest at Connaught Place, stating that they had called for a peaceful gathering at Mandi House at 5 pm on Friday, from where they were detained.

Bora said that the proceedings violate their fundamental rights to freedom of speech, assembly and personal liberty, the legal news outlet reported.

Bora’s lawyers said they would inform the magistrate on Monday that the student leader would not furnish the bond and decide their next course of action depending on the official’s response.

The Delhi High Court is currently closed for the Dussehra vacation and is scheduled to reopen on October 26. Bora’s legal team said they may seek an urgent hearing during the vacation.

Protests against Kumar have been held in Delhi and other parts of the country since October 2 over concerns about the functioning of the Election Commission and its handling of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

Bora has been detained at least five times since the protests began.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Delhi High Court has said that a voter’s apprehension of being accused of making a false declaration by submitting Form 6 to restore his name to the electoral roll after being excluded during the special intensive revision was “misplaced” since the direction to do so had come from the Election Commission, Bar and Bench reported on Monday. Form 6 is meant for first-time voter registration.

The court made the observation while closing a petition filed by two persons whose names were deleted from the draft electoral roll in Delhi after they could not complete the SIR enumeration process following a change of residence.

The petitioners had challenged the poll panel’s direction requiring existing electors who were left out during the SIR to seek fresh inclusion through Form 6, rather than use Form 8 to correct or shift their existing electoral entries.

Form 8 is meant for shifting residence and correcting details in an existing electoral roll.

They sought to have their names restored to the electoral roll and moved to the constituency where they now lived.

The poll panel told the court that the petitioners could seek the restoration of their names by submitting Form 6.

However, the petitioners submitted that furnishing Form 6 would amount to making a false declaration.

SIR in Delhi

Delhi has 97.5 lakh voters in the draft electoral rolls after 47.7 lakh names were removed from the list published on August 31.

Of the 97.5 lakh voters, 33 lakh were issued notices after being flagged for not being linked to the electoral roll from the last SIR or for having a “logical discrepancy” in their enumeration forms.

Verification of these cases is to be completed by October 29, while the final electoral rolls are slated to be published on November 4.

The Delhi chief electoral officer has also ordered a special re-verification drive to re-enrol eligible voters who were left out of the draft electoral roll.

The move came after the Election Commission earlier this month directed poll panels in states where the voter roll revision has been completed to conduct an exercise to restore eligible voters who may have been wrongly excluded through Form 6.

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

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

A contentious exercise

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

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

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

Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Union government has asked Meta to ensure that the algorithms on its social media platforms do not disproportionately amplify “a single or limited set of narratives” and monitor posts that could trigger public disorder, incite violence or fuel other unlawful activity.

The advisory, seen by Scroll, was issued amid protests in New Delhi demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over concerns about the Election Commission and its handling of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

In the advisory dated October 10, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology asked Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, to “provide adequate context in relation to photographs, videos, graphics or other content depicting ongoing public events”.

It said that content allowed to be shared without such context “may contribute to public confusion, apprehension and disturbance of public order and social tranquility”.

Although the advisory did not explicitly mention the protests, it referred to “periods of heightened public-order sensitivity” and “ongoing public events”.

“[Meta is advised to] review its recommendation and content-ranking mechanisms to ensure that potentially misleading, manipulated or out-of-context content is not disproportionately amplified or repeatedly recommended to users,” said the advisory.

The ministry asked the technology company to “ensure timely cooperation with law-enforcement and other authorised government agencies”.

The advisory called for particular attention to content containing “unverified or misleading claims regarding the imposition of emergency, restrictions, police action or other official measures”.

Ahead of a demonstration on October 10, the police imposed several restrictions to deter protesters from gathering in the national capital, in what the organisers described as intimidation by the authorities. The measures include detaining persons, cancelling trains, closing 45 metro stations and suspending mobile internet in central Delhi.

Around 7,000 protesters in Delhi were detained and allegedly assaulted for taking part in the demonstrations.

India is the world’s largest market by user numbers for Facebook and Instagram.

IFF seeks withdrawal of advisory, flags ‘protest censorship’

Digital rights organisation Internet Freedom Foundation on Monday, called on the Centre to withdraw the advisory to Meta, arguing that it could enable the “suppression of protest reporting”.

The organisation said that the advisory was issued on the day that the Delhi Police detained protesters and journalists during demonstrations against the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

It argued that asking Meta to flag “unverified” claims about police action and prevent the disproportionate promotion of certain narratives risked curbing freedom of expression.

The organisation also alleged that several news outlets, journalists and activist accounts had been restricted on Facebook and Instagram in the days following the advisory. It called on Meta to disclose any content removals, account restrictions or reductions in the visibility of posts carried out in response to the government’s communication.

Written by Abeer Khan. Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Opposition accused the ruling coalition in Maharashtra of creating a “jungle raj” or lawlessness in the state after unidentified gunmen opened fire on actor Tiger Shroff’s vehicle in Mumbai.

Two persons, including Shroff’s driver, were injured in the attack on Sunday evening when the actor was leaving a football ground in Juhu.

Two adults were arrested and a minor detained in Kota, Rajasthan on Monday after a first information report has been filed.

In a purported audio clip shared online, an alleged member of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang claimed responsibility for the attack.

महाराष्ट्रात महायुती सरकारने जंगलराज निर्माण केले आहे! मुंबईसारख्या महानगरात अभिनेता टायगर श्रॉफवर भररस्त्यात गोळीबार होत असेल, तर सामान्य नागरिकांच्या सुरक्षिततेची हमी कोण देणार?

राज्यात कायदा-सुव्यवस्थेचा पुरता बोजवारा उडाला आहे. गुन्हेगारांना कायद्याचा धाक उरलेला नाही आणि… pic.twitter.com/a0uEbGJPJv

— Harshwardhan Sapkal (@INCHarshsapkal) October 18, 2026

The Bharatiya Janata Party, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena faction and the Sunetra Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party Group are part of the ruling Mahayuti coalition in the state.

Reacting to the incident, Congress’ state chief Harshwardhan Sapkal said that criminals in Maharashtra “no longer fear the law” and Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’ control over the police administration “has ceased to exist”.

“If an actor like Tiger Shroff can be shot at in broad daylight in a metropolis like Mumbai, then who will guarantee the safety of ordinary citizens?” he wrote on social media. “Devendra Fadnavis has utterly failed as the chief minister and the home minister.”

He asked Fadnavis to take moral responsibility of the incident and resign.

ठाण्यात पूर्णेकर हत्या;
मुंबईत टाइगर श्रॉफ वर गोळीबार!
कायदा आणि सुव्यवस्था पूर्ण कोसळून पडली आहे!
राष्ट्रपती राजवट हाच एकमेव पर्याय आहे!
देवेंद्र फडणवीस हे सगळ्यात अपयशी गृहमंत्री ठरत आहेत!@PMOIndia @rashtrapatibhvn @Dev_Fadnavis pic.twitter.com/VpSCzbpzRW

— Sanjay Raut (@rautsanjay61) October 18, 2026

Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Sanjay Raut said that “President’s rule was the only option” while calling Fadnavis a “failed” home minister.

Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) leader Supriya Sule described the state’s law and order as “extremely alarming” and urged Fadnavis to monitor the situation.

“Shooting incidents are continuously surfacing across the state, and the situation is such that criminals no longer fear the law,” she wrote on social media. “Criminals are brandishing swords and firing shots on busy streets in broad daylight.”

NCP(SP)’s Rohit Pawar said that the incident was “utterly alarming” as it took place just days after a Uddhav Sena functionary was shot dead outside his party office in Thane.

“If such brazen lawlessness by thugs is unfolding right in the middle of the road in the state’s financial capital, which entrepreneur would dare invest here?” Pawar said.

He also asked the state government to hand over the home portfolio to a “competent minister”.

Congress leader Varsha Eknath Gaikwad criticised the law and order in the state, asking “whose responsibility is it exactly to ensure the safety of Mumbaikars?”

The Rashtriya Janata Dal alleged that nobody was safe under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rule.

“Neither the borders are safe, nor homes, nor youth, nor the common man, and nor the elite!” it said.

Attack on Shroff

A man who identified himself as Anil Pandit and claimed to be a member of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang said that Shroff was on the group’s target list as he was “not heeding” their directions and continuing to work with actor Salman Khan.

Bishnoi, who is in jail in Gujarat, has repeatedly threatened to kill Khan.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Mohit Garg declined to comment on the social media post by the Lawrence Bishnoi gang claiming responsibility for the attack.

Shroff was seen with bandages in videos of him online meeting Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde after the incident. However, the police said that the actor was not hit by any bullets.

Shinde condemned the incident and said that the police have formed several teams to track the suspects. He said that the state government will assess threats to other celebrities as well.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Abeer Khan.

Former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy on Sunday said that he “regrets” having supported a 2023 law introduced by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government to change the process of appointing election commissioners, The News Minute reported.

The Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress leader accused the state poll panel of bias during nominations for the local body elections in Andhra Pradesh. His comments came amid reports of alleged political violence between the YSR Congress and the state’s ruling Telugu Desam Party.

The TDP is a part of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.

The 2023 Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office Act states that the head of the poll panel and the two other top members are to be appointed based on the recommendations of a selection committee comprising the prime minister, a Union Cabinet minister and the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha.

The composition of the panel means that the government enjoys a 2:1 majority over the leader of the Opposition, if there is a difference of opinion.

On Sunday, Reddy described his party’s support for the law as “a mistake” and said that the appointments of election commissioners at all levels should be “neutral”, The News Minute reported.

“An examiner cannot be appointed by the student,” India Today quoted him as saying.

Reddy said that even an honest election commissioner could face questions about impartiality if appointed through a process that was not neutral. He argued that the appointment process should not be controlled by the ruling political party.

The leader accused the TDP of trying to win elections by misusing the state machinery, The News Minute reported.

Reddy alleged that YSR Congress candidates had their nomination papers snatched and party workers were allegedly attacked, kidnapped and intimidated, India Today reported.

He also accused the TDP of arson and filing false cases against YSR Congress workers, allegedly with the knowledge of the police, it added.

“If the flaw is repaired, then the system can run well.” Reddy was quoted as saying.

The law, passed by Parliament in December 2023, replaced an arrangement created by a Supreme Court judgement in March 2023 that had formed a selection committee consisting of the prime minister, the leader of the Opposition and the chief justice of India.

During a hearing in May, the Supreme Court questioned the need for a Union Cabinet minister to be included in the selection panel.

In February 2025, Gyanesh Kumar was appointed the chief election commissioner even as Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi submitted a dissent note at the selection meeting.

The 2023 law has been challenged before the Supreme Court. On September 23, the court referred the petitions challenging its constitutionality to a larger bench.

Edited by Anamika Pathak.

The Cockroach Janta Party political campaign on Sunday alleged that the authorities were deliberately delaying the release of its leaders Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das by prolonging their bail hearings.

The allegations came as the Delhi Police registered a first information report against unidentified persons for allegedly threatening the special executive magistrate scheduled to hear the bail proceedings, to release Ranka and Das, The Indian Express reported on Monday.

Ranka and Das, along with another campaign leader, Ajinkya Shinde, were arrested on October 13 by the police for trespassing on Jantar Mantar. They had “sneaked into” the Jantar Mantar to protest the authorities’ decision to denotify the area as a designated protest site.

Saurav and Ashutosh remain in judicial custody as their release plea goes unheard. There are deliberate delays, procedural irregularities, and a hearing derailed by an alleged threatening message instead of the merits of their release. pic.twitter.com/zK8Vt3Ibq2

— Cockroach Janta Party - CJP (@Cockroachisback) October 18, 2026

On Wednesday, Ranka and Das were sent to judicial custody for five days. Shinde was released on a personal bond.

On Sunday, Ratna Singh, the legal affairs head of the campaign, said that the hearing scheduled for 12 pm was delayed for several hours. She said that the magistrate arrived at 6 pm and said that he had received threatening messages.

