Major political parties, including the Bharatiya Janata Party, Congress and Aam Aadmi Party, failed to explain why they selected 191 candidates with criminal cases for the 2026 Assembly elections as mandated by the Supreme Court, non-governmental organisation Association for Democratic Reforms said in a study on Thursday.

The candidates contested in elections in Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Puducherry.

Under the Supreme Court’s rules, parties have to publish Form C7, explaining why they chose candidates with pending criminal cases over candidates without criminal backgrounds.

The organisation analysed Form C7 disclosures of 3,539 candidates fielded by 51 major political parties across the five states and one Union territory.

Of the 1,405 candidates who had declared criminal cases in their election affidavits, parties published Form C7 disclosures for 1,214, or 86%.

Tamil Nadu had the highest number of missing disclosures. Of the 473 candidates with criminal cases, parties published disclosures for 401.

West Bengal had 55 missing disclosures among 559 candidates, while Kerala had 27 missing out of 268.

Assam had 10 missing disclosures among 66 candidates.

Puducherry had the highest share of missing disclosures, with 27 of 39 candidates not having a Form C7 disclosure.

The BJP did not publish disclosures for eight of its 302 candidates with criminal cases. The Congress did not publish them for 13 of its 202 candidates.

The Trinamool Congress, published disclosures for all 116 of its candidates with criminal cases.

In the disclosures that were published, parties often gave similar reasons for choosing candidates with criminal cases. They described them as popular social workers, grassroots leaders or experienced politicians, and said they had strong support among voters in their constituencies.

Written by Tanya Shrivastava. Edited by Sara Varghese.

Four members of Students for a Free Tibet were detained near Delhi’s Bharat Mandapam after they put up banners demanding independence for Tibet and protesting Beijing’s rule, the organisation said in press statement. The protest was held ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit the capital to attend the BRICS Summit.

The Delhi Police is yet to comment on the matter.

The pro-Tibet group called on BRICS leaders to condemn China’s occupation of Tibet and alleged human rights violations. They also expressed concerns about Beijing’s infrastructure projects on Tibetan rivers and called for action against what they described as “Chinese encroachment” along the Indo-Tibet border. Read on.

A Mumbai court has granted bail to former Tata Institute of Social Sciences student Abhirup Paul, who was arrested for allegedly shouting slogans in support of jailed activists Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam. Paul was arrested on August 7, hours after he and a batchmate were denied anticipatory bail.

They were also booked for allegedly possessing downloaded books and other material that the prosecution claimed reflected Maoist ideology.

While granting bail, the court said Paul had spent sufficient time in custody for interrogation and noted that there was no evidence linking him to any Maoist or banned organisation. It also observed that downloading Maoist literature and shouting slogans in support of jailed activists were not anti-national activities. Read on.

The West Bengal Assembly passed a bill allowing the state government to transfer teaching and non-teaching staff from one state-run university to another. Several teachers’ associations and academics opposed the legislation, saying that it could be used to target professors critical of the government.

Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari said that the legislation would be used to give a “strong dose” to Jadavpur University teachers who were “brainwashing” students. Adhikari added that his government “does not care” if those opposing the bill called it “misuse of power”.

“We have come to power for five years with a two-thirds majority,” he said. “We will do whatever is necessary.” Read on.

The Indonesian government has asked India to hand over five infant orangutans rescued from a forest in Odisha’s Balasore district three days ago, the country’s forestry ministry said. The critically endangered animals were allegedly trafficked to India.

The state forest department has launched a criminal investigation.

Meanwhile, the Odisha government is awaiting permission from the Central Zoo Authority to keep the five orangutans in Nandankanan, where they have been housed since being rescued. The animals have been quarantined in a temperature-controlled room and are being gradually acclimatised. Read on.

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Four members of Students for a Free Tibet were detained near Delhi’s Bharat Mandapam on Friday after they put up banners demanding an independent Tibet and protesting Beijing’s rule, according to a press release by the organisation. The protest took place ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit.

The Delhi Police is yet to comment on the matter.

Tibet has been under Chinese control since 1951, when Tibetan leaders signed an agreement allowing Beijing to station troops in the region.

China established the Tibetan Autonomous Region in 1965. In name, this means Tibet is an autonomous region within China, but in practice it remains tightly controlled. The Tibetan government-in-exile, based in India’s Dharamshala, continues to seek independence for Tibet.

This is a continuing source of tension between India and China. New Delhi also claims part of Tibet as its own territory.

The pro-Tibet group called on BRICS leaders to “condemn China’s illegal occupation of Tibet” and its alleged human rights violations.

They also raised concerns over Beijing’s large infrastructure projects on Tibetan rivers and called on India to take action against what they described as “China’s encroachment” along the Indo-Tibet border.

Xi will be in Delhi to attend the BRICS Summit scheduled for Saturday and Sunday.

Delhi has been under heavy security ahead of the summit.

The BRICS grouping comprises India, Brazil, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates.

Written by Tanya Shrivastava. Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Pune administration on Friday said it was withdrawing its order imposing a 12-day restriction on the sale and consumption of alcohol during the Hindu festival of Ganesh Chaturthi after the Bombay High Court said the blanket restriction was passed “without any rational”, Live Law reported.

The collector told the court that a fresh order will be ordered restricting the dry days to September 14, the first day of Ganesh Chaturthi, and September 25, the main immersion day, Live Law reported.

The administration had earlier imposed dry-day restrictions in parts of Pune between September 14 and September 26, citing law and order concerns during the festival, Pune Mirror reported. Some areas were to have a complete ban, while others were to observe dry days on specific festival days and along immersion procession routes.

During the hearing on Friday, a bench headed by Chief Justice Mahesh Chandra Tripathi said that such a long alcohol ban could lead to serious health problems for habitual drinkers.

“Hospitals will be flooding,” Tripathi was quoted as saying. Blanket orders without any rational cannot be allowed... You cannot say everyone who drinks will create a law and order situation.”

He added that anyone who consumed alcohol and disrupted law and order would “face the music”.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Indonesian government has asked India to hand over five infant orangutans rescued from a forest in Odisha’s Balasore district three days ago, the country’s forestry ministry told AFP on Friday.

The orangutans were allegedly trafficked to India. The state forest department has launched a criminal investigation.

The critically endangered animals were rescued from Bichitrapur forest on Tuesday and taken to Nandankanan Zoological Park in Bhubaneswar.

VIDEO | Odisha: In a rare and heartening development, five baby orangutans rescued from a forest in Balasore district have been spotted playing and posing inside Nandankanan Zoological Park in Bhubaneswar.

At the zoo, the young orangutans are reportedly adjusting well. Kept in… pic.twitter.com/OOr6OOPhLu

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) September 10, 2026

The five infant orangutans appear to be of Sumatran origin, AFP quoted the Indonesian forestry ministry as saying. DNA tests will be conducted to confirm their origin.

International commercial trade in orangutans is prohibited under Cites, the global agreement governing trade in endangered wildlife. The animals are also protected under Indian wildlife laws.

Orangutans are trafficked for sale as exotic pets and to private collectors.

Meanwhile, the Odisha government is awaiting permission from the Central Zoo Authority to keep the five orangutans at Nandankanan, The Indian Express reported.

The animals have been quarantined in a temperature-controlled room and are being gradually acclimatised to the environment, a zoo official was quoted as saying.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read: A border district in Mizoram has become a hub of wildlife smuggling in India

A sub-inspector, not the Greater Noida executive magistrate, was suspended for violating the Supreme Court’s order by serving show-cause notice to a student for his alleged campaign seeking participation in a protest by the Cockroach Janta Party, The Indian Express reported on Friday.

The clarification from the Uttar Pradesh Police came hours after reports widely quoted Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the state, as having informed the Supreme Court that the executive magistrate had been suspended.

The notice had asked the 20-year-old law student, Akshat Tripathi, to furnish a personal bond of Rs 5 lakh.

The student at the Gautam Buddh University had challenged the magistrate’s notice, which was issued after a police report alleged that he was instigating other students to participate in a proposed protest.

The notice stated that Tripathi was “spreading anti-government, misleading statements among other university students and provoking them”, which could “disrupt public peace”.

Tripathi had said that he had not been going to the university for the past three months.

“I was working at the Allahabad High Court in July,” he said. “How could I go to the university and provoke people?”

The notice was withdrawn the following day after the allegations were investigated.

On Wednesday, a lawyer verbally mentioned the matter before a bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant.

The chief justice directed the lawyer to formally place the notice before the court through a petition and said that an explanation would then be sought from the authorities.

The court also asked how the executive magistrate could “dare” to issue the notice to Tripathi.

“We made it clear that no coercive action should be taken against any student,” Kant said. “No magistrate could violate that order.”

On September 1, the Supreme Court ordered that all first information reports registered across the country in connection with student protests held between July 20 and July 25 should not be pursued or investigated and must be treated as closed, except those involving persons with criminal antecedents. The government had told the court that no fresh FIRs would be registered in connection with the protests.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Corrections and clarifications: This article has been updated to reflect the Uttar Pradesh Police’s clarification that a sub-inspector was suspended, not the Greater Noida executive magistrate, as had been told to the Supreme Court by the solicitor general.

A Mumbai court has granted bail to Abhirup Paul, a former student at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences arrested for allegedly shouting slogans in support of jailed activists Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam, Bar and Bench reported on Friday.

Paul had been arrested on August 7, hours after he and a batchmate were denied anticipatory bail by a sessions court. They have also been booked for possessing downloaded books and other material that the prosecution alleged reflected Maoist ideology.

At the time, the court had granted anticipatory bail to seven other students of the institute, who had been booked after taking part in an event in October 2025 commemorating the death anniversary of former Delhi University Professor GN Saibaba.

Saibaba, who had more than 90% disability and used a wheelchair, spent over seven years in jail on accusations of having links with Maoists. In March 2024, he was acquitted by the Bombay High Court and released. Seven months later, in October 2024, he died of post-operative complications in Hyderabad.

The police had filed the case against the students who attended the event based on a complaint by the institute’s administration. The first information report invoked charges of causing prejudice to the nation, causing enmity between groups and participating in unlawful assembly, among others.

On August 7, the sessions court said that while paying homage to Saibaba was not unlawful, the allegations that the students had shouted slogans in support of Khalid and Imam, along with the material recovered from their electronic devices, weighed against granting them anticipatory bail.

Khalid and Imam have been in jail for more than five years under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act for their alleged role in a conspiracy behind the 2020 Delhi riots. The trial in the case has not yet begun, and their petitions for regular bail have been repeatedly rejected.

On Thursday, the additional chief judicial magistrate observed that Paul had spent sufficient time in custody for interrogation, even as there was no evidence linking him to any Maoist or banned organisations, Bar and Bench reported.

The court observed that downloading Maoist books and shouting slogans on campus in support of jailed activists did not amount to activities against the country. An inference of the student being a Maoist cannot be drawn from the same, the bench added.

Paul has denied having shouted the slogans.

Keeping the student in custody on mere suspicion is unjust and would be detrimental to his career, the magistrate was quoted as saying.

The court directed that Paul be released on a personal bond of Rs 1 lakh, The Indian Express reported. He was also ordered to mark his presence before the police once a week till the chargesheet is filed in the matter.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Also read: Why is the BJP scared of displays of support for Umar Khalid?

The West Bengal Assembly on Thursday passed a bill allowing the state government to transfer teaching and non-teaching staff from one state-run university to another, The Indian Express reported.

The bill was opposed by several teachers’ associations and academics who said that the legislation could be used to target university professors critical of the government, The Telegraph reported.

Addressing the Assembly after the bill was introduced, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari said that it would be used to give a “strong dose” to Jadavpur University teachers who were “brainwashing” students.

“You will take students from the hostel [to rallies],” The Telegraph quoted him as saying. “I have all the records of Jadavpur University Teachers Association. I have all the records of what you have done.”

The 2026 West Bengal Universities and Colleges Administration and Regulation Amendment Bill was introduced by Higher Education Minister Jagannath Chattopadhyay during a one-day special session of the Assembly.

The amendment adds Section 14A in the existing Act, allowing the chancellor, in consultation with the state government, to transfer an employee from one state university to another, under “any law made by the state legislature for administrative reasons”, The Indian Express reported.

Adhikari said that his government “does not care” if those opposing the bill called it “misuse of power”, The Telegraph reported.

“We have come to power for five years with a two-thirds majority,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “We shall keep advancing and shall grow from strength to strength. You will keep watching. We will do whatever is necessary.”

He added that those who opposed the transfer provision could “quit” and resort to shouting, “workers of the world, unite”.

He added: “This is the time to eradicate the seeds of Naxalism. If this means war, let there be a war. I hope you all are ready?”

Adhikari also said that the legislation would enable “so-called pundits” to be sent to newly established institutions that would benefit from their services, PTI reported.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Neither statehood nor a legislature was being considered for Ladakh, The Hindu quoted the Union territory’s Chief Secretary Ashish Kundra as saying on Thursday. Instead the region will be offered a unique body with legislative, executive and financial powers, Kundra said.

