Right before the Mapusa river meets the Mandovi river near Panjim, it crosses the wetlands, creeks and low lying paddy fields of Salvador Do Mundo. Surrounding these large stretches of paddy fields are houses and forested hills with steep slopes. Telangana-based real-estate company, KGL Realtors Private Limited bought 20,000 square metres of land on one of these hills.

When the land was bought, the sale deed described it as “barren and waste land”. In Goa, a state-wide regional plan dictates what activities are permitted on a piece of land. The land that KGL bought is zoned as eco-sensitive land where development is regulated. It specifically categorises all of it as Natural Cover and part (4,000 square metres) of it as Natural Cover with “No Development Slopes”.

The Regional Plan 2021, published in 2010, marked nearly 82% of the state as eco-sensitive zones, providing them with protection from rampant construction and development.

Land is a state subject in India and all states have town planning acts which govern spatial planning. But other than seven states, these acts only focus on urban areas. In Goa, the regional plan was created based on the provisions of the Town and Country Planning Act and covers the entire state.

Over the last eight years, the government has introduced three successive amendments to the Act allowing the government to do plot-by-plot change of zones in the regional plan. The latest of these amendments was introduced in 2024 as Section 39A, which allows land owners to apply for zone changes of their plots.

On June 10, 2026, Goa’s Town and Country Planning board recommended that the zoning for the plot bought by KGL be changed to settlement zone, which once finalised, will allow the company to construct on the land. As per the rules for processing these applications, slopes over 25% gradient are eco-sensitive land and cannot be considered for conversion.

Yet, over a quarter (26%) of the 901 applications that received provisional approvals under section 39A in the last two years have been for plots that had such steep slopes, as per an analysis of data collated from official gazettes by citizens groups.

This included KGL’s application to convert over 4,000 square metres of No Development Slope – the special demarcation for areas with a slope greater than 25% – to settlement area. The Town and Country Planning board, which gave the provisional approval, said that the change of zone was recommended because the area was “within permissible gradient”.

In July 2026, some of the residents of Salvador Do Mundo wrote a letter to the Chief Town Planner objecting to this conversion. A key objection was that the recommendation was based on slope data submitted by a private engineer hired by the applicant, without independent verification. The contour plan submitted by the applicant showed the slope gradient of the plot to be 18.49% but data from ISRO’s satellite model shows that parts of the land have over 25% gradient.

While Goa’s laws are clear that no construction is permitted on slopes over 25%, the government is relying on data from private surveyors and engineers to determine which slope fits this criteria.

Activists said that these surveyors can have a conflict of interest as they are hired by applicants seeking permission for hill cutting and that the lack of independent verification of this data is diluting protection given to steep slopes.

We have asked the Chief Town Planner Vertika Dagur if these plans are independently verified and how they assess these discrepancies. We will update this story when we receive a response.

In 1997, Goa amended the Town and Country Planning Act and introduced Section 17A that prohibits cutting of hills, with an aim to reduce the state’s vulnerability to landslides.

India is among the top four countries with highest landslide risk, with nearly 12.6% of the land prone to landslides. Most vulnerable areas are the mountainous region of the North-Western Himalayas, the Sub-Himalayan terrain of the North-East, the Western and Eastern Ghats. A landslide is essentially the failure of a slope triggered either by natural causes like excess rainfall, flooding, earthquakes or anthropogenic activities like deforestation, hill cutting and excessive development.

Many states, such as Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, have introduced provisions restricting development on slopes and hills with an aim to keep the slopes stable and reduce landslide risks. But Goa explicitly demarcates areas with slopes where development is prohibited, a feature that activists said helps in pushing back against illegal hill cutting.

Between March and August 2026, ISignal analysed publicly available data on these conversions, examined physical files of some of the applications and interviewed environmentalists, architects, land surveyors and land policy researchers to understand how Goa managed to protect its slopes and how that protection is being systemically dismantled.

Construction on hilly land

Since the 1980s, tourism and real-estate development have exerted tremendous pressure on the land in coastal stretches of Goa. Over the last two decades, this demand has further soared, largely driven by the desire for a “second home” among metropolitan Indian elites and Goan ex-pats. This demand further surged during the Covid-19 pandemic and has been steadily shifting from saturated coastal areas to hilly areas of the state’s midlands.

Similar pressures on land due to tourism and rampant real-estate development is a recognised threat to the stability of hills and mountains in India, and are known triggers for major landslides. But India does not have any specific national laws governing what kind of development is allowed or prohibited on these hills.

Instead, state governments and local body authorities regulate these activities. And all of them have different parameters and metrics.

Himachal Pradesh does not allow real estate projects on slopes that have an incline of more than 45° and bans hill cutting of more than 3.5 metres. In some areas of Maharashtra, building construction is prohibited on a hilly site with more than 20% gradient. Tamil Nadu, in its hill stations, only allows trees to be grown on land with more than 1:3 gradient, prohibiting all other uses.

Other states like Sikkim and Meghalaya, and cities like Manali, Dalhousie and Mussourie, regulate what percentage of the total plot area can be developed, the idea being that a larger footprint would mean more cutting of slopes and trees and hence increased instability.

But enforcing these restrictions has been a major challenge. In a 2014 paper on building regulations in hill towns, authors said that some hill towns do not have appropriate regulations needed for achieving systematic development in environmentally sensitive hill areas. And in towns where regulations exist, they are not followed or monitored efficiently.

In Goa too, the regulations face multiple implementation challenges but active citizens movements have been pushing the government to safeguard the hills.

The provision to protect Goa’s hills was introduced because of multiple letters that an activist wrote to the government in the 1980s, said Tahir Noronha, an architect, researcher and a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley. “Shridhar Kamat was writing letters every six months for almost a decade saying that we need to stop construction on hill slopes and that will save us from landslides,” he said.

The Planning and Development Authority (Development Plan) Regulations issued in 1989 prohibited construction on Goa’s slopes with a gradient of more than 25%.

Further, Kamat’s letters resurfaced in 1990s after a major landslide in Panaji’s Altinho, prompting the formation of a fact-finding committee to figure out the cause of the landslides. “The committee in its report said that caution must be exercised on any hill steeper than 10% slope, and there should be strictly no construction on hills steeper than 25% slope,” said Noronha.

Based on this report, in 1997, the Town and Country Planning act was amended and Section 17A was introduced. It said that no hilly or sloping land over 10% gradient can be cut or filled up without prior permission from the Chief Town Planner.

Regardless of the provisions, hill cutting continued unabated, said Noronha. “Because the State government never maintained records of hilly land, action was taken only on the basis of complaints. Often after the hill was cut. They would inspect the site, file a complaint, and not pursue the matter further,” he said, adding how such action also depended on the location of the violation. The government would be more strict in cities such as Panaji while being lax with permissions in remote villages.

In 2007, when the Regional Plan 2021 was being drafted, the planners attempted to resolve enforcement issues. Using maps from the Survey of India to identify all the locations with slopes over 25% gradient and marking them in green zigzag lines as No Development Slopes in the spatial plan.

This helped community members seek accountability and push against illegal hill cutting. “The government itself has shown that these slopes are 25% slopes. So, if a construction comes up there, you have a solid proof by just showing a copy of the regional plan. It also showed investors and property owners that certain lands were undevelopable,” Noronha said.

“The logic was that the law can be compromised, the officers of the law can be compromised, but the map can never be compromised,” said Noronha.

‘Legal’ pathway for hill cutting

In July 2024, a major landslide in Kerala’s Wayanad killed 373 people and injured another 200, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in the state’s history. During an assembly discussion on rampant development and hill cutting, Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant called the landslide in Kerala an “eye-opener” for Goa and said, “We cannot compromise on their [the hills’] stability. A system will be developed to report and monitor hill cutting in the state.”

In June 2026, the Town and Country Planning Board approved an increase in fine for illegal cutting, introducing a graded system with fines ranging from Rs 50 lakh to Rs 1 crore.

While ministers have reiterated that cutting slopes over 25% is prohibited, the government diluted the legal protection for such slopes by introducing a circular that disregarded the Regional Plan and instead began relying on contour maps submitted by private companies and land owners as sole evidence, said Noronha.

Section 17A gives the Chief Town Planner the powers to give permission for hill cutting. In 2023, the Chief Town Planner issued a set of additional guidelines allowing land owners to apply for such permission, for developing on slopes between 10% and 25% gradient.

An applicant has to attach a contour plan with a 1-metre interval as proof to show that the gradient falls within this bracket. A contour plan is a map of the plot that shows how steep a slope is using lines connecting points at the same altitude. It is a data-generation exercise, where errors can get introduced at multiple stages.

The process begins with a land surveyor who walks around a piece of land with a machine that captures coordinates and elevation. They collect data from points chosen at regular intervals and then upload them to a design software like AutoCAD. The software then joins the points at the same altitude, creating the lines that show the contours of the area.

An interval of 1 metre means that the software will draw a line for every 1 metre of difference in altitude. The distance between these lines is used to calculate the gradient of the slope. The ratio between the interval and the distance shows how steep or flat that area is. For example, if the distance between two lines in a 1 m interval map is 4 metres, then that area has a slope of 1:4 or 25%. So, the closer the lines are, the steeper the slope of that specific area is.

As per the guidelines, these plans have to be created by “Chartered Surveyors, Architects or Engineers” registered with the Town and Country Planning department. These professionals are hired by the applicants and hence can have a vested interest to manipulate these contour maps to show a lower gradient, said Dean D’Cruz, an architect who was also a member of the Task Force for the 2021 regional plan. “The client will tell the architect to not worry and they will do what they want [with the contour plan].”

ISignal spoke to a land surveyor, who helped create a contour map for a major real estate project, on condition of anonymity. He showed us how the map was later altered by the architect to show a lower slope gradient. “If you look at these lines,” he said, showing two lines on the AutoCAD interface, “The distance between them is less than 4 metres, meaning that this area has a slope of over 25%. But, later when the map was submitted to the TCP department for approval, many of these lines were deleted. So the distance between the lines widened and the slope gradient went down.”

Despite these loopholes in the process, the Town and Country Planning department does not independently verify these maps.

A contour map’s accuracy is also dependent on how granular the data is. A map with a lower interval will have more lines and hence more details. The Survey of India maps that the regional plan used has a 10-metre interval and is from the 1970s, while a contour plan that the applicant submits is supposed to be more recent and granular with a 1-metre interval.

In November 2025, the Bombay High Court dismissed a petition filed by residents of Sancaole against technical clearance given to a mega real-estate project by Bhutani Infra. One of the key objections of the petitioners was that the contour maps were manipulated to show the gradient to be just under 25%. The High Court said that it did not find any discrepancy in how the slope was computed and that the plans submitted by the company were made based on surveys carried out on location with a “total station survey” with 90%-95% accuracy, as compared to the Survey of India data.

In the last two years, the Town and Country Planning board has used similar maps submitted by land owners as proof for the gradient of a plot and approved 240 applications seeking conversion of plots that have No Development Slopes into settlement zones, data collated by the citizen’s group show. The total area to be converted based on these applications was over 20 lakh square metres. The board recommended most of these conversions because the slopes were found to be within “permissible gradient”.

Noronha and a group of volunteers have been examining slope conversions that have received provisional approvals and have found several inconsistencies. Many have unsigned contour maps, some applications claim that the plot has a “gradual slope” but does not specify the gradient and some do not even have a contour plan attached–yet, in all of these cases, the Town Planning Board gave provisional approval.

“Unlike in the past, most of the constructions on hills now are “legal” because now they have permissions from the Goa government. Even if it is a hill, even if an authoritative document of the government [Regional Plan] says it is a hill, a private engineer hired by the landowner declared it not a hill and the state of Goa is going with whatever the property owner says.”

The case for a new regional plan

Since 2018, three consecutive amendments – Sections 16B, 17(2) and now 39A – have been introduced in Goa’s Town and Country Planning Act to allow plot-by-plot conversion of zones in the regional plan. The rationale behind all of them have largely been about errors or anomalies in the plan and the need to correct them.

In September 2024, the Town and Country Planning Minister Vishwajit Rane told the Times of India that a lot of people have benefitted from Section 17(2). “Some people’s lands were originally settlement areas which were made into paddy fields and orchards and put in different zones,” he had said in September 2024.

“While there may be some such cases, the minister, when challenged in the assembly, has not been able to give any detailed maps or listing of what he alleges,” said Solano DaSilva, an assistant professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at BITS Pilani, Goa and one of the authors of the book The Great Goa Land Grab. He added that the plan does need corrections but not the ones that the minister claims.

The plan, in its list of issues that need new policies, stressed on the need for updating the plan using a GIS system to make the data geo-referenced and spatially linked. It also said that certain departments have only provided them with incomplete data.

“We did not have GIS then, we only had survey maps and had to collate data from each department separately. All of the layers came one-by-one and we did the best we could given the limited resources,” said D’Cruz, the architect who was also a member of the Task Force for the 2021 regional plan. “That was 20 years ago and that support system was not there. Now we have better technology.”

The year mentioned in a regional plan is the horizon year until which the planning had been done. Activists and researchers have also been demanding an update.

“This regional plan was planned up to 2021. The natural process for a new plan ought to have started, which the government has not done,” said former chief justice of Allahabad High Court, Justice Ferdino Rebello, who also has been leading a citizen’s movement called “Enough is Enough” to protect Goa’s environment and people’s rights. A new plan would have to undergo public consultation and would be a more transparent process, all of which the government has bypassed by introducing amendments like Section 17(2) and 39A, he added.

In January 2026, Justice Rebello shared a 10-point Citizen’s Charter of demands aimed at protecting the environment and ecology of the state. The first point of the charter called for immediate halt to hill-cutting by declaring them the heritage of the people.