“There was no discussion on the merits of the case today,” Singh claimed. “The entire discussion was focused on the threatening message with the public prosecutor hinting that someone from our side had sent the message.”

Singh alleged that the authorities were delaying the hearing by rejecting bail sureties.

“They wasted everyone’s time for four days,” she said. “I am very disappointed.”

She further questioned how the authorities could prevent Ranka and Das from being released on the basis of the alleged threatening messages.

Describing their arrests as a “conspiracy”, Singh said she would not be surprised if Ranka and Das’ judicial custody was extended further on Monday.

Cockroach Janta Party founder Abhijeet Dipke accused the government of using “every dirty trick in the book” to prolong the “illegal arrest” of Ranka and Das. “They have no legal grounds to keep them behind bars, so they are resorting to delaying tactics to keep them there,” he wrote on social media.

On October 11, Jantar Mantar was denotified as a designated protest site in the national capital, based on recommendations from a committee constituted by the Union home ministry. The police order was reported on October 12.

The police order came against the backdrop of protests in the national capital by the Cockroach Janta Party, the Opposition parties and student groups to demand the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over concerns about the functioning of the Election Commission and its handling of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

• Watch: A generation’s revolt against Modi
• ‘Private parts kicked, phones taken away’: Detained Delhi protestors allege assault in police vans
• Delhi Police arrested thousands far away from Jantar Mantar. What this legal?

The parents of Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay student Sahil Wakode, who died by suicide a month ago, were detained by Mumbai Police on Sunday while sitting at a protest site inside the campus, The Indian Express reported.

Ravindra Wakode and Sonali Wakode had arrived at the campus to pay homage to their son, who died on September 18. Ravindra Wakode had also submitted a letter to the institute’s registrar.

At least 16 protesting students were also detained as the police cleared and demolished the site near the institute’s main gate, the Daily Pioneer reported.

Student groups accused the police of using excessive force while detaining the protesters, alleging that they were kicked, choked and had their clothes torn, the newspaper reported.

The Mumbai Police and the IIT-Bombay administration are yet to make a statement on the incident.

Mumbai Police are brutally detaining students from INSIDE the IIT Bombay campus. What is going on?@CPMumbaiPolice @CMOMaharashtra - this is how you treat young people in Mumbai? @SunetraA_Pawar vahini and @mieknathshinde ji, I hope you will speak out on this. pic.twitter.com/2DrL3nkXO7

— Anish Gawande (@anishgawande) October 18, 2026

Protests at IIT-Bombay

Students have been protesting near the IIT Bombay gates in Powai for about a month, demanding accountability over the death of 20-year-old Sahil Wakode.

Sahil Wakode was found hanging in his hostel room on September 18. His family has alleged that he faced caste-based discrimination at the institute.

Police have registered a case against Professor Suryanarayan Doolla and unidentified others on charges of abetment to suicide and under provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act.

IIT-Bombay claimed that during an examination on September 18, Sahil Wakode was found using a mobile phone and uploading the question paper on artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT to seek answers. Doolla was reportedly the invigilator at the time.

The institute, however, claimed that no disciplinary action was taken against Wakode. “The matter was also discussed with the student by the instructor, the faculty advisor and the Head of the Department, who counselled him and assured him that the incident would not adversely affect his academic career,” it had said at the time.

However, Sahil Wakode’s parents alleged that their son had been threatened with suspension.

His father, Ravindra Wakode, alleged that Doolla had subjected his son to caste discrimination for the previous three months on the instructions of the institute’s director, Professor Shireesh B Kedare.

“Doolla was passing casteist remarks for the past three months and had threatened to implicate him in a wrong manner before the incident took place,” Ravindra Wakode alleged in his complaint.

Kedare, however, denied that there was any caste discrimination in the case. “In fact caste-based information of every student is completely hidden and not available for anybody’s information,” he had said at the time.

The institute’s Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Cell, in an email to students, had said it had not received any complaint of caste discrimination from Sahil Wakode.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Mumbai Police on Friday detained several persons who had gathered for a “Tiranga March” at Carter Road in Bandra, the Cockroach Janta Party has alleged.

The CJP had called the march in solidarity with its leaders Ashutosh Ranka, Saurav Das and Ajinkya Shinde, who were arrested by the Delhi Police amid protests in the country against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.

The police had not granted permission for the march, but protesters reached Carter Road to participate in the demonstration. The CJP said its supporters were detained by the Vakola and Bandra police.

Mumbai, Maharashtra: Following a call by the CJP to hold a 'Tiranga March' on Carter Road in Bandra, the police took action. The Mumbai Police had not granted permission for the march; nevertheless, several CJP supporters arrived at Carter Road to participate. Subsequently, the… pic.twitter.com/bfFLT1F74h

— IANS (@ians_india) October 18, 2026

CJP volunteer Purva Khetan also alleged that some students were not allowed to leave their place of stay in Vakola, in Santacruz East, ahead of the march. She told Scroll that the police had not informed the students why they were being prevented from leaving.

Vakola Senior Police Inspector Navnath Ghuge told Scroll that none of those persons had been taken to the police station. He said the police had not allowed a few persons who had “seemed suspicious and did not give their names and residential details” to leave their place of stay.

मुंबई पोलिसने मला आणि कुणाल ला खार सबवेमधून उचलले. का, तर आम्ही सॉलिडेरिटी वॉक करायला कार्टर रोड ला निघाली होती.

उबेर केली आणि खार सबवे पर्यंत पोहोचलो तर, उबेर थांबवली, सगळीकडून पोलिस आले सिविल ड्रेस मधे आणि गाडीत बसले. आधी कुणाचा फोन खेचून घेतला आणि मग माझा….. प्रचंड… pic.twitter.com/Ke1V0PcYYh

— Mrs Anjali Damania (@anjali_damania) October 18, 2026

A similar Tiranga March had been organised in Delhi on Friday, ahead of which CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke was detained and later placed under preventive arrest. He was released on Saturday.

This comes against the backdrop of protests in the national capital by the the political campaign, the Opposition parties and student groups to demand the resignation of Kumar over concerns about the functioning of the Election Commission and its handling of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

Protests against Kumar have been held in the national capital and other parts of the country since October 2.

The trigger for the protests was a September 23 investigation by The Indian Express, which revealed that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected 14 times in 10 months to decisions by the poll panel related to the special intensive revision, saying some had been taken without their knowledge.

Inputs from Tabassum Barnagarwala. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

At the height of the Cuban missile crisis, American warships dropped small explosive charges near a Soviet submarine off the coast of Cuba on October 27, 1962. Their purpose was to force the B-59 submarine to surface. The Americans did not know that it carried a nuclear torpedo. Inside the submarine, officers who had been cut off from reliable communications struggled to determine whether war had begun.

Captain Valentin Savitsky came close to ordering the torpedo’s use but another senior officer aboard, Vasili Arkhipov, helped prevent that decision. The episode was fully understood decades later, a reminder of how close the world came to the use of nuclear weapons through misperception, incomplete information, and compressed decision timelines under stress.

The incident, dramatised in The Man Who Saved the World, a 2012 television documentary in the PBS series Secrets of the Dead series, illustrates how nuclear escalation can begin without either belligerent choosing to go nuclear. One side conducts an operation it considers limited while the other encounters explosions, incomplete information and uncertainty about what will happen next. Decisions then depend on officers under tremendous pressure, interpreting intentions they cannot verify.

The 88-hour long military conflict between India and Pakistan in May 2025 brought this problem into sharper focus, when conventional weapons fired by India reached deep into enemy territory, including Kirana Hills, associated with Pakistan’s nuclear infrastructure. In August 2026, former Indian chief of defence staff Anil Chauhan revealed that an Indian loitering munition searching for radars at Sargodha airbase in Pakistan had exhausted its endurance and struck a hill there unintentionally.

Chauhan’s account does not establish that India attacked a nuclear storage installation, but it strengthens the case that conventional operations produced effects near a sensitive nuclear location. Pakistan would have had to interpret those effects while attacks were continuing. An accidental impact can resemble reconnaissance, a warning or the opening move of a campaign against nuclear forces.

India’s confirmed attack on Nur Khan airbase on the same day created a related problem. The base shares the wider Chaklala cantonment with Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division, responsible for nuclear planning, although the offices are more than a kilometre away. Physical separation matters, but it cannot guarantee reassurance during the fog of war. Pakistan could have easily perceived the attack as more dangerous than India intended and moved on to take a nuclear posture.

Chauhan has described the military as having received a free hand to conduct operations, with decisions on escalation made under time pressure and with limited real-time political oversight once the campaign began. Hotline communications between the two directorates-general of military operations experienced reported disruptions at critical moments. These details, drawn from public accounts by participants, illustrate how operational tempo, incomplete information and the absence of tightly managed political control can produce near misses even when neither side seeks nuclear use.

The Cuban missile crisis’s enduring lesson regarding the gap between what military operations intend and what frightened nuclear-armed adversaries believe they mean has been forgotten by India and Pakistan. An attacker’s confidence in precision or its non-nuclear intentions does not determine the defender’s interpretation of danger. More crucially, both the Soviet Union and the U.S. learnt the right lessons from the Cuban crisis and chose to eschew all pathways that could lead to even inadvertent nuclear escalation. The baseline of conflict was reset between the two superpowers for the rest of the Cold War.

The military generals in Pakistan and the political leaders in India have chosen the opposite path. To them, the four days of fighting last May demonstrated that missiles, drones and aircraft could strike across international borders without immediately producing nuclear escalation. The geographical and operational boundaries of conflict widened rapidly, but militaries on both sides believed that they had total control over the escalation ladder.

Both governments claimed success and were hailed by their domestic publics, which were infused with a high dose of nationalism. India now believes it has expanded the space for conventional military operations under the nuclear threshold while Pakistan wants its full spectrum deterrence to remain effective by shrinking that space. These incompatible assumptions make the next military conflict in Southasia harder to contain.

Southasia was lucky that the Trump administration negotiated and announced a ceasefire after four days of military exchanges between India and Pakistan. However, it didn’t resolve the problem, instead freezing a higher baseline for the next confrontation, by leaving the underlying conflict unsettled and competing narratives intact.

Think of it this way. After the next big terror attack in India believed to be linked to Pakistan, any government in New Delhi will be under pressure to demonstrate that its military response exceeds previous operations. Pakistan’s military will face corresponding pressure to preserve its reputation and impose visible costs on India. Each side will therefore regard escalation as necessary to restore deterrence.

General Chauhan has suggested that Pakistan’s decision to escalate conventionally in May 2025 makes subsequent nuclear escalation in future conflicts less likely. No such sequencing rule binds Pakistan. Its choices would depend on battlefield developments, perceived threats and political judgments, and not on India’s declared policy of no first use for its nuclear weapons.

If the Pakistani leadership believes Indian attacks threaten its strategic capabilities or military’s survival or could lead to a split in the country, it will not hesitate to signal the use of its nuclear option. That has been made explicitly clear on numerous occasions by the chief architect of Pakistan’s nuclear deterrence doctrine, Lt General Khalid Kidwai.

The Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Notebook estimates that India may have assembled up to 190 nuclear warheads by 2026, with sufficient plutonium for 140 to 225, and continues to field additional delivery systems across a maturing triad of aircraft, land-based missiles, and ballistic-missile submarines.

Pakistan is assessed to hold a comparable number, around 170 warheads, and has accelerated modernisation of its own forces, including tactical nuclear weapons intended to offset India’s conventional superiority. Both sides are fielding faster, more accurate systems such as India’s BrahMos cruise missiles and expanding missile defences and dual-capable platforms. These developments compress warning and decision times.

The 2022 accidental Indian BrahMos launch into Pakistani territory, which prompted Pakistan to suspend air traffic and raise alert levels for hours while India remained mum, demonstrated how a single technical failure during peacetime can produce acute tension. In a crisis environment, the same error could prove far harder to contain.

Analysts have long identified Southasia as the region where accidental or inadvertent nuclear use is most plausible. Barry Posen, a political expert’s work on inadvertent escalation showed that conventional operations can threaten an adversary’s nuclear forces or command systems and thereby generate pressures for early nuclear employment even when neither party intends it.