The bureaucrat said that the nomenclature of the proposed body had not been finalised and that discussions were underway.

“An agreement has been reached with the [Ladakhi] leadership here, a sui generis model, which does not exist anywhere in the country, will be crafted for Ladakh, where a legislative body will be created,” he told The Hindu.

However, the civil society groups leading the agitation seeking statehood for Ladakh said on Thursday that they were disappointed because the negotiations had not moved forward.

Until 2019, Ladakh was part of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. In August 2019, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government abrogated the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Constitution and bifurcated the state into two Union territories: Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.

Unlike Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh was made a Union territory without a legislature, fuelling concerns among the Ladakhi people about their land, natural resources and livelihoods. They also fear that the region’s cultural identity and fragile ecosystem are in danger.

By 2022, the residents had four demands: statehood for Ladakh, constitutional safeguards under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, separate Lok Sabha seats for Leh and Kargil districts and the rollout of a recruitment process and a separate Public Service Commission for Ladakh.

All of Ladakh currently has one Lok Sabha seat.

The Sixth Schedule guarantees protection to land and a degree of autonomy for the country’s tribal areas.

On Thursday, the chief secretary said that the proposal for an administrative body under Article 371 of the Constitution had been discussed with the Leh Apex Body and the Kargil Democratic Alliance, The Hindu reported. The two civil society groups have led the protests demanding statehood for Ladakh.

Article 371 deals with “temporary, transitional and special provisions” and allows decentralised governance, with a degree of administrative autonomy. It is applicable in 12 states including Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Sikkim.

The members of the civil society groups had agreed to a system of “direct election through constituencies” for the proposed body, the official said.

They have been given a list of questions to clarify doubts and to examine the details, including the distribution of powers between the proposed body and the existing hill councils, The Hindu quoted him as saying.

The next round of talks will be held in October.

Ladakh groups not satisfied

However, the Leh Apex Body and the Kargil Democratic Alliance said that there had been no progress on their core demands, The Indian Express reported. They said that there was no clarity about the powers the elected body would have, particularly in the area of law and order.

Activist Sonam Wangchuk said that the negotiations were cordial but had produced no substantive outcome, the newspaper reported.

Following the “in-principle understanding” the two sides had reached on May 22, the groups had expected a draft proposal on the constitutional safeguards under Article 371 to be provided to them during the meeting on Wednesday, Wangchuk was quoted as having said.

However, the meeting on Wednesday seemed to be “just a red herring” to distract Ladakh from the Leh to Kargil march that was to begin on Thursday, Wangchuk said on social media. “Trust is diminishing, distrust is growing unfortunately,” he added.

The groups said that they were planning to hold a march from September 19 to September 24 if the Union government did not provide a concrete proposal within a week.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read:

• How Ladakh’s proposed elected governance body can safeguard the region
• Why five new districts in Ladakh have led to fears of exclusion, gerrymandering

Following pushback from parties across the political spectrum, a school in Maharashtra’s Mira Road managed by the family of Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Narendra Mehta withdrew a circular asking students to avoid eating onions, garlic and potatoes during a Jain festival, The Indian Express reported on Friday.

The Seven Square Academy had issued the circular on September 8, asking parents to ensure that the students’ tiffins did not include root and tuber vegetables during the Jain holy month of Paryushana. The observance began on September 8 and will conclude on September 15.

The school had also said that the canteen would only serve food without onion, garlic and potato during the period.

‘Attack on Maharashtra’s dharma’

Political parties objected to the circular, with some describing it as an “attack on Maharashtra’s dharma”.

Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Sanjay Raut asked whether the “so-called champions of Hindu dharma” in the Devendra Fadnavis Cabinet agreed with the circular. “This incident is more horrific than love jihad!” Raut said on social media.

Love jihad is a Hindutva conspiracy theory that Muslim men trick Hindu women into romantic relationships with the aim of converting them to Islam. The Union home ministry has told Parliament that Indian law has no provision defining such a term.

Raut asked: “Will these very people decide whether the Marathi people of Mumbai can stay or not? Will these very people decide what to eat and what not to eat? Will they take over the Ganpati festival in Mumbai too?”

Has Maharashtra, “earned through the sacrifice of 106 Marathi people, been put up for auction?” Raut asked, referring to the deaths during an agitation in the late 1950s for a separate Marathi-speaking state.

मिरा रोड (Thane) येथील 'सेव्हन स्क्वेअर अकॅडमी' (Seven Square Academy) या शाळेने आपल्या पोर्टल व व्हॉट्सॲप ग्रुपद्वारे पालकांना एक परिपत्रक पाठवले ,त्यानुसार पर्युषण काळात (८ सप्टेंबर ते १६ सप्टेंबर) विद्यार्थ्यांनी डब्यात कांदा, लसूण, बटाटा किंवा बीट यांसारखे जमिनीखाली उगवणारे…

— Sanjay Raut (@rautsanjay61) September 10, 2026

The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena alleged that the circular was imposing a religious practice on students from other communities.

Robert D’Souza, the chief of the party’s students wing in the city, said that they had filed a complaint with the state education department seeking the cancellation of the school’s licence.

“A school is supposed to be a secular space for children to learn from each other’s culture and religion, rather than the school imposing one religion on every student...” The Indian Express quoted him as saying.

नरेंद्र मेहताची वसई विरार भागातील
नायगाव येथील सेव्हन स्क्वेर शाळा@lokmat @LoksattaLive @abpmajhatv @ANI @timesofindia @mid_day @Dev_Fadnavis pic.twitter.com/JaYz2rhVij

— मराठी एकीकरण समिती - Marathi Ekikaran Samiti (@ekikaranmarathi) September 9, 2026

State Minister Pratap Sarnaik, who is from Shiv Sena’s Eknath Shinde faction, also criticised the circular, asking BJP leaders to “also pay attention” to such matters.

“In a democracy, politics should not enter schools,” The Indian Express quoted Sarnaik as saying. “Religion, caste and creed should not come into educational institutions…such a fatwa being issued in Maharashtra is unfortunate.”

In Islamic law, a fatwa is a legal opinion or advisory on a matter.

The school’s circular was also widely criticised on social media.

Political commentator Raju Parulekar asked whether the demand was not “minority appeasement by the BJP, at the cost of Marathis, Bengalis and majority Indians”, citing West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari defending religious leader Dhirendra Shastri for his call for a meat ban during the Durga Puja festival.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The West Bengal Congress on Friday said that its leader Atanu Das has been arrested for holding a peaceful protest and burning the effigy of religious leader Dhirendra Shastri.

In a statement, state Congress chief Subhankar Sarkar condemned the arrest of Das on Thursday night and demanded his unconditional release.

This came hours after Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari said that he had ordered the arrest of those burning photographs of Shastri to protest against his call for a meat ban during the Durga Puja festival.

Sarkar said that the Opposition party’s fears had come true and that a “policy of repression by fascist forces has been unleashed” in West Bengal.

He asked why Shastri, the head of the Bageshwar Dham temple, had not been arrested for making “derogatory remarks” about Bengalis and “insulting” the state’s culture.

“Instead, those who are protesting peacefully and democratically to save Bengali culture and pride are having their democratic rights snatched away,” he said.

Das is the general secretary of Congress’ South Kolkata committee.

On Sunday, Shastri said that he does not like it when “dirty” non-vegetarian food is eaten during the Hindu festival and at gatherings linked to the celebration. Meat must not be sold near the goddess’ idol during the festival, he added. The festival will begin on October 6 and conclude on October 10 this year.

Among Bengali Hindus, eating meat during Durga Puja is common and animal sacrifice is also an important ritual for some in the community.

Shastri had called for these restrictions at a religious event at Liluah in Howrah. Adhikari, along with his Cabinet colleagues from the Bharatiya Janata Party, had met him and hosted a dinner for him on September 4.

The comments by Shastri had triggered a row in the state. Protests were held by Congress workers, with some persons reportedly burning photographs of Shastri outside the Bhawanipore police station in Kolkata.

On Tuesday, the Congress’ state unit filed police complaints against Shastri. In one of the complaints in Kolkata, the Congress accused Shastri of “hurting the sentiments” of Bengalis and insulting the state’s culture and traditions.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read: The illogic of meat bans

A Delhi court on Thursday framed money laundering charges against Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, his son Tejashwi Yadav and wife Rabri Devi in connection with alleged irregularities in the leasing of two Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation hotels, Live Law reported.

The court observed that during Lalu Yadav’s tenure as the railways minister between 2004 and 2009, officials allegedly manipulated a tender to award leases for hotels in Ranchi and Puri, the legal news outlet reported.

The directors of the companies that received the leases allegedly transferred a plot of land in Patna to Sarla Gupta, an associate of Lalu Yadav. Sarla Gupta later allegedly transferred her shares in the companies to Rabri Devi for a nominal amount.

Sarla Gupta and her husband Prem Chand Gupta, a former Union minister, have also been named as suspects in the case.

Special Judge Vishal Gogne of the Rouse Avenue Courts passed the order framing charges under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. Formal charges will be framed on October 3.

“There exists a strong suspicion of abuse of office and proceeds of crime in the hands of Rabri Devi and Tejashwi Yadav”, Live Law quoted the court as saying.

It added that the RJD leaders continued to enjoy a “tainted land” in Patna, which was transferred to them at the behest of Lalu Yadav.

The court also discharged seven suspects in the case.

In October 2025, the court had framed charges against Lalu Yadav, Tejashwi Yadav, Rabri Devi and 11 others in a corruption case filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation in connection with the same allegations.

They were charged with cheating and criminal conspiracy. Provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act were also invoked against them.

The CBI case

The CBI’s IRCTC case pertains to alleged irregularities in a tender awarded to a private company called Sujata Hotels to develop and operate two railway hotels in Ranchi and Puri in 2005, when Lalu Yadav was the railways minister.

In return, Lalu Yadav allegedly received a three-acre plot worth Rs 45 crore through a benami company owned by his wife Rabri Devi.

The term benami refers to a transaction or contract held or carried out in the name of someone other than the person who has financed it.

The CBI alleged that the plot was shown in official records as agricultural land, which caused losses to the state exchequer, as such property is exempt from certain taxes.

After Lalu Yadav demitted office in 2009, the shares of the benami company were transferred to Tejashwi Yadav and Rabri Devi between 2010 and 2014, the central agency alleged.

The CBI launched an investigation into the case in July 2017 and filed a chargesheet against Lalu Yadav, his wife and son, and 11 others in April 2018.

Tejashwi Yadav and his mother Rabri Devi were granted bail in the case in October 2018. Lalu Yadav was granted bail in January 2019.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Madhya Pradesh High Court on Wednesday sought a response from the state government on a public interest litigation about the deaths of more than 30 children in Balaghat district seemingly due to infectious diseases, PTI reported.

The petition was filed by Anshul Tiwari, a resident of Narsinghpur district, based on newspaper reports. The plea alleged that children were not receiving adequate medical care, with around 400 children being treated in a hospital that has only 50 beds.

Scroll reported on September 4 that at least 25 children from the Baiga and Gond tribes have died since May in Balaghat. For two months, the suspected measles-malaria outbreak went undetected because of the complete absence of a healthcare system in the remote Adivasi habitation.

A division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Vivek Rusia and Justice Pradeep Mittal has issued notices to the State Health Department, Women and Child Development Department, the Balaghat collector and others.

During the hearing last week, the court had observed that filing a PIL solely based on newspaper reports was not appropriate, PTI reported. It had asked the petitioner to visit the affected areas, verify the facts and submit a report.

On Wednesday, the petitioner submitted a report following his visit to the affected areas in Balaghat.

In the report, the petitioner alleged that handpumps in the affected areas were supplying yellow-coloured water, the news agency reported. It added that children and women in the area had not received nutritious food on time for months.

The petitioner also alleged that the area was plagued by poor sanitation and claimed that these conditions were causing infections and contributing to the continued deaths of children.

The report said that the administration took action only after more than 30 deaths, following which the number of hospital beds was increased and health, sanitation and cleanliness in the area were improved, PTI reported.

The case will next be heard on September 18.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read:

• For months, Adivasi children in Madhya Pradesh kept dying. The government woke up too late
• Behind deaths of Adivasi children in Balaghat: appalling vaccination levels, widespread hunger

When world leaders gathered in New Delhi for the G20 Summit in September 2023, the spectacle surrounding the event was impossible to miss. Under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the summit was celebrated as India’s grand arrival on the global stage. Streets were lined with banners, cultural motifs saturated the summit’s visual landscape, and official messaging projected India as the “voice of the Global South”.

Three years later, India is preparing to host the 2026 summit of BRICS, but there is a palpable contrast. Unlike the build-up to the G20, there is little of the expansive public mobilisation, symbolic messaging, or political fanfare that characterised 2023. Meanwhile, uncertainty continues to surround the summit-level meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, commonly known as the “Quad,” which was expected to take place in India this year.

At the same time, New Delhi has stepped back from hosting the 33rd Conference of Parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2028, despite having earlier expressed willingness to do so. These developments suggest a more selective approach to international summitry that is shaped by altered geopolitical circumstances and the limits of reproducing diplomatic spectacle indefinitely.