“Goa is dependent on rain water. The rain which falls percolates into these hills and filters out into streams and rivers. If we cut down all the hills, and the trees then where will we get water from?” asked Justice Rebello, “And we also have soft laterite soil. If trees are cut, then the soil will fall down and we will have landslides.”

Risk for landslides also depends on the composition and integrity of the lateritic soil. “The iron and silica makeup of lateritic soil changes based on distance from the coast. With acid rain, lateritic soil weakens; with certain types of plants, lateritic soil becomes stronger,” said Noronha, while stressing the need for location-specific soil sampling and testing before permissions are given. “Because, in places where the laterite is degraded, even disturbing a 10%-15% slope could risk landslides,” he added.

Moreover, the current provisions are not enough, said D’Cruz. “Most of the slopes in Goa have gradients closer to 1:4 (25%) and they are highly ecosensitive forested patches. So, to protect these borderline cases, it is better to consider 1:5 (20%) as the threshold,” he said.

“If we can only correct the RP-2021 in the manner it was sought to be corrected. By ensuring all of the slopes and paddy are marked out properly. Tenanted lands should also be marked because they also cannot be used for non-agricultural purposes. The government has all this data. If we can only do that, we will be able to protect most of Goa,” said DaSilva.

Shreya Raman is an independent journalist and a resident at the Climate Change Media Hub at the Asian College of Journalism.

Jamia Millia Islamia university on Saturday shifted all its classes online until further notice amid protests on campus demanding elections for the constitution of the students’ union, reported The Indian Express.

The announcement came soon after students alleged that the university administration had “attacked” those who have been on a hunger strike for 13 days and tried to dismantle the protest site.

The university has not held student union elections since 2006.

Jamia administration with the help of guards and Delhi police is trying to remove the peacefully protesting students from the campus using brutal force. Students have been on hunger strike and sit in for more than 10 days now in the campus demanding reinstating of Jamia Millia… pic.twitter.com/XVEiYQBtNt

— Adarsh.M.Saji (@Adarshmsaji) October 24, 2026

Since October 12, five students have been on a hunger strike to demand the restoration of the union.

On October 16, the university rusticated one of them, suspended two and banned all three from entering the campus for a year.

In a joint statement on October 17, student organisations in the university alleged that “more than 100” security guards had entered the protest site and “manhandled” the students on hunger strike, The Indian Express reported.

Protests on the campus have grown since then, with the students demanding an official notification announcing the schedule for elections to the Jamia Millia Islamia Students’ Union, withdrawal of disciplinary action against protesting students and removal of the institute’s chief proctor and security advisor.

The university cited the “safety and security” of students for the decision to shift all classes online.

Videos being shared on social media showed large-scale deployment of security forces outside the campus.

Earlier on Saturday, the university officials met the protesting students.

After the meeting, Mahtab Alam Rizvi, the university registrar, told reporters that a committee had been constituted to draft the constitution of its students’ union, reported ANI.

“They then asked for a deadline,” Rizvi was quoted as saying. “I told them that the sooner they complete the draft constitution, the sooner we will conduct the elections.”

He claimed that the students had agreed to this.

However, students had earlier said that the decision to constitute another committee to draft the union’s constitution by December 20 was a delaying tactic, reported The Hindu. They had said that their hunger strike would continue until the university released the election notification.

The institution has said elections were discontinued after recurring violent clashes, attacks on teaching staff and disruptions of classes, The Indian Express added.

Edited by Sneha.

Demonstrators protesting against a dam project on Friday vandalised and set fire to an office of the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation and a police station in Arunachal Pradesh’s Pasighat after security personnel fired tear gas during the agitation, a government official told Scroll.

Several organisations have been protesting against the proposed 12,500-megawatt power project on the Siang river. It will be built by the government-owned power company National Hydroelectric Power Corporation.

On Saturday, the Pasighat administration imposed prohibitory orders under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita to ban the assembly of four or more persons.

The buildings that house the office and the police station were not entirely burnt down, the Pasighat-based official said. However, the vehicles on their premises “were torched and the protesters threw stones at the police station”, the official added.

The violence followed the police firing tear gas at the demonstrators who were demanding the release of 10 protesters who had been arrested earlier this month.

“The immediate cause of the violence was that the security personnel unprovoked fire tear gas shelling on the peaceful protest,” the official said. “The crowd got angry.”

Eyewitnesses told @scroll_in that anti-dam protesters have set fire to the NHPC office in Pasighat after police fired tear gas on peaceful protestors.

A statement from police is awaited. pic.twitter.com/BM53vcTw4E

— Rokibuz Zaman (@ZamanRokibuz_) October 23, 2026

Purported videos of the incident were widely shared online. In one of the videos, tear gas was seen being fired at protesters while they were talking amongst themselves.

The official alleged that the protesters also vandalised the homes of the leaders of the state’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

An Itanagar-based senior police officer told Scroll that the homes of Pasighat West MLA Ninong Ering and Mariyang-Geku legislator Oni Panyang had been vandalised, along with that of Kaling Moyong, the BJP state chief and former Pasighat East MLA.

The office of the apex tribal body, Adi Bane Kebang United, in Pasighat was also damaged, the officer added. Pasighat is located in the East Siang district.

On Saturday afternoon, Ebo Mili, an advocate, and Otul Jerang, a youth leader from Pasighat, surrendered at the Pasighat police station. They said that the youth protesting against the Siang project had no role in the recent mob violence.

Also read: ‘Threats, detentions, militarisation’: How Arunachal government is choking anti-dam protests

Five injured at Dite-Dime

Earlier on Friday, at least five women were injured at Dite-Dime near Geku in Siang district after a clash broke out between the police and the protesters, leading security forces to fire tear gas to disperse the mob, officials said.

Siang Superintendent of Police Kamdam Sikom said that tear gas had been fired at Dite-Dime to disperse the demonstrators protesting against the hydropower project, as the protesters allegedly threw stones at the security personnel.

The district police chief told Scroll that the protesters from Siang District had been conducting their bandh peacefully. “However, this morning, around 7 am, approximately 150 to 200 protesters from Upper Siang district, particularly from Geku and Komkar, arrived at Dite-Dime,” he said.

The officer added: “They attempted to enter Siang District while carrying machetes, lathis, slingshots and other items. They also attempted to vandalise the barricades, obstructed the duty personnel deployed at the location and violated the prohibitory order issued by the district magistrate. They also threw stones at the deployed security forces.”

Lawful action against the protesters was initiated in the presence of the executive magistrate after proper announcement, the officer said.

The bandh had been jointly called by the Adi Bane Kebang United and other local civil society groups such as the SUMP Affected Area Youth Association, the Siang Indigenous Farmers’ Forum Youth Wing and the Adi Galo Welfare Society.

The protesters have been demanding the release of the 10 activists held earlier this month, reinstatement of suspended village heads or community leaders, withdrawal of all pre-feasibility activities linked to the dam project and the removal of paramilitary and central forces deployed in the region.

On October 11, Chief Minister Pema Khandu defended the detention of the protesters, saying that individuals involved in disrupting law and order would be dealt with according to the law.

Khandu had said that many villagers in the Siang belt had been misinformed about the project, stating that the current stage involves only drafting a pre-feasibility report.

On Friday, Khandu said that he was inviting civil society groups to discuss the matter and said that he will visit Siang till the pre-feasibility report is completed. It appeared that the protesters had been “fed some misinformation”, the chief minister said.

Inputs from Rokibuz Zaman. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Odisha government has moved the Supreme Court against Andhra Pradesh’s decision to conduct panchayat elections in the disputed villages of the Kotia region, PTI reported on Saturday.

Both Odisha and Andhra Pradesh have claimed jurisdiction over the 21 villages of Kotia district in Koratpur district along the inter-state border. In 1968, Odisha had challenged Andhra Pradesh’s claim in the Supreme Court.

The court had asked both states to maintain the status quo in 2006.

Tensions between the two states arose again in 2021, when Andhra Pradesh held panchayat polls in Kotia. Following this, Odisha filed a contempt petition in 2022.

On October 10, the Andhra Pradesh government issued a notification to conduct zilla parishad and panchayat samiti elections in three of the villages – Phagunasineri, Ganjeipadar, and Phatusineri.

Following this, Odisha’s Revenue and Disaster Management Minister Suresh Pujari said that Andhra Pradesh had violated the Supreme Court order, reported PTI.

The petition in the Supreme Court was filed by the Koraput collector against Andhra Pradesh’s election commissioner, the collector concerned and other officials involved in the polling process, Pujari was quoted as saying by The Times of India.

“We will also pray to the Supreme Court to direct the Andhra Pradesh government to refrain from such illegal activities in the future,” added the minister.

Andhra Pradesh is ruled by a Telugu Desam Party-led alliance, of which the BJP is a part. The TDP is also a part of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance at the Centre.

After reports about the polls, Naveen Patnaik, the leader of Opposition in Odisha, wrote to Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi, alleging that his government had adopted a soft approach to the Kotia dispute because of the NDA’s dependence on the TDP at the Centre, The New Indian Express reported.

Edited by Sneha.

A Delhi court on Friday extended till February the permission for United States citizen Matthew VanDyke and six Ukrainians to stay abroad while the investigation in an arms training case was pending, the Hindustan Times reported.

They had been arrested by the National Investigation Agency in March for allegedly having links to ethnic armed groups in Myanmar that are hostile to India.

The court allowed the seven foreign citizens to stay outside India after the agency said that it needed more time to investigate the case, the newspaper reported.

On September 24, VanDyke and the Ukrainians were allowed by the court to travel to their home countries for a month on the condition that they would return and cooperate with the investigation.

They had been directed to return to India after one month and inform the court of their return within 72 hours.

While VanDyke returned to India for the court hearing on Friday, the six Ukrainians did not.

The Ukrainians appeared through video conferencing, citing health problems, The New Indian Express reported. After their counsel submitted that they were unwell, the court extended the permission for them to stay outside India.

However, VanDyke told PTI that he will remain in India till the case is over.

#WATCH | Myanmar Training camp case: Bailed-out US National Matthew Aaron Vandyke arrives at Delhi's Rouse Avenue Court to appear before the NIA court, after returning from the USA.

He was granted permission to travel to the USA to meet his family. In September 2026, the court… pic.twitter.com/Dlt98iMCt1

— ANI (@ANI) October 23, 2026

The Congress asked why such a liberty was being extended to a foreign citizen “accused of terrorism”.

This came even as the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government has “shown no hesitation in detaining and arresting youth activists and peaceful protesters during the anti-Vote Chori protests this past month”, said party leader Jairam Ramesh.

Ramesh said that it was also worth noting that VanDyke’s case was raised during US Secretary of State Rubio’s last visit to India in May, who visited again this week.

The case

VanDyke and the six Ukrainians were arrested on March 13. They were allegedly involved in supplying weapons and military equipment to ethnic armed groups operating in Myanmar, and training them.

VanDyke leads Sons of Liberty International, a US-based organisation that claims to provide security consulting, training and weapons supplies “to vulnerable populations to enable them to defend themselves against terrorists and insurgents”.

On September 8, the National Investigation Agency filed a chargesheet against the seven foreigners for illegally entering, staying and moving in India under the 2025 Immigration and Foreigners Act.

Although they had been arrested under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, the agency only accused them of immigration violations in the chargesheet.

Investigators alleged that they had entered India on valid visas, but later travelled to Mizoram without the mandatory restricted area permit. They were also accused of entering Myanmar and meeting ethnic groups hostile to India.

Officials alleged that the individuals received drone deliveries from Europe while in Mizoram.

They were reportedly arrested in Delhi, Kolkata and Lucknow while trying to leave India.

VanDyke was granted default bail on September 18. The six Ukrainians were granted bail on September 23.

Default bail is granted when an investigating agency fails to complete its probe and file a chargesheet within the statutory period while an accused is in custody.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

On the morning of October 9, Adum Tayom was getting a haircut in a town in Arunachal Pradesh when the police barged into the barber’s shop.

They grabbed Tayom, a leader from the Upper Siang district, and three other activists and pushed them into a police van. They were taken from Pasighat to the state capital, Itanagar, where they remain in preventive detention.

All four are residents of Geku, a village on the banks of the Siang river that has been at the heart of protests against a proposed 11,000 MW dam in the district.

The activists are members of the Siang Indigenous Farmers’ Forum or SIFF, which represents agriculturists from the Adi community. The group has been stalling surveys for the dam for years, claiming that it will submerge their ancestral lands and displace them.

For several hours after Tayum was picked up, the police gave no information about his and his colleagues’ whereabouts, nor were their families informed. “We were not told about his arrest for more than eight hours,” Osunam Tayom, his wife, told Scroll. “He was not told why he was being arrested. We did not know which jail he was taken to.”

Later that night, the Upper Siang district magistrate said the four had been held under the state’s draconian preventive detention law, the Arunachal Pradesh Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 2014. The law allows for detention up to six months, with little to no legal recourse.

The order said the four were being held “to contain unlawful activities” in Upper Siang district.

‘Fighting to be heard’

The detentions are not isolated. Residents of the Siang Valley say that the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Arunachal has taken a set of extraordinary measures in the last month to shut down the protests against the proposed Siang Upper Multipurpose project.

The government has detained activists, arrested protestors and flooded the villages in Upper Siang with paramilitary personnel, turning villages into “military zones”, say residents.

It has blocked Facebook pages and social media accounts of mediapersons and activists reporting on the protests – and the Arunachal Pradesh department of information and public relations has warned that criticism or gatherings will lead to arrests.

