Shrikant Pangarkar, an accused in the 2017 murder of activist-journalist Gauri Lankesh, won the Jalna Municipal Corporation election on Friday as an Independent candidate in Maharashtra, PTI reported.

Pangarkar defeated Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Raosaheb Dhoble from electoral ward number 13. He secured 2,661 votes, while Dhoble secured 2,477, the news agency quoted an election official as saying.

Counting of votes for 29 civic bodies in Maharashtra, which went to polls a day before, is underway.

Other than Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena, most major political parties fielded candidates in the Jalna civic polls.

Ahead of the November 2024 Maharashtra Assembly elections, Pangarkar had briefly joined the Shinde-led Shiv Sena. Following widespread criticism, Shinde had put Pangarkar’s induction into the party on hold.

Lankesh, the editor of a periodical named Gauri Lankesh Patrike and a prominent critic of Hindutva groups, was shot dead outside her home in Bengaluru’s Rajarajeshwari Nagar by a group of men on the night of September 5, 2017, as she was returning home from work.

Pangarkar was accused of arranging firearms and attending a training camp in the murder case.

In September 2024, the Karnataka High Court granted bail to him, along with Bharat Kurane, Sujith Kumar and Sudhanva Gondhalekar.

Pangarkar was a member of the undivided Shiv Sena. He was the Jalna municipal councillor between 2001 and 2006. He joined the Hindutva organisation Hindu Janjagruti Samiti after being dropped by the party during the 2011 civic elections.

He was also accused of plotting to bomb the Sunburn music festival in Pune in 2017 and was arrested by the Anti-Terrorism Squad in Mumbai in 2018.

In August 2024, the Bombay High Court granted bail to Pangarkar, noting that the alleged conspiracy to bomb the festival was never executed.

VIDEO | Jalna, Maharashtra: Journalist Gauri Lankesh murder accused Shrikant Pangarkar celebrates his victory with supporters after winning the Jalna Municipal Corporation elections as an independent candidate.

#Jalna #MaharashtraCivicPolls2026

(Full video available on PTI… pic.twitter.com/slFETxVN1w

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) January 16, 2026

Also Read: Maharashtra civic polls: BJP, allies lead in Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur

The Supreme Court rejected Justice Yashwant Varma’s petition challenging the legality of the inquiry committee constituted by the Lok Sabha speaker to look into corruption charges against him. The bench held that Varma is not entitled to any relief and that “no interference is called for”.

Cash that was unaccounted for was allegedly recovered at Varma’s official residence in Delhi when emergency services responded to a fire there on March 14. He was a judge at the Delhi High Court at that time. The judge said he was in Bhopal when the cash was discovered and claimed that it did not belong to him or his family.

Varma had argued in his petition that although impeachment notices had been submitted in both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla constituted the committee unilaterally without waiting for the chairperson of the Upper House to admit the motion. Read on.

The Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies were leading in Mumbai, Pune, Thane and Nagpur as counting of votes is underway for 29 civic bodies in Maharashtra, which went to polls the previous day. In Mumbai, the BJP has won 21 seats and Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena faction has secured 10 seats.

Together, they were also leading in 119 seats out of 227 of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, crossing the halfway mark.

In Pune, the BJP has won 29 seats and is leading in 43 others. In Nagpur, the BJP was leading in 84 seats and the Congress in 41. In Thane, the Shinde Sena has won 33 seats and the BJP five.

Shrikant Pangarkar, an accused in the 2017 murder of activist-journalist Gauri Lankesh, won the Jalna Municipal Corporation election as an Independent candidate. Read on.

A day after marker pens were used on electors’ fingers instead of indelible ink in the municipal corporation polls in Maharashtra, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that the Election Commission’s gaslighting of citizens was “how trust has collapsed in our democracy”. “Vote chori is an anti-national act,” he said about a report about the poll panel’s response to concerns raised by the Opposition parties on the matter.

The State Election Commission on Thursday said that it would investigate the quality of the indelible ink in the marker pens used for the municipal polls. Read on.

‘Money and muscle’: Why Opposition workers are crying foul in Maharashtra civic polls

The Supreme Court has given two weeks to the speaker of the Telangana Assembly to decide on pending disqualification petitions against MLAs who defected from the Bharat Rashtra Samithi to the ruling Congress. The speaker is yet to decide on petitions against three of the 10 BRS MLAs who switched over to the ruling party after the 2023 Assembly elections.

On November 17, the Supreme Court issued a contempt notice to the speaker for refusing to act within the timeline and was hearing the matter on Friday. Read on.

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Lurh Tlang Vavu Sanctuary in Farkawn village of Champhai district has become Mizoram’s first community-led forest dedicated to the sole conservation of Mrs. Hume’s pheasant, the state bird of Mizoram. This initiative marks a rare instance of an entire village proactively setting aside forest land for the conservation of a species.

Mrs. Hume’s pheasant (Syrmaticus hymiae) was scientifically discovered in 1881 from Manipur by Allan Octavian Hume, a British naturalist. He named the bird after his wife, Mary Ann Grindall Hume.

The male Mrs. Hume’s pheasant has a chestnut brown plumage, red patch around the eyes and metallic blue neck feathers with distinct and long, banded tail feathers. The female is patterned in shades of brown, with smaller red patches around the eye.

The species is listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Habitat loss and hunting are major threats to the population. Globally there are between 6,000 and 15,000 individuals, mainly found in Mizoram and Manipur in India apart from Myanmar and Thailand.

Protecting a rare bird

A joint survey by the local people and Conservation Mizoram, an NGO working on environmental issues, recorded a healthy population of the bird in the region. The survey found 20 breeding pairs, a concentration that is considered high for this rare species.

The people then decided to formally conserve the area to better protect the rare bird as well as generate employment opportunities through tourism. They converted eight square kilometre forest into a protected sanctuary in collaboration with Conservation Mizoram.

Lalawmaia Sailo, Secretary, Conservation Mizoram, told Mongabay-India that Mrs. Hume’s pheasant is a rare bird. “After seeing the resident population of these birds in their village, people of Farkawn decided to dedicate this land for conservation of the state bird of Mizoram,” he added. “Our survey found there is a good population of vavu (Mizo name for Mrs. Hume’s pheasant) in Farkawn. We found more than 20 breeding pairs in a forest area of seven-eight square kilometers, which is a very healthy number. In consensus with local people, the area was demarcated as a sanctuary for vavu.”

The Lurh Tlang Vavu Sanctuary, located on Tlang mountains, was officially opened for tourists on November 21 this year.

As seen in many northeastern states in India, the forest department has minimal control over community-owned forest land.

“Luit Tarh Vavu Sanctuary is entirely a community project, which the forest department is just monitoring and supporting,” Lalbiakchama Chawngthu, Divisional Forest Officer (DFO), Champhai, told Mongabay-India., “It has been put under (categorised as) a Non-Notified Tree Forest, which is community-managed but protected under The Forest Conservation Act 1980. We have an active range office in Farkawn from where we monitor the forest, but it is managed by the locals of Farkawn.”

Apart from Mrs. Hume’s pheasant, the forest has a rich biodiversity. “We found 275 species of birds in this forest,” Sailo said. “The forest also has animals such as serow (Capricornis sumatraensis), grey goral (Naemorhedus goral), civet (Viverricula indica), golden jackal (Canis aureus), dhole (Cuon alpinus), barking deer (Muntiacus muntjak), porcupine (Hystrix indica) etc.”

For now, these efforts to protect the bird and associated species limits the threat of hunting. Camera traps are also installed in the area to help monitor the bird. As the government-mandated protected forests cover only a small portion of the bird’s potential habitat, these kinds of community-led protection efforts can lead to the conservation of these birds in the long term.

Conservation and livelihood

Farkawn, one of the largest villages in Champhai district has a population of 4,000, along with 800 households. Its location along the India-Myanmar border also makes it a strategically important village.

Jhum or shifting cultivation remains its main occupation, with locals growing crops such as rice, brinjal, ladies finger, ginger, chillies etc. Mithuns (Bos frontalis) are mainly reared for meat. Now, tourism in the sanctuary can generate livelihoods and open up a new avenue of income.

The sanctuary received its first visitors, two tourists from Bengaluru, on the day of the inauguration in November 2025.

“They were actually going to Murlen National Park in Champhai, but drove here after hearing about our sanctuary,” said Lalneihsanga, a resident of the village and a member of the sanctuary’s management committee. Farkawn currently has a tourist lodge and a travellers’ inn to accommodate tourists.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

The counting of votes in the 29 municipal corporation elections in Maharashtra, including for the Mumbai civic body, was underway on Friday.

Pune, Nagpur, Thane, Nashik and Navi Mumbai are among the 29 cities.

The six major political parties in the fray in the elections were the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Congress, and the two factions each of the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party. The parties had entered into several combinations of alliances for the 29 municipal polls.

As of 5.30 pm on Friday, the Bharatiya Janata Party and Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena faction were leading in 119 seats in Mumbai, crossing the halfway mark, The Times of India reported.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has 227 seats, with 114 needed to win the election.

The BJP has won 21 seats and the Shinde Sena 10 seats, Mid-Day reported.

The Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena group has won 15 seats and its ally, Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman, has won one. The Congress has won four seats.

In Pune, the BJP has won 29 seats and is leading in 43 others, The Hindu reported.

In Nagpur, the BJP was leading in 84 seats and the Congress in 41. A party needs 76 seats to win in the city municipal corporation.

In Thane, the Shinde Sena has won 33 seats and the BJP five, PTI reported. A party needs 66 seats to win the election.

In Navi Mumbai, the BJP was leading in 70 seats, followed by Shinde Sena’s 36. A party needs 56 seats to win.

In Jalna, Shrikant Pangarkar, an accused in the murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh, won as an independent candidate from a ward.

VIDEO | Jalna, Maharashtra: Journalist Gauri Lankesh murder accused Shrikant Pangarkar celebrates his victory with supporters after winning the Jalna Municipal Corporation elections as an independent candidate.

#Jalna #MaharashtraCivicPolls2026

(Full video available on PTI… pic.twitter.com/slFETxVN1w

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) January 16, 2026

The polling took place on Thursday. State Election Commissioner Dinesh Waghmare estimated that the overall voter turnout would be between 46% and 50%, which would be higher than the 2017 polls, The Hindu reported.

Several exit polls have predicted that the constituents of the BJP-led Mahayuti alliance will win the elections for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, which were held after a four-year delay.

Pollster Axis My India predicted that the coalition of the BJP and the Shiv Sena faction led by Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde will win 131 to 151 seats out of a total of 227 in Mumbai. The rival alliance of the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena and Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) may win 58 to 68 seats, it said.

The third major alliance – comprising the Congress, Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi and Rashtriya Samaj Party – could win 12 to 16 seats, Axis My India predicted.

BMC - Exit Poll – Seat Share - Vote Share (%)#BMCElections2026#ExitPoll2026#AxisMyIndia pic.twitter.com/xE535uMm3B

— Axis My India (@AxisMyIndia) January 15, 2026

Another pollster, JVC, tipped the BJP and Shinde Sena to win 138 seats, the alliance headed by the Uddhav Sena to emerge victorious in 59 places and the coalition led by the Congress to win 23 seats, India Today reported.

Nearly two weeks before polling took place, 68 candidates of the Mahayuti coalition were elected unopposed as several Opposition candidates withdrew their nominations. Of these, 44 belonged to the BJP and 22 to the Shinde Sena. The remaining two were won by Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar’s NCP group.

The wins themselves were not enough for the ruling alliance to clinch control of any municipal corporation. However, the Maharashtra State Election Commission sought reports from the municipal corporations amid the Opposition’s allegations of irregularities in the filing of the poll nominations.

The polls in Mumbai assume significance because the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation is India’s richest civic body with an annual budget of over Rs 74,400 crore.

Also read: ‘Money and muscle’: Why Opposition workers are crying foul in Maharashtra civic polls

The Supreme Court on Friday stayed a Calcutta High Court verdict from November that disqualified Trinamool Congress leader Mukul Roy from the West Bengal Assembly for defecting from the Bharatiya Janata Party, reported Bar and Bench.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi said that the electronic evidence against Roy, which showed him attending a Trinamool Congress press conference, has yet to be proven.

“See there is AI [artificial intelligence] etc, we do not know whose face etc is there,” the court said. “Electronic evidence has to be tested.”

The court passed its interim directions on a petition filed by Mukul Roy’s son, Subhranshu Roy, Live Law reported.

It also directed Suvendu Adhikari, the leader of Opposition in West Bengal Assembly, and BJP MLA Ambika Roy to respond to the matter within four weeks, Bar and Bench reported.

In June 2021, Mukul Roy defected to the Trinamool Congress months after winning the Krishnanagar Uttar Assembly constituency on a BJP ticket.

Mukul Roy was one of the earliest members of the Trinamool Congress when it was founded in 1997, but joined the BJP in 2017. However, soon after the Trinamool Congress returned to power in the state in May 2021, he rejoined the party.

The BJP has been demanding Mukul Roy’s disqualification as a legislator since he was made the chairman of the public accounts committee in July 2021.

In November, the Calcutta High Court disqualified Mukul Roy from the West Bengal Assembly and set aside his nomination as the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee.

The court also set aside an earlier order by Speaker Biman Banerjee, where he had refused to act on a disqualification petition filed by the BJP.

The court had said he incurred disqualification under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, which states that a member of the House shall be disqualified if, after getting elected, they give up the membership of their party or join another political party.

Adhikari and Ambika Roy had approached the High Court challenging Banerjee’s decision, claiming that there was a press conference to prove Roy had defected.

In November, the High Court highlighted that Mukul Roy had “not denied the contents of the press conference,” Bar and Bench reported.

In 2021, the Modi government unveiled its plan to build a mega infrastructural project on the Great Nicobar Island, the southernmost island of India. In the run-up to the announcement, a crucial government map of the island changed. Corals that hugged Great Nicobar’s coastline disappeared on the map – only to reappear in the middle of the sea.

In this episode of True Story, Scroll’s Executive Editor Supriya Sharma speaks to environment reporter Vaishnavi Rathore about how she broke the story and why it is significant.

Also read: Our coverage of the Great Nicobar Project

The Supreme Court on Thursday directed the speaker of the Telangana Assembly to decide within two weeks on pending disqualification petitions against MLAs who defected from the Bharat Rashtra Samithi to the ruling Congress, Live Law reported.

A bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and AG Masih was hearing a compliance petition in the matter, following its July 31 order directing the speaker to decide within three months on the disqualification of the MLAs.

On November 17, the Supreme Court issued a contempt notice to the speaker for refusing to act within the timeline. The matter was heard again on Thursday.

During Thursday’s hearing, the court was informed that seven of the 10 petitions have been disposed of. The counsel for the state government sought two weeks to decide on the remaining three, Live Law reported.

“Two weeks more and we will do it,” Advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi appearing for the state was quoted as saying. “The speaker went to the hospital for eye surgery and the secretary general also changed. It is little bit of an overlap.”

The Bharat Rashtra Samithi had appealed to Speaker Gaddam Prasad Kumar between March 2024 and April 2024 against the 10 MLAs, who had defected after being elected on the party’s ticket in the 2023 Assembly election.

The tenth schedule states that a member of the House shall be disqualified if, after getting elected, they give up the membership of their party or join another political party.

The Bharat Rashtra Samithi had approached the Supreme Court alleging that the speaker was not initiating any action against the defected MLAs despite repeated petitions.

In July, the Supreme Court had said that if political defections are not curbed, it has the potential to disrupt democracy.

The bench had also set aside a Telangana High Court ruling at the time, which held that courts cannot impose a time limit on the speaker to decide disqualification pleas.

Those who had defected to Congress after winning from a Bharat Rashtra Samithi ticket in the 2023 Telangana Assembly elections are: Danam Nagender, Kadiyam Srihari, Tellam Venkat Rao, Pocharam Srinivas Reddy, Kale Yadaiah, M Sanjay Kumar, Krishnamohan Reddy, Mahipal Reddy, Prakash Goud and Arekapudi Gandhi.

Petitions against Kadiyam Srihari, Danam Nagendar and M Sanjay Kumar are pending before the Speaker, The Hindu reported.

On Thursday, the speaker dismissed petitions against two legislators – Chevella MLA Kale Yadaiah and Banswada MLA Pocharam Srinivas Reddy – while five others had been dismissed in December.

Two persons were detained on Friday in connection with clashes in Odisha’s Sundargarh district a day earlier that left 12 persons, including police personnel, injured, PTI reported.

Following the violence, the authorities in the district banned public gatherings and suspended internet services till 6 pm on Friday.

The violence occurred in the Regent Market area at about 2.30 pm, the news agency quoted the police as saying. While reports said that the clash started following an argument between two persons about a food item, it was not clear what the argument was about.

Within minutes, the argument escalated into a fight in the market area, The Indian Express reported. A meat shop and some vehicles were vandalised, and a van was set on fire.

The two groups reportedly used sharp weapons and threw stones at each other, and the police had to use force to disperse them.

Odisha’s Deputy Inspector General of Police was quoted as saying that the situation had been brought under control by 5 pm.

Sundargarh Collector Subhankar Mohapatra said that schools, colleges and other educational institutes in the town will be closed on Friday as a safety measure, PTI reported.

Brijesh Rai, the deputy inspector general of police in the western range, told PTI that raids are underway in the district to detain more persons involved in the violence, based on CCTV footage.

The Supreme Court on Friday rejected Justice Yashwant Varma’s petition challenging the legality of the inquiry committee constituted by the Lok Sabha speaker to look into corruption charges against him, Live Law reported.

A bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Satish Chandra Sharma held that Varma “is not entitled to any relief” and that “no interference is called for”.

The court was hearing a petition filed by Varma seeking to quash Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla’s decision to constitute the committee under the 1968 Judges Inquiry Act to investigate the impeachment proceedings against him in the unaccounted cash row.

Unaccounted cash was allegedly recovered at Varma’s official residence in Delhi when emergency services responded to a fire there on March 14. He was a judge at the Delhi High Court at that time. The judge said he was in Bhopal when the cash was discovered and claimed that it did not belong to him or his family.

Amid the row, he was transferred to the Allahabad High Court.

In his petition, Varma had argued that although impeachment notices had been submitted in both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, Birla constituted the committee unilaterally without waiting for the chairperson of the Upper House to admit the motion.

He contended that this was contrary to Section 3(2) of the Judges Inquiry Act, which requires both Houses of Parliament to admit the motion for impeachment.

On January 8, the Supreme Court reserved its verdict in the matter.

The bench had said at the time that it had “to balance the rights of the judge to be proceeded against as well as the members who have an independent right under the law to move a motion and get it admitted”, The Indian Express reported.