Political theatre

In a recent study, I show how multinational summits function as stages of political theatre. Unlike routine foreign policy, which is conducted through bureaucratic and technocratic channels away from public view, summit meetings place national leaders at the center of highly mediatised global events. Carefully curated public performances through images, speeches, handshakes, and hugs allow leaders to simultaneously project political authority and status before domestic and global audiences.

This performative dimension is especially attractive to populist leaders, whose politics rely heavily on spectacle, personalisation, and direct appeals to “the people.” Populism is understood not simply as an ideology, but as a political style enacted through symbolic performances and finely tuned public imagery. International summits amplify these tendencies. They allow populist leaders to embody the nation on the global stage, personalise foreign policy through leader-centric diplomacy, and project themselves as strong representatives of popular will confronting global elites and power hierarchies.

Using this framework, my research examined how Modi’s conduct during India’s G20 presidency combined three overlapping registers of populist performance: textual, visual, and participatory. Textually, speeches, slogans, and official messaging framed the world as facing a crisis of multilateralism while presenting India as a civilisational power capable of providing moral direction and stability. Modi also frequently used his personalised Mann ki Baat broadcasts to familiarise citizens with the summit and highlight its supposed benefits for Indian citizens.

Visually, the presidency was adorned with the widespread use of G20 branding, the lotus symbol, and Modi’s own image, alongside symbolic gestures such as the Akhand Bharat mural and the use of “Bharat” instead of “India” during the summit. At the participatory level, the summit was promoted as a “People’s Presidency” through the Jan Bhagidari campaign and nationwide outreach initiatives designed to turn diplomacy into a mass public experience. Through these modalities of populist articulation, Modi was able to project India’s growing international prominence and strengthen his domestic political image as the embodiment of popular will.

Diminishing returns

If the G20 demonstrated the political value of global summitry as spectacle, why has that model not been replicated for the upcoming BRICS meeting? And what explains India’s decision to withdraw from hosting COP33 despite showing interest earlier? The answer lies partly in the altered geopolitical environment between 2023 and 2026, but also in the selective logic of populist diplomacy itself.

The 2023 G20 Summit represented a fortuitous convergence of factors: a favorable international moment for India, heightened global attention toward New Delhi, and a form of political leadership attuned to spectacle and narrative projection. But such moments are difficult to reproduce indefinitely. Not all international forums lend themselves equally to political performance, and the symbolic returns of summit spectacle tend to diminish with repetition.

India occupied a particularly advantageous diplomatic position in 2023. Amid intensifying rivalry between the West and both China and Russia, India was being viewed by major powers as an indispensable partner. Its balancing position on the war in Ukraine, growing strategic relevance in the Indo-Pacific, and claim to represent the concerns of the developing world all elevated its international visibility. That position is harder to maintain today as the international environment has become more fragmented and uncertain.

The continuation of the war in Ukraine, a new one in West Asia, and the corresponding rivalries have narrowed the space for the optimistic bridge-building rhetoric that India successfully deployed during its G20 presidency. The language of the Global South, which carried considerable diplomatic resonance in 2023, has also become more diffuse.

At the same time, BRICS itself has become more internally heterogeneous following its expansion, with several of its constituent states finding themselves on opposite sides of the fence in the ongoing war in West Asia. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, meanwhile, remains strategically important but is a narrower and more security-oriented grouping, one less suited to expansive public mobilisation or broad civilisational messaging.

We also need to take into account that all international forums do not offer the same opportunities for political performance. The G20 was uniquely adaptable to spectacle because of its broad agenda, high visibility, and diverse audience. It enabled the projection of multiple narratives at once: India as a rising power, a civilisational state, and a spokesperson for the developing world. Forums such as BRICS or the Quad operate within narrower strategic confines, while climate negotiations under the UNFCCC impose a different kind of constraint altogether. Climate summits are heavily technical, negotiation-intensive, and tied to measurable commitments. They generate scrutiny as much as symbolism. Hosting such forums carries reputational risks if expectations are not met, making them less conducive to the political projection of the leaders involved.

Although New Delhi did not provide a detailed public explanation for abandoning its plans – beyond citing a review of commitments for 2028 – there seems to be a realisation that hosting a COP entails a rise in expectations regarding mitigation commitments, energy transition targets, and climate financing. Such pressures sit uneasily with its long-standing emphasis on equity, climate justice, and domestically determined developmental pathways rather than externally driven benchmarks of climate ambition. By stepping back from summit stewardship, India may be seeking to avoid intense international scrutiny of its continued reliance on coal and its broader developmental priorities.

Having said that, India’s withdrawal should not be interpreted as a retreat from climate diplomacy or global environmental governance. In recent years, New Delhi has actively sought to position itself as an agenda-setter and representative voice of the Global South in climate politics through initiatives such as the International Solar Alliance, the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure, and its emphasis during the G20 New Delhi Summit 2023 on themes such as sustainable lifestyles and climate justice. The decision to withdraw from hosting COP33, therefore, appears less as a repudiation of climate leadership than a recalibration in order to avoid heightened scrutiny.

There is also the logic of diminishing returns at play. Spectacle derives much of its power from novelty and exceptionalism. Attempting to replicate the same intensity around every summit risks diluting its political effect. Overperformance can gradually turn spectacle into routine, blunting its emotional and symbolic resonance.

Spectacle or substance

India’s recent experiences with summitry offer a useful lens through which to think about the relationship between diplomacy and political performance. International summits have always involved elements of symbolism, image-building, and political theatre.

However, the contrast between the spectacle of the 2023 G20 Summit and the quieter politics surrounding subsequent forums highlights that there are limits to turning multilateralism into permanent political theatre. Even though increased public visibility through summitry can help generate attention, legitimacy, and momentum for international initiatives, challenges arise when symbolic projection becomes an end in itself rather than a vehicle for advancing cooperation.

As summitry becomes more performative in the age of media-driven populism, the importance of behind-the-scenes diplomacy is likely to grow because technical negotiations, institutional backchannels, and sustained bureaucratic engagement remain the real backbone of international cooperation. Grand spectacles may capture public imagination, but durable diplomacy is still shaped away from the cameras.

Abhinandan Kumar is a Doctoral Candidate at the Department of International Relations, Jadavpur University, Kolkata.

The Congress government in Karnataka has ordered that only the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram be sung at official programmes and functions, except those attended by the president, vice president, prime minister or governor, PTI reported.

On January 28, the Union home ministry directed that all six stanzas of the Vande Mataram be sung first when it is played together with the national anthem Jana Gana Mana.

Only the first two stanzas of the national song had been played at official functions earlier. The remaining stanzas, which invoke Hindu goddesses Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati, had been omitted.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has long alleged that the Congress had agreed to drop the four stanzas to “appease Muslims”.

On August 19, The Congress said that the party would sing only the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram at its functions, citing a Congress Working Committee resolution from 1937.

In December, Prime Minister Narendra Modi criticised the Congress in Parliament, alleging that Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, had supported Muhammad Ali Jinnah in opposing Vande Mataram when the resolution was adopted because it could “irritate Muslims”.

In August, the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Amendment Act, which criminalises insults to the national song, came into effect.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit India for the first time in nearly seven years to attend the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on September 12 and September 13, China’s foreign ministry said on Thursday.

The visit comes as India-China relations have seen a thaw since 2024, following years of tensions over a military standoff in Ladakh.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh said that it will not send a government representative to the summit.

Xi last visited India in October 2019, when he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Tamil Nadu’s Mamallapuram. The two leaders are now expected to meet on the sidelines of the BRICS summit.

The BRICS grouping comprises India, Brazil, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates.

Border tensions between India and China escalated in June 2020 when a violent face-off between Indian and Chinese soldiers took place in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley along the Line of Actual Control. It led to the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers. Beijing said that the clash left four of its soldiers dead.

Following the military face-off, both countries deployed thousands of soldiers along with heavy artillery in the region. China and India held several rounds of military and diplomatic talks to resolve their border standoff.

In October 2024, the two countries announced that they had reached a patrolling arrangement along the Line of Actual Control, “leading to the disengagement” of the two militaries in eastern Ladakh.

In July 2025, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that relations between India and China were “steadily improving” and called for the continued normalisation of bilateral ties.

‘Bangladesh won’t attend the summit’: Foreign minister

Dhaka will not send a government representative to the BRICS Summit as Prime Minister Tarique Rahman was “not invited” to the meeting, The Daily Star quoted Foreign Minister Humaiun Kobir as saying on Thursday.

However, Bangladesh has received two invitations from India. One is from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a bilateral visit, while the other is for Rahman, in his capacity as chairperson of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation to attend the BRICS summit.

Bangladesh assumed the chairmanship of BIMSTEC in April 2025 for a two-year term. The regional grouping comprises Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

On Thursday Kobir said: “How shall we go? Has anyone from the Bangladesh government been invited?...Our prime minister was not invited. The BIMSTEC chair was invited.”

The developments came as Bangladesh and India continued discussions over a possible visit by Rahman amid Dhaka’s repeated demands for the extradition of ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

On August 16, Dhaka said that a “propitious” environment needs to be created before any top-level visit and urged India to expedite Hasina’s extradition.

The neighbouring countries have had strained relations since massive student-led protests erupted in Bangladesh in July 2024 against a controversial quota scheme for government jobs and later snowballed into a broader agitation against Hasina’s government. Her government was eventually brought down, forcing her to flee to India.

In November, Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal sentenced Hasina to death for crimes against humanity in connection with the deadly crackdown on protesters in 2024. In February, a court sentenced her to 10 years’ imprisonment in two corruption cases relating to alleged irregularities in the allocation of land in a government housing project in Dhaka.

Besides demanding that Hasina be extradited, Dhaka has also expressed concerns about the ousted leader being allowed by the Indian authorities to address her supporters from Delhi.

New Delhi has previously said that it was for Hasina to decide whether she wants to return to Bangladesh.

Rahman took office in February and has since visited Malaysia and China, departing from the tradition of Bangladeshi leaders heading to India for their first overseas trip.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit India for the first time in nearly seven years to attend the 18th BRICS Summit, China’s foreign ministry confirmed. The summit will be held in New Delhi on September 12 and September 13.

Xi is expected to meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the summit. The visit comes as India-China ties have improved since 2024, following years of tension over the military standoff in eastern Ladakh.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh foreign minister said that Dhaka will not send a government representative to the summit, as Prime Minister Tarique Rahman was “not invited”. India has reportedly invited Rahman to attend the summit as chairperson of BIMSTEC and for a bilateral visit. Read on.

West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari directed the police to arrest those who burned photographs of religious leader Dhirendra Shastri during protests against his remarks on meat consumption during Durga Puja. Adhikari said that the “saint” had only expressed his views and not imposed them on anyone.

Shastri, the head of the Bageshwar Dham temple, had on Sunday had asked Hindus not to consume “dirty” non-vegetarian food during Durga Puja. He had also said that meat should not be sold near Durga idols during the festival.

His remarks had triggered a row in the Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled state, where eating meat during the festival is common among Hindus. Read on.

The United States’ Department of Homeland Security has drawn criticism for a social media post telling “Mr Singh” to “get off our roads” and accusing him of not knowing how to drive. Politicians and members of the Indian diaspora criticised the post as racist.

The artificial intelligence-generated image accompanying the post showed a brown-skinned man facing Transformers character Optimus Prime and carried the text: “Self-deport or find out.” Critics said that the post stereotyped people based on their surname and appearance.

The Hindu American Foundation and Coalition of Hindus of North America called for an investigation, while a Sikh-American politician in Michigan described it as “xenophobia dressed up as public policy”. Read on.

The National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, has reversed its decision to cancel the convocation for its 2026 graduating batch. Chief Justice Surya Kant will attend the ceremony, which will be held on October 17.

The event, originally scheduled for September 12 was cancelled amid opposition from more than 700 students and alumni to Kant and Bar Council of India Chairperson Manan Kumar Mishra being invited.

Students had objected to Kant’s attendance over his remarks during a hearing on alleged police excesses against protesters in Delhi. They had also criticised the Bar Council’s now-withdrawn action against NALSAR students who opposed Kant’s participation in their convocation. Read on.

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Chief Justice Surya Kant will attend the convocation of the National Law School of India University in Bengaluru on October 17, after the decision to cancel the ceremony was reversed, Bar and Bench reported on Thursday.

On August 27, the university said that it had cancelled the convocation for the batch, originally planned for September 12, citing “unavoidable circumstances”. The decision came amid opposition from more than 700 students and alumni to Kant and Bar Council of India Chairperson Manan Kumar Mishra attending the ceremony.

Students and alumni had objected to Kant’s attendance over his remarks during a hearing on alleged police excesses against protesters in Delhi. They had also opposed the Bar Council’s now-withdrawn directive against students of the National Law University in Hyderabad after they campaigned against the chief justice’s participation in their convocation.