On Friday morning, a protest demanding the withdrawal of paramilitary forces and release of the detained in Ditte Dime village was met with tear gas, leading to injuries to five women. The police said that the protestors pelted stones and were carrying weapons, leading them to take action. By evening, the agitation had spread to Pasighat town, with protestors torching police vehicles after tear gas was fired at them.

Activists also alleged that the government was pressuring village officials to toe its line. Scroll spoke to two village headmen, who said they were sacked by the district administration because of their opposition to the dam.

However, Chief Minister Pema Khandu defended the detention of protestors, saying those involved in disrupting law and order would be dealt with according to the law. He claimed that many villagers in the Siang belt had been misinformed about the project.

The playbook used by the government is similar to the one used in Delhi to frustrate protestors who came to Central Delhi in support of the youth outfit, the Cockroach Janata Party, on October 11, some protestors pointed out. “As they tried in Delhi, they have made sure that social media posts against the dam are no longer visible,” said Heenu, a protestor from the state. ‘They don’t want to show that people in Arunachal are fighting and united against the dam.”

The difference is that the anti-dam protests have not “got national media attention or the solidarity they deserve”, an activist associated with a feminist group in Arunachal Pradesh said. “They are not just fighting to protect their homeland, they are also fighting to be heard.”

The dam

The Siang flows into Arunachal Pradesh from Tibet and is the Brahmaputra’s main tributary.

The Siang Upper Multipurpose project was first proposed in 2017 by the Central government think-tank Niti Ayog and was meant to counter the threat posed by Chinese hydropower projects being developed on the Yarlung Tsangpo river upstream. The Siang is known as Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet where it originates.

The Siang Indigenous Farmers’ Forum estimates that 27 villages along the river – in Siang and Upper Siang districts – will be affected because of the proposed dam. For years, the residents of the area have opposed the project.

In September, Chief Minister Pema Khandu visited the Siang Valley to push for a pre-feasibility survey for the proposed Siang Upper Multipurpose project. He defended the dam as a way to protect the Adi tribes from a massive 60,000 MW Chinese dam that is yet to be built.

However, angry villagers torched government vehicles, vandalised the house of a Bharatiya Janata Party legislator and prevented cabinet ministers from attending a government meeting. On October 5, eight protesters were arrested from Riga village for setting a building on fire in protest.

One of them, a 65-year-old woman protestor Yalek Tair, was allegedly assaulted in police custody which left her with two fractured ribs on the right side of her chest, Arunachal Times reported.

“This is a clear assault on the rights to free expression and peaceful assembly,” advocate Ebo Mili said. Mili’s Facebook account was one of several social media handles run by journalists and activists that were temporarily blocked on orders from the Union Information Technology ministry.

At least 40 FIRs have also been filed in relation with the protest against the dam since 2025, lawyers and activists said.

“I'm dealing with 34 cases and there are at least six more I am aware of,” said advocate Sunny Tayeng, who is representing villagers booked in several cases.

‘Intimidation’

The government also issued notices to several government employees and village heads for allegedly joining protests against the dam.

Tapir Jamoh, the gaon burah in Riew village in Siang district, said he was removed from his post in March this year after he did not sign a letter consenting to a pre-feasibility survey.

“The government’s supporters threatened me with guns,” the 68-year-old, who is also a BJP member, told Scroll. “But how can we say yes to the dam which will wash our paddy fields and homes away? There are no options but for us to resist.”

Jamoh also claimed that at least 18 headmen have been suspended for opposing the dam. Six were reinstated after they changed their stance.

“The government is forcing the dam on us with the security forces deployment and other threats,” he said.

Another headman at Parong village, Abu Abing, also told Scroll that the government suspended him because he spoke against the dam. “In our village, the government has managed to take support of 40% of the population by threats and intimidation and money,” he said.

Tayi Taggu, the deputy commissioner of Siang district, denied that village headmen were suspended because of their opposition to the dam. He then cut the phone, saying he was busy.

‘They have turned the village into a military zone’

The residents of Siang Valley are also uneasy about the sharp increase in military presence in the area.

Opang Boko, a resident and farmer from Komkar village, told Scroll that hundreds of personnel are stationed in the villages where the stiffest opposition to the dam has been voiced. “They have erected temporary camps in several villages like Beging, Parong, Riga, Komkar and also in Yingkiong, the administrative headquarters of the Upper Siang district.”

Dubit Siram, a resident of Parong and a leader of SIFF, said that the paramilitary personnel have been patrolling the villages at night.

“Whenever we go to our paddy fields, they check IDs and sometimes prevent us from going to our own field,” Siram said. “Pura gaon ko military zone kar diya. The whole village has been turned into a military zone. That’s why we don’t trust the government.”

Sarkar Tayom, Adom’s brother, also criticised the deployment of police personnel in front of the homes of Geku villagers who oppose the dam. “It is absolutely wrong for police to wait outside the homes of villagers at night to apprehend them,” Sarkar said. “They want to intimidate us.”

Slew of detentions

However, the villagers said the arrests and detentions would not deter them.

“My brother was apprehended because he was leading the villagers,” Sarkar Tayom, Adom’s brother, said. “He has not committed any crime. We support him in the fight for our land.”

Orik Taku, a resident of Geku, said the government was making a mistake in detaining the community leaders and might risk inflaming emotions.

“The anger against the government is being somewhat controlled by these leaders,” Taku told Scroll. “If they don’t release them, things will get out of hand.”

Also read:

‘Are we militants?’ In Arunachal Pradesh, anger over plan to send armed forces for mega dam survey

Why Arunachal Pradesh residents are stalling surveys for a mega dam

In August 2024, Vikas Garg was appointed the convenor of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s economic cell in Delhi. Eight months later, his firms were raided by the Enforcement Directorate.

But the agency did not disclose what had prompted the action.

More than a year later, in a statement released on July 10, it has finally revealed that Garg is being prosecuted under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, for his involvement with “the Mahadev Online Book/Skyexchange illegal online betting case”. He was arrested in the case on Tuesday.

The Mahadev Book is a mobile app that claims to be a platform for “sports insights”. It has more than a million users. Skyexchange is a Dubai-based betting platform associated with Mahadev app.

Since 2022, central agencies have been investigating Mahadev’s promoters on charges that they used the app to run an illegal betting syndicate that laundered revenue through benami bank accounts, cryptocurrency and hawala networks, some of which was allegedly used to manipulate the Indian stock market.

The case first made national headlines in 2023 when the Enforcement Directorate alleged that the promoters of the app, Chhattisgarh-based businessmen Sourabh Chandrakar and Ravi Uppal, had paid nearly Rs 508 crore in kickbacks to then chief minister Bhupesh Baghel of the Congress party.

The revelations came months before the state assembly elections. Congress lost the election. Baghel has denied any wrongdoing.

Subsequently, the inquiry into the app by the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation extended to private Indian firms, foreign institutional investors and even Bollywood celebrities who had attended Chandrakar’s lavish wedding in Dubai in February 2023.

While most of these alleged connections made headlines, what went unnoticed was that a member of the BJP was also under the scanner.

Businessman Vikas Garg belongs to an old BJP family. His father, Nand Kishor Garg, has been elected three times from the capital’s Trinagar constituency on the party’s ticket.

Although the central agencies remained silent on the proceedings against him, Garg’s firms acknowledged the Enforcement Directorate investigation as part of their mandatory stock market disclosures in 2024. In their annual reports, the firms denied all the allegations.

When Scroll asked Garg for a response in April, his lawyers sent a notice, threatening legal action. “That the contents of your communication with regard to the proceedings of Enforcement Directorate, it is submitted that the same is sub judice,” it said. “My Client has NOT been convicted of any offence of money laundering and/or any other offence, till date.”

In its July 10 statement, the Enforcement Directorate has said that it has attached assets worth Rs 940.7 crore worth belonging to Garg, his family and his firms under the money-laundering law. The agency described the attachments as “proceeds of crime” from illegal betting operations that were “routed into the entities owned and controlled by Vikas Garg”.

Garg did not respond to a request for comment.

In March 2026, the Enforcement Directorate said that it had searched more than 175 premises across the country in connection with this case, arrested 13 people, chargesheeted 74 and frozen assets worth nearly Rs 4,336 crore in India and abroad. In its latest statement, it pegged the value of attached assets at Rs 3,800 crore.

The BJP connection

Garg is the promoter of Vikas Lifecare Limited and Vikas Ecotech Limited, which manufacture chemicals and are listed on the National Stock Exchange, Ebix Limited, a global digital and financial exchanges firm which is listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange, and Ebix Inc, which is listed on the American stock exchange Nasdaq.

On his social media profiles, he describes himself as “Convenor – Economic Cell, BJP”. A list of functionaries released by BJP Delhi in August 2024 also identifies him as holding this position.

Garg’s social media accounts showcase photos of him with senior BJP leaders, including Union Home Minister Amit Shah. The photos show him meeting Union Parliamentary Affairs minister Kiren Rijiju in April 2025, former Union minister Anurag Thakur in September 2024, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla in November 2022, and BJP’s former Delhi chief ministerial candidate Manoj Tiwari in November 2021.

In September 2025, Garg met Harsh Malhotra, the Union minister of state for corporate affairs and road transport and highways, and tweeted that they had discussed “key issues related to the economic cell and its functioning”. In May 2026, Malhotra became the president of the BJP in Delhi.

Raids and probes

The first time that Enforcement Directorate officials visited Garg and his firms was on April 16 last year, Vikas Lifecare disclosed in a filing to the National Stock Exchange on April 18.

The disclosure was made under regulation 30 of the SEBI (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2015, which mandates listed entities to disclose significant information to stock exchanges to ensure transparency and prevent insider trading.

The firm said that Enforcement Directorate officials had visited its office and Garg’s home and the office of one of his companies. It added that the investigation pertained to “third-party entities and transactions”.

On April 21, an Enforcement Directorate statement said that it had raided premises across several Indian cities on April 16 in the Mahadev betting app case.

It added: “During the searches, evidence has been recovered to suggest that the promoters of such companies collaborated/colluded with the accused persons to manipulate to share prices of such companies with the help of ‘tainted money’ to raise their company’s valuation using a string of agents and middlemen.”

The agency did not name any firms and promoters.

In its 2024-’25 annual report published in September 2025, Vikas Lifecare, said that the Enforcement Directorate had initiated proceedings “against various persons including officials of the Company” under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

It denied the allegations and said that it was in the process of moving the High Court to quash the proceedings. While Scroll could not find pleas filed by the firm against the Enforcement Directorate in the Delhi High Court in 2025 and 2026 on the e-courts website, court proceedings from April 2026 show that Garg has moved the Prevention of Money Laundering Act appellate tribunal against the Enforcement Directorate’s Raipur branch, which is investigating the Mahadev betting operation.

In a stock filing on June 24, Vikas Lifecare said that the Enforcement Directorate had attached immovable properties worth Rs 13 crore as part of its investigation into the Mahadev betting app. Ebix Limited put out a similar filing on June 23 which did not mention the value of the attachments.

“The Parent company has represented that it is neither involved in nor a beneficiary of the alleged activities under investigation and is contesting the attachment before the appropriate legal forums,” Vikas Lifecare said.

The Enforcement Directorate, in its July 10 statement, said Garg’s attached assets included residential properties, land parcels, equity shares and other securities.

The Dubai connection

Since 2022, the Enforcement Directorate has released more than a dozen press releases on its probe into the Mahadev betting app, naming the owners Sourabh Chandrakar and Ravi Uppal and several others as under investigation. It has named those it has arrested and searched, detailed the modus operandi of the accused, and stated the assets it has frozen.

In a press release in March 2024, the Enforcement Directorate stated: “It was found that one Hari Shankar Tibrewal who hails from Kolkata but currently residing in Dubai…has partnered with the promoters of Mahadev Online Book.”

It added: “The searches revealed that Hari Shankar Tibrewal owned and operated one of the illegal betting websites viz. skyexchange.”

In April 2024, the Enforcement Directorate filed a prosecution complaint in court – the third supplementary chargesheet in the Mahadev app case – naming Tibrewal as accused number 24 and charging him with money laundering under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002.

In the prosecution complaint, the Enforcement Directorate said: “Investigations had further revealed that the accused, Mr Hari Shankar Tibrewal had laundered the proceeds of crime emanating from the betting operations through multiple companies operating both in India and outside India.” It added: “The operations of Indian companies were managed by Mr Suraj Chokhani.”

In a petition before a district court in Delhi in 2024, Tibrewala denied any role in the Mahadev betting app.

Questions emailed to Tibrewal and Chokhani about the Enforcement Directorate’s charges against them remain unanswered.

Filings with the National Stock Exchange show that in 2022 and 2023, Vikas Garg’s listed firms received investments from individuals and entities based in Dubai and Kolkata, which were accused of involvement in the Mahadev betting app in 2024.

For instance, Vikas Lifecare Limited’s shareholding disclosure from September and December 2022 shows that a Dubai-based investor, Ecotek General Trading LLC, had a 1.76% stake in it, valued around Rs 10 crore.

By March 2023, five other firms from Kolkata bought nearly 8% of Vikas Lifecare: Brilliant Investment Consultants Private Limited, Discovery Buildcon Private Limited, Dream Achievers Consultancy Services Private Limited, Forest Vincom Private Limited and Sawarnbhumi Vanijya Private Limited. This investment was worth nearly Rs 38 crore.

The common director in the Kolkata firms was Suraj Chokhani.

Sawarnbhumi Vanijya also owned 1.1 % shares of Vikas Ecotech as of September 2023, worth nearly Rs 5 crore.

National Stock Exchange data shows that towards the end of 2023, these investors sold their shares in Garg’s firms.