A report of the in-house inquiry committee into the matter, released on May 3, concluded that there was “sufficient substance” in the charges against Varma. It held that the judge’s misconduct was “serious enough to call for initiation of proceedings for removal”.

To impeach a judge in Parliament, a removal motion is required to be signed by 100 Lok Sabha MPs or 50 Rajya Sabha MPs. If the motion is admitted in both Houses, a three-member judicial committee investigates the matter. Parliament votes on the impeachment if the committee finds misconduct. If the motion gets two-thirds of the votes, the president is advised to remove the judge.

On July 25, Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said that the decision to impeach Varma was unanimous and that 152 MPs from the ruling coalition and the Opposition parties had signed the motion.

There is consensus that the removal of Varma should be a joint effort, he had said, adding that the Lok Sabha will take up the proceedings before they move to the Rajya Sabha in line with the Judges Inquiry Act.

On August 12, the Lok Sabha speaker formed a three-member committee, comprising Supreme Court Justice Aravind Kumar, Madras High Court Chief Justice Manindra Mohan Shrivastava and advocate B Vasudeva Acharya, to look into the matter.

In November, the committee sought a written statement from Varma on the charges against him. In response, the judge sought authenticated copies of the motions before both the Houses in July and any orders passed in connection with them.

However, the Lok Sabha’s secretary general said that the Rajya Sabha had not admitted the impeachment motion

Earlier, Varma had also challenged the in-house committee report that indicted him in the matter, as well as the recommendation made by Sanjiv Khanna, who was the chief justice of India when the report was submitted to the president and the prime minister to initiate impeachment proceedings against him.

In August, the Supreme Court dismissed both the petitions.

A Muslim man died after being assaulted by alleged cow vigilantes in Odisha’s Balasore district on Wednesday, The Telegraph reported.

Sheikh Makandar Mohammed, a resident of Astia village, worked as a helper for a cattle pickup van.

On Wednesday, a group of alleged cow vigilantes tried to stop the van Mohammed was in. The van overturned on the outskirts of a town.

While the driver escaped, Mohammed was caught by the mob, The Telegraph reported.

A video widely shared on social media, alleged to be that of the incident, shows the group assaulting Mohammed with pipes and forcing him to shout “Jai Shri Ram” and “Gau Mata Ki Jai”. The mob continued to beat him up even as he complied with their demand.

Balasore, Odisha
A Muslim man, Sheikh Makarand Mohammad, was allegedly beaten to death by a Hindutva mob. Reports say he was first forced to refer to the cow as “mother,” then compelled to chant “Jai Shri Ram.” He was brutally assaulted with plastic pipes, and the injuries… pic.twitter.com/Pd6BTajqBJ

— Team Rising Falcon (@TheRFTeam) January 15, 2026

The police took Mohammed to hospital, but on Thursday, he succumbed to injuries he had suffered during the attack.

The police have registered a case under a section of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita that pertains to lynching by a group motivated by prejudice based on religion, race or caste. Mohammed’s brother had filed a police complaint and named five persons as suspects.

Three suspects were arrested on Thursday in connection with the killing, The Times of India reported.

Rabi Behera, the head of the Odisha Milk Farmers’ Association, was quoted as saying by The Telegraph that the activities of cow vigilantes had increased since the Bharatiya Janata Party government led by Mohan Majhi was elected to power in the state in June 2024.

“The government must ensure stern action in such cases,” Behera said.

One night in October, Saluram Kargal was sleeping near his goats outside his home in the village of Wadgaon Borwadi, around 100 km from Pune. The one-room brick home is situated in an enclosure surrounded by an eight-foot-high fence. Suddenly, Kargal’s sleep was broken by the sound of the animals yelping. He opened his eyes and saw a blur of orange near the goats.

It was two leopards.

One swiftly grabbed a 6-kg goat by its neck and jumped out of the enclosure over the fence, then disappeared into the sugarcane fields that surround the house. The second grabbed another goat and also tried to escape, but its paw got stuck in the fence.

Each goat cost between Rs 10,000 and Rs 20,000. Desperate to save at least one of them, Kargal attacked the leopard.

“The leopard dug its teeth into my thigh,” Kargal told Scroll in mid-December. “I screamed and my son ran out with a stick and began to hit it.” The leopard fled, only to return minutes later and attack Kargal again.

The animal bit the 40-year-old farmer on his stomach, hand and left leg, tearing through his flesh. Kargal fell unconscious – his stomach and thigh were bleeding profusely. The leopard next attacked Kargal’s 15-year-old son, Santosh. But now, the family’s four dogs pounced on the leopard from all sides, and bit it to death.

By this time, Kargal and Santosh were unconscious – they woke up four hours later in a hospital, where forest guards had rushed them.

Three months on, Kargal is able to walk, but with a limp and some pain. “I can never forget that leopard and that night,” he said.

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

Kargal’s village, Wadgaon Borwadi, is located in Junnar taluka in Pune district.

Junnar, which is spread over 5,826 sq km, is nestled at the northern end of the Western ghats. The surrounding region is dotted with lakes, waterfalls and picturesque valleys. On one of the mountain peaks in Junnar sits the Shivneri fort, where Shivaji, the founder of Maratha empire, was born. The site attracts a steady stream of tourists through the year, mostly from Mumbai and Pune.

This striking locale is also the site of a complex human-animal conflict – between leopards and people like Kargal, who live in small villages.

One reason this conflict has arisen is the high density of leopards in the area.

Although the last count of leopards in Junnar dates back to 1920, when a survey found between 420 and 500 leopards in the area, officials estimate their numbers have dramatically risen. “Now we estimate their population to be 800 to 1,000. Maybe more,” said Smita Rajhans, assistant conservator of Junnar forest division.

Ankit Kumar, a senior researcher at the Wildlife Institute of India, who is working under the senior scientist Bilal Habib on leopard behaviour and population estimation in Junnar, said that they found that the region had a density of around six or seven leopards in every 100 sq km. Kumar explained that in other parts of Maharashtra, such densities are typically found in protected areas, like the Tadoba-Andhari tiger reserve, which has around seven leopards for every 100 sq km, and the Sahayadri tiger reserve which has six for every 100 sq km.

Considering that Junnar is not a protected area and has heavy human habitation, Kumar said, he considered its leopard population density “towards the higher number”.

The high density in the region is closely linked to changes in patterns of land use over decades in the districts of Pune, Solapur and Nashik. Since the 1970s, at least five dams have come up in the region, in response to which farmers began to grow the water-intensive cash crop of sugarcane. The dense fields offered leopards the ideal habitat to breed, while the presence of humans ensured good prey availability in the form of dogs and goats.

Experts noted that conflict was almost inevitable in such a situation. “A low-density large carnivore population and low-density human population can co-exist. But when both become high, then that’s a recipe for conflict,” said YV Jhala, former dean of the Wildlife Institute of India, and a biologist who has worked extensively with tigers, leopards and cheetahs.

Indeed, these factors have resulted in a high number of “chance encounters” with humans, Rajhans noted, often leading to fatal attacks.

Between 2002 and this year, 56 people, most of them children, have been mauled to death and another 156 have been injured, according to data that the Junnar forest department shared with Scroll. Last year, while Kargal survived, five others lost their lives in leopard attacks in Junnar. At least 26,979 cattle have been killed.

Since 2002, the forest department has paid residents of Junnar a total of Rs 26.62 lakh for deaths and permanent disabilities that have resulted from leopard attacks. “But the compensation means nothing when you lose a family member,” said Maya Sonawane, a farm labourer.

The problem has even had some political ripples: to draw attention to locals’ frustrations and fears over the problem, in December, Junnar member of the legislative assembly Sharad Sonawane attended a session of the assembly in a leopard costume and mask.

Even as the problem persists, Junnar’s residents do whatever they can to avoid encountering leopards, which they refer to by the Marathi word “bibtiya”. When Scroll visited three villages in late December, locals advised us not to move around alone. Cages to trap the big cats were a common sight and we found fresh pug marks at multiple locations in two of the villages. Locals shout loudly while walking to scare any possible leopards in nearby fields, and shut themselves indoors by 8 pm.

In all these villages, locals guarded us and made whistling noises as we walked around sugarcane fields, meeting families. We were prepared to flee whenever a tiny rustle in farms was heard. “We live in fear all the time,” Kargal said. “Imagine you have to keep looking behind your back even when you sit on your porch.”

Sixty-two-year-old Laxman Mandlik remembers Junnar’s barren, undulating landscape before sugarcane was introduced in the region. At the time, the major crops grown in the region were wheat and maize, both sown on limited cultivable land. Leopards were present then too, he recounted, but conflicts were rare because “their numbers were less”, he said.

In 1972, the government built five dams on the Kukadi river, to provide water in Pune, Ahmednagar and Solapur. Along with these dams, located in and around Junnar, the government also created an extensive canal system that made water easily available for thirsty crops, such as sugarcane.

“A sugar factory came in 1982 which increased demand for sugarcane and made it lucrative for farmers to grow the crop,” said Mandlik, a retired schoolteacher and a farmer. Between 2000 and 2010, the area in Junnar under sugarcane cultivation doubled from 8,000 hectares to 16,000 hectares.

The crop is typically harvested once between every 12 months and 18 months. In this period, it can grow into a dense foliage more than 15 feet tall, which offers shelter to leopards to give birth to and raise cubs. Furthermore, the animals are usually left undisturbed because farmers in this region rely on drip irrigation, and so rarely need to venture into the farms to water the crop.

“This gave leopards privacy,” said Feroz Pathan, a “rescue member” with the Junnar forest department, whose job is to trap, relocate and rescue leopards, as well as raise awareness among residents on ways to protect themselves. “Unlike forests where predators could kill their cubs, in sugarcane farms they had no enemies. Cubs began to survive better on farms.”

Kumar explained that the cats also diversified their diets – while in forests, they typically eat animals such as deer and wild boar, his team’s photographic evidence showed leopards feeding on rats in farms, as well as dogs and livestock like goats and sheep. “We could not have predicted it, but we seemed to have created a perfect habitat for the leopard,” he said.

Indeed, the team’s camera traps showed that Junnar’s leopards had made the fields their home. “There was always a notion that leopards come here from some place and attack and then leave,” he said. “But, our study showed that this was not the case.” Their research, which is yet to be published, revealed that 70% of the leopards the team documented persisted in the area for at least three years. Based on this, the team informed locals that the animals were living “in their very own backyards”, Kumar said.

As the animal’s population grew, so did conflicts with it. A 2023 study that looked at data from 2001 to 2019 found that the number of attacks on livestock had increased sharply since 2015, ranging from 400 to 900 a year – in contrast, the region had seen between 200 and 400 such attacks a year between 2001 and 2014.

The threat to human lives also increased. Sakubai Kakade, a 65-year-old farmer in Kalwadi village, experienced the tragic consequences last year, when her eight-year-old grandson Rudra was killed by a leopard in their sugarcane field. After that she stopped going to the farm alone. “To cut the sugarcane, we ask sugar factory owners to send workers. Nobody wants to risk their lives anymore,” she said.

Locals in Junnar have also started to rely on migrant workers to cut their harvest. Vaishali Wagh is one such migrant worker, who travels from Jalgaon to Junnar every year for four months to harvest sugarcane. She, too, lives with the fear of leopards. “I keep looking back to make sure she is there,” said Wagh about her eight-month-old baby who was playing in the dry grass as Wagh cut the tall-stemmed cane metres away. “There is nothing else I can do. We have heard of leopards and we are scared. But I have to earn money to pay off a loan of Rs 1 lakh.”

In Kalwadi, farmers have been advised to avoid sugarcane cultivation close to borders of the village, to minimise the risk that leopards will stray in. The sides of the village’s roads are kept clean of shrubs or bushes to ensure that leopards do not have easy hiding places. Further, to ensure their safety, children in the village are not allowed to leave their homes alone at any time. “If they do, there is always an elder,” said Tushar Waman, the sarpanch of the village.

The forest department has approved Rs 13 crore for measures to tackle the leopard problem in Junnar for 2025-’26.

As part of this work, it has identified 650 isolated houses, and aims to provide residents with 75% of the cost of erecting solar fences around them, which deliver mild electric shocks to animals that might intrude. The department has also set up around 400 cages across Junnar to trap leopards, though, Kalwadi’s sarpanch Waman noted, this number is proving insufficient as the number of distress calls climbs every day.

In addition, the department has designed and distributed spiked collars to 3,300 farmers – worn around the neck, the area leopards often bite first, these devices can protect farmers who are attacked.

Among the most prominent long-term strategies that the government has resorted to in Junnar is translocating animals. Since the early 2000s, the forest department has sought to mitigate the problem by moving animals from human-habited areas into forested regions of Junnar, or other forested areas in the state.

But experts note that this approach is ultimately unlikely to be successful. “Such translocations only solve the problem for a while in the location from where they are translocated,” Jhala said. “But it translocates the problem elsewhere.”

This was borne out by a 2010 paper by the ecologist Vidya Athreya, which examined a programme to translocate leopards in Maharashtra that began in 2001. As part of the programme, initially 29 leopards were captured from human habitats and released in the slopes of the Western Ghats, primarily in Bhimashankar Wildlife Sanctuary, and Malshej Ghat, parts of both of which are within 40 km of Junnar. The study found that translocation led to an increase in the frequency of leopard attacks on humans in the Junnar forest division by a staggering 325%.

“The release sites already contained resident leopards, thus, leopard movements out of the release sites were inevitable,” the authors wrote, since “the two small areas could not support the influx of large numbers of leopards.”

Kumar’s more recent research also indicates that translocation is a flawed strategy. His team radio-collared 13 leopards that had been moved from various villages in Junnar to forested areas between 15 and 70 km away. The researchers found that the animals would almost always come back to the original sites within 30 days to two months. Further, Kumar explained that as the animals explored routes to return to their original homes, they would look for prey in an unfamiliar area, “which will lead to more interactions with humans”.

Jhala noted that translocations “could also mess with the social dynamics of where the animals are taken from”. For instance, he said, if a dominant leopard, which had perhaps been coexisting with humans, was shifted, other younger leopards less familiar with human presence could take over the territory. This “could exacerbate the problem”, Jhala said.

Forest department staffers said that the failure of these strategies can leave locals deeply angry, particularly after a village sees a fatal attack. “We are scared to even enter villages at such times,” Pathan said. “Recently, locals set a forest van and outpost on fire.”

In response, the forest department has for the moment halted translocations. Instead, it is housing captured leopards permanently in a centre in Manikdoh, initially meant for lost or injured animals. Another centre is being constructed in Junnar to accommodate the growing numbers of captive leopards.

But this approach is inherently limited. The Manikdoh centre has 50 enclosures, each of which is 25 square feet wide and can house one leopard. But currently, the centre houses 130 leopards, many in tiny trap cages where they can hardly move. “We are expanding our centre to build more enclosures and we will soon send 50 leopards to Vantara,” a senior official from the rescue centre told Scroll, referring to the Reliance Foundation’s animal centre in Jamnagar, Gujarat.

The forest department is also attempting to use new technology to tackle the problem.

On a crisp December afternoon, forest helper Rushi Gaikwad inspected a cage trap that he had set up the previous day for a leopard found lurking in the village. He showed us an application on his mobile phone, developed by the forest department. The app is linked to 55 AI-powered cameras in Junnar, set up in villages where leopards are spotted frequently. The cameras are programmed to recognise leopards and capture images of the animals, as well as set off alarms on phones that have the app installed. “We receive a notification from it on our phone when it captures an image of a leopard. We immediately rush to the spot,” Gaikwad said.

Additionally, the forest department also relies on a more general warning system called the “animal intrusion detection and repellent system”, or “anider”, set up near several villages in Junnar. The system detects the intrusion of an animal into a human settlement and makes a loud sound to drive away the animal. “We have 75 anider machines that detect wildlife movement and set off an alarm,” Rajhans said.

Further, she explained, the department has installed 16 simpler alarm systems that make loud noises at regular intervals, such as of lions roaring, elephants trumpeting and firecrackers exploding. “This scares a leopard away,” Rajhans said.

But the sheer population of leopards in Junnar means that such measures cannot go very far towards tackling the problem. Every village that has a sugarcane field – and most do – report leopard sightings regularly. “If we spot a leopard today, the forest team comes tomorrow,” Waman said. “They are short on staff and cages to trap leopards.”

Other new proposals that the forest department is considering to manage the conflict have also been met with criticism. One of these entails moving leopards from Schedule I of the Wildlife Protect Act, 1972, to Schedule II, which would in effect reduce the level of protection they enjoy. This would make it easier to catch “maneater” leopards, the government has claimed.

However, experts claim this will be a disastrous step.

Jhala explained that under the act, the chief wildlife warden has the power to make decisions to remove an animal if they deem it harmful to humans. Changing the protection status would “make it easier for the chief wildlife warden since the onus of decision making would not come to him”, said Jhala. But, he argued, it would spell disaster for the animal. “The leopards are still in the trade, their skin is valuable,” Jhala said.

Another strategy being implemented entails giving immuno-contraceptives to wild female leopards to prevent reproduction and thus control the animal’s population. In November, the union environment ministry granted the state forest department permission to proceed with a pilot test involving five female leopards.

Experts caution that this method might be inefficient and expensive, since each vaccine shot costs between $100 and $150, and interrupts the animal’s reproduction cycle for only around two years, after which it needs to be injected again.

The sterilisation project was initiated in 2015 when Jhala was working at the Wildlife Institute of India. “We had set up experimental cages at the institute but soon after the ministry refused to release any money for this project,” he said.

This hampered progress on studying the approach closely, he noted. “Science cannot operate at a finger snap,” he said. “You have to have your science done before the problem comes up. If you do it when it comes up, it is too late.”

Officials involved with the process are also worried about the possible hormonal changes that the shot may induce in the leopards. “We are taking help from African authorities who have undertaken contraception for animals there,” Rajhans said. “They reported a change in animal behaviour. We want to make sure contraception does not make a leopard more aggressive. That is why we are starting with just five leopards and we will observe them for three years.”

Jhala argued that other long-term strategies would be more effective, such as “changing of cropping pattern which provides cover, or reducing vulnerability of livestock to predators, and total elimination of free-ranging feral livestock and dogs, which provide the food base to sustain leopard population”. He added, “Everything else is all eyewash. It’s a matter of stalling the problem. But some hardcore decisions need to be taken.”

Meanwhile locals resort to extreme measures to protect their families. Maya Sonawane, a farm labourer, locks her three children indoors for the entire day when she is on farms working. “The leopard comes and sits under that tree,” she said, pointing to a tree in the courtyard. “My children watch it from the window.”

The toilet is located outside the house. “At night, we all wait outside if one person has to use it,” she said.

