Three personnel of Chhattisgarh’s District Reserve Guard and 12 suspected Maoists were killed in a gunfight in Bijapur district on Wednesday, reported The Indian Express.

Two other District Reserve Guard personnel sustained bullet injuries and are in stable condition, the newspaper quoted Bijapur Superintendent of Police Jitendra Kumar Yadav as saying.

The security personnel who died were identified as Head Constable Monu Wadadi, and Constables Dujaru Gonde and Ramesh Sodi.

With these deaths, the number of security personnel killed in Chhattisgarh this year has risen to 23, The Indian Express reported.

The gunfight took place during a joint operation launched by security forces after they received intelligence inputs about Maoist presence in the area, the newspaper quoted unidentified officials as saying.

Teams from the District Reserve Guard of Bijapur and Dantewada, the Special Task Force and the Central Reserve Police Force’s Commando Battalion for Resolute Action were part of the operation.

The gunfight began around 9 am.

After the exchange of fire ended in the evening, security forces carried out search operations and recovered the bodies of 12 unidentified suspected Maoists.

A total of 275 suspected Maoists have been killed in gunfights in Chhattisgarh so far this year, The Indian Express reported. In the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh, more than 400 suspected Maoists had been killed in 2024-’25, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai had said in June.

In 2024, 217 suspected Maoists were killed by security forces in Chhattisgarh.

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

The Union government has repeatedly vowed to end Maoism by March 31, 2026.

Former Indian Police Service officer Sanjiv Bhatt has moved the Supreme Court seeking suspension of the 20-year jail sentence handed to him in the 1996 drug planting case, Live Law reported on Wednesday.

Bhatt is already serving a life sentence in a separate 1990 custodial death case.

The plea came up on Wednesday before a bench of Justices JK Maheshwari and Vijay Bishnoi but was adjourned at the request of advocate Kapil Sibal, who appeared for Bhatt.

Bhatt was arrested in 2018 in a case based on a complaint by a Rajasthan-based lawyer, Sumer Singh Rajpurohit, who accused the ex-IPS officer and others of planting 1.15 kg of opium at a Palanpur hotel in Gujarat’s Banaskantha district, where he was staying in 1996.

At the time of the alleged incident, Bhatt was serving as the district superintendent of police in Banaskantha. Another officer, Inspector IB Vyas, was also named in the case. Vyas turned approver in the case in 2021.

According to the prosecution, Bhatt and his co-accused conspired to frame the lawyer under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act.

In March 2024, a sessions court in Palanpur sentenced him to 20 years in prison under provisions of the Act.

He was also convicted under several sections of the Indian Penal Code, including forgery, using forged documents, wrongful confinement, criminal conspiracy and framing incorrect documents with intent to cause injury.

Following this, Bhatt approached the Gujarat High Court for suspension of sentence and bail in the case.

The High Court had rejected his plea, noting the “seriousness and gravity” of the offence, the stringent requirements under Section 37 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act and the presumption of innocence being reversed after conviction, among others, Live Law reported.

Section 37 of the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act deals with cognisable and non-bailable offences.

The Union government has withdrawn its order that directed smartphone manufacturers to mandatorily preload a government cybersecurity app on all devices. The decision was taken “given Sanchar Saathi’s increasing acceptance”, stated the Ministry of Communications.

The announcement came hours after Union Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia told Parliament that the app cannot be used for snooping. He had also said that the government is willing to make changes to the order based on public feedback.

Opposition leaders and technology policy experts had expressed concern about the directive, stating that it amounted to expanded surveillance without safeguards. Read on.

‘A permanent surveillance backdoor’: Why Sanchar Saathi app order raises privacy fears

The Centre has told the Supreme Court that it will bring back to India a pregnant woman and her eight-year-old son who were “pushed” into Bangladesh. Sunali Khatun, her son Sabir and husband Danish Sk, who are residents of West Bengal, were forced into Bangladesh by the Indian authorities in June on claims that they are undocumented immigrants.

The Bangladeshi authorities arrested them on August 21 for illegal entry. They were released from the Chapainawabganj jail on Monday evening after a lower court granted them bail on humanitarian grounds.

This came on the same day that the Supreme Court asked the Union government if Khatun and her son could be returned to India on humanitarian grounds, taking note of her advanced pregnancy. Read on.

Bangladeshi or Indian? Investigating Modi government’s crackdown on ‘illegal immigrants’

The Indian rupee fell to an all-time low of 90.2 against the United States dollar. The currency has fallen about 5% this year, putting it on track to record the sharpest decline in a year since 2022.

The rupee is the worst-performing Asian currency this year. The plunge has been attributed to punitive tariffs by the United States and the weak inflow of capital. This was coupled with uncertainty about the trade deal between India and the US. Read on.

The Calcutta High Court has overturned an order that cancelled the appointment of about 32,000 primary school teachers in West Bengal in connection with an alleged cash-for-jobs recruitment scam. The bench set aside the 2023 order passed by Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay, who is now a Bharatiya Janata Party MP.

The High Court observed that the single-judge bench had “gone beyond the pleadings” by cancelling the appointments. The judges also noted that there had been no complaint regarding the effectiveness of the candidates appointed as teachers and set aside the order. Read on.

The Karnataka High Court has refused to suspend the life sentence handed to former Janata Dal (Secular) MP Prajwal Revanna in a rape case. The bench noted that several cases accusing Revanna of sexual abuse are pending trial.

Referring to the ongoing cases, the bench said there was “much force” in the prosecution’s submission that suspending the sentence could lead to witness tampering.

The former MP from Karnataka’s Hassan has been named in four separate sexual abuse cases, including one in which he was convicted on August 2. Read on.

What the Prajwal Revanna case reveals about the struggles of women in politics

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The Calcutta High Court on Wednesday overturned a 2023 order that had cancelled the appointment of about 32,000 primary school teachers in West Bengal in connection with an alleged cash-for-jobs recruitment scam, Live Law reported.

A division bench of Justices Tapabrata Chakraborty and Reetobroto Kumar Mitra set aside the order passed by Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay.

Gangopadhyay is now a Bharatiya Janata Party MP from Tamluk constituency in the Trinamool Congress-ruled state.

The controversy erupted in 2014 after 42,500 primary school teachers were recruited based on the Teachers’ Eligibility Test conducted by the West Bengal Board of Primary Education.

Several candidates had later filed a petition in the High Court alleging irregularities in the recruitment process involving the payment of cash to secure jobs, Live Law reported.

In his order, Gangopadhyay had held that the appointments of 32,000 teachers were invalid on multiple grounds, including the absence of an aptitude test, the involvement of an external agency to conduct parts of the Teachers’ Eligibility Test process and allegations that the board officials “sold” jobs to candidates, the legal news outlet reported.

On Wednesday, Chakraborty and Mitra observed that the single-judge bench had “gone beyond the pleadings” by cancelling the appointments based on the fact that no aptitude test had been conducted.

“For cancellation of the entire exam, there must be a finding on systemic malice as borne out by the evidence on record,” Live Law quoted the High Court as saying on Wednesday. “That is not the case.”

The judges also noted that there had been no complaint regarding the effectiveness of the candidates appointed as teachers.

“There is no allegation that students who paid money got more marks…a group of unsuccessful candidates should not be allowed to affect the entire system when it cannot be ruled out that untainted teachers may suffer greater ignominy and stigma,” Live Law quoted the bench as saying. “Service cannot be terminated on the basis of an ongoing criminal proceeding.”

The bench had begun hearing the matter in April.

The cancellation of appointments of 32,000 primary teachers had earlier been challenged before a division bench led by Justice Soumen Sen, who is now the chief justice of the Meghalaya High Court.

However, Sen recused himself from the case after which it was placed before the present bench.

In April, the Supreme Court had upheld a separate order of the Calcutta High Court terminating the appointment of more than 25,000 teachers and non-teaching staff by West Bengal’s School Service Commission.

The Supreme Court had passed the order after observing that the recruitment process was “vitiated by manipulation and fraud”.

The High Court had issued the termination order in 2024 based on the findings of a re-evaluation of the Optical Mark Recognition sheets from the 2016 recruitment examination in the case.

The re-evaluation had found that the selected teachers had been recruited against blank Optical Mark Recognition sheets.

A row erupted in Telangana after Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy’s comment about Hindu deities at a Congress meeting in Hyderabad on Tuesday.

Drawing a comparison between the diversity within the Congress and the plurality within Hinduism, Reddy said that the party “takes along all types of individuals”.

“Some say they will worship Lord Venkteswara, others say they will worship Lord Hanuman,” The Indian Express quoted the chief minister as saying. “We could not reach consensus on which gods to worship; how will we reach consensus on political leaders and DCC [District Congress Committee] presidents?”

He was quoted as having said: “How many Gods are there for Hindus? Three crore? There is Hanuman for those who are not married. There is another god for those who marry twice. There are gods to whom toddy and non-vegetarian food are served during certain events and there are gods for those who eat dal-chawal.”

“Just as Hinduism has a god to suit every mentality, the Congress too has space for every viewpoint,” The Hindu quoted him as saying.

Bharatiya Janata Party leader Bandi Sanjay Kumar on Tuesday alleged that Reddy had insulted Hindus and Hindu deities.

“The Congress has always been a party that bends before the AIMIM [All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen],” Kumar said on social media.

The Union minister claimed that Reddy had himself said that the Congress is a “Muslim party” and that the comment “exposes their mindset”.

“Congress carries deep-rooted hatred towards Hindus,” Kumar said, alleging that the Bharat Rashtra Samithi had also “repeatedly demeaned” Hindu gods and culture.

He added: “This is exactly why we warned during the Jubilee Hills bye-election that if Congress or BRS accidentally won, Hindus would not be able to step out with dignity. The CM’s latest comments prove BJP was right.”

Following the row, Reddy said that his comments had been twisted for political gains.

“I told them [party workers] that just as there are many gods with different identities and symbols, the Congress too has many leaders and viewpoints,” News18 quoted him as saying on Wednesday. “We all must work together.”

He added that the BJP, having recently lost local body elections, was “needlessly making an issue” out of an innocuous comment.

The BJP’s Telangana chief N Ramchander Rao said that the comments by Reddy were “another insult” to Hindus by the Congress.

Rao demanded an unconditional apology from the chief minister for allegedly hurting religious sentiments, The Hindu reported.

Several leaders of the BRS demanded an apology from the chief minister for hurting the sentiments of Hindus, The Indian Express reported.

Following the criticism, Congress’ Telangana chief B Mahesh Kumar Goud told the newspaper that Reddy had said nothing wrong.

“He shared Telugu adages in a lighter vein,” Goud said. “The CM and the Congress party respect all religions.”

The Union government on Wednesday said it was withdrawing its order that directed smartphone manufacturers to mandatorily preload a government cybersecurity app on all devices, following pushback.

“Given Sanchar Saathi’s increasing acceptance, [the] government has decided not to make the pre- installation mandatory for mobile manufacturers,” said the Ministry of Communications.

The Union government had, on November 28, directed manufacturers to preinstall the Sanchar Saathi app in new phones and to add the application to devices that have already been sold through a software update within three months.

Users will not be able to disable the app, the ministry had said in a press release on Monday.

After Opposition leaders and technology policy experts expressed concern that the directive amounted to expanded surveillance without safeguards, Union Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia claimed on Tuesday that users would be able to delete the app.

However, the digital rights organisation Internet Freedom Foundation said that Scindia’s explanation was incorrect.

Paragraph 7(b) of the order issued by the Department of Telecommunications states that the Sanchar Saathi app “cannot be ‘disabled or restricted’”, the organisation said on social media.

After the announcement on Wednesday, the organisation described the decision as a “welcome step” but stated it was “awaiting the full text of the legal order that should accompany this announcement, including any revised directions”.

“For now, we should treat this as cautious optimism, not closure, until the formal legal direction is published and independently confirmed,” said the Internet Freedom Foundation.

The announcement came hours after Scindia told Parliament that the app cannot be used for snooping.

“Snooping is neither possible nor will it happen through this [Sanchar Saathi] app,” Scindia told Parliament, adding that the platform is meant to protect users against cyber frauds.

Scindia had also said that the government is willing to make changes to the order based on public feedback. He added that the government wants to give users the power to help them protect themselves.

On Wednesday, the ministry reiterated that the government had mandated the use of the app “with an intent to provide access to cybersecurity to all citizens”.

“There is no other function other than protecting the users in the app and they can remove the app whenever they want,” the ministry said in a press release. “This has been clarified by [the] government.”

The Congress had on Monday said that the directive by the telecom department was “beyond unconstitutional” and demanded that it should be rolled back immediately.

The Internet Freedom Foundation on Tuesday said that the November 28 directive was a “deeply worrying expansion” of executive control over personal digital devices.

The requirement for the functionalities of the app not being disabled converts every smartphone “into a vessel for state-mandated software that the user cannot meaningfully refuse, control or remove”, said the organisation.

It added that the directive was so vague that while today the app is framed as a benign International Mobile Equipment Identity checker, “through a server side update, it could be repurposed for client side scanning for ‘banned’ applications, flag VPN [Virtual Private Network] usage, correlate SIM activity, or trawl SMS logs in the name of fraud detection”.

Also read: ‘A permanent surveillance backdoor’: Why Sanchar Saathi app order raises privacy fears

The Karnataka High Court on Wednesday dismissed an application by former Janata Dal (Secular) MP Prajwal Revanna seeking suspension of the life sentence handed to him in a rape case, Live Law reported.

A division bench of Justices KS Mudagal and Venkatesh Naik T said that it found “no fit case” to grant bail or suspend the sentence.

“Weighing the material on record, the gravity of the offence, and considering the effect on other pending cases against the appellant, if the appellant is released on bail, this court is of the considered opinion that this is not a fit case for granting suspension of sentence and bail,” Live Law quoted the bench as saying.

The court noted that several cases accusing Revanna of sexual abuse are pending trial. It recorded that the complainant in the present case had not initially approached the police, given the “sound political and economic background” of the former MP. It added that Revanna was not granted bail even during the trial.

Referring to the ongoing cases, the bench said there was “much force” in the prosecution’s submission that suspending the sentence could lead to witness tampering, Live Law reported.

The court said that if Revanna wished to expedite the matter, he was free to seek an early final hearing, and the appeal would be taken up on priority.

The former MP from Karnataka’s Hassan had been arrested on May 31, 2024, after returning to Bengaluru from Germany, where he had fled on April 26, 2024. He was suspended from the Janata Dal (Secular) on April 30, 2024.

He had fled after videos of alleged sexual assaults against several women, allegedly recorded by Prajwal Revanna himself, surfaced during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

He has since been named in four separate cases, including one in which he was convicted on August 2. A trial court found him guilty of raping a 48-year-old worker employed at his family’s farmhouse and recording the assault.

Three women have accused Prajwal Revanna of sexual assault, while the fourth case concerns allegations of sexual harassment, stalking and criminal intimidation under the Indian Penal Code.

Soon after Prajwal Revanna fled to Germany, he and his father, former state minister HD Revanna, were booked by the Karnataka Police for sexual harassment and criminal intimidation.

After being convicted, Prajwal Revanna moved the Karnataka High Court, which is scheduled to continue hearing his plea on Tuesday

A Delhi court on Tuesday granted bail to nine students who were arrested during a protest against air pollution in the national capital on November 23, The Indian Express reported.

More than 20 students had been detained from India Gate, Kartavya Path and later from outside the Parliament Street police station following the protest.

Two first information reports were registered – one against six persons at the Kartavya Path police station and another against 17 persons at the Parliament Street police station.

The cases were initially filed under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to assault, obstruction of public servants and outraging the modesty of women. On November 25, the police also added charges pertaining to making assertions prejudicial to national integration to the FIR registered at the Kartavya Path police station.

The case filed at the Parliament Street police station was linked to an alleged scuffle between the protesters and the police, the newspaper reported. All 17 accused have since been granted bail.

While eight of them received bail last week, nine were granted bail on Tuesday.

The second FIR was related to the alleged recovery of pepper sprays during the protest and the purported Maoists links of the protesters, The Indian Express reported.

The court reserved its order on Tuesday on the bail petitions of the six accused in this case. The order is expected on Thursday.

While granting bail to the nine persons on Tuesday in the case filed at the Parliament Street police station, Judicial Magistrate First Class Sahil Monga of the Patiala House Court said that further custodial detention was not necessary as the investigation officer had not sought police custody.

Monga added that the investigation did not appear to require custody.

The magistrate added that a significant portion of the objections raised by the investigating officer related not to the case filed at Parliament Street but to the investigation in the FIR at the Kartavya Path police station, The Indian Express reported.

This second case included “allegations of protest at India Gate, recovery of pepper sprays, and criminal antecedents of certain individuals”, Monga said, adding that these pertained to a different incident and cannot be the grounds to oppose bail in the present FIR.

In the second case being heard before Judicial Magistrate First Class Aridaman Singh Cheema, the counsels for the students argued that being part of WhatsApp groups that organised the protest was not a crime. The lawyers said that what happened at the site was not in their control.

“You can’t swim in two boats,” the newspaper quoted one of the counsels as saying. “Earlier they said someone else had pepper spray, now they’re pinning it on my client.”

Another lawyer said that shouting an anti-establishment slogan was not a crime.

The police argued that custody was needed as the investigation was still underway, while also noting that the permission had not been sought for the protest.

During an earlier proceeding, the police had claimed that the accused had supported a banned organisation on social media and shared articles supporting Maoist leader Madvi Hidma, who was killed in a gunfight with security forces on November 18.

The students have been accused of using criminal force against police personnel and shouting pro-Maoist slogans at the protest at India Gate on November 23.

Some of the protesters had allegedly used pepper spray on the police personnel while being removed from the site, while some had allegedly displayed posters and shouted slogans allegedly supporting Hidma.

The protest on November 23 was mainly organised by an environmental research and action collective called Himkhand, student group Bhagat Singh Chatra Ekta Manch and the discussion forum Scientists for Society.

Scientists for Society, however, said on November 24 that it joined the protest only on the subject of pollution, and that the agitation was “not the appropriate forum” to discuss Hidma’s killing.

Also read: Why the police claim that a protest against Delhi pollution had ‘Naxal’ links

The government cyber security app that smartphone manufacturers have been asked to mandatorily preload on all devices cannot be used for snooping, said Union Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Wednesday.

“Snooping is neither possible nor will it happen through this [Sanchar Saathi] app,” Scindia told Parliament, adding that the platform is meant to protect users against cyber frauds.

The Union government on Friday directed manufacturers to preinstall the Sanchar Saathi app in new phones and to add the application to devices that have already been sold through a software update within three months.

Users will not be able to disable the app, the Ministry of Communications said in a press release on Monday.