All six investors – the five Kolkata firms and the Dubai firm – have been accused of being part of the money-laundering operations of the Mahadev betting app, according to Enforcement Directorate documents. One is a March 2024 letter from the agency to the Chhattisgarh government’s Economic Offence Bureau and the Anti-Corruption Bureau. The other is a freezing order from February 2024.

The names of the Dubai and Kolkata firms also feature in a list shared by the Ministry of Finance as part of a Lok Sabha reply in August 2024. The list disclosed the names of 1,519 firms against whom the Enforcement Directorate had filed prosecution complaints – or chargesheets under the money laundering law – between 2019 and 2024.

The six firms in Kolkata and Dubai did not respond to emails seeking comment.

In a bail hearing in the Supreme Court last year, Chokhani’s counsel had argued that his alleged involvement in money-laundering operations of the betting app was comparatively minor and limited to managing companies, not owning or operating the app directly.

The counsel also argued that the Enforcement Directorate case relied on statements by the co-accused, which were inadmissible in court and purportedly under retraction.

Chokhani was granted bail by the court citing extended duration of his custody, the fundamental right to a speedy trial, and the absence of trial proceedings.

Indian authorities have been trying to extradite and prosecute the app’s promoters – Uppal was reportedly arrested by the United Arab Emirates police in December 2023 and fled custody in November 2025. Chandrakar is reportedly in Oman.

Corrections and clarifications: This article has been updated to include details from the Enforcement Directorate’s prosecution complaint. A paragraph that relied on a news report published in the India Today has been removed.

The police in Imphal on Friday fired tear gas to disperse demonstrators who were protesting against recent killings in Manipur, PTI reported.

The demonstrations were held in five Meitei-dominated valley districts against the ethnic violence and the government’s alleged failure to restore normalcy in the state.

No injuries were reported during the “sound protest” called by the Federation of Haomee, a civil society group. In several parts of Imphal, protesters banged utensils and struck electric poles with hammers, and motorists honked their vehicle horns as part of the demonstrations, India Today NE reported.

In Imphal, the protesters marched to the Kangla fort near the governor’s residence and the chief minister’s secretariat, PTI reported. Kangla is the historic political and cultural centre of the erstwhile Manipur kingdom.

While security personnel stopped several protesters at Palace Compound, Moirangkhom and Keisampat junctions, hundreds managed to reach the Kangla gate, the news agency reported. They were prevented from entering the fort premises.

Imphal, Manipur: A large number of people staged a statewide protest, marching towards Kangla and entering through its Western Gate despite security forces using tear gas and mock bombs. Organized by the Federation of Haomee, protesters demanded NRC updation, the return of… pic.twitter.com/dbvtZbPuIq

— IANS (@ians_india) October 23, 2026

The police fired several rounds of tear gas to disperse the protesters who had gathered near the governor’s residence, PTI reported.

The protests came four days after three persons from the Meitei community were killed in Kuki-dominated Kangpokpi district.

On Friday, state Home Minister Govindas Konthoujam said that searches were underway to arrest persons involved in the killings, The New Indian Express reported. Three persons have been held.

The protesters were also demanding that the National Register of Citizens be implemented in Manipur, alleged undocumented migrants be deported and the Suspension of Operations agreement be abrogated, India Today NE reported.

The Suspension of Operations agreement 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.

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

The agreement was renewed in September 2025.

This followed the ethnic clashes that broke out in Manipur in May 2023 between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo-Hmar communities.

At least 306 persons have been killed and 49 are missing in Manipur since the beginning of the ethnic violence in the state in May 2023, the Assembly was informed in September. About 60,000 persons were displaced during the violence. Of them, 36,000 persons had been resettled and 24,000 remained in relief camps across Manipur.

Tensions between the Kuki and the Naga communities have also escalated in the state since February.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Cabinet Secretariat did not initiate action against an Election Commission officer despite complaints by two election commissioners, noting that doing so without a formal complaint from the poll panel as a whole could amount to “executive interference”, The Indian Express quoted a reply under the Right to Information Act as having shown on Thursday.

The records were provided in response to an application by Right to Information activist and Navy officer Commodore (retired) Lokesh K Batra.

The records show that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi separately wrote to Cabinet Secretary TV Somanathan on July 29, seeking action against Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Maneesh Garg.

Garg, an Indian Administrative Service officer from the Himachal Pradesh cadre, was given additional charge of the poll panel’s administration division on July 28 while Deputy Election Commissioner Bhanu Prakash Yeturu was on leave from July 27 to August 9.

Within hours of taking charge, Garg issued an order changing the work assigned to senior deputy election commissioners, deputy election commissioners, director generals and other officers, Sandhu and Joshi had alleged. The order revised the work allocation set out in a previous order dated September 2025.

In their letters, Sandhu and Joshi alleged that Garg had made the changes without consulting the Election Commission or the officers concerned, despite repeated verbal and written instructions that such changes required “prior discussion or approval” from the poll panel.

As a follow up to @IndianExpress story on ‘CEC vs ECs’, official documents accessed by RTI Activist Commodore Lokesh Batra (Retd) sheds more light on the issue.

Election Commissioners Dr Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Dr Vivek Joshi wrote to Union Cabinet Secretary individually on the… https://t.co/bk21NiyeSE pic.twitter.com/jQec7hP2nC

— Arvind Gunasekar (@arvindgunasekar) October 22, 2026

Sandhu said that the revised allocation had been issued “without discussing or informing” the commission or him, The Indian Express reported.

On the other hand, Joshi wrote that when he “requested for the relevant file from the administration division, it was not provided”.

Both commissioners alleged that Garg’s actions were contrary to established practice and violated provisions of the 2023 Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners Act, PTI reported.

A Cabinet Secretariat file dated August 3 proposed seeking Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s opinion on the complaints. A note dated August 4 said that the Election Commission was an independent constitutional body and the letters from the two commissioners, sent in their individual capacities, did not constitute a formal complaint from the poll panel as a whole.

Citing Section 18 of the 2023 Act, the note said the poll body should make decisions unanimously as far as possible, with differences settled by a majority.

The note added that although Garg was appointed by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet, his conduct was governed by the Election Commission’s rules and guidelines.

The Cabinet Secretariat noted that taking action without an official communication from the poll panel as a whole could be “inappropriate” and “construed as interference in the functioning of the constitutional body”, The Indian Express reported.

The Cabinet Secretariat decided to acknowledge the letters and send copies to Kumar’s office.

On August 5, Somanathan sent separate letters to Sandhu and Joshi acknowledging their complaints.

The records released under the Right to Information Act do not establish whether the chief election commissioner subsequently responded to the proposed request for his opinion.

On September 23, The Indian Express reported that Sandhu and Joshi had formally objected 14 times in 10 months to decisions by the poll panel related to the special intensive revision of electoral rolls, saying some had been taken without their knowledge.

On September 26, the poll body said the revised work allocation orders issued by Garg had not been implemented following directions from the two commissioners.

Since October 2, nationwide protests have been held calling for Kumar’s resignation over concerns about the functioning of the Election Commission and the alleged irregularities in how the voter roll is being revised.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read: SIR explained: Why the voter roll revision has become so controversial

Confrontations between Indian and Chinese troops have been taking place at several locations along the Arunachal Pradesh border, The Hindu quoted Indo-Tibetan Border Police Director General Shatrujeet Singh Kapur as saying on Thursday.

“In the past few days, a situation arose where face-off happened at several locations in Arunachal and it still continues,” Kapur said at an event in Alwar, Rajasthan.

The Indo-Tibetan Border Police, a central force, guards the 3,488-km Line of Actual Control with China.

Told you so! ITBP DG Shatrujeet Singh Kapur confirms several face-offs between Chinese & Indian troops in Arunachal, including Taksing, which are still continuing. The face-offs were even taking place when Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Delhi for BRICS. #IndiaChinaBorderRow pic.twitter.com/DMyFdRnUnB

— Rajat Pandit (@IamRajat_Pandit) October 23, 2026

The force is stepping up preparations for modern warfare with drones, specialised commandos and new underground shelters, PTI quoted Kapur as further saying.

Reports of a stand-off between Indian and Chinese soldiers near Taksing in Arunachal Pradesh’s Upper Subansiri district emerged in July, with several confrontations reportedly taking place along the boundary.

“Sometime in July, during routine patrolling, Indian and Chinese troops came face to face near Maja,” an unidentified official told The Hindu. “After [a] brief confrontation, both sides returned but the Chinese PLA [People’s Liberation Army] came back in larger number few days later and pitched tents, around 6-7 kms within India’s perception of the LAC.”

The Indian military and the Union government had not commented on the reports at the time.

In August, the Ministry of External Affairs said that maintaining peace and tranquillity along the Line of Actual Control was of “utmost importance” and warned that the “state of the border affairs” will affect bilateral relations in general.

In June, The Arunachal Times quoted the Nah Welfare Society as having alleged that Chinese soldiers were occupying areas near the Line of Actual Control, building roads and military camps, and taking over grazing grounds.

BJP ‘suppressing’ reports, alleges Congress

On Friday, the Congress accused the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government of “suppressing” reports of skirmishes along the border since July.

The Opposition said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi “was seen joking around” with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the BRICS summit in September instead of taking action.

“Modi has abandoned our soldiers every time, betrayed the country and shirked his responsibility,” the Opposition party said on social media. “This weak prime minister has caused immense harm to the country.”

Xi visited India for the summit between September 11 and September 13. The visit came amid a thaw since 2024 in India-China relations, following years of tensions over a military standoff in Ladakh.

The two countries have held three rounds of high-level border talks since July, The Hindu reported.

China has for long sought to rename places in Arunachal Pradesh. Beijing lays territorial claims over a large portion of Arunachal Pradesh, claiming that it is “South Tibet”. China refers to Arunachal Pradesh as Zangnan. India has rejected China’s claims.

Situation along LAC gets disturbed from time-to-time: MEA

Ministry of External Affairs spokekesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on Friday that the situation along the India-China border areas “gets disturbed from time-to-time when Chinese forces diverge from established patrolling patterns”.

Answering a question about Kapur’s remarks, Jaiswal said during the ministry’s weekly media briefing that New Delhi and Beijing continue to use “existing diplomatic and military mechanisms” to resolve outstanding issues and “avoid misunderstanding and miscalculation along the Line of Actual Control”.

He added that the two sides have agreed to discuss ways to “improve understanding of LAC in appropriate areas” for better border management.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar and Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read: Why accepting ‘differing perceptions’ on the LAC might be hurting India strategically

The Delhi High Court on Friday dismissed a petition filed by student leader Neha Bora challenging a notice issued by a special executive magistrate directing them to furnish a bond to maintain peace, reported Bar and Bench.

Bora, the president of the All India Students’ Association, had been detained on October 16 while participating in a flash protest by the student group near Barakhamba Road demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.

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

In a notice issued on October 17, the special executive magistrate had directed them to furnish a personal bond of Rs 10,000 with a surety to “maintain peace during the period of inquiry”.

On Friday, Justice Subramonium Prasad said that there were “adequate safeguards” and directions had been issued to the special executive magistrate to give all materials to Bora before passing any order in the inquiry, reported Live Law.

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

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

In their petition against the notice, Bora had argued that no material had been disclosed that could establish a likelihood of a breach of peace or identify a specific event or period during which such a breach is apprehended.

The All India Students’ Association chief also contested the allegation concerning a protest at Connaught Place, stating that they had called for a peaceful gathering at Mandi House at 5 pm on October 16, from where they were detained.

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

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

On October 7, businessman Elon Musk took to X to accuse unnamed “oligarchs” of blocking the entry into India of Starlink, his service that uses a network of low-orbitting satellites to deliver high-speed broadband internet. Musk claimed that this was a “crime against the people of India”.

However, the Indian government said that Musk’s claim was “baseless and misconceived”. It said all three licensed operators of satellite internet (satcom) services in India – Elon Musk’s Starlink, Reliance Jio’s Jio Satcom and the Bharti-backed Eutelsat OneWeb – are at broadly the same stage of the regulatory approval process, each awaiting security clearance before spectrum is assigned.

The spat makes for good theatre. But it frames the wrong question. The issue is not whether Starlink should come to India. It is on whose terms and who will hold the switch when it matters.

Digital divide

India had nearly 1.09 billion internet subscriptions at the end of March, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. That hides a divide. Cities have about 127 subscriptions per 100 people but rural India has about 48.

By the estimates of the Internet and Mobile Association of India industry group, roughly 38% of Indians – nearly 58 crore people – are still not active internet users.

Many of them live in places where it is difficult to lay cables or build towers : villages in the mountains, forested districts, the North East, island territories. For a farmer checking crop prices, a student attending an online class, or a relief team after a cyclone, being able to access the internet via low Earth orbit satellites changes everything. India should want this technology – and soon.

But infrastructure, as Ukraine learned the hard way, is power.

In 2022, Starlink became the backbone of Ukraine’s battlefield communications. That October, the Financial Times reported that Ukrainian units lost Starlink service as they advanced into territory recaptured from Russia.

Around the same time, Ukraine asked for coverage near Crimea to support a naval drone operation. Musk declined to enable it. He later said he did not want SpaceX to be “complicit in a major act of war”.

A decision with consequences for a sovereign nation at war was taken by a private individual in another country. In March 2025, Musk put it bluntly himself: Ukraine’s “entire front line would collapse if I turned it off”,

No Indian government should ever be in that position.

Unfortunately, we are being blocked by certain oligarchs in order to maintain their monopolistic chokehold on the Indian people. You can guess who they are …

This is a crime against the people of India! https://t.co/t3YONgpcm7

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 7, 2026

The risk is not hypothetical. In December 2024, security forces recovered Starlink equipment from a militant camp in Manipur. The same month, police in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands found that drug smugglers had used the service to reach Indian waters.

