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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But there is a broader social context to this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rising cost of living

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘No political voice’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OFFICIAL CLARIFICATION: REGARDING THE ERRONEOUS CIRCULATION OF ELECTION COMMISSION DOCUMENT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The conflict

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

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

Also read:

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

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

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

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

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

Their deaths triggered widespread protests and outrage about police brutality.

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

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

The sentencing will take place on March 30.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also read:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— ANI (@ANI) March 23, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

— ANI (@ANI) March 23, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An agency in distress

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

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

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

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

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

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

A newspaper’s bid

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Rs 32 crore mystery

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

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

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

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

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

Changing ownership

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The auditor’s warning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Common Cause judgments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Indigo disruption

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘This is AI’ an unfalsifiable response to reality?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also on Scroll last week

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo curation and mentorship: Palanikumar, Founder, Peoples Photographers Collective.

Text: Anupriya, Hasiru Dala.

The Union government on Saturday allowed an additional 20% allocation of commercial liquefied petroleum gas to states and Union Territories, taking the overall allocation to 50%.

Of the total amount, an allocation of 10% will be given on the condition that states undertake measures to ease the expansion of the piped natural gas network.

The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas said that the additional 20% allocation will be given on priority “to sectors like restaurants, dhabas, hotels, industrial canteens, food processing/dairy, subsidised canteens/outlets run by State Govt or local bodies for food, community kitchens, 5 kg FTL [free trade LPG] for migrant labourers”.

Energy supplies to India have been disrupted since the conflict in West Asia broke out on February 28. Since the hostilities began, Iran has blocked the Strait of Hormuz – through which about 20% of global petroleum liquids consumption passes – for most commercial ships.

Due to the disruption, the Centre had initially curtailed the supply of LPG to commercial establishments, and had prioritised domestic supplies. Subsequently, the government had restored a commercial allocation of 20%, and had proposed the additional allocation of 10% subject to states undertaking reforms for the expansion of piped gas.

The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas on Saturday acknowledged that LPG supply remains a concern because of the prevailing geopolitical situation. However, it claimed that no dry-outs have been reported at LPG distributionships, panic bookings have reduced and the delivery of domestic LPG cylinders is normal.

The Centre also said that natural gas supplies to priority segments, including domestic PNG and CNG transport, are being fully maintained, and that industrial consumers were receiving about 80% of their usual supply.

Earlier this month, the prioritisation of domestic LPG supplies had led to disruptions for businesses. Hotel associations had warned that the operations of restaurants had been hampered in Mumbai and Bengaluru, and that the shortage was spreading.

The conflict in West Asia began after Israel and the United States launched a joint operation to “degrade the capabilities” of the Iranian government. Tehran retaliated by striking Israel and US military bases in the region, and targeting major cities in other Gulf countries and some ships.

While Israel has been claiming that Iran is close to obtaining a nuclear weapon, Tehran has long maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes.

In 2018, a young tigress stopped appearing on camera traps in Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh. There was no official report of conflict as well as no records of carcass recovery or poaching incidents. This indicated that she had not died within the reserve.

However, for nearly three years, there was no photographic trace of her anywhere in the official monitoring grids of Madhya Pradesh.

Then, in 2021, camera traps in Achanakmar Tiger Reserve in the neighbouring state of Chhattisgarh captured a tigress moving through the sal forest with cubs trailing behind her. The stripe pattern verification confirmed what the field staff suspected. She was the same tigress. She had crossed over from Madhya Pradesh to Chhattisgarh – nearly 400 kilometres. Forest officials later named her Jhumri. In official monitoring records, she was catalogued as TK-8.

Experts say that when she disappeared from Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve, she had reached dispersal age, a stage in a tiger’s life, usually between two and three years old, when remaining in the natal territory is no longer possible.

Bandhavgarh is one of India’s most densely populated tiger reserves. In such landscapes, ecological success creates pressure. When prey density is high and breeding females are established, cub survival increases. But territory is finite. Adult males hold defined ranges that overlap with resident females. Sub-adults, once independent, are gradually pushed outward, said Samir Kumar Sinha, head of conservation at the Wildlife Trust of India.

Jhumri is not an isolated example.

In early 2023, another movement reinforced this pattern. A young male tiger, identified as T-200, was recorded in Kanha Tiger Reserve. Later that year, he disappeared from Kanha’s monitoring grid. In December, camera traps in Achanakmar Tiger Reserve recorded a new male. Stripe analysis confirmed it was T-200.

These movements are contributing to the increase in tiger numbers in Achanakmar Tiger Reserve and in Chhattisgarh.

Sanket Bhale, Director of the Central India Landscape at the WWF-India, told Mongabay-India that tiger presence in Achanakmar Tiger Reserve has gradually increased as observed over successive All India Tiger Estimation surveys conducted every four years since 2010. One, three, and five tigers were recorded in 2010, 2014, and 2018, respectively, within Achanakmar Tiger Reserve. The reserve now holds seven female and three male tigers, with regular dispersal from nearby reserves.

Recent monitoring suggests that around ten individuals currently use the reserve, including several breeding females.

Chhattisgarh’s overall tiger numbers, which had once declined, have begun to increase in recent years, doubling from 17 in 2022 to 35 in April, 2025. State authorities attribute this to strengthened anti-poaching enforcement, expanded camera-trap monitoring, habitat management, and renewed focus on maintaining forest corridors.

Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai stated that his government has made efforts over the past few years to create a favourable environment for tigers.

Speaking to Mongabay-India, he said, “The way the tiger population has increased in the forests of ATR indicates that the tigers are now thriving here. Tigers arriving from neighbouring states have also established their territories permanently. Our administration has worked closely with forest officials, local communities, and wildlife organisations to enhance habitat protection, strengthen anti-poaching measures, and maintain connectivity between forests. These coordinated efforts have made ATR an attractive home for tigers, encouraging both resident and migrant individuals to settle, reproduce, and expand the population steadily.”

Sinha said that three factors influence whether a dispersing tiger settles in a new landscape: prey base, safety, and the presence of a mate.

“If ATR is witnessing the breeding of tigers that have travelled from Bandhavgarh and Kanha, it indicates an improvement in forest conditions,” he said.

Forest-rich state

Chhattisgarh was carved out of Madhya Pradesh in November 2000 as a new administrative state.

At the time of its formation, nearly 44% of Chhattisgarh’s geographical area was under forest cover, according to the Forest Survey of India. These forests form part of the Central Indian Highlands, one of the most important tiger conservation landscapes in the world.

The new state inherited potential tiger sites — Indravati Tiger Reserve in the south, Achanakmar Tiger Reserve in the north, and Udanti-Sitanadi Wildlife Sanctuary. All three were later notified as tiger reserves. In 2021, Guru Ghasidas-Tamor Pingla Tiger Reserve was notified, spanning more than 2,800 square kilometres and strengthening ecological linkages toward Madhya Pradesh’s Sanjay-Dubri landscape.

However, when it comes to tiger numbers, Chhattisgarh’s story has not been as successful as that of Madhya Pradesh.

In 2006, Chhattisgarh recorded 26 tigers. By 2010, the number had stabilised. By 2014, the population stood at 46, showing fluctuation but limited long-term growth. In 2018, the All-India Tiger Estimation recorded 19 tigers in the state, indicating a decline from earlier years.

During the same period, Madhya Pradesh experienced sustained growth. From roughly 300 tigers in 2006, the number rose to 526 in 2018 and reached 785 in the 2022 national estimation, the highest in India.

Pran Chaddha, a conservationist and former member of the wildlife boards of undivided Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, told Mongabay-India that on paper, Chhattisgarh possessed many of the structural components required for tiger persistence – forest cover, prey base, river systems, terrain heterogeneity, and adjacency to strong source populations such as Kanha and Bandhavgarh. Yet the demographic trends told a different story.

The forests had not disappeared in Chhattisgarh. But their ability to retain stable breeding populations had weakened. Conservation scientists began describing parts of the state as functioning as a demographic “sink” – a region where mortality and instability prevent consistent reproduction and where persistence depends on immigration from neighbouring source landscapes, Sinha said.

