The Supreme Court on Tuesday verbally observed that the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls had been conducted smoothly in all states except in West Bengal, Live Law reported.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi was hearing a batch of petitions against the special intensive revision in the state. During the hearing, the chief justice said that he had read an article about the exercise across the country.

“Apart from West Bengal, everywhere it happened smoothly,” Bar and Bench quoted Kant as saying.

In response, advocate Kalyan Banerjee, representing the West Bengal government, said that certain developments in the state were unusual. He said that the Election Commission had not published a “logical discrepancy” list or issued administrative notifications at unusual hours during the process in other states.

“Logical discrepancies” flagged by the poll panel during the voter list revision included mismatches in parents’ names, low age gap with parents and the number of children of the parents being above six.

However, the chief justice noted that there had been equally complicated problems in other states, but the revision “by and large” went on smoothly there, Live Law reported.

The bench also noted the pressure on judicial officers tasked with adjudicating claims in the state. “Do you realise we have put so much pressure on the judicial officers to complete 60 lakh cases within 45 days?” the legal news portal quoted Bagchi as saying.

In response, Banerjee said that the pace of the exercise was “inhuman”, reiterating that such an exercise could realistically take two to three years.

The bench also acknowledged that the exercise had thrown up “unique challenges” in West Bengal.

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

On February 28, the Election Commission published the final electoral roll for West Bengal, indicating the exclusion of more than 61 lakh voters. However, the process continued with about 60 lakh “doubtful and pending” cases remaining “under adjudication” based on their objections to their exclusions from the draft rolls published in December.

A batch of names approved by judicial officers were added to the rolls through the first supplementary list published on Monday. Of the 60 lakh pending cases, 29 lakh had been adjudicated. However, the poll panel did not specify how many voters had been dropped and or included in the list.

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

Four days later, it allowed judges from Odisha and Jharkhand to also be deployed to decide on the claims and objections raised during the process.

At the hearing on Tuesday, Banerjee told the bench that the entire supplementary list had not yet been made available to stakeholders and requested that soft copies be provided to all political parties, Live Law reported.

Advocate DS Naidu, representing the Election Commission, told the Supreme Court that the poll panel was willing to publish supplementary lists on a daily basis and had placed a proposal before the chief justice of the Calcutta High Court.

Advocate Shyam Divan, appearing for Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, raised concerns about the impact of pending voter claims on the Assembly elections, Bar and Bench reported.

The elections will be held in two phases on April 23 and April 29. The votes will be counted on May 4.

Divan told the bench that about 14 candidates for the polls were on the adjudication list. This could affect their ability to file nominations before the deadline, he added.

The deadline for filing nominations for the first phase is April 6 and April 9 for the second.

The advocate added that the electoral roll in the state must be frozen seven days before polling.

In response, the chief justice said that these concerns appeared to be administrative in nature and should be taken up before the High Court.

The Supreme Court is tentatively scheduled to take up the matter again on April 1, Live Law reported.

Punjab MLA Harmit Singh Pathanmajra, who has been absconding since September after being booked in a rape and cheating case, has been arrested in Madhya Pradesh’s Gwalior on Tuesday, The Indian Express reported.

Pathanmajra, an Aam Aadmi Party legislator representing the Sanour constituency, was arrested at about 10 pm, the newspaper quoted a government spokesperson as saying.

The MLA had been booked on charges of rape, cheating and criminal intimidation on September 1 after a woman from Zirakpur, Punjab, accused him of sexually exploiting her on the pretext of marriage. She also alleged that he had concealed his first marriage.

After the first information report was registered, the police had sent a team to arrest him from his relative’s home in Haryana’s Karnal district. However, Pathanmajra escaped as his supporters allegedly thew stones and fired gun shots at the police.

In November, Pathanmajra appeared in a video interview with a web portal and claimed that he was in Australia, adding that he would “return home only after securing bail”. The MLA claimed that he had been framed.

However, a court in Patiala rejected his petition for anticipatory bail and issued a proclamation notice against him.

Issued under the Criminal Procedure Code section 82, a proclamation requires an absconding person to appear at a specified place and time not less than thirty days from the date of publishing such a notice.

Punjab’s Anti-Gangster Task Force had been on his trail since then, The Indian Express reported.

Denying the allegations against him in his interview in November, Pathanmajra had described the case as a “political conspiracy” that was aimed at silencing voices that speak for the residents of Punjab.

“In Punjab, ministers and MLAs are not consulted on key matters,” the MLA had said. “Freedom of speech is being curtailed. After losing in Delhi, those [AAP] leaders have now taken over Punjab, and they are ruining it the same way.”

In February 2025, the Bharatiya Janata Party defeated the AAP in the Delhi Assembly polls.

Earlier, Pathanmajra had also accused the AAP’s Delhi unit of “controlling Punjab ministers like puppets”.

“I spoke about mismanagement during the floods, and soon after that, cases started coming up against me,” the MLA had said in a statement after being booked.

A Singapore coroner’s inquiry into the death of singer Zubeen Garg has ruled that he died of accidental drowning, The Straits Times reported on Wednesday.

A coroner’s inquiry is a fact-finding process to establish the causes and circumstances of a person’s death.

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

The death certificate issued by the authorities in Singapore on September 20 stated the cause of Garg’s death as drowning. The authorities reiterated the findings in October and December.

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

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

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

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

The four persons charged for murder are Shyamkanu Mahanta, who was the organiser of the North East India Festival, Zubeen Garg’s manager Siddharatha Sharma and two musicians – Shekharjyoti Goswami and Amritprava Mahanta – who were with the singer on the yacht.

Besides, Zubeen Garg’s cousin, Deputy Superintendent of Police Sandipan Garg, was charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder. He had also travelled with the singer to Singapore. Two of Zubeen Garg’s personal security officers, Borah and Baishya, were accused of criminal breach of trust.

Harish Rana, the first person in India to be granted permission for passive euthanasia by the Supreme Court, died at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi on Tuesday, The Indian Express reported.

Rana died at 4.10 pm on Tuesday, the hospital stated. He had been in a permanent vegetative state since 2013.

The court had, on March 11, allowed life support to be withdrawn for the 31-year-old. The order had been passed on a plea filed by the family of Rana, who suffered a severe traumatic brain injury in August 2013 after falling from the fourth floor of a building in Chandigarh.

This was the first instance in which the court’s directions on passive euthanasia, laid down in a 2018 judgement, had been applied.

Three days after the court’s ruling, Rana had been moved from his home in Ghaziabad to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences.

Also read: From Aruna Shanbaug to Harish Rana, India’s long reckoning with the right to die with dignity

In 2018, a five-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court had recognised and given sanction for passive euthanasia, and allowed living wills or advance directives.

In that judgement, the court had ruled that the right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution includes the right to live with dignity. The court had held that the constitutional right includes the smoothening of the process of dying in case of a terminally ill patient or a person in a persistent vegetative state with no hope of recovery.

Rana’s family had approached the court seeking permission to withdraw life-sustaining treatment in the form of clinically assisted nutrition and hydration administered through a PEG tube.

A Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastronomy tube is a device inserted through the abdominal wall directly into the stomach to deliver nutrition, fluids and medication.

On March 11, the court had noted that continuing the treatment was only prolonging Rana’s biological existence without any therapeutic improvement. It also observed that the primary and secondary medical boards, along with Rana’s parents, had reached the opinion that the clinically assisted nutrition and hydration should be discontinued as it was not in the best interest of the patient.

The court stated that when the medical boards have certified withdrawal of life support, there was no need for the court to intervene.

However, it added that since this was the first case to reach the court, it was appropriate to examine the matter.

It also recommended that the Union government bring in a comprehensive legislation on passive euthanasia.

Candidates contesting elections to the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council will now be required to possess a Scheduled Tribe certificate. The development comes weeks after the polls were postponed following violence in connection with the nomination process, which left two dead.

The violence had erupted after non-tribal candidates filed nominations for the polls. Two persons were killed in suspected police firing on March 10.

On Tuesday, the Meghalaya governor gave assent to an amendment to the Assam and Meghalaya Autonomous Districts Constitution of District Councils Rules.

The amendment was approved by the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council on Monday.

After the approval, Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma said that the decision “will strengthen true representation of our Garo people, ensuring leadership by those who understand the aspirations, traditions and future of our community”.

Elections to the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council were earlier slated to be held on April 10. However, the elections were postponed and the council’s term was extended till October 18 following the violence.

History has been made today with the landmark decision of the GHADC to amend its rules, now mandating ST Certification to contest Council elections.

The Garo Hills District Council, established in 1952, has taken 74 long years to arrive at this historic moment. This decision… pic.twitter.com/nXU6Fu1LLm

— Conrad K Sangma (@SangmaConrad) March 23, 2026

The Meghalaya High Court had on March 10 set aside a notification issued by the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council that had made Scheduled Tribes certificates mandatory for candidates to file nomination papers. The High Court had held that the notification was issued without following procedures under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution.

The Sixth Schedule provides for autonomous decentralised self-governance in certain tribal areas of Meghalaya, Assam, Mizoram and Tripura.

United States President Donald Trump claimed on Tuesday that his country has won the war in Iran, and that it was only “fake news” portals that were claiming otherwise.

US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth asserted that “never in history has a modern military…been so rapidly and historically obliterated”.

There was no immediate response from Iran to the US’ claims.

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

• Trump, while claiming that the US has won the war in Iran, also said: “There won’t be any nuclear weapons. Iran has agreed to that.” He made the statement two days after directing the Department of War to postpone military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for five days following “good and productive conversations” between Washington and Tehran. Iran, however, had claimed that it was the US president who “backed down” after learning that it would target all power plants in West Asia.
• On Wednesday, the Iranian military rejected Trump’s claims about the negotiations, state-owned Fars news agency reported. “Has the level of your internal conflicts reached the state of negotiating with yourselves?” military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Ebrahim Zolfaghari was quoted as having asked in a video. He added that Washington should not describe its failure as an agreement.
• The Iranian news agency quoted Zolfaghari as saying that there will be no return to the oil prices as were before the conflict, or to the previous order, “until our will is done”.
• Washington has offered a 15-point ceasefire plan to Iran, AP quoted an unidentified official as saying on Tuesday. The plan was submitted to Iran by intermediaries from Pakistan, which has offered to host renewed negotiations between Washington and Tehran, the official said. Israeli officials, who have been advocating for Trump to continue the conflict, were surprised by the submission of the plan, the official was quoted as saying. This came as the US military is preparing to send at least 1,000 more soldiers to supplement some 50,000 troops already in West Asia.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: The war in Iran has been won.

The only one that likes to keep it going is the fake news. pic.twitter.com/pAYfeglpzJ

— Department of State (@StateDept) March 24, 2026

• Iran has said that at least 12 persons were killed and 28 others injured in an “enemy attack” on the residential areas of Varamin in southern Tehran, Al Jazeera quoted the Iranian state-owned Fars news agency as saying on Tuesday. In Iran, at least 1,500 persons have been killed and more than 18,550 injured in the conflict that started after the United States and Israel launched an attack on the country on February 28.
• Iran’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations said that non-hostile vessels can pass through the Strait of Hormuz in coordination with the the Iranian government, provided that “they neither participate in nor support acts of aggression against Iran and fully comply with the declared safety and security regulations”.
• The United Arab Emirates’ defence ministry said that a Moroccan citizen working as a civilian contractor with the armed forces was killed during a routine mission in an Iranian missile attack in Bahrain, Gulf News reported on Tuesday. The attack also injured five personnel from the ministry, it added.
• Drones targeted a ​fuel tank ‌at Kuwait International Airport, ​causing a ​fire but no ⁠casualties, ​Reuters quoted the country’s Civil Aviation ​Authority as saying on Wednesday. The authority said that emergency procedures ​had been ​activated immediately, with firefighting ‌teams ⁠responding to the blaze. Initial reports ​indicated only ​material ⁠damage, it added.
• Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said that he had received a call from United States Donald Trump, adding that he had a “useful exchange of views” on the situation in West Asia. “India supports de-escalation and restoration of peace at the earliest,” Modi said on social media. “Ensuring that the Strait of Hormuz remains open, secure and accessible is essential for the whole world. We agreed to stay in touch regarding efforts towards peace and stability.”
• Iran had effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterbody connecting the Gulf to the Arabian Sea, for most international commercial vessels since the start of the conflict. About 20% of global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint. The International Energy Agency has said that the fighting has caused the “largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market”.

The conflict

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

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

The Gujarat Assembly on Tuesday passed the Uniform Civil Code Bill amid protests by the Opposition.

The legislation will need to be given assent by the governor to become a law. Once the law is enacted, Gujarat will become the second state after Uttarakhand to implement the uniform civil code.

Congress MLAs walked out of the House before the bill was passed, The Indian Express reported.

The Uniform Civil Code refers to a common set of laws governing marriage, divorce, succession and adoption for all citizens. Currently, such personal affairs of different religious and tribal groups are based on community-specific laws, largely derived from religious scripture.

The bill passed by the Gujarat Assembly also introduces a common legal framework governing related matters such as live-in relationships. The legislation will not apply to all members of Scheduled Tribes or groups whose customary rights are protected under the Constitution.

Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel said that the code will “reject any policy or custom of division or discrimination among citizens” based on their religion or caste. The code has adopted the principles of equality, he was quoted as saying, adding that it reflects “the expectations, aspirations and desires of the citizens of Gujarat for equal justice”.

Patel said that “saving girls from cases such as Shradhha Walkar is part of our duty”. The regulations pertaining to live-in relationships are “not for taking away anybody’s freedom, but for legal security of daughters”, he said.

“For those who do marriages while concealing their identity or do fraud, there is no place in Gujarat,” he added.

Walkar was murdered allegedly by her live-in partner Aaftab Poonawala in Delhi in November 2022. Her body was chopped into pieces and thrown at different places in the city over several months. The case had led to outrage at the time.

The Gujarat legislation makes registration of live-in relationships mandatory for couples in the state, while keeping it optional for residents living outside the state. Failure to register a live-in relationship within a month could attract up to three months’ imprisonment or a fine of Rs 10,000.

In cases where the persons are between 18 and 21 years of age, their parents will be informed by the administration, The Hindu reported.

The Congress’ Gujarat chief Amit Chavda was quoted by The Indian Express as having alleged that the government had introduced the bill “in a hurry, with political intentions while keeping in mind coming elections in the state”.

Gujarat is expected to hold local body elections in April or May.

The lone Muslim MLA Imran Khedawala of the Congress opposed the legislation, arguing that it would distance Muslims from the Shariat law and make them “atheists”, the newspaper reported.

The bill in Gujarat is based on recommendations of a committee chaired by retired Supreme Court judge Ranjana Prakash Desai.

Article 44 of the Constitution says that the state should “endeavour to secure for the citizens a Uniform Civil Code throughout the territory of India”. However, the provision is part of Directive Principles of State Policy and is thus not legally binding.

Introducing a common personal law has long been on the BJP’s agenda and several states governed by the Hindutva party have been taking steps towards implementing it.

In January 2025, BJP-ruled Uttarakhand became the first state to implement the Uniform Civil Code after independence. A common civil code has been in place in Goa since the Portuguese Civil Code was adopted in 1867.

At his factory in Visakhapatnam, Sanjeev Relhan produces surgical gowns and protective gear that doctors and nurses routinely use in hospitals while handling an infectious patient or for a surgery.

Usually, Relhan sells gowns to hospitals for Rs 80 a piece. In the last few days, he has raised the price by 50% to Rs 120.

The manufacturer said he had no other option, as the cost of non-woven fabric has shot up because of the Iran war.

The synthetic fabric, made out of a petroleum-based polymer called polypropylene, is in short supply as petrochemical plants have slashed production because their gas supplies are dwindling.

In Faridabad, a company that sells disposable syringes, catheters, IV cannula and dialysis products to hospitals has also increased prices from 5% to 25%.

A Punjab firm that manufactures dental implants has raised prices as the cost of titanium surges because of the war.

The war on Iran by Israel and the United States of America has already rattled the global supply of crude oil and liquified petroleum gas. Iran’s shutdown of the key shipping route, the Strait of Hormuz, has increased freight costs and made imports costlier.

The cascading effects of the conflict are now rippling out across sectors in India – and might raise costs for hospitals and patients.

Several manufacturers of medical devices have flagged an unprecedented rise in the cost of raw materials, packaging and freight due to the international shipping disruption. The result is a sharp rise in prices of disposable medical devices such as personal protective gear, syringes, cannula, catheters, dialysis kits, IV bags, and products made of medical-grade plastics.

In the coming weeks, if the bottlenecks continue, the price escalation is going to trickle down, bumping up hospital fees and cost of treatment for patients, industry experts told Scroll. And if the war drags on for a year, even MRI machines might struggle to work.

A polymer crunch

In early March, days after US-Israel’s attack on Iran, the central government curtailed the supply of gas to petrochemical industries as it prioritised the domestic market and cooking fuel availability.

Within weeks, the effects were felt by Relhan’s firm, Shalex Meditech, in Visakhapatnam.

The petrochemical companies from which he sourced synthetic fabric cut down on production.