Some find humour in their grim circumstances. Laughing, Gaikwad said that the one silver lining was that thefts in Junnar had reduced, because “Even thieves are scared to go out alone at night.”

Fifty-two Maoists surrendered before security forces in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur on Thursday, The Hindu reported. Forty-nine of them carried a cumulative bounty of Rs 1.4 crore.

The persons, including 21 women, belong to the South Sub Zonal Bureau of the banned the Communist Party of India (Maoist).

The Maoists who surrendered include Lakkhu Karam, alias Anil, a divisional committee member, and platoon party committee members Laxmi Madvi and Chinni Sodhi, alias Shanti, The Hindu quoted the police as saying. They carried a reward of Rs 8 lakh each.

On Wednesday, 29 Maoists surrendered in neighbouring Sukma.

On January 7, 26 Maoists surrendered in Sukma followed by 63 in Dantewada a day later.

All surrendered members will be given immediate assistance of Rs 50,000 each and rehabilitated, the Hindustan Times quoted Bijapur Superintendent of Police Jitendra Kumar Yadav as saying.

On December 16, the Union government told Parliament that 2,167 “Left-wing extremists” had surrendered and 335 had been killed in the first 11 months of 2025. More than 940 had been arrested.

Overall, more than 1,800 such persons had been killed and over 16,000 had been arrested between 2014 and December 1, 2025. More than 9,580 had surrendered during the period.

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

In 2025, the number of “most affected” districts came down from six to three. These are Bijapur, Sukma and Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh.

More than 9,200 persons died in the national capital because of respiratory illnesses in 2024, increasing from 8,800 in 2023, PTI quoted data released by the Delhi government as saying on Thursday.

Common respiratory diseases include asthma, pneumonia, lung cancer and tuberculosis.

The overall death rate in Delhi also showed an increase, PTI reported. More than 1.39 lakh deaths were recorded in 2024 compared to 1.32 lakh in 2023.

About 3.06 births were recorded in Delhi in 2024, 8,628 less than the previous year.

The data showed that cardiovascular illnesses such as coronary artery disease, stroke, hypertension and heart failure were the top cause of deaths in Delhi during the year. More than 21,200 persons died in 2024 because of such diseases.

In 2023, more than 15,700 persons had died because of cardiovascular illnesses, India Today reported.

Infectious and parasitic diseases caused by the spread of bacteria and viruses were the second biggest case of deaths, PTI reported. About 16,000 persons died because of such illnesses compared to 20,781 deaths in 2023.

The infant mortality rate in the national capital showed marginal improvement, falling to 22.4 per 1,000 live births from 23.6 in 2023, the news agency reported. The rate measures the probability of a child dying before reaching the age of one.

India’s wool economy is a reminder that trade policy is rarely linear.

In the late 1980s, India had one of the world’s largest populations of sheep and a wool economy valued at an estimated Rs 4,500 crore at today’s prices. Wool sustained an entire ecosystem of shepherds, spinners, sorters, dyers and weavers.

This landscape changed abruptly in 1991, when India’s structural adjustment policies slashed tariffs and dismantled decades of protectionism. The changes opened the country to global trade. While this fuelled a boom in sectors such as software, Indian wool was devastated as imports flooded in.

Three decades later, a new twist has emerged. The global economy, taking its cues from US President Donald Trump, has shifted back toward protectionism.

The few Indian producers who had carved out export niches, especially those working with high-quality fleece, now find themselves squeezed out of their most lucrative market. In a striking echo of the 1990s, the same industry that was undercut by the removal of tariffs three decades ago is now threatened by their re-imposition abroad.

What remains constant is the pastoralist origin of the fibre: the households that continue to rear sheep, even as the wool they shear each year often has no buyers. Whether tariffs fall or rise, the first impact of policy lands on these households.

Structural adjustment policies

When India restructured its economy in the 1990s, among the sectors that benefitted enormously was the country’s software industry: tech firms accessed imported hardware more easily, the devalued rupee attracted global clients and exports soared to over $12 billion in 2004 from $128 million in 1990-’91.

However, the same policies dealt a devastating blow to the wool sector.

Most of the country’s wool was coarse, suited for carpets and blankets rather than fine apparel. But it was a coherent economy, built on breeds adapted to dry landscapes and a network of small users who depended on steady access to local fibre.

For India’s pastoralists, wool provided a predictable annual cash flow – even though a larger share of income came from meat and the sales of live animals

Before liberalisation, Indian mills had already preferred imported fine wool but high duties – often 45% – kept domestic fleece competitive. Once tariffs dropped to as low as 4%, cheaper and better quality imports flooded the market.

It wasn’t just imports that changed demand. Synthetic fibres, also newly affordable, spread quickly. Domestic users shifted almost overnight to imported alternatives.

Rajasthan’s carpet industry, for instance, began importing entire containers of finer, cleaner fleece from Australia instead.

In 1991, Indian wool produced was valued at Rs 4,000 crore at today’s prices. By 2001, it had fallen to Rs 2,800 crore.

For Indian shepherds and small artisans, the impact was swift. The price of Indian wool, which was Rs 300 per kg (at today’s prices) in the early 1990s, began to plunge, stagnating at around Rs 40 per kg from 1995.

Today, this price remains at Rs 45 per kg-Rs 50 per kg, so low that herders in Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Rajasthan often make a loss on every sheep sheared. Many have stopped transporting wool to markets altogether – it is burned, buried, or left to rot because disposal is cheaper than selling it.

The wool produced in India today is valued at close to Rs 600 crore.

The paradox of liberalisation was stark: a policy meant to make India globally competitive ended up crippling one of its oldest and most geographically widespread rural industries.

Global protectionism

In 2025, the new era of global protectionism has been prompted by the policies of Trump in the US – India’s largest market for textiles and apparel. New duties introduced last year have raised effective tariffs on some Indian goods to 50%-60%.

For woollen garments and niche exports such as fine organic wool, the rates are high enough to knock Indian producers out of the US market entirely. Competitors like Australia and New Zealand face lower duties, giving them a pricing edge.

Meanwhile, India’s own policies remain uneven. The government has recently reintroduced protections for synthetic fabrics, imposing a minimum import price to deter cheap polyester. But raw wool imports continue to enter at a duty of just 4%, preserving a long-standing tilt in favour of man-made fibres.

This imbalance amplifies the structural disadvantage created in the 1990s, making it even harder for domestic wool to regain viability.

Lost in policy swings, first toward openness, then toward protectionism, is the simple fact that wool production begins far from ports and mills. It begins with pastoralists moving flocks across drylands, shearing animals adapted over generations to local climates.

For them, though wool was never the main source of income, it was an essential seasonal cash payment that helped sustain their households.

When tariffs fell in the 1990s, the first people to feel the collapse were not mill owners but shepherds walking down from summer pastures to find that nobody wanted their fibre. When tariffs rise in the US today, the immediate effect is absorbed by the handful of herders and processors who built a small but promising export channel, one suddenly rendered unviable.

India has now experienced both extremes: the harm of removing protections too quickly and the harm of facing protectionism elsewhere. The victims, in both cases, are rural producers who operate on thin margins and have little bargaining power in distant markets.

As India debates the future of its textile sector, 2026 is in sharp focus, since it is the International Year for Rangelands and Pastoralism. The story of pastoralist wool offers a cautionary tale. Policies designed for one part of the economy can reshape another in ways that are neither intended nor easily reversible.

The challenge now for India is to rebuild and strengthen a domestic system that values natural fibre and the people who produce it, before another generation of shepherds finds wool too burdensome to carry at all.

Aniruddh Sheth is the research coordinator at the Centre for Pastoralism, New Delhi. Data on the wool economy is based on research being conducted at the institution.

The office of the block development officer at Goalpokher-II in West Bengal’s North Dinajpur district was vandalised on Thursday, with protesters setting fire to files and other materials outside the building during demonstrations against hearings under the special intensive revision of electoral rolls, The Times of India reported.

North Dinajpur district’s Superintendent of Police Jobi Thomas told the newspaper that ten persons have been detained in connection with the violence.

Six police personnel, including the inspector-in-charge of the police station, were injured in the incident and two of them were hospitalised, he added.

The state’s draft electoral rolls were published on December 16. They showed that more than 58 lakh voters were removed after being marked dead, shifted or absent. In addition, 31 lakh voters were “unmapped”, or not found on the 2002 rolls, when the last special intensive revision was held.

The revision exercise is currently in the claims and objections stage in the state, during which unmapped voters are being called for personal hearings.

The second phase of the hearing process under the revision exercise in West Bengal is being held in 294 Assembly constituencies and will continue till February 7. A final electoral roll will be published on February 14.

As part of this process, the block development officer has been issuing notices to voters for hearings.

On Thursday, around 500 hearings were scheduled after 11 am, and about 50 to 60 persons had arrived at the office for this, The Times of India reported.

According to a complaint filed by the Block Development Officer at the Chakulia police station, a group of around 300 persons allegedly entered the office forcibly, damaged furniture, electronic equipment and official documents. They also set fire to files and other materials after bringing them out of the building, the newspaper reported.

Thomas told The Times of India that the agitators also blocked the road in front of the office.

“We tried to lift the blockade,” Thomas was quoted as saying. “But the public was agitated and attacked the police. We did lathicharge to disperse the mob.”

This came a day after a block development officer was assaulted in Farakka in Murshidabad district during protests linked to the voter roll revision exercise.

In Farakka, a group allegedly threw chairs at the block development officer after barging into his office and attempting to ransack the room, The Times of India reported.

Two persons have been arrested in the case.

West Bengal is expected to head for Assembly elections in the next three to four months.

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

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

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

D Tamilselvi recently retired as a community health nurse from the Medavakkam primary health centre after 40 years of service. “In the beginning, I remember always having tree shade to park my cycle, to administer vaccines and write field reports,” the 60-year-old says.

But around the turn of the century, she began to dread the twice-weekly field visits. The trees that provided respite were gone, and open areas became buildings. “I began to sweat and struggle in the heat even in October,” she recalls.

About 300 km away in Bengaluru, V Harshitha struggles to deliver food and groceries in the summer. A second-year visual communications student from the temple town of Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh, Harshitha works as a Swiggy delivery personnel from 2 pm to 8 pm. “I specifically chose Bengaluru because I thought it wouldn't be too hot to work outdoors like my native town. But even in June, I check the temperature every day and while my phone says 30 degrees celsius, I feel like it is much hotter when I am outside.”

In Delhi’s Bakkarwala, Anshu Thakur, a tailor, is losing income due to increasing heat. “I am unable to work due to the discomfort I feel inside my home. This is despite having an air cooler and using reflective paint on the roof,” she says.

Thakur used to make Rs 600 a day for six hours of work. Now, she barely makes Rs 200. Apartments have cropped up in the empty spaces around Bakkarwala. As localities with greenery are comparatively cooler, the residents are now planting more trees.

The common thread tying these experiences is the Urban Heat Island effect – a phenomenon where cities experience warmer days and nights as concrete and heat-radiating structures (such as glass and metal) replace original land cover. Anecdotal evidence and a growing number of scientific papers link the growing urban heat island effect to rampant and unsustainable urbanisation at the cost of green cover and water bodies.

This has increased the temperature of the ground, roadways and buildings – referred to as the land surface temperature. This in turn has led to an urban heat island crisis in our cities.

In a two-part series, we look at what’s causing the crisis in nine Indian cities.

Health and productivity

Over time, sustained high land surface temperature can turn heat events into prolonged crises, altering local climates and ecosystems. This unchecked land surface temperature rise has now become both a symptom and a driver of the escalating urban heat island crisis in Indian cities.

And the impacts are far-reaching. The 2025 report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change shows that Indians were exposed to, on average, 19.8 heatwave days each – and a third of these would not have occurred if not for climate change.

Heat exposure led to a loss of 247 billion potential labour hours – or a “record high” 419 hours per person, 124% more than during 1990-1999. Agriculture (66%) and construction (20%) suffered the most losses. This led to an income loss of $194 billion.

Globally, failure to curb the warming effects of climate change has seen the rate of heat-related deaths surge 23% since the 1990s, to 546,000 a year, the report found.

By 2030, India is expected to lose around 5.8% daily working hours due to rising temperatures. This in turn will erode productivity and lower the collection of fiscal revenue, according to a report by the United National Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.

A study from 2021 confirms that temperature can influence worker output through different channels and that people may be more likely to miss work on very hot days. The study says that a one degree warming is estimated to reduce manufacturing output by about 2%.

In short, heat is equally an economic problem that urban India is not fully prepared for and if city governments do not adopt immediate interventions, both health and wealth will be impacted, say experts.

A 2021 research paper from the United Nations Environment Programme further states that if the current trends in urbanisation and increasing heat continue, it is expected that the urban population exposed to high temperatures – that is, average summertime highs above 35 degrees celsius – will increase 800% to reach 1.6 billion by mid-century.

If we continue on this path, “heatwaves will intensify, rising heat will lead to health risks, productivity loss will increase and energy demands will intensify”, says Anjal Prakash, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change author and research director at the Bharti Institute of Public Policy, Indian School of Business. “Vulnerable communities such as outdoor workers and slum dwellers will suffer the most because they don’t have the economic capacity to improve their thermal comfort. Urban heat will compound air pollution, water stress and inequity. If we go on like this, our cities will become unlivable.”

Green to grey

The data indicate that the interplay between rapid urban expansion and heat intensification is deeply entrenched into the evolving land dynamics of Indian cities. The roots of accelerated urbanisation for most Indian cities can be first traced to 1991.

“In India, urbanisation has occurred at an unusual rate in recent decades, particularly following the 1991 economic reforms,” a November 2022 study notes. “Urbanisation over a region was closely attributed to the rising trend in population due to either natural means or through migration.” The second wind for the rising urban sprawl came through the technology boom in the 2000s, as in the case of Bengaluru. And satellite images show this quick transition, as we explain in the second part of this series.

The elevated heat level is especially pronounced in regions where natural water bodies and green cover have either shrunk or disappeared entirely. In Jaipur for instance, historic water bodies such as the Ramgarh and Sambhar lake have dried up and shrunk, respectively over the last three decades.

This has reportedly been due to numerous encroachments and obstruction in the catchment areas. Ramgarh lake has been dry since 2000 and in the 20 years since this occurred, Jaipur’s land surface temperature has risen by 1.8 degrees celsius.

“Cities technically have master plans and climate action plans but they have not been brought together to create a comprehensive policy on development and expansion in the face of a climate crisis,” says Aravind Unni, an urban policy expert. “Today, we face an urban heat island crisis because there were no regulations in regard to the ratio of shade or green cover to built up area.”

“At a macro level, the Ministry of Urban Affairs and the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change are not even working together to tackle heat stress. This is a major governance failure.” he adds.

IndiaSpend has reached out to both ministries for comment. We will update this story when we receive a response.

Experts say land development has progressed without parallel investment in green infrastructure or environmental safeguards. While heat action plans have now become mainstream, most are underfunded, not built for local context, are poor at identifying and targeting vulnerable groups; have weak legal foundations; and are insufficiently transparent, according to a 2023 review of 37 heat action plans by the Centre for Policy Research.

“Cities need heat action plans that go beyond the advisories that mandate the cool roofs, reflective surfaces, shaded streets and also urban forests. Building codes must integrate passive cooling and energy efficiency,” says Anjal Prakash, IPCC author and research director at the Bharti Institute of Public Policy, Indian School of Business.

The disconnect between policy intent and ground reality is evident in how buildings actually get constructed.

For builders, the focus is to ensure using maximum built up area in any given plot. “This has meant a blatant violation of existing building rules in regard to the floor space index,” says a project architect and interior designer who has worked on multiple residential complexes in the suburbs of Indian cities who did not want to be named.

“While smaller buildings aren’t subject to much scrutiny or concerned about not receiving a completion certificate, larger projects are able to circumvent the minimum tree cover rule through connections and corruption. When we submit the design to the development authorities, we show the minimum required tree cover. But when it comes to fruition, that space is mostly allocated for parking. Builders say that budget homes (Rs 1 crore to Rs 3 crore) do not sell if they don’t offer at least two parking spots per home.”

To prevent legal trouble, her firm sends an email to the builder they work with objecting to the violation and ensuring their disapproval is on record. “Sustainability cuts into profits,” she points out.

Retrofitting cities

Research identifies four key cooling strategies: urban greening, changing surface material in built up areas, improving/ adding water bodies and urban form optimisation.

Across the country, cool roofing efforts in low income households are already underway and have yielded positive results, with white solar-reflective paint on rooftops lowering temperatures by 4-5 degrees celsius. Cooling strategies such as setting up a rooftop garden can reduce indoor temperatures as much as 4-5 degrees celsius and water-filled PET bottles by least 1-2 degrees celsius.

“Although urban expansion is irreversible, shading, natural ventilation and reflective materials can be employed to passively cool existing buildings,” says Shikha Patel, a research assistant at the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning in Qatar University. “In Bengaluru for instance, soil facilitates the expansion of green cover through the installation of additional trees, green roofs, and vertical gardens, which in turn naturally cool neighborhoods and alleviate heat stress. These straightforward measures can rapidly enhance the quality of outdoor living and enhance the livability of the city,” she adds.

Experts further suggest that progress is only possible if communities participate willingly. “Governments need to make strong efforts to spread awareness about the impact of the UHI [urban heat island] crisis and increase in LST [land surface temperature] to people. At a household level, the need for changes to the rooftop, building design and material use has to be communicated,” says Unni.

“For the microclimate to be fixed, we need to institutionalise the right policies for expanding green cover and increasing shade with the public onboard. Simply painting roofs white does not solve the UHI crisis,” he adds.

“Where is the space to improve green cover? There is rampant and illegal construction across cities. There are people living in these built environments. Can they all be evicted? It is a failure of the system that they live there,” says Abhiyant Tiwari. “Tier 1 cities are almost beyond repair at this point. If we have to take on such a mammoth task, it requires strong and harsh decision making,” he adds.

V Vinoj, associate professor at the School of Earth, Ocean and Climate Sciences, IIT Bhubaneswar questions how water bodies and additional tree cover – enough to make a difference – can be created in congested zones without disrupting the existing built up area. “It is incorrect to think that green cover alone will cool down every city. It depends on its geography, rainfall pattern, wind patterns. Similarly water bodies can’t be created in a concrete jungle. Retrofitting cities is harder than creating new plans for cities,” he points out.

His study shows that smaller cities such as Jamshedpur, Raipur, Patna and Indore rank highest when it comes to contribution of urbanisation to land surface temperature.

Tier 2 cities

Tier 2 cities – expanding rapidly without the infrastructure or planning capacity of larger cities – face their own escalating challenges.