Protected reserves remained intact islands of habitat. But the spaces between them – the corridors – began to narrow. Mining expansion in forested districts such as Korba, Raigarh, Sarguja, Koriya, and Surajpur increased pressure on habitats. Linear infrastructure, including roads, railway lines, and transmission corridors, intersected forested hill systems and fragmented landscape continuity. Agricultural expansion intensified edge effects around reserve boundaries. Hydrological changes altered riparian vegetation patterns, said one of the senior officials at WWF, who was not authorised to speak to the media.

Subhranjan Sen, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, Madhya Pradesh, told Mongabay India that prey availability in parts of Chhattisgarh remains limited, making it difficult for wildlife populations to sustain themselves.

A political boundary

When Chhattisgarh was carved out of Madhya Pradesh in November 2000, the ecological system did not reorganise itself along that line. For instance, the Maikal Hills along the northern boundary merged into the forest belt of Madhya Pradesh.

In large carnivore conservation, connectivity is not rhetorical. It is biological.

Chaddha explained that central India operates as a metapopulation system – a network of subpopulations connected by dispersal. In such systems, some reserves function as sources, producing surplus individuals because of high prey density and successful breeding. Others function as sinks, where local reproduction alone cannot offset mortality.

“Without dispersal, isolated tiger populations face reduced genetic diversity. Inbreeding depression increases the risk of lowered reproductive success and higher cub mortality. Small populations become vulnerable to stochastic events, disease outbreaks, prey crashes, or poaching incidents,” he added.

The forest corridors linking Kanha, Bandhavgarh, Sanjay-Dubri, Guru Ghasidas, Achanakmar, Indravati, Udanti-Sitanadi, Nagzira, Tadoba, and Palamu form part of a wider Central Indian landscape spanning tens of thousands of square kilometres. Much of this land lies outside formally protected boundaries. Its future depends on land-use decisions that extend beyond wildlife policy.

Research across the Central Indian landscape shows that tigers often disperse along forested ridgelines and riparian strips. Even relatively narrow canopy corridors can function if disturbance remains below certain thresholds. What matters is permeability – the ability of a landscape to allow movement – rather than its legal classification, said Sinha from WTI.

A 2014 report by the National Tiger Conservation Authority has highlighted several bottlenecks affecting wildlife corridors in the region. It noted that the Kanha-Pench and Bandhavgarh–Sanjay-Dubri corridors pass through landscapes with historical poaching pressures and increasing infrastructure linked to coal mining.

Corridors connecting Bandhavgarh to the sink habitats of Sanjay-Dubri and Guru Ghasidas also face risks from linear infrastructure associated with mining. In the Kanha-Achanakmar corridor, parts of the intervening forests are used for commercial forestry, and the report stresses that such activities must be carefully managed to avoid undermining the corridor’s function as a wildlife movement route.

Its 2022 report again raised concern, stating, “Although some habitat corridors exist that allow tiger movement between them, most of these habitats are not protected areas, and continue to deteriorate due to unsustainable human use and developmental projects, and thereby not conducive to animal movement.”

Fragmentation also brings new pressures. Livestock grazing, human activity, noise, artificial lights, and roads begin to appear along forest edges. Each break in the forest makes it harder and riskier for animals to move through the landscape, said Sen, the PCCF, Madhya Pradesh.

Jhumri’s movement suggested that at least one dispersal pathway between Bandhavgarh and Achanakmar remained functional.

Her arrival alone would not have signified recovery. Reproduction would. Her first litter in ATR experienced loss – one cub reportedly killed by a male tiger, forest officials informed.

But she bred again. In 2023, she successfully raised two cubs. Subsequently, she gave birth to four more.

Similarly, T-200 walked from Kanha Tiger Reserve to Achanakmar, an estimated 400 km -450 km journey. The movement suggested that connectivity between Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh had not collapsed. It had narrowed, but it remained biologically viable, Chaddha said.

Chhattisgarh’s tiger numbers, once declining, have shown signs of recovery in recent years. The state’s chief minister attributed this to strengthened anti-poaching enforcement, expanded camera-trap monitoring, habitat management, and renewed attention to corridor protection. Forest Survey of India reports have also indicated incremental increases in forest cover.

He credited his government’s conservation efforts for the improvement in tiger numbers. “Not only have tiger numbers increased, but Forest Survey of India data also shows a rise in Chhattisgarh’s forest cover,” he said.

However, Subhranjan Sen said corridor protection remains critical. “Corridors are natural, but in areas with heavy human presence, it becomes difficult for tigers to survive, and the challenge is even greater for breeding tigers. Chhattisgarh needs to work more on forest management,” he said.

Jhumri’s journey from Bandhavgarh to Achanakmar Tiger Reserve highlights the importance of wildlife corridors. Her role in the growing tiger population in Chhattisgarh underscores a larger reality. Whether the state continues its demographic recovery will depend not only on protection within reserves, but on the permeability of the forests between them.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday described Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the “biggest infiltrator” and reiterated her criticism of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government in connection with the special intensive revision of voter rolls, PTI reported.

The Trinamool Congress chief, addressing worshippers after Eid prayers at Kolkata's Red Road, said she would not allow Modi and the BJP to take away citizens’ voting rights.

“When you [Modi] go abroad, you shake hands with leaders and speak of friendship,” Banerjee said, according to PTI. “That is your choice, and I respect all countries. But when you return to India, suddenly the Hindu-Muslim narrative begins, and people are called infiltrators.”

Referring to the BJP’s allegations about undocumented immigration taking place in West Bengal, Banerjee said: “You then call for deleting names and labelling people as infiltrators. I would say you and your government are the biggest infiltrators.”

Eid Mubarak! May this sacred festival fill every life with joy, peace, and boundless happiness.

Alongside her heartfelt Eid greetings to the people of Bengal, our beloved leader Smt. @MamataOfficial urges everyone to stand united and defeat with full determination the malicious… pic.twitter.com/U9VKzxhZ2T

— All India Trinamool Congress (@AITCofficial) March 21, 2026

Ahead of the Assembly elections slated for next month, the Trinamool Congress has been alleging that the special intensive revision exercise has resulted in the removal of several genuine voters, especially from minority communities, from the state’s electoral rolls.

The Election Commission published the updated voter list for West Bengal on February 28 as part of the exercise. It said that the names of 5.46 lakh persons have been deleted from the electoral rolls, while a total of 60,06,675 “doubtful and pending” cases have been marked as “under adjudication”.

Also read: As polls knock, why is Bengal’s SIR in a state of chaos with no end in sight?

On Saturday as well, Banerjee noted that the names of many people had been deleted from West Bengal’s voter list.

“For this, I have approached the Calcutta High Court, Delhi, and even the Supreme Court,” she told the gathering at Red Road, according to The Indian Express. “I still hope that people’s rights will be protected. Even if no one stands with you, I will stand by the people of Bengal – across all religions, castes, and creed – as a member of your own family.”

Banerjee alleged that the BJP was trying to “capture the government” in the state, but said that her party would “not be afraid”, The Indian Express reported. “They [BJP] have removed everyone and plan to place BJP leaders in those positions. This is a party of thieves, robbers, and goons – a party of ‘gaddars’ [traitors],” she said.

The chief minister was further quoted as alleging: “There are also some traitors who have started taking money from the BJP to split votes. But I would say that ultimately, whatever the Almighty wills is what will happen, and nothing beyond that.”

The West Bengal elections will be held in two phases on April 23 and April 29. The results will be announced on May 4.

Four persons were arrested in Uttar Pradesh’s Shravasti district on Friday for allegedly throwing leftover meat in a stream near a temple in an ashram, the police said.

The incident took place near the Sonpathri Ashram temple in the Sirsia area.

Circle Officer Satish Kumar Sharma said that a complaint had been filed on Thursday by Hari Sharnanand, who is the head of the ashram. The complainant alleged that an iftar party had been organised near the freshwater stream next to the temple on Tuesday.

Meat was served during the iftar, the circle officer said. After the party, the organisers allegedly threw the leftover food into the stream, from which the ashram obtains water for cooking, drinking and washing idols, Sharma said.