“Last week, all my big suppliers told me that they have stopped full-fledged production of non-woven fabric,” Relhan said. The cost of the fabric, he added, has risen from Rs 150 to Rs 215 per kg due to the high demand and limited supply. As a result, Relhan is selling gowns at a higher price to hospitals.

India produces approximately 50 lakh pieces of surgical gowns and protective gear per month, Relhan said. The cost of these disposables is set to rise if the conflict continues for a few more months.

Like Relhan, Faridabad-based Bio-Med HealthCare is struggling to continue production of syringes and other disposable devices.

The firm uses a medical grade of polypropylene, which is biocompatible, inexpensive, and can be sterilized using heat. It is used in a wide range of products like syringes, IV bags, catheters, surgical trays, test tubes, inhalers, nebulisers, surgical sutures, and orthopaedic implants.

“The raw material cost has risen by 40% to 60%,” said Deepak Arora, the owner of Biomed. The refineries and petrochemical units he sourced the polymer from have redirected gas to produce cooking fuels and compressed natural gas or CNG, he said. “There has been a drastic reduction in our production in the last 20 days.”

He said that the cost of the finished goods has gone up by 25 % to 28%. “Since this is an essential commodity, we have raised prices only by 5%,” Arora said.

Himanshu Baid, managing director at Poly Medicure, which makes a wide range of medical devices, said the rise in cost of plastic raw material has begun to pinch manufacturers. “Many companies in the small and medium sector may shut down soon as they cannot pass on these increased costs to consumers,” he said.

Experts said hospitals may also look at curtailing cost and may switch to reusable syringes made out of borosilicate glass and stainless steel to contain costs.

Grit your teeth

India also relies on titanium imports to manufacture implants or directly imports ready-made implants. Titanium implants are used in dentistry and orthopedics to replace teeth or bones since they are biocompatible and bond well with human bone.

India imports titanium from Germany, United States, Switzerland, Korea and Israel but the blockade of Strait of Hormuz has affected supplies. The fall in the Indian rupee has also led to a surge in titanium prices.

The impact is already visible.

Jagmeet Bahri, the vice president of Pivot Implants, the Punjab firm that manufactures dental implants, imports titanium from Switzerland. While he has a stock of three months, he said he was forced to increase prices due to the fall in Indian currency. So, he is selling implants to dental clinics at Rs 12,500, up from Rs 10,000, three weeks ago.

“If the shipping blockade continues, I will have to import from Korea, but its titanium quality is not as good,” he said. “Doctors will also have to increase their costs.”

On Monday, the Association of Indian Medical Device Industry, or AIMED, wrote to the ministries of finance and commerce to take urgent remedial steps to help the medical device sector.

Rajiv Nath, forum coordinator for the association, told Scroll that they have requested for a three-month custom duty rebate on raw materials and component imports.

“The medical device input costs have risen by nearly 50% for critical plastics and over 20% for packaging,” Nath said. “Manufacturers operating on thin margins on products like nitrile gloves, syringes, catheters, disposable plastic medical devices have to either operate at loss or increase their cost,” his letter added.

Nath told Scroll that manufacturers can deal with shipment delays of one to three weeks through their buffer stock but “prolonged disruption may lead to production halts, hospital shortages, and inflated costs”.

Nath is also the managing director at Hindustan Syringes and Medical devices Ltd. a firm in Delhi that manufactures single-use syringes. In the last few days, his phone has been flooded with messages from suppliers who have increased the cost of high-density polyethylene and low density polyethylene – the raw material used to make syringes.

The prices are rising each day. On March 1, the prices of high-density polyethylene rose by Rs 2,500 per metric ton. By March 3, it was up by Rs 6,000 per metric ton. In the last fortnight alone, the prices have risen by Rs 24,000 per metric ton.

For MRIs, a helium question

Another possible disruption, if the conflict extends beyond a year, is of MRI machines.

The magnets in several MRI machines are regularly bathed in liquid helium to sustain their superconductivity and to cool them down.

India imports a large quantity of liquid helium, a byproduct of natural gas, from Qatar and the USA. In early March, Qatar announced a halt in production facilities of energy supplies, including helium, due to the ongoing conflict.

The shortage of helium that followed has led to soaring prices, from Rs 1,200 a litre to Rs 1,800-Rs 2,200 a litre, said Raju Kumar Sitaram Jaiswal, a supplier of the gas from Maharashtra’s Tarapur.

Jaiswal imported 60% of helium from Qatar and 40% from Russia. He has now completely moved to Russian suppliers. “Like me, several Indian importers have been put on a waitlist. Helium prices have shot up and the waiting period is 40 days.”

To deal with the shortage, he said, he has restricted supply. “If a hospital demands 1,000 litres, we are able to supply 500 litres.”

But the shortage is not widespread. Suppliers who rely on domestic producers of liquid helium have not been affected.

Vishal Shah, a vendor in Mumbai who supplies liquid helium to many MRI centres, said he has not been affected as his suppliers are from India.

For now, the prices of MRI scans have not increased. MRI machines, too, are at no risk of running out of helium.

An MRI machine can store 1,200 to 2,000 litres of helium, which can last for two to four years. Many diagnostics centres have enough buffer stock to tide them through the conflict before they feel the pinch, industry insiders said.

While the impact of price rise will be immediate for hospitals and clinics, diagnostic laboratories may face this later.

Veena Kohli, the chief executive officer of New Delhi-based Vanguard Diagnostics, said the war has not affected the cost of laboratory diagnostic equipment, reagents and devices to test human blood, undertake cancer tests, and urine diagnosis. Manufacturers have inventories, she said, and will be able to cushion the impact of price rise temporarily on the diagnostic industry.

“But if it goes on for longer, six months or more, then the real impact will be seen,” she said.

Papa Rao, believed to be the last active Maoist commander in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region, surrendered along with 17 other cadres in the Bijapur district on Tuesday, the Hindustan Times quoted the state police as saying.

Rao, who was a member of the Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee and in charge of the South Sub Zonal Bureau of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), carried a reward of Rs 25 lakh on his head.

His surrender comes a week before the March 31 deadline set by the Union government to end the Maoist conflict.

Apart from Rao, the other Maoists who surrendered included divisional committee members Prakash Madvi and Anil Tati, the Hindustan Times reported.

The police in Bastar said that the 18 Maoists had agreed to shun violence and join the mainstream in a “decisive breakthrough” in the ongoing efforts to end Maoism in the region.

The statement added that the development was evidence that the goal of a Maoist-free Bastar was steadily becoming a reality, the newspaper reported. It added that this is the first time in the history of the Maoist movement in the Dandakaranya region that the organisation is left without an effective leadership.

Rao, who is believed to be between 55 and 60 years of age, is a school dropout who joined the Maoist movement in 1997, The Indian Express reported. He is believed to have been involved in several conspiracies to carry out several attacks.

The Maoist commander had 45 cases against him, including in connection with the biggest Maoist attack in Tadmetla in 2010, when 76 jawans were killed in an ambush, Bijapur Superintendent of Police Jeetendra Kumar Yadav told The Indian Express.

He was also allegedly involved in a Moaist attack in Bijapur’s Ambeli in January 2025. Eight security personnel and a civilian driver were killed then.

Vivekanand Sinha, additional director general (naxal operations) was also quoted as saying by The Indian Express that Rao was “the last important Naxal leader left in the outfit in Chhattisgarh”.

Since 2014, over 10,000 cadres have surrendered across the country, PTI reported. While 2,300 laid down arms in 2025, more than 630 have surrendered in the first three months of 2026, according to the news agency.

In February, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs said that the number of districts affected by “Left-wing extremism” has come down to eight from 11 in October.

These districts include Bijapur, Dantewada, Gariyaband, Kanker, Narayanpur and Sukma in Chhattisgarh, West Singhbhum in Jharkhand, and Kandhamal in Odisha.

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

Civil liberties groups and Opposition parties have also questioned some of the killings of reward-carrying Maoists, alleging that they constitute “fake encounters”.

Another key Maoist leader surrenders in Odisha

In Odisha, Maoist leader Sukru, who carried a reward of Rs 55 lakh on his head, along with four other cadres, surrendered before the police in Kandhamal district on Tuesday, PTI quoted Director General of Police YB Khurania as saying.

Khurania said that Sukru, who was a state committee member of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), surrendered with an AK-47 rifle. Sukru, who hailed from Malkangiri district, was considered one of the last remaining Maoist leaders active in the state, he added.

Also read: As Maoists retreat, why many fear security forces in Chhattisgarh villages

The Lok Sabha on Tuesday passed by voice vote the 2026 Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Amendment Bill.

The bill will now be moved to the Rajya Sabha. If cleared by the Upper House of Parliament, it will be sent for presidential assent.

Introduced in the Lok Sabha on March 13, the bill proposes amendments to the 2019 Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Act by redefining who qualifies as a transgender person.

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

The bill was passed in the Lower House amid criticism from Opposition parties. While some described it as “draconian”, others said that its passing showed the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government’s “callous” approach.

The parties also argued that the bill undermines the right to self-identification recognised by the Supreme Court in the 2014 National Legal Services Authority v Union of India matter, or NALSA case.

The judgement had formally created the “third gender” category for transgender persons that recognised them as a socially and economically backward class.

It had issued directions to the government to ensure transgender community gets job quotas, admission in educational institutions, health benefits, separate public toilets and a host of other safeguards against discrimination.

Provisions of bill

The new bill proposes to make medical evaluation and certification mandatory for legal gender recognition. It underlines that the authority to permit such transitions is vested in medical professionals operating under a medical board.

The bill also introduces graded punishments based on the severity of offences, increasing the maximum penalty from two years under the 2019 law to up to 14 years.

It emphasises that the law is intended to protect a defined class of persons facing “extreme and oppressive” discrimination and not all “persons with various gender identities, self-perceived sex/gender identities or gender fluidities”.

Opposition criticises amendments

On Tuesday, Congress MP S Jyothimani said the amendment bill was introduced without consulting the transgender community, asserting that it was not a reform and should be sent to a standing committee.

“This is not democracy but a monologue of power, which is the trademark of the [Narendra] Modi government,” Jyothimani alleged.

Samajwadi Party MP Anand Bhadauria questioned the government’s claims that the bill was aimed towards welfare, stating that it imposes restrictive definitions and unfairly excludes sections of the community.

DMK MP T Sumathy accused the Union government of interfering with the right to self-determination of identity.

“This government treats the transgender community as subjects to be corrected, which is highly condemnable,” she said.

Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) leader Supriya Sule also opposed the bill, stating that it had been brought in “an extremely hasty manner”.

“If we take the basis of fundamental science, it is impossible to identify anyone as transgender with 100% certainty,” she said, adding that it was “technically difficult” to show someone was transgender in the birth certificate.

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

A Delhi court on Tuesday sentenced Kashmiri separatist leader Asiya Andrabi to life imprisonment, PTI reported.

Andrabi, alleged to be the founder and chief of the banned all-women separatist group Dukhtaraan-e-Millat, and two of her associates had been convicted under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act on January 14.

Her associates, Nahida Nasreen and Fahmeeda Sofi, have been sentenced to 30 years of imprisonment, reported Bar and Bench.

Andrabi had been arrested in April 2018 by the Jammu and Kashmir Police for allegedly planning a large-scale demonstration in Anantnag. She had been sent to jail in Srinagar.

While Andrabi was allegedly the head of the banned outfit, Fehmeeda served as its press secretary and Nasreen as the general secretary, Bar and Bench reported.

In addition to the anti-terror law, the three women were convicted under sections of the Indian Penal Code related to promoting enmity between groups, imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration, conspiracy to wage war against the Government of India, criminal conspiracy and statements conducing to public mischief.

After the conviction, the National Investigation Agency had sought life imprisonment for Andrabi, Hindustan Times reported.

The agency accused the three women of spreading “insurrectionary imputations and hateful messages and speeches against India” through social media, the newspaper reported.

“The convicts are well-educated women, and their acts were part of a deep-rooted conspiracy to wage war against the Government of India,” the agency told the court in written arguments. “They were not just part of the conspiracy but were the main perpetrators.”

The court observed that while there was no direct evidence that the convicts used violence, their actions eulogised militants and indirectly promoted violence, Bar and Bench reported.

The court held that they were “infusing the minds of Kashmiris, especially the youngsters” with the idea that “Kashmir is not part of India and [that] India has occupied the Kashmir illegally and in a hostile manner”, which could evoke public sentiments and potentially lead to violence.

It was February 27. A herd of around 20 cows drank from the Biprasar pond, while a flock of sheep grazed nearby. Around 13 camels straddled in.

“Every day, thousands of animals, birds, and humans come to quench their thirst here. And this water is two years old because there was not much rain last year. Even when the seasonal rainfall is low, the vast aagor [catchment] helps us collect it here,” said Lal Singh, spreading his arm to indicate the extent of the land before growing sombre. “There is a proposal to set up a 400 MW solar energy park in the catchment. Where will all these animals go? How will we survive without water?”

Growing up in Ramgarh village of Jaisalmer district, Singh has imbibed the language of the desert ecosystem where people thrive on an average annual rainfall of around 100 mm spread over just eight days. This region has some of the lowest intensity of rainfall. For comparison, the average annual rainfall in India is around 1,200 mm.

People here use traditional wisdom to harvest this little water from ponds, shallow and deep wells, and khadeens, and to rear animals on desert grasses and shrubs in orans (sacred groves) and gochars (pastures).

But a growing number of large solar power and mining projects in the region are now taking over these traditional community lands, threatening the traditional way of life and sparking conflicts that have grown into a broader movement in the last five years.

Walking for the sacred and sustaining

Orans are sacred groves dedicated to local deities or martyrs, conserved by local communities under strict rules governing extraction. While livestock are allowed to graze, tree cutting is not allowed, turning these into oases in the desert, harbouring a large number of indigenous trees like khejri (Prosopis cineraria) and rohida (Tecomella undulata), as well as the critically endangered great Indian bustard, caracal, and desert fox.

On January 21, around 100 villagers started a protest march from Tanot Mata temple near the India-Pakistan border in Jaisalmer, planning to reach the state capital Jaipur, a distance of around 700 km, by the end of March to press upon the state government for protection of orans, pastures, and catchment areas of water sources.

Along the way, several thousand others are joining them in cities like Jaisalmer and Jodhpur, while villages en route offer a warm welcome with shelter and food. Several political leaders, cutting across party lines, have supported the campaign and raised the issue in the state assembly as well.

“The march is raising public awareness on the issue. We are expecting thousands of supporters from all over Rajasthan to enter Jaipur,” said Sumer Singh Bhati, a conservationist and activist who is leading the protest under the banner of “Save Oran”. “We are not against development, but the focus on large-scale solar energy projects, requiring thousands of hectares, is taking away our sources of survival and livelihood.”

At Bandha village, for instance, the state government allotted 2,397 hectares for a 1 GW solar power project, forcing livestock owners to look for alternatives to the grassland that is now enclosed.

“Earlier, the animals could graze freely, but now there is limited land. This has forced people to reduce their herd size,” said Swaroop Ram, a resident of Bandha village. “In records, our pasture was classified as wasteland, thus making it easier for the government to allot it to the companies.”

The Rajasthan Tenancy Act 1955 and the Rajasthan Land Revenue Act 1956 restrict the use of pastures and catchment of water resources for industrial and infrastructural purposes, and subsequent judgments have reinforced the rule. But wastelands can be easily allocated, which is why the locals are pressing for accurate classification of their community lands.

“Our estimate suggests that around 5.8 lakh hectares of orans in Jaisalmer district are classified as wasteland in government records,” said Bhati. “We did not know about this wrong classification and had no reason to worry because there were negligible industrial projects in the desert, and they usually required just a few acres. Solar parks, however, are different. They are being set up in thousands of hectares, and so many of them are coming up now.”

Mongabay-India reached out via email to the Rajasthan Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Limited, the Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Limited, and the Jaisalmer district collector to inquire about the safeguards employed when allocating land for solar energy parks. No response was received at the time of publishing.

The solar surge

With over 325 sunny days a year, Rajasthan has emerged as India’s renewable energy hub. The state ranks first in solar power, boasting an installed capacity of 22,860.73 MW. The Rajasthan Clean Energy Integrated Policy aims to achieve a target of 125 GW Renewable Power Projects by 2029-30, including 90 GW solar. Some 44,247 hectares of land were allotted for solar parks with a capacity of 23 GW between 2023 and 2025.

The conflicts arising out of such expansion have also reached court. Residents of Nedan village, for instance, filed a case in 2018 arguing that a 600-MW hybrid solar-wind project by the Adani group had restricted access to orans, leading the Rajasthan High Court to cancel the allotment of land to the group.

In another case, the Adani group had to return 205.3 hectares of oran land it had acquired for a solar power project at Baiya village, following vehement opposition from the locals last year.

“Solar parks don’t generate jobs for the locals, except a few who are hired as security guards or cleaners of solar panels. If the government is really serious about the welfare of people, they should promote small, decentralised solar plants owned by communities,” said Bhopal Singh, a leader of the Save Oran group. “Large solar parks and mining projects only benefit a few businessmen while villagers are forced to either migrate to cities or resort to poorly paid labour work. In contrast, livestock rearing has helped people survive in this harsh region for generations.”

According to the 20th Livestock Census 2019, Jaisalmer district had around 24 lakh cows, goats, sheep, and camels, but activists say the recorded pasture area is not enough for their survival.