In Southasia the geography is unforgiving where short flight times, high population densities along the border, and overlapping conventional and nuclear force deployments leave little margin for error.

Recurrent triggers such as terrorist attacks, artillery exchanges along the Line of Control and competing claims over Kashmir keep the two sides in a cycle of crisis. The absence of robust, institutionalised confidence-building measures, shared nuclear doctrines or reliable crisis communication protocols beyond a fragile military hotline further elevates the danger. Studies by scholars such as Vipin Narang and Scott Sagan have documented how Pakistan’s full-spectrum deterrence posture and India’s evolving dynamic response doctrine create competing incentives to demonstrate resolve while testing the other’s red lines.

These dynamics carry direct consequences for the US, as the broader US-led international order rests on the residual authority of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. Preventing Iranian nuclear acquisition was an announced objective of the US and Israeli operations launched in February 2026.

The credibility of that effort depends on the perception that existing nuclear-armed states, including those like India and Pakistan which are outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty, manage their arsenals with restraint and that crises among them do not produce uncontrolled escalation. A serious nuclear incident between India and Pakistan would undermine that perception, complicate US efforts to maintain alliance commitments in Asia and raise questions about the durability of the entire non-proliferation architecture.

Emerging domains add further complexity. The US has confirmed for the first time that it has deployed weapons in space. Both India and China are developing space-based capabilities, including anti-satellite systems and dual-use technologies that could blur the line between conventional and strategic operations. Proposals for lunar reactors and space-based sensors or weapons, while still nascent, introduce new pathways for miscalculation.

An incident involving space assets during a Southasian crisis could cascade rapidly, given the reliance of modern command-and-control systems on satellites. The US, as the leading space power and the primary external actor with influence in both New Delhi and Islamabad, would face immediate demands to clarify its own red lines and to prevent the conflict from expanding beyond the subcontinent.

A wargaming of Southasia’s distinctive danger combines recurring terrorist triggers, rapid conventional retaliation, sensitive military geography and contested crisis narratives. The combination of faster weapons, deeper military attacks, less constrained operational practices, overconfidence in escalation control, incompatible victory narratives and thin crisis-management institutions have reduced the margin for error. Successful termination of an earlier conflict has given political and military leadership in India and Pakistan confidence that the same methods will work again, even when the next attack, political circumstances or battlefield losses differ dramatically.

The resulting danger, of Southasia being the most dangerous global nuclear flashpoint, comes from these mutually reinforcing expectations of limited, manageable violence between two nuclear-armed states. The world cannot afford another confrontation in Southasia which tests assumptions that fortuitously survived once.

Sushant Singh teaches Southasian studies and political science at Yale University.

This is a Global Southasia (formerly Sapan News) syndicated feature.

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India on Saturday suspended the licence of Priyagold biscuit manufacturer Surya Food and Agro Limited for using cattle-feed bran as a raw material.

During an inspection, the regulator found that bran meant for cattle feed and not intended for human consumption was being used as a source of fibre.

In a post on social media, it added that legal proceedings have been initiated against the company for several food safety violations relating to plant hygiene, pest control, raw material storage and segregation, personnel hygiene, premises maintenance, and the handling of intermediate formulations.

The company has not yet responded to the regulator’s action.

The regulator has also initiated prosecution proceedings against Dodla Dairy Limited and UEIR Organic Foods Private Limited for alleged food safety violations.

A sample of Dodla Dairy’s full-cream milk was found to contain detergent or caustic soda and also failed to meet the prescribed milk-fat specifications. Yellow raisins sold by UEIR Organic Foods were found to contain pesticide residues.

The action came amid a recent crackdown by food regulators on food adulteration and misleading advertisements.

On October 3, the food regulator said that a sample of Nestlé’s low-fat dairy whitener collected from The LaLiT hotel in Delhi’s Connaught Place was found to be “unsafe and substandard”.

The regulator had directed that the sale of the product be immediately prohibited.

However, Nestlé India said the product was “safe to consume” and complied with applicable regulations.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Sara Varghese.

Also read:

• Food regulator took credit for a ‘crackdown’ on Bournvita. But it gave the drink a clean chit
• India’s food regulator flagged over 160 misleading claims. Years later, 120 are still around
• How India’s ambitious plan to curb unhealthy food failed

Delhi’s chief electoral officer on Saturday said that around 26 lakh, or 78.5%, of the 33.1 lakh cases flagged for not being linked to the electoral roll of the last special intensive revision or for having a “logical discrepancy” had been resolved, The Hindu reported.

The 33 lakh voters who were issued notices account for about one-third of the 97.5 lakh voters included in the draft electoral roll. Of these, 13.7 lakh were flagged for failing to link themselves to the electoral roll from the last SIR, while 19.3 lakh were issued notices over “logical discrepancies” in their enumeration forms.

Verification of these cases is to be completed by October 29, while the final electoral rolls are slated to be published on November 4.

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

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

Those removed from the voter list were marked as permanently shifted, deceased, absent, duplicate entries or placed under the “other” category. It was unclear what the “other” category referred to.

Booth-level officers have been visiting homes across constituencies to collect documents from the 33 lakh persons who received notices.

In addition to this, the Delhi Election Commission has also ordered a special re-verification drive to re-enroll eligible voters who were left out of the draft electoral roll, The Indian Express reported on Saturday.

The chief electoral officer has directed booth-level officers to “simultaneously identify left out eligible electors in their allotted part and facilitate their enrolment through Form 6, wherever the person is found to be eligible”.

The move came after the Election Commission earlier this month directed poll panels in states where the voter roll revision has been completed to conduct an exercise to reinstate through Form 6 eligible voters who may have been wrongly removed from the electoral rolls.

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

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

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

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

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

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Assam government on Sunday demolished the homes of more than 600 Muslim families in the Lutumari Longjap Reserve Forest in Nagaon district, which the administration claimed were encroaching on forest land, a senior forest official told Scroll. This was the second day of the demolition drive.

On Saturday, more than 500 Muslim families were evicted in three Assam districts, senior government officials told Scroll. The evictions were carried out in Nagaon, Golaghat and Hojai amid heavy security. A total of 547 families – 336 in Nagaon, 59 in Golaghat and 152 in Hojai – were evicted. Most of those affected were Bengali Muslims.

The families in Lutumari had been living on more than 300 hectares of land in the reserve forest for decades. The affected residents said they were not encroachers and had been settled there by the government.

“We were settled by the government in 1974,” Abdul Noor, a 44-year-old resident of Lutumari whose home was demolished on Sunday, told Scroll. “We are originally from nearby Juria town but were settled by the government as our forefathers were landless. Altogether, 300 landless families were given four bighas of land each.”

He added: “We had challenged the eviction in the Gauhati High Court, but the court did not give us any relief.”

Noor said more than 10 mosques, some of them more than 50 years old, were also demolished.

“We used to work in the forest department as labourers. That’s why many were brought [here],” he said.

In June, the All India Union of Forest Working People had urged the Assam government to halt the planned eviction of villagers in the Lutumari Longjap Reserve Forest. The organisation had argued that residents of four villages there had been settled under the colonial-era taungya system of forest management and should not be treated as ordinary encroachers.

Under the taungya system, forest-dwelling communities cultivated food crops alongside commercially valuable trees while working for the Forest Department. The system was introduced by the British in the mid-19th century and was later used in parts of Assam.

The four villages are Kandarpa Longjap, Padumoni, Hatijur and No. 9 Kheroni.

In the last ten years of Bharatiya Janata Party rule, about 19,000 families – the majority of them Muslim – have been evicted from government land, according to data provided by the state revenue and disaster management department and respective district authorities compiled by Scroll.

Inputs from Rokibuz Zaman. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

A bulldozer sent to remove a Communist Party of India (Marxist) book stall in Kolkata’s Jadavpur area on Saturday had to retreat after party workers, residents and students gathered to oppose the move, The Telegraph reported.

The incident is the latest in a series of disputes over Left parties’ book stalls during Durga Puja in West Bengal.

Police and central forces were present as a team from the Kolkata Municipal Corporation arrived with the bulldozer to remove the stall, which had been set up four days earlier.

What an image for this #DurgaPuja in Kolkata! No one has seen this, #Bulldozer coming to destroy the bookstalls of the left at #Jadavpur.
The resistance was given by local people & all the @CpimlWestBengal @CPIM_WESTBENGAL & other democratic forces. Ultimately it had to go back. pic.twitter.com/4Z1oPV6pX7

— SS #Andolanjeevi #SaabYaadRakhaJayega (@sumonseng) October 17, 2026

“We have permission from the Kolkata Police, the corporation and for the electricity consumed at the stall,” Sudip Sengupta, a Communist Party of India (Marxist) state committee member, told The Telegraph. He alleged that officials had arrived to clear the site after the court went on vacation.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation criticised the action, accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh of targeting Left-run book stalls.

The RSS, a Hindutva organisation, is the ideological parent of the BJP.

“The BJP-RSS regime fears books because it fears ideas,” the party said on social media. “It fears the history of people’s struggles, the ideas of equality and justice, and the spirit of resistance that no bulldozer can crush.”

The action followed the demolition of book stalls in nearby Dhakuria earlier on Saturday, the newspaper reported.

Communist Party of India leader Prabir Deb, a Dhakuria resident, said the party had been setting up its book stall in Dhakuria for 49 years and had informed the local police station every year.

“Why can’t we sell books?” he asked.

On Thursday, another CPI(M) book stall in the state’s North 24 Parganas district was allegedly vandalised and set on fire by unidentified people, PTI reported. The stall was located in the Palashi Majhipara area of Bijpur.

Book stalls run by the CPI(M), the CPI and the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation have faced opposition and attacks across West Bengal in the weeks leading up to Durga Puja, The Hindu reported.

The dispute follows Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari’s September 10 call for Durga Puja committees to deny space to such stalls if they use the term “Sharodotsav” or autumn festival instead of Durga Puja, the newspaper reported.

Left parties have long set up book stalls during the festival, selling books on politics, literature and other subjects.

The parties say they have traditionally informed local police about their stalls and paid the required fees to the civic body. However the authorities have disputed whether some stalls had the necessary permissions, Alt News reported.

The dispute has also reached the Calcutta High Court.

On Friday, a division bench of the Calcutta High Court stayed an earlier order allowing the CPI(M) to set up a book stall near its party office in Bongaon, preventing it from operating during the remaining days of Durga Puja, Bar and Bench reported.

The state government had challenged the single-judge order issued on Thursday, which directed that the party be allowed to set up the stall within 100 metres of its intended location.

The court also directed the state to check whether a Hindutva group called the Hindu Jagran Manch, which had set up a stall at the proposed location, had the necessary permission.

After the order, the CPI(M)’s counsel said it “is only related to the CPM’s Bongaon stall and does not apply to all other stalls across Bengal,” The Telegraph reported.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

A Supreme Court-appointed enquiry committee investigating alleged police excesses during youth protests in July and violence against security forces, launched a portal on Saturday for the affected persons to submit their complaints.

Priority will be given to complaints concerning the use of pellet guns, targeted violence and harassment of women protesters, and the excessive use of force and destruction of property by either side, the committee said.

The committee said the portal was designed to protect vulnerable witnesses and keep the identities of affected persons confidential if they wished to remain anonymous.

On August 20, the court had formed the five-member enquiry committee headed by Justice R Subhash Reddy, a retired Supreme Court judge.

The court had set up the panel while hearing petitions alleging that the police used excessive force against protesters marching to Parliament in Delhi on July 20.

The youth protests against alleged mismanagement of several competitive examinations had begun on June 6, when the Cockroach Janta Party political campaign staged a demonstration at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar to demand the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, the Union education minister at the time. Pradhan resigned as the education minister on July 25.

During the protest, several demonstrators were injured after security personnel used lathis, fired tear gas and pellet guns to disperse the crowd.