The complainant claimed that when members of the ashram objected, the organisers of the iftar event responded with threats.

A first information report was registered at the Sirsia police station based on the complaint under provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita related to promoting enmity and disharmony, PTI reported.

The four men accused in the case – Jamal Ahmad, Irfan Ahmad, Imran Ahmad and Zaheer Khan – were arrested on Friday to maintain law and order, the news agency quoted Sharma as saying.

All four are residents of the Mahru Murtiha village under the Hardattnagar Girant police station limits, he added.

Their arrest came days after the arrest of 14 Muslims in Varanasi for allegedly hurting the religious sentiments of Hindus after they organised an iftar party on a boat in the river Ganga and ate chicken biryani.

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

A police complaint was filed by Rajat Jaiswal, the chief of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s youth wing in the city, who alleged that the incident had hurt the religious sentiments of the Hindus. In his complaint, Jaiswal alleged that the persons had thrown meat leftovers into the river Ganga.

The United States ​and Israel ​on Saturday ‌launched an attack ​on ​the Natanz uranium-enrichment ⁠facility in Iran, Reuters quoted Tasnim news agency as saying.

No radioactive ‌leaks ⁠occurred and residents near ​the ​site ⁠were not ​at ​risk, ⁠the Iranian news agency added.

The Natanz facility was hit in the first week of the conflict in West Asia as well. The International Atomic Energy Agency had said at the time that some entrance buildings at the plant suffered damage, but had added that “no radiological consequence” was expected due to the strike.

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

• On Friday, the US temporarily lifted sanctions for 30 days on the purchase of Iranian crude oil and petroleum products at sea to ease energy supply pressures amid the conflict in West Asia.
• In a social media post, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that “by temporarily unlocking this existing supply for the world, the United States will quickly bring approximately 140 million barrels of oil to global markets, expanding the amount of worldwide energy and helping to relieve the temporary pressures on supply caused by Iran”. Bessent added: “In essence, we will be using the Iranian barrels against Tehran to keep the price down as we continue Operation Epic Fury.”
• Earlier on Friday, Iran said that it had “no surplus crude oil” to offer to international markets after the US treasury secretary indicated on Thursday that Washington could lift sanctions on Iranian oil at sea.
• “Currently, Iran basically has no surplus crude oil left on the water or for supply in other international markets, and the US treasury secretary’s statement is solely aimed at giving hope to buyers,” Iranian Oil Ministry spokesperson Saman Ghoddoosi said on social media.
• The waiver on Iranian oil comes days after the Donald Trump administration eased sanctions for Russian oil already at sea. It also comes against the backdrop of Washington seeking to stem a global supply crunch caused by Iran effectively blocking the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterbody connecting the Gulf to the Arabian Sea, for most international commercial vessels. About 20% of global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint.
• US President Donald Trump on Friday said that he was considering “winding down” military operations against Iran, adding that the Strait of Hormuz would need to be “guarded and policed” by other countries who use the vital waterbody.
• “We are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East with respect to the Terrorist Regime of Iran,” Trump said on social media. However, he ruled out reaching a ceasefire agreement with Iran.
• In a written message for the Persian New Year, Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has said that Tehran’s enemies were being “defeated”, Al Jazeera reported. “At the moment, due to the particular unity that has been created between you [Iranian citizens], our compatriots – despite all the differences in religious, intellectual, cultural and political origins – the enemy has been defeated,” the news outlet quoted a statement from the supreme leader as saying.
• Trump on Friday said that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies were “paper tigers” and described them as “cowards”, criticising them for what he claimed was their lack of support amid the Israel-US war on Iran. NATO is a military alliance of 32 countries, including the US and several members of the European Union.
• On social media, he claimed that the countries in the alliance did not “want to join the fight to stop a Nuclear Powered Iran”. Trump added: “Now that fight is Militarily WON, with very little danger for them, they complain about the high oil prices they are forced to pay, but don’t want to help open the Strait of Hormuz.”
• In India, an ‌airlines group representing IndiGo, Air India and SpiceJet, warned the Union government of route withdrawals, and delayed fleet and network expansions if fare caps imposed in December are not revoked, Reuters reported.
• In a letter to the Union government on March 12, the Federation of Indian Airlines noted ​growing financial pain even before the Iran ​crisis, when airlines were hit hard by a Pakistani airspace ban for international operations due ⁠to diplomatic tensions, Reuters reported. On December 6, the civil aviation ministry had imposed distance-based fare caps amid continued disruptions in IndiGo’s operations and a sharp spike in ticket prices.

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

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

Since the start of the conflict, Iran has effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz for most international commercial vessels. The International Energy Agency has said that the fighting has caused the “largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market”.

Also read:

• As conflict rages in the Gulf, many are focussed on oil – but water is also a major concern

• The Iran war is starting to hit India’s small manufacturers

Protesters clashed with the police in Uttar Pradesh’s Mathura district on Saturday as demonstrators blocked a national highway in the Kosi Kalan area in protest against the death of a cow vigilante who was hit by a truck, The Hindu reported.

The protesters alleged that Chandrashekhar, a cow vigilante and a religious leader in the Braj region who was popularly known as “Farsa Wale Baba”, had died in a “deliberate act” carried out by cattle smugglers.

The Mathura Police, however, rejected the allegations.

In a statement, the police said that Chandrashekhar had stopped a vehicle in the Kosi police station area between 3 am and 4 am, claiming that it was transporting cattle, The Hindu reported.

“…He was tragically killed when struck by a truck coming from behind due to dense fog,” the newspaper quoted the statement as saying.

The police added that the vehicle that Chandrashekhar had stopped was “found to contain grocery items and the truck coming from behind was loaded with wires”.

It said: “This is a road accident – ​​it has nothing to do with cow smuggling.”

#WATCH | Uttar Pradesh: A scuffle broke out between Police and locals in Mathura’s Kosi area, as people blocked the road and protested against the death of a 'Gau Rakshak' who was allegedly run over by cattle smugglers. pic.twitter.com/EMXoseyLU5

— ANI (@ANI) March 21, 2026

However, the tensions led to clashes between the protesters and the police.

Deputy Inspector General of Police Shailesh Pandey said that some of the protesters threw stones at the police officers, India Today reported. Tear gas shells were fired to force the crowd to disperse, and the situation was brought under control, he added.

“Those involved are being identified, some arrests have been made,” India Today quoted Pandey as saying.

Responding to the situation, Chief Minister Adityanath directed officials to ensure strict action against the perpetrators, The Hindu reported. He added that “the accused will not be spared under any circumstances”.

The Central Board of Film Certification has blocked the theatrical release of the film The Voice of Hind Rajab in the country owing to fears that it will “break up” ties between India and Israel, Variety quoted the film’s local distributor as saying on Thursday.

The Oscar-nominated film, directed by Kaouther Ben Hania, depicts the real story of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl who was trapped inside a car attacked by Israeli forces in Gaza and later found dead.

The incident, which took place in 2024, occurred while Israel was carrying out unprecedented air and ground strikes on the besieged Palestinian enclave. The strikes, which began in October 2023, have left more than 70,000 persons dead.

Manoj Nandwana, who heads the Mumbai-based Jai Viratra Entertainment and is the distributor for The Voice of Hind Rajab in India, told Variety that the film is being censored as it “is very sensitive”.

The distributor claimed that he was told by a CBFC member that “if it gets released, it would break up the India-Israel relationship”.

He said that he had screened the film for the CBFC in February when he had submitted it for censorship approval. Nandwana added that he was planning to release it in India on March 6 “because we thought it was a good date” ahead of the Oscars.

The 2026 Oscar awards, which are organised by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, were held in Los Angeles on March 16. The Voice of Hind Rajab had been nominated in the International Feature Film category but did not win.

Nandwana told the entertainment news magazine that the film had not been cleared for release in India by the film certification board.

This came as Prime Minister Narendra Modi travelled to Israel in late February. During his visit, Modi had told the Israeli Parliament on February 25 that India stood with Israel “firmly, with full conviction, in this moment and beyond”.