A tehsildar can earmark pasture land in consultation with the village panchayat by roughly allocating 0.12 hectare for each cattle head, says the Rajasthan Tenancy (Government) Rules 1955.

“Our assessment of 45 villages based on livestock census shows that the pasture land in records is invariably short of the requisite area. We have written to the Jaisalmer district collector to do similar assessments for all villages of the district and allocate the pasture area accordingly,” said activist Balwant Singh Jodha. “A cow consumes 5 kg of dry fodder daily. If we buy from the market, it will cost Rs 2,800 every week. This is why it’s essential to have orans and gochar for every village.”

Orans as forest

In 2005, the Supreme Court’s Central Empowered Committee recommended detailed mapping of orans and their classification as forests. The recommendations, however, remained unimplemented, and after several follow-up interlocutory applications, the court directed the Rajasthan government in December 2024 to enforce the recommendations and to form an expert committee to identify various forms of desert ecosystems, such as grassland, rocky outcrops, and stony desert, and to consider them as forest land.

In December 2025, the state government-formed committee proposed 11,313 bigha (2,977 hectares) of land in three villages of Jaisalmer district for classification as oran. Many other villages, however, are yet to be surveyed.

“No orders have yet been issued to the local revenue officers to carry out this exercise, and hence most villages are not able to take up new proposals in their panchayats,” said Parth Jagani, a Jaisalmer-based environmentalist and farmer. “Until this mapping is done, no land should be allotted or leased out for any commercial activity.”

Mongabay-India reached out to the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests and the Jaisalmer district collector to inquire about ground mapping of the orans and pasture lands. Their responses are awaited.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

The Kerala Police ordered social media platforms to remove posts about a letter issued by the Election Commission bearing the seal of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s state unit. A row had erupted in the state on Monday, with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) alleging that “seals are being casually swapped”.

The Election Commission attributed this to a clerical error.

The police are reporting to the Election Commission as the Model Code of Conduct is in force in the state ahead of the Assembly polls. In their order, the police alleged that the posts ordered to be taken down “blatantly insult” the poll panel and “propagate content that undermines communal harmony”.

Social media platform X informed several users, including journalists and leaders of Opposition parties, that it had been directed by the police to remove posts based on claims that the content violated Indian law. An Instagram post by Scroll about the controversy was also blocked. Read on.

Only persons belonging to the Hindu, Buddhist and Sikh faiths can claim the Scheduled Caste status, said the Supreme Court. It added that a Dalit person converting to any religion other than the three loses his or her Scheduled Caste status, regardless of the status at birth.

The order came on an appeal filed by a pastor against an Andhra Pradesh High Court ruling from April. The pastor alleged that he had faced caste discrimination and abuse. The High Court had quashed the case, observing that the complaint no longer had the Scheduled Caste status after converting to Christianity. Read on.

Why proposed reservations for Dalit Muslims, Christians have sharply divided Ambedkarites, explains Nachiket Deuskar

The White House said that it did not have concrete comments to make on reports that the United States will hold talks with Iran in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad later this week. The comments came after the Financial Times reported that Pakistan was pitching Islamabad as a possible venue for negotiations.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Monday that he had spoken with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, but did not mention whether they had discussed the proposed talks.

Meanwhile, global oil prices remained high amid supply concerns, although there was a marginal drop in the rates. The Indian stock market improved marginally on Tuesday after Trump indicated that US, Israel and Iran could negotiate an end to the conflict. Read on.

Ramachandra Guha: Of the three leaders at the heart of West Asia conflict, who is the most evil?

If reports suggesting that Pakistan may be acting as an intermediary in communications between the US, Israel and Iran are true, it would mark a “severe setback” for India, said the Congress. Party leader Jairam Ramesh said that “it is all attributable to the self-styled Vishwaguru”, in an apparent reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Congress leader also criticised Modi’s recent visit to Israel on February 25 and February 26, just two days before the US-Israel attacks on Iran began. Read on.

The Central Bureau of Investigation has moved the Supreme Court against the bail granted to two men accused of sexually assaulting and parading two Kuki women naked during the 2023 ethnic violence in Manipur. In September, the Gauhati High Court granted bail to the two men, noting that there was a significant delay in the trial, largely because of the lapses by the CBI.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant, and Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and N Kotiswar Singh issued notice to the two men and sought their response. Read on.

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The Central Bureau of Investigation has moved the Supreme Court against the bail granted to two men accused of sexually assaulting and parading two Kuki women naked during the 2023 ethnic violence in Manipur, Bar and Bench reported on Tuesday.

The incident had taken place a day after ethnic clashes broke out between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo-Hmar communities on May 3, 2023.

On July 19, 2023, a video showing two women being paraded naked by a mob in the Kangpokpi district was widely shared on social media. One of the women in the video was gangraped, according to a police complaint.

In September, the Gauhati High Court granted bail to two men who were allegedly part of the group that had paraded the women naked. The High Court had noted that there was a significant delay in the trial, largely because of the lapses by the CBI, the legal news agency reported.

The trial in the cases has begun. In January, a special court in Assam’s Guwahati framed criminal charges against six persons, including the two out on bail, The Times of India reported.

On Tuesday, a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant, and Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and N Kotiswar Singh issued notice to the two men and sought their response.

The CBI had told the court that the case involved extremely serious allegations. “The accused had paraded women naked,” Bar and Bench quoted the agency as submitting before the court. “This is a gross case. The women were gangraped and then paraded.”

The assault took place near the B Phainom village in the Kangpokpi village.

The Supreme Court had taken suo moto cognisance of the violence in the state. Following the court’s intervention, the CBI took over the probe in several cases linked to the violence.

Also read: ‘If you don’t take off your clothes, we will kill you’: Kuki women paraded naked in Manipur

Supreme Court flags delay in legal aid

In a separate hearing, the Supreme Court on Tuesday expressed dissatisfaction about delays in appointing legal aid counsel for complainants in sexual violence cases related to the ethnic conflict in Manipur, Live Law.

The bench comprising Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi noted that its earlier directions had not been complied with for over a month and directed that legal aid representation be ensured without further delay.

“Why are they making false promises,” Kant asked the lawyer for the Manipur rehabilitation committee.

On February 26, the Supreme Court directed that complainants in 20 cases linked to the ethnic violence be provided copies of chargesheets and free legal aid for proceedings in Guwahati.

In August 2023, the court issued an order directing that trials in the violence cases be conducted in Assam, while permitting the parties to appear via video conference from Manipur.

In its February order, the bench noted that complainants in Manipur were unaware of chargesheet filings in Assam and directed the Manipur and Assam State Legal Services Authorities to appoint one lawyer who understands the local language per complainant or family.

Twenty-five leopards from Maharashtra have been relocated to Vantara, the wildlife rescue centre run by Reliance Foundation in Gujarat’s Jamnagar, PTI quoted state minister Ganesh Naik as saying in the state legislative council on Monday.

Naik added that the state government has signed an agreement with the Reliance Foundation to translocate 50 leopards to Vantara.

“We made a demand [to take the leopards] because 150 leopards were trapped in Pune district,” PTI quoted Naik as saying while speaking on the amendment of the Wildlife Protection Act as applied to Maharashtra.

On March 18, the Maharashtra Assembly approved the 2026 Wildlife Protection Maharashtra Amendment Bill seeking to introduce changes to the 1972 Wildlife Protection Act, the Hindustan Times reported.

The proposed amendment will empower the state government to capture and relocate leopards from one area to another, which otherwise requires approval from the Union government.

The bill was cleared by the council on Monday, PTI reported. It will only come into effect after receiving the president’s assent, as it proposes changes to a central law.

This came against the backdrop of repeated instances of man-animal conflict in Maharashtra amid a surge in the population of leopards. The minister said on Tuesday that the leopard population has gone up to 444 from 101 in the past seven to eight years, PTI reported.

In Pune district, a mass capture drive began in October after a five-year-old girl was killed in a leopard attack in Shirur taluka. In December, the Hindustan Times reported that the Junnar forest division had captured around 110 leopards, most of which were housed at the Manikdoh Leopard Rescue Centre. The centre was originally designed to accommodate only 45 leopards.

On Monday, Naik said that the Wildlife Protection Act amendment has been brought because the chief wildlife warden, in cases of human-leopard conflict, cannot take steps for population management or translocation of big cats under section 12 without permission from the Union government.

This highly regulated, cumbersome process is time-consuming and delays effective scientific management and translocation of leopards, as well as efforts to deal with human-leopard conflict in the state, PTI quoted Naik as saying.

The bill will enable the chief wildlife warden to take necessary steps for the scientific management of leopards, including translocation and population management, with the permission of the state government, he added.

The Delhi High Court on Tuesday dismissed a petition moved by Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav seeking to quash the corruption case against him linked to an alleged land-for-jobs scam, Live Law reported.

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

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

Yadav had filed a petition claiming that the investigations in the case were initiated without obtaining a sanction mandated under the 1988 Prevention of Corruption Act. He alleged that this illegality was also ignored by the special judge.

The former chief minister of Bihar alleged in his plea that he was being made to suffer through an “illegal, motivated investigation” in violation of his fundamental right to fair investigation.

On Tuesday, Justice Ravinder Dudeja refused to quash the first information report filed by the CBI, three chargesheets and the trial court orders taking cognisance of the chargesheets.

Dudeja held that Yadav’s plea was devoid of any merit and dismissed it.

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

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

The Delhi High Court has held that universities cannot restrict peaceful protest merely because the views of the students do not align with the management’s ideology, Bar and Bench reported on Tuesday.

The court made the observation while setting aside the expulsion of a student from Dr BR Ambedkar University. The punishment was “highly disproportionate” and unsustainable in law, it added.

In the March 13 order, Justice Jasmeet Singh allowed the student’s petition challenging allegedly disciplinary orders issued against her in June and August.

“A university that accepts only obedience and discourages protests and criticism would fail in its broader educational role,” the judge said. “The role of the university is not to suppress every form of dissent, but to ensure that such expression is answered and catered to.”

Singh said that a university is not only a place for attending classes, but also a space where students “are expected to learn and inculcate independent thought processes, ability to ask questions and engage in critical thinking”.

The court observed that peaceful protest and non-violent dissent form a natural part of such an environment, Live Law reported. Protests when carried out without violence or serious disruption, cannot be treated as misconduct, it added.

“On the contrary, it reflects the very spirit of freedom to engage in discourse and discussions that a university is expected to encourage,” the judge said.

The petitioner, a global studies student at the university, alleged that she faced severe ragging, bullying and gender-insensitive remarks that led to self-harm. She later took part in complaints and protests over the incident, after which the university suspended her, Bar and Bench reported.

In April 2025, the High Court had allowed her to attend classes but barred her from participating in protests while the matter was under inquiry.

The university later claimed that the petitioner had breached the direction by joining a campus-wide boycott, and issued a show-cause notice to her in May before expelling her for taking part in a sit-down protest.

The student denied participating in the protest, stating she was only near the site to meet a friend when her photograph was taken by campus security.

While examining the matter, the court noted there was no allegation that the protest disrupted the functioning of the university or interfered with other students’ academic pursuits.

It also clarified that any punishment for violation of a court order lies with the court and not the university.

The court set aside the disciplinary orders, holding that the loss of a year was sufficient punishment, and allowed her to resume her studies from the third semester in July, Live Law reported.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday said that only persons belonging to the Hindu, Buddhist and Sikh faiths can claim the Scheduled Caste status, Bar and Bench reported.

A Dalit person converting to any religion other than the three loses his or her Scheduled Caste status, regardless of the status at birth, the court observed, citing Clause 3 of the 1950 Constitution Scheduled Caste Order.

Upholding an order passed by the Andhra Pradesh High Court in April 2025, a bench of Justices PK Mishra and Manmohan said that a Dalit person who converts to Christianity cannot claim the violation of the Scheduled Caste Act.

The order came on an appeal against the High Court ruling filed by a pastor, who alleged that he had faced caste discrimination and abuse.

He had filed a complaint under the 1989 Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Prevention of Atrocities Act and a first information report had been registered in the matter.

The person accused in the matter had challenged the case against him, arguing that the complainant had converted and was actively professing Christianity, Live Law reported.

The High Court had quashed the case, observing that the complaint no longer had the Scheduled Caste status after converting to Christianity.

Also read: Why proposed reservations for Dalit Muslims, Christians have sharply divided Ambedkarites

A row erupted in Madhya Pradesh on Monday after Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Ambrish Sharma criticised his own government, accusing state officials of inaction, bias and of ignoring him and his constituency, The Indian Express reported.

Sharma, a first-time MLA representing the Lahar Assembly seat in Bhind district, organised a protest against the state government but later called it off.

Speaking at a public gathering and during the protest about the alleged neglect of Lahar, Sharma said he and residents of the region “feel helpless and neglected”, the newspaper reported.

Sharma claimed that “the people and the MLA are now orphans”.

“Both of them are before god and the party,” The Indian Express quoted him as saying. “To our own chief minister [Mohan Yadav] and our party…I request that the Lahar constituency not be subjected to injustice.”

The MLA accused officials of failing to act against illegal encroachments and irregularities despite repeated complaints, the newspaper reported. He also alleged that influential persons were being protected while action was delayed or avoided.

“The officials should not mistake our patience for weakness,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “I am a cultured MLA of a cultured party… You people aren’t even worth a single puff – if I blow, you’ll end up flying all the way to Pakistan.”

After Sharma’s comments triggered a row, the BJP’s state unit spokesperson Ajay Singh Yadav told The Times of India that the protest was “about a Congress leader who is protecting the illegal mafia and our MLA is fighting against him”.

He added that Sharma’s allegations were directed only at a section of officials. “We know how the Congress shields and patronises leaders linked with the mafia,” the newspaper quoted Yadav as saying.

The BJP has also claimed that members of the Scheduled Caste community in Lahar have been protesting against Govind Singh, a close ally of former chief minister Digvijaya Singh, for allegedly encroaching on land used as a pathway to several habitations and villages in the region, the newspaper reported.

The Congress, however, dismissed the allegations.

Mithun Ahirwar, a spokesperson for the party’s state unit, said that Govind Singh is “considered a senior and respected leader not just by the Congress but in the political arena”, The Times of India reported.

“The charges levelled by the BJP MLA [Sharma] are not being taken seriously even by his government and party,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “The officials he is making the allegations against were posted by the BJP government.”

The Kerala Police on Tuesday ordered social media platforms to remove posts, including those by journalists and members of Opposition parties, about a letter the Election Commission had issued.

A row had erupted in the state on Monday when an Election Commission letter bearing the seal of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Kerala unit was widely shared online. The seal was on a letter dated March 19, 2019, sent to political parties across the country detailing norms about criminal antecedents of candidates.

The letter had been sent along with an email on March 21.

After the matter came to light on Monday, the poll panel said that the letter carried the BJP seal due to a “purely clerical error”. The panel added that it had withdrawn the erroneous document.​

On Tuesday, journalists Arvind Gunasekar, Piyush Rai and the Congress’ Aditya Goswami posted on social media that the Kerala police had in its order cited sections of the 2000 Information Technology Act and the 2021 IT rules that allow the authorities to order intermediaries such as social media platforms to take down content.

The Kerala Police is reporting to the Election Commission as the Model Code of Conduct is in force in the state ahead of the Assembly polls.

Social media platform X informed several users that it had been directed by the police to remove the posts based on claims that the content violated Indian law.

It was unclear how many of the posts listed for removal had been taken down.

An Instagram post by Scroll about the controversy was also blocked. Scroll received a notice from the platform saying that the content was blocked based on a “legal request”.

Have received notice from Kerala police for the tweet below. Kerala Police in the notice said the tweet insults the election commission of India and propagate content that undermines communal harmony. https://t.co/r1pFeSlYPq pic.twitter.com/dijkinMfvy

— Piyush Rai (@Benarasiyaa) March 24, 2026

In their order, the police alleged that the posts “blatantly insult” the Election Commission and “propagate content that undermines communal harmony”.

“The post in question is not only a direct affront to a respected national institution, but also poses a serious threat to public order by inciting division and hostility,” said the notice by the police.

The continued circulation of the retracted letter “is being used to spread false allegations, thereby undermining the integrity and transparency” of the poll panel, the police stated.

It told the social media platforms that they would be liable for abetment if they failed to remove the content.

The 2019 letter detailed norms about criminal antecedents of candidates, bore a seal of the BJP’s Kerala unit and was signed by an official of the Election Commission.

The CPI(M) alleged that “seals are being casually swapped” and questioned whether “all pretences” have been dropped by the BJP and the Kerala Chief Electoral Officer. The Congress and the Trinamool Congress also raised the matter on social media.

Election Commission’s explanation

The poll body stated that the error occurred because the BJP’s Kerala unit had approached the Election Commission seeking clarification on 2019 guidelines regarding the publication of criminal antecedents of candidates.

Along with the request, the Hindutva party had submitted a photocopy of the original 2019 directive, which carried its seal, the poll body explained.

“Due to an oversight, the office failed to notice the party symbol on the submitted document and inadvertently redistributed it to other political parties as part of the requested clarification,” stated the poll body.

It added that once the error was noted, all political parties, district election officers and returning officers were informed that the “erroneous document” had been withdrawn and should be disregarded.