Every summer, Narender Khandelwal, CEO of Floking Pipes Private Limited, a manufacturing unit in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, sees a 15% drop in production of plastic pipes. He also faces rejection of additional pipes that are not stored in godowns or have to be transported in pushcarts. His factory nestled within an industrial park in Kancheepuram was built a decade ago and this annual loss has been occurring since their first summer there.

“It becomes extremely hot here during the summer season and the chilling process of the product gets disrupted by external temperatures. Cold air or cold water is used to strengthen the pipes once expanded but due to heat this process slows down significantly. When shaded storage is full, we store the finished product in an open area and the colour changes from off-white to milky white, causing it to be rejected,” he explains.

According to the Tamil Nadu State Planning Commission's latest study, the impact of increase in built up area is evident from peri-urban blocks such as Kundrathur, Sholavaram, and Sriperumbudur where the disappearance of traditional irrigation tanks and surface water bodies has compounded the local warming trend.

In the last 40 years, Sriperumbudur and Oragadam – home to leading manufacturing units – have expanded from 5 sq km to 25 sq km.

“Without these water bodies serving as natural thermal regulators, the urban environment becomes more vulnerable to heat accumulation and slower nocturnal cooling, aggravating the urban heat island effect,” states the report.

Efforts to stem the impact of heat are multi-pronged in a state like Tamil Nadu.

“Lots of measures are underway. Tier 2 and 3 cities are being studied block by block and as a whole district,” says Sudha Ramen, member secretary of the Tamil Nadu State Planning Commission. “The Green Tamil Nadu mission has been set up already to improve green cover in the state to reduce the impact of heat. Municipal corporations and the State Wetland Mission are working to restore and protect waterbodies and the health department is looking into heat-related illnesses and comorbidities. The Industries Department is looking at specific industrial belts and mandating necessary interventions including additional rest for workers and prevention of dehydration. In addition to this, every district has its own Heat Action Plan,” she adds.

Madurai for instance, is gearing up to create two urban forests in its periphery at a cost of Rs.1.13 crore; 15 acres of land in Kodimangalam and 10 acres of land near Vilandgudi have been chosen by the forest department and the city corporation for this project. While there are concerns about the species of trees that will be chosen and past setbacks, there is cautious optimism regarding this project amongst residents and environmentalists.

For people like Tamilselvi who watched her neighborhood's trees disappear over 40 years, such efforts – if scaled and sustained – offer hope that cities might reverse some of the heat damage already done.

The Bihar government meanwhile has set up five weather stations to study meteorology, hydrology, type of buildings and building materials used in heat hotspots in Patna.

In a presentation made at the 12th International Conference on Urban Climate the Bihar Mausam Sewa Kendra, Department of Planning and Development said there was a 3.5 degrees celsius increase in temperature in UHIs compared to greener areas in the city. They found, through Weather Research and Forecasting Models simulations, that the strategic introduction of white reflective paint on rooftops and redevelopment of barren land into parks can reduce temperatures by 2-2.5 degrees celsius.

With this in mind, the Patna Municipal Corporation has drawn a city master plan for 2031 with a focus on urban greening and lakefront redevelopment where there are encroachments.

With inputs from Laasya Shekhar, an independent journalist from Chennai, who writes on environment, wildlife, heat and their interplay with communities. She can be reached on X at @plaasya

Priyanka Thirumurthy is an award-winning multimedia journalist with a focus on the impact of climate change and excessive heat on our everyday lives. She can be reached on X at @priyankathiru

This article first appeared on IndiaSpend, a data-driven and public-interest journalism non-profit.

The Supreme Court on Thursday stayed the first information reports registered by the West Bengal Police against Enforcement Directorate officials in connection with the searches at the premises of political consultancy I-PAC on January 8, Bar and Bench reported.

The court also issued notice to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and several West Bengal Police officers on a petition filed by the Enforcement Directorate, alleging that they had obstructed the searches, Live Law reported.

The searches were conducted at the firm’s office in Kolkata’s Salt Lake area, the home of the firm’s head Pratik Jain, and the office of a trader in the city’s Posta neighbourhood, as part of an investigation into alleged money laundering.

The Indian Political Action Committee has managed the Trinamool Congress’ election campaigns, including in the 2021 Assembly elections.

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

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

Following the raids, the Trinamool Congress and I-PAC moved the Calcutta High Court challenging the legality of the searches.

The ED also approached the High Court, alleging “illegal interference” during its search operations, but the matter was adjourned on Wednesday at the agency’s request, Bar and Bench reported.

The Enforcement Directorate’s petition in the Supreme Court was filed under Article 32 of the Constitution, which grants individuals the right to move the top court for enforcement of their fundamental rights.

On Thursday, a Supreme Court bench of Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and Vipul M Pancholi said that the alleged interference of the state in ED’s searches was a “serious issue” that needed to be examined.

“For furtherance of rule of law in the country, and to allow each organ to function independently, it is necessary to examine the issue so that the offenders are not allowed to be protected under the shield of the law enforcement agencies of a particular state,” Live Law quoted the bench as saying.

It added: “Larger questions are involved in the present manner, which if allowed to remain undecided, would further worsen the situation and there will be a situation of lawlessness prevailing in one or the other state.”

The court also observed that while central agencies do not have the authority to interfere with the election-related work of political parties, it must be examined whether a bona fide investigation into serious offences can be obstructed on the grounds that party activities are being affected, Live Law reported.

The Enforcement Directorate has also sought a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into the alleged obstruction of its functioning.

The Supreme Court has issued notice to the West Bengal government, Banerjee, the state’s Director General of Police Rajeev Kumar, Kolkata Police Commissioner Manoj Kumar Verma and Deputy Commissioner of Police (South Kolkata) Priyabatra Roy.

The respondents have been asked to file their counter-affidavits within two weeks. The matter will be heard next on February 3.

Separately, the High Court on Wednesday disposed off a petition filed by the Trinamool Congress seeking protection of confidential political data.

This came after the Enforcement Directorate told Justice Suvra Ghosh that it had not seized any documents during the searches.

Additional Solicitor General SV Raju, representing the Enforcement Directorate, had claimed that any documents or electronic devices removed from the premises were taken away by Banerjee and not by the central agency.

The Supreme Court stayed the first information reports registered by the West Bengal Police against Enforcement Directorate officials in connection with searches of the premises of political consultancy I-PAC last week. The bench also issued notice to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and several West Bengal Police officers on a petition filed by the central agency, alleging that they obstructed the searches.

The court said that the alleged interference of the state in ED’s searches was a “serious issue” that needed to be examined.

It also observed that while central agencies do not have the authority to interfere with the election-related work of political parties, it must be examined whether a bona fide investigation into serious offences can be obstructed on the grounds that party activities are being hampered. Read on.

As voting for 29 municipal corporations in Maharashtra was underway, the Opposition parties raised concerns about the use of marker pens on the electors’ fingers instead of indelible ink to ensure that they did not vote multiple times. Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray said that if a voter was to use a hand sanitiser, “the ink disappears”.

Mumbai’s Municipal Commissioner Bhushan Gagrani said that the administration will investigate complaints related to the use of the marker pens. On the other hand, the State Election Commission said that attempting to erase the ink applied on an elector’s finger “and thereby trying to create confusion among voters is a malpractice”.

As of 3.30 pm, the voter turnout in Mumbai stood at 41%. In Pune, some electronic voting machines reported glitches during the initial hours of polling, but officials said that the faulty devices were replaced. Read on.

The Supreme Court asked the Election Commission to consider extending the deadline for filing objections to the deletion of names from Kerala’s draft electoral rolls following the special intensive revision. The bench made the suggestion citing difficulties faced by voters in accessing details of those excluded.

It also directed the poll body to publicly display the names of excluded voters at gram panchayat offices or other public offices in villages, and to publish the list on its official website. Read on.

United States President Donald Trump claimed he had been told that the killing of protesters in Iran had stopped and that “there is no plan for executions”. However, he provided no details and did not identify his sources, describing them only as important sources “on the other side”.

He added that he would later “find out” whether the information was true and said the US would wait and watch how events unfold before deciding on any action.

The US president’s claims came hours before Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that “there is no plan” to hang people, when asked about the crackdown on nationwide anti-government protests. Read on.

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The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the Election Commission to consider extending the deadline for filing objections to the deletion of names from Kerala’s draft electoral rolls following the special intensive revision, reported Live Law.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi made the suggestion citing difficulties faced by voters in accessing details of those excluded.

The bench also directed the poll body to publicly display the names of excluded voters at gram panchayat offices or other public offices in villages, and to publish the list on its official website, the legal news outlet reported.

The special intensive revision of electoral rolls is underway in 12 states and Union Territories, including Kerala. The exercise is currently in the claims and objections stage in the state.

In Kerala, the draft electoral rolls published on December 23 showed that 24 lakh names had been excluded from an electorate of 2.7 crore, or approximately 8.7%.

The voters can file claims and objections to deletions until January 22. The notice phase, which includes hearings and verification, will continue until February 14, and the final electoral rolls are scheduled to be published on February 21.

On Thursday, the petitioners told the court that while voters can object to deletions, the list of persons removed from the draft roll is not available to them, Live Law reported.

Counsel for the Election Commission submitted that the court’s earlier direction on publicly displaying draft electoral rolls had been complied with.

However, the bench said that if the list of excluded voters had not already been made public, it must be displayed at local public offices and on the commission’s website.

“Meanwhile, having regards to the difficulty being experienced by the people at large, the [Election Commission] may consider the desirability of extending the date,” Live Law quoted the bench as saying.

Counsel for the commission agreed to consider the suggestion.

The court is hearing a batch of petitions against the validity of the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls in several states, including Kerala.

One of the petitions has been filed by the Kerala government, which had not challenged the exercise but sought a postponement in view of the local body elections that were held on December 9 and December 11.

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.

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

Voting is underway for 29 municipal corporations in Maharashtra, including the Mumbai civic body, on Thursday. The results of the elections will be declared on Friday.

Voting began at 7.30 am and will end at 5.30 pm.

As of 3.30 pm, the voter turnout in Mumbai stood at 41%, PTI reported.

Across the state, 3.4 crore voters are eligible to decide the fate of 15,931 candidates, PTI reported.

Voters in cities other than Mumbai will cast multiple votes for the first time to choose several corporators for each ward under the panel system. Electors in Mumbai will have to cast a single vote due to the traditional one-ward-one-corporator model.

Dozens of senior police officers, along with 11,938 constables and 42,703 home guards have been deployed across the state to maintain law and order, The Hindu reported. Fifty-seven companies of the State Reserve Police Force have been deployed.

The six major political parties in the fray in the municipal elections are the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Congress, and the two factions of the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party. The parties have entered into several different alliances across the 29 municipal corporations.

In Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad, Ajit Pawar’s faction of the NCP will contest the elections in alliance with the Sharad Pawar-led faction of the NCP.

In Mumbai, the BJP has retained its alliance with the Shiv Sena group led by Eknath Shinde, while the NCP faction headed by Ajit Pawar is contesting independently.

The Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) has allied with its former rival, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, along with the NCP faction headed by Sharad Pawar. The Congress has entered into a coalition with Prakash Ambedkar’s Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi.

Nearly two weeks before polling took place, 68 candidates of the Mahayuti coalition were elected unopposed in the municipal elections. The wins had become clear after the deadline to withdraw nominations ended on January 2.

Several candidates of the Opposition alliance had withdrawn their nominations.

Of the 68 candidates who won unopposed, 44 belonged to the ruling BJP. Its ally, the Shinde Sena won 22 seats unopposed. The remaining two were won by Ajit Pawar’s NCP group. The wins themselves were not enough for the ruling alliance to clinch control of any municipal corporation.

However, the Maharashtra State Election Commission sought reports from these municipal corporations amid the Opposition’s allegations of irregularities in the filing of the poll nominations.

EVM glitches reported in Pune, officials say machines replaced

Some electronic voting machines reported glitches during the initial hours of polling in Pune but officials said that the faulty devices were replaced and voting continued without disruption, PTI reported.

Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) leader Rohit Pawar said on social media that some of the EVMs in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad shut down at the start of polling and that a few showed time lags of up to 15 minutes.

“In some places, light was blinking after casting a vote for the third candidate, while in some cases, despite casting all four votes, the mandatory light was not blinking,” he said. “All these things are suspicious. The State Election Commission should give a clarification.”

Pune’s Additional Municipal Commissioner and poll in-charge Omprakash Divte told PTI that 15 to 20 EVMs developed snags soon after polling began. “However, substitute machines kept with sectoral election officers were immediately deployed and polling continued in those wards without any glitch,” he was quoted as saying.

As of 1.30 pm, the voter turnout in Pune was 23%, PTI reported.

High stakes in Mumbai

In the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, which is India’s richest civic body with an annual budget of over Rs 74,400 crore, more than 1 crore voters will cast their ballots to elect 227 corporators, with about 1,700 candidates in the fray, in elections being held after a four-year delay.

More than 28,000 police personnel have been deployed across Mumbai to maintain law and order.

Ahead of the Mumbai civic polls, the Thackeray cousins joined hands two decades after Raj Thackeray left the Shiv Sena to form the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena.

The two parties have the support of the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar).

While the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) is contesting 163 seats, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena is vying for 53. The Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) is contesting 11 seats.

The BJP is contesting 137 seats in the Mumbai municipal body, while the Shinde Sena is contesting 90.

Also read:

• ‘Money and muscle’: Why Opposition workers are crying foul in Maharashtra civic polls
• Maharashtra civic polls: Use of marker pens instead of indelible ink sparks row

When Rajesh Kumar’s* visa stamping appointment was canceled on December 8, he had already landed in Delhi for what was supposed to be a two-week trip home. The software engineer, who has lived in the United States since 2016, had timed his visit around the Christmas holidays – a window that many on H-1B temporary work visas use to renew their status.

But instead of flying back to his job in California, Kumar now faces a rescheduled appointment in July 2026, seven months away.

He is one of hundreds of Indian H-1B visa holders stranded after US consulates in India abruptly postponed their appointments following the Trump administration’s implementation of new social media vetting procedures.

The Trump administration had announced the new vetting procedures on December 3, saying all H-1B applicants and their dependents seeking H-4B visas would now be subject to social media screening as part of what the US State Department called “expanded screening and vetting”.

The policy was introduced for student visas in June and has now been extended to cover skilled workers and their dependents.

Visa stamping appointments scheduled from December 15 were rescheduled to dates between March 2026 and January 2027, according to affected workers.

WORLDWIDE ALERT FOR H-1B AND H-4 VISA APPLICANTS
 
Beginning December 15, the Department of State expanded online presence reviews to ALL H-1B and H-4 applicants as part of standard visa screening. This vetting is being conducted globally for ALL applicants of ALL nationalities… pic.twitter.com/qMrMrOvqy0

— U.S. Embassy India (@USAndIndia) December 22, 2025

In emails sent to affected applicants, the State Department said appointments were being delayed “to ensure that no applicants … pose a threat to US national security or public safety”. A spokesperson said consulates were now “prioritizing thoroughly vetting each visa case above all else”.

India has long been the biggest beneficiary of the H-1B programme, accounting for 71% of visa holders, according to an April 2025 report from US Citizenship and Immigration Services. As of September, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Tata Consultancy Services and Google were the five largest sponsors of H-1B workers, USCIS data shows.

Scroll spoke to five H-1B workers affected by the postponement, all of whom requested anonymity for fear of jeopardising their immigration status. They are now applying for expedited visa stamping appointments even as they negotiate with their employers to allow them to continue working remotely from India.

One worker, employed at a tech company on the West Coast in the US, said his employer agreed to let him work from India until March. “They said we’ll assess the situation then,” he told Scroll.

Another worker said she traveled to India with her husband for visa renewals. Both had appointments scheduled for the same day and time, but only hers was rescheduled to June while her husband’s went ahead as planned.

A third worker said that the lease for his apartment in the US expires in April. “I’m not sure if the property manager would allow me to renew if I’m not in the US,” she said. “Everything is an added expense at this point.”

Thousands of horror stories from H1B holders whose stamping appointments were postponed by US Consulates in most arbitrary fashion. They are stranded for no fault of theirs. @DrSJaishankar @narendramodi @PiyushGoyal

India-US trade deal when US is targeting innocent citizens?

— Tamirabharani தாமிரபரணி (@iluvindia2014) December 21, 2025

Emily Neumann, an attorney at Reddy Neumann Brown, a Houston-based immigration firm, has at least 100 clients stuck in India. “Companies we are in touch with are trying to work with their employees to allow them to work remotely,” she said. “But there are those who don’t have that option and in these cases, the employers are trying to hold out as long as they can.”

Ana Gabriela Urizar, an attorney with Manifest Law, an immigration law firm in the United States, said workers who get laid off while stuck in India cannot return under their prior H-1B approval and would need a new employer to file a fresh petition.

While a $100,000 charge for new applications announced in September could apply in some cases, Urizar said it may be early to assume that. She added, “In many cases, the fee does not apply.”

Workers can apply for expedited appointments if they can demonstrate urgent business needs, but they are allowed only two attempts. One worker said that his requests for an expedited appointment had been rejected, leaving him with an appointment date in June.

Some large employers have tried to accommodate stranded workers. Amazon, one of the largest sponsors of H-1B workers, stated in an internal memo sent to its employees on December 17 that those stuck in India could work remotely until March 2. The note also specified a list of restrictions: workers cannot write code, make strategic decisions, negotiate contracts or interact with customers.

The cancellation of appointments are the latest in a series of restrictions on H-1B visas. In July, the State Department announced that H-1B holders would no longer be able to renew their visas remotely or in third countries requiring them to return to their home countries for processing. In September 2025, Trump signed a proclamation imposing a $100,000 fee on new H-1B applications.

The Trump administration is also close to approving a wage-based weighted lottery system for H-1B visas, which would prioritise applicants with higher salaries over the current random selection process.

*Names withheld at the request of those interviewed.

A junior doctor and a nurse have been admitted to Kolkata’s Infectious Diseases and Beliaghata General Hospital after developing early symptoms of the Nipah virus infection, the Hindustan Times quoted a state health department official as saying on Wednesday.

The Nipah virus is a “zoonotic illness” transferred from animals such as pigs and fruit bats to humans. The virus can also be caught through human-to-human transmission.

It causes fever and cold-like symptoms in patients. The infection can also cause encephalitis, which is the inflammation of the brain, and myocarditis, or the inflammation of the heart, in some cases.

The two persons had been treating a healthcare worker, who had later tested positive for the virus at the Burdwan Medical College and Hospital in Purba Bardhaman district.

The doctor and the nurse were shifted to the hospital in Kolkata on Tuesday and have been kept in isolation, an unidentified official told the newspaper. Their blood and nasopharyngeal swab samples have been sent for testing, another official was quoted as saying.

The new suspected cases came three days after two healthcare workers in the state tested positive for the infection. They remain in critical condition at a hospital in Barasat. While one of them is in coma, the other is on ventilator support, The Hindu reported.