The proposal to hold the event in October was approved by the college’s executive council and general council on Wednesday. The meeting was chaired by Kant in his capacity as the university’s chancellor, The Hindu reported.

In August, the students from the National Law School of India University had also condemned the Bar Council of India’s now-withdrawn action against the outgoing National Academy of Legal Studies and Research batch and demanded an unconditional apology from the regulatory body.

The statement had expressed solidarity with NALSAR students and faculty over two letters issued by the council on August 13. The council had directed state bar councils to defer the enrolment of NALSAR’s graduating batch as advocates, objecting to a campaign by some students against the university’s decision to invite Kant to its convocation.

The student’s stand

The council withdrew the directive a few hours later, but said that it had sought an inquiry report from NALSAR identifying those who were “principally instrumental” in opposing Kant’s participation in the convocation.

Later in the night, the council closed all proceedings against the students, saying it was satisfied that the 2026 batch had no role in any “disturbance or movement”.

NALSAR had invited the chief justice for the upcoming convocation despite students urging the university to reconsider the decision, citing Kant’s response to a petition alleging that the police had used excessive force against protesters in Delhi on July 20.

On July 22, a bench headed by the chief justice refused to urgently hear a petition about police excesses against protesters. “Don’t waste our time and don’t waste your time,” Kant had been quoted as having told the petitioners at the time.

When the lawyer for the petitioners said that he could present video evidence of the police excesses, the chief justice had said the bench was “not interested” in watching them.

Referring to the remarks, the students had told the university authorities that it did not sit right to receive their degrees from a dignitary whose recent public conduct appeared dismissive of serious allegations of police brutality against protesting citizens.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Also read: Bar councils do not have power to punish law students, rules Supreme Court

West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Thursday said that those burning photographs of religious leader Dhirendra Shastri to protest against his call for a meat ban during the Durga Puja festival should be arrested, The Hindu reported.

Adhikari said that Shastri was only sharing his views and not imposing them on anyone.

On Sunday, Shastri, the head of the Bageshwar Dham temple, said that he does not like it when “dirty” non-vegetarian food is eaten during the Hindu festival and at gatherings linked to the celebration. Meat must not be sold near the goddess’ idol during the festival, he added. The festival will begin on October 6 and conclude on October 10 this year.

Among Bengali Hindus, eating meat during Durga Puja is common and animal sacrifice is also an important ritual for some in the community.

Shastri had called for these restriction at a religious event at Liluah in Howrah. Adhikari, along with his Cabinet colleagues from the Bharatiya Janata Party, had met him and hosted a dinner for him on Friday.

The comments by Shastri had triggered a row in the state. Protests were held by Congress workers, with some persons reportedly burning photographs of Shastri outside the Bhawanipore police station in Kolkata, The Hindu reported.

Kolkata, West Bengal: Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari says, "... Think five times and not once before insulting the word Saffron. And to insult the society of Sadhu's and Sant's. I was seeing that a sant had come from Liluah... I have seen few people burning photos in front of… pic.twitter.com/IskvwMKWHw

— IANS (@ians_india) September 10, 2026

On Tuesday, the Congress’ West Bengal unit filed police complaints against Shastri. In one of the complaints in Kolkata, the Congress accused Shastri of “hurting the sentiments” of Bengalis and insulting the state’s culture and traditions.

The Trinamool Congress had also said on Monday that Bengalis “will not let go” if somebody tries to dictate what they eat or celebrate as part of their festival.

Amid the row, BJP state chief Samik Bhattacharya had said on Monday that Shastri comes from “another world” and Bengalis should not be concerned about his remarks.

“[Shastri] has no right to decide what the people of Bengal will eat and what not,” NDTV quoted Bhattacharya as saying. “Bengalis will eat fish and meat. We have great respect for [Shastri], but Bengalis should not be concerned about his comment.”

Speaking in the Assembly on Thursday, Adhikari directed the police commissioner to arrest those who had burnt the photographs of Shastri, The Hindu reported.

“A saint had come to Liluah, he spoke like a saint about nationalism, Akhand Bharat and on culture,” the newspaper quoted Adhikari as saying. “Those who want to accept will accept, and those who do not want will not. He did not impose it on anyone.”

“Akhand Bharat” is a concept espoused by Hindutva supporters envisaging that neighbouring countries Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka would become part of India.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

• The illogic of meat bans
• Have attacks on ‘Anandabazar Patrika’ proven its ‘saffron hooliganism’ headline right?

The Delhi High Court on Thursday verbally remarked that it was not correct for Cockroach Janta Party leaders Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka to post information about Bharatiya Janata Party leader Gaurav Bhatia on social media without verifying it, Live Law reported. The bench suggested that they remove the posts voluntarily.

The court was hearing Bhatia’s two crore defamation suit against Das, Ranka and Cockroach Janta Party founder Abhijeet Dipke.

The suit pertained to an image shared by Das and Ranka on social media platform X on September 5, following the arrest of Swatantra Bhardwaj, a Hindutva influencer accused of assaulting the father of a student activist during the youth protests at Jantar Mantar.

Bhatia alleged that the post was an artificial intelligence-generated image that falsely attributed statements to him, claiming that he had described Bhardwaj as a “dimaagi naxali” and “jaatiwaadi”, or casteist, Live Law reported.

The court observed that “there are different ways of protesting” and told the Cockroach Janta Party leaders that they “are all youngsters” who may have anxieties but stressed that “attacking like this without verifying” was not correct.

It added that if Das and Ranka were willing to delete the posts on their own, the court would not pass a takedown order.

The counsel appearing for Das said that his post had already been deleted.

The court noted that there was no allegation against Dipke in the suit.

It also verbally observed that the BJP leader could have explored other ways of resolving the matter, such as approaching the defendants directly, instead of filing a case.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Allahabad High Court stayed a first information report registered against a journalist for reporting the alleged poor infrastructure in a government school in Lucknow, The Indian Express reported on Thursday.

In its order passed on Tuesday, the court observed that the state’s action appeared to be an “ego issue” and a retaliatory move amounting to “killing the messenger”.

A bench of Justices Abdul Moin and Pramod Kumar Srivastava noted that the government was legally obligated under the Right to Education Act, 2009, to ensure compliance with prescribed standards in schools, the newspaper reported.

It said that the authorities should have addressed the deficiencies pointed out by the journalist and worked towards rectifying them, rather than viewing his report as an “ego issue” and registering an FIR against him.

The court was hearing a petition filed by journalist Amit Yadav challenging the FIR registered against him on August 24 at Gosaiganj police station in Lucknow under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.

The petition said that Yadav had visited Purva Madhyamik Vidyalaya in Gosaiganj on August 20 as part of his work as a reporter. He claimed in his report that the school was poorly maintained, with dirty toilets and no drinking water, among other problems.

An case was later filed against him, claiming that the school was in excellent condition and that its toilets were clean, The Indian Express reported. According to the FIR, Yadav entered the school without permission, disturbed the students’ classes and pressured two women teachers to speak about the school’s condition. The FIR also claimed that his report was driven by political bias.

The bench observed that the photographs submitted before it prima facie showed the “abysmal condition” of the school’s toilets and premises.

It also directed the Uttar Pradesh additional chief secretary for basic education to file a personal affidavit in four weeks on the school’s current condition, PTI reported.

In a social media post, Yadav thanked the High Court and said that the order was a “victory of truth over lies”.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Bombay High Court on Wednesday said that the “casual approach” of the police in investigating the case against members of the Shiv Sena’s Eknath Shinde faction who assaulted medical staff and vandalised a private hospital in Maharashtra’s Palghar was unacceptable, PTI reported.

A bench of Justices AS Gadkari and Kamal Khata said that the Palghar Police had not carried out any investigation in the case.

The matter pertains to the alleged assault and vandalism at Relief Hospital on the intervening night of September 5 and September 6. Several workers of the Shinde Sena allegedly entered the hospital, where some persons who had been injured while participating in Dahi Handi celebrations were undergoing treatment.

During Dahi Handi celebrations, revellers form human pyramids to break an earthen pot filled with curd. Some revellers sustain injuries fr falling from the pyramids.

The workers claimed that the hospital was charging excessive fees. They allegedly threatened doctors, assaulted staff members and forcibly took away the injured persons admitted to the intensive care unit.

Two days after the violence, Shinde suspended the party’s Palghar chief Rahul Gharat and announced that he would be expelled from the outfit, the Hindustan Times reported. The deputy chief minister said his party “does not and will never condone violence against doctors or any healthcare professional”.

On Wednesday, the court was hearing a suo motu petition concerning an assault at a civic hospital in Thane in July, in which Shiv Sena corporator Ramesh Mhatre is an accused, PTI reported. During the hearing, a lawyer mentioned the Palghar incident before the court.

The bench said that the police had not learnt anything from the Thane hospital assault case.

“This reflects on your inefficiencies,” PTI quoted the court as saying. “This is a sensitive case where a hospital has been vandalised, staffers were assaulted and doctors were threatened.”

Palghar Superintendent of Police Yatish Deshmukh told the High Court that one of the 10 persons named in the first information report, Rahul Gharat, had been arrested and was in police custody.

The other nine accused remain absconding, he said.

The court verbally remarked that it was because of the police’s “laxity” that the accused were absconding, PTI reported.

The court also said that it would hand over the investigation to the Mumbai Police Crime Branch if the Palghar police failed to properly investigate the case.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The names of Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani and brokerage platform Zerodha’s Nikhil Kamath and Nithin Kamath were flagged for discrepancies by the Election Commission as part of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Karnataka, The Hindu reported on Thursday.

Nilekani’s family, including his wife and two children, were classified as “unmapped with last SIR”, The Indian Express reported. This classification applies to voters who were not part of the 2002 electoral rolls.

Nikhil Kamath, Nithin Kamath and their mother Revathi Kamath have all been flagged for a “parents’ name mismatch” in the Bangalore South Assembly constituency, The Hindu reported.

The names of more than one crore voters were removed from Karnataka’s draft list published on August 24 as part of SIR. The excluded names amount to 19.4% of the state’s electorate.

The poll panel had said at the time that notices will be sent to 43 lakh persons whose enumeration forms either had anomalies or those who had not been mapped.

The claims and objections by voters against their removal from the draft list can be filed between August 24 and September 23. The appeals will be heard by October 22, before the final electoral roll is published on October 27.

Officials will visit prominent citizens and very important persons at their homes so that they do not have to go to the hearing centres, The Hindu quoted state chief electoral officer’s office as saying. The arrangement will also be made for elderly voters and persons with disabilities.

Karnataka is among the 19 states and Union Territories where the voter roll revision is being carried out in the third phase of SIR.

In 2025, the first phase of the exercise was conducted in Bihar. It was extended to 12 states and Union Territories in the second phase in late 2025 and the first half of 2026.

Since it began, concerns have been raised that the revision could eliminate genuine voters from the rolls and even shape electoral outcomes, as Scroll has reported.

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

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a petition filed by gangster Abu Salem seeking early release from prison in the 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blasts case, Bar and Bench reported.

Salem had contended that the remission he had earned for good conduct and undertrial custody should be counted toward the computation of his 25-year jail sentence, after completion of which he would be eligible for early release.

Remission is the reduction of the duration of a prison sentence without changing its nature, allowing for earlier release.

In September 2017, a special court under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Prevention Act in Mumbai sentenced Salem to life imprisonment for his role in the blasts that killed more than 250 persons.

He had been extradited from Portugal in November 2005.

Salem’s petition centred around the terms of the extradition treaty between India and Portugal under which he would have to be released on completion of 25 years in jail.

He had argued that the remission for good conduct and the undertrial custody amounts to more than three years, which needed to be set off against his full sentence. Based on this, Salem contended that he had completed his 25-year term by March 31, 2025.

The Maharashtra government maintained that Salem had not completed 25 years.

In February, the Supreme Court had declined to entertain Salem’s plea, and asked him to approach the Bombay High Court.

In April, the High Court rejected the petition, saying that it did not appear that the gangster had completed the 25-year jail term. Salem had challenged this decision in the Supreme Court.

The case

In June 2017, the special Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Prevention Act court had found Salem and five others guilty of conspiring and carrying out a series of bomb blasts across Mumbai in 1993, which killed more than 250 persons.

Salem was convicted for offences punishable under sections of the Indian Penal Code, the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Prevention Act, the Arms Act, the Explosive Substances Act and the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act.

Salem had transported and distributed arms and ammunition used in the blast, according to the prosecution.

In September 2017, the special court had sentenced Salem to life imprisonment.

In December 2002, the Union government issued a gazette notification under the 1962 Extradition Act, directing that its provisions would apply to the Portuguese government.

LK Advani, the deputy prime minister at the time, had assured Portugal that New Delhi would exercise its powers conferred by Indian laws to ensure that if extradited for trial in India, Salem would not be given a death penalty or imprisonment for a term beyond 25 years.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

A social media post by the United States’ Department of Homeland Security that said “Mr Singh does not know how to drive” drew flak online, with politicians and Indian diaspora groups criticising it for being racist.