“​The public and media are requested to refrain from spreading misleading messages based on this clerical error,” the Election Commission said. “The Election Commission maintains a rigorous and foolproof system to ensure that the electoral process remains free from any external interference or influence.”

On Tuesday, the state’s Chief Electoral Officer said that an assistant section officer who dealt with the file in question had been suspended pending inquiry.

The Congress on Tuesday said that reports suggesting Pakistan may be acting as an intermediary in communications between the United States, Israel and Iran, if true, would mark a “severe setback” for India.

On Monday, the Financial Times reported that Pakistan was positioning itself as a mediator to help broker an end to the conflict in West Asia and pitching Islamabad as a possible venue for negotiations.

The Donald Trump administration in the US declined to make any concrete comments on the report, but said that “speculations…should not be deemed as final until they are formally announced” by the White House.

In a social media post on Tuesday, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said: “If these reports are true, they represent a severe setback and rebuff to India.”

He added that “it is all attributable to the self-styled Vishwaguru”, in an apparent reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Rajya Sabha MP said that despite India’s “undoubted military successes” in Operation Sindoor, Pakistan’s diplomatic engagement and narrative management, since then, had been “markedly superior to that of the Modi government”.

He added: “Pakistan, which was in a hugely precarious situation – politically, socially, economically and globally – has received a fresh lease of life.”

Ramesh said that the Pakistani establishment has developed a “cosy relationship” with US President Donald Trump’s immediate circle.

The Congress leader also criticised Modi’s recent visit to Israel on February 25 and February 26, just two days before the US-Israel attacks on Iran began.

“Modi’s ill-advised visit to Israel…will go down in our political history as a singularly disastrous choice – one that has made us retreat from a position where we could and should have mediated,” he said. “The Prime Minister’s huglomacy stands brutally exposed. The country is being forced to pay a price for this.”

Multiple reports in leading international media outlets have identified Pakistan as one of the intermediaries being used between the US and Israel on the one side and Iran on the other.

If these reports are true, they represent a severe setback and rebuff to India - and it is…

— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) March 24, 2026

The conflict

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

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

Former Punjab Transport Minister Laljit Singh Bhullar was arrested on Monday in connection with the death by suicide of a Punjab Warehousing Corporation official who had accused the Aam Aadmi Party legislator of harassment, ANI quoted the chief minister’s office as saying.

Gagandeep Singh Randhawa, a district manager of the Punjab State Warehousing Corporation in Amritsar, died by suicide at his home on Friday, leaving behind a video in which he purportedly said he was acting out of fear of Bhullar.

In the 12-second recording, the official had stated: “Your friend has consumed poison due to fear of minister Laljit Bhullar; I won’t survive now.”

Bhullar had resigned from his post on Saturday and a first information report was filed in the matter the same night, naming the legislator, his father Sukhdev Singh Bhullar and personal assistant Dilbag Singh, PTI reported.

The three men face Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita charges pertaining to abetment of suicide, criminal intimidation and common intention.

According to the complaint filed by Randhawa’s wife, the three men had pressured her husband to approve tenders for warehouses in the name of the former minister’s father, warning of dire consequences against her family, The Tribune reported.

The complaint further alleged that Randhawa was on March 13 called to Bhullar's home, where he was allegedly humiliated, assaulted and forced to record a confession stating that he had accepted a Rs 10 lakh bribe.

The video was meant to blackmail the official into complying with the tendering process, other relatives had previously alleged.

Earlier on Monday, Randhawa’s family had issued a 24-hour ultimatum to the state government to arrest the former minister, PTI reported.

The family had also refused to allow a post-mortem examination and cremation until Bhullar was arrested.

Ahead of being taken into custody, Bhullar claimed on social media that he was surrendering voluntarily.

“I have full faith in the law of the country, and also have unshakable faith in the justice system,” he said. “Believing in truth and justice, I myself am surrendering at Mandi Gobindgarh.”

Following the arrest, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann said that anyone who violates the law in the state will face “strict action”, irrespective of “what position they hold or whether they are my relative or someone influential”.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday asked all MPs from Punjab to formally write to him about Randhawa’s death, stating that he is willing to transfer the probe to the Central Bureau of Investigation, The Indian Express reported.

Shah was responding to Congress MP Gurjit Singh Aujla, who raised the matter in Lok Sabha.

Karnataka minister Madhu Bangarappa on Monday said that a framework will be introduced to regulate mobile phone and social media usage by children under the age of 16, PTI reported.

Speaking in the Legislative Council, the primary and secondary education minister said that while restrictions already exist, the enforcement has been weak. He added that the Congress government in the state is working on stronger guidelines in consultation with stakeholders.

Bangarappa was replying to legislators’ questions in the Council, urging the government to take stringent measures against mobile addiction among children.

The minister noted that “for the first time in India, our government has proposed in the Budget that mobile use should be banned for children below 16 years”.

On March 6, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah announced that the state government will ban the use of social media for children under the age of 16. The decision had been taken “to protect children from the harmful effects of excessive mobile and social media use”, he had said while presenting the state Budget for the financial year 2026-’27.

Siddaramaiah did not mention when the ban would take effect.

Once implemented, Karnataka will become the first state to impose such a ban.

On Monday, Bangarappa said that although there are laws prohibiting the use of mobile phones in schools, they are not being followed, PTI reported.

He said that some students use mobile phones outside schools, adding that there is no proper system in place. Mobile phones, while useful for learning, have increasingly become a source of harmful content, the minister added.

The minister said that the state government is coordinating with the information technology department, which has formed a committee to examine social media practices. Detailed guidelines are being prepared, he added.

However, Bangarappa added that use of mobile phones by children cannot be completely eliminated. “We will bring a law on how to impose restrictions,” PTI quoted him as saying.

The minister added that the proposal would be placed before the House in the next session after wider consultations.

He also said that inputs would be sought from parents, experts and international organisations relating to children before the policy is finalised, the news agency reported.

In December, Australia became the first country to block social media for those under 16.

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.

After Siddaramaiah announced the social media ban for children under the age of 16 on March 6, the advocacy group Internet Freedom Foundation said that child safety online “demands serious, evidence-based policy not headline-driven prohibitions”.

It added that the announcement raises questions about whether its implementation will require state legislation, or if it will mandate age-verification systems that “create fresh privacy risks for all users, including adults”.

The group asked if the ban would also apply to educational and informational uses of the internet.

Also read:

• Social media bans won’t keep teenagers safe – Finland shows a better approach

• Australia’s social media ban for underage teens, children kicks in. Will other countries follow?

The Election Commission late on Monday published the first supplementary voter list after adjudications as part of the special intensive revision exercise in poll-bound West Bengal.

Of the more than 60 lakh pending cases in the state, 29 lakh cases have been adjudicated so far by judicial officers deputed by the Supreme Court, The Indian Express reported. The poll panel, however, did not specify how many voters were dropped and how many were included in the list.

Speaking to reporters earlier on Monday ahead of the list’s publication, West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal said that he did not know how many names had been approved or rejected at this moment, The Times of India reported.

Agarwal said that those left out of the supplementary list can challenge the decision in the appellate tribunals to be set up by the Calcutta High Court.

However, the date for voters to challenge the decision or when the tribunals will be formed is yet to be announced.

“The state government will provide space for the tribunals and the High Court will give the go ahead on the arrangements,” The Indian Express quoted the chief electoral officer as saying. “Only then the tribunals will be formed in all the 23 districts.”

Agarwal said that all names have been adjudicated from districts that had a lower number of pending cases such as Kalimpong, Jhargram, Purulia and Bankura, The Indian Express reported. He added that the judicial officers who were engaged in those districts have now been transferred to other areas that have a larger number of adjudication cases.

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

On February 28, the Election Commission published the final electoral roll for West Bengal. At the time, the names of 5.46 lakh persons were deleted from the voter list, while 60,06,675 “doubtful and pending” cases were marked as “under adjudication” in the electoral rolls.

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

Four days later, the court allowed judges from Odisha and Jharkhand to also be deployed to decide on the claims and objections raised during the process.

On March 10, the Supreme Court directed the formation of an appellate tribunal composed of former High Court chief justices and judges to hear appeals against exclusions from the voter list in West Bengal.

A person whose claim for inclusion in the electoral roll had been rejected by a judicial officer can approach the appellate tribunal, it said. The Supreme Court passed the order after concerns were raised about the lack of an independent appellate mechanism to deal with appeals against the rejection of their claims by judicial officers.

The special intensive revision in West Bengal comes ahead of the Assembly elections in the state, which will be held in two phases on April 23 and April 29. The results will be announced on May 4.

Two recent incidents are an indication of distress among India’s schoolchildren and a reflection of the increasingly turbulent contexts of their lives which continue to be neglected by the education system and society.

In 2025, after completing their final examination, some older students at a public school in Mumbai celebrated by destroying the classroom furniture, windowpanes and breaking CCTV cameras. Even after teachers and a school committee held several meetings with them, the students were unapologetic.

In another instance, some boys and girls carried drugs in their school bags and consumed it with their friends on the premises, according to teachers I spoke to. Despite strict warnings, attempts at persuasion, meetings with parents, and the gentle but firm intervention of the school counsellor and committee, the students did not reveal the name of their supplier.

Teachers from municipal and the so-called elite schools have expressed concern about the growing consumption of substances in and outside the schools, and their inability to control it. More empathetic teachers try to help, seeking the advice of in-house counsellors. Others threaten to report students to the principal or hold them back after class or issue minor punishment. Neither the municipal bodies nor the government seem able or willing to tackle this seriously.

Krishna Kumar, a scholar of education and former director of the National Council of Educational Research and Training, has articulated some of these concerns. In his article, “In India, why teachers are walking away from the classroom”, published on October 5, 2025, Kumar writes about the difficulties that are pushing teachers to quit at a time when lakhs of them face growing unemployment.

He elaborates on the reasons which include “bureaucratic aggression” and expectations, extensive record keeping, frequent testing, extra duties, and dealing with aggression, bullying and violence in the classroom and corridors. His description of the troubling behaviour of school children is especially indicative of the challenges teachers face.

“Discipline” problems are a key source of heightened stress among teachers. It includes a wide range of children’s behaviour ranging from minor mischief – like being noisy in class, pushing each other, being inattentive – to more serious issues such as destructive or extremely rude behaviour, vulgar gestures and comments, insulting teachers and commenting on the girls’ bodies. Around the world, teachers, social workers, counsellors, educationists, blame social media for the behaviour of children.

But there is a broader social context to this.

Violence, alcoholism, open aggression, growing frustration alongside rising aspiration, is the lived reality of the student and their surroundings, especially those from underprivileged backgrounds. Most children experience some trauma but receive little support from parents or other adults, who may themselves suffer from stress, frustration and social pressure.

Gabor Mate, a world-renowned authority on trauma and addiction, says that childhood trauma – such as violence, rejection, humiliation, physical and sexual abuse, the absence of love and understanding – often manifests as anger, rage and defiance in children. After decades of research and practice, Mate believes the turn to drugs or compulsive behaviour is to “alleviate emotional pain and to experience feelings of relief, connection or a sense of being normal”.

But the modern education system is such that at a time when children require the most attention and understanding, teachers are duty-bound to follow the timetable, syllabus, exam schedule, conduct regular evaluations and prepare detailed reports on students’ academic and other performances.

That the overload drives school teachers to give up their jobs is a sentiment shared by most teachers I have interacted with, even those who work in high-end, private schools. Counsellors are also burdened with additional duties, as one of them told me.

After decades of teaching in postgraduate institutions, I am convinced that an inflexible syllabus, a rigid timetable and the examination system that form the “iron cage” of India’s education system, leave little room for innovation, creativity, critical thinking and joyful learning.

The American philosopher Martha Nussbaum has sharply criticised the examination-oriented education system of India, which, she observed, promoted rote learning at the cost of critical thinking. This is a huge issue by itself.

Government and civic authorities, donors, school managements and, of course, parents are focused on academic excellence with little regard for the emotional, mental and physical development of a child. This is hardly surprising in today’s competitive society where a child, even an adult, must “achieve” and “succeed”, the way society defines it.

Better-off parents are under pressure to put in extended hours of work – India’s middle-class white-collar workers are said to be among the most overworked in the world – while the poor battle housing problems, health issues and financial constraints.

Often, teachers and parents have no time or energy, and the community and larger society care little for the wellbeing of children. How else does one explain the appropriation of open spaces for commercial purposes across towns and cities at the cost of what children need the most: playgrounds, open parks and closer contact with nature.

Mate has an illuminating explanation of addiction to anything, digital media or drugs, or any form of excessive harmful consumption and dependence. It is a response to pain, an attempt to cope with emotional emptiness, he explains: “don’t ask why the addiction, ask why the pain”.

He sees addiction as a response to today’s toxic culture characterised by stress, ruthless competition, loneliness and alienation – “at the core of every addiction is an emptiness based in abject fear”. Mate explains children’s anger as a reaction to constant exposure to anger and conflict in the home while lacking secure attachment with adults or a sense of safety and self-worth.

Frustrated, children seek validation from their peers instead of their parents or teachers. Peers lack the maturity to provide the guidance that caring and trusting adults can. In fact, most often a child’s peers may support or encourage bad and dangerous behaviour.

With the weakening of community support and the extended family, Mate points out that children rely on each other and feel like they must be “cool” to be accepted. But “cool” often means the absence or pretence of emotions, the denial of vulnerability, fear and insecurity. In a culture of aggression and violence, children develop an appetite for violence in music, games, art, language.

For Mate, the best solution is to restore children’s attachment to the adult world. The home as well as institutions ranging from day care and kindergarten and upwards at all levels of education – “must hold the emotional nurturance of children as the highest value”.

To this, I would add the natural world, which lights up the child’s mind and heart with curiosity, tenderness, wonderment and an appreciation of beauty. In my experience, an active community can become a revitalising force.

Despite the constraints of today’s society, conscious, energetic citizenry can make a difference: by transforming a neglected small patch of land, or a badly run local library, organising exhibitions, starting a mobile library, or pressurising municipal authorities to provide space, for example, for a small local museum, cultural or sports centre for everyone specially children.

Well-defined rules and boundaries should be communicated to children of all ages for their positive socialisation, guidance and development. But more necessary is to communicate feelings of care, love, trust and compassionate understanding by adults surrounding children, at home in school and in social spaces.

Trusting and empathic adults can play a crucial role in helping a child to identify, acknowledge and deal with hurt, pain, anger and other strong emotions. Over stressed, insensitive or irresponsible parents and teachers cannot do that. The education system, especially schools, need a major revamp placing academic as well as emotional development of the child as its core concern.

Indra Munshi is the executive editor of the Indian Journal of Secularism, Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, Mumbai, and retired professor and head of the department of sociology, University of Mumbai.

The Kerala chief electoral officer said on Tuesday that it has suspended an official in connection with a row surrounding an Election Commission letter bearing the seal of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s state unit.

An assistant section officer who dealt with the file in question has been placed under suspension pending inquiry, the chief electoral officer said in a social media post. A link to the original communication that had been sent to political parties, which did not have the seal of the BJP’s Kerala unit, was also provided.

Further to the clarification issued in the matter, the Assistant Section Officer dealing with the file in the office of the Chief Electoral Officer has been placed under suspension pending enquiry. The original communication sent to all political parties is available at page 29… https://t.co/ZkPZPNNMo0

— Chief Electoral Officer Kerala (@Ceokerala) March 23, 2026

The seal was on a letter dated March 19, 2019 sent to political parties across the country detailing norms about criminal antecedents of candidates.

The letter was sent along with an email on March 21.

After the matter came to light, the poll panel said that the letter carried the BJP seal due to a “purely clerical error”.

“The Office of the Chief Electoral Officer acknowledged the lapse as soon as it was detected,” added the chief electoral officer in Kerala. “Consequently, on March 21, the deputy chief electoral officer issued a formal letter withdrawing the erroneous document.​”

The poll panel stated that the error occurred because the BJP’s Kerala unit had approached the Election Commission seeking clarification on the 2019 guidelines regarding the publication of criminal antecedents of candidates.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s Kerala unit first flagged the matter on social media on Monday afternoon.

The ruling party in the state alleged that “seals are being casually swapped” and questioned whether “all pretences” have been dropped by the BJP and the Kerala chief electoral officer.

The Congress and the Trinamool Congress also backed the CPI(M)’s allegations.

Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra alleged that the poll panel “finally had the courage to issue official letters” with the BJP seal.

The Congress’ Kerala unit asked the poll panel whether it was operating out of the BJP’s office, questioning how electoral officials got access to the party’s seals.

Last week, Amazon India reported a surge in sales of ready-to-eat meals on its e-commerce platforms. A spokesperson attributed it to customers “relying on instant meals to navigate the current fuel uncertainty”.

Workers employed at the tech giant’s warehouse in Manesar, Haryana, however, are struggling to pay for meals. Hundreds of migrants from Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar work in the warehouse in the industrial town to the south of Delhi.

With cooking gas cylinders running out, many are unable to cook food in their rented homes and have instead turned to local dhabas. The eateries, facing the same shortage of gas, have raised their prices.