Modi made the comment while expressing New Delhi’s condolences for the deaths of 1,200 persons, mostly Israelis, during the attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023.

The attack had been followed by the Israeli military offensive in Gaza.

“We feel your pain” and “share your grief”, the prime minister told the Knesset. He added that like Israel, India has a “consistent and uncompromising policy of zero tolerance for terrorism, with no double standards”.

The prime minister said that “there is great admiration” in India for Israel’s “resolve, courage and achievements”, adding that “long before we related to each other as modern states, we were linked by ties that go back more than 2,000 years”.

The remarks came during Modi’s first visit to Israel since Hamas’ October 2023 incursion.

India’s longstanding position has been to support a two-state solution for establishing a sovereign, viable and independent state of Palestine within recognised and mutually agreed borders, living alongside Israel in peace.

Speaking to Variety about the release of The Voice of Hind Rajab in India, Nadawana said that he had told the CBFC that “the India-Israel relationship is so strong that it’s idiotic to think this movie will break it”.

He also noted that the film had been released in the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, France and several other countries that have a relationship with Israel. “But they want to censor it anyway,” Variety quoted the distributor as having said.

Meanwhile, an unidentified government official told The Hindu on Friday that the film had been referred to a revising committee in the CBFC in the past few days, and that it would be reviewed by them now.

On the same day, director Kaouther Ben Hania asked in a social media post if “the honeymoon between the ‘world’s largest democracy’ and the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ so fragile that a film could break it”.

In 2025, the film certification board halted the release of Indian director Sandya Suri’s Oscar-shortlisted Santosh. The film was set in a fictitious northern Indian state and depicted the caste system and politics based on religion.

The combined wealth of Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and his wife Riniki Bhuyan Sarma has increased to Rs 35.16 crore in 2026 from 17.27 crore in 2021, showed the affidavit filed by the Bharatiya Janata Party leader on Friday.

Himanta Biswa Sarma had filed the affidavit along with his nomination papers to contest the Jalukbari constituency in the upcoming Assembly elections. The polls are scheduled to take place in a single phase on April 9. The votes will be counted on May 4.

In 2016, the wealth of the chief minister’s family stood at nearly Rs 6.4 crore.

In the current affidavit, the BJP leader submitted that he possesses only movable assets, valued at Rs 2.36 crore in 2026, compared to Rs 1.72 crore in 2021.

On the other hand, Riniki Bhuyan Sarma owns both movable and immovable assets, which increased to Rs 32.79 crore in 2026 from Rs 16.19 crore.

The chief minsiter’s income in the financial year 2024-’25 was Rs 29,62,920, while that of his wife was Rs 4,19,25,000.

Himanta Biswa Sarma has said that he has no investments in bonds, debentures, shares, mutual funds and others, while his wife has investments worth Rs 5.10 crore. She also has a life insurance policy valued at Rs 1.77 crore.

The BJP leader has Rs 2.28 lakh in cash and four bank deposits totalling Rs 68,01,943. His wife has Rs 3.16 lakh in cash and bank deposits amounting to Rs 74,85,248.

Under liabilities, Himanta Biswa Sarma has declared Rs 95 lakh in bank and institutional loans. His wife’s liabilities stand at Rs 15.91 crore, also in loans.

According to the affidavit, neither the chief minister nor his wife owns any agricultural land. However, Riniki Bhuyan Sarma owns three non-agricultural properties. While two of them are acquired, one was inherited. They have a combined market value of Rs 19.25 crore.

The office of the United News of India in Delhi was sealed on Friday night following a High Court order cancelling the allotment of land to the news agency.

UNI alleged that no notice was given before the action and that the office was “forcibly vacated”.

The premises were sealed by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs’ Land and Development Office in the presence of the Delhi Police and with the Central Reserve Police Force, reported The Hindu.

“Despite requests from employees to be given some time and to wait for the arrival of company management, and demands to show a notice, they forcibly dragged and pushed some employees, including female staff, away from their seats and out of the newsroom,” alleged the news agency. “During this, they were also subjected to verbal abuse.”

The sealing of the office of United News of India (UNI), one of the country’s oldest and most respected news agencies, has raised serious concerns over press freedom.

📌 Staff members were forcibly evicted, with several not allowed to retrieve their personal belongings.

📌… pic.twitter.com/dzaLObs49O

— United News of India (@uniindianews) March 20, 2026

Earlier in the day, the Delhi High Court cancelled the allotment of land to UNI, stating that the news agency had failed to construct a building on the plot for more than four decades and effectively “squatted on valuable public land”.

The court upheld the legality of the March 29, 2023, order of the Land and Development Office. The order had stated that under the original land allotment terms of 1979, UNI was required to complete the construction of a composite office complex within two years of taking possession, reported The Hindu.

However, no construction has been undertaken in this regard, it added.

It further stated that the land was originally intended for joint use by UNI, the Press Club of India, and the Press Association. However, UNI had failed to fulfil its obligations, the newspaper quoted the order as stating.

On Friday, the news agency alleged that government officials, along with nearly 300 personnel from the Delhi Police and paramilitary forces, as well as some lawyers, entered the office premises and “began pressuring employees to immediately vacate the newsroom”.

“They said that if the employees did not leave peacefully, they would have to use force,” it added.

UNI said it was “incomprehensible why employees were evicted from the premises in this manner without any prior notice” and in the absence of the news agency’s senior management.

“The sudden evacuation of this premises has abruptly halted the transmission of news to more than 500 subscribers of United News of India’s English, Hindi, and Urdu services,” stated the news agency. “This has also cast a shadow over the existence of this historic news organisation and the future of hundreds of employees and their families.”

The Statesman, the owner of UNI, described the action as “unprecedented atrocity” and an “attack on freedom of media in India”.

In an unprecedented atrocity and attack on freedom of media in India, the Rafi Marg office of the nation’s oldest news agency, United News of India (UNI), was literally attacked by a police force that would put an anti-terror operation to shame. Employees were not given time to… pic.twitter.com/O1H18imaPs

— The Statesman (@TheStatesmanLtd) March 20, 2026

The price of premium or higher-grade petrol on Friday was increased by Rs 2 per litre amid a spike in global oil prices amid the conflict in West Asia, PTI reported.

The prices of regular petrol and diesel, however, did not change.

In Delhi, the price of 95-octane petrol, a premium-grade fuel, increased from Rs 99.8 per litre to Rs 101.8. A litre of normal petrol in the national capital remained at Rs 94.7, while the same grade diesel was priced at Rs 87.6 a litre.

Normal petrol typically has an octane rating of 91-92, which is suitable for standard engines and offers adequate performance for everyday driving. An octane rating is a measure of fuel stability.

Meanwhile, the rate of bulk diesel sold to industrial users in the country was also hiked by about Rs 22 a litre, according to the news agency. Bulk diesel prices were hiked from Rs 87.6 per litre to Rs 109.5 in the national capital.

Earlier on Friday, Sujata Sharma, joint secretary at the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, told reporters that there is no increase in prices of normal petrol and diesel.

“Some increase is reported in the premium category which hardly makes up for 2%-4% of the entire petrol [sold in the country],” Sharma said. “There is no increase in price for the common man.”

She added that such decisions on pricing were taken by oil companies independently as petrol pricing was deregulated in 2010 and diesel in 2014, PTI reported. “Government does not regulate petrol and diesel prices,” she added.

The conflict in West Asia began on February 28 when the United States and Israel launched an attack on Iran. Tehran has retaliated by launching missiles and drones at targets in the Gulf, including US bases, ships and major cities in the region.

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

Amid the conflict, Iran has effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterbody connecting the Gulf to the Arabian Sea, for most international commercial vessels. About 20% of global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint.

India imports 88% of its crude oil needs and about half of its natural gas requirement, PTI reported. This mostly comes through the Strait of Hormuz.

On Friday, the price of benchmark Brent crude also slid to $105 a barrel, after spiking to $119 a day earlier. The price was $78 per barrel on February 27, a day before the conflict started.