Musk responded by asserting that “Starlink satellite beams are turned off over India”. That was reassuring – and revealing. It meant that whether the service worked over Indian territory was, in the end, a company’s decision.

Sovereignty over the internet does not mean shutting foreign players out. It means the rules are set in New Delhi and enforced in India. The Department of Telecommunications’ 2025 security conditions are a sound start.

Operators must route Indian traffic through gateways in India and keep user data in the country. They must allow lawful interception and be able to restrict service in specific areas during hostilities. They must also make at least 20% of their ground equipment in India within five years.

These rules must apply equally to every operator, foreign or Indian. They must be enforced in practice, not just on paper.

Here Musk’s complaint deserves a hearing. “Sovereign” must not become a euphemism for “concentrated”. If control over India’s satellite internet simply moves from one foreign billionaire to two or three domestic conglomerates, citizens gain little. A switch in a few private hands at home is still a switch outside public accountability.

Three aims

India should aim for three things. First, transparent licensing and spectrum pricing policies, decided on timelines that have been made public, so no applicant is left in limbo and none is fast-tracked.

Second, real plurality: room for public-sector players such as Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, for start-ups, and for capacity built with the Indian Space Research Organisation, alongside global and domestic giants.

Third, oversight that is precise, not sweeping. The government should be able to step in at sensitive borders and in genuine emergencies, under the law, for a limited time, with each use reviewed by Parliament or the courts. It should not have a blanket kill-switch.

India already suspends internet access from time to time to manage law and order in sensitive areas. The digital rights group Access Now counted 65 suspensions in 2025. Any oversight of satellite networks should meet the same test: used sparingly, for a limited time, and only where truly needed. The aim is security for the nation while keeping its people connected.

India should welcome Starlink and every competitor willing to play by Indian rules. The goal is simple to state and hard to achieve: connectivity for the 58 crore still offline and control that rests with the roughly 140 crore who own this country.

Neither Musk nor a monopoly should hold the switch. India should.

Shaan Ray is the author of The Emerging Technologies is Handbook.

What happens when a content creator films you surreptitiously and you only find out after the video has gone viral?

More and more people globally are discovering the pitfalls of smartglasses, which look like ordinary glasses, but have cameras embedded in them.

Privacy invasion, however, is not the only concern surrounding the use of smartglasses in India.

At recent street protests in Delhi, police officials were spotted wearing them. Does this mean the state is watching and profiling you?

Watch our report to find out more.

The Delhi Police on Friday detained several protesters as they attempted to march to the Election Commission headquarters to demand Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation for his handling of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

The march had been called by the Delhi Coordination Committee of People Against SIR – a civil society group consisting of students, farmers and rights activists. They were joined by Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Brinda Karat, members of the All India Democratic Women’s Association and the All India Democratic Students’ Organisation.

The demonstration began near Gole Dak Khana in central Delhi, with the protesters shouting slogans against Kumar and calling for a halt to the voter roll revision.

More than 13 crore names have been removed from the draft electoral rolls across 30 states and Union territories during the exercise.

Police detain protestors who had gathered in central Delhi, demanding the resignation of CEC Gyanesh Kumar.

Several other protestors climbed atop buses to stop them from driving away. @priyali_dhingra reports pic.twitter.com/69YltXLCgi

— Scroll.in (@scroll_in) October 23, 2026

Ahead of the march, a large number of personnel from the Delhi Police and the Rapid Action Force were deployed in central Delhi, reported The Hindu.

When the security personnel stopped the protesters at Ashok Road, they sat down and held a “People’s Parliament”, according to the newspaper. The police then asked them to vacate the area.

Delhi Police stopped a march under the banner of ‘People Against SIR’ near Bangla Sahib.

Protestors sat on the road and continued their agitation.@priyali_dhingra reports pic.twitter.com/nWDDWvVfN2

— Scroll.in (@scroll_in) October 23, 2026

The protesters refused to do so, following which the police detained several of them.

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

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

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

Inputs by Priyali Dhingra. Written by Sneha. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Delhi Police detained several protesters as they attempted to march to the Election Commission headquarters to demand Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation for his handling of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls. The march was called by the Delhi Coordination Committee of People Against SIR – a civil society group consisting of students, farmers and rights activists.

Ahead of the march, a large number of personnel from the Delhi Police and the Rapid Action Force were deployed in central Delhi. Read on.

The Delhi Police has granted permission for singer Diljit Dosanjh’s concert at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium on October 30. A day earlier, reports said that police had denied clearance for the event because of threat-related inputs and security requirements during the festive season.

The concert’s ticketing partner, BookMyShow, said that the police had asked the organisers to ensure additional safety and traffic management measures. We “have assured Delhi Police of full compliance with all security/traffic requirements”, said the platform. Read on.

The Congress accused the Narendra Modi-led government of “suppressing” reports about face-offs between Indian and Chinese troops along the Arunachal Pradesh border since July. The accusation came after Indo-Tibetan Border Police Director General Shatrujeet Singh Kapur said that confrontations between Indian and Chinese troops have been taking place at several locations along the Arunachal Pradesh border.

Reports of a stand-off between Indian and Chinese soldiers near Taksing in Arunachal Pradesh’s Upper Subansiri district had emerged in July. The Indian military and the Union government had not commented on the reports at the time.

The Opposition said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi “was seen joking around” with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the BRICS summit in September instead of taking action. The two countries have held three rounds of high-level border talks since July. Read on.

The State Bank of India on Friday said it had individually informed customers whose personal data was leaked on the dark web following a cyberattack, using email or WhatsApp. The cyberattack a day ago had led to the leak of about 3.75 lakh customer records on the dark web, of which 3,897 contained personally identifiable information.

The bank’s statement came after digital rights organisation Internet Freedom Foundation flagged that SBI had informed stock exchanges about the data leak but had not notified affected customers. Read on.

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

The Delhi Police has granted permission for singer Diljit Dosanjh’s concert at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium on October 30, IANS quoted the event’s ticketing partner BookMyShow as saying on Friday.

This came a day after the police denied clearance for the event because of threat-related inputs and security requirements during the festive season.

The Hindu festival of Diwali will be celebrated on November 8.

On Friday, BookMyShow clarified that any media reports claiming that the concert had been cancelled were inaccurate.

“Permission for the event had been temporarily withheld, not cancelled, and the two should not be confused,” IANS quoted the platform as saying.

It added that the police had asked the concert’s organisers and BookMyShow to ensure additional safety and traffic management measures.

“BookMyShow Live had a cordial meeting with Delhi Police, presented a detailed plan and have assured Delhi Police of full compliance with all security/traffic requirements,” said the ticketing platform.

It added: “On that basis, permission for the event has been reconsidered and issued.”

After Delhi, Dosanjh is scheduled to perform in Indore, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Lucknow and Chandigarh in November and December as part of his Aura India Tour.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The State Bank of India on Friday said it had individually informed customers whose personal data was leaked on the dark web following a cyberattack, using email or WhatsApp.

The cyberattack on Wednesday had led to the leak of about 3.75 lakh customer records on the dark web, of which 3,897 contained personally identifiable information.

The bank’s statement came after digital rights organisation Internet Freedom Foundation flagged that SBI had informed stock exchanges about the data leak but had not notified affected customers.

In its statement on Friday, the SBI said that customers’ account balances and funds were safe. “Customers are advised to follow safe digital banking practices, never share their OTP, PIN or password with anyone, and remain vigilant against suspicious calls, messages and emails,” it added.

In July, customer data and internal documents from state-run Bank of Baroda were also leaked on the dark web, Reuters reported.

The Reserve Bank of India has repeatedly warned lenders about cybersecurity risks that could affect financial stability.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

“Irregularities” have been found in 10,470 entries in the electoral roll of the Pilibhit Assembly constituency after the special intensive revision, said the Uttar Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa on Thursday.

Rinwa also announced that legal action will be taken against the current and former electoral registration officers in the constituency, while the services of a computer assistant at the Voter Registration Centre of Pilibhit will be terminated.

The action was taken after an investigation by the Pilibhit district election officer showed that the computer assistant had entered 13,779 Form 8 applications.

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

“No forms or records related to any of these entries were found available in the office,” said the chief election officer.

He added that of the total, 10,470 forms for “corrections” were approved. Irregularities were found in all of them, said Rinwa.

The statement came a day after the Congress alleged that the names of more than 13,000 voters were replaced with those of other persons after the final electoral list was released in April following the special intensive revision.

The voter identity card numbers and serial numbers of these voters had remained the same, said the party.

“If the EPIC number remains the same but another person’s name is entered against it, the original voter could face an identity mismatch at the polling station and be deprived of the right to vote”, the Congress highlighted.

Party leader Supriya Shrinate had also pointed out that the alleged discrepancies were significant given the electoral arithmetic in Pilibhit Sadar.

In the 2022 Assembly polls, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Sanjay Gangwar had won the seat by a margin of less than 7,000 votes.

कार्यालय मुख्य निर्वाचन अधिकारी, उत्तर प्रदेश
(प्रेस विज्ञप्ति)

विधान सभा निर्वाचन क्षेत्र 127-पीलीभीत की मतदाता सूची में पाई गयी गड़बड़ी के प्रकरण में वर्तमान के साथ-साथ पूर्व निर्वाचक रजिस्ट्रीकरण अधिकारी के विरूद्ध भी होगी विधिक कार्रवाई

दोनों निर्वाचक रजिस्ट्रीकरण…

— CEO Uttar Pradesh (@ceoup) October 22, 2026

Rinwa told The Indian Express that the poll panel also received complaints from the Samajwadi Party about discrepancies in the Pilibhit electoral rolls on October 19.

The poll panel also received a complaint from advocate Faizan Ali Khan, who alleged that his name and his brother’s were not showing up in electoral records despite appearing in the final voter roll, the newspaper reported.

Khan said in his complaint that the name “Raees Ali” was showing with his voter identity number.

On Thursday, the Uttar Pradesh chief electoral officer said that the Pilibhit district election officer had been directed to “conduct a thorough investigation of all Form-6 entries made by the computer assistant at the Voter Registration Centre for adding names to the electoral roll, and all Form-7 entries for deletion of names” after the special intensive revision concluded on April 10 up to October 21.

“Additionally, the process of correcting all entries related to Form-8 in which irregularities have been found, in accordance with the rules and standards, is underway,” he added.

Uttar Pradesh was part of the second phase of the voter roll revision.

More than two crore, or 13.2%, names were deleted from the final rolls published in April. The state had more than 15 crore electors before the roll revision.

A contentious exercise

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

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

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

Written by Sneha. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

SIR explained: Why the voter roll revision has become so controversial

The Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration suspended the licences of eight eateries in Mumbai and seized nearly 38 tonnes of food stock worth Rs 54.6 lakh across the state during inspections on Wednesday and Thursday.

The inspections uncovered violations, including unhygienic kitchens and drainage systems, rusted racks and utensils, incomplete temperature records, workers without medical certificates and the use of unauthorised food colours in sweets.

The establishments whose licences were suspended in Mumbai are SK Bakery in Mazgaon, Nekzad Restaurant in Grant Road, Foodies Multi Cuisine in Bandra, Arabian Luqma in Jogeshwari and Delhi Zaika in Kurla. The list also includes You Mee in Ghatkopar, a Domino’s Pizza outlet in Bhandup and Bikkgane Biryani in Govandi-Chembur.

The Food and Drug Administration said that the licences had been suspended with immediate effect. However, it did not specify which violations were found at each establishment.

As for the seizures, the largest was reported in Navi Mumbai, where officials confiscated 33,286 kg of kidney beans and other pulses worth about Rs 50 lakh from RDC Agro Ventures in the Shirwane area of Nerul.

The department said that the products were suspected to be substandard and incorrectly labelled.

In the Nashik division, officials seized 483.4 kg of food products worth Rs 1.7 lakh from three establishments. These included refined soybean oil from Shri Santaji Trading Company in Sinnar, butter and ghee from New Huma Trading Company in Nashik, and yellow sev and papdi from Mahipati Enterprises.

The action comes amid a statewide drive by the department against eateries and other establishments that alleged violate food safety norms.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read: How a bureaucrat has forced Maharashtra’s eateries and other food businesses to clean up their act

Paralympic swimmer Mohammad Shams Aalam Shaikh was sent back to India from the ongoing Asian Para Games in Nagoya, Japan after being accused of sexually assaulting an employee at the hotel where the swimming contingent was staying, the Hindustan Times reported on Thursday.

The Paralympic Committee of India said that its Chef de Mission has recommended a lifetime ban on the 40-year-old athlete.

Shaikh was arrested by Japanese police in connection with the incident, the Hindustan Times reported.

The alleged incident took place on Monday at the Four Points by Sheraton hotel while the employee was reportedly carrying out housekeeping duties in Shaikh’s room, Moneycontrol quoted an unidentified committee official as saying.

The local organising committee informed the Indian delegation about the complaint, following which representatives visited the hotel and spoke with the police and hotel management. Shaikh was subsequently taken to a local police station.

The delegation submitted a written apology to the employee, and Sheikh was sent back to India on the first available flight on Tuesday.

“The Paralympic Committee of India maintains a zero-tolerance policy towards any form of sexual misconduct or behaviour that violates the dignity, safety and rights of others,” the Hindustan Times quoted the body as saying. “The committee has established strict disciplinary guidelines and expects every member of the Indian contingent to uphold the highest standards of conduct, discipline and sportsmanship.”