“In the dhabas near the warehouse, rotis that cost Rs 8 earlier are now being sold for Rs 12,” said Pawan Singh Sisodiya, general secretary of Amazon India Workers Union. “If prices keep increasing like this, workers will be forced to go back home.”

Already, there are news reports of an exodus of migrant workers from Gujarat’s textile and ceramics industries. The paucity of gas forced some industrial units, which depend on fuels such as liquefied petroleum gas and liquefied natural gas, to shut down. In other instances, workers decided to leave despite the availability of work because they had to go days without food.

In Delhi and surrounding areas, too, the shortage of LPG cylinders is fast snowballing into a cost-of-living crisis for migrant workers who typically don’t own gas connections and depend on the black market.

Labour supervisor Yash Dixit, who helps small-scale manufacturers in Noida source cheap manpower, said, “Half the workers I know have gone home for this reason. They say that at least they get food to eat when they are at home.”

Even those who have found cooking gas for now are using it sparsely. A 25-year-old worker at the Amazon warehouse in Manesar said he no longer makes rotis and curries every day as he used to before. “Sometimes I eat Maggi [instant noodles] because it is quicker to prepare,” he explained.

Although he had to pay three times the regular price for gas, he was still holding off from planning a return to Uttar Pradesh, his home state. “I have to get by somehow,” he said. “I have given four years to this job so I would rather wait for some more time.”

On March 17, Sisodiya, the union leader, put out a press release urging Amazon to review wages because the gas crisis was “pushing workers toward hunger and severe financial distress”. The company has not acted on the demand so far.

Social scientist Pushpendra Kumar, who has written extensively about the challenges faced by migrants, said the Covid-19 pandemic had clearly shown that migrants in India possessed the least “capacity to cope” with disasters, both manmade and natural.

“Any sincere government would have been thinking about rationing supplies and starting community kitchens at this time,” Kumar said. “But the government can’t be seen.”

Rising cost of living

The cost of cylinders, which used to be sold at Rs 1,200 till recently, has shot up to Rs 3,000-Rs 4,000 in and around Delhi. “Even those queuing up to buy gas at that price don’t get it sometimes,” Dixit, the labour supervisor in Noida who is himself a migrant from Shahjahanpur in Uttar Pradesh, complained.

Driven by the shortage in Noida, some workers Dixit knew had taken days off from work to go to their home towns and fetch gas cylinders. Others, he claimed, had resorted to burning firewood on the terrace of his building for preparing their meals.

But that was not an option for those toiling in Amazon’s warehouse in Manesar. Landlords in the area would not allow tenants to light fires, Sisodiya pointed out. Besides, firewood was hard to find in Manesar, he added.

Goutam Majhi, who works in a Mahindra showroom in South Delhi and lives in the working-class neighbourhood of Gautam Nagar, has switched to buying gas by the kilo. Earlier, the worker from West Bengal used to buy a 14.2 kg cylinder for Rs 1,100 from the black market. But now he is having to cough up Rs 300-Rs 400 for every kilo.

Majhi gets his cylinder refilled with a few kilos of gas every week or so, hoping that the price will come down eventually. “I will not be able to save any money this month,” he lamented.

Self-employed migrants running small businesses have also been hit by the crisis. Sahil Ahmad, a political science graduate from Munger University in Bihar, ran out of gas for his pizza cart in Gautam Nagar last week. He had to shut shop for a day as he went about looking for a cylinder.

When he did find a seller, the price of Rs 2,800 deterred him from buying the cylinder. Ultimately, he, too, decided to buy a few kilos of gas for the time being to resume his business. Could he not jack up the selling price of his pizzas to cover the increase in costs? “My customers will not accept that,” Ahmad said.

The 27-year-old blamed gas agencies and middlemen for profiteering from the gas shortage. “They think this is the share market and they are like Harshad Mehta,” he added, referring to the controversial stockbroker who wreaked havoc on Dalal Street in the 1990s. “They are changing gas prices at will.”

Ahmad’s own meals have become costlier as well, given that he eats outside most of the time. The dent in his profits as well as his savings is making the young man contemplate giving up on the business and sit for railway recruitment exams instead.

‘No political voice’

For social scientist Pushpendra Kumar, the impact of the gas crisis on migrant workers did not come as a surprise. He told Scroll that policymakers are no better prepared to tackle the problem than they were before the pandemic. This, he argued, is because migrants are not a political force to reckon with.

“Migrants have no political voice, especially poorer migrants,” Kumar explained. “There is no pressure on those in power to cater to this constituency or address its problems.”

Migrant workers, for their part, are drawing another parallel to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Dixit, the labour supervisor in Noida, recalled how Prime Minister Narendra Modi had appeared on television in 2020 to abruptly announce the lockdown. This time, information has been even more scarce with the government maintaining silence for weeks.

On Monday, 24 days into the war, Modi addressed Parliament. He spoke about the measures the government had taken to diversify India’s energy sources. He warned that the impact of the conflict in West Asia would be severe, just like the situation India had faced during the pandemic. “We have faced such challenges with unity during the Covid period and now we have to be prepared again,” he said.

But workers say they are looking for more practical information they can use.

“The government should tell us how long it will take for things to get better,” Dixit said. “The news also does not tell us this. It just shows us the war. This is why we are unable to decide whether we should stay here or go home.”

A row erupted in Kerala on Monday after an Election Commission letter bearing the seal of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s state unit was widely circulated online on the final day for submitting nominations for the Assembly elections.

Later in the day, the poll panel stated that the letter carried the BJP seal due to a “purely clerical error”.

“The Office of the Chief Electoral Officer acknowledged the lapse as soon as it was detected,” added the Chief Electoral Officer in Kerala. “Consequently, on March 21, the deputy chief electoral officer issued a formal letter withdrawing the erroneous document.​”

OFFICIAL CLARIFICATION: REGARDING THE ERRONEOUS CIRCULATION OF ELECTION COMMISSION DOCUMENT

​ It has come to our notice that a letter from the Election Commission, bearing the seal of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is being circulated across various Malayalam news channels.…

— Chief Electoral Officer Kerala (@Ceokerala) March 23, 2026

The Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s Kerala unit first flagged the matter on social media on Monday afternoon. The party shared a screenshot of a March 21 email that had an affidavit attached to a March 19, 2019, letter sent to political parties in the country.

The 2019 letter detailed norms about criminal antecedents of candidates, bore a seal of the BJP’s Kerala unit and was signed by an official of the Election Commission.

The CPI(M) alleged that “seals are being casually swapped” and questioned whether “all pretences” have been dropped by the BJP and the Kerala Chief Electoral Officer.

“It is no secret that the same power centre seems to control both the Election Commission of India and the BJP,” the party alleged. “Even then, at least maintain the courtesy of two separate desks.”

The Congress and the Trinamool Congress also backed the CPI(M)’s allegations.

Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra alleged that the poll body “finally had the courage to issue official letters” with the BJP seal.

The Congress’ Kerala Unit asked the poll body whether it was operating out of the BJP’s office, questioning how electoral officials got access to the party’s seals.

Congress leader Pawan Khera asked whether the BJP’s slogan “Abki baar, Modi sarkar” was also the result of a similar “clerical error”.

The poll body stated that the error occurred because the BJP’s Kerala unit had approached the Election Commission seeking clarification on 2019 guidelines regarding the publication of criminal antecedents of candidates.

Along with the request, the party had submitted a photocopy of the original 2019 directive, which carried its seal, the poll body explained.

“Due to an oversight, the office failed to notice the party symbol on the submitted document and inadvertently redistributed it to other political parties as part of the requested clarification,” stated the poll body.

It added that once the error was noted, all political parties, district election officers and returning officers were told via a formula letter that the “erroneous document” was withdrawn and should be disregarded.

“​The public and media are requested to refrain from spreading misleading messages based on this clerical error,” the Election Commission said. “The Election Commission maintains a rigorous and foolproof system to ensure that the electoral process remains free from any external interference or influence.”

A Varanasi court on Monday denied bail to 14 Muslim men who were arrested after they organised an iftar party on a boat in the river Ganga and allegedly ate chicken biryani, Bar and Bench reported.

The offences allegedly committed by the men were of “a serious nature and non-bailable”, held Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Amit Kumar Yadav.

“Keeping in view the facts and circumstances of the case, there are no sufficient grounds to grant bail to the accused,” the judge said.

The 14 men who were denied bail are Azad Ali, Aamir Kaiki, Danish Saifi, Mohd Ahmad, Nehal Afridi, Mahfooz Alam, Mohd Anas, Mohd Awwal, Mohd Tahseem, Mohd Ahmad alias Raja, Mohd Noor Ismail, Mohd Tausif Ahmad, Mohd Faizan and Mohd Sameer.

They were arrested after a video showing them holding the party on the boat was widely shared on social media on March 16.

The men face charges under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita sections pertaining to defiling a place of worship with intent to insult the religion of a class, deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of a class by insulting its religious beliefs and promoting enmity between groups.

They were also booked under sections pertaining to public nuisance, fouling water of a public spring or water reservoir, disobeying a public servant’s order and sections of the Water Prevention and Control of Pollution Act, Bar and Bench reported.

The police later added charges of extortion under threat of death or grievous hurt to the case. This came after the owners of the boat alleged that the men forcibly took the boat.

Charges under the Information Technology Act section 67, which punishes publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form, have also been invoked, reported Bar and Bench.

United States President Donald Trump on Monday said that he has directed the Department of War to postpone “any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure” for a five day period after “good and productive conversations” between Washington and Tehran.

Shortly after Trump’s statement, Iran’s Fars news agency reported that there was no “direct or indirect” conversation with the US president.

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

• Trump also said that the halt in strikes would depend on the success of ongoing meetings and discussions between the two countries.
• However, the Iranian government said that the US president “backed down after hearing that our targets would be all the power plants in West Asia” Fars reported. On Sunday, Iran reiterated its warning that it would strike energy and water infrastructure in the Gulf if Trump follows through on his threat to attack the country’s electricity installations, Reuters reported.
• While speaking to Fox News later, Trump claimed that Iran had said that they are “willing to make a deal”, which the US had agreed to. However, he added that the deal must be “good” and stated that there will be “no more wars or nuclear weapons”.
• The threat had led to concerns in a region that is dependent on desalination for drinking water. On Saturday evening, Trump issued a 48-hour ultimatum to Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, warning that the US will “hit and obliterate” Tehran’s power plants if it fails to comply. Trump’s deadline would end at about 5.15 am on Tuesday Indian time.
• On Monday, Iran’s defence council stated that it would mine “all access routes and communications lines in the Persian Gulf and coastal areas”, AFP reported.  This would include deploying “drifting mines deployable from the coasts” if its coastlines or islands were attacked.
• Saudi Aramco, the world’s top oil exporter, has cut crude supply to Asian buyers for a second month in April, Reuters quoted two officials as saying on Monday. Saudi Arabia has exported ​4.3 million barrels per day of crude so far ⁠in March, the news agency reported, citing data from analytics firm Kpler. This was down from 7.1 ‌million barrels per day in February.
• An Indian citizen was injured by falling debris after an Iranian ballistic missile was intercepted in the United Arab Emirates’ Abu Dhabi, the city’s administration said on Monday. The injury was minor, it said.
• India’s Cabinet Committee on Security on Sunday reviewed the situation in West Asia and discussed measures to mitigate the impact on the country. The Prime Minister’s Office said that a detailed assessment about the availability for critical needs, including food, energy and fuel security, was made.
• The impact of the crisis on farmers and their requirement for fertilisers for the kharif season was assessed and alternate sources for procurement were discussed, the government said. The supply of coal stocks at power plants and measures to diversify India’s sources of imports needed by chemical, pharmaceutical, petrochemical and other industrial sectors was also discussed.
• The Indian benchmark stock indices were down 2.5% on Monday. Asian stocks also continued their fall. As of 12.15 pm Indian time, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was down 4%, South Korea’s Kospi had fallen 6.5%, Japan’s Nikkei 3.4% and China’s Shanghai Composite 3.9%.
• South Korean currency Won sank to its lowest level against the United States dollar in 17 years on Monday amid volatility in the market, AFP reported. The value of the currency had fallen to 1,510 won against the dollar.
• Global oil prices remained high amid supply concerns. The benchmark Brent crude was trading at $111 per barrel on Monday. The price was $78 per barrel on February 27, a day before the conflict started. Iran has effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterbody connecting the Gulf to the Arabian Sea, for most international commercial vessels since the conflict began. About 20% of global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint.
• International Energy Agency chief Fatih Birol on Monday warned that the world could suffer its worst energy crisis in decades because of the conflict, France 24 reported. He said that the world was losing 11 million barrels of oil per day, which was more than the two major oil shocks of the 1970s combined, in which five million barrels each had been lost per day.
• One person was killed in the Iranian coastal city of Bandar Abbas, where a radio station was targeted, Al Jazeera reported. In Khorramabad and Urmia, residential areas were targeted, leading to the death of a child.
• Mark Rutte, the secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, told Fox News on Sunday that the military alliance has always come together on several security challenges such as Russia’s war on Ukraine. “[When it comes to] the Strait of Hormuz, Iran, I’m absolutely convinced that we’ll get this done together,” he said. “Actually, it is already being planned.”
• Rutte’s comments came after Trump criticised the military alliance for not being there for Washington amid the war on Iran. The US is among 32 North American and European countries, which form the military alliance, who promise to protect each other if any one of them is attacked. Israel is not part of the group.
• The Israeli military said that its own artillery fire had killed an Israeli civilian on the northern border on Sunday, AFP reported. The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah had earlier claimed an attack in the region and Israeli emergency workers had initially said that a man was killed in a “direct hit” on his car by a rocket from Lebanon. 

The conflict

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

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

Also read:

• Interview: How the war in West Asia could change India’s energy calculus
• Ramachandra Guha: Of the three leaders at the heart of West Asia conflict, who is the most evil?

A court in Tamil Nadu on Monday found nine police officers guilty of the custodial killing of a father and son at the Santhankulam police station in Thoothukudi district in June 2020, reported Live Law.

On June 18, 2020, the police arrested P Jeyaraj (58) and his son J Benniks (31) in Sattankulum for allegedly violating the Covid-19 lockdown rules, The Hindu reported.

They were taken to the police station, where they were beaten and tortured overnight.

The next day, they were remanded to judicial custody and sent to jail. Both developed serious health complications and were taken to the hospital. Benicks died on June 22, 2020 and Jayaraj died on June 23, 2020.

Their deaths triggered widespread protests and outrage about police brutality.

On Monday, Judge G Muthukumaran of the First Additional District and Sessions Court in Madurai convicted inspector S Sridhar, sub-inspectors P Raghu Ganesh and K Balakrishnan, head constables S Murugan and A Saamidurai, and constables M Muthuraj, S Chelladurai, Thomas X and S Veilumuthu.

A tenth accused in the case, special sub-inspector Pauldurai, died after contracting Covid-19.

The sentencing will take place on March 30.

The bench also directed the Union and state governments to submit details of the health condition of the nine accused and their salary statements, along with other asset details, reported Live Law.

The court highlighted that the injuries on Jeyaraj and his son were unnatural, while noting that the post-mortem reports said they were caused by repeated assault, the legal news outlet reported.

The judge also rejected the arguments that the injuries were self-inflicted. It could not be said that the death was caused by illness, despite Jayaraj’s history of heart ailment, the court held. It concluded that the two men were murdered, Live Law reported.

The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court had taken suo moto cognisance of the case, ordered a judicial inquiry and began monitoring the matter. The state government later transferred the investigation to the Central Bureau of Investigation. The CBI had also prosecuted the nine police officers.

United States President Donald Trump said that he has directed the Department of War to postpone “any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure” for five days. The decision was taken following “good and productive conversations” between Washington and Tehran, he added.

However, soon after the statement, Tehran stated that there was no “direct or indirect” conversation with the US president. Trump had “backed down after hearing that our targets would be all the power plants in West Asia”, the Iranian government was quoted as stating.

Iran’s defence council stated that it would mine “all access routes and communications lines in the Persian Gulf and coastal areas”. Read on.

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

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the impact of the conflict in West Asia will be “felt for a long time” and that India should be “prepared and remain united”. Modi’s statement to Parliament came amid energy supply disruptions caused by the conflict.

“India imports a large amount of crude oil through the Strait of Hormuz,” Modi said. “The government has been trying to ensure that its impact does not affect the citizens.”

He added: “We have faced such challenges with unity during the Covid period and now we have to be prepared again.” Read on.

Can propaganda on Iran allowing Indian ships hide Modi government’s failure to secure gas supply? Shoaib Daniyal writes

The Bombay High Court directed the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation and the Mumbai Police to conduct a “thorough verification” of all street vendors in the city. Action should be taken against those found to be undocumented migrants, said the bench.

The actions may include “steps for repatriation by the competent authorities”, the court said, adding that officers who fail to take necessary steps will face punishment.

The direction came against the backdrop of several Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states rounding up thousands of Bengali-speaking migrant workers since May and asking them to prove that they were Indian citizens. In February, BJP leader Kirit Somaiya said he had “launched a campaign” in Mumbai for a “hawker-free city from Bangladeshi vendors”. Read on.