The convenience for consumers created by the gig economy has an unforeseen byproduct: it is taking an immense toll on the wellbeing of platform workers.

Gig workers face a heightened vulnerability to road accidents, chronic body aches from long hours and working through erratic weather conditions, from extreme heat to heavy rainfall.

Though platforms claim to provide health insurance for gig workers, these benefits are often subject to performance and earnings, say news reports, worker unions and researchers.

However, gig workers could benefit from the Code on Social Security, 2020, which came into effect from November. It extends recognition to gig and platform workers and seeks to extend benefits such as retirement savings, and state-run health, life and disability insurance to them.

It brings gig workers under the Employees’ State Insurance Scheme, which could provide a comprehensive social safety net, beyond traditional medical expense coverage.

However, for all the benefits such a scheme offers, including gig workers in its purview poses challenges. An expansion would also have to account for gig workers’ volatile incomes and long working hours with no fixed timings.

Physical stress, protection gap

A study published in 2020 of 173 gig workers in Chennai found that between April and June the previous year, 32.36% food delivery workers had met with road accidents.

Similarly, a survey of 166 gig workers in Hyderabad, carried out in June 2024, found that more than half the workers experienced heat exhaustion and 30% reported heatstroke symptoms while working. The research was carried out by HeatWatch, which both authors are associated with, and the Telangana Gig and Platform Workers Union.

Workers have said insurance is often linked to opaque performance ratings. Rest of World interviewed 40 Swiggy riders and found that insurance access was tied to weekly performance rankings, with 65% calling the system unfair and several others saying that claims were fully or partially denied.

A 2024 report by Fairwork, notes that “workers in different categories are prioritised differently for grievance redressal, loss of pay, and insurance schemes”. Similarly, government social security schemes have been tied to standard employment relationships, which leaves gig workers with weak protection even when laws begin to recognise them.

For instance, the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana, which provides cashless hospitalisation coverage up to Rs 5 lakh per family per year for secondary and tertiary care, helps if a gig worker is admitted to a hospital but not otherwise.

The Employees’ State Insurance scheme, which has been operating since 1952, could fill such gaps. It is India’s only work-linked social health insurance scheme that provides medical benefits and monetary support for lost wages due to health problems.

The scheme acknowledges the health and economic risks of working in low-paying industries and combines medical care for a worker and their family with cash benefits to cover for loss of wages due to sickness, maternity, injury and the like.

The scheme also offers a safety net in case of extreme heat. In July 2024, the Ministry of Labour and Employment announced that those insured are “eligible for sickness benefit due to heatwave if it necessitates abstention from work”. But more needs to be done.

Floating income, many platforms

The government thinktank Niti Aayog estimates the number of gig workers to increase from 1 crore to 2.35 crore by 2029-’30. By these estimates, including even one crore gig workers under the ambit of the Employees’ State Insurance Scheme will raise the current insured person population by 26%: to 5.01 crore from the current 4.01 crore.

Can the Employee State Insurance Corporation absorb a new insured population without diluting real access? That depends on two linked issues: design and capacity.

The Corporation’s dashboard shows that it has 165 hospitals and 1,574 dispensaries. Where ESIC facilities are unavailable, the insured person can access cashless care through over 1,000 empanelled hospitals. These figures reflect the scheme’s institutional capacity, but underutilisation needs to be addressed before expanding coverage to gig workers pan-India.

The first constraint is the gap between sanctioned and operational capacity. Bed occupancy data can conceal the fact that sanctioned beds are not always commissioned or operational. In Delhi, as of March 2024, 2,100 beds were sanctioned, but only 1,530 were commissioned, creating a shortfall of 570 beds, shows official data.

Second, vacant posts limit service delivery. Under the scheme, Delhi has 32 dispensaries with 312 doctor posts sanctioned, but there are only 177 doctors, creating a vacancy of 135 posts – around 43% – which is roughly four doctor posts per dispensary on average.

There must be a targeted strengthening of the system to be able to cover a large, floating population of gig and platform workers.

Eligibility for the Employees’ State Insurance Scheme is tied to a wage ceiling of Rs 21,000 per month. But gig and platform worker incomes are volatile. Even among “consistent” drivers, around 15% experience month-to-month swings of 20% in earnings per hour, says a research paper by analytics and data nonprofit IDinsight.

The Employee State Insurance Scheme is also funded with the employer contributing 3.25% of the worker’s wages and the employee contributing 0.75%. However, the latest draft rules do not yet clarify if insurance will be through the corporation or a separate insurance product financed by platform contributions.

Then there is also the fact that workers operate with multiple platforms. The draft rules require aggregators to upload worker details but the coverage is tied to a worker’s Aadhaar-linked registration or unique ID on a central portal, so access continues when workers switch or use multiple platforms.

Workers are eligible for benefits if they complete 90 days with one aggregator, or 120 days across multiple aggregators in the last financial year. However, this should not become a stringent requirement.

Four priorities

First, the ESIC should publish district-wise “functional readiness” indicators so expansion to more workers is linked to actual service capacity. A dashboard could report on commissioned beds versus sanctioned beds, specialist posts filled versus vacant, outpatient department hours, and indicate downtime or stock-outs for dispensaries/diagnostics.

Second, since the OPD and dispensary timings are supposed to be 9 am-4 pm on all working days except Sunday, it is a struggle for gig workers with long, irregular working hours, to access healthcare. The Corporation should create a network of extended-hours access points in districts with high gig-worker capacity through dispensaries that are open early mornings, late evenings and on weekends.

Third, design constraints will have to be addressed before extending coverage to gig workers. The rules should allow enrollment from the first day itself into a worker-linked digital account that can automatically receive payments from platform companies based on verification.

Finally, the corporation must invest in dedicated infrastructure, equipment, and practical training for medical staff for rising heatstroke and other heat-related illnesses. It should implement forward-looking protection that anticipates emerging risks.

Ananya Tiwary is a Project Associate at HeatWatch, leading research on heat resilience among women gig/platform workers in Delhi. She works at the intersection of climate risk, labour, and social protection.

Apekshita Varshney is a journalist, development sector professional, and founder of Heatwatch, a nonprofit focused on expanding awareness and action around the impact of extreme heat and heatwaves on marginalised populations in India.

In 2022, as the number of Covid-19 cases began falling and travel opened up again, 30-year-old Irshit Ali’s life changed. There was a sudden surge of tourists in his hometown of Ladakh, where he worked ferrying tourists in his van. This was good for business.

His monthly income went up from around Rs 20,000 in 2022 to Rs 1.5 lakh in 2023. This encouraged Ali to expand his business. He secured a bank loan to purchase two more vehicles. For the next two years, he saw a steady rise in tourists coming to Ladakh.

However, 2025 brought Ali, and Ladakh’s entire tourism sector, to the brink of a crisis.

A series of events from April 2025 severely impacted the tourism economy of India’s newest union territory, those in the industry report. After a terrorist attack in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir that month, there was a slight decline in foreign tourists visiting Ladakh. Then, during the brief armed conflict between India and Pakistan that followed, and even after it, tourist activities completely stopped.

Later in August, after record-breaking rainfall, roads were closed and the region was cut off for a few weeks, discouraging tourists from travelling to Ladakh.

In September, a protest in Leh demanding full statehood for Ladakh and inclusion in the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution turned violent, again keeping tourists away from the cold desert region.

According to Rigzin Lachik, the President of All Ladakh Hotel and Guest House Association, business in Ladakh dropped significantly in 2025 and due to the cancellation of bookings in hotels and guest houses, many hotel owners earned much less than expected.

A difficult year

“Tourism growth in Ladakh has been very positive since 2010. However, this growth has stalled since 2018. Last year was particularly difficult, not only for the tourism industry but for everyone in Ladakh. First, the Pahalgam terror attack, then the heavy rains in Ladakh and neighbouring states, and then the September 24 incident – all these factors impacted the tourism sector,” said Lachik.

Talking about the brief conflict in April, Lachik said, “During Operation Sindoor, the airport was completely closed, and people who wanted to come couldn’t. During that time, 80% of our bookings were cancelled, and we had to refund people in full. So, there were very few tourists in May. We started to recover a little in June, but recovery could not be sustained.”