After Opposition leaders and technology policy experts expressed concern that the directive amounted to expanded surveillance without safeguards, Scindia had claimed on Tuesday that users would be able to delete the app.

However, the digital rights organisation Internet Freedom Foundation said that Scindia’s explanation was incorrect.

Paragraph 7(b) of the order issued by the Department of Telecommunications states that the Sanchar Saathi app “cannot be ‘disabled or restricted’”, the organisation said on social media.

On Wednesday, Scindia said that the government is willing to make changes to the order based on public feedback. He added that the government wants to give users the power to help them protect themselves.

During the Question Hour in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, the Congress questioned the minister’s assurance.

“Even after the app is disabled, users will not be able to know whether all its features have been disabled or not,” party MP Deepender Hooda said, asking the minister to clarify. “In such a situation, this issue is surrounded by concerns of violation of the right to privacy and suspicions of spying.”

The Internet Freedom Foundation on Tuesday said that the November 28 directive was a “deeply worrying expansion” of executive control over personal digital devices.

The requirement for the functionalities of the app not being disabled converts every smartphone “into a vessel for state-mandated software that the user cannot meaningfully refuse, control or remove”, said the organisation.

It added that the directive was so vague that while today the app is framed as a benign International Mobile Equipment Identity checker, “through a server side update, it could be repurposed for client side scanning for ‘banned’ applications, flag VPN [Virtual Private Network] usage, correlate SIM activity, or trawl SMS logs in the name of fraud detection”.

Also read: ‘A permanent surveillance backdoor’: Why Sanchar Saathi app order raises privacy fears

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday said that her government will not set up any “detention camps” in the state, adding that she follows the Constitution and practises secular politics.

The revision of the voter rolls is underway in 12 states and Union Territories, including in West Bengal. Booth-level officers began distributing enumeration forms on November 4.

Banerjee has repeatedly claimed that the Union government’s real intention behind the revision is to create a National Register of Citizens – a proposed exercise to create a list of Indian citizens and to identify undocumented immigrants.

The register was updated in Assam in 2019, after a mammoth scrutiny of ancestral family documents to weed out “illegal immigrants”, and ended up excluding 19 lakh residents of the state. The updated list, however, has not been notified six years on.

Those deemed to be foreigners were transferred to detention centres in the state.

On Tuesday, the Trinamool Congress chief also said that she did not want the public to face distress on account of the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls and urged the Union government not to issue “forceful instructions” to state government officers “like the British”, The Indian Express reported.

“If you want to give instructions, send them to the state government,” the newspaper quoted her as saying. “Otherwise, we have to save our officers.”

Banerjee also announced that the state government would provide Rs 2 lakh each to the families of 39 persons, including booth-level officers, whose deaths had been linked by families and political parties to the stress caused by the ongoing voter roll revision exercise in the state.

The chief minister said that 13 persons remained hospitalised and three others who had attempted suicide were receiving treatment. She further announced Rs 1 lakh as compensation for those injured or hospitalised.

Amid the revision of the electoral rolls, at least eight suicides by booth-level officers and two deaths due to stroke have been reported across the country.

Booth-level officers are typically primary school teachers and anganwadi, or health care workers, who are employed by state governments. They are responsible for distributing and collecting enumeration forms as part of the ongoing exercise.

They are required to go door-to-door, check the identities of new voters and verify the details of those who have died or permanently moved out of an area.

Scroll has also previously reported that the revision exercise has spread panic in West Bengal because exclusion from the voter roll is being perceived as a step towards losing citizenship.

The exercise comes even as Assembly polls are expected to take place in West Bengal in the first half of 2026.

Also read: ‘In Bengal, SIR is NRC’: Why revision of the electoral roll has spread panic in the state

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

Concerns had been raised after the announcement in Bihar that the exercise could remove eligible voters from the roll. Several petitioners also moved the Supreme Court against it.

West Bengal, among other states, has also moved the court against the exercise.

On Sunday, the Election Commission extended by one week the timeline for the revision of the electoral rolls in all 12 states and Union Territories.

The last date of submitting the forms was extended to December 11 from December 4. As per the updated schedule, the draft electoral rolls will be published on December 16 instead of December 9.

The final electoral rolls are to be published on February 14 instead of February 7.

The Union government on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that it will, on humanitarian grounds, bring back to India a pregnant woman from West Bengal and her eight-year-old son who were “pushed” into Bangladesh by the authorities on claims that they are undocumented immigrants, Live Law reported.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi that Sunali Khatun and her son Sabir will be brought back “following the procedure without prejudice to our contentions on merits and our right to put them under surveillance”.

On Monday, the bench had asked the Union government if Khatun and her son could be returned to India on humanitarian grounds. It took note of Khatun’s advanced pregnancy and sought instructions on whether she could be permitted to re-enter India through the Malda border.

Khatun, her son and husband Danish Sk were released on bail in Bangladesh on Monday evening. So was another family of Sweety Bibi and her two sons. They were arrested on August 21 for illegal entry after being “pushed” into Bangladesh by the Indian authorities in June.

They walked out of the Chapainawabganj jail at about 7.30 pm after more than three months in custody.

Their release followed a local court order that granted them bail on humanitarian grounds. A Bangladeshi citizen stood surety for the group and provided a bail bond of 5,000 taka.

The Chapainawabganj court accepted arguments that the group included a pregnant woman and children, and ordered their release on bail. However, the magistrate set conditions that they must remain in Bangladesh and appear before the court when required.

Khatun, Sweety Bibi and their families have maintained that they hail from West Bengal’s Birbum district. Khatun, her husband and son were taken into custody in Delhi on June 20, and all three were sent to Bangladesh six days later.

On September 26, the Calcutta High Court had set aside the deportation order against the six persons. It had directed that they be brought back to West Bengal within four weeks. The High Court had passed the order on a petition filed by Khatun’s father Bhodu Sekh.

Two days before the four-week period ended, the Union government in October challenged the order before the Supreme Court. The Union government and the Delhi Police questioned whether the High Court had the jurisdiction to hear the case.

In its order on Wednesday, the Supreme Court observed that the solicitor general had agreed to bring back Khatun, along with her son. It noted that Mehta had submitted that Khatun would be brought back to Delhi as she had been taken into custody from there, Live Law reported.

“However, there is a suggestion by the learned senior counsel representing the respondents that it will be advisable to shift her to the town where her father stays in the district of Birbhum,” Live Law quoted the bench as saying.

The bench also directed the West Bengal government to ensure free medical facilities for the woman.

It further directed the state government to also take care of her son.

During the proceedings, advocate Kapil Sibal, representing the West Bengal government, requested that the Union government be instructed to repatriate the other four persons who had been deported.

However, Mehta claimed that they were Bangladeshis and the Union government had a serious contest. He also said that it was surprising that the state government was appearing on a caveat in the matter and seeking protection for them.

The bench also observed that if Khatun could establish a biological connection with Bhodu Sekh, who was an Indian citizen, then she could also establish Indian citizenship, Live Law reported.

The Supreme Court will hear the matter next on December 12.

While hearing the matter last week, the Supreme Court had suggested that the Union government bring back all six persons so that they could be given an opportunity for a hearing, Live Law reported.

The solicitor general had said at the time that he would be able to prove that they were foreigners.

Since May, thousands of Bengali-speaking migrant workers have been rounded up in states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party and asked 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.

Following the Union government’s submission in Khatun’s case on Wednesday, Trinamool Congress MP and West Bengal Migrant Workers Welfare Board chairperson Samirul Islam said that justice had finally prevailed after a long wait.

On social media, Islam noted that Khatun had been “illegally deported to Bangladesh merely for speaking Bengali, and her ordeal across the border stands as a stark example of why BJP is called Bangla-Birodhi Zamindars”.

The Rajya Sabha MP added that “the relentless fight of this poor woman ultimately found victory” in the Supreme Court.

After a long wait, justice has finally prevailed. The Central Government has agreed, on humanitarian grounds, to bring back pregnant Sunali Khatun and her minor son.

She was illegally deported to Bangladesh merely for speaking Bengali, and her ordeal across the border stands as… pic.twitter.com/N9Z2TGLnLO

— Samirul Islam (@SamirulAITC) December 3, 2025

Also read:

• Bangladeshi or Indian? Investigating Modi government’s crackdown on ‘illegal immigrants’

• Pregnant woman from Bengal forced into Bangladesh. Family has land records from five generations ago

The Tamil Nadu government has urged the Supreme Court to recall its interim order directing an inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation into the stampede at a Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam party rally in Tamil Nadu’s Karur district, which left 41 persons dead, Live Law reported on Tuesday.

In an affidavit, the state said the order effectively granted the petitioner’s final relief at an interim stage by taking the investigation away from the state police and putting it under an external supervisory committee.

The Supreme Court ordered a CBI investigation into the stampede on October 13 after hearing multiple petitions, including one from Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam general secretary Aadhav Arjuna.

The party took objection to the High Court forming a Special Investigation Team comprising only officers from the Tamil Nadu Police.

Now the state of Tamil Nadu has argued that the October order, which also suspended the Justice Aruna Jagadeesan Commission and created a three-member supervisory panel led by former Supreme Court judge Ajay Rastogi, “virtually allowed the writ petition” even as questions on the maintainability of the appeal were still pending, Live Law reported.

“There is no prima facie evidence that the investigation conducted by the State Police was tainted, biased, or actuated by mala fides,” The Indian Express quoted the affidavit as saying.

The state further said this approach was inconsistent with previous Supreme Court rulings that a Central Bureau of Investigation probe is an extraordinary measure that should be “used sparingly and cautiously”.

The state said the petitioners relied mainly on media reports, conjecture and political allegations, and had not demonstrated any procedural lapse by the Karur police.

Responding to the Supreme Court’s concern that senior police officers had made public comments exonerating the administration, the state said officers are required to provide information during major disasters and that such communication cannot be treated as evidence of bias, The Indian Express reported.

Tamil Nadu also objected to the direction that the supervisory committee include two Indian Police Service officers who are not from the state, arguing that the term amounted to discrimination on the basis of place of birth, The Indian Express reported.

In the affidavit, the state government also attributed the stampede to a series of “reckless, negligent and uncoordinated actions” by the organisers and cadres of the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam, Live Law reported.

The stampede had taken place on September 27 at Veluchamy Puram in Karur, when party chief Vijay was addressing supporters from his campaign vehicle.

The first information report filed in the matter alleged that while permission had been granted for 10,000 attendees, more than 25,000 persons gathered at the venue. A day before the event, television channels had said that Vijay would arrive at Karur by noon, but he reached the district by 4.45 pm.

Among those who died were 18 women and nine children.

Last month, two reports were tabled in the Assam Assembly on the Nellie massacre – one of the largest mass killings in post-independent India.

Both the reports arrived at different conclusions.

The Tewary Commission, which had been set up by the Congress state government, said that the Indira Gandhi government’s decision to hold Assembly elections in Assam at the peak of an anti-foreigners’ movement was not to blame for the violence in 1983.

In February that year, 1,800 Bengali Muslims were massacred in Assam’s Morigaon district days after Assembly elections were held under President’s rule. No one has been punished for the killings in all these years.

A different narrative was put forward by a second commission formed by Mukti Jujaru Sanmilan and organisations spearheading the Assam movement, which mobilised people against so-called illegal migrants. The Justice (retired) TU Mehta Commission ascribed the violence squarely on the imposition of the elections against the wishes of the people.

The Himanta Biswa Sarma government’s decision to table the “unofficial” Mehta Commission findings has revived the narrative about the anxiety over “illegal immigrants” ahead of the Assembly election.

But, as the Japanese scholar Makiko Kimura pointed out, neither report addresses the question of justice for the dead.

Kimura wrote The Nellie Massacre of 1983: Agency of Rioters (2013), one of the few, scholarly investigations into the violence, which looks into the reasons for the riots, why the attackers participated in the violence, the role of organisations like the All Assam Students’ Union and the government and its agencies.

In this interview with Scroll, Kimura explains the motivations of the two commissions and what happens when justice eludes victims for decades. Excerpts:

What do you think of the Assam government’s decision to table two reports on the 1983 Nellie massacre after so many years?
I have no clue why the government decided to make them public now. Most probably, it is just to divert the attention of the public from some other issues, as many others say.

What are the major differences in the findings of the two commissions? What did both say about the violence against the Muslims peasants? Did they hold anyone responsible for the massacre?
As I say in my book, from the beginning these two commissions represented the interest of the organisations or institutions which asked them to report on the violence.

Both the Tewary Commission report and Mehta Commission Report do not provide details regarding the attackers involved in the collective violence.

The role of the top leaders of the AASU or the All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad in any of the incidents has not been established beyond the reports in newspapers, weekly journals, and other publications.

The commissions were, from the beginning, biased towards certain organisations, and their work was utilised to show either the central government’s or [the Assam movement] leaders’ perspectives.

The conclusion of the Tewary commission report is very ambiguous about the cause of the violence. It shies away from criticising the government. It criticised the students’ movement leaders but not very strongly. It only blamed the lower rank police officials for negligence and was guilty and punished. That’s it.

The responsibility of the government and their decision to hold elections in such unusual conditions has never been touched upon.

The Tewary commission did not say anything about what kind of measures should be taken for compensation or justice. I don’t think the government has ever discussed this topic either.

The Mehta Commission Report is also silent on the Assam movement leaders and their responsibility. I am sure that they were pretty aware that if they continued with their boycott of the elections, something would happen especially because the local police were influenced by the movement leaders and their propaganda that they have to drive out foreigners of Assam.

It is regrettable that there has been no neutral and third-party investigation into the Nellie massacre, such as the ones conducted by the Peoples Union for Democratic Rights or People’s Union for Civil Liberties after violent incidents in other parts of India.

Tell me a little about your experience visiting Nellie over the years. What struck you about the survivors?
I was struck by the fact that most people had stayed in the same village even after the attack. Every family has lost members of their family. Sirajuddin, who was quoted in my book, and who gave testimony in the documentary by Subasri Krishnan, What the field remembers, lost four daughters. And his family is not an exception.

Many people said they have lost 10, 20 family members. And they live with those memories.

I have visited a few times. The last time was on February 18, 2023. Every year, they conduct some memorial, but it was smaller and more discreet that year. I heard the organisers were afraid there could be repercussions.

The Tewary Commission in its conclusion said that the 1983 violence was not communal, though over 2,000 Muslims were killed. How do you read this finding?
A recent article in The Print quotes the commission as saying: “It is entirely unwarranted to give a communal colour to the incident’s under enquiry. All sections of the society suffered as a result of the senseless violence.”

It is true that there were numerous violent incidents, and there were no fixed victims or attackers. But I am sure the Muslims were most targeted. There was no other incident on the same scale as Nellie.

It is clear that the Assam police overlooked warnings on possible disturbances in Nellie because they were sympathetic to the movement.

In your view, what led to the 1983 violence and what role did the Assam movement leaders and the government play?
As I say in my book, the first and foremost case was the central government’s failure in handling the situation skillfully and, to some extent, the AASU’s failure. The Assembly election became an occasion for both the Congress and the AASU to pursue success in their attempt to gain control in Assam, and thus, the two powerful organisations’ interests clashed.

To sum up, both the AASU and the Union government did not make enough effort to prevent the violence that had easily been predicted. Instead, both parties tried to utilise the opportunity to gain power to their own end. In this way, neither can escape the criticism of instigating small-scale violence and creating an atmosphere where everybody felt threatened.

Why could the violence not be prevented in the initial days? Why did the state machinery fail to stop the riots?
In a report in India Today on May 15, 1983, Arun Shourie pointed out three things. It helps you to understand why the state machinery could not stop the Nellie incident.

First, ensuring a free and fair poll was not the priority for the police and administrative officers, as well as security personnel. For them, the goal was to be able to proclaim one way or another that the ritual of the elections had been gone through. Thus, police and security personnel were made to concentrate on the polling booths in order to protect the 8,000 officers who had been airlifted for polling duty, and the candidates and their families.

Second, the local policemen were not satisfied with the Centre’s decision, and they became very hostile towards the state apparatus. There was obvious hostility between the local Assam police and the CRPF Personnel.

Third, there was a wireless message sent on February 15 by the Nagaon police station that warned of a possible attack in the area. The village residents had visited the officer-in-charge of the Nagaon Police

station, Zahirud Din Ahmed, and requested him to take some action. There was a specific warning from the district headquarters to the police station in Jagiroad, but the concerned officers failed to take any action.

The government was not really concerned about the violence, they were mostly focused on the elections. They did not have the will to prevent the violence.

What does the lack of justice for riots like this do to communities?
I think overall, Muslims keep losing trust in the government and their own country. When you isolate and marginalise minorities, it sows seeds of future trouble. In the end, it destabilises the country.

The Air Quality Index in Delhi deteriorated again on Wednesday, with six of the 39 monitoring stations recording readings above 400, which is categorised as “severe”, as per the Sameer application at 10.05 am.

The national capital’s average AQI stood at 368, the application, which provides hourly updates published by the Central Pollution Control Board, showed.

A day earlier, the overall AQI had hit 372, rising from 304 on Monday and 279 on Sunday.

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

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

An AQI in the “severe” category signifies hazardous pollution levels that can pose serious risks even to healthy individuals.

In areas adjoining the national capital, Noida recorded an AQI of 386, followed by Ghaziabad with a 356 reading. Greater Noida reported an index of 343.

Delhi has been recording air quality in the “poor” or worse categories since mid-October, leading to Stage 3 restrictions under the Graded Response Action Plan being imposed on November 11.

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

Restrictions under Stage 3 entail a ban on non-essential construction work and the closure of stone crushers and mining activities, in addition to the measures already imposed under Stage 1 and Stage 2.

They also include the shifting of primary school up to Class 5 to hybrid mode. Parents and students have the option to choose between offline and online classes wherever available.

Additionally, the use of BS-III petrol and BS-IV diesel cars is restricted in Delhi and the NCR. BS norms, or Bharat Stage Emission Standards, are regulations set by the Indian government to control air pollutants from motor vehicles.

However, the Commission for Air Quality Management on November 26 withdrew the Stage 3 restrictions, citing improved air quality. The restrictions under the GRAP 1 and GRAP 2 remain in force.

Air quality deteriorates sharply in the winter months in Delhi, which is often ranked the world’s most polluted capital.

Stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana, along with the lighting of firecrackers during Diwali, vehicular pollution, falling temperatures, decreased wind speeds and emissions from industries and coal-fired plants contribute to the problem.

On Sunday, the Supreme Court directed the Commission for Air Quality Management to submit a report within a week on measures taken to address pollution sources such as vehicular emissions and construction dust.

The commission is a statutory body formed in 2020 to address pollution in the National Capital Region and the adjoining areas.