Their infections were initially detected at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences Kalyani and reconfirmed by the National Institute of Virology in Pune.

While more than 120 persons, including hospital staff, family members and ambulance drivers, who were in contact with the two healthcare workers have also been told to isolate themselves, several others are being screened for the virus, The Hindu reported.

Contact tracing is underway in North 24 Parganas, Bardhaman and Nadia districts.

The source of the outbreak has not yet been identified.

While the last outbreaks of the Nipah virus were in West Bengal in 2001 and 2007, the last reported cases of the disease in the country was in Kerala in August.

Two teenage athletes were found dead in the hostel room of a Sports Authority of India facility in Kerala’s Kollam on Thursday, PTI quoted the police as saying.

The girls were identified as Sandra, 17, from Kozhikode district, and Vyshnavi, 15, from Thiruvananthapuram, reported Mathrubhumi.

While Sandra was studying in Class 12, Vyshnavi was a Class 10 student.

The deaths came to light at around 5 am after other hostel residents noticed that the two girls were missing from training. Hostel authorities broke into the room and found the bodies, PTI quoted the police as saying.

The police said that Vyshnavi, who was living in a separate room, had spent the previous night in Sandra’s room.

The Kollam East police have launched an investigation.

The reason for the deaths is yet to be determined and no note was recovered from the room, officials said.

A National Investigation Agency court in Delhi on Wednesday convicted Kashmiri separatist leader Asiya Andrabi and two of her associates under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, PTI reported.

Andrabi, alleged to be the founder and chief of the banned all-women separatist group Dukhtaraan-e-Millat, had been arrested in April 2018 by the Jammu and Kashmir Police for allegedly planning a large-scale demonstration in Anantnag, the news agency reported. She had been sent to jail in Srinagar.

In July 2018, Andrabi and her associates, Nahida Nasreen and Fahmeeda Sofi, were arrested by the NIA from the Srinagar jail.

The central agency had registered a case under the anti-terror law against the three women for being members of a banned organisation, waging war against the state, sedition and criminal conspiracy. They were formally charged in February 2021.

Additional Sessions Judge Chander Jit Singh of the NIA court had been hearing the case.

On Wednesday, the judge found them guilty of offences under sections of the UAPA pertaining to conspiracy and membership of a terrorist organisation, PTI reported.

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

The bench will hear the arguments on their sentencing on Saturday.

Andrabi is the second separatist leader to be convicted by an NIA court after Yasin Malik since the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution in 2019, which had granted special status to the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir.

A portion of a school being constructed in Madhya Pradesh’s Betul district was bulldozed by the authorities on Tuesday following rumours that it was an unauthorised madrasa, The Indian Express reported.

A resident, Abdul Naeem, had invested nearly Rs 20 lakh in borrowed money and from family savings to construct the school in Dhaba village, the newspaper reported.

Naeem was building the school for students from nursery to Class 8 because families from the village and nearby Adivasi hamlets had to send their children to institutes several kilometres away. He had filed an application with the state school education department on December 30.

However, rumours had begun to spread since last week that a madrasa was being built in the area, The Indian Express reported.

“I had decided to construct the school on my private land so that my village can progress and some people can study,” Naeem told the newspaper. “Senior officials claimed that we were doing wrong things here.”

Naeem said there was no basis to claims that a madrasa was being built there. “This is a village with only three Muslim families,” he said. “How would a madrasa even function here? And the building wasn’t even complete – no classes, no students.”

On Sunday, the panchayat issued Naeem a notice ordering him to demolish the school, claiming that he did not have the permission to build the structure. The officials at the panchayat office allegedly refused to accept his response and told him to return later.

Following protests by residents, the panchayat issued a no-objection certificate for the school on Monday, NDTV reported. The sarpanch was quoted as stating that she had not received any complaints alleging that the structure was an unauthorised madrasa.

However, on Tuesday, when Naeem and some villagers had gone to meet the district collector to discuss the matter, the administration demolished the parts of the school.

Ajit Maravi, the sub-divisional magistrate, told The Indian Express that the administration had acted on a complaint from the panchayat alleging encroachment and violation of rules.

“A verification found that part of the construction fell under encroachment,” Maravi was quoted as saying. “Only the illegal portion has been removed, not the entire building.”

He alleged that all permissions had not been obtained.

Naeem disputed the allegations. “I had the panchayat NOC,” he was quoted as saying, adding that he had applied for a school approval.

NDTV quoted Naeem as saying that he was told that the structure would be demolished as the panchayat had not issued a no-objection certificate.

“I did not know [earlier] that an NOC from the panchayat was required...” he was quoted as saying. “I am ready to pay whatever fine is imposed; that is my humble request…My only request is that the building should not be demolished.”

Two journalists associated with Telugu news channel NTV were arrested by the Telangana Police on Wednesday for broadcasting allegedly false and defamatory content about a woman Indian Administrative Service officer and a state minister in a television programme, The Hindu reported.

Those arrested were NTV input editor Donthu Ramesh and reporter Sudheer.

Ramesh was arrested at the Hyderabad airport when he was about to board a flight to Bangkok, The News Minute reported. Sudheer was arrested at his residence in the city.

Another NTV reporter, Paripurna Chari, had been detained for questioning but was later released, an unidentified officer told The Hindu.

On Thursday, the journalists were produced before a magistrate and granted bail, PTI reported. The court directed them to surrender their passports.

The arrests followed a complaint filed by Jayesh Ranjan, secretary of the Telangana IAS Officers’ Association, who alleged that content telecast by NTV on January 8 contained “completely false, fabricated and baseless” allegations against a serving woman Indian Administrative Service officer, The News Minute reported.

The complainant alleged that the TV programme had made unsubstantiated claims, used sexual innuendo and indirectly identified the officer while attempting to link her postings to an alleged personal relationship with an elected official, The News Minute reported.

While the reports did not identify the persons, state minister Komatireddy Venkat Reddy on Saturday denied the allegations and said that legal action would be taken against those responsible for the “deliberately misleading” content.

Based on the complaint, a Special Investigation Team headed by Hyderabad Police Commissioner VC Sajjanar was formed.

The police have registered cases against NTV, T News and several other television channels, YouTube channels and social media accounts under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the Information Technology Act and the Indecent Representation of Women Prohibition Act.

The charges include sexual harassment, insulting a woman’s modesty, criminal intimidation, insult with intent to provoke breach of peace and transmission of obscene material in electronic form.

The investigation team also conducted a search at the NTV office, and seized computers and hard disks, The News Minute reported.

The police said that they were investigating two cases, including a separate matter relating to the circulation of an allegedly obscene and humiliating image of Chief Minister Revanth Reddy in a WhatsApp group.

The late-night detentions sparked sharp political reactions, with Opposition parties accusing the Congress government in the state of targeting the media.

Bharat Rashtra Samithi leader KT Rama Rao condemned the arrests, comparing them to actions during the Emergency and questioned why journalists had been detained at night when the offences cited were bailable.

“It is unfortunate how Telangana DGP is hell bent on treating journalists like criminals,” Rao said on social media.

Former minister and BRS leader T Harish Rao urged the police to follow due process and asked whether it was “necessary to go to journalists’ homes in the middle of the night during the festival and make arrests”, The News Minute reported.

YSR Congress Party chief YS Jagan Mohan Reddy said that the police action was an attack on press freedom and democratic values.

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday directed authorities in the national capital to immediately take over subways near government hospitals, and provide beds and tents for those waiting for treatment and their relatives camped outside to protect them from the cold, the Hindustan Times reported.

A bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia issued the directions to the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board, saying that denying shelter amounted to a violation of fundamental rights. Refuge cannot be denied on the grounds of the paucity of funds or other resources, the judges said.

The bench said that the government and its agencies were duty-bound to ensure that homeless persons, and those waiting to be treated at hospitals and their relatives, were given adequate space to take shelter, Bar and Bench reported.

The order covers areas near major government hospitals in the national capital such as All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, Vardhman Mahavir Medical College and Lady Hardinge Medical College in the national capital.

The court directed the shelter board to take over subways near these areas by Wednesday evening, and erect tents or shelters with essential amenities, the Hindustan Times reported.

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi and the Delhi Development Authority were asked to cooperate with the shelter board, “failing which the court may take a strong view of the matter and erring officials of these agencies may be held accountable”.

The bench said that the direction applied to the Delhi Police and Delhi Metro Rail Corporation as well.

The direction was issued after the court on Monday took suo motu cognisance of a report in The Hindu that described the condition of patients and their kin staying on the streets near AIIMS due to the lack of affordable accommodation.

On Wednesday, the court was told that the counsel for the Union government, Ashish Dixit, visited shelters near AIIMS and Safdarjung Hospital in the national capital, and reported a need for at least 400 additional beds. Dixit also reported that most of the occupants were cancer patients or their attendants.

A non-profit organisation also submitted photographs of the shelter to the bench, saying that its office-bearers had visited several locations, Bar and Bench reported.

Taking into account these submissions and the arguments from the counsel for several government authorities, the bench noted that the reality on the ground appeared very different from the claims made before it.

The court said that a meeting shall be held on Friday under the chairmanship of the Principal District Judge (South District) to chalk out a short-term plan. This will be implemented from Friday itself to meet the current exigencies, it added.

The case will be heard further on Friday.

Danish shuttler Anders Antonsen on Wednesday said that he had withdrawn from the India Open Super 750 in New Delhi for the third consecutive year, because of “extreme pollution” in the capital.

Ranked third in men’s singles globally, the player said that the air pollution made Delhi an unsuitable venue for hosting a badminton tournament at this time of year.

This is the third consecutive year that the Danish badminton player has opted out of the Super 750 event.

The India Open began on Tuesday and will run until Sunday. It is being held at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium.

Explaining the reason behind his decision in a series of social media posts, Antonsen shared a screenshot from Swiss-based air quality monitoring firm IQAir showing Delhi’s air quality index at 348 on Wednesday, a level categorised as “very poor”.

Air quality in the “very poor” category can cause breathing discomfort even in healthy persons.

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.

In his social media post, Antonsen said: “Crossing my fingers that it will be better in the Summer when the World Championships will take place in Delhi.”

The World Championships are expected to be held in Delhi in August.

Antonsen’s comments came a day after fellow Danish shuttler, Mia Blichfeldt, raised concerns about health and training conditions at the ongoing tournament, The Indian Express reported.

Blichfeldt, ranked world number 20, is competing at the India Open and has reached the round of 16.

“I am happy with the court conditions but not the health conditions,” The Indian Express quoted her as saying. “The floors are dirty and there is a lot of dirt on the courts. Also, there are birds flying in the arena, there is bird poop also.”

The Badminton Association of India responded to the criticism, stating that Blichfeldt’s comments were mainly related to the training facilities and not the playing arena.

The association’s General Secretary, Sanjay Mishra, said the main playing arena had been kept clean, dirt-free and pigeon-free, and that several players had expressed satisfaction with the conditions, Firstpost reported.

“As an athlete who is more sensitive to dust and environmental factors, she was sharing a personal perspective on how conditions can sometimes impact her health,” Mishra was quoted as saying.

The lynching on December 18 of Dipu Chandra Das, a Hindu man in Bangladesh’s Mymensingh district, over allegations of blasphemy against Prophet Muhammad, put the focus on the horrors of majoritarian vigilante mob justice. Das’s killing was followed by further violence against Hindus across the border.

The killing sparked massive outrage in India among ordinary citizens, politicians, the media and even celebrities. The Indian government officially expressed its concern about the “barbaric killing”. The reactions are entirely justified. After all, if such horrendous violence has to be prevented, it must be met with visceral anger and condemnation.

But the response caused some to ask: should outrage be channeled on the lines of religion, nationality and ethnicity?

Within days of Das being killed, there were at least four lynchings in India: Mohammad Athar Hussain, a cloth vendor in Bihar; Ramnarayan Baghel, a migrant worker from Chhattisgarh in Kerala; Jewel Sheikh, a worker from West Bengal in Odisha; and Anjel Chakma, a student from Tripura in Uttarakhand. These killings did not traumatise our national consciousness as Das’s did.

Only Chakma’s death got some attention. There were no primetime news debates or condemnations from powerful ministers. In this selective outrage, a Bangladeshi player was barred from playing in the IPL cricket tournament.

India has chosen to ignore the powerful exhortation by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”.

After the Bharatiya Janata Party assumed power in 2014, India saw a spurt in lynching on the basis of religion. An overwhelming number of victims were Muslim. The lynchings, among many others, of Mohammad Akhlaq, Pehlu Khan, Alimuddin Ansari, 16-year-old Junaid Khan, Ghulam Ahmed, Majlum Ansari and 12-year-old Imitiaz Khan and Rakbar Khan drew international attention. This prompted the Supreme Court to ask Parliament to consider drafting a separate law for mob lynching.

Though there is no central law, Section 103(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanahita punishes mob violence.

In contrast, the spate of lynchings since 2024 has not troubled the national imagination and has scarcely received media time. It reveals a shocking normalisation of hate against minorities. In June 2024 alone, Guddu Khan and Chand Miya Khan, Mohammed Farid, and Salman Vohra were lynched. In August 2025, 20-year-old Suleman Khan Pathan was killed by a mob, which included his close friends.

Lynching and mob violence against minorities are tools to enforce ethnic or religious hierarchy and control, to punish alleged social transgressions, to enforce segregation or are driven by the fear of those considered outsiders.

In Bangladesh, Dipu Chandra Das in Mymensingh had a factory job, which many among the mob that killed him probably coveted. Many of the lynchings in India mentioned above were carried out by cow vigilantes. But Ramnarayan Baghel was a Hindu Dalit worker from Chhattisgarh in Kerala, whom the mob, consisting of Hindus, believed was a thief and a Bangladeshi.

Similarly, Jewel Sheikh was a Bengali Muslim worker in Odisha butmob accused him of being a Bangladeshi. To the Uttarakhand mob that killed Anjel Chakma, from Tripura, he was “Chinese”.

Majoritarian mob violence is particularly brutal. Dipu Chandra Das was dragged, hung and burned in public view, all while being filmed. Ram Narayan Baghel in Kerala had more than80 injuries on his body: the doctors say that he was “beaten like an animal”. In Bihar, the mob stripped Athar Hussain to confirm that he was a Muslim, burned his flesh, beat him with rods and cut his ears with pliers.

The gravest mistake that can be made is in believing these incidents are aberrations. They are a symptom of polities under majoritarian convulsion. Dipu Chandra Das’s murder was a consequence of the process when a nation wants to conceive itself in the image of its religious majority – in this case, Muslim.

It is a vision that does not believe in a democratic compact in which every citizen is equal, irrespective of religion, a secularism that is enshrined in the Constitution that Bangladesh now wants to remove.

In India, similarly, religious nationalism and state and political display of religious identity have become central features of the polity. Cow vigilantism and allegations of so-called love jihad – the conspiracy theory held by Hindutva supporters that Muslim men are luring Hindu women into romantic relationships solely to force them to convert to Islam – stem from a deep sense of victimhood in which the majority religion believes it is being overrun by the minority.

This Christmas saw numerous attacks on Christians: Hindutva supporters disrupting prayers asserting that India is a Hindu Rashtra, vandalising Christmas celebrations in hotels, schools and malls, and even threatening poor vendors selling Santa Claus hats. In 2014, 147 incidents of violence against Christians were reported but that number reached 840 in 2024.

Majoritarian mob violence spreads terror among even those who are not attacked and creates permanent fissures out of religious animosities. Many leave their homes, like some Hindus in Bangladesh. In India too, Muslim families have left the villages where they lived for generations.

When Martin Luther King, Jr, contended that one should confront injustice everywhere, he was arguing with those who wanted to brand him an “outside agitator” for getting involved in civil rights activism beyond his home city and state.

In recent months, Indians have been more than eager to speak for Hindu minorities in other parts of the world, as they should. But many have forgotten to speak for religious minorities in India or even other Hindus when perpetrators are Hindu mobs themselves.

Mob killings are a barbaric blot on humanity in the 21st century. When we apportion our indignation on the basis of our religion, we do nothing to confront that barbarity.

Nissim Mannathukkaren is a professor at Dalhousie University, Canada. His X handle is @nmannathukkaren.

The Editors Guild of India on Wednesday expressed concern about the continued reciprocal blocking of news outlets in India and Pakistan.

The press body said that unhindered access to news, especially among neighbouring countries in South Asia, is a “prerequisite to building an atmosphere of trust and understanding between the peoples and nations of the region”.

“Untrammelled access to news, views, perspectives and information will help create an informed citizenry, aid dialogue and help usher in peace in the region,” it added.

In 2025, India and Pakistan blocked a number of each other’s news outlets following tensions between the two countries after the Pahalgam terror attack on April 22.

In India, at least 12 Pakistani news websites were confirmed to have been blocked between April and May, including Dawn, Pakistan’s leading English-language daily.

The Indian government also banned 16 Pakistani YouTube channels, including Dawn News, Geo News, ARY News. It said the action was taken for spreading misleading content related to the Indian Army and Kashmir.

Pakistan responded by blocking access to Indian media outlets from around May 8. At least eight Indian news websites, including India Today, Republic World, The Hindu and NDTV, were confirmed to be inaccessible. Islamabad also blocked 32 Indian news websites and 16 Indian YouTube channels.

In its statement, the Editors Guild acknowledged that there had been instances of media organisations in both countries “crossing the bounds of balanced and professional journalism”.

“There have been instances of media in both countries going overboard with misinformation, spreading fake news and inciting panic, which endangers lives and weakens democratic institutions,” it added.

The press body said that such violations do not justify blanket bans on news websites.

“While such aberrations and instances of unethical journalism need to be dealt with more conscientiously, blocking all access is not the solution,” it said. “A blanket ban does not expunge ground realities, but only serves to build a climate of fear and mistrust. Such bans also run counter to the spirit of democracy and freedom of expression.”

The Guild urged the governments of India and Pakistan to lift the restrictions and restore access to cross-border journalism.

The Calcutta High Court disposed of a petition filed by the Trinamool Congress seeking protection of confidential political data. The decision came after the Enforcement Directorate told the court that it had not seized any documents during its searches of the premises of the political consultancy firm, I-PAC, on January 8.

The central agency also claimed that any documents or electronic devices removed from the premises were taken away by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and not by the ED.

After the ED conducted searches at I-PAC’s offices in Kolkata and the residence of the firm’s head Pratik Jain, Banerjee had claimed that the central agency’s officials were “taking away” party documents ahead of the Assembly elections. The party had moved the High Court challenging the legality of the searches. On the other hand, the ED also approached the court, alleging “illegal interference” during its search operations. Read on.