The committee will also assess the medical and other assistance, including compensation, provided to those affected by the alleged police abuse, and whether it was adequate. It will also consider injuries sustained by police personnel while on duty and the “mental and emotional trauma” experienced by their family members.

The portal allows users to submit information under four categories: affected persons, witnesses wishing to file complaints, anonymous information and suggestions for the committee. Each section contains a set of questions and allows users to upload supporting material, including complaints, photographs and videos.

Those wishing to submit complaints in person about matters being examined by the committee can visit its office at Shiksha Sadan in New Delhi, between 2 pm and 4 pm on working days.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Sara Varghese.

Also read:

• Ten persons injured by pellets during youth protest march to Parliament, shows RTI response
• Youth protests: Constable fired AK-47 after being ‘trapped’ in crowd, Bihar tells Supreme Court
• Watch: Young protesters in Delhi face police lathi-charge and tear gas

At least 19 persons, including women and children, were killed and 25 injured in a stampede at a Durga Puja pandal in north Kolkata on Saturday evening, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari said.

The stampede occurred at around 7.40 pm as crowds gathered at the pandal during rainfall, ANI quoted the Kolkata Police as saying.

The rain prompted people waiting outside the pandal to rush inside for shelter. An announcement warning that the pandal might collapse if the crowd was not brought under control reportedly added to the confusion and triggered a sudden rush, according to The Indian Express.

The injured were taken to Kolkata Medical College and Hospital and other hospitals for treatment.

Never in our bloodline we have seen a stampede in #DurgaPuja & people dying! pic.twitter.com/ve4cMWTLVY

— All India Trinamool Congress (@AITCofficial) October 17, 2026

Seven persons, including the secretary and vice-president of the organising committee, have been arrested in connection with the incident, PTI quoted the Kolkata Police as saying on Sunday. Two persons in-charge of security and a person responsible for construction work were among those arrested.

Police have registered a suo motu case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder at the Girish Park police station. Fourteen persons were detained for questioning on Saturday night, of whom seven have been arrested. The police said more arrests could follow.

Adhikari said surveillance camera footage would be examined and those found responsible for failures in crowd control would face action, ANI reported.

He also said the government would seek the appointment of a sitting judge of the Calcutta High Court to oversee a special investigation team probe.

The pandal has since been closed to visitors, and the site was handed over to investigators and forensic teams, the chief minister said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced Rs 2 lakh in compensation from the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund for the family of each person killed in the stampede, and Rs 50,000 for each injured person.

Adhikari announced Rs 25 lakh for the family of each person killed, along with a government job for one family member in a Group D post, which typically involves entry-level support work such as office assistance.

The state government will also provide Rs 5 lakh to each injured person and cover their medical treatment costs, the chief minister said.

President Droupadi Murmu, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi and former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee were among those who expressed condolences.

Major pandals temporarily shut, prohibitory orders imposed

The Kolkata Police on Saturday asked several major Durga Puja organisers to temporarily close their pandals following the stampede, including at Tala Pratyay, Alipore Sarbojanin, Chetla Agrani and Ballygunge Sarbojanin, The New Indian Express repororted.

The police said the closures were temporary measures to control crowds, with a review meeting scheduled for Sunday.

Prohibitory orders under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita were imposed in parts of Bowbazar on Sunday until Tuesday to “prevent a breach of peace”, ANI reported.

The restrictions prohibit gatherings of five or more people, carrying lathis or dangerous weapons, and activities that could disrupt public harmony.

The restricted area includes the vicinity of Kolkata Medical College and Hospital in central parts of the city.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Six United States lawmakers, including Pramila Jayapal and Ilhan Omar, have urged Secretary of State Marco Rubio to raise with Indian authorities concerns about alleged police excesses against those protesting to demand Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation and the suspension of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

Rubio will be visiting Mumbai and Jamnagar between October 19 and October 22. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will travel to Mumbai to meet the Trump official on October 20.

In a social media post on Saturday, Indian-born Jayapal said that the US and India have an obligation to defend human rights as the world’s largest democracies.

In a letter addressed to Rubio on Friday, Jayapal, Omar, Jim McGovern, Rashida Tlaib, Eleanor Holmes Norton, and Jesus Garcia expressed concern about a “pattern of repression, wrongful detention, and excessive use of force” by authorities in India during nationwide protests to demand Kumar’s resignation.

This came against the backdrop of protests in the national capital and other parts of the country since October 2 over concerns about the functioning of the Election Commission and its handling of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

On October 10, around 7,000 protesters in Delhi were detained and allegedly assaulted for taking part in the demonstrations.

The Democratic Party leaders, in their letter, urged Rubio to press the Indian government to investigate the alleged human rights violations during the protests and release any persons detained “for peacefully exercising the rights of freedom of expression and assembly”.

The lawmakers also accused the Indian diplomatic missions in the US of surveilling protesters on American soil.

“Members of US human rights organisations and the Indian diaspora who joined protests in Washington DC, Chicago and San Francisco disclosed that they had been photographed by individuals who identified themselves as having been hired by the Indian embassy and the consulates general,” read their letter.

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The trigger for the protests in India was a September 23 investigation by The Indian Express, which revealed that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected 14 times in 10 months to decisions by the poll panel related to the special intensive revision, saying some had been taken without their knowledge.

India responds to Jayapal’s comments on SIR

On Wednesday, Jayapal said that the Indian government’s actions to “purge” 13 crore persons from the electoral rolls through the special intensive revision appeared similar to measures being taken by the Donald Trump administration to “undermine voting rights in a democracy”.

Since the special intensive revision began in June 2025, concerns have been raised that the revision could eliminate genuine voters from the rolls and even shape electoral outcomes, as Scroll has reported. Overall, more than 13 crore names have been removed from voter lists and draft rolls since the first phase of the exercise in June 2025 in Bihar.

Responding to Jayapal’s comments on Friday, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that the remarks were “unwarranted and uninformed, and tantamount to interfering in the electoral practices of a democracy”.

“This is an approach that undermines democracy itself,” Jaiswal added.

Written by Abeer Khan. Edited by Sneha.

A Delhi court on Saturday ordered the police to release Cockroach Janta Party founder Abhijeet Dipke a day after he was placed under preventive arrest, reported Live Law.

The conditions imposed on Dipke will be clear once the bail order passed by the special executive magistrate is made public. However, one of the conditions will require him to maintain peace for one year.

He was released from Mandir Marg police station after being granted bail, reported ANI.

Dipke and student leader Neha Bora had been detained on Friday in connection with separate demonstrations in central Delhi. Bora was released on Saturday at 5 am.

Earlier in the day, the Cockroach Janta Party said that Dipke’s whereabouts were “still unknown” and that his lawyers had not met him.

He was detained when he was on his way to Connaught Place in central Delhi for the campaign’s “Lehra Do Tiranga” demonstration.

The demonstration to wave the national flag in central Delhi was announced as a response to the arrest of the campaign’s leaders Ashutosh Ranka, Saurav Das and Ajinkya Shinde on Wednesday.

Ranka and Das were sent to judicial custody for five days by the special executive magistrate court, while Shinde was released on a personal bond.

The three men had been arrested after they “sneaked into” Jantar Mantar to protest the authorities’ decision to denotify the area as a designated protest site.

Police notice to Dipke

Before he was detained on Friday, the police had served a notice to Dipke, ordering him not to hold a protest at Connaught Place, citing heavy pedestrian and vehicular traffic in the area. The police said that a demonstration at such a location could “hamper emergency access”.

The police added that orders prohibiting gatherings of four or more persons are in force in central Delhi and warned that violations could invite charges of disobedience.

The notice also claimed that the political campaign had previously violated the conditions under which permission was granted to it for protests. This had resulted in a breach of peace and disruption of public order, said the police, in an apparent reference to protests in July against alleged irregularities in several competitive examinations.

Protests against CEC

Dipke and other leaders of the Cockroach Janta Party were arrested against the backdrop of protests in the national capital by the the political campaign, the Opposition parties and student groups to demand the resignation of Kumar over concerns about the functioning of the Election Commission and its handling of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

Protests against Kumar have been held in the national capital and other parts of the country since October 2.

The trigger for the protests was a September 23 investigation by The Indian Express, which revealed that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected 14 times in 10 months to decisions by the poll panel related to the special intensive revision, saying some had been taken without their knowledge.

Edited by Sneha.

Also read: How the Modi government radicalised a generation to rise in revolt against it

“Twenty years ago, all this was paddy,” says Nazir Ahmad, a farmer from Qaimoh, a village in south Kashmir’s Kulgam district, pointing at the rows of apple saplings that now cover his land. Today, much of that landscape has changed. The irrigation channels set up for paddy still exist, running through the fields as they always have. However, the paddy they once fed has given way to apple plantations.

Across Kashmir, farmers are increasingly replacing food crops with horticulture, especially apple orchards, as they seek higher returns amid rising cultivation costs.

For many growers, the calculation is straightforward. Paddy offers modest returns, while apples, particularly high-density plantations, promise significantly higher earnings. The move makes economic sense for individual farmers. However, this is now leading to Kashmir Valley becoming increasingly dependent on outside states for its staple food – rice.

Nisar Ahmed from Kulgam district in Kashmir, used to cultivate paddy on his nine-kanal (0.46 hectares) farmland, which earned him between Rs 30,000 and Rs 50,000 annually. A few years ago, he converted the land into a high-density apple orchard because he was facing losses. After the shift, Nisar and his family saw a considerable increase in their earnings. “Every season, we earn around Rs 4 lakh to Rs 5 lakh,” he said.

Fareed Ahmed Wagay, a farmer who converted six kanals (0.30 hectares) of paddy land into an apple orchard also said that paddy cultivation could not fetch healthy returns. “As a result, hundreds of farmers are now shifting towards horticulture and planting high-density apple trees.”

A changing agricultural map

The transformation has been underway for decades. A 2019 study based on Landsat satellite imagery found that agricultural land in Kashmir Valley declined by around 28% between 1992 and 2015, while plantation cover increased by about 88%. The expansion of plantations was part of a broader shift in land use that came alongside a decline in agricultural land, the study said.

The latest official figures suggest the trend has continued. Jammu and Kashmir’s paddy acreage has fallen to 258,840 hectares in 2024-2025 from 304,500 hectares in 2015-2016, a drop of around 15%. Conversely, the area under apple increased to 173,073 hectares in 2024-2025 from 107,930 hectares in 2004-2005, an increase of around 60%.

Another study examining land-use changes across the Kashmir Himalaya between 1990 and 2017 found that cropland agriculture declined by around 5%, while horticulture expanded by around 4.3%. The researchers linked the changes to economic, demographic and natural drivers and warned that declining agricultural land could pose a threat to regional food security.

The contrast is particularly visible in Kashmir’s traditional rice-growing belts – Anantnag, Kulgam, Pulwama, being a few districts.

In Kulgam, the area under apple is now more than twice the area under paddy. According to government data, only 6,951 hectares remained under paddy in 2024-2025, compared to 18,255 hectares under apple. In the neighbouring Pulwama district, paddy covered 10,990 hectares, while apple orchards occupied 15,928 hectares.

A spatial land-use analysis published in 2020 found that the area under rice cultivation in Kulgam district declined from 18,500 hectares to 12,900 hectares between 2011 and 2020, a loss of 5,600 hectares. Over the same period, land under apple orchards increased from 14,667 hectares to 20,787 hectares.

A 2022 study of Anantnag found that around 6,908 hectares of agricultural cropped area had shifted towards horticulture. Among surveyed farmers, the area under paddy fell from around 83% in 2000-2001 to 40% in 2014-2015, while apple cultivation increased from around 16% to 59%.

Yet, the precise scale of paddy-to-orchard conversion for the whole of Kashmir Valley remains difficult to establish. That is because the Agriculture Department does not maintain data on how much paddy land has been converted into orchards, according to Sartaj Ahmad Shah, Director Agriculture in Kashmir. He, however, acknowledged that Kashmir’s dependence on rice supplies from outside the region has increased, as paddy cultivation has declined.