Activist Gulfisha Fatima, accused of being part of a “larger conspiracy” behind the 2020 Delhi riots, told the Supreme Court on Tuesday that the prolonged incarceration of undertrials in the case makes “a caricature of our criminal justice system”, Bar and Bench reported.

Fatima and four others – Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam, Meeran Haider and Shadab Ahmad – have challenged a September 2 Delhi High Court order that dismissed their bail applications.

The five persons had been arrested between January and September 2020 in connection with the communal violence that broke out in North East Delhi in February 2020 between supporters of the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act and those opposing it. The violence had left 53 dead and hundreds injured. Most of those killed were Muslims.

Appearing for Fatima on Tuesday, advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi told a bench of Justices Aravind Kumar and NV Anjaria that such extended incarceration amounts to “pre-trial conviction”, Bar and Bench reported.

Singhvi added: “Nobody needs to be punished like this unless they are convicted.”

Advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Khalid, told the court that he cannot be held responsible for delays in the trial, Bar and Bench.

Sibal argued that if bail were denied, Khalid would remain in jail for “another three years” as an undertail despite no “single act of violence” being attributed to him.

“That will be eight years without trial,” Bar and Bench quoted Sibal telling the court. “I am an academic. I am an individual. I have not been attributed for any overt act.”

Khalid, Imam, Fatima, Haider and Rehman were charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act, the Arms Act and sections of the Indian Penal Code.

On October 30, in an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court, the Delhi Police opposed their petitions, arguing that their alleged actions were part of a coordinated “regime change operation” carried out under the guise of civil dissent.

The Delhi police had also submitted that the petitioners were playing the “victim card” on the grounds of long incarceration, and claimed that they were themselves responsible for delaying the trial for “mala fide and mischievous reasons”.

On October 31, Khalid, Imam and Fatima told the court that they had not called for violence and were only exercising their right to peaceful protest against the CAA.

The Delhi Police had argued on November 18 that the five of them cannot seek parity with co-accused Devangana Kalita, Natasha Narwal and Asif Iqbal Tanha, saying the High Court’s 2021 bail order in their favour was passed on an incorrect interpretation of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

Court examines Imam’s speeches under UAPA

During the hearing on Tuesday, the Supreme Court also examined whether some parts of Imam’s speeches during the protests against the Citizenship Act could amount to incitement or a “terrorist act” under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, Live Law reported.

During earlier hearings, the Delhi Police had played video clips of Imam calling for blockades, nationwide chakka jams and for protesters in the North East to “cut off” the chicken-neck corridor to isolate Assam. These speeches were flagged as provocative and inflammatory.

Advocate Siddharth Dave, appearing for Imam, said that the activist was being unfairly labelled an “intellectual terrorist” despite never having been convicted of any offence, Live Law reported.

He argued that Imam had already been prosecuted in separate first information reports for the same speeches being used to project a “conspiracy”, including one registered on January 25, 2020. Dave argued that Imam was in custody even before the February 2020 riots took place.

The lawyer submitted that a speech by itself cannot amount to a terrorist act and said that the prosecution must show further action beyond the speeches to sustain a charge under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

Dave also said that none of the 750 FIRs relating to the 2020 riots named Imam as an accused person. He also highlighted an order of the Allahabad High Court which granted Imam bail, holding that his speeches did not call for violence.

Additional Solicitor General SV Raju sought time to respond.

The hearing will continue on Wednesday.

Also read: How the Delhi Police’s riots conspiracy case is built on sand

This October, residents of Delhi NCR breathed a sigh of relief – 10 days into the month, the air quality was still in the “moderate” category, uncharacteristic for this time of the year.

Usually, by this time, the region gets enveloped in a thick layer of smog, owing particularly to cold weather, low wind speed, and farm fires from the neighbouring states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. This pushes the air quality index to hazardous levels, leaving residents choking and breathless.

This year, a late monsoon withdrawal, coupled with farmers delaying stubble burning in the fields due to floods in September, has meant that air pollution is beginning to increase, but later than usual.

Stubble-burning, however, is only one among the plethora of environmental challenges the country is facing – soil-quality deterioration, groundwater depletion and contamination are giving policymakers sleepless nights.

Though the problems appear distinct, they share a common origin: contemporary agricultural practices.

Legally, too, they represent a deeper structural issue – the divergence between India’s agricultural and environmental law-policy frameworks.

Despite clear synergies between the two, the country’s law-policy architecture continues to treat agriculture and environment as isolated and distinct spheres.

Obsolete agricultural policies

India’s agricultural policy has been driven by the logic of food security and justifiably so. Feeding a large population was amongst the foremost challenges for the newly independent Indian state in 1947. The Green Revolution, launched under the guidance of geneticist Dr MS Swaminathan during the 1960s, was directed towards the singular goal of enhancing agricultural productivity.

By adopting measures such as double-cropping, increased farming areas, adoption of high yield variety seeds, use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides and improved irrigation facilities, the Green Revolution delivered on that goal.

But the productivity “hangover” did not fade. The country went into overdrive after the liberalisation of the 1990s, and the hangover has continued to drive India’s agricultural policy.

Consider, for instance, the “Terms of Reference” of a recent NITI Aayog report on pulses. The report clearly points to a policy preference for self-sufficiency and productivity enhancement of pulses with only a tangential reference to sustainable agriculture.

Several other examples such as subsidies for fertilisers, power and irrigation suggest a similar attitude in agricultural policies.

It is no-one’s case that a country such as India should abandon productivity as a policy preference in the wake of its rising population. But focusing solely on productivity makes little sense amidst increasing environmental challenges.

Environment-agriculture interdependency

Agriculture and the environment are not two different worlds. Farming depends on soil, water and climate. Conversely, agriculture shapes their health.

A recent IPCC report notes that an expansion of areas under agriculture has contributed to an increase in net anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (around 13% of carbon dioxide, 44% of methane and 81% of nitrous oxide globally during 2007-2016), loss of natural ecosystems and declining biodiversity.

It further notes that agriculture currently accounts for about 70% of global freshwater use. The situation in India is even more dire. The Green Revolution has caused loss of indigenous crop varieties and also substantially changed the Indian food consumption pattern.

It has also over-stressed water resources: 91% percent of freshwater use in India is attributable to the agricultural sector. Substantial and unwarranted use of pesticides and fertilisers have caused water pollution, significant damage to human health and soil and loss of human lives.

Residents of North India are now accustomed to breathing alarming levels of hazardous air every year caused by stubble burning during the winter season. Despite clear synergies between them, the country’s law-policy architecture continues to treat agriculture and environment as isolated and distinct spheres.

Bad to worse

What is worse is that the architecture of India’s environmental law continues to provide a safe harbour for agricultural activities.

This is because Indian environmental statutes are primarily directed at regulating and minimising industrial impact on the environment. Take for example the Water & Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Acts of 1974 and 1981 respectively. These legislations pay minimal to no attention to the impact of conventional agricultural practices on the affected environmental systems.

The Environmental Protection Act of 1986, an overarching environmental legislation in the country, takes the same trajectory. Despite adopting an expansive definition for “environment”, “environmental pollution” and “hazardous substances”, it makes no reference to pollution caused through agricultural activities. Same is the case with the Environmental Impact Assessment Notifications of 2006.

Such a dichotomy in India’s environmental and agricultural law-policy is absurd. The need of the hour is to align them, particularly in light of climate change.

It must be understood that unsustainable agricultural productivity cannot fulfill the twin goals of food security and ecological resilience for present and future Indians.

Inadequate efforts

Governmental agriculture policies in the last decade or so have echoed this concern. Different programmes, initiatives and drives have been launched towards that end.

The most notable among them is the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture. As one of the core missions under India’s National Action Plan for Climate Change, the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture is an umbrella initiative that focuses on agroforestry, rainfed areas, water and soil health management, climate impacts and adaptation.

The Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana also promotes adoption of precision farming techniques such as micro-irrigation. Similarly, the Integrated Watershed Management Programme supports rainwater harvesting.

These policy shifts are optimistic, but they are under-financed and have slow adoption rates. A recent report highlights that the budget allocation to National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture is minuscule (0.8%), compared to the overall budget of the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare.

Coordinated and incremental actions

The biggest hurdle in transitioning towards sustainable agricultural practices appears to be the fear of low agricultural productivity by policymakers and farmers themselves.

Other factors include lack of knowledge and training among farmers, the absence of a safety net from potential loss of yields, limited incentives for shifting to sustainable agricultural practices and under-developed markets for sustainable agricultural products.

The government should focus on addressing these concerns and also convince farmers and organisations working with farmers of the positive impacts of sustainable agriculture such as low input costs, better nutritional value and health benefits.

Undoubtedly, the geographic spread and the socio-economic and political significance of agriculture pose enormous challenges for law and policymakers in India to effectuate meaningful shifts towards it.

But if the transition towards sustainable agriculture is to happen, some hard decisions need to be made. It is an urgent endeavor that requires coordinated and incremental actions from all stakeholders, particularly the governments and farmers.

Akhilendra Pratap Singh teaches law at BML Munjal University, Haryana. His research and teaching interests span constitutional and administrative law, environmental law, and comparative law.

Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

The Allahabad High Court has directed the Uttar Pradesh administration to ensure that members of the Scheduled Castes who have converted to Christianity do not avail benefits meant for the designated groups.

Citing a 2024 Supreme Court order, the bench said on November 21 that persons availing reservations by claiming that they belong to a Scheduled Caste despite having converted amounts to a “fraud on the Constitution”.

The High Court set a four-month deadline for all district magistrates in the state to identify such cases.

The direction by a bench of Justice Praveen Kumar Giri came while dismissing an application filed by a person, Jitendra Sahani, who is accused of making derogatory comments about Hindu deities and promoting communal enmity, to quash the case against him.

The court noted that while the man had stated in his affidavit that he is a Hindu, the additional government advocate had drawn the bench’s attention to a witness’s account that Sahani had converted to Christianity and become a priest.

The order quoted the witness as alleging that Sahani had ridiculed Hinduism by claiming it offered no respect because of caste hierarchies, and that converting to Christianity would lead to jobs, business growth and economic benefits from a “missionary”.

The court said that it finds it pertinent to mention that according to the 1950 Constitution Scheduled Caste Order, no person who belongs to a community other than Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist shall be deemed to be a member of the Scheduled Caste.

It asked the district magistrate of Maharajganj to enquire about the religion of the applicant within three months and take action against him if he is found guilty of forgery.

The court also asked the Uttar Pradesh government to look into the matter and take action or pass orders directing the authorities “so that law may be executed in reality/true sense”.

The court cited the 2024 Supreme Court judgement to state that upon conversion to Christianity, a person ceases to belong to their original caste.

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

Amid criticism from Opposition leaders and technology policy experts, Union Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia claimed that users will be able to delete the government cyber security app Sanchar Saathi, which smartphone manufacturers have been asked to mandatorily preload on all devices. However, the digital rights organisation Internet Freedom Foundation pointed out that Scindia’s explanation was incorrect.

Paragraph 7(b) of the order issued by the Department of Telecommunications on Friday states that the app “cannot be ‘disabled or restricted’”, the organisation said on social media. It also said that the directive was a “deeply worrying expansion” of executive control over personal digital devices.

The Congress also criticised the directive, stating that it was “beyond unconstitutional” and demanded that it should be rolled back immediately. Read on.

Shiv Sena MLA Santosh Bangar was booked for allegedly violating the election rules after a video showed him entering a polling booth while a woman was casting her vote during the local body polls in Maharashtra’s Hingoli district. Bangar belongs to the Shiv Sena faction led by Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.

The video widely shared online showed Bangar entering the polling booth, peeking into the enclosure and speaking to the woman who was casting her vote.

Opposition leader Varsha Gaikwad alleged that Bangar was “directly telling a lady to vote for him”, and that the MLA and his supporters were “openly using phones inside the booth”. The video also showed him allegedly shouting political slogans inside the polling booth. Read on.

The Bombay High Court postponed the counting of votes and declaration of results for the local body elections in Maharashtra from December 3 to December 21. The order came on petitions stating that declaring results in phases would “materially influence” voting and the outcome of the second leg of elections.

Last week, the State Election Commission rescheduled polls in 24 local bodies to December 20.

The High Court directed that the Model Code of Conduct remain in force until the results are declared and prohibited the conduct of exit polls till December 20. Read on.

The Supreme Court stayed the trial proceedings against Karnataka’s former Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa in a case pertaining to the alleged sexual assault of a 17-year-old girl. The decision came on a petition filed by the Bharatiya Janata Party leader against the Karnataka High Court’s refusal to quash the case against him.

The top court issued a notice to the state government, asking it to examine whether the matter should be remanded back to the High Court for fresh consideration. Read on.

The Supreme Court recommended that the Election Commission further extend the deadline from December 11 for submitting enumeration forms under the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Kerala. The court made the recommendation in view of the ongoing preparations for local body elections in the state.

Local body polls are scheduled in two phases on December 9 and December 11. The counting of votes will take place on December 13. The Kerala government has moved the court seeking to postpone the revision exercise until after the polls are conducted.

On Sunday, the Election Commission extended by one week the timeline for the exercise. Read on.

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Shiv Sena MLA Santosh Bangar was on Tuesday booked for allegedly violating the election rules after a video showed him entering a polling booth while a woman was casting her vote during the local body polls in Maharashtra’s Hingoli district, The Indian Express reported.

Bangar belongs to the Shiv Sena faction led by Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.

The incident took place inside a booth in the Bazaar area of Kalamnuri town.

On Tuesday, voting was underway for more than 260 municipal councils and nagar panchayats in the state.

The video widely shared online purportedly showed Bangar entering the polling booth, peeking into the enclosure and speaking to the woman who was casting her vote.

Shinde Sena's Santosh Bangar is seen here directly telling a lady to vote for him. His supporter then looks inside the polling enclosure and points out the button to the lady. He and his supporters are openly using phones inside the booth. How can they call this a free and fair… pic.twitter.com/60MOJMvvcW

— Prof. Varsha Eknath Gaikwad (@VarshaEGaikwad) December 2, 2025

Opposition leader Varsha Gaikwad alleged that Bangar was “directly telling a lady to vote for him”.

“His supporter then looks inside the polling enclosure and points out the button to the lady,” the Congress leader alleged on social media. “He and his supporters are openly using phones inside the booth.”

“How can they call this a free and fair election?” Gaikwad asked.

The video showed Bangar allegedly shouting political slogans inside the polling booth, The Indian Express reported.

Reacting to the incident, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said that “people’s representatives should maintain the spirit of democracy” and should “think about how we are behaving in the elections, what message we are giving”, ABP Mazha reported.

Earlier on Tuesday, PTI reported that election officials had ordered an investigation into the matter.

An unidentified election official was quoted as saying that the returning officer at the booth has been asked to submit a report about the incident. Action will be taken based on the report, the polling official said.

The Bombay High Court on Tuesday postponed the counting of votes in the elections from December 3 to December 21. The Nagpur bench said that declaring the results in phases would “materially influence” voting and the outcome of the second leg of polls scheduled to take place later this month.

Last week, the State Election Commission rescheduled polls in 24 local bodies to December 20 after identifying irregularities related to withdrawal timelines and symbol allocation.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday recommended that the Election Commission further extend the deadline from December 11 for submitting enumeration forms under the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in Kerala, reported Live Law.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi made the recommendation in view of the ongoing preparations for local body elections in the state.

Local body polls in Kerala are scheduled in two phases on December 9 and December 11, with counting on December 13.

Kerala is also among the 12 states and Union Territories where the exercise to revise electoral rolls is underway.

The Left Democratic Front government in the state has moved the Supreme Court seeking to postpone the revision exercise until after the local body elections are conducted.

On Sunday, the Election Commission extended by one week the timeline for the exercise. The last date of submitting the forms was extended to December 11 from December 4.

As per the updated schedule, the draft electoral rolls will be published on December 16 instead of December 9. Voters will be able to file their claims and objections between December 16 and January 15, and hearings will be held by February 7 instead of January 31.

The final electoral rolls are to be published on February 14 instead of February 7.

On Tuesday, after the bench was informed about the extension of the timeline, it observed that officials engaged in election duties should also get sufficient time to upload their forms, Live Law reported.

“You extend it more so anyone missed out they will also get an opportunity,” Kant was quoted as telling advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, who represented the Election Commission.

The court said that the request for a further extension was “just and fair” and merited consideration by the poll body.

The State Election Commission told the court that the revision exercise was not hampering the polls, pointing out that personnel assigned to election duties had been exempted from the voter roll revision responsibilities.

The court allowed the Kerala government to submit a detailed representation to the Election Commission explaining why the deadline should be extended.

The commission has been asked to decide by Thursday after considering the proposal “objectively and sympathetically”, Live Law reported

The Supreme Court on Tuesday questioned how far the law should be stretched to accept persons who immigrate to India illegally, Bar and Bench reported.

The court also asked if the Union government had issued any order that declared Rohingyas as refugees.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi was hearing a habeas corpus plea, which alleged that five Rohingya persons had been detained by the authorities and then disappeared. The petition sought that the deportation of undocumented migrants be carried out in line with the processes.

Kant said that India had a “sensitive border” in the north and questioned whether immigrants should be given access to the country’s resources at the cost of the needs of Indian citizens, Bar and Bench reported.

“And so you want a red carpet for them [undocumented migrants],” he was quoted as saying. You enter through [a] tunnel, etc and then you are entitled to food, shelter, right to education for children etc.”

Kant also said that “asking habeas corpus” was “very fanciful”, Bar and Bench reported. A habeas corpus is a petition through which courts can order the authorities to produce a person before them to verify if they have been detained.

The court questioned whether there was a basis to show that the persons who had allegedly disappeared are refugees. “If somebody is an intruder...do we have an obligation to keep them inside?” Kant was quoted as saying.

When the counsel for the petitioner said that the persons had been detained by the Delhi Police in May and that there had been no information about their whereabouts, Kant asked if there was any government order declaring Rohingyas as refugees, according to Live Law.

“Refugee is a well-defined legal term and there is a prescribed authority by the government to declare them,” Live Law quoted Kant as saying. “If there is no legal status of a refugee, and somebody is an intruder, and he enters illegally, do we have an obligation to keep that fellow here?”

The counsel said that the plea was not seeking refugee status for the Rohingyas and was not opposing their deportation. But the deportation must be carried out as per the procedure, the counsel added.

The bench will hear the matter next on December 16.

The Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court on Tuesday postponed the counting of votes and declaration of results for the municipal council, nagar parishad and nagar panchayat elections in Maharashtra from December 3 to December 21, Bar and Bench reported.

The directive came while voting was underway for 264 municipal councils and nagar panchayats in the state.

Last week, the State Election Commission rescheduled polls in 24 local bodies to December 20 after identifying irregularities related to withdrawal timelines and symbol allocation, PTI reported.