India on Wednesday issued a fresh travel advisory urging its citizens to avoid travelling to Iran amid escalating anti-government protests. The country’s embassy in Tehran also asked Indian citizens in Iran to leave at the earliest.

There are approximately 10,000 Indians in Iran, including a large number of students. The advisory came amid widespread unrest in Iran over the past two weeks. Around 2,000 persons, including security personnel, have been killed during the protests, an Iranian official said. Read on.

Assamese singer Zubeen Garg was “severely intoxicated” and not wearing a life jacket when he drowned during a yacht trip in September, the Singapore Police told a coroner’s court. Assistant Superintendent of Police David Lim said Garg had refused to wear a life vest despite repeated reminders and swam away from the yacht before becoming motionless and floating face down.

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

He was pulled back on board and given cardiopulmonary resuscitation before being taken to hospital, where he was pronounced dead. An autopsy found 333 mg of alcohol per 100 ml of blood in his system. Police said there was no evidence of suicide, duress or coercion. Read on.

A Muslim woman who was forced across India’s border to Bangladesh in December has approached the Supreme Court challenging a Gauhati High Court order that declined to hear her plea against a foreigners’ tribunal decision declaring her a foreigner. In September 2019, the tribunal held that Aheda Khatun failed to establish a link between herself and her Indian parents and grandparents.

Khatun has said the tribunal ignored documents including voter lists showing her parents as electors, her school certificate, a village permanent residency certificate and a registered land deed gifted by her father.

On December 17, she was among 15 persons expelled under the Immigrants Expulsion from Assam Act, 1950, and is currently in Bangladesh. Read on.

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India and South Africa are both navigating one of the toughest challenges of the 21st century: shifting their electricity systems away from ageing coal-fired power stations while ensuring people still have reliable, affordable energy.

South Africa generates about 74% of its electricity from coal, one of the highest shares in the world. Electricity plants are ageing, and maintenance is overdue. The electricity sector is highly centralised and dominated by the state-owned energy provider, Eskom. These factors have led to power cuts in the past.

Coal accounts for about 70% of India’s electricity generation. However, India has managed faster improvements in electricity access and renewable energy integration.

Both countries have national grids that are not very reliable, and don’t have enough public funds to move quickly into green (renewable) energy.

We are engineering academics who research the transition to green energy. Our study identified the strengths and weaknesses in both countries’ approaches.

We found lessons that could accelerate progress in both countries. South Africa could learn from India to boost local manufacturing of renewable energy systems, and India could learn from South Africa’s transparent renewable procurement and community-benefit models.

India’s green energy push

Over the past decade, India has implemented a carefully sequenced set of energy policies that linked rural electrification with renewable energy and reforms to agriculture. New rural power lines enabled more solar projects, and cleaner farm electricity reduced pressure on the national electricity grid.

As a result, India moved from chronic electricity shortages to near-universal access to electricity, despite having a massive population and vast rural areas. About 25%-30% of India’s electricity now comes from renewable energy – enough to power 70 million to 80 million Indian homes each year.

This growth has been driven by huge solar farms, rooftop solar installations, and hybrid solar-wind projects. India has attracted billions of dollars in private-sector investment. The country has a national policy framework that makes it easier for energy companies to operate and promotes the connection of clean energy to the national grid.

India has also made tremendous progress in energy efficiency by reducing its energy consumption by around 3.5%. It aims to reduce its carbon emissions by a further 10%.

South Africa’s progress and bottlenecks

South Africa has made impressive strides in renewable energy procurement. The Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme is a competitive tender process designed to facilitate private sector investment into renewable energy that can feed into the national grid.

Private energy companies have invested R256 billion (US$17.3 billion) in renewables. But they still supply less than 10% of South Africa’s power. Further expansion is held back because the grid can’t accommodate more energy in certain areas. Slow, centralised decision-making, combined with delayed bidding processes, delays new projects.

In South Africa, remote and low-income communities still rely on costly or informal energy sources: paraffin, diesel generators, firewood, and illegal grid connections.

The transition must balance environmental goals with energy supply stability. There are 91,000 coal workers and communities who earn a living working near coal mines and coal-fired power stations.

Lessons from India

Several lessons emerge from India’s experience:

1) Instead of treating rural development, electricity grid upgrades, and buying renewable energy as three separate tasks, South Africa should manage them together so that improvements in one area benefit the other areas.

2) South Africa needs a dedicated energy-efficiency institution like India’s Bureau of Energy Efficiency. Such a body would set rules to cut energy waste. It could strengthen appliance and building standards, run national awareness campaigns on energy savings and cost reductions, and support industries through audits and best-practice guidance.

3) India’s federal system allowed states to create energy systems that suit local needs. South Africa has a central government system. It could benefit from giving provinces and local governments more power to accelerate their own renewable projects and community-level initiatives.

4.) India’s Production-Linked Incentives and Make in India policies support strong domestic solar and battery manufacturing. South Africa, by contrast, still imports most of its solar panels, inverters, and battery-storage components.

Lessons from South Africa

South Africa offers India valuable insights as well:

1.) South Africa’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme is a great global model for fair and transparent procurement. It uses clear bidding rules, has independent evaluation panels, and publicly discloses winning prices.

2.) This programme also ensures that some of the profits from renewable energy projects go to community trusts. Many trusts hold about 8%-12% of the shares in their local green energy initiatives. However, communities don’t always benefit as much as they should if their shares are financed by debt and dividends spent on repaying loans. India could adopt an improved community model that offers real benefits.

What needs to happen next

Our study found that coal will remain part of both countries’ energy systems for some time. But coal should be used sensibly. For example, coal plants must be made cleaner, and both countries should avoid new coal construction except where absolutely unavoidable.

Renewable energy, battery storage, and grid upgrades must happen. This deployment will gradually reduce dependence on coal.

India and South Africa both have ambitious climate goals and face similar pressures to develop. They can transition to cleaner energy quickly without making electricity less reliable, more expensive, or less fair. They can learn from each other through Brics (the intergovernmental organisation they belong to), the G20, and direct bilateral partnerships.

South Africa’s 2025 G20 presidency endorsed investing more quickly in renewable energy. It also advocated for working together across countries to link and improve electricity grids. But it missed an opportunity to make explicit, stronger promises to cut back on coal, oil, and gas.

Sustainable transitions are not achieved by abandoning old systems overnight. Transforming them carefully, responsibly and inclusively is the way to go.

Craig McGregor is Associate Professor in Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering and Director of the Solar Thermal Energy Research Group, Stellenbosch University.

Varun Pratap Singh is Associate Professor (Extraordinary) in the Solar Thermal Energy Research Group, Department of Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering, Stellenbosch University.

This article was first published on The Conversation.

The Calcutta High Court on Wednesday disposed of a petition filed by the Trinamool Congress seeking protection of confidential political data, reported Bar and Bench.

This came after the Enforcement Directorate told Justice Suvra Ghosh that it had not seized any documents during its searches at the premises of political consultancy firm I-PAC on January 8, Bar and Bench reported.

Appearing for the central agency, Additional Solicitor General SV Raju claimed that any documents or electronic devices removed from the premises were taken away by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and not by the ED.

The ED had conducted searches at I-PAC’s office in Kolkata’s Salt Lake area, the residence of the firm’s head Pratik Jain and the office of a trader in the city’s Posta neighbourhood on January 8 in connection with an investigation into alleged money laundering.

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

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

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

Following the raids, the Trinamool Congress and I-PAC moved the Calcutta High Court challenging the legality of the searches.

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

During the hearing on Wednesday, the High Court noted that written records of the searches showed that no documents were seized from the I-PAC office or Jain’s residence.

“In view of such submissions, nothing remains to be dealt with and the application is disposed of,” Live Law quoted the bench as saying.

The ED had also sought adjournment of its petition alleging interference by Banerjee during the searches, stating that a similar plea had been filed before the Supreme Court, Bar and Bench reported.

The High Court accepted this request.

The agency’s petition before the Supreme Court seeks an inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation into Banerjee allegedly obstructing its raids and the return of documents and electronic material that the chief minister is alleged to have taken.

The West Bengal government has also approached the Supreme Court to ensure that no ex parte orders are passed in the matter without hearing it first.

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

Meanwhile, the West Bengal Police also registered first information reports against the ED based on two complaints filed by Banerjee.

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

India on Wednesday issued a fresh travel advisory urging its citizens to avoid travelling to Iran amid escalating anti-government protests. The country’s embassy in Tehran also asked Indian citizens in Iran to leave at the earliest.

In a statement, the Ministry of External Affairs said Indian nationals were “once again strongly advised” to avoid travel to the West Asian country until further notice.

Advisory for Indian nationals regarding travel to Iran

🔗 https://t.co/6nSHTg45Bu pic.twitter.com/JWK1xC8EQO

— Randhir Jaiswal (@MEAIndia) January 14, 2026

The Indian Embassy in Tehran also advised Indian nationals in Iran, including students, pilgrims, businesspersons and tourists, to leave the country by available means of transport, including commercial flights.

“It is reiterated that all Indian citizens and PIOs [persons of Indian origin] should exercise due caution, avoid areas of protests or demonstrations, stay in contact with the Indian Embassy in Iran and monitor local media for any developments,” the embassy stated

There are approximately 10,000 Indians in Iran, including a large number of students, the Hindustan Times reported. The country is also visited each year by thousands of Shia pilgrims from several parts of India.

pic.twitter.com/5LnD6gC0tu

— India in Iran (@India_in_Iran) January 14, 2026

The advisory came amid widespread unrest in Iran over the past two weeks. Around 2,000 persons, including security personnel, have been killed during the protests, an Iranian official told Reuters on Tuesday.

The protests, which began on December 28, were initially focused on discontent about rising inflation. However, they later expanded in scope as protesters in more than 100 cities demanded an end to clerical rule.

The authorities in Iran have accused the United States and Israel of inciting the unrest.

On January 8, the government snapped internet access and telephone lines, largely cutting off the country from the outside world.

The restrictions were eased on Tuesday, AP reported. However, text messaging services were still down and internet users were only able to connect to government-approved websites locally.

One of the protesters who was arrested on January 8 has been sentenced to death.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said he was “horrified” by the violence in Iran.

“The killing of peaceful demonstrators must stop, and the labelling of protesters as ‘terrorists’ to justify violence against them is unacceptable,” Turk stated.

Turk also described reports about the possibility of a death sentence to protesters as “extremely worrying”.

A court in Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal has ordered a first information report against Additional Superintendent of Police Anuj Chaudhary in connection with allegations that a man had been shot and injured during unrest in the town in November 2024, the Hindustan Times reported on Wednesday.

Chaudhary was the circle officer of Sambhal at the time.

The court of Chief Judicial Magistrate Vibhanshu Sudheer also directed that an FIR be filed against Inspector Anuj Tomar and several unidentified police personnel, the newspaper reported.

The Sambhal Police said that it will appeal against the order.

On November 24, 2024, violence broke out in Sambhal after a group of Muslims objected to a court-ordered survey of the Shahi Jama Masjid in Chandausi town.

A trial court had ordered the survey in a suit claiming that the mosque had been built in 1526 by Mughal ruler Babar on the site of the “centuries-old Shri Hari Har Temple dedicated to Lord Kalki”.

Five persons were killed in the violence.

Yameen, the father of the man who was allegedly shot, said that his son, Alam, had left home that day to sell rusks. He alleged that Alam had been shot by the police near the mosque.

Advocate Chaudhary Akhtar Hussain, who represents Alam’s family, alleged that the 24-year-old had to receive medical treatment secretly to avoid being pressured by the police, the Hindustan Times reported.

The petition, which named Chaudhary, Tomar and other police personnel, had been filed before the court in February 2025, the newspaper reported.

The matter was heard by the court on Friday and the order was made public on Tuesday.

Also read: This Instagram-influencer cop is Adityanath’s key to Sambhal

A Muslim woman who had been expelled from India in December moved the Supreme Court on Monday challenging a Gauhati High Court ruling that refused to hear her plea against a tribunal order that declared her a foreigner.

In September 2019, the foreigners’ tribunal had declared Aheda Khatun a foreigner for failing to establish a connection between her Indian parents and grandparents.

The tribunal had not considered documents such as four consecutive voter lists that showed her parents as electors, her school certificate, the permanent residency certificate issued by the village chief and a registered gift deed of a land parcel given to her by her father.

Foreigners tribunals in Assam are quasi-judicial bodies that adjudicate on matters of citizenship. However, the tribunals have been accused of arbitrariness and bias, and of declaring people foreigners on the basis of minor spelling mistakes, a lack of documents or lapses in memory.

She had been held in a detention camp till the High Court in August dismissed her plea, refusing to interfere in her matter.

The court had cited Khatun’s failure to explain the six-year delay in challenging the tribunal’s order. However, it had not commented on the merits of her case.

On December 17, Khatun was among the 15 declared foreigners that the Assam government had ordered to leave the country under the 1950 Immigrants Expulsion from Assam Act. The 44-year-old is still in Bangladesh.

The Act grants power to district commissioners and senior superintendents of police to expel “illegal migrants” from the state by bypassing the foreigners tribunals.

Khatun, in her petition before the Supreme Court, argued that the High Court’s decision violated her personal liberty. She also challenged the tribunal’s order.

On Monday, a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi issued a notice to the Assam government, asking the state to verify the genuineness of the documents being relied on by the family to prove their citizenship.

The authorities have been asked to respond by March 16.

Khatun’s petition in the Supreme Court says that she was born in the state’s Nagaon district in July 1981 and that the name of her parents had appeared continuously in the voter lists of 1965, 1970, 1985 and 1997. Her father had inherited ancestral land in 1987, a part of which he gifted to Khatun in 2010.

The proceedings against Khatun had begun with a police reference allegedly made in 1998 and culminated with the tribunal’s order in 2019, she said in her petition. The reference was based on a report by the electoral registration officer, without a notice being served to Khatun, she alleged.

SC issues notice in another case

On January 8, the Supreme Court also issued a notice to the Union government on a petition filed by another woman challenging a 2020 Gauhati High Court ruling that upheld the 2015 order by the foreigners' tribunal in Kokrajhar district. The tribunal had declared her a foreigner in an ex-parte order.

The woman had been forced into Bangladesh two to three weeks ago, her lawyer told Scroll.

In its 2020 ruling, the High Court said that the woman had appeared before the tribunal in 2009 and her statement had been recorded in 2011. However, the court noted, the woman had stopped appearing before the tribunal and refused to accept a notice on the grounds that her husband’s name was wrongly shown in it.

The High Court said the tribunal had correctly concluded that the name had been accurately shown and that the woman had “deliberately avoided” the proceedings. The tribunal passed its order declaring her a foreigner in December 2015.

The High Court had also noted that the woman had said that her home had been burnt down during a riot in 2012.

The riots in Kokrajhar in 2012 had broken out between Bodos and Bengali-origin Muslims. They had left about 100 dead and rendered four lakh homeless.

The High Court quoted the woman as saying that the riot forced her to live in a relief camp in Dhubri, making it difficult for her to contact her lawyer.

She was arrested in 2019 and held at the Kokrajhar detention camp.

Since April, 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 Karnataka High Court on Tuesday stayed the investigation against Art of Living Foundation founder and spiritual teacher Ravi Shankar in connection with a case pertaining to alleged land encroachment in Bengaluru, reported Bar and Bench.

Art of Living is a non-profit organisation that was founded in 1981 and promotes yoga and meditation.

The stay will remain in force until the next hearing on January 21, according to Live Law.

The case is linked to a public interest litigation filed in 2023, which alleged large-scale encroachment of government land in Kaggalipura village in Bengaluru South Taluk, Bar and Bench reported.

Ravi Shankar was named as one of the respondents in the PIL. However, he has denied owning any land in the area and claimed he had been impleaded in the petition for ulterior motives.

On Tuesday, Justice M Nagaprasanna passed the interim order after stating that prima facie, there were no allegations against Ravi Shankar. However, he clarified that the proceedings were not being terminated, but only kept in abeyance.

“Without any allegations, the petitioner cannot be drawn into the web of crime, unless the learned special public prosecutor would place on record something to indicate that the petitioner is directly involved in certain acts, on the next date of hearing,” the judge was quoted as saying.

The court was hearing a petition filed by Ravi Shankar seeking that the first information report registered against him by the Bangalore Metropolitan Task Force in September be quashed.

The High Court had, in the same month, disposed of the public interest litigation alleging land grab and directed the state to take action against any encroachers.

In his petition, Ravi Shankar has said that his name did not appear in the list of alleged encroachers in a memo filed by the state in the now-quashed proceedings. He also pointed out that he had not been named in proceedings initiated by a Land Grabbing Court in 2024.

Despite this, a suo moto FIR was registered on September 19 under the Karnataka Land Revenue Act, naming Ravi Shankar among those accused of encroachment, Ravi Shankar told the court.

Singer Zubeen Garg was “severely intoxicated” and had refused to wear a life jacket when he drowned while swimming in September, The Straits Times quoted the Singapore Police as having told a court on Wednesday.

Assistant Superintendent of Police David Lim of the Singapore Police Coast Guard made the statement while testifying at a Coroner’s Inquiry, which is a fact-finding process in the Southeast Asian country to establish the causes and circumstances of a person’s death.

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

A death certificate issued by the authorities in Singapore on September 20 stated the cause of Garg’s death as drowning.

On Wednesday, Lim said that witnesses had noted that Garg did not have any suicidal tendencies and was not subjected to duress or coercion before his death, The Straits Times reported.

“He did not wear a life jacket, despite repeated reminders by the yacht captain to wear one,” the Singaporean newspaper quoted Lim as saying.

The police officer said that Garg began swimming away from the yacht without a life jacket, even as others on board tried to convince him to return.

“Suddenly, the deceased became motionless and was floating face down,” Lim was quoted as testifying.

The witnesses also saw foaming at his mouth, Lim added.

Garg was pulled back onto the yacht, where cardiopulmonary resuscitation was administered and an emergency call was made at 3.36 pm. Lim said that a Police Coast Guard vessel arrived at the scene in less than 10 minutes, The Straits Times reported.

He was taken to hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 5.13 pm.

An autopsy found 333 mg of alcohol per 100 ml of blood in Garg’s body, which could have affected his coordination, The Straits Times reported. Singapore’s drink-driving limit is 80 mg per 100 ml of blood. The quantity is 30 mg per 100 ml of blood in India.

The videos recorded on witnesses’ mobile phones were also played in court, showing Garg removing his life jacket, the newspaper reported.

On December 19, Singapore Police reiterated that they did not suspect any foul play in Garg’s death. They had made a similar statement in October.

Meanwhile, a Special Investigation Team in India filed a chargesheet in a Guwahati court on December 12, accusing four of the seven arrested persons of murder.