How police drives against ‘Bangladeshis’ bypassed rules, pushed Indian citizens across border, explains Anant Gupta

The Indian stock market continued its crash on Monday amid concerns surrounding the conflict in West Asia and surging energy prices. The benchmark Sensex index had fallen by more than 1,800 points or 2.4% at closing. The Nifty had sunk 2.6%, or by more than 600 points.

The Indian rupee ended at a record low of 93.9 against the United States dollar on Monday amid continued outflow of foreign funds and falling stocks. Read on.

The years between 2015 and 2025 have been the hottest since the World Meteorological Organization began recording data, said the United Nation’s weather agency. In its State of the Global Climate report, the agency added that 2025 was the second or third hottest year on record, at about 1.43 degrees ​Celsius above the pre-industrial average.

According to the report, 2024 was the hottest year on record. Temperatures above 1.55 degree Celsius more than the 1850 to 1990 average were recorded that year. It also highlighted that the Earth’s climate is “more out of balance than at any point in observed history”. Read on.

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The Bombay High Court on Monday directed the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation and the Mumbai Police to conduct a “thorough verification” of all street vendors in the city and take action against those found to be undocumented migrants, Bar and Bench reported.

A division bench of Justices Ajay S Gadkari and Kamal R Khata was hearing a group of petitions alleging that undocumented migrants were undertaking “illegal hawking”, The Indian Express reported.

The direction came against the backdrop of several Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states rounding up thousands of Bengali-speaking migrant workers since May and asking them to prove that they were Indian citizens – and not undocumented immigrants.

In several cases, workers have been declared foreigners within days and forced into Bangladesh, despite being Indian citizens.

The court stated that the authorities should verify the identities of all street vendors, including “those alleged to be Bangladeshis or non-Indian residents, nationals who operate stalls or carry on vending or hawking activities or work as assistants or helpers of such stallholders, vendors or hawkers”.

In case any person is found to be an undocumented immigrant, “appropriate action shall be taken in accordance with law, including steps for repatriation by the competent authorities”, the bench added.

It warned that officers who fail to take necessary steps will face punishment, Bar and Bench reported

The bench also refused a request by the vendors’ counsel to extend the stay on implementing the 2014 Street Vendors Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending Act, according to The Indian Express.

The implementation had already been delayed by seven years, said the court.

The counsel representing street vendors had sought a two-week extension on the stay to allow a challenge before the Supreme Court.

In February, BJP leader Kirit Somaiya said he had “launched a campaign” in Mumbai for a “hawker-free city from Bangladeshi vendors”.

Somaiya has been conducting meetings to clear encroachments in areas that he claimed are occupied by Bangladeshi vendors, such as Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Market, Kurla and Ghatkopar.

Separately, in her speech after taking charge as the mayor of Mumbai, Ritu Tawde had said that her administration would focus on removing “illegal Bangladeshi hawkers” from the streets of Mumbai.

On February 28, Maharashtra minister Akash Fundkar said that the state government would soon direct online food and quick-commerce companies to ensure mandatory police verification of “delivery partners” and gig workers.

Speaking in the state Assembly, Fundkar had noted that companies such as “Zomato, Swiggy, Blinkit, Zepto and Amazon, amongst others, have appointed delivery partners without proper police verification”, which raises concerns about the safety of women, elderly citizens and other vulnerable groups.

Also read:

• How police drives against ‘Bangladeshis’ bypassed rules, pushed Indian citizens across border
• What Mumbai could learn from Singapore’s street hawker policies

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said that the impact of the conflict in West Asia will be “felt for a long time” and that India should be “prepared and remain united”.

Modi made the statement in the Lok Sabha amid energy supply disruptions caused by the conflict. Retaliating to attacks from the United States and Israel, Iran has effectively blocked the strategic Strait of Hormuz for most international commercial vessels. About 20% of global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint.

This has affected liquified petroleum gas supplies in India. The country imports about 60% of its LPG demand, most of it from Gulf countries. The disruption has led to several eateries being temporarily shut, and long queues outside LPG godowns and agencies.

“India imports a large amount of crude oil through the Strait of Hormuz,” Modi said. “The government has been trying to ensure that its impact does not affect the citizens.”

Domestic production of LPG has been prioritised to ensure a smooth supply, he added.

“We have a strategic petroleum reserve of more than 53 lakh tonnes,” said the prime minister. “Our refinery capabilities have also escalated. The Indian government is keeping a keen eye on the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz to secure our energy, gas and fertiliser needs.”

He added: “We have faced such challenges with unity during the Covid period and now we have to be prepared again.”

Modi’s statement came a day after India’s Cabinet Committee on Security reviewed the situation in West Asia and discussed measures to mitigate the impact on the country.

#WATCH | On the West Asia conflict, Prime Minister Narendra Modi says, "... In the last decade, India has prioritised storage of crude oil for times of crisis. Today, India has a strategic petroleum reserve of more than 53 lakh metric tonnes, and work is underway to create… pic.twitter.com/12mZ0tVkDK

— ANI (@ANI) March 23, 2026

The prime minister also said that India’s concerns about the situation in West Asia are “greater” since a crore Indians live and work in the Gulf countries.

“Commercial ships operate there…the number of Indian crew members is also very high,” Modi said. “Due to these various reasons, India’s concerns are naturally greater.”

Modi said that more than 3.75 lakh Indians returned to the country amid the conflict.

“From Iran, nearly 1,000 Indians have returned safely so far, of which over 700 are medical students,” he added.

#WATCH | On the West Asia conflict, Prime Minister Narendra Modi says, "Since the war began, more than 3,75,000 Indians have returned safely to India. From Iran, nearly 1,000 Indians have returned safely so far, of which over 700 are medical students. In view of the situation,… pic.twitter.com/laIMJ2KDjX

— ANI (@ANI) March 23, 2026

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

A committee set up by the University of Jammu has recommended that topics related to former Pakistan president Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Muslim reformer and educationist Syed Ahmad Khan and Pakistani poet Mohammad Iqbal be removed from the institution’s MA Political Science syllabus, reported The Indian Express on Monday.

The recommendation has been forwarded to the Board of Studies, which will meet on Tuesday to discuss the matter, according to the newspaper.

The committee, headed by Professor Naresh Padha of the Physics Department, had been constituted after the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad held protests on campus against including a chapter on the political thought of Jinnah in the syllabus, The Times of India reported.

The ABVP is the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological parent of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

The ABVP’s J&K State Secretary Sannak Shrivats, who led the protests on Friday, said that Jinnah was earlier mentioned in a chapter on “two-nation theory”. But in the revised syllabus, the Pakistani leader appears in a chapter on “Minorities and the Nations”, he was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.

Shrivats claimed that Jinnah was portrayed as the leader of minorities in India, the newspaper reported.

Baljit Singh Mann, the head of the Political Science Department at Jammu University, had earlier said that including Jinnah and other thinkers in the syllabus was consistent with the curricula followed by universities nationwide, as well as the norms of the University Grants Commission, The Indian Express reported.

He added that an unnecessary controversy was being created and that the university does not promote any ideology, but presents diverse viewpoints to enable critical evaluation, the newspaper reported.

For years, one of India’s oldest English newspapers, The Statesman, was in financial distress. Its revenues were dwindling, and it had struggled to settle dues with lenders like the State Bank of India.

Yet, in June 2025, the newspaper pulled off a corporate miracle. Through the National Company Law Tribunal, it acquired the United News of India, or UNI, the country’s second-largest news agency.

The deal was valued at roughly Rs 75 crore. UNI’s employees, who were owed over Rs 100 crore in unpaid wages and dues, were forced to settle for just Rs 23.3 crore.

The deal raised the question: how did a newspaper company with a battered balance sheet come up with the cash to buy a news agency?

Besides being a legacy newswire, UNI also sat on lucrative real estate. It was headquartered at a property measuring half an acre in Rafi Marg in Delhi, right in the heart of the Lutyens zone. This land had been leased to it by the government and has been tied up in litigation for years.

On Friday, after the Delhi High Court lifted a stay on a 2023 government order cancelling the news agency’s lease rights to the property, the Modi government took control of the UNI office. That evening, dozens of Delhi police personnel stormed the UNI office and forced its employees out.

Scroll examined the balance sheets of The Statesman and found an anonymous Rs 32 crore-loan on its books that arrived just in time for the newspaper to secure its bid for UNI.

Questions sent to the owner of the newspaper and the news agency, Rajender Parshad Gupta, The Statesman managing director Ravindra Kumar and director Vineet Gupta, remain unanswered at the time of publication.

Rajender Parshad Gupta told Scroll over the phone, “I’m not well. I’m under medical advice.”

An agency in distress

UNI was founded in 1959 by prominent news organisations to break the monopoly of the Press Trust of India, the country’s leading news agency. Its shareholders included Ananda Bazaar Patrika, The Hindu, Indian Express, The Statesman, The Times of India, among others.

At its peak in 1975, the agency employed 139 full-time journalists and 166 stringers – reporters paid per assignment – across 53 bureaus in India. But financial trouble began in the 2000s as television news began to outpace print news agencies and UNI subscribers – including the state-owned public broadcaster Prasar Bharati – started to unsubscribe.

In August 2022, UNI employees took the agency to the National Company Law Tribunal over years of unpaid dues. The NCLT began an insolvency process to take stock of the assets of UNI, and settle the dues of creditors by either liquidating or reviving UNI.

As part of the process, the tribunal found that the agency’s debt came to Rs 125.5 crore – Rs 104 crore due to its employees, Rs 16.5 crore to the government, Rs 2 crore to the State Bank of India and the rest to other creditors.

On the asset side, apart from the Rafi Marg property, the tribunal recorded that the agency had properties in Hyderabad, Bhopal, Indore and Bengaluru, whose leases had either been cancelled or had expired. It also owned a flat in Nashik and had tenancy rights over a property in Mumbai. The fair value of UNI’s land and buildings was pegged at Rs 54 crore. A report in The Indian Express, citing an anonymous government source, pegged the value of the land at Rafi Marg at Rs 409 crore.

Among those who showed interest in acquiring UNI were former journalist and Bharatiya Janata Party minister MJ Akbar, Gautam Adani’s brother-in-law, Rakesh Ramanlal Shah, and The Statesman, according to Newslaundry.

A newspaper’s bid

The Statesman is a 150-year-old newspaper, founded by journalist Robert Knight in 1875. It was owned by the British till the 1960s.

Like UNI, it faced financial decline over the years, becoming a distressed business. At the end of 2024-’25, the cash and bank balance of The Statesman Ltd, the company that owned the newspaper, stood at Rs 1 crore.

Its balance sheets show that The Statesman had not turned a profit in more than a decade.

In 2023-’24, its long-term liabilities stood at Rs 22 crore and short-term liabilities amounted to Rs 133 crore. In comparison, UNI’s long-term liabilities in the same year were Rs 6.7 crore and the short-term ones were Rs 172 crore.

In 2024-’25, The Statesman’s statutory auditors calculated an accumulated loss of Rs 47.4 crore over 15 years. “The above factors indicate a material uncertainty which may cast a significant doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern,” they stated in an independent audit.

The same year, however, the distressed newspaper made a bid to acquire UNI.

For this, it had to pay a performance guarantee of Rs 20 crore – a deposit that a bidder puts up to prove they are serious about a deal – to the news agency. ​​If it did not, the acquisition would collapse, and the NCLT would look for other buyers.

Ravindra Kumar, the paper’s managing director, told Newslaundry that the organisation had losses but was treating UNI as a “special project”. “And we are raising the finance for it,” he added.

The funds clearly materialised. In February 2025, the NCLT passed a verdict and handed over UNI to The Statesman, approving its Rs 75 crore takeover plan – Rs 72 crore to the creditors and a fresh capital infusion of Rs 3 crore. As per the plan, the government would receive 100% of its dues, SBI would receive 64%, and the employees only 22%.

The tribunal held that it could only verify that the plan followed the law, not whether the settlement was fair.

From being a 12% shareholder in UNI before the insolvency, The Statesman acquired 100% of the news agency in June 2025.

Where did the money come from exactly when it was needed?

The Rs 32 crore mystery

On January 30, 2026, the newspaper filed its latest balance sheet that recorded its accounts till March 31, 2025.

The filing shows that the year when The Statesman managed to pay the Rs 20-crore performance guarantee to UNI was also when its long-term borrowings shot up from Rs 22.1 crore in 2023-’24 to Rs 53.9 crore 2024-’25 – an increase of Rs 31.8 crore.

The source of this loan of Rs 31.8 crore has not been disclosed by the newspaper. It is simply labelled “other loans”.

Curiously, this loan is unsecured. Unlike secured loans, where lenders demand collateral – property, machinery, or fixed deposits – an unsecured loan requires none. The auditors noted that the loan was still “subject to confirmation” and due to absence of documents, they could not determine what rate of interest, if any, was being charged.

All in all, a distressed newspaper’s guarantee of Rs 20 crore to acquire a distressed newswire came from an unsecured loan from one or more anonymous financiers.

Changing ownership

Till 2024, The Statesman itself was mostly owned by 15 Kolkata-based trusts. These included the Soli Sorabjee Charity Trust, Nani Palkhivala Charity Trust and the Jai Prakash Narayan Charity Trust.

Though the ultimate beneficiaries of these trusts have not been disclosed, a decade-old filing by the newspaper said that all of them had The Statesman’s managing director Ravindra Kumar as a trustee.

By 2024, Rajender Parshad Gupta, a real-estate developer and stock broker, had become a co-trustee of at least two of these 15 trusts.

Taken together, in 2024, the trusts owned nearly 64% of The Statesman, while firms controlled by Gupta owned 20% of the newspaper. He also served as its chairman.

However, the shareholding pattern changed drastically in 2025. It was the culmination of a process that had started three years before.

Just three days after UNI was taken to the NCLT in August 2022, The Statesman floated seven lakh special shares worth Rs 100 each. These shares came with the special power of appointing a director to the paper’s board. The paper’s board removed a company clause that capped an individual’s shareholding at 13%.

On August 5, 2024, Gupta and his five relatives bought all 7 lakh new shares for Rs 7 crore, increasing their stake in The Statesman from 20% to 90%. These relatives include his wife Veena and nephews Rajeev, Vineet, Amit and Sandeep.

In other words, by June 2025, the Guptas came to control not one but two legacy media organisations – The Statesman and UNI.

Not much is known about the Guptas. They have a stock brokerage business since 1993 and have firms with real estate assets in Himachal Pradesh, Delhi and West Bengal.

In 2017, Rajender Parshad Gupta and The Statesman had published a book on then president Pranab Mukherjee and presented it to him in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Rashtrapati Bhawan.

The auditor’s warning

The Statesman’s book-keeping over the years has come under scrutiny by its own statutory auditors.

In 2024-’25, the year that The Statesman was allowed to acquire UNI, the paper’s auditors stated that it has “no internal audit system commensurate with the size and nature of its business”. It added that it has not appointed an external chartered accountant nor an in-house team for carrying out internal audits.

The auditors said that The Statesman was not compliant with sections 185 and 186 of the Companies Act, 2013. Section 185 bars a company from lending money or providing guarantees to its own directors or their related parties. Section 186 sets limits on how much a firm can lend, invest, or give guarantees to other companies.

In the past, The Statesman has given out loans even while being deep in debt. As of 2024-’25, despite being saddled with long-term loans of Rs 53.9 crore, it advanced Rs 96 crore to other firms – a sum that is three times its annual revenue. The names of these firms have not been disclosed in its filings.

In addition, it paid Rs 20 crore to UNI’s creditors as a performance guarantee.

In 2025-’26, it paid the remaining Rs 55 crore to acquire the agency. The source of these funds is not known yet since both UNI and The Statesman will make their 2025-’26 financial filings by the end of 2026 or early 2027.

The Delhi Police on Saturday arrested three persons in Mahipalpur area for allegedly hoarding liquefied petroleum gas cylinders, The Indian Express reported.

The persons accused in the matter are Krishna (33), Dinesh Sahu (46) and Mithilesh (39), the police said.

Police officers were quoted as saying that 70 domestic LPG cylinders and four commercial cylinders were seized. Fifty-four of the 70 domestic cylinders were filled while 16 had been used. Three of the commercial cylinders were filled, The Times of India reported.

The three men had been involved in the illegal supply of LPG cylinders in the area for three years, the police alleged.

The police conducted a raid and arrested them following a tip-off. The accused men failed to show a valid licence for storing and selling the cylinders, The Indian Express quoted police officers as saying.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (South-West) Amit Goel told the newspaper that the raid was part of a crackdown on the illegal trade of essential commodities.

A first information report has been filed in the matter and an investigation is underway.

The Delhi Police last week seized about 700 LPG cylinders that were allegedly being hoarded in godowns and shops.

The action came amid energy supply disruptions caused by the conflict in West Asia.

Retaliating to attacks from the United States and Israel, Iran has effectively blocked the strategic Strait of Hormuz for most international commercial vessels. About 20% of global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint.

This has affected LPG supplies in India. The country imports about 60% of its LPG demand, most of it from Gulf countries. The disruption has led to several eateries being temporarily shut, and long queues outside LPG godowns and agencies.

The government has urged citizens not to believe in rumours and to refrain from panic buying. However, it has urged consumers who can shift from LPG to piped natural gas to do so immediately.