On Tuesday, a division bench of Justices Anil S Kilor and Rajnish R Vyas said that declaring results in phases would “materially influence” voting and the outcome of the second leg of elections, Bar and Bench reported. The court held that the results for all phases must be declared together.

The bench also directed that the Model Code of Conduct remain in force until the results are declared and prohibited the conduct of exit polls till December 20.

The order came on at least 10 petitions seeking simultaneous declaration of results for the local body elections.

The petitioners had argued that announcing results separately for each phase would compromise the fairness of the process, Bar and Bench reported.

“The decision [of phase-wise results] has a direct effect of creating a two-tier electoral process within the same municipal council and further conferring an undue political and psychological advantage upon candidates in the remaining wards who will be contesting against the background of an already declared Council composition,” Bar and Bench quoted the petitioners as saying.

The petitioners said that phased declarations violate the fundamental principle of free and fair elections and the requirement of a level playing field for all candidates.

Similar petitions have also been filed before the Aurangabad Bench and the Kolhapur Circuit Bench of the High Court, though no orders have been passed yet in those cases.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday issued a stay on the trial proceedings against Karnataka’s former Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa in a case pertaining to the alleged sexual assault of a 17-year-old girl, Live Law reported.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi passed the order after hearing a petition filed by the Bharatiya Janata Party leader against the Karnataka High Court’s refusal to quash the case against him.

A bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya issued notice to the Karnataka government to examine whether the matter should be remanded back to the High Court for fresh consideration, according to Live Law.

The High Court had on November 13 upheld a February order of a special court in Bengaluru that had taken cognisance of a chargesheet in the case and had directed Yediyurappa to appear before it.

The case against Yediyurappa was registered on March 14, 2024, under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act for allegedly assaulting a minor girl, who is a rape survivor in a separate case from 2015.

He also faces charges of sexual harassment under Section 354A of the Indian Penal Code.

The 82-year-old leader is accused of having assaulted the girl on February 2, 2024, when she and her mother met him to seek help in the 2015 rape case.

During proceedings before the Supreme Court, advocate Sidharth Luthra, representing Yediyurappa, submitted that the High Court had ignored key evidence, Bar and Bench reported.

“There are certain statements which prosecution suppresses,” said Luthra. “High Court has ignored facts that there are people present saying nothing as such happened. He [Yediyurappa] has been four times chief minister.”

The advocate also claimed that the BJP leader was “suffering due to political vendetta”, Live Law reported.

In response, the chief justice asked: “How can you compel High Court to hold a mini trial?”

During the hearing on November 13 in the High Court, the judge directed the special court not to insist on Yediyurappa’s appearance during the trial unless “his presence is essential”. It also clarified that he is free to seek discharge before the trial court.

On February 7, the High Court had granted Yediyurappa protection from arrest and sent the matter back to the trial court, noting that the special court had erred in taking cognisance of the chargesheet. It had then directed the court to pass a reasoned order.

The trial court had taken cognisance again on February 28, after which the High Court stayed the proceedings in March.

POCSO case against Yediyurappa

The complainant has said that she and her mother met Yediyurappa at his Bengaluru residence on February 2, 2024.

While her mother was explaining the details of the 2015 rape case, she was asked to wait in another room, where the former chief minister allegedly molested her.

Yediyurappa has denied the allegation. He told investigators in June 2024 that he had only been helping the family with legal support in the earlier rape case.

Meanwhile, Yediyurappa and his three associates, Arun YM, Rudresh M and Y Mariswamy, were also charged under provisions of the Indian Penal Code related to destruction of evidence and offering bribes for concealing the offence for allegedly destroying a video recorded by the girl’s mother during the confrontation with the former chief minister after the alleged incident of sexual assault.

Union Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Tuesday claimed that users will be able to delete the government cyber security app that smartphone manufacturers have been asked to mandatorily preload on all devices.

However, the digital rights organisation Internet Freedom Foundation pointed out that Scindia’s explanation was incorrect.

Paragraph 7(b) of the order issued by the Department of Telecommunications on Friday states that the Sanchar Saathi app “cannot be ‘disabled or restricted’”, the organisation said on social media.

The Union government directed manufacturers to preinstall the app in new phones and to add the application to devices that have already been sold through a software update within three months.

Users will not be able to disable the app, the Ministry of Communications said in a press release on Monday.

The comment by Scindia on Tuesday came following pushback by Opposition leaders and technology policy experts who expressed concern that the directive amounted to expanded surveillance without safeguards.

The Congress said that the directive by the telecom department was “beyond unconstitutional” and demanded that it should be rolled back immediately.

Party leader KC Venugopal said that “Big Brother cannot watch us”, adding that the right to privacy is an intrinsic part of the fundamental right to life and liberty.

“A pre-loaded government app that cannot be uninstalled is a dystopian tool to monitor every Indian,” Venugopal said on social media. “It is a means to watch over every movement, interaction and decision of each citizen.”

The Congress MP said that the directive was part of a series of “relentless assaults” on constitutional rights.

Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Tuesday said that Sanchar Saathi was a “snooping app”.

“Everyone must have the right to privacy to send messages to family and friends without the government looking at everything,” Vadra told reporters. “They’re turning this country into a dictatorship in every form.”

She added: “There’s a very fine line between reporting fraud and seeing what every citizen of India is doing on their phone. That’s not how it should work.”

Vadra said that while there is a need for strengthened cybersecurity, it does not give the government an excuse to “go into every citizen’s telephone”.

Communist Party of India (Marxist) MP John Brittas told ANI that the directive was a “blatant invasion” into privacy.

The matter was also raised in Parliament on Tuesday.

During a discussion on a separate matter in Rajya Sabha, Congress MP Renuka Chowdhury said that there are “many ways in which the Modi government disrupts democracy” and the Sanchar Saathi app is “yet another instrument that diminishes the rights of citizens, just like the SIR [special intensive revision of electoral rolls]”.

Scindia told reporters outside Parliament that the app enables users to ensure their safety.

“When the Opposition has no issues, and they are trying to find some, we cannot help them,” he said. “Our duty is to help the consumers and ensure their safety.”

Bharatiya Janata Party publicity chief Amit Malviya said that the app will only work after user activation. It is a “cybersecurity safeguard, not a surveillance mechanism”, he said.

Not proportional, app could be repurposed: Digital rights group

The Internet Freedom Foundation on Tuesday said that the November 28 directive was a “deeply worrying expansion” of executive control over personal digital devices.

The means chosen to curb International Mobile Equipment Identity fraud are disproportionate, legally fragile and structurally hostile to user privacy and autonomy, it said.

The requirement for the functionalities of the app not being disabled converts every smartphone “into a vessel for state-mandated software that the user cannot meaningfully refuse, control or remove”.

The foundation said that for the app to work, it would “almost certainly need system level or root level access” to the device.

“That design choice erodes the protections that normally prevent one app from peering into the data of others, and turns Sanchar Saathi into a permanent, non-consensual point of access sitting inside the operating system of every Indian smartphone user,” it added.

IFF's Statement on the Sanchar Saathi App Pre-Installation Directive

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT), specifically its AI & Digital Intelligence Unit (AI & DIU) on 21st November, 2024 has under the Telecommunications (Telecom Cyber Security) Rules, 2024 issued a…

— Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) (@internetfreedom) December 2, 2025

The organisation argued that the mandatory installation of the app does not pass the proportionality test laid down by the 2017 KS Puttaswamy judgement, which established the right to privacy as a fundamental right. The test requires that any intrusion into the right to privacy must meet the standards of legality, necessity and proportionality.

It also said that the directive was so vague that it while today the app is framed as a benign IMEI checker, “through a server side update, it could be repurposed for client side scanning for ‘banned’ applications, flag VPN [Virtual Private Network] usage, correlate SIM activity, or trawl SMS logs in the name of fraud detection”.

The foundation said that the Union government was asking all smartphone users to accept an “open ended, updatable surveillance capability” on their personal devices “without the basic guardrails that a constitutional democracy should insist on as a matter of course”.

Technology policy expert Pranesh Prakash questioned the necessity of mandating the Sanchar Saathi app when the government already has the Central Equipment Identity Register to blacklist IMEI numbers.

“All telecom networks in India have EIRs [equipment identity registers] to check and block spoofed/null IMEIs and reported IMEIs (of stolen phones) with the Indian govt running a CEIR,” he said. “I still haven’t heard a good argument as to why having this app pre-installed at a device level is helpful.”

All telecom networks in India have EIRs to check and block spoofed/null IMEIs and reported IMEIs (of stolen phones) with the Indian govt running a CEIR.

I still haven't heard a good argument as to why having this app pre-installed at a device level is helpful. https://t.co/0hw1KY0Jf8

— Pranesh Prakash (@pranesh) December 2, 2025

Technology company Apple does not plan to comply with New Delhi’s directive, Reuters quoted three unidentified persons in the industry as saying.

The United States-based firm will tell the Indian government that it does not follow such mandates anywhere in the world as they raise several privacy and security issues for the company’s iOS ecosystem, Reuters quoted two of the persons, who are familiar with Apple’s concerns, as saying.

Scroll’s Nolina Minj has won second place at the Schizophrenia Research Foundation India’s 2025 Media for Mental Health Award for her reportage on the world of unregulated psychological counselling in India.

The Chennai-based foundation is a nonprofit organisation for mental health.

The awards were distributed during a virtual ceremony on Friday.

The foundation said that the winners’ “powerful stories, sharp field reporting and compassionate narratives continue to push mental health into mainstream discourse”.

Minj’s article, looks into how the Indian law does not recognise and regulate a range of mental health professionals, was published in January 2025 as part of Scroll’s Common Ground in-depth reporting project.

As a result of psychological counselling being an unregulated area, persons who seek help run the risk of finding themselves in the hands of untrained and unqualified individuals, she reported.

Read: The murky, unregulated world of psychological counselling in India

Independent journalist Sanket Jain won first place in the award for his report about how climate change was leading to a rise in perinatal depression. The article also looked into how Accredited Social Health Activists, or ASHA workers, were acting as an early warning system.

The story was reported for The Fuller Project and co-published with Scroll.

Schizophrenia Research Foundation India said that Jain won the first place for his “powerful reporting on the urgent need for public health strategies that address both environmental and psychosocial impacts, while highlighting the vital work of community health workers”.

Earlier this year, Jain’s report had also won the Asian Development Bank Institute’s Developing Asia Journalism Award.

Read: As climate change takes toll on maternal mental health, ASHA workers are tackling the challenge

Only about 30% of candidates who accepted internship offers under the Prime Minister Internship Scheme have joined their posts since the scheme was launched October 2024, the Union government told Parliament on Monday.

The scheme, introduced in the Union Budget 2024-25, aims to provide internship opportunities to one crore young people over five years.

Minister of State for Corporate Affairs Harsh Malhotra told Lok Sabha in a written reply that only 16,060 candidates, or around 30% of the 52,600 who accepted internship offers in the two pilot rounds, joined the private companies and public sector undertakings where they were placed.

Malhotra added that 6,618 interns, which is nearly 41% of those who joined, left before completing the 12-month internship. Of this, 4,565 candidates are from round 1 and 2,053 candidates from round 2.

In both rounds, only 95 interns have received full-time job offers from their host companies, government data showed.

Malhotra was responding to two separate questions from All India Trinamool Congress MPs Sayani Ghosh and June Maliah in the Lok Sabha.

He said that feedback from interns pointed to long travel distances, the one-year internship duration and lack of interest in assigned roles as key reasons for low acceptance and high dropouts. To address this, the government has geo-tagged internship locations and issued more detailed job descriptions in the second round, Financial Express reported.

The ministry has also used only Rs 73.72 crore of the Rs 10,831-crore allocation for 2025-’26 under the scheme as of September 30, the minister said.

Most applications came from Andhra Pradesh, followed by Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. Uttar Pradesh recorded the highest number of candidates who joined, followed by Assam and Madhya Pradesh.

The scheme was announced as part of the Union Budget 2024-’25 to provide internship opportunities to one crore youth in 500 top companies over five years.

The Union Ministry of Corporate Affairs launched the pilot project of the scheme on October 3, 2024.

Also read: Why young Indians are not interested in the prime minister’s ambitious internship scheme

Four Muslim traders from West Bengal’s Murshidabad district were given a 72-hour deadline to leave Odisha’s Nayagarh after being accused of being Bangladeshis and Rohingya migrants, The Telegraph reported on Tuesday.

The men had lived in Nayagarh for several years selling mosquito nets, quilts and woollens on two-wheelers. All four of them were from the Sagarpara gram panchayat in the Jalangi block of the Domkal subdivision in Murshidabad.

On November 27, one of the men, Saheb Sekh, said that police officers had come to their rented accommodation and accused them of being “Rohingya living illegally in India”, The Telegraph reported.

Sekh said that the officers asked for his identity papers.

“I showed him my Aadhaar and voter card,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “He was not satisfied. He called my landlord and asked all of us to report to the station by 5pm.”

Later in the day, the four men went to the Odagaon police station, where an officer asked them to leave the town within three days. The men alleged that they were also accused of being Rohingya and Bangladeshis for speaking in Bengali.

The police also took signed copies of their documents.

Abdus Salam, one among the four men, claimed that another group that was also present in the police station and harassing them was part of a Hindutva outfit. “We have seen them in markets and other places,” The Telegraph quoted him as saying.

It was not clear whether the four men had returned to Murshidabad.

The incident comes amid allegations by the Trinamool Congress that Bengali-speaking workers are being discriminated against in states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party on the suspicion of being Bangladeshis.

Since the terror attack on April 22 in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, the police in several states ruled by the BJP have been detaining Bengali-speaking persons – mostly Muslims – and asking them to prove that they are Indian citizens.

Several persons have been forced into Bangladesh after they allegedly could not prove their Indian citizenship. In some cases, persons who were mistakenly sent to Bangladesh returned to the country after state authorities in India proved that they were Indians.

The matter is also being heard by the Supreme Court on a petition filed by the West Bengal Migrant Workers Welfare Board.

In Odisha, there have been several instances in recent months of Bengali Muslims facing violence and intimidation.

On November 24, Rahul Islam, a 24-year-old winterwear seller from Murshidabad, was allegedly accused of being Bangladeshi and beaten up by a mob in Ganjam after he refused to chant “Jai Shri Ram”, The Telegraph reported.

Islam’s employer, Mainul Sarkar, who also returned to his home in Murshidabad, alleged that he had gone to the police in Odisha for help but did not receive any.

In July, hundreds of Bengali workers in Odisha’s Jharsuguda had been detained on the suspicion of being Bangladeshis. Several of them were released after the authorities ascertained that they were Indians.

India is likely to face a colder-than-usual winter, with more cold wave days than normal across parts of central, northwest and northeast India, the India Meteorological Department said on Monday.

The weather agency said that the expected drop in temperatures will be influenced by a polar vortex and continuing weak La Niña conditions between December and February.

“Below normal temperatures and cold wave conditions over Madhya Pradesh had something to do with the polar vortex and the La Niña conditions,” the Hindustan Times quoted IMD scientist OP Sreejith as saying. “Now again the polar vortex has started impacting.”

La Niña refers to the periodic cooling of ocean surface temperatures in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific that can lead to higher rainfall and colder winters. A polar vortex is an area of low-pressure, very cold air circling the poles that can push colder conditions southward.

Spatial maps indicate that Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi and Gujarat are expected to experience below-normal temperatures, while most of central India and the adjoining peninsular and northwest regions are likely to record normal to below-normal minimum temperatures, the Hindustan Times reported.

Above-normal minimum temperatures are expected in the remaining parts of the country, the weather agency added.

IMD chief Mrutyunjay Mohapatra noted that cold wave conditions could persist for up to 11 days, compared with the normal four to six days, The Indian Express reported.

“Above normal cold wave spells will affect Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Vidarbha and Marathwada regions of Maharashtra during the winter season,” he said. “Cold wave episodes can last longer than normal.”

The weather agency declares a cold wave when the minimum temperature of a station drops to 10 degrees Celsius or less for plains and 0 degrees Celsius or less for hilly regions.

The Election Commission told the Supreme Court that there was no basis to allegations that the special intensive revision of electoral rolls would lead to “mass disenfranchisement”, The Hindu reported.

The poll panel said that 95.6% of the voters in Tamil Nadu and 99.7% in West Bengal had already been given pre-filled enumeration forms. Of these, it had already received back 58.7% of the forms and digitised them, it told the court.

It made the statements in affidavits filed in response to petitions challenging the revision of the electoral rolls in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi have been hearing petitions against the validity of the exercise.

The court will hear Tamil Nadu’s petition on December 4 and that of West Bengal on December 9. At the previous hearing, it had heard Kerala’s petition to defer the process. The bench had asked the poll panel to file its response to this by December 1. The matter will be heard on December 2.

In its affidavits responding to the petitions filed by Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, the Election Commission dismissed claims made by the Opposition that there was up to 30% voter exclusion in West Bengal, The Hindu reported.

It said that the statistics on the distribution of pre-filled enumeration forms and the number of completed forms that the poll panel has received back showed that claims by the petitioners about errors, under-inclusiveness and mass disenfranchisement were “highly exaggerated”.

The 1950 Representation of the People Act vested the Election Commission with discretionary powers to conduct a special revision of the electoral rolls “in such a manner as it thinks fit”, the affidavits said.

The poll panel also noted that it had undertaken such an “intensive revision of special nature” of the electoral rolls for all or some parts of the country several times earlier, including in 2002, 2003 and 2004.

Significant changes had occurred in the last 20 years, the affidavits said, including additions and deletions in the electoral rolls on a large scale over a long period, The Hindu reported. Urbanisation and migration had become a regular trend, it added.

The revision exercise is underway in 12 states and Union Territories. Booth-level officers began distributing enumeration forms on November 4.

Besides Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, the voter rolls are being revised in Kerala, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Lakshadweep, Madhya Pradesh, Puducherry, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

A “special revision” of the voter list, which is similar to the usual updates to the electoral roll, will take place in Assam separately.

Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Puducherry and Assam are expected to head for Assembly elections in the first half of 2026.

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

Concerns had been raised after the announcement in Bihar that the exercise could remove eligible voters from the roll. Several petitioners also moved the Supreme Court against it.

On Sunday, the Election Commission extended by one week the timeline for the revision of the electoral rolls in all 12 states and Union Territories.

The last date of submitting the forms was extended to December 11 from December 4. As per the updated schedule, the draft electoral rolls will be published on December 16 instead of December 9.

The final electoral rolls are to be published on February 14 instead of February 7.

The Supreme Court on Monday questioned whether stubble burning alone could explain the severe air pollution affecting Delhi and the broader National Capital Region, and asked for a clearer assessment of the contribution of other pollutants, Bar and Bench reported.

A Bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi said it was “easy to blame farmers” who were not represented before the court and noted that stubble burning had taken place “as usual” during the Covid-19 lockdown but the pollution crisis was not as severe.

“During COVID, stubble burning happened as usual, but we could still see blue skies and stars…,” the court remarked. “Something to be thought about and other factors.”

The Bench then directed the Commission for Air Quality Management to submit a report within a week on measures taken to address additional pollution sources, including vehicular emissions and construction dust, Hindustan Times reported.

“It could come easy to put the blame on farmers and stubble burning, but there are vehicular emissions and construction dust as well,” the newspaper quoted Kant as saying. “Stubble burning cannot become an issue of politics or ego. Farmers need to be apprised and supported.”

Besides, the court asked the air quality monitoring body to explain which of its directives had produced results on the ground and why earlier action plans had failed to achieve meaningful improvements, the newspaper reported.

The court said it would continue to monitor the case regularly as part of its efforts to address the pollution crisis, Bar and Bench reported.

“None of us can sit idle with an assumption that this problem or crisis will go away on its own,” the court said. “This issue cannot be wished away.”

On November 12, the court had sought reports from Punjab and Haryana on measures taken to curb stubble burning by farmers.

The next hearing of the case is scheduled for December 10.

Air quality deteriorates sharply in the winter months in Delhi, which is often ranked the world’s most polluted capital.

Stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana, vehicular pollution, along with the lighting of firecrackers during Diwali, falling temperatures, decreased wind speeds and emissions from industries and coal-fired plants contribute to the problem.

Delhi has been recording air quality in the “poor” or worse categories since mid-October, leading to Stage 3 restrictions under the Graded Response Action Plan being imposed on November 11.

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

On November 26, the Commission for Air Quality Management withdrew the Stage 3 restrictions, citing improved air quality. The restrictions under the GRAP 1 and GRAP 2 remain in force.

At 9.06 am on Tuesday, Delhi’s average Air Quality Index stood at 340, placing it in the “very poor” category, as per the Sameer application, which provides hourly updates from the Central Pollution Control Board.

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

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

A pregnant woman from West Bengal, Sunali Khatun, who was pushed into Bangladesh by Indian authorities in June on allegations of being an undocumented immigrant, and later jailed there for “illegal entry”, was released on bail on Monday evening, The Times of India reported.

She walked out of Chapainawabganj jail at around 7.30 pm along with her husband Danish Sk, their eight-year-old son Shabir and Sweety Bibi and her two sons, after more than three months in custody.

Their release followed a local court order that granted them bail on humanitarian grounds. A Bangladeshi citizen stood surety for the group and provided a bail bond of 5,000 taka.

The development came on the same day that the Indian Supreme Court asked the Union government to consider allowing Khatun and her son to return “on humanitarian grounds”, The Indian Express reported.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi noted Khatun’s advanced pregnancy and asked Solicitor General Tushar Mehta to seek instructions on whether she could be permitted to re-enter India through the Malda border.

The Supreme Court, however, did not make any statement on the return of her husband. The case is slated to be heard further on Wednesday, the newspaper reported.

Earlier in the day, the Chapainawabganj court accepted arguments that the group included a pregnant woman and children and ordered their release on bail.

However, the magistrate set conditions that they must remain in Bangladesh and appear before the court when required. The court also directed that Khatun receive appropriate medical care and be admitted to hospital if necessary, The Indian Express reported.

Khatun told The Times of India over the phone that she wanted to return home to India and added that she had not been keeping well of late. She thanked West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Trinamool Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee for standing by their side.

Khatun also said that the police in Chapainawabganj had asked them to appear at the police station at 9.30 pm, The Times of India reported.

“I do not know what is happening or why the police want to speak to me again,” the newspaper quoted her as saying. “I just hope that I return home quickly.”

Sk Mofizul, a social worker who has been in Bangladesh for several months assisting the families, said that he had arranged rented accommodation for them in the district. He added that the bail order had no directive that Khatun and the rest of them be repatriated to India.

Khatun, Sweety Bibi and their families have maintained that they hail from West Bengal’s Birbum district. Khatun, her husband and son were taken into custody in Delhi on June 20, and all three were sent to Bangladesh six days later.

The Calcutta High Court had on September 26 set aside the deportation order against six persons, including Khatun. It had directed that they be brought back to West Bengal within four weeks.

Two days before the four-week period ended on October 24, the Union government challenged the order before the Supreme Court. The Centre and the Delhi Police have questioned whether the High Court had the jurisdiction to hear the case.

Since May, thousands of Bengali-speaking migrant workers have been rounded up in states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party and asked 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.

Also read:

• Bangladeshi or Indian? Investigating Modi government’s crackdown on ‘illegal immigrants’

• Pregnant woman from Bengal forced into Bangladesh. Family has land records from five generations ago

In The Cell and the Soul: A Prison Memoir, Anand Teltumbde notes that incarceration does not only test the body – it also tests whether the mind will refuse to surrender.

That observation sounds a little abstract until one remembers what he endured: months of humiliation, surveillance and the slow discovery that in India’s prisons, time itself is punishment. His reflections are not about one man’s endurance. They are about a republic’s ability to live comfortably with the confinement of some people.

Teltumbde spent 31 months in jail under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act before being released on bail in 2022. His ordeal, like that of many others, exposes a legal order that converts waiting into guilt and procedure into penalty.

The National Crime Records Bureau’s Prison Statistics India 2023 shows that nearly 73.5% of India’s prisoners are undertrials – people not yet convicted of any crime. Behind that abstraction lies a quieter truth: for most who enter the system, justice never arrives; only waiting does.

‘The victim card’

This politics of waiting defines an entire generation of prisoners of conscience. In recent weeks, the Supreme Court has been hearing bail petitions of Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam, Meeran Haider, Gulfisha Fatima, and Shifa-ur-Rehman – all accused of playing a role in the Delhi riots of 2020 and charged under the same anti-terror law under Teltumbde.

On October 27, the court declined the Delhi Police’s request for more time to respond. By October 31 and November 3, senior lawyers for both sides argued again before the bench. It fixed November 6 for the case to continue. Each date a step forward on paper, a standstill in practice.

The state blamed the accused people for “playing the victim card”. In truth, it is the state that plays the calendar—stretching time until hope itself becomes sub judice. The matters are now listed again for December 2 – an administrative rhythm that keeps liberty negotiable and converts endurance into evidence.

Indian jurisprudence has long known better. In Hussainara Khatoon v State of Bihar in 1979, the Supreme Court read a speedy trial into Article 21 of the Constitution, which guarantees the right to life and personal liberty. In Sanjay Chandra v. CBI in 2012, it reminded us that pre-trial detention cannot be punitive.

AR Antulay v RS Nayak in 1992 recognised that delay itself is a denial of justice. Under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, the Union of India v. KA Najeeb in 2021 held that prolonged incarceration can itself justify bail. In Shoma Kanti Sen v State of Maharashtra 2024, the court granted interim bail to a 66-year-old individual accused under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, emphasising her age, health, and delay.

The doctrine is clear; what has changed is the country’s appetite for applying it. Law still speaks the language of liberty, but power uses the grammar of postponement. When law begins to delay what it is meant to deliver, power learns to hide behind procedure.

Justice in two speeds

That concealment has consequences. Consider how quickly courts can move when they wish to: television anchors facing contempt, film stars seeking urgent relief or high-profile politicians invoking “public interest”.

In recent years, relief was granted within days, even hours – most visibly in television personality Arnab Goswami’s interim-bail order by the Supreme Court in Nov 2020 and Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal’s interim bail during the 2024 Lok Sabha campaign.

Yet bail hearings under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act – where liberty is truly at stake – stretch over years, adjourned on grounds as slight as a missing counter-affidavit. This is not about comparing offences; it is about comparing priorities.

Justice today moves at two speeds: express for the influential, terminal for the dissenter. The difference is not in the law but in the moral speed with which justice travels.

Digital allegations, physical punishment

The prosecutions in the Bhima Koregaon case, in which a group of 16 lawyers, activists, writers and others have been accused of conspiring to organise a riot in 2018, show how easily that happens. Independent forensic experts found that malware had been used to plant incriminating files on the devices of the people accused.

Yet several defendants spent years in prison before these revelations entered the public record. The alleged crime was digital, the punishment physical. The fabrication was digital, the punishment, real.

Anand Teltumbde’s own extended period of incarceration unfolded within that same machinery of distrust – a system where accusation replaces proof and adjournment replaces verdict.

These revelations deepen, not dilute, the moral dimension of these prosecutions. To call them political prisoners is not to romanticise them – it is to name a moral fact. As Teltumbde has written elsewhere, political prisoners are kept in jail not to reform them but to send a message to the world. When liberty depends on obedience, prison becomes a metaphor for citizenship itself. What once was an emergency exception has become a daily administrative habit.

The logic of preventive detention has quietly migrated into ordinary criminal law. This situation was warned against in Khudiram Das v State of West Bengal in 1975, where the court held that even preventive detention is reviewable for mala fides. Again, in Rekha v. State of Tamil Nadu in 2011, the court ruled that such detention is impermissible when ordinary criminal law suffices. The Constitution’s presumption of innocence now coexists with a presumption of distrust.

Corrosion of moral memory

The Constitution never promised a crime-free state – it promised that even the accused would not be forgotten. Article 21 was meant to restrain the government’s impatience, not legitimise it. Yet every fresh adjournment erodes that promise.

A person who spends five years behind bars while the prosecution refines its theory of guilt suffers a visible loss; the Republic suffers a quieter one – the corrosion of its own moral memory.

BR Ambedkar, the architect of the Constitution, once warned that political democracy without social conscience would degenerate into tyranny by law. The long pre-trial wait of today’s prisoners proves him right: our courts have constitutional power but shrinking moral bandwidth.

If the past decade has taught us anything, it is that evidence can lie. Digital forensics demand independent scrutiny and institutional humility. An honest criminal process would welcome that; a fearful one prefers adjournments.

When courts allow delay to become routine, they do not merely fail individuals – they normalise punishment without conviction. The current hearings in the case against Umar Khalid and the others test more than the fate of five accused – they test whether the Supreme Court still remembers that the burden of the Constitution lies not in its words but in its waiting citizens.

And yet, there is still a kind of hope in remembering. This is where The Cell and the Soul transcends memoir and becomes a moral document. Teltumbde wrote that in the smallest cell, freedom survives as critical consciousness – a term he uses to describe the mind’s capacity to remain awake even in captivity.

That consciousness – the ability to see what has become normal – is the last liberty left to us. We cannot all break the bars, but we can refuse to forget who is behind them.

Sahil Hussain Choudhury is a lawyer and Constitutional Law Researcher based in New Delhi. His X handle is @SahiHChoudhury and his Instagram handle is voxjuris_.

The telecom ministry has asked smartphone manufacturers to mandatorily preload all new devices with a government cyber security app that users cannot uninstall, Reuters reported on Monday.

The order issued by the Department of Telecommunications on Friday gave manufacturers three months for compliance, Reuters reported. The Sanchar Saathi app has been developed by the department.

The app allows users to report suspected fraud, block lost or stolen mobile handsets and check the mobile connections registered in the person's name.

In the phones that are already being sold, the ministry told the manufacturers to add the app through a software update. Reuters reported that the order was not made public, but sent privately to select manufacturers.

The app is essential to combat “serious endangerment” of telecom cybersecurity from duplicate or spoofed International Mobile Equipment Identity numbers that could enable scams or misuse of the network, the ministry was quoted as saying.

The app has been available since May 2023 for users to download voluntarily. There is also a Sanchar Saathi website providing the same services.

The order is based on the belief that it will make reporting of fraud easier, an unidentified telecom department official told the Hindustan Times.

“Right now, reporting time varies because users have to go to the website to report fraud or stolen mobile phones,” the official said.

United States-based technology giant Apple, South Korea’s Samsung, and Chinese electronics manufacturers Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi are among the companies that have been asked to comply, according to Reuters.

In 2018, Apple was in loggerheads with India’s telecom regulator over the development of an anti-spam mobile app by the government.

In August, the Russian government had made it mandatory for smartphone and tablet manufacturers to pre-install the state-backed MAX Messenger, a WhatsApp rival.

In Kerala, the demand for river sand, one of the primary materials used in construction, has increased in line with development. The state has experienced rapid expansion in modern housing, partly fuelled by remittances from the Gulf since the 1970s oil boom and large-scale migration from the state. As Kerala’s demand for sand grew sharply, the state’s riverbeds bore the brunt – leading to falling groundwater levels, disrupted stream flows, and weakened bridges.

To prevent these consequences, in June 2015, the Kerala government banned sand mining in six rivers and restricted it in five others. In January 2016, the central government amended the Environmental Impact Assessment Notification of 2006, mandating prior environmental clearance for the mining of minor minerals, including sand, in areas less than or equal to five hectares.

While this was a well-intended move, a new study shows that the ban on river sand mining may have led to an unexpected boom in stone quarrying across the Western Ghats. The study was published by a team of three researchers from the National Institute of Technology, Kozhikode.

The study attains added significance in the light of the Revenue Department of Kerala issuing an order in May 2025, approving new guidelines for the resumption of river sand mining in the state, effectively lifting a nearly decade-long moratorium.

The study noted that the state’s construction industry, the largest consumer of the mined river sand, reacted to the ban by replacing river sand with manufactured sand (M-sand). M-sand is artificially made from crushing hard rocks into fine particles.

Though it is thought to be more environmentally friendly than river sand, there are no studies proving that the environmental trade-offs are worth the shift. “This is especially true when the quarries supplying stones for the manufacture of artificial sand are located near ecologically sensitive areas,” notes the paper, published in the journal The Extractive Industries and Society.

As M-sand became the new construction staple, the Western Ghats, which is rich in granite and charnockite – a hard, dark, coarse-grained rock with a greenish tint, quarried widely in southern India – became the quarrying frontier, increasing the threats to this biodiverse ecosystem.

Expanding scars

Based on data from the state mining portal, Kerala Online Mining Permit Awarding Services, the researchers identified 355 operational quarries spread throughout 32 talukas (of 12 districts). Of these, 72 quarries fall within the 10-kilometre buffer zone around 20 protected areas in the Western Ghats region.

“Using Google Earth tools and GIS, we analysed the expansion in the area of these quarries for 10 years, from 2011 to 2021. We noticed a more-than-normal increase in the year 2016,” says George K Varghese, one of the authors of the study and an associate professor in the NIT department of civil engineering.

Between 2011 and 2015, 64 of the 72 quarries grew by a tenth of their original size. But the growth accelerated from 2016 to 2021, with 66 quarries expanding by at least another 10%. Five quarries increased more than fivefold – one even growing nine times larger. Overall, 90% of the quarries grew by over 50% during the decade. “The highest increase in the area was observed in quarries located in the 5 to 10-kilometre buffer zone,” the study noted.

Put together, the 72 quarries expanded by over 250 hectares between 2011 and 2021. Of this increase, 17.4 % occurred in 2016.

Lekshmi Ashok, co-author of the study and a NIT doctoral candidate, carried out a survey among residents near protected areas. “The majority considered stone quarrying as the most important threat,” says Varghese, who co-guided Lekshmi’s doctoral work along with Santosh G Thampi, a professor in the same department.

Blast, din dust

Beyond the removal of rocks, quarrying activity is accompanied by loud noises, dust, ground-shaking blasts, says the study, causing harm to the region’s biodiversity.

The study particularly noted that some quarries are very close to the protected areas. Silent Valley National Park has three quarries just four kilometres from its boundary, and the Malabar Wildlife Sanctuary, spread across Kozhikode and Wayanad districts, has 15 quarries within its 10 kilometre buffer, the study pointed out.

“Six quarries, two each in the buffer zones of Malabar Wildlife Sanctuary and Peechi-Vazhani Wildlife Sanctuary, and one each in the buffer zones of Idukki Wildlife Sanctuary and Thattekkad Bird Sanctuary, more than doubled their area in 2016 when compared to 2015,” the study noted.

The NIT team reviewed how quarrying affects local ecosystems, combing through academic databases such as Web of Science, Google Scholar, and Scopus to assess how noise pollution, dust, and vibrations affect birds, mammals, and plant life in ecologically sensitive areas.

Combined with real-time sound monitoring near active quarry sites they could show that blasting produced noise levels well above safe thresholds – posing risks to wildlife and human settlements. The study involved deployment of a sound level meter near the quarry sites.

During blasting the noise level measured was 98 decibels (dB) at 50 m from the blast location, and the equivalent noise level (Leq) measured was 70 dB at 50 m of operational quarries. The equivalent noise level (Leq) is a single decibel value that represents the total sound energy of fluctuating noise over a set period as if it were a constant level. At noise levels above 40dB the density of birds species decreased near the quarrying sites, as an earlier study found.

Better balance and enforcement

Meanwhile experts have pointed out in formal reports and media comments the widespread presence of many illegal quarries in the Western Ghats.

Eminent ecologist Madhav Gadgil, who has studied the region for decades, told Mongabay India that conservation laws are often poorly enforced. He cited the influence of powerful lobbies that bypass protections and pressure local communities to surrender their rights. “We need the rule of law,” Gadgil said in reference to illegal quarrying in the Western Ghats.

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has often defended the criticism about illegal mining in the Western Ghats, especially in landslide-affected areas.

Commenting on the relevance of study, Raghunathan Pillai, a former director of GSI, underscored the increasing use of concrete in Kerala. “Use of stones for basement construction is minimal now with the practice of making pillars even for small houses; but sand is an essential material for construction,” he said. “Rather than depending too much on M-sand, river sand can be brought from neighbouring states, and shipped from Gujarat. Another option is recovery of sand resources off Kerala coast after clearing environmental concerns. Use of suitable boards and wood in construction also can reduce consumption of sand,” he said.

GSI has identified approximately 750 million tonnes of construction-grade sand in offshore deposits off the Kerala coast – from Ponnani to Kollam – sufficient for nearly 25 years of the state’s demand. However, the Kerala government has opposed the move on environmental and procedural grounds.

By-products of industrial processes, crushed stone dust from quarries, recycled glass, demolition concrete waste, rice husk ash and coal combustion waste such as fly ash and bottom ash are some the other alternatives, as studies suggest.

Meanwhile, the NIT paper authors has called for an urgent overhaul of Kerala’s quarrying regulations. They recommend that ecologically sensitive zones be designated strictly off-limits for new quarry approvals, and that any major expansion in extractive activity undergo a strategic environmental assessment. Crucially, they call for mandatory public disclosure of quarry expansion data and biodiversity assessments – steps they argue are essential to restore transparency and accountability in the sector.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

The Indian rupee fell to an all-time low of 89.7 against the United States dollar. This came amid sluggish trade activity and portfolio flows, coupled with uncertainty about a trade deal between Washington and New Delhi.