The post on social media platform X on Wednesday had an artificial intelligence-generated poster featuring Transformers character Optimus Prime and a brown man staring at each other. “Self-deport or find out”, read the image.

“America for Americans,” the poster said. “Get off our roads, you don't know how to drive Mr Singh.”

The appearance of the man in the image was similar to that of an Indian-origin truck driver arrested in Florida in August 2025 for a crash that killed three persons.

The post had been viewed more than 4.2 million times as of 12 noon Indian time on Thursday, with more than a thousand reposts. It was posted as a reply to a video by the department itself urging people to report allegedly undocumented migrants living in the US.

The North American Punjabi Truckers Association estimates that between 1,30,000 to 1,50,000 drivers from Punjab and Haryana are employed in the trucking sector in the United States.

‘Xenophobia dressed up as public policy’

The post was criticised by politicians in India and the US and Indian diaspora groups.

Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra said that the US department was telling Indian Punjabis that they do not know how to drive, in what she described as a racist advertisement.

Moitra urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to “bring this up” with US President Donald Trump “now that you dropped UAPA charges against Anti-India US mercenary Matt Van Dyke”.

The TMC leader was referring to the National Investigation Agency on Tuesday only accusing seven foreigners, including a US citizen, who had been arrested in March, for immigration violations and not charging them under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, under which they had been held. The persons had been arrested for alleged links to ethnic armed groups in Myanmar that are hostile to India.

“You don’t know how to drive Mr. Singh!” US Dept of Homeland Security tells Indian Punjabis in racist ad. @narendramodi pls bring this up with Fraand Doland now that you dropped UAPA charges against Anti-India US mercenary Matt Van Dyke pic.twitter.com/zRtnc86NMe

— Mahua Moitra (@MahuaMoitra) September 10, 2026

Ranjeev Puri, the leader of the Democrats in the Michigan House of Representatives, said that he was a proud Sikh-American and that his middle name is Singh.

“It [the name Singh] is not a punchline, it is a surname carried proudly by millions of Sikhs worldwide, generations of whom have served this nation, built businesses and strengthened the fabric of democracy,” he said in a statement.

“When an official government agency mocks people for their name, their faith, or how they look, that is not strength,” he said. “It is xenophobia dressed up as public policy.”

He added that such rhetoric divides the US and distracts from the real challenges Americans need Washington to solve.

As a proud Sikh-American, my middle name is Singh. My response to the vile post by the Department of Homeland Security. https://t.co/cmbSwSOjwa pic.twitter.com/cwa9xxJHS4

— Ranjeev Puri (@RanjeevPuri) September 10, 2026

The Hindu American Foundation, a non-profit that says it advocates for Hindus in the US, said that Singhs are Hindu, Sikhs and American, “and they drive”.

The “racist, un-American, anti-Indian profiling/trolling” by the homeland security department “should shock our nation’s collective conscience”, it said on social media.

The organisation called for an investigation, saying that it was a “discriminatory post by a federal agency that is far beyond political messaging”.

Another advocacy group, the Coalition of Hindus of North America, said that while the law must be enforced, communities as a whole should not be caricatured. The group said that dangerous drivers come from all backgrounds, ethnicities, faiths and last names.

“Singling out some last names does nothing for safe streets, but it does endanger the safety of hundreds of thousands of Americans with names like Singh and Kumar,” it said on social media.

“When an official US government handle shows a brown person as ‘foreign’ and ‘un-American’, it becomes open season to target Hindus and Indian Americans - including those who are legal residents and citizens,” the group said.

Stop stigmatising millions of law-abiding Hindu, Sikh and Indian-Americans, it added.

Several other social media users criticised the post, saying that it had gone too far. “Stand up for Sikhs and this blatant misuse of Singh name as a target for an attack,” said one user.

Deportations by Trump administration

In recent months, several incidents have been reported in which truck drivers of Indian origin in the US were arrested and charged in connection with fatal crashes involving commercial vehicles.

The arrests also came amid a broader immigration crackdown under Trump’s second term which began in January 2025.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been implementing the Trump administration’s large-scale deportation programme, which was a major poll promise of his campaign ahead of the elections.

More than 3,500 Indian citizens were deported from the US in 2025 and over 1,100 in 2026, the Union government informed Parliament in June.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read:

• ‘Anti-Hindu’ crimes remain low in US, but MAGA hostility against Indians is growing
• US uses Taj Mahal poster to promote $2,600 incentive for undocumented migrants to ‘self-deport’

Political commentator Kumar Nayan has approached the Delhi High Court against the blocking of his account “@Nehr_who” on social media platform X in India at the Union government’s directions, Live Law reported.

Nayan has alleged that the satirical account was blocked by the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcast for allegedly objectionable posts without providing him with the blocking order, reason or supporting documents.

The commentator has contended that the blocking of his account violates his right to equality, right to practice any profession, his freedom of speech and personal liberty. The account had more than 2.5 lakh followers when it was withheld.

Nayan said in his plea that the platform informed him on July 27 that it was enforcing a blocking order from the ministry under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act.

The law allows an authorised official in the Union government, not below the rank of a joint secretary, to send content removal orders to social media platforms if the content is deemed to threaten national security, sovereignty or public order.

The ministry had on July 28 issued notice proposing to block the account and supplied a list of links allegedly relied upon for the action, Live Law reported. However, Nayan contended that the order that blocked his account was not provided to him, even during the inter-departmental committee proceedings on August 7.

The committee reviews and recommends the blocking of online content under the Information Technology Rules.

“@Nehr_who” was also among 12 accounts blocked in a previous instance on March 18.

On April 6, the High Court ordered that Nayan’s account, along with that of another political commentator, be restored. However, it said that the allegedly objectionable posts mentioned in the blocking order should remain withheld.

Nayan had been directed to appear before a review committee of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology at the time to examine whether his posts will have to continue to be blocked.

In his plea, Nayan has alleged that despite the court’s direction, he was never provided the March blocking order, Live Law reported. He has also contended that the July blocking order cannot be viewed in isolation and amounts to successive restrictions on his medium of expression.

The commentator has sought directions for the supply of documents pertaining to the blocking of his account and the quashing of orders withholding the profile.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read: Shifting viewership and Centre’s fresh attempt to control news online

In 1972, community organiser Ela Bhatt and a group of women met at Ahmedabad’s Victoria Garden to discuss the conditions in which self-employed women worked. That meeting led to the formation of the Self-Employed Women’s Association, or SEWA, which became one of India’s most significant labour organisations.

Ahmedabad’s public spaces have never just been places to pass the time: since the freedom struggle, they have hosted many important gatherings meant to organise, debate and build political movements.

That history makes the attack on a reading gathering at AUDA Garden in Vastrapur on August 27 particularly revealing. A group of people had gathered to read books including Anne Frank’s diary, Malala Yousafzai’s I Am Malala, Bhagat Singh’s Why I Am an Atheist and George Orwell’s 1984. Members of the Bajrang Dal disrupted the gathering and assaulted some of those present.

The organisation later said its objection was directed at Yousafzai, citing her views on Pakistan and Kashmir. The incident followed a controversy at a school in the city, where members of the Bajrang Dal and Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad – Hindutva groups under the umbrella of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh – objected to the inclusion of I Am Malala and Anne Frank’s diary in the school’s reading programme.

The school eventually made the books optional and ended the contract of the consultant who had been involved in developing its curriculum.

Hindutva supporters have presented the argument about the books as though this were a dispute over curriculum. That isn’t particularly convincing. The school has said that the books were part of an optional book club rather than the compulsory curriculum. Yet, a reading list containing two internationally recognised books became a political controversy, and the response to protest outside the school and pressure the institution until it changed its position instead of examining the books through an educational process.

Ahmedabad Mirror, 28 August, 2026.
Activists??? VHP and Bajrang Dal goons attacked, silent book reading citizens, with deadly weapons, abused and terrorise them in a public park. pic.twitter.com/v5XIBPnsdc

— Nirjhari Sinha (@NirjhariSinha) August 28, 2026

More revealingly, the objection reported by The Times of India was that the books were associated with people of “other religions”. The books were turned into proxies for their authors’ identities and the school was pressured to treat those identities as a legitimate reason to restrict what children could read. Those objecting to these books were identifying a Muslim author and a Jewish author as politically suspect and then using (dis)organised pressure to determine whether children should encounter their work.

This was not the first instance of an educational institution in Ahmedabad being confronted by political muscle.

In 2018, historian Ramachandra Guha was appointed at Ahmedabad University and was expected to direct its Gandhi Winter School. The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, protested almost immediately, threatening violence. Guha, noted for his scholarship on Gandhi, eventually did not join the university.

In March 2020, at IIM Ahmedabad, a doctoral thesis on electoral democracy attracted the attention of Bharatiya Janata Party politician Subramanian Swamy because it explored how the Hindutva organisation mobilises around caste and religion. Swamy took to X to target the young scholar, a woman, and her advisor (who was then the director of the institute). Both were harassed and subjected to vitriol for months after that.

In April 2020, the Union education ministry subsequently asked IIM Ahmedabad for a copy of the thesis but the institute denied the request. Again, political actors considered themselves entitled to intervene in what was being produced and circulated as academic research.

On August 14, Bajrang Dal members led by Hiren Rabari allegedly entered Anand Niketan School in Shilaj, Ahmedabad, by jumping over the gates and breaking a lock, objecting to books including "I Am Malala" and "The Diary of a Young Girl," which they called “anti-Hindu."

The… pic.twitter.com/StauNNitWG

— Maktoob (@MaktoobMedia) August 25, 2026

At Gujarat University in 2024, outstation students were attacked in their hostel after a group objected to them offering namaz during Ramzan. Students were injured, rooms and vehicles were vandalised, and the incident resulted in criminal cases.

These incidents are a part of a history of political and religious organisations claiming the authority to decide what is acceptable in Ahmedabad’s schools, universities and public spaces.

In April 2002, shortly after the Gujarat riots, a peace meeting at Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram was attacked by a mob protesting the presence of activist Medha Patkar, whose Narmada Bachao Andolan had opposed the Sardar Sarovar dam that is one of the state’s signature projects. Patkar was surrounded and threatened, journalists covering the meeting were assaulted, and participants were manhandled.

News reports described police as initially standing by before eventually intervening. The irony of a peace meeting being attacked inside Gandhi's ashram was not lost on anyone, but the incident was significant for another reason: the people holding the meeting had chosen the Ashram because threats had already forced them to abandon another venue.

Ahmedabad has never had a straightforward relationship with the idea of a common public.

The Sabarmati Riverfront is a clear example of this pattern. Its development in 2012 was framed as the reclamation and beautification of public space, but the project displaced thousands of people who had lived and worked along the river. Research on the completed riverfront has also found that parts of this new public space are privately managed, with guards preventing street vendors and squatters from using the promenades.

Ahmedabad’s parks are part of this same dynamic. The city now has hundreds of municipal parks and gardens, but public space is about more than whether everyone is allowed in. It is also about whether a group of young people can gather there, whether someone can pray there, whether people can hold a political discussion, whether a Muslim woman can sit there without becoming conspicuous and whether a group can read books that someone else considers politically offensive without being confronted by a mob.

The Disturbed Areas Act is a more formal expression of this anxiety. Introduced in Gujarat in 1991 in the aftermath of communal violence, the law was intended to prevent distress sales and protect people from being forced out of areas affected by communal tensions.

However, over time, it has reinforced religious segregation in Ahmedabad by restricting certain property transfers between members of different communities. What began as a protective measure has become part of the machinery by which the city’s communal geography is maintained.

There is extensive research on how this segregation affects access to housing, public space and everyday mobility. If a neighbourhood has become religiously segregated through decades of violence, fear and displacement, then preventing people from changing that demographic composition can be justified as necessary to preserve communal harmony. Segregation creates the condition to justify maintaining segregation.

The Gujarat government expanded this framework in 2026, changing the terminology from “disturbed areas” to “specified areas”, giving authorities wider powers over property transactions.

Earlier this year, the Gujarat High Court struck down an order preventing a Hindu-owned property in Jamalpur from being sold to the Muslim family that had rented it for decades. One of the concerns about the transaction had been its potential effect on the religious composition of the area. The court rejected the idea that demographic change could simply be treated as sufficient reason to block a property transaction.

The connection between the Disturbed Areas Act and the mob in the Vastrapur park is not direct. One relates to who can buy property in a neighbourhood. The other relates to what people can do in a park. But both become easier to understand in a city where communal identity has already been allowed to determine so much of the physical and social landscape.

There is an irony in this happening in Ahmedabad, a city with such a strong history of political organising and public debate. The women who met in Victoria Garden in 1972 were using the public space available to them to organise around their own interests. That is what public space is supposed to make possible: people who do not necessarily have institutional power finding each other, talking, reading, organising.

Now, the question is about what kind of public life Ahmedabad is willing to permit.

Saachi D’Souza is a writer and editor from Goa, working on reportage, essays and fiction on culture, identity, and politics.

The Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration has suspended the licences of three food outlets at the International Society for Krishna Consciousness’ Juhu campus in Mumbai, The Hindu reported on Wednesday.