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

A civilian employee at an Indian Air Force station in Assam suspected of spying for Pakistan’s intelligence agency was arrested on Sunday, PTI quoted the Rajasthan Police as saying.

Sumit Kumar (36), a multi-tasking staff member at the Air Force Station in Chabua, Dibrugarh, Assam was allegedly gathering confidential information related to the station and sharing it with Pakistani handlers through social media, ANI reported.

The accused is suspected of having collected and passed on sensitive details related to Air Force installations, including locations of fighter aircraft, missile systems and personnel-related information, through social media platforms, PTI reported.

Prafulla Kumar, additional director general of police (intelligence) said that the Air Force staffer was arrested in a joint operation by Rajasthan Intelligence and Air Force Intelligence, PTI reported.

The investigation had begun with the arrest of a suspect from Jaisalmer in January, which led to the identification of Sumit Kumar, a resident of Uttar Pradesh, as a spy.

During interrogation, Kumar said that he had been in contact with Pakistani intelligence operatives since 2023 and was allegedly sharing confidential information in exchange for money, the news agency quoted the officials as saying.

A case has been registered under the Official Secrets Act and provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.

The Uttar Pradesh Police on Sunday said they have arrested 19 persons for allegedly blocking the Delhi-Agra highway and throwing stones at the police after the death of cow vigilante Chandrashekhar, popularly known as “Farsa Wale Baba”, in the Mathura district, PTI reported.

While protesters claimed that Chandrashekhar had been killed by cattle smugglers, the police maintained that he died in a road accident. He was hit by a truck amid dense fog after he stopped a vehicle claiming that it was transporting cattle, the police said.

The authorities alleged that thousands of supporters of the cow vigilante gathered on the national highway on Saturday, blocked traffic for several kilometres, and threw stones at the police while President Droupadi Murmu was in Govardhan town during a three-day visit to Uttar Pradesh, PTI reported.

Several police personnel were injured in the violence, while a police outpost and government vehicles were damaged, the news agency reported.

The police have filed a first information report against a man named Daksh Chaudhary and his associates under provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. The police alleged that Chaudhary, who hails from Ghaziabad, is a history-sheeter who has allegedly been involved in vandalising and looting vehicles, PTI reported.

Deputy Inspector General of Police Shailesh Pandey told India Today on Saturday that tear gas shells were fired to force the crowd to disperse.

A case has also been filed against the driver of the truck that allegedly hit Chandrashekhar, the cow vigilante and a religious leader in the Braj region.

On Saturday, the police said that Chandrashekhar had stopped a vehicle in the Kosi police station area between 3 am and 4 am, claiming that it was transporting cattle. They said he was killed when he was struck by a truck coming from behind due to dense fog.

The deaths after consuming allegedly adulterated milk in Andhra Pradesh’s Rajamahendravaram town in February have increased to 16, PTI reported on Sunday.

Laboratory findings showed that the persons had died of multi-organ failure, the news agency quoted a government press release as saying. The organ failures were triggered by acute renal failure after consuming the milk that contained ethylene glycol, it added.

Three persons continue to receive treatment at hospitals in the town.

Several persons had been hospitalised in mid-February after developing severe health complications, including vomiting, abdominal pain, anuria and acute renal dysfunction, after they consumed allegedly adulterated milk supplied in Chowdeswaranagar and Swaroopanagar areas of the town.

By February 24, four had died and several were undergoing treatment. Some of them had been in critical condition.

The symptoms of renal failure had begun a day after the festival of Maha Shivratri, which was on February 15, The Times of India quoted residents as saying.

District Collector Kirthi Chekuri had told The Hindu at the time that the persons had consumed milk supplied by the same vendor. The vendor has been taken into custody.

The milk had reportedly been procured from more than 40 dairy farmers and was being supplied to over 100 families. All persons who died and are ill are from the same areas of the town.

Samples had been collected from 75 families, the chief minister’s office had said on February 23. The samples of the milk and the fodder given to the cattle have been sent for forensic tests.

On a grey afternoon in August 2013, Harish Rana, an engineering student, slipped from the fourth floor of his paying guest accommodation in Chandigarh. The accident left him in a permanent vegetative state, dependent on life supporting equipment. That split-second event gave rise to a 13-year legal battle.

On March 11, 2026, the Supreme Court of India delivered a landmark judgment, allowing Harish Rana’s family’s plea to withdraw the feeding tubes keeping him alive, giving effect for the first time to the constitutional right to die with dignity recognised way back in 2018.

A bench of Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice KV Viswanathan directed that Rana be shifted to the palliative care ward of AIIMS New Delhi, where a medical board would oversee the withdrawal of his clinically administered nutrition with the care owed to any human being in their final passage.

It was a culmination of a process that began with the Aruna Ramchandra Shanbaug case, which first prompted India to confront what it means to prolong a life that has, in every meaningful sense, already ended.

Remembering Aruna Shanbaug, the nurse who spent 42 years in coma in KEM Hospital after a sexual assault. For 42 years, the nurses of KEM, Mumbai cared for and nursed her, even fighting successfully in the Supreme Court against attempts for her mercy killing.

She passed away on… pic.twitter.com/KaMPmM0d44

— Dr Kiran Kumar Karlapu (@scarysouthpaw) May 19, 2024

That case began with a sexual assault in November 1973. Aruna Shanbaug, a young nurse at King Edward Memorial Hospital, Mumbai, just weeks away from her wedding, was attacked by a ward boy named Sohanlal Walmiki. He wrapped a dog chain around her neck and attacked her.

The strangulation cut off the oxygen supply to her brain. The assault left her in a state of irreversible neurological devastation from which she would never emerge. In 2009, journalist and activist Pinki Virani filed a writ petition before the Supreme Court seeking permission to withdraw her nutrition.

The nurses of KEM Hospital opposed the plea. The 2011 ruling, declined withdrawal in her specific case but it did something more consequential. It laid down, for the first time, that passive euthanasia was not inherently impermissible in India.

The bench, led by Justice Markandey Katju, which starts on a rather poetic note, encapsulates a victim’s ordeal by quoting a Mirza Ghalib couplet:

“Marte hain aarzoo mein marne ki
Maut aati hai par nahin aati.”

One dies in the longing for death
Death arrives, but death does not come.

The judgment drew a line between active euthanasia (administering a lethal substance) and passive euthanasia (withdrawing life-sustaining treatment). The former remained illegal. The latter could be permitted in an irreversible vegetative state, could be permitted with High Court sanction and after consulting a medical board).

This followed the reasoning of the House of Lords in the English case of Airedale NHS Trust v Bland in 1993. Aruna Shanbaug died in May 2015, of pneumonia, never having regained consciousness.

Common Cause judgments

The Aruna Shanbaug case laid down a mechanism for the exercise of passive euthanasia. However, crucial questions were left unattended. Firstly, does a person have the right to record, in advance, their wishes about end-of-life care? Secondly, could someone, while being healthy and cognisant, determine what should happen to them if they fell into a state such as Aruna’s?

The Common Cause Society had been pursuing these questions since 2005, seeking recognition of the right to execute a “living will” – a document through which a person could specify, in advance, their refusal of artificial life support. The petition sat in court for over a decade.

In March 2018, a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, led by the then Chief Justice Dipak Misra, delivered its landmark judgment in Common Cause v. Union of India, holding that the right to die with dignity was a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Constitution.

A life stripped of all agency, all consciousness, and all human experience was not a life the Constitution could compel a person to continue against their will, the court said. It recognised advance directives, replaced the need for a sanction from the High Court with a two-tier medical board system, and anchored the entire framework within Part III of the Constitution that lists fundamental rights, thus greatly increasing its significance.

However, the conditions for registering a valid living will – getting it notarised in front of two witnesses and a Judicial Magistrate First Class – proved cumbersome. Disability rights advocates raised the harder question: who decides what constitutes a life worth living? Fear mounted that the framework could create subtle pressure on families and institutions to withdraw care from patients with severe disabilities who were not in vegetative states at all.

Moreover, on a global scale, religious groups, particularly from Christian and Islamic traditions, had opposed it on doctrinal grounds, arguing that the sanctity of life could not be subject to judicial calibration.

In 2023, the Supreme Court, in Common Cause v. Union of India, while deciding an application seeking clarification of its earlier 2018 judgment, made significant changes to the process.

Primarily, it dispensed with the requirement of the living will being executed in the presence of a Judicial Magistrate First Class. The magistrate was no longer required to either retain a copy of the document or to forward it to the District Registry, family members and physician.

However, the government, for its part, has remained ambivalent. Despite repeated concerns from the Supreme Court, in both 2018 and 2023 Common Cause rulings, no comprehensive legislation on passive euthanasia or advance directives has been enacted yet.

"Which Parent Wants This?" Harish Rana's Father After 'Right To Die' Order https://t.co/0UB4sQvjLi pic.twitter.com/2JI15t9G1i

— NDTV News feed (@ndtvfeed) March 11, 2026

While Harish Rana could breathe unaided, what kept him alive was a PEG tube, a surgically inserted feeding apparatus delivering nutrition directly to his stomach. After 11 years, his parents approached the Delhi High Court in 2024, seeking administration of passive euthanasia. The High Court dismissed the petition, held that removing the feeding tube would amount to active, not passive, since Rana was not dependent on a ventilator, A distinction was drawn between ventilator support, classified as artificial life support, and nutritional support, held to be more fundamental.

His parents had filed a Special Leave Petition before the Supreme Court, which in November 2024 directed the Union government to provide adequate care – including providing home care. Liberty was granted to return if necessary.

After this, in view of Rana’s continued vegetative state, his parents again approached the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court, in the present judgment, rejected the distinction carved out by the Delhi High Court. The court was of the view that clinically assisted nutrition and hydration ought to be recognised as medical treatment. The very survival of the patient in a permanent vegetative state “is resting on an invasive form of artificial support”, so denying this recognition “would reduce the patient to being a passive subject of medical technology”, it said.

While deciding on withdrawing treatment, it held that “the correct question should be whether it is in the patient’s best interests that life should be prolonged…” The presumption in favour of preserving life may be “displaced where continuation of medical treatment ceases to serve any therapeutic purpose, i.e., becomes futile, merely prolongs the suffering without the hope of recovery or causes indignity to the life of the patient,” the court said.

As a result, while allowing the exercise of passive euthanasia, the court directed the withdrawal of all treatment, including clinically assisted nutrition and hydration.

The Harish Rana judgment does not represent a new doctrine but reiterates principles from 2011, 2018, and 2023, now given effect for the first time. Once again, the Supreme Court, this time definite terms, urged the Union government to enact comprehensive legislation on end-of-life care.

A statutory framework would spare families the cost and rigour of protracted litigation. But the complex socio-political and religious sensitivities surrounding end-of-life care in India cannot be wished away and any legislation, when it comes, will have to reckon with them honestly.

Aman Alam is a student barrister at University of London, and an advocate at the Supreme Court of India.

Ramisha Fatima is a second-year law student at Aligarh Muslim University.

Fifteen persons, including minors, have been held in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad for suspected espionage after allegedly filming military sites, railway stations and other sensitive installations, and sharing the photos, videos and location coordinates with foreign handlers, The Indian Express reported on Saturday.

Nine were detained on Friday after six suspects were held on March 14 as part of a probe by a Special Investigation Team. It was unclear how many of those detained were minors.

The investigation team detained the persons on Friday after questioning the suspects who had been held earlier, the newspaper reported. During questioning, eleven names had surfaced, of whom nine were detained.

The adults arrested on Friday have been identified as Ganesh Giri (20), Vivek Rai (18), Gagan Prajapati (22) and Durgesh Nishad (26), the Hindustan Times reported.

Additional Commissioner of Police Raj Karan Nayyar was quoted by the newspaper as saying that two others, Naushad Ali and Sameer Ali, are absconding.

“During the interrogation, it came to light that the suspects were given tasks by their foreign handlers to install solar-powered, SIM-based, standalone CCTV cameras,” Nayyar told the Hindustan Times, adding that the police had recovered two such surveillance cameras.

The two cameras were seized from railway stations in Sonipat, Haryana and Delhi cantonment, The Times of India reported.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (City Zone) Dhawal Jaiswal told the Hindustan Times that the suspects had been operating for six months.

Investigators said that the persons accused in the matter also had a mobile application to share global positioning system, or GPS, coordinates with their handlers. They allegedly shared one-time passwords linked to Indian SIM cards, enabling the handlers to operate accounts using Indian numbers.

“In exchange, they used to get money ranging from Rs 500 to Rs 5,000,” the police alleged.

The police alleged that the SIM cards were either stolen or had been registered in the names of family members. Officers were quoted as having added that the suspects were part of a larger network and that further investigation is underway to identify additional links and locations.

A case has been registered under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to endangering the sovereignty and integrity of India and criminal conspiracy, and the Official Secrets Act, The Indian Express reported.

Manipur Chief Minister Yumnam Khemchand Singh on Sunday said that the government’s decision to hold talks with the Kuki-Zo Council was the “first step to remove the trust deficit” between the state’s two major ethnic communities and to bridge gaps in an effort to bring peace.

The meeting on Saturday was the first between the chief minister of the state and the umbrella organisation of Kuki-Zo groups since ethnic violence broke out in May 2023.

In a statement, the Kuki-Zo Council described the meeting as being largely an ice-breaking session.

The organisation said that it had raised several key matters, including the need to de-escalate tensions between the Kuki and Tangkhul communities, the “importance of maintaining the sanctity of the buffer zone until a political settlement is reached” and ensuring justice for the victims of the conflict “as a fundamental prerequisite for any meaningful peace”.

The need to expedite the Suspension of Operations talks to ensure lasting peace was also highlighted, it added.

The Suspension of Operations pact was signed between the Centre, the Manipur government and two conglomerates of Kuki militant outfits – the Kuki National Organisation and United Peoples Front – in 2008 and renewed in September.

Under the agreement, the security forces and the militant groups are prohibited from launching operations. The militant groups must abide by the laws of the land and are also confined to designated camps identified by the Union government.

The Kuki-Zo Council said that the meeting on Saturday concluded without any decisions or agreements.

In a press release, the chief minister’s office quoted Yumnam Khemchand Singh as saying on Sunday that the meeting was a “good beginning”. He said that efforts must focus on reconciling differences between the state’s 36 communities and moving forward.

“Let us forgive and forget the past for a better future,” he was quoted as saying by his office.

The chief minister made the comments during a press briefing following an unrelated event in Imphal.

The Kuki-Zo groups have maintained that the creation of a separate administrative arrangement in the form of a Union Territory, in the areas of the state dominated by the community, is the way forward to end the conflict. While the Meiteis dominate the valley region, the Kukis are in the majority in the state’s hill districts.

Commenting on this, Yumnam Khemchand Singh said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had already stated that the territorial integrity of Manipur would not be compromised. He did not need to comment further on a matter already addressed by the prime minister, he added.

Responding to questions about the movement of traffic along the Imphal-Kohima highway, the chief minister acknowledged that while travel had resumed, fear remained because of trust issues between the communities.

“This is the reason why I said that removing [the] trust deficit is my priority,” he said.

Kuki-Zo Council chief Henlianthang Thanglet told The Indian Express that the body would not have agreed to the meeting under the previous government led by Bharatiya Janata Party leader N Biren Singh. “Since there is a new government, we agreed to come,” Thanglet was quoted as saying.

At least 260 persons have been killed and more than 59,000 persons displaced since ethnic clashes broke out between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo-Hmar communities in May 2023. There were periodic upticks in violence in 2024 and 2025.

Biren Singh had stepped down as the chief minister in February 2025 amid allegations from Kuki-Zomi-Hmar groups that his response to the violence had been partisan and that he had stoked majoritarianism.

After he resigned, Manipur was under the President’s Rule for a year until Yumnam Khemchand Singh took oath as chief minister on February 4.

Punjab Transport Minister Laljit Singh Bhullar resigned from his post on Saturday following the death by suicide of a Punjab Warehousing Corporation official who had accused the minister of harassment, The Indian Express reported.

Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann accepted Bhullar’s resignation and directed Chief Secretary KAP Sinha to conduct an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding Gagandeep Singh Randhawa’s death, The New Indian Express reported.

Mann said the resignation was necessary to ensure that the investigation could proceed without interference.

Randhawa was a district manager of the Punjab State Warehousing Corporation in Amritsar. He reportedly died by suicide at his home on Friday, leaving behind a video in which he purportedly said he was acting out of fear of Bhullar, PTI reported.

In the 12-second recording, the official had stated: “Your friend has consumed poison due to fear of minister Laljit Bhullar; I won’t survive now.”

Mann described the incident as painful and stated that harassment of any kind, especially to the extent that it leads someone to die by suicide, was unacceptable, ANI reported.

Bhullar’s ministerial portfolios will be reassigned to other members of the Cabinet, The Indian Express quoted Mann as saying.

The Punjab State Warehousing Corporation Field Employees Union alleged that Randhawa faced pressure to approve tenders for warehouses owned by political aides that did not meet the technical criteria, Hindustan Times reported.

Randhawa’s relatives, speaking to Opposition leaders, claimed that he had been summoned to Bhullar’s residence on March 13, physically assaulted, and forced to record a confession stating that he had accepted a Rs 10 lakh bribe.