United States President Donald Trump had said on November 10 that his country was getting close to a “fair deal” with India. However, the delay in the announcement of the trade deal and the resulting uncertainty about the future of exports were creating a stir across the market.

Washington’s tariffs on Indian exports have dented trade and portfolio flows into equities, leaving the Indian rupee reliant on interventions by the central bank for support. Read on.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has demanded an audit of 1.2 crore digitisation entries made between October 26 and October 28 in the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in West Bengal. The party has alleged irregularities in the exercise, claiming that the rise in the digitisation numbers from 5.5 crore to 6.7 crore was “an abnormal and statistically impossible”.

It also alleged that the surge was achieved not by booth-level officers, but by a political consultancy group, “known to be very close to the ruling TMC”, illegally performing the digitisation tasks.

After meeting Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Kumar Agarwal, BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari also alleged that the names of Bangladeshi citizens had been illegally added during the revision process. He said that the BJP had filed complaints against 5,000 booth-level officers. Read on.

In Bengal, BJP faces growing anger of Hindu migrants over SIR

The Supreme Court has refused to extend the December 6 deadline for waqf properties to be registered on the UMEED portal. The bench told the petitioners that they can approach the Waqf Tribunal, which has the power, under the 2025 Waqf Amendment Act passed in April, to extend the time limit for registering properties.

The petitioners had told the court that only six months were provided to register the properties on the portal, which was “very less” because not all details were available. They also said that the portal had several glitches and that they were only seeking more time to comply with the registration, as required by the Act.

However, the Union government contended that the tribunal can make exemptions on a case-by-case basis. Read on.

How the Supreme Court ruling on Waqf act puts properties in administrative limbo

The Enforcement Directorate has issued a show-cause notice to Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in connection with alleged foreign exchange violations by Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board. Notices have also been issued to former state finance minister TM Thomas Isaac and the board’s Chief Executive Officer KM Abraham.

Isaac described the ED action as a politically motivated gimmick ahead of local body elections in Kerala.

The central agency is investigating whether about Rs 2,150 crore raised through masala bonds issued in 2019 and listed on the International Securities Market in London were used to purchase land in alleged violation of Foreign Exchange Management Act norms. Read on.

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The Supreme Court on Monday refused to extend the December 6 deadline for waqf properties to be registered on the UMEED portal as required by the 2025 Waqf Amendment Act passed in April, Live Law reported.

The Unified Waqf Management, Empowerment, Efficiency and Development portal was developed by the Union Ministry of Minority Affairs to create a digital inventory of waqf properties by geo-tagging them.

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

On Monday, a bench of Justices Dipankar Dutta and AG Masih said that petitioners seeking an extension can approach the Waqf Tribunal. Section 3B of the Act gives the tribunal the power to extend the time limit, it noted.

Advocate Kapil Sibal, representing the petitioners, had said that while the amendment to the waqf law took effect on April 8 and the portal was operationalised on June 6, the rules were framed on July 3.

The court’s interim order on pleas challenging the amendments to the contentious Waqf Act came on September 15, he added.

The managers or trustees of waqf properties had only six months to register the details on the portal.

Sibal contended that the time provided to register the properties was “very less” because not all details were available.

“We do not know who the waqif [who creates the endowment] is for waqfs of 100, 125 years old,” Live Law quoted Sibal as having said. “Without these details, the portal won’t accept.”

Advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi said that the portal had several glitches and that the petitioners were only seeking more time to comply with the registration requirement.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the court that as per Section 3B of the Act, the tribunal can extend the deadline. The tribunal can make exemptions on a case-by-case basis, he was quoted as saying.

Sibal said that this would mean 10 lakh representations being made to the tribunal for extension of the deadline, Live Law reported.

On September 15, the Supreme Court stayed several provisions of the Act but said that no case had been made to stay the entire amendment.

The court had also declined to stay the requirement for all waqfs to be registered, saying that the requirement existed before the amendment, Bar and Bench reported.

The court was, at the time, hearing a batch of petitions challenging the amendments made to the Waqf Act, which critics say discriminate against Muslims and interfere with waqf property management. The Union government has defended the law, saying it aims to prevent misuse of waqf provisions to encroach on public and private land.

Also read: How the Supreme Court ruling on Waqf act puts properties in administrative limbo

Another booth-level officer allegedly died by suicide in Uttar Pradesh’s Moradabad district on Sunday, citing work pressure related to the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls in the state, PTI reported.

Sarvesh Singh, an assistant teacher posted in a school in Bhagatpur Tanda village in Moradabad, was found hanging in his home in Baheri village by his wife at about 4 pm on Sunday.

Circle Officer (Thakurdwara) Ashish Pratap Singh said that Sarvesh Singh died by suicide and had left behind a note claiming that he had been unable to cope with the burden of his duties as a booth-level officer.

His body has been sent for post-mortem, the officer added.

Sarvesh Singh was assigned as a booth-level officer on October 7, PTI reported.

Amid the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in the country, at least eight suicides by booth-level officers and two deaths due to stroke have been reported.

The revision exercise is underway in 12 states and Union Territories, including Uttar Pradesh. Booth-level officers began distributing enumeration forms on November 4.

Booth-level officers are typically primary school teachers and anganwadi, or health care workers, who are employed by state governments. They are responsible for distributing and collecting enumeration forms as part of the ongoing exercise.

They are required to go door-to-door, check the identities of new voters and verify the details of those who have died or permanently moved out of an area.

The Election Commission on Sunday extended by one week the timeline for the revision of the electoral rolls in all 12 states and Union Territories.

The last date of submitting the forms was extended to December 11 from December 4. As per the updated schedule, the draft electoral rolls will be published on December 16 instead of December 9.

The final electoral rolls are to be published on February 14 instead of February 7.

Several petitions have been filed before the Supreme Court against the exercise over concerns that the special intensive revision of voter rolls could disenfranchise eligible voters.

The National Investigation Agency on Monday conducted raids at eight locations in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama, Shopian and Kulgam districts in connection with the November 10 Delhi blast, PTI quoted unidentified officials as saying.

The central agency raided the homes of Adeel Ahmad Rather in Kulgam and Muzamil Shakeel Ganai at Koil village in Pulwama, The Indian Express quoted officials as saying. The homes of Mufti Irfan Ahmad Wagay in Shopian and Amir Rashid at Samboora village in Pulwama were also raided.

All four men had been arrested in connection with an alleged terror module, which also included Umar Nabi, the doctor who is believed to have been driving the car that exploded near the Red Fort metro station in Delhi on November 10. The blast killed 13 persons.

Nabi was a key person in the terror network spanning Kashmir, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, according to reports.

Hours before the blast, the police said that it had cracked an “inter-state and transnational terror module” in Haryana’s Faridabad and Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur. Rather and Ganai, also doctors, were among those arrested in the case at the time.

Rashid and Wagay were arrested after the blast.

The raids came after the Jammu and Kashmir Police on Thursday carried out inspections at mosques and madrasas as part of a crackdown on “individuals and networks associated with terrorist organisations”.

Al-Falah group chairperson sent to 14-day judicial custody

On Monday, a Delhi court sent Jawad Ahmad Siddiqui, the chairperson of the Al-Falah group, to 14-day judicial custody in a money-laundering case linked to alleged fraudulent accreditation claims and financial irregularities at the group’s educational institutions, PTI reported.

The Al-Falah Medical College in Faridabad, which is owned by the Al-Falah group, has been under scrutiny in the investigation linked to the Delhi blast. The college is part of Al-Falah University.

On November 18, the Enforcement Directorate arrested Siddiqui in the money-laundering case. A day later, he was sent to the agency’s custody for 13 days.

On Monday, Additional Sessions Judge Sheetal Chaudhary Pradhan sent him to judicial custody till December 15.

The Delhi Police has alleged that the key suspects in the Delhi blast, including Nabi, who was a faculty member, used a room on the Al-Falah Medical College campus to plan logistics for transporting ammonium nitrate for multiple blasts in the National Capital Region.

The vehicle used in the blast had been parked inside the campus for nearly 20 days, the police said.

Siddiqui, who has also been the chancellor of the Al-Falah University since 2014, was taken into custody under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act after investigators examined material seized during searches conducted on November 18.

The Enforcement Directorate’s case is based on two first information reports filed by the Delhi Police Crime Branch, which alleged that the Al-Falah University had falsely claimed accreditation by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council and misrepresented its eligibility under the University Grants Commission Act.

The National Assessment and Accreditation Council is an autonomous body under the University Grants Commission that assesses and accredits higher educational institutions such as colleges and universities to determine their “quality status”.

The University Grants Commission has said that the Al-Falah University is recognised only as a state private university and has never been eligible for central grants.

Also read: How a Kashmir probe into Jaish posters nearly unmasked Delhi blast plot

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has quashed a case pertaining to rioting and unlawful assembly against Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann and other leaders of the Aam Aadmi Party, The Indian Express reported on Monday.

In January 2020, the Chandigarh Police booked Mann and seven AAP legislators under the Indian Penal Code sections pertaining to rioting, unlawful assembly, assault and voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant from duty during a protest against a hike in electricity tariff.

The AAP leaders had planned to surround the residence of then-Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, Bar and Bench reported. However, the police used water cannons to stop them, allegedly prompting them to throw stones.

On Saturday, Justice Tribhuvan Dahiya observed that “ingredients of none of the offences alleged can be said to have been made out against any of the petitioners even prima facie”.

The judge further stated that there was no reason for the police to stop the protesters, as no prohibitory order had been issued.

“Nobody has been named from amongst the persons present who allegedly pelted stones on the police force,” Bar and Bench quoted the court as saying. “Besides, it is not the case that the petitioners asked them to do so.”

It added that the “nature of alleged instigation by the petitioners” had also not been mentioned, nor specific words or gestures attributed to them.

The judge added that the “immediate trigger for the mob turning furious and behaving the way it did, appears to be shooting of water on them as per orders of the district magistrate”, Bar and Bench reported.

The nature of the injuries suffered by the police officers, which included abrasions, pain and swelling, could also be the result of the shoving and jostling by the mob in an effort to push its way ahead, the court said.

“The investigating agency has failed to come up with any material indicating any definite role to the petitioners in this regard as well,” Bar and Bench quoted the judge as saying.

A Central Industrial Security Force head constable allegedly shot a 17-year-old boy dead in Delhi’s Shahdara for entering a wedding celebration uninvited in search of food, PTI reported on Sunday.

The head constable allegedly shot the boy on Saturday near a community centre at DDA market in Mansarovar Park. The official, identified as Madan Gopal Tiwari and posted in Uttar Pradesh’s Kanpur, was among those who attended the wedding, the Hindustan Times reported.

He has been arrested on charges of murder.

A preliminary investigation into the incident suggested that the shooting was the result of an altercation between the minor and the head constable at the venue, an unidentified police officer told the news agency.

“We got to know that the victim came to eat food after he witnessed a function was going on,” PTI quoted the police officer as saying. “He jumped a wall and was initially stopped by some locals.”

The officer claimed that Tiwari, who was also there, pulled out a gun and shot him dead in a fit of anger.

Shahdara Deputy Commissioner of Police Prashant Gautam said that the minor, who was living in the New Modern area, was taken to a hospital but was declared dead. He said that the head constable has been taken in custody, and the pistol suspected to have been used in the shooting has been seized.

The accused was being interrogated to find out the sequence of events, the police said, adding that it was also being ascertained whether the weapon used in the incident was a service firearm or a personal one.

Following the incident, the father of the 17-year-old boy said that he did not know that his son had gone to the venue, the Hindustan Times reported.

“I was told later that my son and three other boys went to attend the procession,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “They didn’t even enter the venue. They just wanted to dance or maybe eat some food. What was the need to kill him?”

He added: “…His friends told me he was near the horse when two men started hitting him and accused him of stealing.”

The Indian rupee on Monday fell to an all-time low of 89.7 against the United States dollar.

The plunge came amid sluggish trade activity and portfolio flows, coupled with uncertainty about a trade deal between Washington and New Delhi, Reuters reported.

As of 3.20 pm, the rupee had recovered to 89.5.

The positive Gross Domestic Product number released on Friday offered little respite to the rupee. The Indian economy grew by 8.2% year-on-year in the July-September quarter, up from 7.8% in the previous quarter, showed data released by the National Statistics Office.

The economy had recorded 5.6% growth in the same period last year.

However, the rupee remains under pressure from the lack of progress on a US-India trade deal, importer hedging activity and a balance of payments position that has turned less supportive, Reuters quoted bankers as saying.

Bilateral relations between New Delhi and Washington deteriorated in August after US President Donald Trump doubled the tariffs on Indian goods to 50% for purchasing Russian oil amid the war in Ukraine. Trump has repeatedly alleged that India’s imports were fuelling Russia’s war on Ukraine.

On November 10, Trump said that Washington would bring down the tariffs imposed on India “at some point” and claimed that New Delhi had substantially reduced its purchase of Russian oil.

Trump also said that his country was getting close to a “fair deal” with India.

However, the delay in the announcement of the trade deal and the resulting uncertainty about the future of exports were creating a stir across the market, The Financial Express reported.

The tariffs have dented trade and portfolio flows into equities, leaving the Indian rupee reliant on interventions by the central bank for support, Reuters reported.

Additionally, foreign investors have pulled out more than $16 billion from the Indian equity market this year, according to the news agency. The merchandise trade deficit, or when imports of goods exceed exports, also hit an all-time high in October.

The rupee’s rough patch has further brought down its 40-currency real effective exchange rate to undervaluation territory, Reuters reported. In October, this rate stood at 97.4, the news agency quoted data from the central bank as saying.

The real effective exchange rate, which is seen as a measure of competitiveness, is the weighted average of a country’s currency in relation to an index or basket of other major currencies. A level below 100 indicates that a currency is undervalued relative to those of its trading partners.

The Enforcement Directorate has issued show-cause notices to Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, former state finance minister TM Thomas Isaac and Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board Chief Executive Officer KM Abraham in connection with alleged foreign exchange violations by the board, The Hindu reported on Monday.

Isaac said the agency has filed its report with the special director (adjudication) in Delhi, and that he, Vijayan and Abraham have been asked to give their explanations to the adjudicator.

The central agency is investigating whether about Rs 2,150 crore raised through masala bonds issued in 2019 and listed on the International Securities Market in London were used to purchase land in alleged violation of Foreign Exchange Management Act norms, The Hindu reported.

Masala bonds are bonds that are issued outside India but are denominated in Indian rupees. They allow Indian companies to raise capital from foreign investors in Indian currency, and are usually used to fund infrastructure projects.

Isaac described the Enforcement Directorate’s action as a politically motivated gimmick ahead of local body elections in Kerala, Manorama News reported. He claimed that the bonds were issued in compliance with Reserve Bank of India norms.

“A portion of the funds was utilised only to acquire land for a KIIFB project,” he said. “As per the rules, masala bonds should not be used for land purchase. We did not do that – we only acquired land.”

Further, Isaac claimed that the RBI restriction on land purchase did not apply when the masala bond was issued, according to Manorama News.

“The ED only wants to create political sensation during the local body elections,” he alleged. “This is part of the BJP’s conspiracy.”

Local body polls in the state are due to be held in two phases on December 9 and December 11, with votes scheduled to be counted on December 13.

Opposition parties on Sunday alleged the Election Commission’s decision to extend the schedule for the special intensive revision of electoral rolls by a week showed that the exercise had been launched in haste and was “ill-conceived”, PTI reported.

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav said that a one-week extension was not enough, and that the timeline should have been extended by three months.

“The Election Commission did not pay any heed to this logical and practical demand,” he said. “It appears that the commission has lost all sensitivity, and has no concern for the problems of the voters.”

Yadav said that booth-level officers implementing the process on the ground were being overburdened, which was harming their physical and mental health.

The Trinamool Congress said the change was “an open admission that the original schedule was impossible, irresponsible and dangerous”.

“The Commission may try to reset dates, issue statements, or hide behind procedure, but the lives lost in this manufactured panic are on their conscience,” the party said. “And no deadline extension can wash away that guilt.”

The party’s West Bengal vice-president Jay Prakash Majumdar claimed the poll body had announced the entire exercise “just to cater to the interest of the ruling party at the Centre, the BJP,” PTI reported.

Congress leader Pramod Tiwari said the poll body had “itself realised” that the work could not be completed within the initial timeline, PTI reported.

He urged the poll body to adopt a more extensive schedule similar to the one used in 2003 and extend the dates further.

On Sunday, the Election Commission extended by one week the timeline for the special intensive revision of electoral rolls underway in 12 states and Union Territories.

Booth-level officers had begun distributing enumeration forms on November 4.

The last date of submitting the forms has been extended to December 11 from December 4.

The final electoral rolls are to be published on February 14 instead of February 7.

The exercise is underway in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Goa, Puducherry, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Lakshadweep, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

Several suspected suicides of booth-level officers allegedly because of the work pressure related to the revision process have been reported in Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Kerala and Rajasthan.

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

Concerns had been raised after the announcement in Bihar that the exercise could remove eligible voters from the roll. Several petitioners also moved the Supreme Court against it.

There is no road to Bargur. To get to the village, in the Kotagiri taluk of Tamil Nadu’s Nilgiris district, you have to step down from a tar road onto a mud path that leads to a stream below. Then, you cross the stream and follow the path up to the village.

When I visited the village in early October, Mari Manday was still grappling with a tragedy. Manday, who said he was between the ages of 50 and 55, is a member of the Irula community, a Scheduled Tribe in the Nilgiris. The previous week, Manday’s eight-year-old granddaughter had died.

Manday is not sure what had caused his granddaughter’s death. “The first day she had fever, vomiting and diarrhea, and the second day it continued,” Manday said. “The third day, we took her to the hospital. But she died almost immediately after she reached the hospital.”

The child’s parents had also fallen ill and were admitted to the hospital along with her – their condition had improved and they were out of danger.

Manday was distraught that they could not save the child, particularly because they could not afford to take her to the hospital in time. If they had, he said, “Maybe she would have survived.”

Conversations with others who live in the area revealed that such struggles to access healthcare were commonplace.

The cost of an auto, jeep or car to the nearest hospital in Kothagiri, about 20 km away, is at least Rs 700. This cost is prohibitive to residents, many of whom are daily wagers and earn between Rs 200 and Rs 300 per day. Locals explained that in some emergency cases, hospitals send ambulances free of cost, but that in other instances, they have to pay.

Public transport in the area is unreliable. Jyothi N, a resident from a hamlet near Manday’s settlement said that a bus that usually passed through the area had not arrived for the last few weeks because the roads were in a poor condition. “We have to fully rely on private vehicles to go to the doctor now,” Jyothi said.