At the 2018 Asian Para Games, Shaikh won gold medals in the 50-metre and 200-metre breaststroke events. He is also a former world No 1 in the 100-metre butterfly and 50-metre breaststroke.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

In his article “Being a Dalit, being a cockroach: A self-reflective note on Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’”, Bhimraj M, a scholar at University of Oxford, uses an autobiographical lens and diagnoses his dalitness as a Kafkaesque condition. He compares his place in the caste society to that of Franz Kafka’s cockroach character Gregor Samsa.

As Dalit scholar-activists from Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University we find this metaphor inappropriate, misleading and potentially regressive. Dalit consciousness, we argue, is fundamentally political, not existential and it requires analogies that foreground active resistance.

Bhimraj is admittedly comfortable in his “familiar” cockroach-ness, and detests being humanised. Yet, he yearns for and, eventually, resolves to seek a humanness for himself. “How am I supposed to feel when my fellow Dalit students are forced to clean bathrooms in schools, humiliated as ‘quotawallas’ or even driven to suicide in colleges?” he asks.

Enraged, we say! Such has been the approach of Dalit movement from Phule to Ambedkar and Kanshiram. The Dalit Panther movement of the 1970s sought to transform indignation into collective resistance, with “Panther” symbolising strength and defiance against oppression.

It is pathetic to see, but crucial to understand why, and how, a Dalit imaginary of “panther” metamorphoses into a “cockroach?” Moreover, what kind of message does it send young Dalits aspiring to higher education when a Dalit scholar at Oxford describes himself as a “cockroach.”

Metamorphosis speaks of modern European capitalist society that reduces a person’s worth to their appearance and ability to provide. Samsa’s transmutation is sudden, individual and unfolds within the private register of family and employer. However, our condition is religiously sanctioned and socially reproduced, specifically subjecting Dalits to inhuman suffering.

How does this metaphor correlate with the horrors of caste to any reasonable depth? Dignity, for Dalits, is not a private feeling to be cultivated in isolation, but a result of collective political action.

Samsa, by resorting to seclusion and dying in docility, relieves his family from an unbearable burden, and restores equilibrium. On the contrary, the death of Hyderabad University scholar Rohith Vemula, on whose tenth anniversary this article was published, generated enduring grief that constituted a site of public mourning, mobilisation, and protest.

Our collective bereavement refuses to forget, sprouted into resistance that held authorities answerable, demanded institutional accountability and enactment of the Rohith Act. Dalit consciousness defies the forces that seek to dehumanise people. That has been the legacy of Dalit politics, instead of the image of a wretched dalit body.

Regardless of author’s intent, such a framing of Dalits may appeal to members of a neoliberal, Euro-American-centred academia that fetishises wretched minorities whose salvation seemingly lie in their scholarly attention and sympathy. It favours rendering of marginalised subjects as passive through spectacle of suffering in grotesque details that make sellable content. Hence, a burgeoning literature displays such patterns of carefully rehearsed vulnerability.

Dalit politics, while acknowledging lived experience, has historically been oriented towards resisting oppression to establish an emancipatory agenda. On the other hand, a performative “victimisation Olympics” risks tumbling structural critique to virtue signalling.

Bhimraj borrows Camus’ concept of revolt against an indifferent universe. Conversely, caste is not indifferent. Dehumanisation, here, is part of a collective and deliberate project instead of a collateral of flawed socio-economic design. In this system, power is explicit, violence is targeted specifically at Dalits , therefore political resistance is inevitable.

Reclaiming humanity, here, requires consistent assertion of political agency, not appeals for recognition or the moral alteration of the oppressor. Ambedkar provided a register of resistance and negotiation for the movement, rather than self-deprecation, which was carried forward by Dalit Panthers.

Each metaphor reflects distinct politics, “Cockroach” exhibits an inability to respond to objective violence, whereas “Panther” shows the ways to retaliate against dehumanisation.

Bhimraj seems to miss the sensibilities of Dalit politics. It is noteworthy, here, that India’s existing constitutional safeguards were secured not because Dalits are victims but because they have been an organised force capable of altering political arrangements.

Using the cockroach as a metaphor for India’s historically oppressed weakens the emancipatory potential of Dalit politics by translating a political problem into an existential one.

Komal Rajak is a research scholar at the University of Delhi. Ajay Pateer and Bhoopendra Kumar Ahirwar are research scholars at Jawaharlal Nehru University. They are members of the United Dalit Students’ Forum.

The Bombay High Court on Wednesday said that it was “shocking” that Mumbai’s pollution levels had surpassed those in Delhi, despite the city’s natural geographical advantages, Bar and Bench reported.

“The city has a sea breeze coming, which has a lot of open spaces, the whole openness of the sea, still we are facing this…,” the legal news outlet quoted the bench as saying. “[The authorities] should see to it that Mumbai skies are clear.”

On Thursday, Delhi recorded an air quality index of 223, in the “poor” category, at 3.20 pm. Mumbai’s AQI stood at 102, in the “moderate” category, according to the Sameer application, which provides hourly updates from the Central Pollution Control Board.

Over the past week, Mumbai has been experiencing smog and reduced visibility.

Referring to reports that visibility in the city had fallen below 500 metres on Tuesday, The Indian Express quoted the bench as asking: “If this is the state of affairs, who is bothered?”

The court also pulled up the municipal authorities, the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board and the police for failing to implement its orders on air and noise pollution. The remarks came a day after the Durga Puja and Dussehra celebrations ended on Tuesday.

The bench said that the police had been “extremely slow” to enforce its orders, including those requiring licences for sound systems used during processions and banning firecrackers on public streets during festivals, the newspaper reported.

The bench cited an incident on Tuesday in south Mumbai, where firecrackers were reportedly burst on the street outside a police station near Crawford Market.

The court called it a “rampant breach” of its orders and warned that officials who failed to act could be punished for violating citizens’ constitutional rights.

“You cannot depend on nature, you have to change human habits…” The Indian Express quoted the bench as saying. “We don’t want Mumbaikars to have a situation to see AQI levels first and then step out.”

Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Delhi Police has denied permission for singer Diljit Dosanjh’s concert at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium on October 30. The concert did not receive clearance due to threat-related inputs and security requirements during the festive season, the police reportedly said.

Aam Aadmi Party leader Jarnail Singh asked if the reason being cited for police denying permission for the concert was an “excuse”.

Dosanjh’s Delhi concert was to kick off the India leg of his Aura India Tour. He is scheduled to perform in Indore, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Lucknow and Chandigarh in November and December. Read on.

One Indian citizen was killed and two were injured in an attack on the King Fahd International Airport in Dammam in Saudi Arabia Separately, an Indian was injured in an attack on the Shaybah oil field.

India condemned both attacks. Its embassy in Riyadh advised citizens to follow the instructions of local authorities and take precautions during aerial attacks.

Saudi Arabia has faced near-daily attacks by Yemen’s Houthi militant group this month. In view of this, India is coordinating with airlines and tour operators to facilitate the return of stranded Umrah pilgrims. About 3,000 pilgrims have returned to India over the past week, the Ministry of External Affairs said. Read on.

The Bombay High Court said it was “shocking” that Mumbai’s pollution levels had surpassed those in Delhi, despite the seaside city’s natural geographical advantages. “[The authorities] should see to it that Mumbai skies are clear,” said the bench.

Over the past week, Mumbai has been experiencing smog and reduced visibility.

Referring to reports about this, the court pulled up the municipal authorities, the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board and the police for failing to implement its orders on air and noise pollution. Read on.

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

One Indian citizen was killed and two were injured on Wednesday night, in an attack on the King Fahd International Airport in Saudi Arabia’s Dammam, the Indian embassy in Riyadh said.

The attack killed two persons and injured eight in total, the embassy said on Thursday.

Separately, an Indian citizen was injured in an attack on Saudi Aramco’s Shaybah oil field, said the Ministry of External Affairs.

Saudi Arabia has faced near-daily attacks by Yemen’s Houthi militant group this month, including a strike on Riyadh’s international airport that marked the kingdom’s deadliest attack in years.

The attacks mark an escalation in the conflict between the Iran-backed Houthis, who are seeking to topple Yemen’s internationally recognised government, and Saudi Arabia, which backs the government.

On Thursday, India condemned the attacks on the airport in Dammam and the Shaybah oil field.

“We convey our heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family and wish speedy recovery to those injured,” said the Ministry of External Affairs.

It also reiterated that the attacks on “civilian and critical infrastructure are completely unacceptable and must cease immediately”.

“We stand in solidarity with the people and the Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in safeguarding its sovereignty, and hope that peace and normalcy would return to the region at the earliest,” added the ministry.

On October 10, an Indian citizen was killed in the attack on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh.

In view of the attacks, the Indian embassy has advised its citizens in Saudi Arabia to follow instructions issued by the local authorities and to take precautions during aerial attacks.

The instructions said that persons receiving an emergency alert should remain calm, follow official directions and immediately move to the nearest safe place inside a building, preferably an interior room away from windows. They were advised to remain indoors until the danger had passed and stay away from open areas, windows, glass, balconies and rooftops.

The Indian community is requested to take note and follow the instructions by Saudi authorities. ⬇️ https://t.co/a6NpCgXSWv

— India in Saudi Arabia (@IndianEmbRiyadh) October 20, 2026

India facilitating return of pilgrims

Meanwhile, the Ministry of External Affairs also said that the Indian embassies in Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh and Jeddah were “engaging with concerned airlines and tour operators to facilitate the early return” of pilgrims amid the continued attacks.

Over the past week, about 3,000 stranded pilgrims who had travelled to Mecca have returned to India on available flights, said Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal.

“This is in addition to more than 10,000 normal Umrah pilgrims who were booked on the available flights and have travelled back to India over the past week,” he added. “Arrangements are being discussed to facilitate the return of other Umrah pilgrims at the earliest.”

Umrah pilgrims are Muslims who travel to Mecca to perform the Umrah, a voluntary pilgrimage to the Ka’aba.

Our Embassy in Riyadh @IndianEmbRiyadh and the Consulate in Jeddah @CGIJeddah are actively engaging with concerned airlines and tour operators to facilitate the early return of affected pilgrims. Over the past week, about 3,000 stranded Umrah pilgrims have travelled from Saudi…

— Randhir Jaiswal (@MEAIndia) October 22, 2026

Written by Tanya Shrivastava and Sneha. Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Delhi Police has denied permission for singer Diljit Dosanjh’s concert at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium on October 30, reported PTI.

The concert did not receive clearance due to security concerns, reported ANI.

The deputy commissioner of police in South Delhi reportedly told ticketing platform BookMyShow that the request was not approved because of threat-related inputs and security requirements during the festive season.

The Hindu festival of Diwali will be celebrated on November 8.

Dosanjh’s Delhi concert was to kick off the India leg of his Aura India Tour. He is scheduled to perform in Indore, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Lucknow and Chandigarh in November and December.

Aam Aadmi Party leader Jarnail Singh asked if the reason being cited for police denying permission for the concert was an “excuse”.

Security or an Excuse? Let the Public Know the Truth!

Why was permission for Diljit Dosanjh’s October 30 show reportedly cancelled in the name of security? If security was the concern, why was the issue not addressed with proper planning?

Artists and music lovers deserve… pic.twitter.com/SlKlOzmyVx

— Jarnail Singh (@JarnailSinghAAP) October 22, 2026

“Why was permission for Diljit Dosanjh’s October 30 show reportedly cancelled in the name of security?” asked Singh. “If security was the concern, why was the issue not addressed with proper planning?”

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Amid United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s India visit and a purported photo being circulated of Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri meeting convicted American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday asked which “anti-national traitor” the US was “blackmailing”.

Puri has faced a questions since early this year after his name came up in the “Epstein files”.

The “Epstein files” refer to millions of documents, emails, photos and videos released by the US Department of Justice detailing the activities of Epstein, an American financier, and his social circle that included politicians, celebrities and several public figures.

Epstein is accused of sexually abusing underage girls and running a vast sex-trafficking network. In 2008, he pleaded guilty to state charges of soliciting prostitution from a minor and was sentenced to 18 months in prison, of which he served about 13 months, BBC reported.

He was arrested again in 2019 on federal sex-trafficking charges involving minors but died in a New York jail cell that August while awaiting trial.

A set of documents released on January 30 contained email exchanges between Puri and Epstein that began in June 2014.

The old photo of Puri and Epstein widely shared on social media on Tuesday was among the documents released by the US justice department in January.

Puri has said that his conversations with Epstein had nothing to do with the crimes for which the American financier had been convicted.

In a social media post, Gandhi said that Rubio had travelled to Mumbai earlier this week and the US justice department had “released” a picture of Puri and Epstein.

The leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha asked workers of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, “which anti-national traitor do you think they [the US] are blackmailing?”

Congress leader KC Venugopal alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi “did nothing despite knowing fully well” about Puri and Epstein’s “close ties”.

He claimed that Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s “complete silence and inaction” pointed towards “their criminal indifference” to the allegations against Puri.

Venugopal also asked whether “these revelations” will have any effect on the India-US trade deal and asked Modi to speak on the matter.

“Given how lopsided the previous deal was, there is every chance that the compromised PM will once again surrender India’s interests to shield himself and those close to him,” he said on social media.

Congress leader Pawan Khera asked whose “dark deeds” the Modi government was trying to allegedly cover up by “trading away” the country’s economic and geopolitical interests.

The Aam Aadmi Party also accused Puri of lying that he had met Epstein as part of a delegation.

“…The images released show no delegation,” the AAP said. “What was Mr Puri doing with Epstein? The nation deserves answers.”

On February 11, Puri had said that he met Epstein on a “few occasions”, but those meetings had nothing to do with Epstein’s crimes.

He had said that after resigning as India’s ambassador to the United Nations, he joined the International Peace Institute. He was the secretary general of the independent commission on multilateralism set up by the International Peace Institute.