The licence of an Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation-linked kitchen in the city was also suspended after inspectors found live cockroaches in the food storage and processing areas. They also found that food was being prepared near open garbage, the newspaper reported.

The action came amid a statewide drive by the administration against eateries and other establishments for alleged violations of food safety norms.

The inspection at ISKCON’s Hare Krishna Land in Juhu was conducted on September 3. The inspectors found that the storage areas had rodent droppings and the drains were clogged with food waste.

At the main food establishment at the centre, the FDA found poor raw material checks, improper storage, pest infestation and inadequate cleaning and drainage, The Indian Express reported.

It also flagged that records for water testing, employee medical checks, vaccination, training and audits were missing.

At Govinda’s Restaurant, inspectors found stagnant water in the cold-storage area, blocked drains and shortcomings in pest control and food storage, reported the newspaper.

ISKCON Juhu claimed that the FDA had said its compliance level with food safety norms was at 70%, ET Now reported.

It added that its kitchen operations would remain closed until “the necessary corrective measures are completed and full compliance is achieved”.

Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has suspended the licence of a food establishment operated by ISKCON at Juhu, after an inspection found several serious violations of food safety and hygiene norms. The inspection was conducted on September 3 as part of the FDA’s… pic.twitter.com/wmE25oFoCy

— Richa Pinto (@richapintoi) September 8, 2026

License of IRCTC kitchen suspended

The Indian railways-linked kitchen at RK Associates & Hoteliers Private Limited was inspected on September 2, reported The Hindu.

The FDA found the utensils in the kitchen were rusted and classified it as “non-compliant”, ordering it to stop food preparation, supply and sales.

It also found that one employee was handling food despite an injured finger. Medical fitness certificates were available for only 21 of its 34 food handlers.

Four other establishments supplying food to railway passengers in Mumbai and Thane were issued improvement notices.

IRCTC said corrective measures had been completed at the Kurla base kitchen and that it expected operations to resume from Wednesday, Hindustan Times reported.

Edited by Sneha.

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

The Delhi International Airport Limited said on Wednesday that it has filed a first information report against 63 social media handles for circulating allegedly misleading posts about flooding and waterlogging at the Indira Gandhi International Airport last week.

On September 4, water temporarily accumulated in the airport’s Terminal 3 arrival forecourt following heavy rainfall.

The “incorrect posts” had shown that the airport was flooded and falsely suggested that operations had been disrupted, the operator stated.

In one case, it said, an old video of waterlogging at Dubai Airport was shared as footage from Delhi.

Such content was “intended to create public mischief, spread misinformation, defame a critical public utility service and create unwarranted concerns among passengers”, said the airport operator.

It added that the area had received about 72.2 mm of rain between 2.30 pm and 5.30 pm on September 4, and that the accumulated water was cleared within 20 minutes without affecting airport operations.

Eleven flights were diverted between 3.30 pm and 5 pm on September 4 due to bad weather, The Indian Express reported. Five were diverted to Jaipur, four to Lucknow, and one each to Ahmedabad and Chandigarh.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Sneha.

Scientist CNR Rao, a Bharat Ratna awardee, has been asked by the Election Commission to establish his identity as part of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Karnataka, The Hindu reported on Wednesday.

Rao was sent a notice following a mismatch in the spelling of his name during the exercise, according to the newspaper.

The 92-year-old was informed that while the older voter list mentioned his name as “Prof CNR Rao”, the new roll recorded it as “Proff CNR Rao”, with an extra “f” in the professional title. This is categorised as a “self-mismatch”.

This is a category of discrepancy flagged by the Election Commission when the details filled out by a voter in their enumeration form do not match those present in the 2002 electoral roll. “Logical discrepancies” can also arise if there is a mismatch in the names of a voter’s parents, a low age gap with parents and the number of children of the parents being more than six.

Rao has been asked to appear before the authorities, The Hindu reported, adding that his acquaintances were not aware of the notice until the newspaper contacted them.

After The Hindu’s report, the Election Commission claimed that Rao was not served a notice. However, the scientist's name is on the panel’s list of notices issued.

The scientist was awarded the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honour, in 2014 for his contributions to solid-state and materials chemistry.

The Congress on Wednesday asked that if a Bharat Ratna awardee could be issued a notice for “something careless, think about what is happening right now to the ordinary elderly voter in Karnataka who has no institution behind them”.

“This is exactly the kind of flaw that ends up quietly disenfranchising thousands of genuine voters while everyone is looking the other way,” said Inayat Ali, the party’s Karnataka unit general secretary.

Just read an article in The Hindu that says everything about how careless the Karnataka SIR process has become. Prof. C.N.R. Rao, 92 years old, has been served a notice. The reason listed is "self name mismatch." The 2002 electoral roll records him as Prof. C.N.R. Rao. The…

— Inayat Ali (@InayatMulki) September 9, 2026

Voters excluded in Karnataka

In Karnataka, the names of more than one crore voters were removed from the draft list published on August 24 as part of SIR. The excluded names amount to 19.4% of the state’s electorate.

The poll panel had said at the time that notices will be sent to 43 lakh persons whose enumeration forms either had anomalies or those who had not been mapped.

The claims and objections by voters against their removal from the draft list can be filed between August 24 and September 23. The appeals will be heard by October 22, before the final electoral roll is published on October 27.

Karnataka is among the 19 states and Union Territories where the voter roll revision is being carried out in the third phase of SIR.

In 2025, the first phase of the exercise was conducted in Bihar. It was extended to 12 states and Union Territories in the second phase in late 2025 and the first half of 2026.

Since it began, concerns have been raised that the revision could eliminate genuine voters from the rolls and even shape electoral outcomes, as Scroll has reported.

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

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read: Scroll’s SIR experience is a microcosm of what urban India is facing

Monsoon rains have routinely given Nepal a surge of hydropower, creating a surplus. Some of that surplus was used to supplement downstream neighbour Bangladesh’s fossil-fuel-dependent electricity supply.

On August 2, however, Nepal’s hydropower system was damaged extensively. Flash floods swept through the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli river systems, killing at least 1,250 people as of 3 September. The floods also damaged 15 hydropower plants and critical transmission infrastructure, wiping out over 750 MW of electricity generation, reported Time. Nearly 900 hydropower workers are missing.

The disaster has now disrupted Nepal’s electricity exports, with supplies to Bangladesh halted, authorities in Dhaka and Kathmandu confirmed to Dialogue Earth.

On September 3, Shaligram Bhandari, a spokesperson for Nepal’s Ministry of Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation, told Dialogue Earth that floods damaged the 22 megawatt Chilime and 24 MW Trishuli hydropower projects, which have since stopped generating electricity. The power they produced had been approved for export to Bangladesh. Nepal halted all power exports, Reuters reported several days earlier.

Amid the disaster, the ministry had yet to explore alternatives, Bhandari said. Nepal’s growing role as a hydropower exporter must be viewed together with these vulnerabilities.

Complicating its role as an exporter is its lack of a shared border with Bangladesh. Electricity trade between them has passed through India’s transmission network, which comes with some conditions.

Since 2024, Nepal has been exporting 40 MW of electricity to Bangladesh through India’s network every June to November. It wanted to export 20 MW more. But this June, the Indian power trading company which manages cross-border grid operations with Bangladesh declined the request, Nepali government officials told the Kathmandu Post. The company, NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam Limited, reportedly cited capacity constraints on the India-Bangladesh transmission line.

In July, India held energy cooperation talks with Nepal. While there was development on bilateral energy coordination, there was no resolution on the 20 MW issue.

That amount is minuscule compared to the size of the three countries’ electricity grids, which have a combined total installed capacity of around 586 GW. But energy experts, officials and power-sector analysts in those countries told Dialogue Earth the 20 MW impasse is more nuanced than it appears. There are technical, procedural and political factors at play, they note.

The disruption in Nepal comes at a particularly difficult time for Bangladesh, which has experienced severe load-shedding in recent days. It faced a power shortfall exceeding 3,500 MW at one point, as well as widespread outages across the country. The loss of electricity from Nepal only adds to that pressure.

While Bangladeshi and Nepali experts point to unused capacity on the India-Bangladesh transmission link, Indian experts say there could be a genuine capacity limitation on the line. In the absence of a regional body and trade mechanism dedicated to energy, procedural lapses and politics also have major roles to play, they note. Strained India-Bangladesh relations since Bangladesh’s 2024 change of government may also be involved.

Why Bangladesh wants Nepal’s hydropower

Nepal and Bangladesh have complementary electricity needs. The summer monsoon gives Nepal surplus hydropower, which Bangladesh can use to diversify its energy sources. In the dry winter, these roles reverse somewhat – Nepal faces shortages while Bangladesh’s demand dips – making cross-border trade beneficial in both directions over the year.

In 2025-2026, Nepal’s total installed capacity reached 4.1 GW, but monthly peak domestic demand stood at only around 2.5 GW, according to the Nepal Energy Authority. Electricity exports bring total demand up to about 3.2 GW.

Bangladesh has 32 GW of installed power generation capacity, 98% of which is dependent on fossil fuels, according to energy think-tank Ember. The country wants to diversify sources to meet its current demand. Bangladesh also aims to cover 20% of its electricity needs from non-imported renewables by 2030.

Energy trade between Nepal and Bangladesh therefore makes “economic sense”, says Shahriar Ahmed Chowdhury, director of the Centre for Energy Research at United International University in Dhaka.

“Hydropower from Nepal and Bhutan could provide Bangladesh with a cheaper source of electricity than many of the country’s existing generation sources,” says Shafiqul Alam, lead analyst for Bangladesh energy at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

“Ideally, electricity trade should work both ways,” Chowdhury says. But expanding such trade is “a political decision”, he notes. “The volume is small, but it is important because it marks the beginning of cross-border electricity cooperation.”

Cross-border electricity trade helps Bangladesh primarily by shielding it from geopolitical disruptions to energy supplies, volatility in international fuel prices and diversification, experts say.

After all, the additional 20 MW will not help Bangladesh meet its 20% renewables target. There is no plan to include imports within what is a domestic generation target, says Aninda Islam Amit, Bangladesh’s state minister for power, energy and mineral resources. He expects the country’s private sector to “take the lead” on renewables as there are “incentives for private entrepreneurs”, he tells Dialogue Earth.

For Nepal, the energy trade is part of a much larger ambition. During the July energy talks, it agreed to increase its export capacity as India ups its import capacity. Nepali energy minister Birajbhakta Shrestha tells Dialogue Earth that the deal is another step towards fulfilling the country’s agreement to export 10 GW of electricity to India, signed in 2024.

A Nepali energy ministry official, requesting anonymity, says the immediate 20-MW issue could be resolved through trilateral discussions between Nepal, India and Bangladesh.

India holds the missing link

The 40 MW Nepal currently exports to Bangladesh is transported by the Baharampur-Bheramara high-voltage DC interconnection from east India, where it arrives on a transmission line from southern Nepal.

The Baharampur-Bheramara link between India and Bangladesh has a transfer capacity of 1 GW. The country typically receives around 920-930 MW through the link, leaving some unused transfer capacity, said a Bangladesh Power Division official speaking on condition of anonymity.

Nepal has also been considering alternatives. “If power cannot be exported via the Baharampur-Bheramara line, there is option for Nepal to export the additional 20 MW through other Indian transmission lines connected to Bangladesh,” says Manoj Silwal, former deputy managing director of the Nepal Electricity Authority.

Apart from the Baharampur-Bheramara link, Bangladesh also imports nearly 1.7 GW from India: 160 MW through the Surajmaninagar to Comilla interconnection, and 1.5 GW from Godda to Rohanpur, the latter operated by Adani Power.

However, transporting the 20 MW via existing corridors may not be feasible for a few reasons, says Nikit Abhyankar, an energy efficiency expert at the University of California, Berkeley. It is possible that these corridors are fully utilised.

Additionally, the average amount of electricity a transmission line carries is not necessarily the capacity that is safely available, Abhyankar notes. At times of peak demand, power flows can be much higher, and some capacity must be reserved to manage unexpected failures elsewhere in the system. “I would be very surprised if they are actually going to operate a 1,000 MW line at 1,000 MW capacity,” Abhyankar says.

A line may also be unable to deliver its rated amount of electricity due to losses from transfers. In a high-voltage DC connection, such as Baharampur-Bheramara, some electricity is lost when power is converted from AC to DC, as it travels along the transmission line, and when converted back to AC at the receiving end. Abhyankar estimates that roughly 40-50 MW could be lost on a 1-GW line.

The Baharampur-Bheramara corridor is also loaded with India’s own exports to Bangladesh. India’s Central Electricity Authority “doesn’t want to run the line close to its thermal limit … on a line that also carries India’s own bilateral exports”, notes Binit Das, deputy programme manager for renewable energy at the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE).

For the India-Bangladesh link, battery storage could potentially help if the line has spare capacity during periods of lower demand, Abhyankar adds. But feasibility depends on how much the power flow on the interconnection varies over the day.