Data from the Kushok Bakula Rimpochee Airport in Ladakh reveals that the airport was completely closed from May 7 to May 13 due to Operation Sindoor, launched by the Indian Armed Forces. No aircrafts operated on August 25, 26 and 27 due to rain.

In September, following the protests, four people died and over 50 sustained injuries in police firing. A week-long curfew was imposed in Leh after the incident.

According to the data from the Tourism Department, the month of June saw the highest decline in tourist numbers. Ladakh typically sees over 100,000 visitors during this month each year. In 2024, 153,711 tourists visited Ladakh; in 2025, the number stood at 75,089 – almost half.

“No business can plan properly when there are frequent disruptions,” said Arnab Ghosh, the general manager of El Castillo Hotel. “There were a lot of disruptions during the main summer season. By the time we could decide on staffing, capacity, whether to stock or not, or how much to stock, the main season was over,” he said. According to Ghosh, his earnings dropped by about 30-40% last year.

“There were 30 to 45 days when our hotel didn’t have a single guest, meaning zero occupancy! Any businessperson in Ladakh anyway expects only 100 to 120 days of good revenue during the tourist season. About half of those days had zero occupancy,” he added.

Debt repayment

“I’ve been in this field since 2010, when I used to drive an Echo van. I bought a new Scorpio N in November 2022,” said Dorje Gyalson, a taxi driver in Leh about his vehicle upgrade. “After COVID, business went well in 2022, and our expectations increased accordingly. Those who have purchased new vehicles are 70%-80% on loans. These people are now having trouble paying their loan instalments. Everyone’s monthly instalments are over Rs 20,000,” he continued. “Because of the extreme weather conditions here, we can work only for six months. We use these funds to pay instalments and sustain ourselves in the next six months,” added Gyalson.

Over the past few years, Ladakh’s tourism infrastructure has expanded, with people obtaining loans from various banks to expand their businesses. However, with the drop in tourist numbers, they find it challenging to repay those loans. Consequently, various organisations requested temporary relief on their loan and interest payments.

The Finance Department, responding to this demand, issued a notification to bankers declaring Ladakh a disaster-affected area. Following this declaration, banks in Ladakh can offer borrowers flexibility in instalments and repayment periods under the provisions of Chapter Seven of the Reserve Bank of India’s Master Direction.

Trade and competition

According to data from the Tourism Department, 3,35,872 tourists visited Ladakh in 2025, a decrease of only about 10% from the previous year. But why did many businesses struggle despite only a small decline in visitor numbers?

This may be due to the increase in the number of hotels and guest houses in recent years, says Ladakh’s Tourism Secretary, Sanjit Rodrigues. In the last three years, the number of hotels and guest houses in Leh city alone has increased by approximately 30%. The number of taxis has also increased significantly, he says.

“The peak business months witnessed some disruptions in 2025. However, that is not the only reason behind the drop in earnings of people. Our analysis shows that in the last few years, the number of hotels, guest houses, taxis, tourism related business establishments have increased rapidly, but the number of tourists have not increased in that proportion,” Rodrigues said.

He also noted that there is a need for a scientific study on the carrying capacity of Ladakh, especially in Leh town. Results of overtourism within the town could prove detrimental in the long term both for the industry and ecology.

Those involved in this sector say that it would be inaccurate to assume that the sudden surge in tourist arrivals in Ladakh in 2022 and 2023 was normal and make income predictions based on that. During these years, due to COVID-related restrictions preventing domestic tourists from traveling abroad, the number of tourists in Ladakh exceeded five lakhs. However, in 2024, the number dropped to around 2,50,000.

According to official data, Leh had 149 hotels and 386 guest houses in 2011. In 2015, the number of hotels increased to 213 and guest houses to 433. According to 2022 data, Leh had 291 hotels and 807 guest houses. In Kargil, there were 17 hotels and 82 guest houses in 2015, which increased to 40 and 100, respectively in 2022.

While the most recent data on the number of hotels and guest houses is unavailable, a 2021 report prepared by The Energy and Resources Institute for NITI Aayog, estimated that Ladakh would have 489 hotels, 1,061 guest houses and 73 homestays by 2025. This represents a 108% increase in hotels and a 206% increase in guest houses compared to the 2015 data.

Also, there were 3,646 taxis in Ladakh in 2022, but according to Stanzin Loldan, the vice-president of Ladakh Taxi Union, currently there are more than 5,500 taxis in Leh alone.

Bigger challenges

The rise of hotels, taxis and other means of transport, coupled with the increased tourist flow, has boosted Ladakh’s tourism and economy. However, this has also led to an increasing consumption of natural resources in the UT.

According to a report by the Indian Institute of Sustainable Development, between 2001 and 2011, the built up area in Ladakh increased from 168 hectares to 294 hectares. Also, the introduction of exotic plant species for urbanisation, aesthetics, and commercial purposes has harmed the biodiversity of Leh city.

The Ministry of Tourism’s vision document for the development of tourism in Ladakh also highlights the cultural and environmental challenges posed by increased tourism. The document states that excessive tourism in Ladakh could threaten socio-cultural heritage, overuse limited resources, and lead to other negative impacts.

The replacement of traditional and eco-friendly buildings with non-eco-friendly ones, the growing problem of dry waste, increasing air pollution, depletion of water resources and the loss of biodiversity, are listed as major challenges to tackle.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

The Indian embassy in Riyadh said that an Indian citizen died in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday amid the conflict in West Asia. The cause of the death was unclear.

With this, six Indians have been killed in the conflict so far.

The Directorate General of Shipping said on March 2 that three Indian seafarers had been killed and one injured as a result of the conflict, which began on February 28 after the US and Israel bombed Iran. Two Indians were killed in a drone attack in Oman’s Sohar province on March 13. Read on.

The Uttarakhand High Court refused to quash a first information report filed against gym owner Deepak Kumar, or “Mohammad Deepak”, who opposed the harassment of an Muslim shopkeeper by alleged Bajrang Dal members. Justice Rakesh Thapliyal also restrained him from commenting on social media about the cases filed in connection with the incident.

Thapliyal said that the gym owner could affect the investigation against him by making statements or posting videos on social media. The judge criticised him for regularly posting on social media platforms about the incident and giving “sermons”.

The incident took place on January 26 when alleged Bajrang Dal members had arrived at the shop of an elderly Muslim man named Vakeel Ahmed in the Pauri Garhwal district, objecting to him using the word “Baba” in the name of his establishment. Kumar and another person, Vijay Rawat, rebuked the mob for its actions. Read on.

The Delhi High Court quashed lookout circulars issued by the Central Bureau of Investigation against former NDTV promoters Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy. The notices had been issued against them by the central agency in connection with first information reports filed in 2017 and 2019.

A lookout circular is used by the law enforcement authorities to check whether a person leaving the country is wanted by the police.

In October 2024, the investigating agency had closed the corruption and fraud case against Prannoy and Radhika Roy. The counsel for the Roys had said in May that the couple had answered the summons issued to them in 2019 and had cooperated in the case. Read on.

Kashmir’s chief cleric Mirwaiz Umar Farooq claimed that he had been detained at his home and was not being allowed to offer congregational prayers at Srinagar’s Jamia masjid. Farooq alleged that he had been “put under arbitrary house arrest – never conveyed in writing” for the third consecutive Friday during the Islamic holy month of Ramzan.

The detention to prevent him from delivering the Friday sermon at the mosque had been “enforced by placing police vehicles and large contingents in front of my gate…,” the Hurriyat Conference leader alleged on social media. The action conveyed the “panic of the rulers”, he added.

Farooq had been previously placed under house arrest in September too. This came after an inauguration plaque bearing the Ashoka emblem inside the Hazratbal shrine in Srinagar was damaged on September 5, allegedly by protesters who claimed that it went against Islamic principles. Read on.