“…It is as part of a delegation of the International Peace Institute or the Independent Commission on Multilateralism that I met Epstein on a few occasions, three or maximum four,” he had said.

Puri’s Rajya Sabha term will end on November 25. He was not re-nominated by the BJP for the Upper House election on October 16.

He became a Rajya Sabha member in January 2018, four months after becoming a Union minister. Puri is not a member of the Lok Sabha.

No other Rajya Sabha elections are scheduled.

A minister who is not a member of either House of Parliament for six consecutive months ceases to be a part of the Cabinet.

Ahead of Rubio’s visit, Gandhi had on October 16 asked the Union government to explain why the US secretary of state had “summoned his employee” to Mumbai. Rubio visited Mumbai and the Reliance refinery complex in Jamnagar, not Delhi, on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The Opposition leader’s criticism came as New Delhi had not provided details of Rubio’s visit as of October 16 afternoon, even as the US ambassador to India said that Washington was “expecting” Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and other officials to travel to Mumbai to meet Rubio.

Later on October 16, the Ministry of External Affairs said that it had been a practice “in the last decade or so that we have hosted foreign secretaries outside Delhi”.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami on Wednesday announced that madrasas recognised as schools in the state would not have their weekly holiday on Friday, reported The Indian Express. Instead, they will be shut on Fridays.

In India, Islamic seminaries are called madrasas.

The weekly holiday in madrasas is typically on Friday, the day that Muslims usually participate in congregational prayers.

The government in July abolished its statutory madrasa board and brought educational institutions run by all six notified minority communities under a single regulatory authority.

Institutions run by Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Parsis are now regulated by the Uttarakhand State Authority for Minority Education, created after the 2025 Uttarakhand Minority Education Act came into force on July 1.

On Wednesday, Dhami said that the new rules on weekly holidays aim to bring minority-run institutions under common academic and administrative standards.

“We have already introduced a Uniform Civil Code in the state,” Dhami was quoted as saying. “There should be a uniform system for everyone. All educational institutions should operate in the same direction, and we are working towards that goal.”

The new rule will apply to madrassas that have been recognised by the education department and those that have applied for recognition, The Print reported.

The Congress alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party government in the state was resorting to “politics of polarisation and communalism” ahead of the Assembly elections, due to be held in February or March 2027.

“Why is it that whenever elections approach, the BJP suddenly starts focusing on polarisation, communalism, namaz, madrassas and mazars?” asked Congress spokesperson Pratima Singh. “Why don’t they ever explain what they intend to do to fix the state’s collapsed education system?”

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

Introducing a common personal law has for long been on the Bharatiya Janata Party’s agenda and several states ruled by the party have been making advances towards implementing it.

In September, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that governments led by the BJP and its National Democratic Alliance partners in all 21 states would introduce the Uniform Civil Code before 2029, when the next Lok Sabha election is expected to be held.

Edited by Sneha.

The Uttar Pradesh chief electoral officer on Wednesday ordered legal action against officials allegedly responsible for errors in the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in the Pilibhit Sadar Assembly constituency.

The order came hours after the Congress alleged that the names of more than 13,000 voters were replaced with those of other persons, after the final list was released in April, while their voter identity card numbers and serial numbers remained the same.

“If the EPIC number remains the same but another person’s name is entered against it, the original voter could face an identity mismatch at the polling station and be deprived of the right to vote”, the party highlighted.

The Opposition party also claimed that more than 800 persons were deleted from the voter list even as they continue to live in the constituency. About 2,600 names were added of individuals who allegedly did not live there, it added.

This takes the number of persons affected by the alleged irregularities to more than 16,000 in the Pilibhit Sadar constituency.

Congress leader Rajendra Pal Gautam claimed at a press conference on Wednesday that the alleged changes to voter lists were made between July and September, three months after the final rolls were published.

“A voter sees his name, address, EPIC number and serial number in the final draft and assumes that his vote is secure,” Gautam said. “But if the name is changed later, he may be told on polling day that his name is not in the electoral roll despite having an EPIC card and identity proof.”

He alleged that similar irregularities could have happened in other constituencies.

The Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh will be held early next year.

Congress leader Supriya Shrinate said that the alleged discrepancies were significant given the electoral arithmetic in Pilibhit Sadar.

In the 2022 state polls, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Sanjay Gangwar had won the seat by a margin of less than 7,000 votes.

The allegations come amid protests by the Congress and other Opposition parties against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over the functioning of the Election Commission and the alleged irregularities in how the voter roll is being revised.

On Wednesday, the state’s Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa said that an investigation by Pilibhit district election officer found that searching the Electors Photo Identity Card numbers of certain voters’ online displayed the details of other voters.

Rinwa ordered the removal of the constituency’s electoral registration officer and the voter registration centre operator.

The poll panel also directed district election officers to examine the electoral rolls of the Assembly constituencies in their jurisdiction and submit reports within two days.

Uttar Pradesh was part of the second phase of the voter roll revision.

More than two crore, or 13.2%, names were deleted from the final rolls published in April. The state had more than 15 crore electors before the roll revision.

A contentious exercise

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

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

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

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read: SIR explained: Why the voter roll revision has become so controversial

Photographer Raihan Vadra, son of Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, on Wednesday said that Bikaner House had “forced” him to remove photos of the youth protests in Delhi from his solo exhibition at the arts and cultural centre.

The Rajasthan government runs the Bikaner House in Delhi.

Raihan Vadra said that the venue’s management had described his photographs as “objectionable”. He claimed that they had also asked him to remove two photos of the national flag, which he refused.

He told PTI that the management removed one of the photographs of the Indian flag while he was not at the venue.

“Five hours ago, the Bikaner House management forced me to remove the bulk of the artworks displayed in my show No Idea Is Final which opens this evening at 7 pm,” Raihan Vadra wrote in a social media post on Wednesday. “The show will go on in part for now, but I will find another venue and display the entire collection of protest photos.”

View this post on Instagram

The show will open to the public on Thursday, PTI reported.

The cultural centre’s management said on Thursday that it had asked Raihan Vadra to remove “certain photographs” because they were “inconsistent with the policy” of the Bikaner House Management Society, Hindustan Times reported.

“Bikaner House is a public cultural institution dedicated to the promotion of art and culture,” it said, adding that photographs in line with the policy continued to be displayed.

However, the management did not specify which photographs had violated its policy.

Raihan Vadra told PTI that the venue’s management had objected to the “political nature” of the protest photos. He said they had told him that it was not the “right time” for such images to be displayed.

“The subjects of the artworks were wildlife photography, abstract works and street photography of the recent youth movements in India,” he said. “They told us at 3.30 pm today if the images are not taken down by 5 pm, the show will be cancelled.”

He said that he had shared the proposal and layout of the show with the venue in advance. It was incorrect to ask for half the artwork to be removed less than 24 hours before the opening of the show, he added.

VIDEO | Delhi: Artist and photographer Raihan Vadra, the son of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Robert Vadra, on Thursday said the Bikaner House administration pulled down many of his pictures of the recent Delhi protests ahead of a solo exhibition.

Speaking to PTI about the possible… pic.twitter.com/4jMfBhBZ3q

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) October 22, 2026

In a social media post, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said that she was proud of Raihan Vadra.

“When someone with power becomes afraid of the expression of another, he doesn’t know it, but he has already lost the very power he is trying to protect,” she wrote.

Congress leader Pawan Khera said that even “the Tricolour is not safe from the censor’s scissors”.

He asked “what exactly was the offence” since the photographs “merely documented protests” and were not “derogatory or inflammatory”.

“Imagine a government so threatened by ideas that not just protests, but even photographs of protests and the Tricolour itself have become intolerable,” Khera added.

Youth protests in Delhi

Youth protests had erupted in the national capital in July against the alleged mismanagement of several competitive examinations. The protests began on June 6, when the Cockroach Janta Party political campaign staged a demonstration at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar to demand the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, the Union education minister at the time.

On July 20, the protesters’ march to Parliament was met with a crackdown by police. Dozens were injured as the police used lathis and fired tear gas shells and pellet guns at the demonstrators. The police action turbocharged the agitation, which spread to other parts of the country. Pradhan resigned as the education minister on July 25.

More recently, since October 2, Opposition parties, student groups and the Cockroach Janta Party campaign have been staging protests in Delhi and other parts of the country, demanding Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation over concerns about the functioning of the Election Commission and the alleged irregularities in how the voter roll is being revised.

Ahead of a demonstration on October 10, the police imposed several restrictions to deter protesters from gathering in the national capital, in what the organisers described as intimidation by the authorities. Thousands of protesters and activists, besides journalists, were detained during the demonstrations.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Sneha.

Since taking office in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has waged an energetic campaign to gain the support of the roughly five million Indian Americans. He has, in several speeches, urged the community to contribute money and expertise to his programmes in India. He has been keen to leverage the Indian diaspora to build political clout for himself in the US and increase monetary remittances to India.

The Indian diaspora is not homogenous and not so easy to unify. It comprises many religious, caste, linguistic and class groups. However, Modi recognised that many in these diverse groups are bound together by a powerful – but often elusive – sense of belonging and a connection to their motherland.

He shrewdly appealed to their shared love for India, tapping into a nostalgia for home and invoking a sense of pride in the land they had left behind. He tried to build coherence and unity by using this shared sense of identity as a foundation.

Things were good in the beginning. The government of India was quite efficient in streamlining processes and removing administrative hurdles enabling people of Indian origin to formally acquire what it called “overseas citizenship of India”.

But soon the rubber hit the road. While a part of the Indian diaspora was very loudly celebrating Modi, there was a section that was not as receptive. Many members of this community, used to exercising their free-speech rights, were openly critical of the authoritarian tendencies of the Indian prime minister.

In response, the Indian machinery became equally efficient in revoking visa privileges for Overseas Citizens of India for speaking out against the Bharatiya Janata Party.

In 2024, Human Rights Watch reported that over the past decade, the government cancelled over 100 permits and deported some OCIs for allegedly showing “disaffection towards the Constitution”.

Most recently, on October 15, actor Imran Khan, a US citizen and an Overseas Citizen of India, was ordered to leave India for participating in a peaceful protest in Mumbai. Khan has joined an illustrious group of OCIs that have faced the wrath of the Foreigners Registration Office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in India, including journalist Aatish Taseer and academics Ashok Swain and Nitasha Kaul.

Delhi High Court grants relief to Ashok Swain, set aside Centre's decision to cancel his Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) card. pic.twitter.com/YB5aqRhJeG

— Bar and Bench (@barandbench) March 28, 2025

While the BJP has been wooing the Indian diaspora, was its understanding of belonging too narrow or perhaps too shallow? And if so, what does belonging mean to an Indian immigrant who may have left their country of birth, acquired citizenship elsewhere, but remains deeply connected to the country that birthed and nurtured them?

Their sense of belonging is uniquely tied to the smell of their land, the taste of their food, the feel of the clothes, the language of their parents, and more often than not, the politics that continues to shape their identity. And yet, despite these shared connections, some OCIs belong, while others do not.

The language of belonging is a complicated one for any immigrant. It is especially relevant today to the Indian community as it is in the process of figuring out what belonging looks like abroad and what it is to assert it in India.

IMPORTANT NOTE - I received a cancellation of my #OCI (Overseas Citizenship of #India) *today* after arriving home. A bad faith, vindictive, cruel example of #TNR (transnational repression) punishing me for scholarly work on anti-minority & anti-democratic policies of #Modi rule. pic.twitter.com/7L60klIfrv

— Professor Nitasha Kaul, PhD (@NitashaKaul) May 18, 2025

It is important to note that whether non-citizens have a right to participate in peaceful protests or engage in other forms of peaceful activities that critically evaluate a government in India is not purely a legal question. In fact, it would be unhelpful to reduce it to one. Laws are a tool and ultimately meant to serve humanity. And this article is not a legal analysis of the laws regulating the rights of OCIs but a closer look at the idea of belonging.

What is evident now is that for an Indian immigrant to be accepted in the parivaar or family, they must satisfy the “test of goodness”. Much like being called upon to be the “good immigrant” in their adopted homes, an Indian immigrant must also be a “good OCI” in India.

#Breaking: Bombay High Court agrees to hear petition filed by Actor Imran Khan, who has challenged a "Leave India Notice" (LIN) issued to him by the FRRO for "attempting to participate" in an anti-CEC Protest.#BombayHighCourt #ImranKhan pic.twitter.com/D59iBIlJBp

— Live Law (@LiveLawIndia) October 19, 2026

In the western context, this goodness is often measured by willingness to assimilate. In the Indian context, it takes a different form. It means to be compliant, to remain loyal to the government. The expectation is for the OCI to be a supplicant, never question authority, demand rights or speak truth to power.

And where does that leave the Indian diaspora then? Stuck in the middle of two worlds, both of which will have you for your skills or your money but never for the whole “you”.

Whether the wave of resentment against the Modi government is also finding the same resonance within the Indian community abroad is hard to say. But it is safe to say that many in the Indian diaspora are feeling betrayed.

The problem lies in the fallacy at the heart of Modi’s assurance that the diaspora is part of India. For belonging can never be conditional. It cannot depend on agreement alone. Like love, there has to be room for difference. By casually ordering someone to leave because their views run counter to those of the current dispensation is anathema to the very idea of belonging.

Belonging, ultimately, is not just about soil or blood. It is also not about a piece of paper with a name on it. It is about the shared values, experiences, and connections that shape a person’s sense of home, no matter where they are.

It’s about the people who make them feel seen, heard, and understood. It’s about the shared values that transcend borders and time. And being political is central to the sense of Indian belonging.

Joining a peaceful protest should not be an activity that warrants exclusion. For a county born out of protests, joining a protest should be seen as a rite of passage.