Politics complicates power trade

Geography presents India with an unavoidable role in any future Nepal-Bangladesh electricity trade. “There is no other way that Bangladesh can get power from either Nepal or Bhutan without that being facilitated by India,” says Bipul Chattopadhyay, executive director of the Consumer Unity & Trust Society, India.

Experts see this 20 MW episode as a litmus test for how India prioritises capacity across competing uses of a shared asset. During this impasse, India and Nepal separately reached a much bigger capacity decision: to raise Nepal’s export quota from 1.1 GW to 1.65 GW.

“The asymmetry between how quickly that bilateral decision happened and how long the trilateral 20 MW has languished is itself the clearest evidence of where the region’s integration problem actually sits,” says Das of the CSE.

India’s role in Nepal’s hydropower sector also complicates the picture. Several Indian companies are developing major hydropower projects in Nepal, while India is also Nepal’s principal electricity export market and the transit country for its exports to Bangladesh.

India could increasingly draw on Nepal’s hydropower to meet its own rising demand, Chattopadhyay says. The challenge is to develop a framework that works for all the countries involved.

“It should be win-win for all three parties,” he says. “That model is not difficult to develop, but that is something which is still missing in our current political-economic discourse.”

He also raises political considerations in the 20-MW denial. Relations between India and Bangladesh have been strained since former prime minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, went into exile in India in August 2024, where she remains.

“After the change in government in Bangladesh, [the] India-Bangladesh relationship is yet to get on the right track … it’s very frosty,” notes Chattopadhyay.

A South Asian electricity market?

The difficulty of moving a mere 20 MW points to bottlenecks in cross-border energy trade in a region with growing energy needs.

Every prior expansion of the transmission corridor, including the original 40 MW, was formalised through a Joint Steering Committee (JSC) decision followed by a tripartite agreement. The 13th Nepal-India JSC meeting was held in July, having last convened in February 2025, but failed to yield success with the 20 MW addition.

There is also a broader institutional problem. Cross-border electricity trade between Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal, where it goes through India, requires multiple layers of approval. This includes a tripartite power sale agreement, clearance from India’s Central Electricity Authority and a JSC to anchor the decision.

Over the last few years, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal have signed bilateral agreements with India to develop electricity trade. As of April, India has entered into 17 power-sector agreements with neighbouring countries. It is also involved in 13 cross-border power-generation projects and 30 transmission-link projects.

Trilateral and regional transactions carry a layer of political and procedural friction that bilateral ones don’t, Das says. This makes the region’s power systems interconnected yet fragmented.

The potential benefits of deeper integration are significant. Cross-border electricity trade can allow these countries to complement one another’s demands, reducing reliance on fossil fuels while improving energy security and lowering costs, joint research by CUTS and Chintan Research Foundation found.

The stakes are also different for countries of different sizes. “For a large system like India … small cross-border trade doesn’t really make a huge difference. But for countries like Nepal to sell their hydroelectricity [and] for countries like Bangladesh to meet their electricity demand reliably, cross-border trade becomes important,” says Abhyankar.

Yet there is still no subregional institution focused on coordinating and facilitating cross-border electricity trade. A regional power exchange, an agreed open-access framework, or institutionalised, calendar-bound trilateral bodies could provide a more predictable way of handling third-country transit, says Das.

“Without such a mechanism, episodes like the 20-MW holdup could continue to recur even as the region’s growing hydropower surplus and complementary electricity demand make the case for trade increasingly obvious,” he says.

Shalinee Kumari is Dialogue Earth’s South Asia Reporter, based in New Delhi.

Masum Billah is an award-winning journalist based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, covering climate change, migration, the economy, energy and human rights.

Rajendra Pokhrel is a Nepal-based journalist with over a decade of experience. He contributes to international media, covering energy, the environment and public policy.

This article was originally published on Dialogue Earth under the Creative Commons BY NC ND licence.

The operator of the paying guest facilities in a five-storey building in Satya Niketan was arrested, three days after the structure collapsed, killing seven persons.

The police said that Sudhanshu and his business partner, Shubham Tyagi, had leased the property from its owner in August 2025. Tyagi is absconding.

Sudhanshu is the fifth person to be arrested in the case. The building’s owner, Hari Ram, his son Mahesh, his wife Urmila and a labour contractor named Saroj were arrested earlier. Read on.

Why social media thinks government intentionally slowed internet after Delhi building collapse, reports Anant Gupta

The Uttar Pradesh government will challenge the Allahabad High Court order quashing the National Security Act detention of a 25-year-old Delhi University graduate who was arrested after a workers’ protest in Noida. Gautam Buddha Nagar District Magistrate Medha Roopam will separately appeal the ruling.

The Act allows for long periods of detention without trial up to a year.

The High Court on September 2 quashed Akriti Chaudhary’s preventive detention and directed the authorities to pay her Rs 5 lakh in compensation. It described the district magistrate’s conduct as “worthy of derision” and said that she was “guilty of violating her oath of allegiance”. Read on.

The Supreme Court asked how the Greater Noida executive magistrate could “dare” to issue a notice last week to a student for allegedly campaigning for the youth protests led by the Cockroach Janta Party. “We made it clear that no coercive action should be taken against any student,” said a bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant.

Akshat Tripathi, a 20-year-old law student at Gautam Buddha University, had been served the notice on Friday by the executive magistrate after a police report alleged that he was instigating other students to participate in a proposed protest. The notice was withdrawn the following day. Read on.

Twenty legislators of the Opposition Bharat Rashtra Samithi were suspended from the Telangana Assembly for the rest of the Monsoon Session, which will conclude on Friday. The decision came after more than an hour of confrontation between the ruling Congress and the BRS.

BRS legislators demanding “justice” for K Chandrashekar Rao, the leader of Opposition in the Assembly, over alleged disparaging remarks made about him by Congress MLA Veerlapally Shankar.

On the other hand, the Congress alleged that BRS workers in Siddipet had performed a purification ritual after Dalit leaders held a protest there. Read on.

A researcher at artificial intelligence company Anthropic has quit, claiming that he is concerned the firm and the industry are racing to build AI systems that he believes they will not be able to control. In a series of social media posts on Wednesday, Jacob Coxon said that people should not underestimate the power of AI.

“These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionise any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources,” he said. “We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains, and progress is not slowing.”

Anthropic has not yet commented on Coxon’s resignation, or on the concerns he raised. Read on.

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Nearly 30% of voters in 38 Maharashtra Assembly constituencies, where Muslims account for more than one-fifth of the population, have been excluded from the draft lists published as part of the state's special intensive revision of electoral rolls, The Indian Express reported on Wednesday.

The enumeration forms of more than 37 lakh voters, or 29.7% of the previous electoral base, have been marked as “uncollectable” in the 38 constituencies. The state-level average is 21.1%, which amounts to more than two crore persons.

The 29 constituencies reserved for the Scheduled Castes had an average exclusion rate of 19.6%, The Indian Express reported. The 25 seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes had an average exclusion rate of 13.2%.

The “uncollectables”, or those removed from the draft voter list, have been marked as either permanently shifted, deceased, absent, duplicate entries or placed under the “other” category, which includes those who refused to fill the enumeration form.

The deletions pattern

The highest rates of deletions have been recorded in densely populated constituencies. Pune district had the highest number of deletions at 28.6 lakh, followed by Thane with 28.5 lakh and Mumbai Suburban with 26.5 lakh, data from the Election Commission showed.

In Mumbai Metropolitan Region’s Bhiwandi East, 49.1% of voters have been removed, followed by Bhiwandi West at 44.7% and Kalwa-Mumbra at 42.9%, reported The Indian Express.

In the Chandivali area, where Muslims account for 27.6% of the population, 41.4% of the voters were marked as “uncollectable”, added the newspaper. The rate was more than 40% in the city’s Sion-Koliwada and in Pune’s Cantonment area.

The numbers do not indicate whether Muslims were disproportionately excluded from the draft voter list.

In Malegaon Central, which has the highest share of Muslim population among the 38 constituencies at 78.4%, had 23.4% of voters marked as uncollectable, reported The Indian Express.

In Mumbai’s Mankhurd Shivaji Nagar, where the proportion of Muslim population is 53%, the deletion rate was 42.3%, the newspaper reported. Bhiwandi East, with a Muslim population of 51%, had an exclusion rate of 49.1%.

The deletion rate was much lower in several constituencies. Malkapur, with a Muslim population of 20.4%, recorded 7.6% deletions. The rate was between nearly 10% and 11.7% in Raver, Latur City and Balapur, the newspaper reported.

There were 53 constituencies that recorded higher exclusion rates than the average in the 38 Assembly seats. The places include Colaba (46.9%), Khadakwasala (46.5%), Kothrud (46.1%) and Kalyan Rural (46%).

Maharashtra is among the 19 states and Union Territories where the voter roll revision is being carried out in the third phase of SIR.

In 2025, the first phase of the exercise was conducted in Bihar. It was extended to 12 states and Union Territories in the second phase in late 2025 and the first half of 2026.

Since it began, concerns have been raised that the revision could eliminate genuine voters from the rolls and even shape electoral outcomes, as Scroll has reported.

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

Edited by Sneha.

Also read:

• SIR: Bharat Ratna awardee CNR Rao sent notice for spelling mismatch
• Jharkhand SIR: BJP agent held for submitting bulk forms to delete Muslim voters, says report
• Delhi SIR deletions more than 2025 winning margins in 68 of 70 seats: Study

Five infant orangutans, which are not native to India, were rescued from a forest in Odisha’s Balasore district on Tuesday, The Hindu reported. Forest officials suspect that the animals may have been trafficked into the country.

The orangutans, three males and two females aged between six months and one year, were found in the Udayapur section of the Jaleswar Range after residents of the area spotted them and alerted forest officials. They had been in the area for two or three days, unidentified officials were quoted as saying.

#WATCH | Balasore, Odisha | Five baby orangutans, two females and three males, all under one year old, were found in the Ranakatha Protected Reserve Forest (PRF) near Badapai village, which is not their natural habitat.

According to Balasore DFO Indalkar Pratik Prakash, "While… pic.twitter.com/CcdHwug3FO

— ANI (@ANI) September 9, 2026

Orangutans are native to Indonesia and Malaysia and are found only in the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra. International commercial trade in orangutans is prohibited under Cites, the global agreement governing trade in endangered wildlife. The animals are also protected under Indian wildlife laws.

Despite this, orangutans continue to be trafficked for sale as exotic pets and to private collectors.

On Wednesday, the animals were given first aid before being taken to Nandankanan Zoological Park in Bhubaneswar, where they have been placed in quarantine and are being monitored. They do not appear to have any injuries.

The Forest Department is investigating where the animals came from and who may have been involved, The Hindu quoted State Forest and Environment Minister Ganesh Ram Singhkhuntia as saying. A case has also been registered under wildlife laws.

This was not the first time orangutans had been found in India. A juvenile orangutan was found during a raid on a Mumbai flat in November 2024, The Print reported.

In 2022, two baby orangutans were found abandoned at a checkpoint near the border between Assam and Mizoram, BBC reported.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read: A border district in Mizoram has become a hub of wildlife smuggling in India

Twenty legislators of the Opposition Bharat Rashtra Samithi were on Wednesday suspended from the Telangana Assembly for the rest of the Monsoon Session for allegedly disrupting proceedings, The Indian Express reported.

The BRS has 27 MLAs in the 119-member Assembly. The Monsoon Session, which began on Monday, is scheduled to conclude on Friday.

The 20 legislators were suspended after more than an hour of confrontation between the ruling Congress and the BRS.

KT Rama Rao, the Opposition party’s chairperson and son of former Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao’s son, was among the legislators who were suspended.

The proceedings began with BRS legislators demanding “justice” for K Chandrashekar Rao, the leader of Opposition in the Assembly, over alleged disparaging remarks made about him by Congress MLA Veerlapally Shankar, reported The Indian Express.

BRS leaders alleged that Shankar had wished for Chandrashekar Rao’s “demise” in a public statement and demanded that he be suspended.

The Congress, however, accused the BRS of insulting Dalits. Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka and minister D Sridhar Babu alleged that BRS workers in Siddipet had performed a purification ritual after Dalit Congress leaders held a protest there, the newspaper reported.

Siddipet is where K Chandrashekar Rao’s home is.

Vikramarka also alleged that on the first day of the Assembly session, BRS MLC Tata Madhusudan had insulted Speaker Gaddam Prasad Kumar, who is from the Dalit community.

Congress leaders added that they did not endorse Shankar’s alleged remarks about K Chandrashekar Rao.

The House had earlier passed a resolution demanding that the leader of Opposition apologise for Madhusudan’s remarks about the speaker.

Edited by Sneha.

The Uttar Pradesh government will challenge the Allahabad High Court’s order quashing the National Security Act detention of a 25-year-old Delhi University graduate after the workers’ protest in Noida, Bar and Bench reported on Wednesday.

The Act allows for long periods of detention without trial up to a year.