Jyothi herself was struggling with this problem when I met her. “My daughter, like so many others here, has also been ill,” she said. “I should take her to the doctor soon.”

Because travel is unaffordable, many in the area undertake arduous walks across the terrain, particularly challenging when they are ailing.

Dr Ajith JS, a community health specialist who works in the Gudalur Adivasi Hospital, explained that the risks of such journeys are far greater than they may seem. “In a two-dimensional view, it may seem like the distance to a primary health centre or a government hospital is only 4-5 km but if you look at it three-dimensionally, there could be a hill or a forest patch or a private estate in between the nearest primary health facility and the residence of the patient,” said Ajith.

He added, “It is either uphill or a dangerous slope. The roads are made of concrete and cement, which is often slippery, especially during rains. And so by the time they get to a road where they can access public transport, they are completely enervated.”

Doctors, too, cannot easily access some of these villages. “There are some areas which we can visit only two or three times a year,” Ajith said.

Manday recounted that one of his daughters experienced the immense risks of these journeys a few years ago. “We were carrying her in a makeshift stretcher and could not make it to the road on time and right when we were crossing the stream, she gave birth,” he said.

Efforts to bring better healthcare to locals are few and unreliable. In a neighbouring hamlet, a nurse visits once a week but since she does not have any fixed timings, Manday and his neighbours often miss her. Sometimes, a van operated by a local NGO makes rounds in the area, but they miss it also because they cannot see the road from their homes. “Unless one of us happens to be on the road, we have no idea that it is close by,” Manday said.

These challenges are particularly striking in light of Tamil Nadu’s overall strong performance in the field of health. The state has switched between the second and third positions over the last few years in NITI Aayog’s Health Index, indicating that it provides affordable healthcare, and also offers a high degree of specialised services. It is well known for drawing patients from other states and even countries to its hospitals.

But in the Nilgiris, the district in the state with the highest density of Adivasi population, a combination of factors has meant residents have little access to even basic health services. These include the villages’ remoteness and discrimination that locals face when they seek out health services. As activists and experts noted, these challenges are further exacerbated by the social and cultural alienation they experience as a result of their displacement from their traditional homes and ways of life.

While many in the region first seek help at hospitals closest to them, typically run by NGOs, since these are usually small, patients are often referred on to government hospitals. Locals said when they visited these, they often felt discouraged by the poor treatment they were met with.

Mallika Suresh, who lives in Sri Madurai panchayat in Gudalur taluk, is the mother of three children. Suresh, who is in her late thirties, and belongs to the Kattunayakan community, recounted that after her third and fourth child died shortly after birth, doctors and nurses at the government hospital in Gudalur had warned her that having another child was not advisable.

After losing two children, Suresh was heartbroken, but she had two sons, and now yearned for a daughter.

When she got pregnant again, for the first four months, Suresh did not visit the hospital, worried that she would be scolded.

But when Suresh’s due date approached, an NGO-run hospital in Gudalur referred her to the government hospital in Udhagamandalam, more popularly known as Ooty, 50 km away.

There, she recounted, she had one of the worst experiences of her life. Suresh, who was carrying her daughter in her arms as she spoke, wiped away tears streaming down her face as she recalled her ordeal. “They spoke to me very rudely, humiliated me for getting pregnant again,” she said. “I could not tolerate the way they were behaving. It left me very distressed.”

She added, “At one point, I felt it would have been better to die than to remain in the hospital. But just for the sake of my child, I held on to whatever little strength I had and stuck on.”

She delivered her daughter at the hospital, but said that she would hesitate to return to it. “We look at doctors like they are gods, but they treat us so badly,” she said.

Kamalachi, a social worker who also belongs to the Kattunayakan community, said that the rights of Adivasi women and men over their own healthcare choices were often violated.

As a particularly egregious example, she noted that Adivasi women are often compelled to get sterilised after the birth of two children. “They somehow make us say yes even if we don’t want to,” she said. She added, “Sometimes they insert Copper-T and don’t tell women about it” – referring to the reversible contraceptive device.

People that Scroll spoke to also said that they were often given medication without being told what diseases they suffered from, and what the medication was meant to treat.

Manday, for instance, recounted that on one visit, he was given pills to take, but could only guess that they were for “BP or sugar”.

Patients are denied clear information even in more serious situations. “Once a neighbour called me and said the doctors had asked her to transfer her son to a hospital in Kozhikode and I was helping coordinate,” Kamalachi said. “The next thing I heard was that he had been brought dead to Kozhikode. We were not given any information of what had happened to him or how he died.”

Even this treatment is an improvement from what was meted out to locals just four or five years ago, Kamalachi explained. Then, she noted, healthcare workers actively segregated Adivasi patients from others.

“They would make Adivasis sit in a separate line and wait for a long time, but we would see that they would allow other people to go in first,” she said. “And when we went in to see the doctor, they would barely touch us and just write a prescription.”

Among the key structural factors that affects the health of Adivasis in the region is malnutrition.

One study, by the Association for Health Welfare in the Nilgiris, which surveyed more than 1,000 children under five years of age in the Gudalur and Pandalur regions, found that almost half were malnourished.

Manday also said that his granddaughter had been malnourished and had frequently fallen sick.

On the day I visited Manday’s house, residents in the neighbouring Adivasi settlements said that almost every house had someone who was running a fever or had a cold. They explained that they had become more susceptible to illnesses in the last few years.

A crucial reason for their low immunity and malnutrition, they argued, was the changes their diets had seen as a result of their displacement from their original settlements.

In 2008, the government, acting on the orders of the Supreme Court, resettled more than 800 families inside the district’s Mudumalai Tiger Reserve outside the forest. Over the years, many Adivasi families have also been forced to move out of forests to make way for expanding tea estates, as well as an increasing number of settler communities in the region.

Even in Suresh’s case, she and her neighbours from the settlement had been displaced from the heart of the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve to different parts of Gudalur. While some were settled in government-constructed houses near existing villages, some were given money to purchase land outside the reserve.

These locations are far away from their traditional hunting and foraging grounds, which also served as cultural centres for their communities.

Every Adivasi person I spoke to said they missed the food that they previously foraged from the forests. This included various kinds of leafy vegetables, native tubers, different types of millets, ragi, honey, pumpkin and mushrooms.

“We would eat so many different kinds of greens and that would keep us very strong,” an elderly woman who was Suresh’s neighbour, and who used to live in the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve, recalled with a smile. “None of that is available to us now.”

In a neighbouring hamlet, Velkan Verai, another elderly man who could not recall his age, and was displaced from his original home, said that when he was younger, he never needed to go far to get food or water.

“We would get fresh water all through the year and we would pluck so many greens, potatoes and vegetables from the forest,” said Verai, who is from the Paniya tribe, which is classified as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group. “And we had enough land to grow anything else that we wanted. There was never a dearth of nutritious food for us.”

“Today, we don’t even have proper water,” added Verai, who, along with a few other Paniya families, lives in a government-constructed house.

Kamalachi said she too felt there was a significant difference in her own body from the time she lived inside the forest to the present, when she lives closer to the town. “Those days we could walk long distances, carrying heavy loads and not feel tired. The previous generation too had more strength and stamina,” she said. “Now we never have any strength to do anything.”

“Look at us now,” she added, showing me her thin arms. “We barely weigh anything.”

Communities’ displacement and their current low incomes particularly affect their intake of protein, a major part of their diet when they lived in forests. “We used to eat all kinds of meat when I was younger,” said an elderly man in Kil Kothagiri, who was herding his cows. “That’s what made us strong. Now we barely eat meat.”

Even those families who live closer to forests cannot easily access produce they once could because their entry into them is restricted.

“The forest department prevents us from going into certain parts,” said Manday, who still lives close to the forest.

Adivasi communities are now solely dependent on the food provided to them by the government – mainly rice, lentils, oil and sugar. Their displacement “has caused Adivasis to become heavily dependent on the public distribution system”, Ajith said.

Rice, which they receive in the greatest quantity, forms the bulk of their diet. Ajith noted that while it satisfied hunger, it did not provide adequate nutrition.

Further, the quantity of rice they are provided is not always sufficient. “We cook only once a day and eat only one meal a day, which is mainly just rice,” Suresh said.

Ajith noted that the government had been making some efforts to remedy the situation. “In the last few years, the Public Distribution System has been providing millets alongside rice, but dietary diversity in most households remains a persistent challenge,” he said.

The Association for Health Welfare in the Nilgiris has also been supporting the government’s work by providing families with nutritional foods such as dates, peanuts, and a millet-based mix. Ajith said that these various efforts have led to a slow and sustained improvement in the levels of malnutrition over the last two years.

But he explained that this was not “a magic bullet solution” since the problem is often “intergenational” – that is, “malnourished mothers carry and give birth to low-birth-weight babies, who grow up to become malnourished children”. Thus, he noted, “We can’t bring them up to normal weight by merely supplementing their diets with high calories, as this might give rise to future metabolic disorders like high blood sugar and blood pressure during adulthood.”

Another pressing problem that the Adivasi communities are facing that is linked to their displacement is alcohol addiction. “Alcohol dependence is a massive issue among Adivasi communities,” social worker K Mahendran said.

In early October, as Mahendran spoke with the residents of a Paniya settlement about some compensation that was due to them as part of their relocation, he advised them not to spend it on drinking.

All the women instantly began to complain to him about how they were tired of putting up with their husbands’ addiction.

“They are not going to listen to us,” one visibly angry woman said.

Kamalachi’s husband died as a result of an alcohol addiction. “When we lived inside the forest, he didn’t have that much access to alcohol,” she said. She recounted that he would typically remain busy with work through the day. “But once we were moved closer to the town, it became easier for him to buy,” she said. “He began drinking all the time and eventually died due to it.”

She added, “Now there is a liquor shop in every nook and corner, and many Adivasi men end up spending most of their money on liquor.”

Ajith, who runs community health initiatives to address malnutrition and mental health in the region, has also found that alcohol dependency is a matter of great concern. “It is safe to assume that in the backdrop of undernutrition in these communities, consumption of alcohol will have much more addictive and toxic effects,” Ajith said.

Mahendren explained that suicides also occur often as a result of addiction. “Sometimes fights break out and we have had cases where often Adivasi individuals impulsively commit suicide,” he said.

In fact, the suicide rates among Adivasis in the Gudalur and Pandalur regions is also significantly higher than the general population, Ajith pointed out. While data from 2022 shows that the national average of suicides in the country is 12 per 100,000 persons, these regions saw 19 suicides among 34,000 persons in 2023-’24.

Ajith explained that in his research on mental health in the region, he had found that another factor behind the high suicide numbers was the inequality that communities had been exposed to in recent years.

“Just across the road from an Adivasi hamlet, they are able to see signs of development and prosperity, and people who are not struggling like them, which leads to a sense of hopelessness,” he said.

In contrast, most resettled Adivasis live in small, cramped houses. In one Paniya settlement close to Gudalur town, families lived in two-room houses around 300 square feet in area. Though they once had access to land to forage in and cook in, they now largely survived by cooking inside their homes, which had resulted in soot settling on the walls, turning them black. Many residents suffer from difficulty in breathing as a result of inhaling smoke indoors.

Displacement has also weakened community bonds. “They have become isolated, and now every individual has to look out for themselves, which is very different from the way community kinship bonds usually operate in Adivasi communities,” Ajith said.

He added, “Land alienation, rapid and unsustainable urbanisation, economic hardship made worse by restricted access to forests, and the flattening of cultural identities, all lead to a sense of alienation, further exacerbating feelings of social isolation.”

Dr Mrudula Rao, the medical superintendent and family physician at the Gudalur Adivasi Hospital, noted that a major obstacle to improving healthcare in the region was the reluctance of communities to seek help when they needed it. “There used to be a lot of fear about what we would do to them,” she said.

She explained that the Gudalur hospital was making an effort to address this problem and had seen improvement. For instance, the administration sought to ensure that Adivasis were consulted and made part of the process of delivering care. “The patients trust us as they see people from their own community and who speak their language treating them,” she said.

But persuading them to follow through on referrals to other, bigger hospitals, remains a challenge.

“In government hospitals, which often have big campuses, it’s easy to get lost if you don’t have help.”

The doctors said it would benefit the Adivasi population if doctors were sensitised to their needs. “Doctors sometimes see hill districts as punishment postings,” said Ajith. “Many doctors who get transferred here are on bonds, so they may not have an understanding of what the needs of the patients are.”

He added, “It’s important to make doctors go through sensitivity training so they treat Adivasi patients with extra care in order to encourage them to seek healthcare.”

Rao said that one way to address this problem would be for the government to sanction more tribal counsellor posts in healthcare centres and hospitals. As the website of the National Health Mission Tamil Nadu states, these counsellors help communities overcome “cultural shyness, lack of education/awareness, poverty, illiteracy, ignorance of cause of diseases, hostile environment”. In effect, they act as a link between health systems and tribal communities.

“It would be beneficial if there are tribal counsellors in every healthcare centre,” Rao said. “It would help patients get the care they deserve.”

Eleven people were killed and over 50 were injured on Sunday evening after two state-run transport buses collided in Tamil Nadu’s Sivaganga district, The Hindu reported.

The crash occurred around 5 pm near Vivekananda Polytechnic College on the Tirupattur-Karaikudi road. One bus had been travelling from Kangeyam towards Karaikudi and the other was operating on the Karaikudi to Dindigul route when they collided, the police said.

“Eight people died on the spot,” an unidentified officer told The Indian Express. “Three more succumbed to injuries at the Tirupattur Government Hospital.”

Among those who died on the spot was the driver of one of the buses, P Sendrayan, according to the police.

#WATCH | Tamil Nadu | 7 dead in a head-on collision between two buses near Tirupattur in Sivaganga district. Visuals from the spot. https://t.co/9qT04EUqeK pic.twitter.com/2K85EfL3Fc

— ANI (@ANI) November 30, 2025

The injured were taken to hospitals in Karaikudi, Thirupattur, Sivaganga and Pudukottai. Six of them were referred to the Government Rajaji Hospital in Madurai, The Hindu reported.

Initial inquiries indicate that both buses may have been travelling at high speed on a narrow stretch of the road.

The police have filed a case and are investigating the cause of the accident.

Chief Minister MK Stalin expressed his condolences and announced compensation of Rs 3 lakh for the families of those killed, Rs 1 lakh for passengers with serious injuries and Rs 50,000 for those with minor injuries.

Political dynasties are omnipresent in Indian politics. “Dynasts” turn up in parties across the ideological spectrum, at every level of political contestation and in practically every state. Yet, despite their ubiquity, the critique of dynastic politics has become a potent rhetorical weapon used by some parties against others.

During the campaign for the Bihar assembly elections, the ruling BJP-Janata Dal United alliance, its allies, and Prashant Kishor’s Jan Swaraj left no stone unturned in dismissing their principal challenger, the Rashtriya Janata Dal’s Tejashwi Yadav, as representing a “monarchist mindset” and running a “family company.” These attacks came despite the presence of Chirag Paswan – a political “dynast” himself – in the BJP’s alliance.

Conventional wisdom about Indian politics tends to lump all dynastic politicians in the same bucket, and to assume that the heirs of prominent leaders are simply placed on the throne without internal contestation. A closer examination, however, turns up two separate elements of dynastic politics – elected representatives and party leaders who belong to established political families, and parties that are led and controlled by one political family – each of which are driven by different factors.

While the latter are often critiqued as moribund political units beholden to a single family with selfish interests that are less responsive to the electorate’s needs, a number of these dynasty-led parties – MK Stalin’s Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party, and Tejashwi Yadav’s RJD – have achieved success in recent years. Understanding why requires going beyond the simplistic narrative of dynastic politics to examine the context in which these parties function and, in some cases, the political resilience of the dynasts involved when faced with intra-dynastic competition.

Popularity of dynastic politics

The structural persistence of dynastic leaders and elected representatives across Indian political parties, whether national or regional, has been put down to a number of key factors: name recognition, economic and socio-cultural resources, and deep-rooted political networks that are perceived as advantages for dynastic candidates to fight elections more successfully than non-dynastic candidates.

As Gilles Verniers and Christophe Jaffrelot observed, “parties are also risk-averse and seek to mitigate electoral risk by picking candidates among tried and tested families”. Moreover, dynastic candidates with established and long-term associations with the party leadership find it easier to get party nominations to win elections. Such leaders ensure “self-perpetuation of power” within the party and use their proximity to party leadership to seek party nominations for their family members. On the other side of the ballot, voters have regularly rewarded dynastic politicians, and at least one survey revealed a voter belief that such candidates are “better at politics because it is their family profession”.

However, the phenomenon of dynasty-led parties is quite different. There are several political parties in India whose most prominent leadership face comes from a single political family across generations, ranging from the Congress led by the Nehru-Gandhis, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam previously led by former chief minister M Karunanidhi and now his son, MK Stalin, the National Conference led by the Abdullah family over three generations, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha led by the Soren family, the Nationalist Congress Party led by the Pawars amongst many other family-based parties.

In a paper for the Asian Journal of Comparative Politics, I propose two different categories for dynasty-led parties: those that are “dynastic-by-practice”, meaning they were not founded as vehicles for a political family but have ended up that way, such as the Congress and the DMK; and those that are “dynastic-by-design,” which are structured for dynastic control from their inception, like the RJD, Samajwadi Party and the National Conference, among others.

While the conditions that lead to “dynasticism” in each of these categories are distinct, once they have become “dynastic,” these parties tend to exhibit a few oft-criticised characteristics: limited accountability, a lack of inner-party democracy, the absence of an ideological lynchpin, and inadequate or denuded institutional counter-weights.

While all Indian political parties have extremely centralised decision-making structures, especially with regard to leadership choices, once dynasticism has set in, it results in a historical path dependence that makes it extremely difficult for the party to deviate from its reliance on the “first family”. Due, in part, to the lack of an ideological lynchpin or institutional checks and balances, support to the family is seen as the best way to protect the party against intense factional fights – entrenching dynastic succession. As the family comes to personify the party name, its resources, and its political capital, it becomes inextricably linked to the fate of the party.

Intra-dynastic competition

Under what circumstances might leaders in a dynasty-led party face competition and accountability challenges? Most political parties led by a single political dynasty seldom see leadership challenges from outside the “first family,” even following poor electoral results or in the face of political decline. The Shiv Sena in Maharashtra is the rare exception in recent times of a party in which dynastic control was successfully challenged by a leader – in this case Eknath Shinde – from outside the political dynasty.

Competition, however, may come from within the family. Over the last two decades, many leaders in dynasty-led parties have faced challenges to their leadership position from other members of the family, triggering intra-dynastic competition. Given that each of the competitors in these cases hails from the same political family, they often have equally compelling claims to leadership.