Devyani Kacker is a human rights lawyer based in New York.

Awasrao Powal, a 90-year-old, has seen many droughts rumble through Maharashtra’s Beed district. He vividly remembers the 1972 drought when farmers did not even sow seeds. “We had no food, but we still had water,” he recalled.

This year’s drought, he says, is worse. Most water sources have dried up in his village, Chumbali. “There is no money,” Powal said. “There is no work.”

Over two-thirds of Maharashtra – 304 out of 358 tehsils – have been declared drought-hit after the state recorded an 18% deficit in monsoon rains. In Beed, the deficit went up to 37%, making it the worst in a decade.

The drought is hurting farmers in every possible way.

Mustafa Khan’s cotton crop usually grows up to four feet to six feet, with 70 to 80 cotton pods. This year, the lack of rain has stunted it, reducing the number of cotton pods to less than 10.

“The crop has not matured,” he said. “The harvest is also not enough to feed my cattle.”

Khan has 12 cows, buffaloes and bulls. He said he has been buying fodder from the market, but prices have risen from Rs 10 per bundle to Rs 20 in the last two months.

“Milk production has reduced because I am giving the cattle less fodder,” he said. As a consequence, his income from both cotton and dairy farming has taken a hit.

Beed has 8.7 lakh hectares of land under kharif cultivation. The decline in yield will not only hit lakhs of farmers, it has begun to affect others down the chain, from cattle breeders to sugar factories, migrant workers and the larger market where the harvest is sold.

Exacerbating the crisis is the fact that a large number of farming households were already reeling from losses from last year’s unseasonal rains. A second year of devastation in the fields is pushing many over the edge.

Imbalance in markets

Many farmers said the drought-induced water shortage and the fodder shortage due to failed crops have made it difficult for them to maintain their cattle.

In the first week of October, at the weekly cattle market in Neknoor village in Beed, Uzaif Qureshi, who trades in cattle, stood with his eight buffaloes. He wanted to sell them. “The market is full of animals,” he said. “There is no place to stand.” But even though the price of cattle has plummeted, there were hardly any buyers.

In September, the Maharashtra government announced that free cattle sheds would be set up with fodder and water for cattle.

“If these sheds don’t start soon, I will be forced to sell my cattle,” Khan said.

A kilometre away at Beed’s largest weekly market for grain, there were buyers but hardly any farmers. Traders warned of rising prices as the supply of grain has gone down by two-thirds.

“I buy about 20 quintals of soybean from here,” said trader Prashant Deshmukh. “Farmers line up to sell. Today I managed to buy only two quintals. There are no farmers.”

Another trader, Prashant Landke, said: “After every monsoon, I buy 400 tonnes of soybean, rajma, jowar and wheat. This year it will be 150 tonnes. The size of the grain is also small.”

The limited supply has pushed up the rates of soybean from Rs 5,200 per quintal to Rs 6,100. “The price rise will affect local markets by December,” said Deshmukh.

Sugar factories may shut earlier

The rainfall deficit has also affected the sugarcane crop in the region.

In his field in Morphali village, Samadhan Narote points to the cane plants growing across 12 acres. “This should have grown up to 22 feet,” he said. “Look at it, it is only six feet tall.”

Sugarcane is a water-intensive crop. Farmers said that there had been short showers in August and September but no heavy downpours. That has stunted the plants. Narote said the quality of the cane is so poor that sugar factory owners have rejected his produce.

“I have no use for it,” he said. “We will cut it and give it to cattle to eat.”

The decline in sugarcane production has serious implications. Rajan Kshirsagar, from All India Kisan Sabha, said sugar factories usually run for 180 days after every monsoon. The cane is harvested, crushed and processed to make make several products and by-products. “The season will be reduced to 90 to 100 days because the sugarcane cultivation has declined,” Kshirsagar said.

This would mean that the labourers who work in these factories will have no means of income after three months. Ganesh Dashrath Garde, who migrates to Karnataka with his wife to cut sugarcane from November till March, is unsure where he will go after the factories shut early.

“I took a loan of Rs 1 lakh from a private lender to buy soybean and cotton seeds for my land,” said Garde. “Half of our crop is damaged. If there is no work, how will we repay the loan?”

That prospect of loan repayments and the absence of work haunts every farmer in Marathwada.

Debt and suicides

Vikram Dabhade had a predictable routine. He went to his fields every morning, fed his cattle, tied them to a neem tree and returned home for tea.

On October 3, the farmer from Beed’s Pimparnai village left for his fields. When he failed to return at the usual hour, his daughter went to fetch him. She found him hanging from the neem tree.

Dabhade had taken loans of nearly Rs 10 lakh from a bank and moneylenders, his wife Ashwini said.

He had planned to repay some of it from the money he earned from the soyabean crop, a crop commonly grown during the monsoons in Marathwada.

But after the rains failed, Dabhade’s crop dried up on the fields. This followed a disaster he faced last year, when his crop was damaged as unseasonal heavy rain flooded his field.

“He didn’t know what to do anymore,” said wife Ashwini. “He was worried about how he would repay the loan.”

Dabhade’s story is that of everyone in Pimparnai. “We are all farmers,” said Mauli Bhatt, who lives in Pimparnai. “We all have loans. We are all stressed.”

The Bharatiya Janata Party government in the state has instructed banks to not recover loans they have given farmers. But the pressure from moneylenders continues.

Since January, 153 farmers in Beed have died by suicide due to farm distress, data from the district collector office shows. Last year, the district recorded 256 deaths.

Scroll met with the families of six farmers who had died by suicide this year. Each had a loan to repay, ranging from Rs 4 lakh to Rs 10 lakh. Like Dabhade, they had faced losses for two successive years due to unseasonal rain last year and drought this year.

On September 24, Satish Kolgude went his one-acre farm in Radi village with his brother Gajendra to harvest their soybean crop. “The yield was half of what we usually get,” Gajendra said. “He was very upset. He just stopped talking.”

After dinner, Satish Kolgude told his wife and two children that he would spend the night in the field. At 6 am, Gajendra found him hanging by an electric pole in their field.

His wife Vaishali said he was worried about repaying a loan of Rs 6 lakh.

Earlier this month, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis told the audience at a conclave organised by a media group that drought had affected 75% of Maharashtra’s crops. Because of the lack of water, some farmers in the state have decided not to sow the post-monsoon rabi crop. This will further hurt agricultural production and their income.

“It is a helpless situation this time,” Beed collector Vivek Johnson said.

Residents fear that the winter months might be even worse.

Beed has 164 dams, both minor and major, that did not fill up to capacity this year. “By January most of the district will have no water and fodder will last till December end,” said local activist Amar Habib.

In Daithana village, Machhinder Jogdand has been left with the responsibility of caring for two young children of his son, a farmer who died by suicide – but few real options.

“Maybe I will take a loan from someone,” he said.

Schaeffler India Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director Harsha Gopal Kadam was arrested on Monday in connection with a factory accident in Pune’s Talegaon, that killed two workers in June, the company said a filing with the stock exchanges on Tuesday.

On June 9, a “sudden and intense” carbon dioxide gas leak during a scheduled cylinder replacement at Schaeffler India’s Talegaon factory, killed two workers and affected three others, The Indian Express reported.

Schaeffler India manufactures automotive and industrial components, including bearings and precision machinery parts. It is the Indian subsidiary of the German Schaeffler Group.

The police had registered a case in July against six persons, including company officials and representatives of contractors involved in maintaining the factory’s fire-suppression system.

Kadam was taken into custody by the Talegaon MIDC Police Station under provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the company said on Tuesday.

It said that Kadam was included in the investigation on the grounds that he is considered the factory’s “occupier” under the law.

According to the 1948 Factories Act, Kadam is considered the factory’s “occupier” because of his position as its chief executive officer and managing director, making him responsible for overseeing its operations.

The first information report had alleged that the fire-suppression system at the factory had no emergency exit and that sufficient ventilation was kept running without permission in the basement where the incident occurred, The Indian Express reported.

It also alleged that the factory lacked trained staff and experts, personal protective equipment for workers and that no rescue team was deployed at the site, the newspaper reported.

Written by Tanya Shrivastava. Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Mumbai Police has arrested five more persons in connection with the attack on actor Tiger Shroff in the city, reported ANI on Wednesday.

While four of the accused persons were arrested from Delhi, one was held in Haryana. The police were bringing them to Mumbai and they will be presented before a court on Thursday, an unidentified official was quoted as saying by the news agency.

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

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

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

On Monday, the Rajasthan Police arrested three persons from Kota in connection with the firing. They were identified as Rehan, Ritik Kurmi and Phool Singh, reported Bar and Bench. A Mumbai court on Wednesday remanded them to the custody of the Mumbai Police Anti-Extortion Cell until October 31.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edited by Anamika Pathak.

A special executive magistrate court in Delhi on Wednesday ordered the release of Cockroach Janta Party leaders Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das, Bar and Bench reported.

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

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

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

After their custody ended on Monday, a Delhi court extended Ranka and Das’ judicial custody by two days. That period ended on Wednesday, after which the special executive magistrate ordered their release after accepting their sureties.

The Delhi Police had sought an extension of judicial custody by three more days, Bar and Bench reported.

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

‘You’re not Gen-Z’: HC tells Ranka, Das

Earlier in the day, Ranka and Das withdrew their plea before the Delhi High Court against the special executive magistrate court’s order on Monday, Bar and Bench reported.

The High Court did not hear the merits of the challenge and instead suggested that the two wait for the lower court to reconsider the sureties furnished on their behalf.

However, the court asked Ranka and Das about the Cockroach Janta Party, its purpose and whether they were part of Gen Z. The judge noted that Das was 27 and Ranka was 31, and said they were not Gen Z.

“Gen Z” refers to persons born between the late 1990s and 2010.

In its order on Monday, the magistrate court, had said that their conduct indicated a disregard for the law and posed a risk to peace and tranquility. It said they had shown “habitualness” by calling for protests at denotified areas.

In their High Court plea, Ranka and Das had argued that they had remained in custody for six days despite repeatedly furnishing sureties, Bar and Bench reported.

They challenged the magistrate court’s jurisdiction to extend their custody and alleged that its order had relied mechanically on the police’s application without independently assessing whether their continued detention was warranted.

They also argued that holding a protest at a denotified site was, at most, a matter of regulation and did not by itself constitute a threat to public order.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Also read: ‘Impinges on freedom’: Former Delhi HC Justice S Muralidhar on CJP leaders’ custody

A Delhi court has ordered the release of Cockroach Janta Party leaders Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das. The two, along with another campaign leader, Ajinkya Shinde, had been detained on October 13 after they trespassed into Jantar Mantar and waved the national flag.

They had “sneaked into” Jantar Mantar to protest the decision to denotify the area as a designated protest site.

On October 14, Ranka and Das were sent to judicial custody for five days. Shinde was released on a personal bond. After their custody ended on Monday, a Delhi court extended Ranka and Das’ judicial custody by two days. Read on.

‘Impinges on freedom’: Anant Gupta speaks to former Delhi HC Justice S Muralidhar about CJP leaders’ custody

The State Bank of India said that a cyberattack had led to about 3.75 lakh customer records being leaked on the dark web, of which 3,897 contained personally identifiable information. The records included customers’ names, mobile numbers, dates of birth, gender, email addresses and residential addresses.

The bank said the leak was not expected to have any impact on its operations or financial performance.

However, digital rights organisation Internet Freedom Foundation flagged that the bank had not notified the customers whose data had been leaked and had only informed the stock exchanges about . Read on.

India said that it opposed attempts to turn allegations of human rights abuses and “incomplete statistics” into a “negative characterisation” of the world’s largest democracy. Human rights should not be used as an instrument of political pressure or to selectively target countries, Ministry of External Affairs Deputy Secretary Barkha Tamrakar said at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

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

This came a day after UN human rights experts flagged the repeated “heavy-handed police response to peaceful youth-led demonstrations” against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. Read on.

Stage 1 restrictions under the Graded Response Action Plan have been enforced in Delhi. This came as the air quality in the national capital worsened to the “poor” level.

As of 6 pm, Delhi recorded an average Air Quality Index of 247. Forty-three of the 55 active monitoring stations recorded “poor” or worse air quality levels. At 334, the AQI in Pusa was the worst in the national capital region.

Under GRAP 1 measures, vehicles without a valid Pollution Under Control certificate will not be allowed to refuel, while parking charges will be doubled across Delhi. Read on.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The case

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

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

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

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

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The matter was listed for hearing next on October 27.

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

*Democracy in Andhra Pradesh is alive and thriving.*

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

— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) October 19, 2026

YSRCP’s allegations

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edited by Sara Varghese.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Written by Abeer Khan. Edited by Sneha.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Air quality deteriorates sharply in the winter months in Delhi, which is often ranked the world’s most polluted capital. Stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana, vehicular pollution, along with the lighting of firecrackers during Diwali, falling temperatures, decreased wind speeds and emissions from industries and coal-fired plants contribute to the problem.

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

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

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

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

Also read:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edited excerpts from the conversation:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What legal remedy are citizens left with?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reliance has become a major buyer of Venezuelan crude.

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

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

India-US trade deal

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

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

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

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

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

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

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

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

It was unclear what had led to the blocking order.

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

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

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

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

It had been restored on October 5.

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

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

— Satish Acharya (@satishacharya) October 20, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Protests in India

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

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

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

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

Written by Tanya Shrivastava. Edited by Sara Varghese.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edited by Sara Varghese.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Asaduddin Owaisi (@asadowaisi) October 20, 2026

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

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

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

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

Edited by Sara Varghese.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SIR protests

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

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

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

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Sara Varghese.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.