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

The event where the singer was scheduled to perform had been organised by the Indian government and the Indian High Commission in Singapore, with support from the Assam Association and the North East India Association in the country.

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

Zubeen Garg’s cousin, Deputy Superintendent of Police Sandipan Garg, who had travelled with him to Singapore, has been charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder, while two of the singer’s personal security officers have been accused of criminal breach of trust.

Also read:

• Are Assam protests over Zubeen Garg’s death becoming a political challenge for Himanta?

• Why musician Zubeen Garg’s death has unleashed a storm of anger in Assam

The Central Bureau of Investigation has summoned actor and Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam chief Vijay again for questioning on January 19 in connection with the inquiry into a stampede at his rally in Tamil Nadu’s Karur district that left 41 persons dead, The Hindu quoted unidentified officials as saying on Tuesday.

The central agency had recorded his statement in the matter for over six hours on Monday and wanted to continue the questioning the next day.

However, Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam leader CTR Nirmal Kumar said that the party had sought a different date due to the festival of Pongal and other political meetings, The Times of India reported.

The stampede took place on September 27 at Veluchamy Puram in Karur, shortly after 7.30 pm, when Vijay was addressing supporters from his campaign vehicle.

Several of those who attended the rally fainted due to overcrowding. The Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam chief’s speech was interrupted twice as ambulances were brought in to take those who collapsed.

The first information report alleged that while permission had been granted for 10,000 attendees, more than 25,000 persons gathered at the venue. Among those who died were 18 women and nine children.

The Supreme Court had ordered an inquiry by the CBI into the stampede on October 13. The bench had also constituted a three-member supervisory committee, headed by former Supreme Court judge Justice Ajay Rastogi, to ensure that the investigation was impartial.

The Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam also sought an independent investigation monitored by the Supreme Court. It took objection to the High Court forming a Special Investigation Team comprising only officers from the Tamil Nadu Police.

The petition had claimed there was a possibility of a “pre-planned conspiracy” by “miscreants” behind the stampede. It had argued that an independent investigation was unlikely if it was carried out by the state police.

Kuki militant groups and MLAs from the community on Tuesday unanimously resolved to participate in the formation of a new government in Manipur only after getting a political commitment for a Union Territory in the Kuki-Zo-majority areas of the state.

The participants at a meeting held in Assam’s Guwahati adopted several other resolutions, adding that the political settlement “must be finalised and signed before the expiration of the normal tenure” of the current Assembly.

The tenure of the Assembly ends in March 2027.

Manipur has been under President’s Rule since February 2025, when Bharatiya Janata Party leader N Biren Singh resigned as the chief minister.

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

Singh had stepped down amid allegations from Kuki-Zomi-Hmar groups that his response to the violence had been partisan and that he had stoked majoritarianism.

While the Meiteis dominate the valley region, the Kukis are in the majority in the state’s hill districts.

The meeting on Tuesday was attended by representatives of Kuki militant groups that are signatories to the Suspension of Operation agreement, MLAs from the community and the Kuki-Zo Council, an organisation of Kuki tribes.

It also came ahead of a meeting between the groups that are parties to the Suspension of Operation agreement and officials of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, The Indian Express reported.

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

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

As per the minutes of the meeting held on Tuesday, the resolutions adopted by the participants included a demand that the Union government expedites the political settlement for the creation of a Union Territory with a legislature and constitutional provisions for the protection of land ownership.

The participants said that in the absence of the written commitment, they resolve to “respect the political will of the people by refraining from taking any part” in the formation of a government in Manipur.

The minutes added: “It is resolved that a definitive political solution for the Kuki-Zo people must be achieved before the general election [state polls] of 2027.”

The meeting on Tuesday came nearly a month after BJP MLAs from Manipur were called to Delhi by the party for a meeting, which had led to speculation about government formation in the state.

Four of the seven Kuki-Zo MLAs from the BJP participated in the meeting, The Indian Express reported.

The Meitei MLAs have been demanding the end of President’s Rule and formation of a new government. However, Kuki-Zo groups have maintained that the creation of a separate administrative arrangement in the form of a Union Territory is the way forward to end the conflict in the state.

On January 6, the Kuki-Zo Council also said that members of the community “cannot and shall not” participate in the formation of a new state government, reiterating the demand for a Union Territory.

The Delhi High Court on Tuesday verbally remarked that even if the PM Cares Fund is run by the government, it does not lose the right to privacy under the Right to Information Act, Bar and Bench reported.

A division bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia was referring to third parties’ rights under Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act that bars the disclosure of personal information, and not the general right to privacy under Article 21 of the Constitution.

The Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund was established in March 2020 with the stated objective of being a dedicated national fund to deal with “any kind of emergency or distress situation” in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Even if it is state, merely because it is state, does it lose its right to privacy?” the High Court was quoted as having asked. “How can you say that?”

The bench observed: “Merely because there is an entity discharging certain public functions, or if it is managed, supervised and controlled by the government, it is still a juristic personality. How can you deny such a right [to privacy] conferred on it merely because it is a public authority?”

Upadhyaya said that the RTI Act bars information about third parties being provided in response to a query, Bar and Bench reported. He added that there cannot be a difference between the privacy rights of a public or a private trust under the Act.

The bench made the observations while hearing an appeal seeking the disclosure of the information and documents submitted by the PM Cares Fund to get an income tax exemption.

The Central Information Commission had allowed the plea and directed the Income Tax Department to disclose the information.

In January 2024, a single-judge bench of the High Court had set aside the commission’s directive, ruling that the panel does not have the jurisdiction to order the disclosure of the information under Section 138 of the Income Tax Act.

Section 138 of the Act governs the disclosure of information about taxpayers by the authorities.

The single-judge bench had observed that the provision in the Income Tax Act prevails over Section 22 of the RTI Act, which establishes the information law’s precedence over other laws.

The right to information applicant in the matter had then challenged the ruling before the division bench.

On Tuesday, the counsel representing the petitioner argued that the PM Cares Fund is not covered under the exemption granted in Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act. He added that a public charitable trust set up by the government cannot have the right to privacy under the statute, Bar and Bench reported.

The bench will hear the matter next on February 10.

The PM Cares Fund has been the subject of criticism from Opposition parties, who have raised questions about its transparency, and have questioned the need to create the reserve when the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund existed.

In December 2020, the Union government had said in a reply to a Right to Information query that the fund was “owned and established” by the government. However, it said that the fund does not come under the RTI Act because it receives funds from private sources.

In September 2021, it told the High Court that the PM Cares Fund can neither be listed as “the state” nor a “public authority” under the RTI Act.

In December, several district administrations in Jammu and Kashmir banned the use of “unauthorised Virtual Private Network services”, citing security concerns. District officials claimed that VPNs could be misused by “terrorists and their supporters for encrypted communication”.

VPNs allow users to mask their Internet Protocol, or IP, address and browse the internet securely while shielding their identity and data. This also allows users to bypass government and local restrictions on websites.

However, experts argue that the blanket ban on the use of VPNs in Jammu and Kashmir is legally and constitutionally flawed. For one, there are no provisions under any Indian laws prohibiting or restricting the use of VPNs. The ban also contradicts Supreme Court rulings on privacy and the right to access the internet.

“At present, no law in India prohibits the use of VPNs,” said former judge and advocate Bharat Chugh, who practises in Delhi. He said the Information Technology Act, 2000, criminalises the misuse of digital technology for hacking or identity theft, but “does not outlaw the tools through which such offences might be committed”.

The fresh ban on VPNs is tied to Jammu and Kashmir’s long history of internet shutdowns and the use of even anti-terror provisions against residents to curb internet and social media access. In the past, too, the local administration had tried to crackdown on the use of VPNs.

This time, as experts pointed out, the administration used prohibitory orders under the Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita to ban the use of VPNs.

Chugh described the ban on VPNs as a constitutional concern and an overreach of emergency powers. Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita was “never intended to regulate everyday digital behaviour”, said Chugh. “...Such emergency powers are meant for imminent, localised law-and-order situations and cannot and should not be converted into tools for regulating digital technology.”

Bans through prohibitory orders

In Jammu and Kashmir, at least 10 district administrations banned the use of VPNs using Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita which empowers district magistrates to issue prohibitory orders in “urgent cases of nuisance or apprehended danger”.

The Kulgam district administration, in its order dated December 27, said that the decision followed a warning from the Senior Superintendent of Police about an “unprecedented surge” in the use of VPNs by a “significant number of suspicious internet users” across the district.

The order claimed that such “excessive and abnormal usage” could be misused for “unlawful and anti-national activities”, such as “incitement of unrest, dissemination of inflammatory or misleading content, and coordination of activities prejudicial to the maintenance of public order and security”.

The administration said that since it was “not feasible to serve notice individually”, it passed the order “ex-parte” – without hearing the other side.

Similar prohibitory orders were issued in other districts, including Baramulla, where the order clarified that VPNs could be used only by those “authorised/permitted by the government or any competent authority for legitimate official or professional purposes”, without mentioning what constituted such use.

Following the orders, the Kashmir Police said they carried out “systematic verification and monitoring” across several districts and found 24 people in violation of them between December 29 and January 2. The police registered FIRs against two individuals, whom they described as having “adverse terror-related backgrounds”.

Preventive proceedings were initiated against 11 others under Sections 126 and 170 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita. Section 126 empowers an Executive Magistrate to take preventive action, while Section 170 grants the police the power to make preventive arrests without a magistrate’s order or warrant.

Police reported similar action in Pulwama, Sopore, Anantnag, and Kulgam, marking an expanded use of preventive law to enforce the VPN ban.

Scroll contacted three police officials asking about the arrests. Two declined to comment, while one said the “decision was taken by the district administration and they were merely following due procedure”. Kulgam District Magistrate Athar Aamir Khan was also contacted, but he did not respond to calls and messages.

J&K police files FIR under UA (P) and IT act against individuals for defying government orders and misusing social media. IGP Kashmir,Vijay Kumar, makes an "appeal" to general public not to use social media through VPN's.#Kashmir pic.twitter.com/ovaTb3YB3D

— Azaan Javaid (@AzaanJavaid) February 17, 2020

No laws against VPN use

Legal experts said there is little legal basis for district administrations in Jammu and Kashmir to impose a blanket ban on VPNs and arrest people.

Apar Gupta, founder of the Internet Freedom Foundation, told Scroll that India’s existing legal framework focuses on VPN service providers, not users. “There is no general statutory ban in the IT Act or the BNSS on ordinary citizens using VPNs,” Gupta said. “Instead, compliance duties are imposed on providers.”

Using a VPN is not illegal under existing laws but the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team had issued cyber security directions in April 2022 under the Information Technology Act, 2000. These directions required a wide range of entities, including hosting, VPN and Virtual Private Server service providers, to maintain detailed records of their users’ activities.

After the issuance of these directions, several VPN service providers chose to shut down their servers in India, citing concerns over “user privacy and data retention”.

According to a report by the Internet Freedom Foundation, “these service providers could be required to hand over this information” to CERT-In at any time. The report also noted that the 2022 directions do not place any limits on how long CERT-In may retain this data or with whom it may be shared.

In September 2022, SnTHostings, a company which provides hosting, VPN, and VPS services, approached the Delhi High Court challenging the legality of the CERT-In directions. The petition was eventually withdrawn on the petitioner’s instructions on March 14, 2024.

Advocate Abhinav Sekhri, who represented SnTHostings before the Delhi High Court, told Scroll that the case had to be withdrawn as the client “didn’t wish to pursue the case”.

On the merits of the challenge, he said that the issue “has not been heard by any court in India,” and therefore, “there is no answer to whether these directions will stand judicial scrutiny”.

Sekhri added that the 2022 directions introduced “business practices that effectively gave the government a backdoor to access large amounts of VPN-related data”, thereby undermining the very purpose for which VPNs are used.

Immediate Suspension of Virtual Private Network (VPN) services in District #Kulgam. Imposition of Restrictions under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS).@diprjk@ddnewsSrinagar@PIBSrinagar @airnewsalerts #ORDER pic.twitter.com/Ph8BVeU3gs

— Information and PR Kulgam (@DioKulgam) December 30, 2025

Misuse of prohibitory orders

Legal experts also flagged the misuse of prohibitory orders.

Gupta of the Internet Freedom Foundation said it is doubtful that Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita can be used to justify a district-wide ban on VPNs in Jammu and Kashmir. “These powers are meant to be urgent and time-bound, based on material facts showing a specific apprehended danger,” he added.

A blanket ban, like the ones being imposed in Kashmir, wrongly assumes that privacy tools like VPNs are inherently harmful and risks “turning an emergency power into a routine policy decision”, rather than a response to a specific and immediate threat, he said.

Sekhri, the lawyer who represented SnTHostings, said that “since the use of VPNs is not illegal in itself”, it also raises serious questions about “how preventive powers under Section 163 of the BNSS can be invoked to restrict VPN” use or to take individuals into custody.

Chugh, referring to the absence of any specific legal ban on the use of VPNs, warned against punishing actions that are not illegal. “There is no crime without law,” he said. “Detaining or questioning people just for using VPNs blurs the line between prevention and punishment”.

“Section 163 is a fire-extinguisher provision”, said Chugh. “It is designed for sudden and imminent threats, riots, epidemics, and violent assemblies, not to restructure the digital habits of an entire population.” Using such powers to prohibit VPN usage, he argued, “represents a fundamental category error”.

Gupta also pointed to the Supreme Court’s ruling in January 2020 in the case of Anuradha Bhasin, where the court held that internet restrictions cannot be “indefinite and must meet the tests of necessity and proportionality”. He also referred to the Supreme Court’s KS Puttaswamy ruling on privacy, which laid down that “any intrusion into privacy must have a clear legal basis”, pursue a legitimate aim, and be proportionate.

Against this legal backdrop, Gupta argued that a district-wide VPN ban is “unlikely to withstand scrutiny under Articles 19 [freedom of speech] and 21 [right to life] unless it is narrowly tailored to a clearly demonstrated emergency” and supported by explicit statutory authority.

A pattern of restrictions

Jammu and Kashmir has a long history of internet censorship and shutdowns. A complete communications blackout was imposed in 2019, ahead of Parliament’s decision to abrogate Article 370.

When internet services were partially restored in January 2020, access was throttled at 2G speeds for verified users, with only whitelisted websites allowed and social media platforms blocked. During this period, many residents turned to VPN services to access information unavailable due to these restrictions.

A 2020 Scroll report highlighted that residents of several villages in Kulgam alleged that army personnel checked young people’s phones for VPN apps, and that those found using them were allegedly assaulted. VPN use in Kashmir was also curtailed through “written undertakings” that broadband internet users were required to sign, committing that they would not use VPN services.

In February 2020, the cyber wing of the Jammu and Kashmir Police registered a first information report alleging the “misuse of social media” through VPNs. The FIR invoked provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and several sections of the Indian Penal Code against unknown persons.

Around the same time, a 17-year-old was taken into custody and booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, highlighting the harsh legal consequences linked to alleged VPN use.

Such restrictions have not been limited to Jammu and Kashmir. In June 2025, the Manipur government also suspended internet and mobile data services, including VPN services, for five days across five districts of the state. According to reports, the state’s government said that social media platforms were being used to “facilitate and/or mobilise mobs of agitators and demonstrators.”

The ban was imposed under Rule 2 of the Temporary Suspension of Telecom Services Rules, 2017, which allows the Centre or state home secretaries to suspend telecom services.

Standing on the Indora Bridge in Nagpur, one can catch a glimpse of the Namantar Shahid Smarak – a memorial to 27 Dalit activists who were killed during the 16-year Namantar Andolan that started in 1978 to have Marathwada University renamed after BR Ambedkar.

Not surprisingly, some members of the upper castes and land-owning feudal classes in Maharashtra’s Marathwada region opposed this demand for a gesture that would pay tribute to the architect of India’s Constitution for leading the struggle for equality and his efforts to democratise education.

Among them was Shiv Sena head Bal Thackrey. “Gharat nahi peeth ani magtay vidyapeeth,” he sneered. You don’t have a loaf of bread to eat, but you want a university.

Significant markers of the movement included the Long March in 1979, which set out from Nagpur for Aurangabad, 470 km away; the Jail Bharo Andolan to court arrest between 1978 and 1994; and several attacks on protestors by feudal-caste groups that opposed the name change. This movement also helped shape the course of a Dalit literature.

The struggle ended with a compromise on January 14, 1994, to rechristen the institution as Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University. To remember the sacrifices made by the Dalit protestors and to advance the effort to create an egalitarian society based on the principles of humanity, the struggle is commemorated across Maharashtra with key events in Aurangabad (now Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar) and Nagpur on that date each year.

Namantar Andolan Memories Long March For Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar University...

The Namantar Andolan was a 16-year-long Dalit campaign to rename Marathwada University in recognition of Babashaheb Ambedkar University.#NamantarAndolan pic.twitter.com/jJuDvjYxNx

— Apurv JyotiChandra Kurudgikar (@ApurvKurudgikar) January 14, 2021

The annual event offers hope and opportunities for Dalit politics by connecting with the idea of “true politics” that gives a voice to those who are marginalised, making them active participants instead of mere subjects who must conform to the dictates of the state and society. This true politics supports the discourse of natural rights, equality and intellectual freedom, empowering Dalits to express dissent.

Commemorations such as this one enable Dalits to gain a political education from their lives, rather than relying solely on theoretical models.

During the 16-year struggle, the opposition to the Namantar Andolan brought into the open the deep-rooted feudal and caste nexus that had permeated society and politics in Marathwada and Maharashtra in general. It also laid bare the “politics of humiliation” being practised by these groups, undermining the demand by Dalits for dignity and respect.

The Andolan was a response to these Brahmanical power structures. It was a “rejection of rejection”, as political scientist Gopal Guru has described the process.

The government and dominant groups have established a “mnemonic hegemony”, or the power to shape how history is told and which is sidelined. The Namantar Aandolan challenged the power of feudal caste groups to dictate history by asserting its own “mnemonic sovereignty”.

The justified demand to rename the university to Dr Ambedkar University reflected a fairer version of history that had been sidelined by the feudal upper-caste groups.

Dalit students began using the name “Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar University” in their official correspondence even before their demand was granted. They started their own journals and media platforms to communicate their version of events, avoiding mainstream media platforms that were biased in favour of the elite.

The Andolan employed creative methods of storytelling – for instance, using protest songs that shared its struggles and documented the violence perpetrated by both state and non-state actors. The Andolan’s Long March of 1979 made the fight against caste injustice visible. The movement revived the memories and spirit of the Dalit Panther, a militant organisation founded in 1972, inspired by the Black Panther movement in the US.