For example, Stalin has faced a challenge from his brother MK Alagiri for leadership of the party; Tejashwi Yadav had to withstand resistance from his brother Tej Pratap Yadav; internal competition within the Pawar family saw the Nationalist Congress Party split into two; and the Samajwadi Party saw a succession battle between Akhilesh Yadav and his uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav.

Such intra-dynastic competition for party leadership positions acts as pressure on the incumbent dynastic leadership to perform electorally and legitimise their leadership position over other rebel relatives in the party. There is a possibility that in the face of such intra-dynastic resistance, dynasts who cannot perform well in keeping the party together or making it win elections might lose the pole position to another assertive family member within the party.

The example of the Paswan family feud between Lok Janshakti Party founder Ram Vilas Paswan’s brother Pashupati Kumar and Paswan’s son Chirag is a case in point. In 2021, sensing Chirag Paswan’s political vulnerability after Ram Vilas Paswan’s death, Pashupati staged a coup ousting Chirag Paswan from all key party positions and claiming a cabinet berth in the Union government.

Chirag Paswan was caught off-guard and found himself “left in a political wilderness” with only a faction of the original party. But in the 2024 national elections, it was Chirag Paswan’s faction that won all five seats it contested from Bihar, cementing his effort to be seen as the real heir to Ram Vilas Paswan’s political legacy.

It would, therefore, be erroneous to make the absolutist claim that dynastic parties in India do not face any credible leadership challenges, as a number of leaders from political families have had to confront strong intra-dynastic competition. Numerous instances show that the dynastic successors who received support from the founding or supreme leader, were able to take control of the party resources and win the trust of the party cadres and functionaries, allowing them to fend off rebel relatives, often elders, to assert leadership positions within the party. Other examples include Akhilesh Yadav and Tejashwi Yadav.

Intra-dynastic competition offers no guarantee that the leader who emerges on the other end will be electorally successful. Nor is it the only path for dynastic parties to develop the resources to succeed electorally. Other dynasty-led parties like the National Conference, which have not faced such intra-dynastic competition, have managed to win electoral contests in recent years. However, intra-dynastic competition in some dynastic parties reveals that their leadership are not always immune to internal challenges, rebellions, and accountability demands.

As discussed above, the differences between dynastic representation and parties led by a single political family, the distinct contexts of dynastic-by-practice and dynastic-by-design parties, and the potential for intra-dynastic leadership challenges all complicate the simplistic understanding of India’s dynastic politics. At a time when a number of family-led parties in India are at or have crossed the threshold of generational change, it is worth unpacking these elements to better understand the context and circumstances of dynastic politics in India.

Ambar Kumar Ghosh is a political analyst based in Kolkata working on political leadership, dynastic politics and political and governance institutions in India. He is a Non-resident Young Researchers’ Network (YRN) Fellow with European Partnership for Democracy, Brussels.

The article was first published in India in Transition, a publication of the Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania.

The Rajasthan government on Sunday withdrew an order directing schools to observe December 6, the anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Masjid, as “Shaurya Diwas”, PTI reported.

The order, circulated late on Saturday on an official WhatsApp group, had instructed government and private schools to hold activities to promote “patriotism, nationalism, bravery, cultural pride and national unity” to mark the occasion, The Indian Express reported.

The Babri Masjid was demolished by Hindutva extremists on December 6, 1992, because they believed that it stood on the spot where the Hindu deity Ram was born. The incident had triggered communal riots across the country.

In November 2019, the Supreme Court held that the demolition of the Babri mosque was illegal, but handed over the land to a trust for a Ram temple to be constructed. At the same time, it directed that a five-acre plot in Ayodhya be allotted to Muslims for a mosque to be constructed.

The Ram temple was inaugurated in Ayodhya in a ceremony led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in January 2024.

On Sunday morning, Education and Panchayati Raj Minister Madan Dilawar recalled the order citing scheduled school examinations, The Indian Express reported.

“All schools in the state are currently conducting examinations, which will be held from December 5 and 6,” the newspaper quoted Dilawar as saying. “Therefore, it is not possible to conduct any other activities or events in schools during the examination period. Therefore, the ‘Shaurya Diwas’ celebrations are postponed.”

However, Director of Secondary Education Sitaram Jat told PTI that no such instructions had formally been issued to schools and that he did not know how the circular had been disseminated.

The withdrawn order, issued following instructions, had proposed a full-day programme for December 6.

Schools were asked to conduct essay and speech competitions on themes such as “Indian culture and the Ram temple movement, as well as painting and poster-making activities themed on the Ayodhya Ram temple”, The Indian Express reported.

The circular also proposed patriotic song performances, folk dances, short plays, group surya namaskar sessions, yoga practice and a special assembly beginning with hymns and aarti dedicated to the deity Ram, the newspaper reported.

Schools were also encouraged to host “Shaurya Yatras” within their premises and invite military personnel, social workers and history enthusiasts to address students.

Roadside shops selling steaming hot chai and samosas were among the first to down their shutters. The lull then spread gradually across this bazaar, located in front of a major thermal power plant in eastern India, with shop after shop winding up business after their sole customer base, the plant’s workers, were forced to leave after the plant’s closure four years ago.

“This road was a thoroughfare,” said Nrupati Jena, 65. “Workers thronged my shop through the day; I had a daily business of Rs 4,000.” Jena still sells biscuits, cigarettes, and paan [betel leaves] at the wide gate leading to the old plant, his shop the only one standing amidst shuttered ones.

“For three years now, my income has dropped to less than half,” he told Mongabay-India. “Nobody has asked us how we are surviving.”

The National Thermal Power Corporation, India’s largest power company, retired its 460-MW Talcher Thermal Power Station in the mining hub of Odisha in March 2021. The move was fiercely contested by worker unions in court, as worker unions cited insufficient notice – of less than a month – given to the contractual workers who lost their jobs. The court finally allowed the plant’s closure in October of the same year, said officials of the National Thermal Power Corporation.

While National Thermal Power Corporation employees were transferred to other projects of the power giant, and nearly three-quarters of the contractual workers who lost their jobs have since been reinstated at the new under-construction plant, the invisible collateral damage was the approximately 120 shops in the two nearby market areas.

Many shopkeepers from there returned to the undependable work of farming in the villages they had migrated from decades ago, while others took up odd jobs.

A few, like Jena, stayed on.

Warning for the future

This experience of Talcher’s shopkeepers, energy transition experts say, must guide India’s future actions to cushion fossil-fuel-dependent communities from the impact of imminent mine and thermal plant closures as the country builds its renewable capacity, aiming for a net-zero target by 2070.

The last of the shopkeepers in Talcher, where decades of coal mining and thermal plant operations have plummeted the town’s air quality to levels poorer than Delhi’s on occasion, now await a revival – in the form of a new, bigger thermal plant with a total 1,320 MW capacity, with one unit expected to be functional by March 2027, National Thermal Power Corporation officials said.

The Indian government, citing the ever-growing demand for energy and the need for energy security, is currently expanding coal mines and has decided not to shut any more thermal plants until 2030.

Energy transition experts note that the luxury of time this affords is an opportunity to strategise and build a post-coal future for local economies in coal-rich regions.

“The future of coal is uncertain, and planning to retire, repurpose, or upgrade a plant must begin 10 years before the closure. It is not like closing a small shop. It is a large-scale industry,” said Manideep Gudela, director, energy transition at the Centre for Energy, Environment and People, a Jaipur-based research and policy advocacy nonprofit, who has visited Talcher among other thermal plants in the country to study the socio-economic impact of the plant’s closure.

Gudela said that communities, particularly in areas such as Talcher, are deeply linked to coal mining and power operations and risk severe impacts if the government and businesses do not plan well in advance. Citing local estimates, he said that nearly 500,000 people were directly or indirectly dependent on the Talcher plant’s operations for a living.

“There was time to plan for a post-closure industrial diversification,” he said, citing findings from his research into government records on thermal plant closures that show that the National Thermal Power Corporation proposed to the CEA in June 2017 their intent to retire the existing 460 MW plant by December 2023. “There are other industries (beyond coal) that can be drawn to such regions. But the current focus of closures is to transition from coal to coal. This is a missed opportunity.”

The decline

Ice-cream parlour owner Biswanath Nahak, 56, had sensed an imminent decline in the years preceding the plant’s closure, even though shopkeepers like him were the last to find out about what workers said was a “sudden decision” to shut the plant.

The steady stream of children who cycled to his shop for cones and ice-lollies had gradually thinned out, and officers who would stop by on a late evening stroll had one by one said their goodbyes.

“People were retiring and there were no new hires,” said Nahak, standing in his shop, now a photocopying centre, located inside the sprawling National Thermal Power Corporation residential quarters, which in its prime housed nearly 5,000 people living in over 2,000 flats. The complex now wears a deserted look, with shopkeepers estimating that fewer than 200 people live here.

Nahak was drawn to the opportunity the thermal town offered as a young boy in the early 1990s. He was visiting his married sister in Talcher, from Ganjam, a district nearly 300 km away, but stayed on after seeing the town bustling with hundreds of workers.

There would always be work here, he thought. His bet paid off. He started work as a newspaper boy, soon opened a photocopying shop, and finally set up an ice-cream parlour. “It was a bull run,” he said of the market.

Until the closure

India decided to close Talcher Thermal Power Station along with those of 19 other thermal facilities across the country between 2021 and 2023, following “a detailed technical and economic evaluation”, according to a National Thermal Power Corporation and Indian government statement.

The closure led to 879 contractual workers losing their jobs while those on the company’s payroll were transferred to other National Thermal Power Corporation plants, according to the corporation Workers’ Union president Bishnu Mohan Rath and officials.

Of the laid-off workers, 678 have been reinstated, 135 appointments are pending, 30 have reached retirement age since the closure, 24 have passed away, and the rest have moved to other jobs, Rath said.

Those reinstated speak of being offered labour jobs rather than the technical roles they handled at the old plant, though Rath said those concerns would also be sorted in a couple of years once the new plant was operational.

The National Thermal Power Corporation said that most contractual workers affected by the closure were subsequently reemployed in the new project or provided employment through various agencies, with experienced workers given priority.

Officials cited new emission norms, the plant’s poor efficiency, and overall obsolete technology for the decision to close the plant, which dates back to 1967, when it was a major installation to serve India’s growing power demand. It went on to create jobs and nurture a local economy.

While the Indian government has stated that labourers and casual workers who may lose their jobs following thermal plant closures can be reemployed in other available jobs at National Thermal Power Corporation, there is no such assurance for impacted shopkeepers.

Biswanath Behera, 55, owned a small repair shop for bicycles and motorbikes but was forced to close it after the workers left. “Now I cook food at wedding parties,” he said, adding that he earned Rs 500 a day at his shop but now makes as little as Rs 200 as a kitchen help, that too when he gets work. His biggest regret, however, is that he could not fund the higher education of his two sons, who have also taken up odd jobs.

Officials from Odisha’s industries department and Talcher’s district administration did not respond to phone, email, or WhatsApp queries about the state’s plan for industrial diversification in coal-dependent regions such as Talcher.

According to local media reports, in May this year, the state cleared proposals to set up industries of steel, iron and ferro alloys, industrial gases, logistics, food and beverage, agro-processing, tourism and hospitality, chemicals, and apparel and textile in 11 districts of Odisha, which include Angul, where Talcher town is located.

The National Thermal Power Corporation said that the plant’s closure in 2021 “has served as a valuable learning experience”. The energy giant told Mongabay-India that key takeaways included the need for “early engagement with stakeholders, structured re-skilling programmes, proactive communication with affected communities, and closer collaboration with state employment and development agencies”.

“These insights are actively shaping the company’s approach to future decommissioning or transition projects to minimise socio-economic disruptions,” the National Thermal Power Corporation spokesperson said.

Burden of disease

The industrial district of Angul is dotted with coal mines, and steel and aluminium plants, its highways always busy with massive trucks ferrying metals and coal.

India’s Central Pollution Control Board categorises Talcher as a “critically polluted region,” its 2017 data showing its deteriorating air quality. It cites the town’s disease burden due to air pollution as “the second-largest risk factor responsible for premature deaths in Odisha.” Air pollution has also fuelled cases of ischaemic heart disease – when the heart muscle does not receive enough oxygen – and lower respiratory tract infections.

Respiratory diseases ranging from asthma to tuberculosis are common, said Dr Madan Mohan Pradhan, chief district medical officer of Angul district, adding that compromised lungs were more prevalent among adults and the elderly due to their longer exposure to unclean air.

Shopkeeper Jena’s wife has been suffering from asthma for 15 years. She takes regular medication for her condition and has a nebuliser at home. Jena attributes his wife’s condition to the toxic air they breathe in Talcher, but said, “Our problems will not shut down the coal business.”

Like in most coal-dependent regions, despite polluted air and water, and the impact of mining and thermal power on all life forms, the fossil fuel remains a lifeline.

But communities in regions such as Talcher cannot be blamed for not being able to imagine a life beyond coal, said sociologist and water activist Ranjan Panda, convenor of Water Initiatives, a network that works on water, environmental, and climate change advocacy, especially for vulnerable communities.

“The conversation around ‘just transition’ [an equitable shift to a green, sustainable future that leaves no one behind] is elitist so far,” he said. “The communities are not being seen as primary stakeholders in this transition dialogue, which mainly involves technocrats. There are discussions on redesigning, repurposing technology, and reducing emissions. But communities that had coal thrust upon them decades ago are non-entities.”

A new thoroughfare

Meanwhile, another bazaar is taking shape about a kilometre from the old market, on a once-quiet stretch of road that is now a thoroughfare for workers and officials. Shops selling soft drinks, crisps, tobacco, groceries and even clothes and medicines have come up in the past six months on this road, which leads to a new gate constructed for labour entry to the new plant.

Local shopkeepers estimate that more than 2,000 workers have already come in from the states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Gujarat for the ongoing work on the new plant.

Among those who have set up shop here is Draupadi Raut. Her matchbox-sized store is stacked with bags of crisps, cookies, and dozens of small tobacco pouches in a polythene bag. The 47-year-old worked at the old plant for over two decades, earning a monthly income of Rs 12,000, which she said was steady, unlike her income now.

But the new plant promises assured business, with an endless stream of customers stopping by to purchase water, tobacco, or a small packet of potato wafers on a hot, sleepy afternoon. In the past six months, the road has been widened and streetlights installed.

The old market’s shopkeepers said they had no access to the land alongside the new road, as it was privately owned and they didn’t have the funds to lease a shop there.

For Jena, the gate of the old plant remains home.

“I haven’t thought of moving. This is my shop. I have been here since I was a 10-year-old, helping my father. Many shops have closed down, but the market is still there,” said Jena, sitting idle behind the counter on a weekday morning, a couple of local men hanging around for a chat.

“With the plant’s revival, I do hope workers will return to this market. Business might then improve,” he said.

This story is co-published by Mongabay-India and The Migration Story.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

Cyclone Ditwah was on Sunday moving north along the coast of Tamil Nadu, leading to heavy rainfall in the region.

This came after the cyclonic storm caused devastation in Sri Lanka.

It is unclear where and when the cyclone will make landfall.

Here are the top updates:

• The India Meteorological Department said on Sunday afternoon that the cyclone was located about 170 km south-southeast of Chennai, 110 km northeast of Karaikal and 100 km east-southeast of Puducherry. It had moved at a speed of about 7 km per hour since morning.
• The cyclonic storm was very likely to move nearly northwards parallel to the northern Tamil Nadu-Puducherry coast in the next 24 hours. It would be within a minimum distance of 30 km from the coastline by Sunday evening, the weather department added.
• Three persons have died in rain-related incidents, the state’s Disaster Management Minister KKSSR Ramachandran said. The deaths occurred in Tuticorin, Thanjavur and Mayiladuthurai.
• Ramachandran said 28 disaster response teams are on stand-by and additional 10 teams have reached Tamil Nadu from other states, PTI reported.
• The weather department on Sunday issued a red alert warning for heavy to very heavy rain, with extremely heavy rain likely in one or two places in Tamil Nadu’s Tiruvallur and Ranipet districts. An orange alert for heavy to very heavy rain was issued for parts of Kancheepuram, Chennai, Chengalpattu and Vellore districts.
• In Andhra Pradesh, a red alert warning of extremely heavy rain was issued for Prakasam and SPSR Nellore districts.
• Two IndiGo flights operating between Chennai and Jaffna in Sri Lanka were cancelled on Sunday, The Indian Express reported.

Sri Lanka

• In Sri Lanka, the toll from flooding and landslides triggered by the cyclone increased to 212, The Hindu quoted the country’s Disaster Management Centre as saying. More than 200 persons are missing.
• The northern areas of Colombo were flooded as the water level in the Kelani River increased rapidly because of the heavy rainfall, AFP reported.
• Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake declared a state of emergency on Saturday to deal with the devastation caused by the cyclone. He also appealed for international help. More than 25,000 homes have been destroyed and 1.4 lakh persons were taken to temporary shelters, AFP reported.
• India’s National Disaster Response Force sent two teams to Sri Lanka to assist in relief operations. The Indian Air Force said it has positioned helicopters in Colombo for humanitarian assistance. Transport aircraft have also been earmarked for large-scale evacuation of Indians and to deliver essential relief material.

The Election Commission on Sunday extended by one week the timeline for the special intensive revision of electoral rolls underway in 12 states and Union Territories.

Booth-level officers had begun distributing enumeration forms on November 4.

The last date of submitting the forms has been extended to December 11 from December 4.

As per the updated schedule, the draft electoral rolls will be published on December 16 instead of December 9.

Voters will be able to file their claims and objections between December 16 and January 15, and hearings will be held by February 7 instead of January 31, according to the updated timeline.

The final electoral rolls are to be published on February 14 instead of February 7.

The exercise is underway in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Goa, Puducherry, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Lakshadweep, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

The task of preparing voter lists before elections is typically assigned to primary school teachers and anganwadi or health care workers, who are employed by state governments. They are required to go door-to-door and check the identities of new voters and verify the details of those who have died or permanently moved out of an area.

In the commission’s parlance, they are called booth-level officers. Each booth level officer is responsible for maintaining the voter list for one polling booth, which can sometimes have as many as 1,500 registered voters.

Several suspected suicides allegedly because of the work pressure related to the revision process have been reported in Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Kerala and Rajasthan.

On November 24, reports stated that more than 60 booth-level officers and seven supervisors were booked in Noida for allegedly failing to comply with orders from senior officials during the revision process.

In Bahraich district, the administration has ordered first information reports against five booth-level officers, withheld salaries of 42 personnel and suspended a village-level revenue officer for alleged negligence.

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

Concerns had been raised after the announcement in Bihar that the exercise could remove eligible voters from the roll. Several petitioners also moved the Supreme Court against it.

Also read: I struggled to fill SIR forms. BLOs have it much worse