The video was meant to blackmail the official into complying with the tendering process, the newspaper quoted the relatives as having alleged.

Bhullar, who is the Aam Aadmi Party MLA from Patti, has denied the allegations, saying that they were “baseless and false”. He said that he had stepped down to facilitate a fair investigation.

Photographic and artistic representations of Bombay’s pasts tend to acquire a patina of nostalgia for times when things were seemingly different from the present – when streets were clean and uncrowded, or when natural features such as beaches could be enjoyed at leisure and in comfort. Such representations had already acquired a nostalgic aura by the 1990s, when the city’s population had grown dramatically, and many of the grand buildings in areas like Flora Fountain had fallen into a state of disrepair.

The transformation of the city through ‘redevelopment’ over the last twenty-five years has accelerated change to an extent where even the cityscapes of the 1990s seem impossibly distant. Houses have become buildings, which, in turn, have become towers. Flyovers, sealinks, freeways, monorail, coastal roads, bridges to the mainland and now the underground metro have completely transformed both the appearance of the city as well as the experience of navigating it.

Such is the pace of change that a particular vista of the city cannot be guaranteed even over the short cycle of a real estate sale. Brokers now routinely issue disclaimers disavowing the continuity of the view from the flat that a potential buyer might have between initial viewing and completion of the sale.

What are we to make of representations of Bombay’s past in the shadow of the tall towers created through redevelopment? Cityscapes such as Flora Fountain or Hornby Road – human-made through and through – are paradoxically rendered into the city’s ‘natural’ past through these recent changes.

Among such representations of Bombay’s grand buildings, boulevards and beaches, Chittaprosad’s Labour Camp appears anomalous in its portrayal of a cluster of hutments with crouched inhabitants in the foreground, while in the background rise the towers and factories of the modern city.

In contrast to the fixity and permanence of Flora Fountain – and the sense of arrival such representations convey – the labour camp with its humble hutments appears fleeting and transient, still in motion. The tension between the two images offers an insight into the nature of the urban process in Bombay.

Chittaprosad was born in colonial Bengal and is perhaps best known for his sketches of the Bengal famine of 1943-1944. He is also widely recognised for his drawing of a hat-wearing, staff-bearing peasant that adorns the poster of Bimal Roy’s film Do Bigha Zamin. Chittaprosad had joined the Communist Party of India, having been recruited by general secretary PC Joshi, and was sent to Bombay in the early 1940s. There, he participated actively in the party’s cultural activities, including the Indian People’s Theatre Association. In 1943, the party sent him to Midnapore to document the unfolding famine in a series of sketches, later published in a volume titled Hungry Bengal.

Towards the end of the 1940s, however, Chittaprosad grew disillusioned with the CPI and left the party. He retreated to his home in Andheri, where, among other things, he established ‘Khelghar’, a puppet theater for children in the vicinity. Chittaprosad’s life in Andheri and its environs from the late 1940s through the 1960s offered him an opportunity to observe the city of Bombay – also an occasional, though lesser-known, theme in his work – transform into Greater Bombay.

He would have witnessed the physical and administrative absorption of the fields, jungles, swamps, villages and towns of Salsette into the expanding city. He certainly sought to capture the landscape as it existed then, as suggested by the linocut titled Landscape, Bombay Out-Skirts. Dated 1953, it depicts a rural scene with peasants working cattle in the foreground, a hut set amid fields in the midground, and trees and hills skirting the background.

In the same period, had he chosen to do so, he might have also noted the rapid development of the northern portions of the island city of Bombay. Mahim, Dharavi, Sion and Wadala – although already theoretically part of the ‘city’ and of various urbanisation ‘schemes’ of colonial planning interventions by the Bombay Improvement Trust, the Bombay Development Department and the Bombay Municipal Corporation – only underwent actual development in the years during and after the Second World War.

It is likely that Chittaprosad’s Labour Camp was inspired by the Matunga Labour Camp, the best known of Bombay’s labour camps. Located in the heart of the larger Dharavi settlement, Communist party stalwarts Annabhau Sathe and RB More both lived in the Matunga Labour Camp in the 1940s.

Sathe and, to a lesser extent, More were also very active in the party’s cultural front at the time – More’s grandson Subodh More referred to Sathe as the ‘[Maxim] Gorky of Maharashtra’. It is likely that Chittaprosad, through his close association with leftist cultural circles in Bombay in the 1940s, had encountered one or both of these prominent figures.

Urban planning in Bombay over the course of the twentieth century sought to establish fixity and stability in land tenure, building quality and occupancy.

Yet, the very profusion of interventions by various agencies created a cluttered mosaic of schemes and programmes for various parts of the city, each with specific rules and restrictions. At the same time, urban planning also perpetuated forms of transience and impermanence.

By the 2000s, urban development – in the sense of a concerted effort by planning bodies to realise a vision for the city – had yielded to redevelopment, which incentivises private initiative through relaxing the very regulations that planning had put into place. In this most recent era of the creative destruction of the twentieth century urban fabric, Labour Camp assumes a renewed significance.

Whether by design or not, Chittaprosad’s Labour Camp offers an insight into the process of urban development. Unusually for representations of the city from the time, the image focuses on the people whose labour made possible the buildings and factories of the modern city.

But by juxtaposing the transient-seeming labour camp with elements of the modern city in the same frame, the image also suggests that the two forms of urbanism exist in tension with each other, in a dialectical relationship rather than in a sequential one.

The particularities of urban planning in Bombay – that it unfolded in such piecemeal fashion, that housing construction was hampered by shortages, that histories of political mobilisation meant that plans could only ever be partially and incompletely executed – have meant that the very process of urban development created the conditions for its own supersession by redevelopment.

Nikhil Rao is associate professor of history at Wellesley College. His book titled House, But No Garden: Apartment Living in Bombay’s Suburbs, 1898-1964 was published in 2013.

This is an excerpt from Nikhil Rao’s essay, “In the shadow of redevelopment: Bombay’s past through Mumbai’s present”, from the book Bombay Framed: People, Memory, Metropolis accompanying the eponymous exhibition which is on display at The Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai, till April 11.

The Centre has withdrawn airfare caps, with effect from Monday, that were introduced in December to curb a spike in ticket prices after widespread flight cancellations by IndiGo, The Hindu reported.

The government had imposed distance-based price limits, going up to Rs 18,000 on the longest routes.

In an order issued on Saturday, the Ministry of Civil Aviation said that the fare caps were being withdrawn after a review found that “the prevailing situation has…stabilised, with restoration of capacity and normalisation of operations across the sector”.

The decision came at a time when airlines are facing higher costs due to the conflict in West Asia, which has pushed up aviation turbine fuel prices, and led to flight cancellations and longer and costlier re-routings.

The ministry, however, said airlines must ensure pricing discipline.

“Airlines shall ensure that fares remain reasonable, transparent and commensurate with market conditions, and that passenger interests are not adversely impacted,” The Hindu quoted the ministry as saying.

It added that regulatory action, including the reintroduction of fare caps, could be taken if there is an unjustified surge in ticket prices.

Indigo disruption

Between December 3 and December 5, IndiGo cancelled more than 2,500 flights and delayed over 1,850 others, affecting more than three lakh passengers. The disruption, which continued for several days, pushed fares to unusually high rates on several routes.

The disruption came amid the rollout of stricter work hour norms introduced in November.

The revised rostering norms, issued by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation in January 2024 after concerns about pilot fatigue, were meant to take effect on June 1.

However, airlines asked for delayed implementation because of staffing shortages and operational challenges, and the key changes were eventually introduced on November 1.

The new rules required longer weekly rest, restricted night landings, extended the definition of night hours and limited consecutive night duties.

The crisis had led to interventions by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation and the Ministry of Civil Aviation. IndiGo had apologised to its customers.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on March 13 posted a video in which he talked about his country’s attacks on Iran. Social media users claimed that the video appeared to show Netanyahu having six fingers on his right hand. This, they said, was as a sign that artificial intelligence had been used to create the video. Older versions of AI tools sometimes showed human figures with extra fingers or limbs.

The purportedly inaccurate image was cited to raise questions about Netanyahu’s whereabouts and sparked rumours that he had been assassinated.

Netanyahu does not have six fingers. The extra digit that seemed to appear in the images being circulated was an optical illusion – his skin, at that angle, looked like an additional finger. The next day, the Israeli prime minister’s office refuted the claims, stating that Netanyahu was alright.

Perhaps because it was felt that the denial was insufficient, Netanyahu on March 15 posted a proof-of-life video showing him in a café in Jerusalem. The café also shared images of the visit.

Addressing the claims about his death, Netanyahu said in the video that he was “dying for coffee”. He then showed his hands, asking: “Do you want to count my fingers?”

But social media users refused to believe that this video was genuine. They claimed that it too had been generated using AI.

They falsely claimed that the date on the café’s billing machine was from 2024. It wasn’t. The date on the monitor was March 15, 2026. Others insisted that the video was old or had been recreated using footage from the Covid-19 pandemic because Netanyahu’s bodyguards were wearing face masks.

They claimed that the coffee – filled to the brim – had not spilt when Netanyahu lifted the cup. So this had to be AI, they claimed, ignoring the crema and physics.

Even Grok, the AI tool built by Elon Musk’s X, claimed that the video was a “deep fake”, created using AI.

Over the next two days, Netanyahu posted more videos. But it seemed that no evidence of reality was acceptable to users who had made up their mind.

‘This is AI’ an unfalsifiable response to reality?

Most accounts making the claims on social media platform X had blue ticks, a sign of premium membership that is a prerequisite for monetising content on the platform.

This means that some of the conspiracy theorising about Netanyahu’s death was “engagement farming” being conducted to make money. It did not matter to these accounts that it would only be a matter of time before they were proved wrong.

Yet, one could see that many ordinary users were buying into the claims that the videos were AI-generated.

Disinformation and engagement farming are not new. But what is concerning is, as this episode demonstrated, that conspiracy theories – aided by AI – are no longer acts of the fringe. Also alarming was the sheer number of people willing to reject or overlook reality.

This seemingly trivial debate on social media perhaps marks a turning point for human interaction with AI.

Reality, when inconvenient, can be challenged by simply declaring that the evidence is “AI-generated” – and enough people will be willing to believe the claim.

Until now, we were figuring out how to detect AI. Now we are forced to prove something is not AI.

As some pondered on social media, are we at a stage where claims that something is AI-generated are itself an unfalsifiable response to reality that cannot be proven wrong by empirical observation?

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

Energy price shock continues. Global gas prices soared amid concerns about supplies. In Europe, the prices jumped by 35%. The concerns were triggered after Iran struck energy facilities across the Gulf, including Qatar’s main liquefied natural gas complex, in retaliation for an attack on its refinery on Wednesday.

Qatar said that the Ras Laffan complex, home to the world’s largest liquefied natural gas facility, suffered extensive damage, representing 17% of the country’s exports. Iran also hit oil and gas installations in the United Arab Emirates.

Twelve Arab and Islamic countries said that the Iranian strikes cannot be justified under any pretext and called on Tehran to immediately end the attacks.

Global crude oil prices remained above the $100 per barrel-mark as Iran continued to block the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

Contentious iftar on Ganga. Fourteen Muslims were arrested in Varanasi for allegedly hurting the religious sentiments of Hindus after they organised an iftar party on a boat in the river Ganga and ate chicken biryani. The complainant, a Bharatiya Janata Party leader, alleged that they threw meat leftovers in the river, which holds religious significance for Hindus.

The men were arrested after a video showing them holding the party on the boat on Monday was widely shared on social media. They were booked for defiling a place of worship, deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings and promoting enmity between groups.

Ashoka professor will not be prosecuted. The Haryana government told the Supreme Court that it will not grant sanction to prosecute Ashoka University Professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad in a case related to his comments about the press briefings on Operation Sindoor. A bench then quashed the criminal proceedings against Mahmudabad, but cautioned him to act “prudently” in the future.

The state described its decision as “one-time magnanimity”.

Mahmudabad had been booked in May for a social media post highlighting the apparent irony of Hindutva commentators praising Colonel Sofiya Qureshi, who had represented the Indian Army during the press briefings. He was arrested on May 18, but was granted bail three days later.

Also on Scroll last week

• What Ladakh makes of Sonam Wangchuk’s release from detention
• The other Zubeen: Why deaths of Assam’s migrant workers have not stirred election debate
• Reliance lobbied US with record spending ahead of Texas refinery investment
• Why public spaces in India are a minefield for children with intellectual disabilities
• As conflict rages in the Gulf, many are focussed on oil – but water is also a major concern
• Empathising with Iran must recognise the internal struggle against religious despotism
• Digital media is exploiting how our minds are wired to respond to threats
• New law brings gig workers under Centre’s ESI social security scheme. But there are challenges
• Review: ‘Chiraiya’ bluntly confronts marital rape
• Review: ‘Dhurandhar: The Revenge’ is more of everything – gore, cheerleading, propaganda

Follow the Scroll channel on WhatsApp for a curated selection of the news that matters throughout the day, and a round-up of major developments in India and around the world every evening. What you won’t get: spam.

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The Biju Janata Dal on Saturday suspended six MLAs for cross-voting in favour of a Bharatiya Janata Party-backed Independent candidate in the March 16 Rajya Sabha elections in Odisha.

The suspended MLAs are Chakramani Kanhar (Baliguda), Naba Kishor Mallick (Jayadev), Souvic Biswal (Choudwar-Cuttack), Subasini Jena (Basta), Ramakanta Bhoi (Tirtol) and Devi Ranjan Tripathy (Banki).

The six MLAs, along with two previously suspended legislators, Arvind Mohapatra and Sanatan Mahakud, had voted against Datteswar Hota, a urologist fielded as a joint candidate by the BJD and the Congress for the fourth Rajya Sabha seat.

No party had a clear majority for the seat. Cross-voting by eight BJP MLAs and three Congress legislators helped Independent candidate Dilip Ray secure a win.

In a suspension order, party president Naveen Patnaik said that the MLAs had engaged in “anti-party activities”, including cross-voting, in violation of the BJD constitution that mandates adherence to collective decisions.

The party had issued show-cause notices to the legislators earlier. Their responses were reviewed by the disciplinary committee, following which the political affairs committee of the party decided on the suspension.

BJD chief whip Pramila Mallik said that the party would also seek disqualification of the MLAs, The Indian Express reported.

“We will also write to the speaker of Odisha Assembly to cancel their membership as they didn’t comply to party directive,” the newspaper quoted Mallik as saying. “We will also initiate legal procedure for cancellation of these legislators,”

The party also raised objections to the issuance of two ballot papers to BJP MLAs Upasana Mohapatra and Purna Chandra Sethy during voting, The Indian Express reported.

Mallik alleged that despite objections, the Election Commission allowed the votes to be counted.

“Issuance of second ballot is against the rule,” the newspaper quoted Mallik as saying. “Their votes should have been rejected but it was counted as valid votes. The BJD will also fight it legally challenging the poll process.”

With the suspensions, the BJD’s strength in the Odisha Assembly has dropped to 42.

On March 17, the Congress had also suspended its three MLAs – Sofia Firdous, Ramesh Jena and Dasarathi Gomango – for cross-voting.

In the lanes of Cement Colony, YM Shalla, Chickpet and the alleys of Banashankari in Bengaluru, the day often begins with a steely purposefulness.

“Around 11 am, water starts coming, and for the next two hours, until about 1 pm, I’m usually stuck there,” said Swati, a girl who lives in this neighbourhood. “Sometimes I even miss my breakfast and end up eating much later.”

Plastic buckets, steel pots are water bottles are carefully lined up in anticipation. When the water finally arrives from the municipal pipe, life reorganises itself around its slow, uncertain flow.

Across these localities, there are many lanes, On any given day, water may come to one lane but not another. Even where it does arrive, the flow is often weak. Residents use small motors to draw and store what they can, working quickly, helping each other and making sure nothing is wasted.

The water is mostly stored in blue drums outside each home. Households contribute a nominal fee each month for this shared provision. Even homes with individual pipeline connections do not always receive water directly, making shared access points and coordination essential.

Within these homes, women and girls play a central role in managing water for the household. They stand in queues, carry and store water, and allocate it thoughtfully for cooking, cleaning, washing and bathing. Girls move between schoolwork and these responsibilities, learning early on how to navigate and sustain daily life with limited resources.

These are the communities that keep the city running. Many residents are informal waste pickers – sorting, collecting and recycling what the city discards, contributing quietly but critical to urban health. Their work is essential, even if often unrecognised. Still, equitable access to water remains out of reach.

This photo story is told through the eyes of young people from these neighbourhoods, trained in photography by the not-for-profit organisation Hasiru Dala in partnership with Peoples Photographers Collective, to document their own worlds. Their images capture the routines around water, and the resilience within their communities.

This year, World Water Day on March 22 is being marked with the theme “Where water flows, equality grows!”

These images are a reminder that water is deeply tied to gender, labour and justice. They emphasise that the leadership and voices of girls and women are essential for solving the water crisis.

Images: Gokul, Keerthana, Mohan, Anupallavi - Youth Photography Trainees from Cement Colony, YM Shalla & Banashankari, Bangalore.

Photo curation and mentorship: Palanikumar, Founder, Peoples Photographers Collective.

Text: Anupriya, Hasiru Dala.