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The Uttarakhand High Court on Friday restrained gym owner Deepak Kumar, who opposed the harassment of an elderly Muslim shopkeeper by alleged Bajrang Dal members, from commenting on social media about the cases filed against him, Bar and Bench reported.

Declining to quash the first information report against Kumar on charges of rioting and intentional insult to provoke breach of peace, Justice Rakesh Thapliyal said that the gym owner might affect the investigation by making statements or posting videos on social media, Live Law reported. The judge also criticised him for regularly posting on social media platforms about the incident and giving “sermons”.

Kumar, in his petition, had also sought police protection and requested a departmental inquiry against police officers who allegedly failed to act against hate crimes. However, the court had on Thursday accused him of “sensationalising” the matter, and questioned how he could seek protection while being accused in a police case.

The incident took place on January 26 when alleged Bajrang Dal members had come to the shop of an elderly Muslim man named Vakeel Ahmed in the Pauri Garhwal district, objecting to him using the word “Baba” in the name of his establishment.

Kumar and another person, Vijay Rawat, objected to the mob’s actions, after which the two Hindu men were asked not to intervene.

The FIR against Kumar and Rawat was filed in late January based on a complaint by two persons who are members of the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. The FIR invoked charges of rioting, causing hurt, and intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace.

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal members, in their complaint, claimed that Kumar and Rawat stole their watches and money, and hurled casteist abuses at them.

Subsequently, a group of about 40 persons gathered near Kumar’s gym and shouted slogans against him. The protesters also blocked a national highway.

Kumar had filed a complaint against the persons who had gathered in front of his gym, The Indian Express reported. However, the police had filed the case based on the complaint of an officer against unidentified persons in connection with the protests.

On Friday, the court took note of the claim made by the state government that Kumar had not been cooperating with the investigation and had instead been “busy” on social media, Bar and Bench reported.

Thapliyal directed Kumar to cooperate with the investigation and not “indulge unnecessarily on social media platforms so that investigation is not affected”.

Refusing to allow Kumar’s petition, it instead recorded the state police’s assurance that it will follow the guidelines on safeguards to be adhered to while investigating an offence that carries a prison term of up to seven years. It directed the police to go ahead with the investigation.

Earlier during the hearing on Friday, the court noted that when such incidents happen, the police have to first maintain law and order. The judge once again asked Kumar not to sensationalise the matter, adding that he was stopping the gym owner from making any statement on social media.

However, Kumar’s counsel told the court that speaking on social media is not a crime, and asked whether his client had said anything unconstitutional, according to Bar and Bench.

The court on Friday also dismissed Kumar’s request for protection. It also described Kumar’s request for a departmental inquiry against the police officers as “wholly unwarranted” at this stage of the case.

The incident

In a video of the January 26 incident that was later widely shared on social media, Kumar is seen asking the group why other shops are allowed to use the word “Baba” but Ahmed’s shop is not. He is also heard saying that the shop is more than 30 years old and asking whether its name should now be changed.

When asked his name, Kumar replied, “My name is Mohammad Deepak.”

“I intended to convey that I was an Indian and that everyone is equal before the law,” Kumar later explained.

Kumar subsequently posted a video on social media, in which he said: “I am neither a Hindu, neither a Muslim, neither a Sikh, nor a Christian. First and foremost, I am a human being. Because after I die, I have to answer to God and to humanity, not to any religion.”

He added that no one, whether a Hindu or a Muslim, should be targeted for their religion.

What if Rs 66 is all that you earned after working hard all day? And not just one day, but every day, for years. Will you be able to survive?

This is the question that midday meal workers in Chhattisgarh asked the government as they staged a protest in the state capital, demanding an increase in their daily wages from Rs 66 to at least Rs 350.

The government argued that midday meal workers are paid Rs 66 a day, which comes to a monthly Rs 2,000, because the work requires only two hours of their labour.

But is this the case? We travelled to the ground to find out.

Watch our report from Chhattisgarh.

Also read: Why Chhattisgarh’s midday meal workers have not given up their fight for better pay

An Indian citizen died in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday amid the conflict in West Asia, the Indian embassy in Riyadh said on Friday.

In a social media post, the embassy expressed its condolences about the person’s death in the capital Riyadh. It added that it was in touch with the person’s family and with the local authorities.

The cause of the death was unclear.

The Embassy of India expresses its deepest condolences on the tragic demise of an Indian national in Riyadh due to recent events on March 18th.

The Embassy is in touch with the family and local authorities. We remain committed to extending all possible assistance in this…

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

With this, six Indians have been killed in the conflict so far.

On March 14, the Union government said that five Indians had been killed and one was missing, ANI reported.

The Indian diplomatic missions in Oman, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates are in touch with the authorities regarding the missing Indian and for early repatriation of the bodies of those who had died, the news agency had quoted Additional Secretary (Gulf) Aseem Mahajan as saying.

On March 2, the Directorate General of Shipping said that three Indian seafarers were killed and one was injured amid the conflict. It did not, however, provide details of the incidents that led to their deaths.

Two Indians were killed in a drone attack in Oman’s Sohar province on March 13.

Follow top updates on the conflict in West Asia here.

More Indians cross into Armenia, Azerbaijan

The Ministry of External Affairs on Friday said that 913 more Indians had crossed into Armenia and Azerbaijan from Iran through land routes with the embassies’ assistance.

Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that the number of Indian crossing into Iran’s neighbouring countries had increased yesterday.

Additionally, 284 pilgrims who had been stranded in the region have returned to India, he added.

The conflict in West Asia began on February 28 when the United States and Israel launched an attack on Iran. Tehran has retaliated by launching missiles and drones at targets in the Gulf, including US bases, ships and major cities in the region.

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

The Delhi High Court on Friday quashed lookout circulars issued by the Central Bureau of Investigation against former NDTV promoters Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy, Live Law reported.

A lookout circular is used by the law enforcement authorities to check whether a person leaving the country is wanted by the police.

The circulars had been issued against the Roys on behalf of the CBI in connection with two first information reports filed in June 2017 and August 2019, Bar and Bench reported.

In May, the court had verbally observed that it would be futile to retain the lookout circulars, Live Law reported. The counsel for the Roys had said that the couple had answered the summons issued to them in 2019 and had cooperated in the case.

In October 2024, the investigating agency had closed the corruption and fraud case against Prannoy and Radhika Roy. It said that there was no criminal wrongdoing in a Rs 375-crore loan extended by ICICI Bank to their company RRPR Holdings Private Limited.

The closure report filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation had reportedly said that the loan, alleged in 2017 to have violated banking regulations, was in fact a normal business transaction.

A Delhi court took note of the closure report in November 2024 and accepted it in January 2025.

Kashmir’s chief cleric Mirwaiz Umar Farooq on Friday alleged that he has been detained at his home and was not being allowed to offer congregational prayers at Srinagar’s Jamia masjid.

On social media, Farooq alleged that he had been “put under arbitrary house arrest – never conveyed in writing” for the third consecutive Friday during the Islamic holy month of Ramzan.

The detention to prevent him from delivering the Friday sermon at the mosque had been “enforced by placing police vehicles and large contingents in front of my gate and the entire area, choking gully points and lanes with concertina wires, disallowing traffic movement”, the Hurriyat Conference leader alleged.

Farooq shared pictures purportedly showing a large contingent of security forces and police vehicles outside his residence in Nigeen.

For the third consecutive Friday in Ramzan I have been put under arbitrary house arrest-never conveyed in writing, but enforced by placing police vehicles and large contingents in front of my gate and the entire area, chocking gully points and lanes with concertina wires,… pic.twitter.com/90m78aSmBC

— Mirwaiz Umar Farooq (@MirwaizKashmir) March 20, 2026

The action taken against him conveyed the “panic of the rulers”, the chief cleric said.

“…the centrality of Jama Masjid for the Muslims of the region has unfortunately always been a thorn in their side, as are Muslim institutions and identity which they want to undermine,” he stated. “But such measures cannot erase identity nor weaken faith. These attempts will fail.”

On September 12 too, Farooq had alleged that he had been placed under house arrest and stopped from leading congregational prayers at the Jamia mosque.