While a regulation from 2022 addresses the conversion of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes, which requires permission from the concerned District Collector, no other policy specifically looks at paddy-to-orchard conversion to protect paddy regions.

The economics of the shift

For farmers, the move is largely about returns. Sameena Lone, a researcher at the Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir, said the shift reflects rational economic choices rather than a rejection of food crops.

“Apple orchards can generate several times the returns from paddy per unit of land, while shrinking landholdings due to fragmentation push farmers towards higher-value crops,” Lone told Mongabay-India.

A study of household-level paddy production in Kulgam between 2007 and 2014 also found that farmers were already moving away from food crops towards cash crops, particularly apple, almond and walnut, as horticulture was considered more remunerative.

“Converting paddy fields into perennial orchards changes soil structure and moisture regimes,” Lone said. Orchards require less standing water than paddy, but depend on irrigation at critical stages and are vulnerable to weather events during flowering.

As orchards expand, she said, the cropping pattern is also narrowing, potentially increasing farmers’ exposure to market fluctuations, pests, disease and climate-related shocks.

A recent hailstorm in South Kashmir illustrates that vulnerability. Several apple-growing villages in Shopian and Kulgam suffered extensive crop damage, with some areas reporting losses for the third time that season. For grower Mohd Shafi Wagay, the damage threatened his family’s annual income. “Almost our entire orchard is completely damaged,” he said.

A changing water landscape

The agricultural transition is also unfolding against a changing water landscape.

A 2020 study of the Lidder watershed in Anantnag district found that agricultural land declined by 39% between 1980 and 2018, while orchard area expanded by 176%. The researchers linked the conversion of irrigation-intensive rice paddy to less water-intensive orchards to both economic considerations and declining streamflow.

The shift from paddy fields to orchards could also alter the Valley’s groundwater recharge patterns. According to Pir Rayees Ahmad, a hydrogeologist at Central Ground Water Board, paddy fields can act as natural recharge zones, as standing water during the growing season allows water to infiltrate the soil and replenish shallow aquifers.

“Orchards generally require less standing water and increasingly rely on localised irrigation methods. Consequently, opportunities for groundwater recharge decline,” he said.

Pir Rayees added that paddy fields also act as natural flood buffers by temporarily storing rainfall and irrigation water, slowing runoff and reducing flood peaks. Their conversion can reduce this storage capacity, potentially increasing flooding and waterlogging, particularly within the Jhelum floodplain, he said.

The food-security trade-off

Government data reports that Jammu and Kashmir produced around 6.5 lakh tonnes of rice in 2024-2025. Yet the region also relies heavily on government food supplies from outside.

Ashaq Hussain, a professor of agronomy at Kashmir’s agricultural sciences university, primarily attributes the reason for paddy decline to orchard conversion, followed by urbanisation and the expansion of roads and railway infrastructure.

“The conversion had affected Kashmir’s capacity to produce rice locally, although improvements in varieties and farm-management practices had helped raise productivity,” Hussain said.

He estimates that Jammu and Kashmir produces roughly 50%-55% of its own rice requirement, with 45%-50% coming from other states, particularly Punjab, through the Food Corporation of India. But not all agricultural land is equally suited to orchards, Hussain added.

“Lower-lying areas with high soil moisture are particularly suited to paddy, while converting such land to orchards can create problems including excess moisture, root rot and disease.”

Data from the Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Department show that 4.86 lakh tonnes of rice were largely brought in from surplus states, particularly Punjab and Haryana, during 2024-2025, compared with 4.36 lakh tonnes in 2023-2024 and 3.74 lakh tonnes in 2022-2023.

Waseem Hassan, an FMCG wholesaler, described what he sees as growing demand for rice outside the ration system. “The ration is never sufficient for a household’s entire requirement, so people have to buy additional rice from the market,” he said.

The increasing reliance on rice from outside the region raises a larger question: How resilient is a food system when a staple that was once produced locally in abundance has to now increasingly be sourced through external supply chains?

Lone describes this as structural vulnerability, arguing that greater dependence on outside food supplies ties the Valley’s food security to transport networks, market conditions and the stability of supply routes.

Ejaz Ayoub, a Kashmir-based economist, argues that the movement away from paddy is a rational response to market forces.“Labour and resources flow towards things which have more returns,” he said.

From an economic perspective, Ayoub said, Kashmir need not produce everything it consumes. Instead, it can focus on crops in which it has a comparative advantage, such as apples, saffron, almonds and walnuts, and use the income generated from these crops to purchase commodities such as rice from elsewhere in the country.

However, another associate professor in the Department of Economics, University of Kashmir – Javaid Iqbal Khan, called the shift a “macro-level structural hazard.”

“The shift has accelerated with the spread of high-density apple plantations, which allow farmers to plant more trees per unit of land and are promoted as a more remunerative model of horticulture,” he said. “At the micro level, it is a rational and income-maximising decision. But when these individual decisions aggregate, they can create a macro-level structural hazard.”

The cumulative shift away from paddy can reduce the region’s capacity to produce its staple food, even as individual households become more prosperous. According to him the implications of this change need to be viewed in a social and dietary context. Unlike a commodity that can simply be substituted through trade, rice is a culturally entrenched staple in the Valley.

Khan cautioned that this model could create another form of vulnerability if household purchasing power for food becomes increasingly dependent on the performance of the apple economy.

Apple production, he noted, is itself vulnerable to spring hailstorms, autumn temperature fluctuations and global demand cycles. “A poor horticultural year could therefore reduce both farm incomes and the purchasing power available to buy food from outside.”

He described this as a “negative covariance” risk, in which the two sides of the food system become linked through the same vulnerable income stream.

A transition to be managed

This transition could become increasingly difficult to reverse, Khan explains. “It is very easy to move from paddy to apple, but it is increasingly going to be difficult to move from apple to paddy,” he said.

Apple is a perennial crop: once an orchard is established, returning the land to paddy is not as simple as changing the crop in the next planting season.

Lone argues, the solution is not to reverse Kashmir’s shift towards horticulture. “That would neither be realistic nor necessarily desirable given the importance of horticulture to farmers’ livelihoods,” she said.

Instead, she advocates protecting strategic paddy-growing areas as a food-security buffer, promoting diversified horticulture rather than excessive dependence on apples, investing in climate-resilient varieties and developing water-efficient irrigation systems suited to orchards.

At SKUAST-K’s Rice Research Station at Khudwani, scientists are pursuing another way of responding to the shrinking land base: producing more rice from the land that remains. The Vice Chancellor, Professor Nazir Ahmad Ganaie, said the station has developed high-yielding, disease-resistant and climate-resilient paddy varieties, with some showing yield potential of up to 12 tonnes per hectare. He also pointed to technologies such as direct-seeded rice that can reduce water and labour requirements.

“On the one hand, our population is increasing, agricultural land is shrinking, and climate change and global warming are creating new challenges,” Ganaie said. “On the other hand, our food requirements are increasing.”

Meanwhile not all farmers are moving away from paddy. Bashir Ahmad, a farmer from Bijbehara, continues to cultivate rice, citing assured irrigation, manageable costs and the needs of his family of nine.

“I grow paddy because I have assured irrigation and the costs are manageable,” Bashir said, adding that the fruit economy was riskier because of climate uncertainties. He said high-density apple plantations require significant investment, while traditional orchards can take years to become productive.

For Bashir, paddy also provides food security, particularly as rice prices rise and ration supplies do not meet his family’s entire requirement. He said some farmers also grow traditional Kashmiri rice varieties for the market, where they can fetch good prices and are sought after for occasions such as weddings.

“If we lose the crop, we could lose both our income and the food we produce,” he said.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

A Delhi court on Saturday issued a bailable warrant against YouTuber Dhruv Rathee in a defamation case filed against him in 2018 regarding a video he had posted on his channel, reported Bar and Bench.

The case had been filed by Vikas Sankrityayan, alias Vikas Pandey, after Rathee posted a video in May 2018 alleging that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s publicity wing had bribed the complainant to defame the YouTuber.

Then-Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had shared the video on social media.

On Saturday, Judicial Magistrate Rahul Jain of Saket Court was told that summons could not be served to Rathee earlier this week because his home was found locked, reported Bar and Bench.

On October 12, the court issued summons to Rathee after Pandey moved an application seeking early hearing of the matter on the grounds that the YouTuber, who otherwise lives abroad, was in India for protests against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and the special intensive revision of electoral rolls, reported Live Law.

The next hearing is scheduled for October 31.

On October 10, Rathee was detained by the Delhi Police from Gurugram ahead of a protest by youth groups to demand the resignation of Kumar. The YouTuber had arrived in the national capital a day earlier to participate in the protest.

Edited by Sneha.

The Supreme Court has said that every citizen, including children, has a fundamental right to use the internet.

“To deny the same altogether would be as absurd as saying children below a certain age do not have a conscience worth protecting or a freedom of speech worth expressing,” said a bench of Justices JB Pardiwala and K Vinod Chandran in an order passed on Thursday.

The bench was hearing a petition alleging that social media platforms were failing to meet their legal obligations to report child sexual exploitation and abuse material to the authorities.

In its judgement, the court deliberated whether children should be completely shielded from the internet and social media platforms.

However, it pointed out that children's safety and freedom were not at odds. “Our children are entitled to both,” the court noted.

The observations came months after the BBC reported that it had found that social media platform Instagram, which is owned by Meta, had been running paid advertisements that promote child sexual abuse material in India.

Publishing or transmitting child sexual abuse material is illegal and constitutes a serious criminal offence under the 2000 Information Technology Act and the 2012 Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.

The advertisements use phrases such as “rape video” and “child video”, and direct users to channels on the messaging application Telegram, where such material can be purchased, the BBC reported on July 3.

Two days later, the Union government issued a notice to Meta, directing it to disable all advertisements and content allegedly promoting access to child sexual abuse material.

Internet a ‘marketplace of ideas’: SC

During the hearing on Thursday, the Supreme Court pointed out that the internet functioned as a marketplace of ideas, creative expression and a means to gather information. “For many children, particularly in remote areas, it is often the only source of learning and information,” added the bench.

For children with special needs, the bench said, the internet was often the only place to find companionship.

The court noted that recently there have been growing efforts globally to limit internet access for children below a certain age, especially social media platforms, “in the name of their safety”.

However, upon “anxious consideration”, the court decided not to endorse the same.

Social media ban on children

This came against the backdrop of Australia, in December, becoming the first country to block social media for those under 16.

In June, the United Kingdom also announced that it will ban users under the age of 16 from accessing social media to protect them from being exposed to “dangerous” and harmful content

Two Indian states are planning to ban the use of social media for children under the age of 16.

In March, Siddaramaiah, the Karnataka chief minister at the time, announced that the state government will ban the use of social media for children under the age of 16. He did not mention when the ban would take effect.

The Andhra Pradesh government had also said in 2025 that it was considering a ban on social media for children in that age group.

After the Karnataka government’s announcement, advocacy group Internet Freedom Foundation had said that child safety online “demands serious, evidence-based policy not headline-driven prohibitions”.

In India, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act requires a data fiduciary to obtain verifiable consent from a parent or lawful guardian before processing the personal data of a child.

Written by Abeer Khan. Edited by Sneha.

The International Monetary Fund has said that Bangladesh’s per capita gross domestic product is higher than that of India in 2026.

The per capita gross domestic product of Bangladesh at current prices is $2,886 against India’s $2,749, according to long-term data and forecasts in IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook published on October 13.

Per capita gross domestic product is a measure of a country’s economic output per person. It is calculated by dividing the country's gross domestic product by its population.

The average per capita gross domestic product in emerging markets and developing economies is about $7,746. The global average is about $15,889.

In 2027, Bangladesh’s per capita gross domestic product is estimated to be $3,219, ahead of India’s $3,036, the data showed. Bangladesh will maintain the marginal lead in 2028.

However, in 2029, India’s per capita gross domestic product of $3,661 will top Bangladesh’s $3,334, according to the International Monetary Fund.