Namantar movement was a 20-year-long Ambedkarite-Buddhist movement to rename Marathwada University. Hundreds of Ambedkarite-Buddhists and allies shed their blood to reclaim the dream of Dr Ambedkar in the arena of higher education.#bakeryprasad pic.twitter.com/KTdr7A06sc

— Siddhesh Gautam (@siddheshgautam) January 14, 2023

The Andolan, which began as the Namantar Andolan, culminated not with a name change but a name extension – a namvistaar. It revealed the state’s apathy towards Dalit claims for dignity, as well as the state’s tendency to protect the feudal caste-class nexus.

But there were crucial victories. The Andolan had encouraged solidarity between various Dalit sub-castes. For instance, Pochiram Kamble, who is commemorated in the Nagpur memorial, belonged to the Mang community in a struggle where Mahars (the sub-caste to which Ambedkar belonged) were in the majority.

Also commemorated on the memorial is Abdul Sattar, marking the shared history of hardship and oppression between Muslims and Dalits.

As a young person wondering whether Viksit Bharat has a place for Dalits or if the community is being used as pawns in Hindutva’s battle against minorities, January 14 is an opportunity to look back on a crucial campaign and try to understand the crucial lessons that Marathwada’s Namantran Andolan offers to navigate a course for Dalit true politics as it embraces the future.

Nikhil Sanjay-Rekha Adsule is a senior research scholar at IIT-Delhi. His X handle is @beingkhilji.

The Election Commission on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that it is entitled to examine the citizenship of individuals to decide whether they are eligible to be included in voters’ lists, The Indian Express reported.

Advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, for the poll panel, told a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi that the electoral registration officer was “competent to take a view” under Article 326 of the Constitution, the Representation of People Act and the Registration of Electors Rules.

Article 326 establishes elections to the Lok Sabha and the state Assemblies to be based on adult suffrage.

The bench has been hearing petitions against the validity of the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls being conducted across the country.

Dwiwedi noted that in several regulatory frameworks, such as those governing mining leases or other statutory benefits, citizenship was a prerequisite and could be inquired into by the competent authority, PTI reported.

During the course of the hearing, the bench also asked whether it was within the scheme of the Citizenship Act to refer the electoral registration officer’s findings that a person is not a citizen to the Union government and strip him off voting rights even before it takes a decision.

The decision of the Union government “would be for the purpose of examining whether he is entitled to stay in India or should be deported or not”, Dwivedi said, adding that it was the Election Commission that has the power “as far as electoral roll is concerned”, the newspaper reported.

“That’s enough to strike him off the electoral roll,” The Indian Express quoted him as saying.

The advocate also noted that there were enough safeguards for an aggrieved person.

Dwivedi also noted that Article 326 does not explain how to decide on citizenship. Article 5 of the Constitution speaks about who shall be the citizen of India at its commencement, he added.

Article 5 defines citizenship at the Constitution’s commencement on January 26, 1950.

“But what is to happen (after), because this is a continuous process of people coming into being and passing out of being, it does not say,” The Indian Express quoted the advocate as saying.

In response, the chief justice said that the “expression used in Articles 5, 6 and 7 are transitional in nature” as at the time of the creation of the country, its residents needed to take a final decision as to where they would finally settle down.

Article 6 grants citizenship rights to certain persons who migrated from Pakistan to India after the Partition and Article 7 addresses citizenship for those who migrated from India to Pakistan after March 1, 1947.

Dwivedi added that these sections do not help in deciding citizenship.

“They furnish no criteria for deciding how, but it does tell us two things that domicile, residence and birth in India are important,” the newspaper quoted the advocate as saying. “The most important is birth.”

The bench will continue hearing the matter on Thursday.

The special intensive revision of the electoral rolls is underway in 12 states and Union Territories.

In Bihar, where the revision was completed ahead of the Assembly elections 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.

Out of 1,318 documented hate speech incidents targeting religious minorities in India last year, 1,163 or 88% took place in the Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states, said a report by Washington-based research group India Hate Lab on Tuesday.

The report documented hate speech incidents in 23 states and Union Territories, including Delhi.

The researchers used the United Nations' definition of hate speech, which describes it as pejorative or discriminatory language towards an individual or group based on attributes including religion, ethnicity, nationality, race or gender.

According to the report, “in-person hate speech” events targeting religious minorities, primarily Muslims and Christians, rose by 13% in India in 2025, as compared to the previous year. There was a 97% increase in such incidents since 2023.

“In-person hate speech events” refers to incidents that took place at political rallies, religious processions, protest marches and cultural gatherings.

Of the 1,318 such incidents, 1,289, or 98%, targeted Muslims, said the report.

Muslims were explicitly targeted in 1,156 cases and targeted alongside Christians in 133 cases, a nearly 12% increase from 2024, it added.

Hate speech targeting Christians was recorded in 162 incidents, accounting for 12% of all events. Of these, Christians were explicitly targeted in 29 cases, while the remaining incidents involved speeches targeting both Muslims and Christians.

This was a 41% increase from the 115 anti-Christian incidents recorded in 2024.

April recorded the highest monthly spike, with 158 hate speech events. This coincided with Ram Navami processions and hate rallies organised in response to the Pahalgam terror attack.

In the 16 days between April 22 and May 7, following the Pahalgam attack and before Operation Sindoor, India’s military action against Pakistan, 98 in-person hate speech events were documented. This indicated a rapid and nationwide anti-Muslim mobilisation, the report said.

Meanwhile, of the 10 most “prolific hate speech actors” identified in the report, five were leaders of the ruling BJP, it added.

Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, a BJP leader, emerged as the “most prolific hate speech actor”, with 71 speeches, followed by the chief of the Hindutva organisation Antarrashtriya Hindu Parishad Pravin Togadia with 46 speeches and BJP leader Ashwini Upadhyay with 35 speeches, the report noted.

Maharashtra minister and BJP leader Nitesh Rane ranked fourth with 28 speeches.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah ranked sixth with 27 speeches, while Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath ranked ninth with 22 speeches, said the report.

It also found that 88% of all hate speech events occurred in BJP-ruled states or those governed by the National Democratic Alliance.

This was 25% higher than in 2024, when 931 incidents were recorded in these jurisdictions.

Of the 23 states and Union Territories analysed, the BJP was in power, either independently or as part of a coalition, in 16 for most of the year.

The highest numbers of hate speech events were recorded in Uttar Pradesh (266), Maharashtra (193), Madhya Pradesh (172), Uttarakhand (155) and Delhi (76).

Together, these accounted for 65% of all incidents nationwide.

In contrast, the seven states governed by Opposition parties or coalitions recorded 154 hate speech events in 2025, a 34% decline from the 234 incidents documented in these states in 2024.

Additionally, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal were linked to 289 hate speech events, followed by the Antarrashtriya Hindu Parishad with 138 events.

In total, more than 160 organisations and informal groups were identified as organisers or co-organisers of hate speech events in 2025.

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal are part of a group of Hindutva organisations led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organisation of the ruling BJP.

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

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

The Modi government ignored the warning.

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

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

Watch our report to find out more.

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

The Union government has urged quick-commerce companies to stop claiming to offer 10-minute delivery services to protect the rights and safety of gig workers, according to media reports. As part of this change, Blinkit has reportedly revised its principal tagline from “10,000+ products delivered in 10 minutes” to “30,000+ products delivered at your doorstep”.

This came days after platform workers’ unions had called on workers in the quick-commerce sector to strike in the last week of December to demand reforms in the gig economy. The protests disrupted the operations of Zomato, Swiggy, Blinkit and Zepto in several cities ahead of the New Year celebrations.

Earlier, gig workers had also submitted a memorandum to Union Labour Minister Mansukh Mandaviya seeking his intervention to discontinue 10-20 minute delivery mandates. Read on.

A gig worker writes: Why Deepinder Goyal is wrong about the high ‘churn’ rate in the sector

The Supreme Court delivered a split verdict on the constitutionality of an amendment to the Prevention of Corruption Act mandating permission from the government to begin investigations against public servants under the law. Justice BV Nagarathna held that the provision contravenes the Constitution.

On the other hand, KV Viswanathan upheld the provision, but read it down to state that sanction should depend on the recommendation of the Lokpal or Lokayukta.

The Lokpal at the Centre and the Lokayukta at the state level are anti-corruption ombudsmen. On account of the divergent views, the court directed that the case be placed before the chief justice, who could direct another bench to decide on the questions at hand. Read on.

The civic authorities and persons who feed stray dogs could be held responsible for injuries or deaths caused by animal attacks, the Supreme Court said. The bench said that for every “dog bite, death or injury”, the court would “fix heavy compensation” on the state.

“Liability and accountability [will also be placed] on those who are saying we are feeding dogs,” the court observed. It made the remarks while monitoring compliance with its November 7 order directing local authorities to remove stray dogs from government premises such as hospitals, schools and railway stations. Read on.

Around 2,000 persons, including security personnel, have been killed in the anti-government protests in Iran over the past two weeks, said an unidentified official. He said that “terrorists” were behind the killings.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said he was “horrified” by the violence in the country. “The killing of peaceful demonstrators must stop, and the labelling of protesters as ‘terrorists’ to justify violence against them is unacceptable,” Turk stated. Read on.

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Union Labour Minister Mansukh Mandaviya has urged quick-commerce companies to discontinue the claim and branding of 10-minute delivery services to protect the rights and safety of gig workers, CNBC-TV18 reported on Tuesday.

Unidentified officials in the labour ministry told the news outlet that Mandaviya held a series of meetings with representatives of Blinkit, Zepto, Zomato and Swiggy in the past month to discuss delivery timelines and their impact on workers.

The meetings came weeks after several unions, including the Indian Federation of App-Based Transport Workers and the Gig and Platform Service Workers Union, called on workers in the quick-commerce sector to strike in the last week of December to demand reforms in the gig economy.

The workers had sought regulation of platform companies under labour laws, a ban on unsafe 10-minute delivery models, an end to arbitrary ID blocking and penalties, transparent wages, social security, and protection of the right to organise and engage in collective bargaining.

The protests disrupted the operations of Zomato, Swiggy, Blinkit and Zepto in several cities ahead of the New Year celebrations.

An unidentified Labour Ministry official told The Hindu that during the meetings, Mandaviya questioned platforms about the promise of 10-minute deliveries.

Company representatives told the minister that such timelines were enabled by warehouses located close to consumers and not by putting pressure on delivery workers.

“However, the minister urged them to stop this branding practice considering the health and welfare of delivery workers and the companies agreed,” the official was quoted as saying.

As part of this change, Blinkit has updated its brand messaging, CNBC TV18 reported. The company has revised its principal tagline from “10,000+ products delivered in 10 minutes” to “30,000+ products delivered at your doorstep”, according to the news outlet.

The company is yet to issue an official statement regarding and it is unclear whether the proposal has been accepted or what the timeline for its implementation would be.

Aam Aadmi Party leader and Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha said he was “deeply grateful” for the “decisive and compassionate” intervention.

“This is a much-needed step because when ‘10 minutes’ is printed on a rider’s t-shirt/jacket/bag and a timer runs on the customer’s screen, the pressure is real, constant and dangerous,” he said in a social media post.

Chadha added the move would help ensure the safety of delivery riders and others on the road.

Satyamev Jayate. Together, we have won..

I am deeply grateful to the Central Government for its timely, decisive and compassionate intervention in enforcing the removal of the “10-minute delivery” branding from quick-commerce platforms. This is a much needed step because when…

— Raghav Chadha (@raghav_chadha) January 13, 2026

Earlier, gig workers had also submitted a memorandum to Mandaviya seeking his intervention to discontinue 10-20 minute delivery mandates, The Hindu reported.

Welcoming the intervention, Shaik Salauddin, general secretary of the Indian Federation of App-Based Transport Workers, said the move addressed long-standing concerns.

“The 10-minute delivery model forced delivery partners into dangerous road behaviour, extreme stress and unsafe working conditions,” Salauddin was quoted as saying. “We welcome and thank the minister for listening to workers’ voices and intervening decisively in the interest of their safety.”

Growing up in rural India, my grandmother would feed the village dog half a chapati and a bowl of milk each afternoon, surely insufficient for its needs. The dog survived by scavenging from nearby homes. Years later, living in Delhi, I encountered street dogs refusing biscuits, overfed by households competing to care for them.

India’s unique mix of religious and cultural values creates a deep tolerance for non-humans and wildlife among rich and poor alike, often rooted in millennia of coexistence. People consciously endure significant risks to coexist with animals. However, this dynamic is shifting as cities grow and their dogs become more territorial in crowded and more littered shared spaces.

India has at least 60 million free-ranging dogs, an estimate more than a decade old. More recent surveys found about 1 million in Delhi alone. Relatedly, India also accounts for more than a third of global rabies deaths.

Unlike most western countries, Indian culture and laws forbid culling. Dogs must instead be caught, sterilised, vaccinated and – crucially – returned to their exact territory. In practice, these mandates are frequently ignored.

Things changed in August 2025. After several children were mauled by street dogs, the Supreme Court briefly ordered all street dogs in Delhi and the surrounding region be rounded up and placed in shelters or pounds, promising dog-free streets for the first time in decades.

The order was unworkable – there simply aren’t shelters for millions of dogs – and sparked a fierce backlash from animal rights groups. Within two days, the court reversed its decision and reinstated the long-standing sterilisation policy.

Subsequent rulings have narrowed the focus. In November 2025 the court ordered dogs be removed from schools, hospitals and public transport zones nationwide, while adding restrictions on public feeding and encouraging fencing to keep dogs away.

Most recently, on January 7, it directed authorities to fence and secure all of India’s 1.5 million schools and colleges from dogs – all within just eight weeks. Yet, like the earlier order, the aggressive timeline ignores the infrastructure challenges and is unlikely to significantly reduce the frequency of bites or resulting infection. The court is currently holding hearings with interested parties, as it tries to find a middle ground between mass removal of dogs and animal welfare concerns.

The nation is divided. It seems the state cannot kill these dogs, nor house them, nor control them. The question of what to do with them is one of public safety and animal welfare, but also something deeper: the latest chapter in one of evolution’s most remarkable partnerships.

An experiment in coexistence

Dogs are the only vertebrate species that followed human migration out of Africa into every climate and settlement. While the exact moment of domestication is uncertain, we know that dogs evolved to live alongside humans. But our cross-species ties now face unprecedented challenge of tropical urbanism.

In the past few centuries, as dogs earned their way into our homes, humans created over 400 breeds, fine-tuned for companionship, work or aesthetics. This co-evolution matters, as it means dogs are attuned to human cues and form strong attachments to specific people and places. In urban India, where dogs are unowned but aren’t truly wild, that attachment expresses itself as territorial behaviour over a home or someone who feeds them.

Social-ecological laboratory

India offers an unparalleled window into this relationship. Historically, street dogs served as scavengers. In poorer communities, they still do. But in more prosperous districts, they are now intentionally fed.

Preliminary research in Delhi I carried out with my colleague Bharti Sharma reveals dogs organise into packs around specific households where a few committed feeders can meet nearly 100% of their dietary needs. This supports much higher dog densities than scavenging ever could.

Urban collision

This is where ancient coexistence collides with modern urban design. Indian streets are multi-use spaces. In tropical climates, waste pickers and blue-collar workers often operate at night – the very hours when dogs are most territorial, and when the wealthier residents who feed them are asleep.

Dogs have adapted their behaviour – barking, chasing, occasionally biting – in ways that get unintentionally rewarded by feeders but create hazards for others. The statistics are sobering: millions of bites and thousands of rabies deaths each year.

Yet some backlash to the supreme court’s mandates was inevitable. As gentrification changes who gets to decide what urban life should look like, a conflict of values has emerged. Some value shared animal presence, while others prioritise risk elimination.

Path forward

We may have reached “peak mutualism” in India’s cities. Despite daily nuisances everyone suffers – the barking, the chasing – millions still feed these dogs. Yet the same dog that wags its tail at familiar feeders may bite someone new. This is not irrational aggression; it is territorial protection born of deep association with a specific human community.

Western cities culled their street dogs long ago because social priorities were more uniform. India’s diversity means no such consensus exists. It may take another 20 or 30 years before its urban population uniformly sees the presence of territorial dogs as intolerable.

As India urbanises, it must decide whether to maintain spaces for ancient relationships that predate cities themselves or follow the western path of total management.

My grandmother’s half-chapati ritual represented an older compact: minimal investment, peaceful coexistence and mutual benefit. Delhi’s overfed, territory-defending dogs represent a new, more intensified intimacy – and it is unclear whether this serves either species well.

Nishant Kumar is India Alliance Fellow, National Centre for Biological Science, Bangalore & Department of Biology, University of Oxford.

This article was first published on The Conversation.

The Gujarat High Court on Tuesday dismissed Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal’s petition seeking a separate trial from his party colleague, Sanjay Singh, in a criminal defamation case filed by Gujarat University after their comments about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s academic qualifications, Live Law reported.

The court had reserved its verdict in the matter in December.

A single bench of Justice MR Mengdey dismissed the pleas filed by the AAP leaders who had moved the High Court after their pleas seeking a separation of trial were rejected by the trial, city sessions coand magistrate courts.

Kejriwal had argued before the sessions court that he and Singh should not be tried together as the dates of the alleged incidents were different, Live Law reported.

It was submitted that both leaders had uploaded separate videos on their personal social media accounts and that evidence against one could not be used against the other.

On December 15, the sessions court observed that Kejriwal had held a press conference on April 1, 2023, and Singh on April 2, 2023, during which they used defamatory language that tarnished the image and reputation of Gujarat University.

The videos of the press conferences were later uploaded on social media, Live Law reported.

The court had said at the time that the term “same offence” indicates the “same act of crime” as per Section 223 of the now-repealed Code of Criminal Procedure that lays down instances where persons can be jointly accused of a crime.

“If they are animated by a common purpose, and there is a continuity in their action, then surely there is one transaction so far as they are concerned,” the court had said at the time.

The defamation suit

On March 31, 2023, the Gujarat High Court quashed a 2016 directive of the Central Information Commission asking the Gujarat University to provide details about the prime minister’s degrees to Kejriwal. The Central Information Commission is the top appellate body under the Right to Information Act.

The Gujarat University had opposed the order in the High Court, saying that someone’s “irresponsible childish curiosity” cannot be deemed to be in the public interest under the Right to Information Act.

Soon after the judgement, the university filed a criminal defamation case against Kejriwal and Singh, alleging that they had made derogatory statements about Modi’s educational qualifications in the press.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has claimed that Modi was awarded a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Delhi University in 1978 and a Master of Arts degree from Gujarat University in 1983. However, the Aam Aadmi Party has alleged that the degrees are fabricated.

Also read:

• Anand Teltumbde: Why the controversy about Modi’s degrees is a test for Indian democracy
• Explainer: Why the Gujarat High Court blocked the release of Modi’s degrees