This came a week after an inauguration plaque bearing the Ashoka emblem inside the Hazratbal shrine in Srinagar was damaged on September 5, allegedly by protesters who claimed that it went against Islamic principles.

In July, Farooq had claimed that he was placed under house arrest to stop him from referring to Kashmir Martyrs’ Day in his sermon. The day, observed on July 13, commemorates 22 persons shot dead by the Dogra ruler’s forces in 1931.

The day was struck off the list of public holidays after Article 370 of the Constitution, which gave special status to the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, was abrogated in 2019.

In March 2025, the chief cleric had said that he was detained at home ahead of Eid.

The Union government on Friday told the Supreme Court that it has set up a committee that includes former Supreme Court judges to review a chapter about “corruption in the judiciary” in a textbook published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training, Live Law reported.

The committee comprises former Supreme Court judges Indu Malhotra and Aniruddha Bose, and former Attorney General KK Venugopal. Bose is the director of the National Judicial Academy.

The chapter was part of a Class 8 social science textbook. The textbook was withdrawn after the court took suo motu cognisance of the matter and banned its publication and re-printing. The educational body had on March 10 apologised for the chapter.

The chapter had listed “corruption at various levels of the judiciary” among the challenges that the judicial system faces, according to The Indian Express. It was part of a textbook titled “Exploring Society: India and Beyond”.

After Solicitor General Tushar Mehta made the submission about the committee on Friday, the bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and VM Pancholi disposed of the suo motu case, Bar and Bench reported.

The court had on March 11 said that the affidavit of the NCERT director was “disturbing” as it said that the chapter in question had been rewritten.

The Supreme Court had directed the government to create a panel of experts, preferably including a former judge, an academician and a renowned legal practitioner, to review the rewritten chapter.

The court had asked the Union government to revisit the composition of the National Syllabus and Teaching Learning Material Committee, which had approved the chapter.

On March 11, the court had directed the Centre and state governments to ensure that the three persons who were involved in drafting the banned chapter are not associated with other curriculum projects. The governments and universities were ordered not to assign the three persons “any responsibility which involves public funds”.

Canadian Police Commissioner Mike Duheme told CTV News on Thursday that there are no longer clandestine activities or transnational repression taking place in the country linked to the Indian government.

“In the files that we have that involve transnational repression, we’re not seeing any connection right now with any foreign entity, based on the criminal information, the investigations that we have presently,” Duheme told the news channel.

His comments came after he was asked whether transnational repression by agents allegedly linked to the Indian government was still a concern. The full interview is scheduled to be broadcast on Sunday.

The comments came amid a thaw in diplomatic relations between India and Canada.

Ties between the two countries had deteriorated sharply in 2023 after Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister at the time, told his country’s Parliament that intelligence agencies were actively pursuing “credible allegations” tying agents of the Indian government to the murder of Khalistani separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada.

Nijjar was a supporter of Khalistan, an independent Sikh nation sought by some groups. He was the head of the Khalistan Tiger Force, which is designated a terrorist outfit in India.

New Delhi has rejected Canada’s allegations.

Four Indian citizens are facing trial in Canada in connection with Nijjar’s killing. They face charges of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

On Thursday, the chief of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police told the news channel that he was making the statement “based on the totality of the files that we have on foreign interference or transnational repression...”

“...what we have in our holdings is we have people that are intimidating people, harassing people, but connecting the dots to a foreign entity, regardless of the country, we don’t have that,” Duheme was quoted as having said when asked whether there was a threat to public safety.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs has not yet commented on the matter.

On March 1, a spokesperson for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service told The National Post that the agency’s assessment had not changed. India remained one of the main perpetrators of foreign interference and espionage against Canada, the spokesperson said.

This contradicted a statement by a senior government official. On February 25, Canadian news organisations quoted an unidentified senior official as saying that Ottawa believes India is no longer linked to alleged violent crimes in the country.

Ottawa had previously accused India of foreign interference.

In January 2025, a Canadian inquiry commission accused India of interfering in the country’s electoral process by clandestinely providing financial support to political leaders and engaging in disinformation.

The Indian external affairs ministry had rejected the inquiry panel’s report, and had alleged that it was Canada that was consistently interfering in India’s internal affairs.

In March 2025, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service claimed that India, among other countries, could try to interfere in the Canadian general election in April 2025. In July, a report by the country’s Security Intelligence Service accused India of being a perpetrator of foreign interference and espionage.

On February 8, India and Canada said that they had agreed on a work plan to guide cooperation on national security and law enforcement.

The Chhattisgarh Assembly on Thursday passed a bill introducing stricter penalties, including life imprisonment and fines up to Rs 25 lakh, for forced and fraudulent religious conversions.

The 2026 Freedom of Religion Bill will replace a 1968 law enacted in undivided Madhya Pradesh, from which Chhattisgarh was carved out in 2000.

The Opposition boycotted the proceedings, calling for further scrutiny of the draft legislation.

After the Assembly cleared the bill, Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai told reporters that the law would stop religious conversions “carried out by taking advantage of people’s poverty, and lack of education and knowledge”, The Hindu reported.

The 1968 law had become inadequate in effectively controlling “the use of force, greed and fraudulent practices” for conversions, Deo Sai was quoted as saying.

The new law

The new legislation bars persons from converting anyone “by the use or practice of glorification, misrepresentation, force, undue influence, coercion, allurement”.

Under the law, a person who wants to convert will have to submit a declaration to the district magistrate or an authorised official, The Indian Express reported.

Within a week, the authorities will publish the details of the proposed conversion on a website and in the offices of the tehsildar, gram panchayat and the local police station.

The law empowers the authorities to verify the authenticity of conversions, investigate complaints and summon records. Objections against the proposed conversions can be filed within a month, after which the authorities will conduct an inquiry, The Indian Express reported.

The legislation broadens the definition of “allurement” to include monetary benefits, gifts, employment, free education or medical facilities, promises of better lifestyle and marriage.

Conversions solely for the purpose of marriage or marriage done for conversions will be treated as invalid under the new law unless a due legal process has been followed, The Hindu reported.

It says that “coercion” includes psychological pressure, physical force or threats, including social boycott, the newspaper reported.

The law provides for the authorities to maintain a record of proposed religious conversions on its website and the setting up of special courts to hear matters pertaining to the Act.

For mass conversions, a person may be jailed for a minimum of 10 years, and possibly life imprisonment, and be fined Rs 25 lakh or more.

In cases involving minors, women, persons with mental illness, or members of the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes, the minimum fine will be Rs 10 lakh.

However, converting to “ancestral religion” will not be treated as a conversion under the Act, The Indian Express reported.

With this, Chhattisgarh joined several states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party to enact similar legislations in recent years.

The Maharashtra legislature passed a similar anti-conversion bill amid concerns expressed by the Opposition that provisions of the legislation could be misused by the authorities and socio-political groups.

The Delhi High Court on Friday directed digital news outlet Newslaundry to take down allegedly disparaging videos and posts about the TV Today Group and its channels Aaj Tak and India Today, reported Bar and Bench.

A division bench comprising Justices C Hari Shankar and Om Prakash Shukla held that some of the statements made by Newslaundry were disparaging. If the statements are not removed, they would cause serious and irreparable harm to TV Today, the bench added, according to Live Law.

In October 2021, the TV Today Group filed a Rs 2 crore defamation and copyright infringement suit, accusing Newslaundry of “uploading infringing, defamatory, commercially disparaging material on their own website”.

In July 2022, a single-judge bench of the High Court held that on a prima facie basis, the case appeared to be in favour of the TV Today group.

Both Newslaundry and TV Today had filed appeals against the July 2022 order.

Newslaundry had contended in its plea that the single-judge order did not appreciate that its content falls within the realm of “fair criticism” and “satire” and was not meant to defame TV Today.

In its original plea, the TV Today group had sought an order to have 34 articles on the Newslaundry website and 65 videos on the portal’s YouTube channel removed.

The media conglomerate had also asked the High Court to restrain Newslaundry and its journalists from “writing, tweeting or publishing” anything defamatory about its channels, anchors and management.