A previous version of the report published on April 14 said that the per capita gross domestic product of Bangladesh at current prices at the time was $2,911 against India’s $2,812.

In 2025, India’s per capita gross domestic product was $2,670, marginally ahead of Bangladesh’s $2,635, the data had shown at the time. However, Bangladesh was leading India in 2023 and 2024.

The data in April had also shown that India’s per capita gross domestic product in 2027 was estimated to be ahead of Bangladesh. It also showed that India was projected to lead Bangladesh in terms of per capita gross domestic product till at least 2031.

However, the data released on October 13 showed that India’s per capita gross domestic product will not regain the lead until 2029.

The World Economic Outlook is a survey usually published twice a year that analyses the global economy and makes projections in the near and medium terms.

Written by Tanya Shrivastava. Edited by Sneha and Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read: Why do India-Bangladesh GDP comparisons generate so much controversy?

Cockroach Janta Party founder Abhijeet Dipke has been placed under preventive arrest, the political campaign said on Saturday.

Dipke and student leader Neha Bora had been detained on Friday in connection with separate demonstrations in central Delhi. Bora was released several hours after being detained.

The Cockroach Janta Party founder will be presented before the magistrate court on Saturday.

Dipke’s whereabouts were “still unknown” and that his lawyers had not met him, the campaign’s legal affairs head said.

He was detained when he was on his way to Connaught Place for the campaign’s “Lehra Do Tiranga” demonstration.

The demonstration to wave the national flag in central Delhi was announced as a response to the arrest of the campaign’s leaders Ashutosh Ranka, Saurav Das and Ajinkya Shinde on Wednesday.

Bora, the head of the All India Students’ Association, was detained while participating in a flash protest by the student group near Barakhamba Road to demand the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.

#WATCH | Delhi: AISA National President Neha Bora says, "Law and order are being flouted in every possible way. Ordinary citizens are treated as if they were hardened criminals, a practice that has persisted in this country for a long time. The current movement has clearly… https://t.co/s5EqwjaPfG pic.twitter.com/3gAeYHI60r

— ANI (@ANI) October 17, 2026

Protests against Kumar have been held in Delhi and other parts of the country since October 2 over concerns about the functioning of the Election Commission and its handling of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

Before detaining Dipke on Friday, the police had served him notice, ordering him not to hold a protest at Connaught Place, citing heavy pedestrian and vehicular traffic in the area. The police said that a demonstration at such a location could “hamper emergency access”.

The police added that orders prohibiting gatherings of four or more persons are in force in central Delhi and warned that violations could invite charges of disobedience.

After the police detained Dipke, the Cockroach Janta Party said that the action was a “gross violation” of his rights. “Every arrest this government makes, more youth will hit the streets!” said the political campaign.

On October 11, a day after Dipke, Ranka and Das were detained from inside an aircraft after it landed in Delhi ahead of a protest against Kumar, a magistrate court had ordered their release on the condition that they do not breach peace for one year.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

United States President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order putting on hold a law that allows him to impose tariffs of up to 100% on India and other countries that purchase Russian oil and gas.

Trump told the US Congress that the waiver was in the interest of the US.

While Trump had given his assent to the legislation on September 18, the signing of the bill into law had not automatically triggered the tariffs.

The law states that the tariffs could apply to the five countries that imported the largest volumes of Russian crude oil or natural gas in the 12 months before the law takes effect, if they knowingly continue buying Russian crude oil 30 days after the law is enacted.

The president’s order pausing the implementation of the law comes before the 30-day period was to conclude on Sunday.

Trump’s decision also came a week after he announced that the US had agreed to purchase diesel from Russia to lower global energy prices. This was despite such a purchase potentially hurting its partner Ukraine in its war with Russia.

Washington has for long claimed that the purchase of Russian energy has been fuelling Moscow’s war on Ukraine, which began in February 2022.

The sanctions bill was passed by the House of Representatives on September 16. The Senate had cleared it on August 7. The law is named after late Republican legislator Lindsey Graham, who had spearheaded it before he died in July.

The tariffs were to also target any of the five countries identified as helping Russia evade oil-related sanctions.

However, countries that have significantly reduced their imports of Russian natural gas, or whose Russian gas imports account for less than 15% of Russia’s gas exports, would be exempt.

After the bill was passed in the US Congress, India’s Ministry of External Affairs had said that New Delhi is committed to ensuring energy security for its people. “It will continue to do so through diversified sourcing and on the basis of evolving market dynamics,” it said.

Over the past year, there have been diplomatic tensions between Washington and New Delhi over India’s continued purchases of Russian crude oil.

The Trump administration had in August 2025 imposed a 25% punitive levy on India for buying oil from Russia amid the Ukraine war. This had taken the combined US tariff rate to 50%.

In January, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed that India had stopped buying Russian oil after Trump imposed the punitive tariff.

In February, after New Delhi and Washington agreed to an interim trade deal, Trump removed the additional 25% punitive levy linked to the purchase of Russian oil.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Karnataka High Court on Friday quashed a criminal case against former Republic TV Editor Arnab Goswami and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Amit Malviya registered for their claims that the Congress has an office in Istanbul, Bar and Bench reported.

Justice M Nagaprasanna was hearing petitions filed by Goswami and Malviya to quash the first information report against them.

On May 15, 2025, during a news segment on the TV channel, Goswami had falsely claimed that the Istanbul Congress Center is an office of the Indian National Congress. The building shown during the show is a convention centre owned by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, Alt News reported.

Malviya had shared a video on May 17, 2025, asking why the Congress had a registered office in Turkey.

“Did you know that the Congress Party has a registered office in Turkey?” he wrote on social media. “Can Rahul Gandhi explain what necessitated this move? This is bizarre and inexplicable on multiple levels. India deserves to know. Remember: the enemy’s friend is an enemy too.”

The Bengaluru Police had at the time booked Goswami, and Malviya on a separate complaint by an Indian Youth Congress leader. The FIR had been registered under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot and intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace.

The complainant had alleged that the claim was made “with clear and undeniable criminal intent to deceive the Indian public”, defame the party, manipulate nationalist sentiments and undermine national security and democratic integrity”.

Republic TV said in May 2025 that the image had been mistakenly used by a video editor on the digital desk due to a “technical error”.

However, the Congress had said that an apology was not sufficient as redressal for the error.

The Indian Youth Congress had further noted that the claims were made in the context of frosty India-Turkey relations because of Ankara’s support for Pakistan during heightened tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad after Operation Sindoor.

Although the Congress had announced plans in 2019 to open an overseas office in Istanbul and appointed Mohammad Yusuf Khan to lead it, there have been no updates since, and Turkey is not listed on the Indian Overseas Congress website, Alt News reported in May 2025.

The Delhi High Court is also hearing a defamation case against Goswami in the matter.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

At around 2 pm on October 2, around one hundred students from the All India Students’ Association made an attempt to reach Jantar Mantar in Delhi. The protestors were demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls.

As they approached, they chanted, “Vote Chor, Gaddi Chhod!”, vote thief, leave your seat.

Delhi Police personnel intercepted the group and began to chase protestors in an attempt to detain them. The protestors dodged the police. “Dilli Police wardi kholo, RSS ka knicker pehno!” they chanted as they ran. Delhi police take off your clothes, put on RSS shorts.

Among the students was Sahil, a 17-year-old first-year student of sociology from Hindu College. “I was part of the group that broke through two sets of barricades to reach Jantar Mantar,” said Sahil, who asked to be referred to by a pseudonym. “We were detained near the third one.”

In the throes of the protest, Sahil said, he was beaten by the police and suffered some bruises. The police herded Sahil and protestors onto a bus, and drove them in circles for a few hours, before finally releasing them close to Delhi’s border with Haryana. “My hands were shaking throughout the bus ride even though I knew from beforehand that we were only going there to get detained,” said Sahil.

From the border, Sahil took a bus and a metro and reached home around 9 pm. His parents had no idea that he had been detained or even taken part in the protest. “I had told them that I would be home late because of a cultural event at college,” he said.

This was the second time in five months that Sahil stepped out to protest. In June, Sahil had joined thousands of other youth at Jantar Mantar in protests led by the Cockroach Janata Party pressure group to demand the resignation of the education minister Dharmendra Pradhan over irregularities in the national exam for medical college seats.

Sahil has been participating in agitations even though he knows this family would probably disapprove of his actions. “Most of my relatives are teachers whose understanding of education has always been apolitical,” he said. “My parents believe politics exists outside of the domestic sphere. They think kids should not be involved in protests, as they will only be used by political parties for their own ends.”

Despite this, Sahil said he had felt a growing sense of frustration and anger against the union government for several years. He decided to start giving vent to these emotions when he learnt about the Cockroach Janata Party’s protests in June against the leaks of the papers for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for medical colleges – this despite the fact that he is a student of a different discipline.

“The starting point was indeed NEET,” he said. “But it’s the nature of protests that as more people join, the spectrum of issues also expands, and there are so many issues that people are angry about.”

Sahil’s account of his decision to participate in the protests captures something of the present moment of tumult in the country, in which young “Gen Z” protestors have taken to the streets in huge numbers.

Scroll spoke to ten young protestors in Delhi and Mumbai to understand how their worldviews were shaped and what had drawn them to the streets. Six of the ten said they had been manhandled or detained by police during the protests.

Like Sahil, most said they had felt anger build up over time as a result of several crises. Apart from the NEET paper leaks and the contentious SIR, they also mentioned what they saw as the government’s mismanagement of the Covid-19 crisis and its decision to push through the Citizenship Amendment Act and to announce a National Register of Citizens.

Many were also frustrated by the government’s ineffective education reforms and the damage these are doing to the education system, as well as rising unemployment, and an increasing dilution of personal and political freedoms.

“A lot of people did come because of the education system and everything that's wrong with it,” said Vanessa, a political science student in Delhi. “But I went because of the larger issues that we have faced as a country in the past 12 years.”

She added, “I recently turned 21, so these protests were the first time where I felt like I could participate in dissent and express my own dissatisfaction with the government.”

While the young protestors have displayed great courage, they are also aware of the real risks they face by voicing their dissent on the streets. “I am really scared about it. I am not gonna lie,” said 18-year-old Shubhi Singh, a student of Hindu College. “But if I don’t stand up today, I am more scared of how things will only get worse in the future. What kind of world will we leave for the next generation?”

Personal experiences and political consciousness

Like with Sahil, three other students Scroll spoke to said their parents were also totally unaware about their involvement in the protests. Many of the students asked to be identified only by their first names. Some asked to remain anonymous.

Eighteen-year-old Khiteesh said that his parents do not know that he was brutally lathi-charged on July 20, or that he has been detained by the police four times since July. On two of these occassions, he jumped out of the bus to escape detainment.

Khiteesh who studies at Ambedkar University Delhi, belongs to a right-wing upper caste business family in eastern Delhi. “My parents are proper saffronised fascists,” he said. “We rarely talk about politics, but when they do talk about it, they are always like Modi is so great, he is a saviour of our religion.”

He added, “They know that our economy is not doing that well, that prices are rising quite fast. But they don’t care about all that.”

Vaishnavi Sonawane, a 26-year-old, lives in Mumbai, and has participated in protests in the city. She also travelled to Delhi for the protests in July, and again in October. On the latter visit, she said, she was manhandled by the police. Her parents, who live in Gujarat, do not know about her political activities.

Despite this absence of political engagement in their families, many young people told Scroll that they grew interested in politics because of the various government policies and decisions that had hurt them over the years. Some of these played out before these young people became adults.

In 2020, for instance, Vanessa was studying in school in Lucknow when the Covid-19 pandemic hit. When her father, who had a government job fell ill during this period, Vanessa remembers that her family desperately hunted for an oxygen cylinder. “My dad was in need of pretty serious medical help,” she said. “We finally managed to admit him in what was the last vacant hospital bed in Lucknow, I think after three days.”

Vanessa added, “And this was for someone coming from substantial privilege. I can only imagine what the other people went through.”

This experience and her wider conclusion that the government had mismanaged the pandemic “radicalised” her, she said. “I had always known there was something wrong with the government, but after that I was like this government has to go,” Vanessa said. “They had the resources to prepare, but they didn’t.”

Khiteesh too said that the Covid-19 pandemic shaped his political ideology. Though he was not seriously impacted personally, he keenly remembers the struggles of his fellow citizens during that time. “I was horrified to see how common people were suffering on my socials,” he said. “Covid really exposed the inequality in our country.”

During this time, he also noticed communal discrimination by the authorities in his own neighbourhood when it came to helping ordinary families. “I live in an area dominated by Jain and Brahmin families,” he said. “But just next door there is a Muslim majority community and I remember how they were struggling to dispose of their dead.”

In some instances, earlier waves of protest sowed seeds of dissent in young people, who took to the streets in the recent agitations. “Before 2022, I wasn’t that interested in politics,” said 22-year-old Mohammed Akram, a resident of Loni, in Ghaziabad. But when the CAA-NRC protests played out in 2019, “I remember thinking that the government wants to remove minorities from living in the country and put them in camps where they won’t even have basic facilities”, he said.

This sentiment stayed with Akram over the years, and earlier this year, he gave voice to it on Delhi’s streets. In fact, he went further than most. Akram used to work as a hairdresser until June, but quit his job then to participate in the Jantar Mantar protests and work as a full-time organiser for the All India Students Association.

Some young people, from marginalised caste, religious and gender groups, explained that their political leanings were deeply entwined with their community identity. Vanessa, who is from an Adivasi community said, “Both my parents instilled a sense of community identity in me, as we were raised outside of our native place. So ever since the NDA [National Development Alliance] government came into power in 2014, I have known that it was bad for our people.”

Twenty-year-old Karishma, a 20-year-old literature student who asked to be referred to by a pseudonym, explained that her Christian identity was crucial to her political development. “I don’t want to claim that Christians get the same kind of hatred that Muslims do,” she said. “But there is a lot of marginalisation toward Christians that often gets ignored and it is definitely one of the things that has politicised me.”

She recounted occasions from her school days, when her classmates would scream “Jai Shri Ram” at minority students, egged on by their sports teachers. “There was a lot of anger toward Christians because my school had minority reservation for Christian students, as a lot of institutions do,” she said.

Over the years, she grew to realise that these experiences were connected to a larger environment of intolerance perpetrated by the ruling dispensation’s Hindutva ideology. She also became aware of common prejudices and slurs that her community was at the receiving end of – for instance, the term “rice bag converts”.

Her growing political consciousness was only sharpened by incidents in which she also experienced discrimination from people she did not know. She recalled that a few years ago, she was travelling in a general compartment of the Delhi metro, wearing a chain with a crucifix visible on her neck. “There was a pundit seated across me, and he kept staring at me, until I tucked the cross inside my top,” she said. “After that, he nodded at me and looked away.”

Education crises

Several students told Scroll about their concerns about the dilution of the quality of education, at both the school and higher levels.

“I come from a small Muslim neighbourhood in Ghaziabad,” Akram said. “We have very basic facilities and the quality of our schools is terrible. There is not much scope for our youth.”

Akram wanted to continue his studies after school, but had to stop because his father’s health deteriorated around then. “I wanted to attend college in Delhi but I had to earn money to keep my family running,” he said. “I still hope to study further someday.”

He explained that he quit his job because he believed that individuals needed to organise and fight for a better future. “See, I might be able to get out of my neighbourhood,” he said. “But then I think of all the children in my neighbourhood. With the way things are going in this country, what kind of future awaits them?”

Twenty-one-year-old Manav from Rajasthan is pursuing a master’s degree from Delhi University. He spoke of how he believed that working-class students who sought upward mobility were being failed by changes made to the education system, especially under the New Education Policy. “The quality of education has declined significantly,” he said. “In several colleges of Delhi University, regular classes are not being held and the recruitment process of professors is botched.”

Manav observed that the policy had led to poorly planned increases in student course loads, which prevented many, like him, from preparing for their professional futures. “The NEP has been a major hindrance,” he said. “Earlier, our classes used to get over by the afternoon and we had time to prepare for government exams. But now our classes get over by 5 pm, so we are tired by then and we also have multiple assignments. So we can’t attend coaching classes.”

He added, “Someone like me can’t afford to study until the age of 30. The entire ecosystem has become very repressive.”

Sharanya, a 20-year-old student of Ambedkar University Delhi, and a member of the Student’s Federation of India, echoed these observations. “Students have been feeling the pressure,” she said. “They’ve realised that no matter how much they study, they still don’t qualify for NET or JRF. And then they find out that answer papers are being sold for Rs 3- 5 lakh.”

She also noted that campus infrastructure and the quality of teaching had also suffered dramatically in the last decade. “In many campuses, the buildings are crumbling, and students don't get basic facilities, such as water coolers,” said Sharanya. “Meanwhile students are dying in paying guest homes.”

She recounted that while her semester had started in August, they had no classes for two months because some faculty members were only appointed in early October. This was despite the fact that students paid fees of between Rs 40,000 and Rs 50,000 per semester. “So when all this happened to students, I think it caused enough anger and resentment among them to finally figure out what is wrong,” she said.

In fact, apart from joining centralised protests, students have also been expressing frustration with the conditions in colleges and universities across Delhi – in addition to elsewhere in the country. In early October, protests were underway in at least three universities or colleges, and students I spoke to were also involved in these protests on their campuses.

One of these was Ambedkar University Delhi. Khiteesh said that students had been protesting since late September over poor infrastructure, barricading that restricts student movement and a lack of water supply in water coolers, among other problems.

Meanwhile, students from the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union have been on hunger strike since October 4 over rules by the proctor that impose penalties on those who hold protests, and over concerns with the renovation of campus infrastructure, as well as to demand the restoration of the university’s internal entrance exam system.

Students from Hindu College said that they had been protesting along with their professors for three weeks over alleged admission irregularities and the authoritarian functioning of the governing body. “There are also many arbitrary rules such as students not being allowed to access the lawns,” said 18-year-old Shubhi Singh, a student of the college. “Even though our professors tell us that the lawns were easily available earlier and students used to sit and study there on sunny days during the winter.”

Students also spoke of how the weakening of the education system had left them to fend for themselves when it came to employment. Sonawane, who earned a bachelor’s degree in technology from a small university in Gujarat, recalled how as a student she knew her curriculum was not training her for a well-paying job.

“Engineering is meant to be a promising degree,” she said. “But as an engineering student, I understood how badly the system was failing us. There is virtually no employment opportunity.”

Sonawane added, “I graduated two years ago, I remember companies coming on campus and offering annual packages of Rs 3.5 lakh, and my peers took it.”

News media and the internet

All ten young people I spoke to said either that they never watched television news channels, or that they only remembered watching them in their childhood, and now only consumed online sources of information.

Most named internet content creators such as Dhruv Rathee, Meghnad, Kunal Kamra and Medusa among those whose work they followed. They also expressed a preference for print media, such as newspapers like The Hindu and the Indian Express, and independent media outlets like The Wire or Newslaundry, as sources of information, over television channels.

Many developed these news diets despite having grown up in relatively conservative environments. Sonawane, for instance, recounted that her friends in Gujarat were largely pro BJP. At home, meanwhile, her parents either watched “hyperlocal news” or “godi media”.

But Sonawane was exposed to liberal and left-wing views online. For instance, she recounted watching satirical American talk shows hosted by Jon Stewart, John Oliver and Jimmy Kimmel. “I was 19 when I watched these shows, and I was really enjoying it,” she said. “So I started reading up on geopolitics to know what’s happening in the Middle East, what's happening in the US. Eventually, I felt guilty that I should know what's happening in my own country, and then I started reading up on Indian politics.”

Avanish, a 25-year-old from a conservative Hindu family in Assam, said that around 2019, he began to seek out reading material online in response to the social upheaval in the country around the CAA-NRC protests. He read Bhagat Singh’s Why I Am an Atheist and then To Young Political Workers, and then went on to learn about communism and figures such as Marx and Lenin. He also became a member of the branch of the Students Federation of India in Kota, where he was taking coaching classes for the Joint Entrance Exam.

He also recalled an air of unease in Kota when the Babri Masjid judgement was about to be announced in 2019. “I remember our coaching class was shut for the day,” he said. “When I went out in the morning with my friends to drink some tea, the stall owners told us to drink quickly as they too wanted to shut shop soon.”

Avanish also got a call from his father, warning him to stay indoors as he was expecting violence. “But when the verdict was basically declared in the favour of Hindus, no such rioting happened,” he said. “And everybody went about their day normally.”

Emotional and political

Despite their own politicisation over the years, many youth argued that one of the reasons the July protests had been successful was that the Cockroach Janata Party had maintained a somewhat ambiguous and apolitical ideology, and instead sought to tap into the broader emotional angst among youth.

“The momentum they gained, I don't think anyone else could have achieved that,” Karishma said. “And that’s because they actually grew under this banner of being apolitical.”

She added, “In a large part, it was because the NEET deaths were such an emotional issue. But it’s also because they systematically excluded a lot of overt politicisation too.”

Mansi Usha, a 25-year-old from an informal settlement in Mumbai, noted that to many young people, the emotional appeal of the protests was itself political. She cited the example of 16- and 17-year-olds that she saw at the protests in Mumbai, who felt an emotional resonance with the movement despite not having clearly articulated political stances.

“They weren’t necessarily aware of the Constitution or our fundamental rights,” she said. Rather, they “connected what was happening to anime shows like One Piece”. And yet, she observed that they felt moved by news they had heard about. “They spoke of how the parents of the dead NEET aspirants must have felt and were moved to protest,” she said.

Later, when police began manhandling and detaining protestors, Usha said that many of these young people came forward in solidarity. “They saw what the police was doing to their friends and simply said this is wrong and joined the protests,” she said.

A few protestors spoke of how Jantar Mantar had turned into a much needed “third space” where people coming from varying backgrounds could discuss politics and social matters. “The concept of a third space has been almost eliminated in India,” said Khiteesh. “Earlier there were many, where people could talk to each other, but most of them are gone.”

Akram remembers being inspired by the speeches of left-wing student group leaders. “I was touched that despite being upper caste and Hindu, they were still speaking about caste and Muslim issues,” he said. “I began wondering why they were doing that and I realised that there’s something that lies outside my understanding. So, I decided I need to learn more from people.”

As was well documented on social media, in July, the protest site also became a place for young people to take satirical digs at the government, through memes, placards and videos. “A new language of protests emerged. People saw that the language of protests doesn’t necessarily have to be sombre. Dissent can also be joyful and humorous,” said Karishma. “Many people came to the protests because they felt deeply for the cause, but a lot of people also came just to enjoy themselves.”

But the risks that the young protestors faced were very real. Akram’s friends tried to dissuade him from going to the protests, reminding him that Muslims in the country have paid a higher cost for expressing dissent. While Akram saw reason in what they said, he felt that there was a sense of unity to the protests that had been missing earlier. “Agar ab nahi toh kab? Agar hum nahi toh kaun?” he said – if not now, then when, if not us, then who?

Last year, around the time of Durga Puja, public anxiety in West Bengal was mounting with reports of Bengali-speaking people being expelled across the border after being accused of being Bangladeshi.

There was nervousness about citizenship rights and the right to vote due to the approaching Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls.

In response, Durga Puja pandals erected for the state’s most popular festival became powerful vehicles for asserting Bengali identity.

For instance, the theme at the Chaltabagan Sarbojanin pandal in Kolkata was “Ami Banglay Bolchi”, I Am Speaking Bengali. It traced the history of the Bengali language. The Aswininagar Bandhumahal pandal explored the historical journeys of Bengalis through changing political and riverine landscapes. The pandal of the Ramgarh Raipur Club told the stories of migrant workers who could not return home for the festival.

These were artistic interventions confronting exclusion in a political climate in which language and identity had become grounds for suspicion.

In 2026, after the victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the state elections, the new chief minister issued a warning before the festival. “All organisers are instructed to ensure that idols, pandal themes, and decorations strictly respect the rich religious traditions and cultural heritage of Durga Puja,” said Suvendhu Adhikari. “Any practice causing offense or harm to these traditions is strictly prohibited.”

However, visits to pandals across Kolkata this year show that dissent has not disappeared nor has every committee mounting pandals retreated from contemporary politics. Instead, the relationship between the political circumstances and its artistic representation appears more varied.

Some pandals have embraced overtly religious and nationalist narratives, while others explore power through themes of natural resources, labour and environmental change, inviting visitors to draw their own conclusions.

This shift raises a question: what happens when political messages can only be expressed indirectly?

This year, there has been a rise in environmental themes. The theme of the Yuba Sangha in Telipukur is “Ek Pukur Bhalobasha” (A Pondful of Love). It draws attention to the neighbourhood pond and the threats posed by pollution, urbanisation and commercialisation. The theme offers an affectionate portrait of a diminishing water body.

Yet the more difficult questions concern the political economy of its disappearance: who encroached on the pond, which development decisions reduced its size, and who benefited from its transformation? When ecological loss is presented primarily as a consequence of collective littering, responsibility risks becoming everyone’s and, therefore, nobody’s.

Other pandals reveal the tensions within this cautious vocabulary by trying to forge harmony between the sacred and the political. Nalin Sarkar Street’s “Jalalipi” explores the life of River Ganga and its possibility of death through pollution, repeatedly invoking the river as Maa Ganga even as its imagery recalls a familiar cultural reference – the Raj Kapoor film from 1985, Ram Teri Ganga Maili.

Its emphasis on reverence and pollution invites reflection on whether devotion can be separated from the political responsibilities of protecting a river.

Behala Club Sarbojanin’s “Tel: The Market of Faith” takes a more explicitly geopolitical route. Oil emerges through the mythological imagery of the Samudra Manthan, connecting the sacred narrative to a commodity that shapes domestic and sacred life, economic exchange and international power.

Its juxtaposition of ordinary people with world leaders makes the politics of extraction visible through an apparently familiar mythological material.

Thakurpukur SB Park’s Colliery, meanwhile, emphasises coal miners and the human costs of industrial extraction, crystallising its message in the observation that the most important thing to emerge from a mine is the miner.

The theme raises questions about environmental destruction, labour and corruption, although its political implications also invite scrutiny of how responsibility is distributed between successive governments.

Yet its retrospective emphasis on the failures of a previous government also exposes a familiar problem in political art: criticism can become partisan accounting when responsibility is confined to one administration and the structures that sustain extraction remain unexamined.

These examples demonstrate how indirect political art has become a mode through which artists negotiate the boundaries of permissible speech. The question is whether historical and religious references deepen political critique or become substitutes for confronting the present.

Environmental themes can provide language to raise questions than is relatively less confrontational language for raising questions that might otherwise become politically contentious. At the same time, however, such themes can sanitise these questions by translating conflicts about power into appeals for collective responsibility.

Whether environmental art sustains dissent depends on how far it moves from representing ecological damage to investigating its historical causes

The spine, the pillar

While themes of environmentalism and ecological ruin are capable of shifting attention from specific actors, at Barisha Club, indirect expression takes a different form as political ideals emerge from the pandal’s architecture.

“Kalrekha: The Story of Verticals” approaches political expression through historical and religious imagery. Its pillars trace the changing relationship between material structures, sacred forms and human understandings of the divine. The visual journey begins with the human spine, another vertical reaching towards the sky.

The metaphor carries political possibilities. The pillar derives its strength from its structure; the spine evokes the capacity to stand upright. Read in the context of the present moment, the installation suggests that institutions and traditions depend on the integrity of those who sustain them.

Its political force lies in implication rather than accusation. Visitors can connect the image of the upright spine to questions of courage, conformity and public responsibility without being directed towards a particular political conclusion.

However, such ambiguity should not automatically be celebrated as resistance. Coded expression can preserve a space for dissent, but it can also leave the object of criticism conveniently unspecified. Its significance depends on whether it opens a space for questioning authority or substitutes a general moral lesson for political analysis.

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four offers a useful vocabulary for understanding this predicament. Thoughtcrime names the criminalisation of ideas that challenge an authorised political order. Its reach extends beyond explicit censorship. The anticipation of punishment can shape what people are willing to imagine, articulate and display.

In his essay The Prevention of Literature two years before, Orwell had similarly argued that intellectual freedom is indispensable to creative work. It withers when artists are compelled to falsify what they perceive, as artistic freedom depends upon the possibility of intellectual honesty.

Durga Puja in West Bengal has historically offered precisely the possibility of intellectual honesty. Since the late 20th century, its pandals have developed into art installations where histories of displacement, environmental destruction, labour and social inequality can be made visible. The politics of the pandal artists lies as much in their choice of subjects as in their treatment of them.

A change in artistic themes cannot, by itself, establish that organisers have been censored or intimidated. Nevertheless, artists and organising committees operate within networks of sponsorship, public administration, neighbourhood expectations and religious sentiment, and hence, their decisions about what to represent are consequently shaped by more than aesthetic considerations.

Historical and religious subjects have long occupied the festival’s artistic repertoire. Yet when direct engagements with contemporary politics give way to coded references, we must consider whether the change reflects an aesthetic choice, a strategic accommodation or a narrowing of the space for dissent.

The significance of Durga Puja’s pandals lies in their capacity to make competing histories and uncomfortable truths visible in public space. The question is whether this capacity can survive an atmosphere in which artists, organisers and vendors must anticipate the consequences of expression before acting.

Orwell’s warning remains pertinent: creative freedom diminishes when the artist begins censoring the imagination in advance. Environmental consciousness, religious history and cultural memory can all generate extraordinary art. But they cannot replace the freedom to identify those responsible for injustice.

The spine in Barisha Club’s Kalrekha offers a fitting image for the moment. The challenge before Bengal’s artists is to keep it straight, allowing the pandal to remain a place where the sacred can meet the political, and where celebration does not demand silence.

Amrita DasGupta has a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies and teaches at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Student leader Neha Bora and Cockroach Janta Party founder Abhijeet Dipke were detained on Friday.

Bora was detained while participating in a flash protest by the All India Students’ Association near Barakhamba Road in central Delhi to demand the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.

Dipke had been detained on his way to Connaught Place for the political campaign’s “Lehra Do Tiranga” demonstration scheduled for 5 pm. The demonstration to wave the national flag in central Delhi was announced as a response to the arrest of Cockroach Janta Party leaders Ashutosh Ranka, Saurav Das and Ajinkya Shinde on Wednesday.

Protests against Kumar have been held in Delhi and other parts of the country since October 2 over concerns about the functioning of the Election Commission and its handling of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

Against this backdrop, the Delhi Police denotified Jantar Mantar as a designated protest site in the national capital, based on recommendations from a committee constituted by the Union home ministry.

Here’s more on the protests today:

Notice to Dipke

• Earlier in the day, the police served a notice to Dipke, ordering him not to hold a protest at Connaught Place, citing heavy pedestrian and vehicular traffic at Connaught Place, reported IANS. The police said that a demonstration at such a location could “hamper emergency access”.

• The police told Dipke that disruptions at Connaught Place could disrupt businesses in the area, claiming that more than 15 lakh traders and employees depend on the orderly functioning of the marketplace.

• The police added that prohibitory orders under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita are in place and warned that violations could invite charges of disobedience to an order duly promulgated by a public servant.

• It also raised concerns about the area’s proximity to Parliament, the Central Secretariat and diplomatic precincts.

• The notice also claimed that the political campaign had previously violated the conditions under which permission was granted to it for protests. This had resulted in a breach of peace and disruption of public order, said the police, in an apparent reference to protests in July against alleged irregularities in several competitive examinations.

• The group’s “unauthorised calls” for a march to Parliament in July had resulted in public and private property being damaged, the police claimed further.

• Visuals of the exchange between the police and Dipke were streamed on the Cockroach Janta Party’s social media pages. As Dipke read through the notice, he could be heard telling the police that the political campaign did not say it would stage a protest. “We will just wave the Tricolour,” he said. “Is that not allowed either?”

• After the police detained Dipke, the Cockroach Janta Party said that the action was a “gross violation of his rights”. “Every arrest this government makes, more youth will hit the streets!” said the political campaign.

• The campaign also alleged that Dipke was taken “to an undisclosed location”. “We have lost contact with him,” the Cockroach Janta Party said 7.57 pm. “He is not being allowed to talk to lawyers.”

How many will the Modi-Shah put under arrest?

Abhijeet’s detention is gross violation of his rights. Every arrest this government makes more youth will hit the streets! pic.twitter.com/rb0vqyBkbR

— Cockroach Janta Party - CJP (@Cockroachisback) October 16, 2026

Neha Bora taken to ‘unknown location’

• After Bora was detained, a post from their social media account said that they had been taken to “an unknown location”.

• “They don't have their phone!” read the post. “Delhi Police must answer: where is Neha?”

• AISA alleged that the vehicle in which Bora was detained had “two unidentified individuals who are not detainees, are assisting the Delhi Police and are not in police uniform”.

Several protesters detained

• Activist Anjali Bharadwaj said that hundreds of protesters, including hers, were detained by the police in the Central Park of Connaught Place.

• “Is it a crime to raise the national flag?” she asked. “Is it a crime to peacefully protest? Why is the govt so scared of people raising their voice to demand the scrapping of SIR and resignation of CEC Gyanesh Kumar?”

Hundreds detained by the Delhi Police today for trying to peacefully gather in the Central Park in Connaught Place. Is it a crime to raise the national flag? Is it a crime to peacefully protest? Why is the govt so scared of people raising their voice to demand the scrapping of… pic.twitter.com/owW5XNCs1e

— Anjali Bhardwaj (@AnjaliB_) October 16, 2026

Opposition leaders back CJP

• After Dipke was detained, former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that action is being taken against “our youth for peacefully asserting their democratic rights”. “This is nothing short of an undeclared Emergency,” she. “A government that fears dissent is now trying to intimidate an entire generation into silence.”

• Banerjee said that such detentions were part of a “fascist regime that cannot tolerate a voice it cannot control”.

• “Abhijeet, Ashutosh, Saurav – you represent the courage, conscience and aspirations of India’s youth,” said Banerjee. “You cannot silence an entire generation by suppressing its voice. Your Didi stands firmly with you.”

• Aam Aadmi Party president Arvind Kejriwal said Dipke’s detention was “nothing but outright dictatorship”. “Is it a crime to hoist the Tricolour?” he asked.

• Kejriwal also asked that if citizens would not hoist the national flag “in our own country, then will we hoist it in Pakistan”? “Those who have a problem with the Indian Tricolour should go to Pakistan,” he said.

हम अपने देश में तिरंगा नहीं लहरायेंगे तो क्या पाकिस्तान में लहरायेंगे?

जिन्हें भारतीय तिरंगे से परेशानी है, वो पाकिस्तान चले जायें। https://t.co/57vwsvtSVe

— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) October 16, 2026

Curbs ahead of CJP’s demonstration

• The Delhi Police was deploying more than 6,000 personnel in and around Connaught Place, the Hindustan Times reported. Barricades had been installed along roads near Connaught Place, Patel Chowk, ITO and Sansad Marg on Thursday, the newspaper reported.

• Additional surveillance cameras were being installed at Central Park and the Rajiv Chowk metro station in Connaught Place on Thursday, The Indian Express reported.

• This is in addition to the 26,000 personnel from the central armed police forces already deployed in central Delhi in the past week amid protests by the Cockroach Janta Party, the Opposition parties, Left groups and the civil society demanding the resignation of Kumar.

• The deployment of central police forces is among the largest in the national capital since the 2020 riots in northeastern Delhi, the Hindustan Times quoted an unidentified police officer as saying.

Written by Sneha. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.