Gautam Buddha Nagar District Magistrate Medha Roopam will also separately appeal the ruling, the legal news outlet reported.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the state, told the Supreme Court on Wednesday that the order was being challenged. He made the remark during a hearing on a separate show-cause notice issued to a student by a Greater Noida executive magistrate in connection with the Cockroach Janta Party protests, Live Law reported.

On September 2, the High Court had quashed Akriti Chaudhary’s preventive detention under the National Security Act and directed the authorities to pay her Rs 5 lakh in compensation.

It ordered that the amount be deducted from the salary of Roopam, who passed the detention order, and other officials responsible for enforcing it.

The High Court had criticised the detention order, describing the district magistrate’s conduct as “worthy of derision” and saying that she was “guilty of violating her oath of allegiance”.

Chaudhary has been in jail for nearly five months. She had been detained on April 11, two days before the protest in Noida turned violent, her family stated. In May, the Uttar Pradesh Police invoked the National Security Act against her while she was in custody.

Despite her detention under the Act being quashed, she remains in jail because she has been named in several first information reports in connection with the protest.

The police had alleged that Chaudhary and 60-year-old Satya Verma, a journalist from Lucknow, were “significant in instigating violence, arson and creating chaos” during the protest. It also claimed that Verma and Chaudhary “provoked” persons in different areas to “disturb public order”.

Chaudhary and Verma are members of the Mazdoor Bigul Dasta, a workers’ organisation.

On April 13, about 40,000 to 45,000 workers from several industrial units had gathered in parts of the city to press long-standing demands that their salaries be increased. The protests came amid increasing gas prices because of the supply disruption caused by the war in West Asia.

The demonstration had turned violent, with videos widely shared on social media showing some protesters throwing stones and vandalising property.

On April 14, more than 350 persons had been arrested in connection with the violence.

In its September 2 order, the High Court said that the district magistrate had detained Chaudhary only to “set an example out of the petitioner and deter others from exercising their right to freedom of speech and expression in public spaces in support of the labourers”.

It also warned that soon, the “errant in the bureaucracy [will] reduce the state of Uttar Pradesh to an Orwellian Dystopia”.

The High Court highlighted that the state government had not been able to show a single message from the WhatsApp chats between Chaudhary and her associates, or any video clip that “would reveal any incitement”, despite repeatedly being asked to do so.

Violence during protests

Witnesses had alleged that the police personnel deployed to contain the violence on April 13 had beaten up the protesters.

On April 16, a video surfaced online showing police personnel assaulting women. The video was shared on social media platforms by several users, including the Uttar Pradesh Congress, who alleged that it showed police personnel in Noida lathi-charging and manhandling women workers on the day of wage hike protests.

The police commissionerate in Gautam Buddha Nagar district denied this. It said that “prima facie, the video appears to be morphed or AI-generated and does not seem to be from Noida, but rather from some other location.”

However, eyewitnesses, who did not want to be identified because of the fear of facing backlash from the authorities, told Scroll that the video accurately captured the scene they had witnessed.

Scroll also used geolocation analysis and matched the video against a press photo to establish that the location was indeed Block A and Block B of Noida’s Sector 6. Scroll visited the spot and spoke to several people who had seen the police assault. Questions sent to Commissioner of Police Laxmi Singh at the time did not receive a response.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

• Noida and beyond: India’s workers are being shortchanged. They deserve a fair deal

• Fact check: Despite official denial, viral video showing police beating women workers is from Noida

On Monday, Harsh Mamnani, a Delhi-based independent video journalist, put out an unusual request on Instagram. He asked his followers where he could find high-speed internet in Satya Niketan, the South Delhi neighbourhood where a five-storey building used as paying guest accommodation by students had collapsed the previous day, killing at least seven people and injuring several others.

The 24-year-old, who has reported from the site of the collapse every day since Sunday, said he felt compelled to seek help because his mobile phone internet was simply too slow to upload videos. Mamnani thought this was because the government had slowed down the speed of mobile phone internet. “I am pretty sure they [the government] did it,” he asserted.

Student-activists who have visited the area frequently this week were also certain that “jammers” had been used on Sunday, the day the collapse occurred, as well as Monday. “The government did not want us to circulate videos because that could have led to a big protest,” alleged Sagar Suman, a PhD scholar from the Jawaharlal Nehru University who volunteers with the left-wing outfit, Disha Students’ Organisation.

So widespread was this belief that the Delhi Police had to “fact check” it on Tuesday morning. “Networks are fully operational,” it claimed in a social media post. “Media and citizens are broadcasting from the site with no disruption. Do not spread engagement-driven misinformation.”

But by then videos alleging that the government had enforced an internet shutdown in Satya Niketan had gone viral on Instagram. Some of these videos went so far as to say that those trapped under the debris of the collapse were unable to contact their families and friends because of the purported shutdown.

View this post on Instagram

Journalist Nikhil Pahwa, who founded MediaNama, a website focused on technology policy, argued that the Modi government and the Delhi Police had only themselves to blame for this. Their use of internet shutdowns during the recent youth protests at Jantar Mantar, he said, had led to a loss of credibility.

“It is very, very natural that people jump to conclusions because they [the government] have done their best when it comes to losing the trust of people,” Pahwa added.

The Kashmir experience

According to the Telecommunications (Temporary Suspension of Services) Rules, which the Modi government notified in November 2024, officials have the power to suspend “any class of telecommunication services” for up to 15 days. This means that they can halt high-speed mobile phone internet services without putting in place a complete shutdown.

Pahwa pointed out that the government has done this before in Jammu and Kashmir. As recently as March, the home department of Jammu and Kashmir had asked internet service providers to reduce data services to 2G speeds for four days in the “entire Kashmir valley” after the assassination of Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran.

The order capped 2G speeds at 128 kilobits per second, which made it impossible to share videos.

The same rules also require officials issuing internet suspension orders to make them public. However, the rules do not specify when that must be done.

In practice, this has meant that the orders are sometimes released with a lag. During the July youth protests at Jantar Mantar in Delhi, for example, the Union home ministry faced criticism from activists for the delay in making its suspension orders public.

Scroll sent questions to the ministry asking if it had passed any internet suspension orders after the building collapse in Satya Niketan. This story will be updated if the ministry responds.

Controlling Instagram?

Sakhi, 22, who rose to fame with videos mocking Delhi Police officials at the recent Jantar Mantar protests, visited Satya Niketan hours after the building collapse and found that the mobile internet speed was very slow.

“I could see just one network bar on my phone,” said the master’s student from Delhi University, who is an active member of the Students’ Federation of India, which is the student wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). “I was able to send text messages on WhatsApp, but not videos. I had to go 500 metres away, towards the metro station, to send videos.”

Sakhi contended that the Modi government did not want students to circulate information about what had happened. Five of the student’s “most viral” videos from Jantar Mantar have allegedly been taken down from Instagram under the Information Technology Rules.

“The media is no longer competent to give you the best information as quickly as possible,” Sakhi said. “They [the government] have the media in their pockets. Now they want [Instagram] reels also in their pockets.”

But Swati Tiwari, another independent journalist who covered both the Jantar Mantar protests as well as the building collapse in Satya Niketan, was not so sure. While the 26-year-old did struggle to access high-speed internet at the site, she did not blame the government for it.

“There were just too many people there,” Tiwari reasoned. “That area has very narrow lanes. It is very congested. But I was able to post my videos from a nearby park. Students told me that network connectivity is generally bad in parts of that neighbourhood.”

She was hesitant to draw a comparison to Jantar Mantar, where the government had enforced a complete internet shutdown in a 1.5-km radius of the protest site. Pahwa of MediaNama also said network congestion was a “real problem” in crowded and cramped settings.

However, the suspicion of the government has lingered. Mamnani, the independent journalist, was of the view that this was because the authorities had not been transparent with information about the collapse.

“Why has the Delhi Police still not clarified the number of people who were feared to be trapped under the debris?” he asked.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked how the Greater Noida executive magistrate could “dare” to issue notice last week to a student for allegedly campaigning for participation in the youth protests led by the Cockroach Janta Party, Live Law reported.

“We made it clear that no coercive action should be taken against any student,” the legal news outlet quoted a bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant as saying. “No magistrate could violate that order.”

On September 1, the Supreme Court ordered that all first information reports registered across the country in connection with student protests held between July 20 and July 25 should not be pursued or investigated and must be treated as closed, except those involving people with criminal antecedents. The government had told the court that no fresh FIRs would be registered in connection with the protests.

On Friday, a 20-year-old law student at Gautam Buddha University, Akshat Tripathi, was served notice by the executive magistrate after a police report alleged that he was instigating other students to participate in a proposed protest, Live Law reported.

The notice was withdrawn the following day after the allegations were investigated, The Indian Express quoted unidentified police officers as saying. It had been issued under preventive legal provisions under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita.

The notice stated that Tripathi was “spreading anti-government, misleading statements among other university students and provoking them”, which could “disrupt public peace”. It also sought a a personal bond of Rs 5 lakh from the student to ensure that he will preserve peace, the newspaper reported.

Tripathi told The Indian Express that he had not been going to the university for the past three months.

“I was working at the Allahabad High Court in July,” he was quoted as saying. “How could I go to the university and provoke people?”

A lawyer verbally mentioned the matter before the bench on Wednesday.

The chief justice directed the lawyer to formally place the notice before the court through a petition and said that an explanation would then be sought from the authority concerned.

Youth protests

The protests began on June 6, when the Cockroach Janta Party held a demonstration at Jantar Mantar demanding the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, the Union education minister at the time.

On July 20, thousands joined the protest. This came two days after the police forcibly took activist Sonam Wangchuk, who had been on a hunger strike for three weeks, to hospital.

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

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday criticised the Odisha government for failing to decide on the premature release of Bajrang Dal member Dara Singh, who is serving a life sentence for the 1999 murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons, Live Law reported.

On August 19, the bench had given the Odisha Sentence Review Board a final opportunity and verbally stated that the court would take the decision in the matter if the state failed to do so by the next hearing.

However, counsel for the Odisha government on Tuesday sought a four-week adjournment, citing the illness of its advocate-on-record, the legal news outlet reported.

Staines and his minor sons were burnt to death by a mob led by Singh in Odisha in January 1999 when they were sleeping in a jeep. The attackers had accused the missionary of illegal religious conversion.

Singh was among the 14 persons convicted in 2003 by a special Central Bureau of Investigation court. He was sentenced to death by the CBI court, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2005 by the Orissa High Court.

The Supreme Court had upheld Singh’s conviction in 2011.

On Tuesday, the bench comprising Justices Manoj Misra and Vijay Bishnoi questioned why the matter was being delayed, and asked the government to either accept or reject Singh’s remission plea. Misra noted that the matter had been adjourned repeatedly for nearly two years.

The court directed that the matter be listed on September 17 and asked the Odisha government to apprise it of the decision taken in compliance with its August 19 order, Live Law reported.

The bench also warned the state that its officers could be summoned if it failed to take a decision.

In his remission plea, the Bajrang Dal member argued that he should be considered for early release as he is above the age of 60 and has been in jail for more than 24 years. Singh told the court that he regretted his actions, which the petition described as having been in the context of “protecting the nation”.

He also told the court that he had never been granted parole.

In April 2025, Mahendra Hembram, another person convicted in the case, was released from a jail in Odisha on the grounds of “good behaviour”.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The operator of a five-storey building in Satya Niketan being used as paying guest accommodation, which collapsed on Sunday killing seven persons, has been arrested, PTI reported on Wednesday.

Sudhanshu, who ran the “Hostel Daze” paying guest accommodation, is being questioned after his arrest, the news agency quoted unidentified officials as saying. He and his business partner, Shubham Tyagi, had leased the property from its owner in August 2025. Tyagi is absconding.

Sudhanshu’s arrest is the fifth in the case. The building’s owner, Hari Ram, his son Mahesh, his wife Urmila and labour contractor Saroj were arrested earlier, The Indian Express reported.

Five municipal officials have also been suspended.

The building was reportedly 40 to 50 years old, and repair work was underway in the basement when it collapsed.

An unidentified police officer said that the owners allegedly knew that the building would not be able to bear the weight of four additional floors and still decided to lease it out to be used as a paying guest accommodation, The Indian Express reported.

Meanwhile, the police are investigating whether the Hostel Daze operators had conducted due diligence to ensure that the building was safe for occupation.

They are also examining the rent agreement under which the accommodation was let out to the tenants, PTI reported.

The agreement stated that the operators would not be responsible for any “casualties or risk” to tenants.

It also reportedly stated that the hostel would not be liable to pay compensation for personal injury, or loss of or damage to belongings caused by circumstances beyond its control, including sealing, fire, earthquakes and heavy rain.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Instagram on Monday briefly suspended the accounts of three independent journalists who had been reporting on the deaths of Adivasi children in Madhya Pradesh’s Balaghat district. The accounts were back online on Wednesday morning.

The Instagram accounts of Monika Singh, Bindu Gurjar and Lokbhadra Singh had been suspended by the social media platform. All three had been reporting on protests by Adivasi groups following the deaths of the children, highlighting hospital mismanagement and the struggles of ASHA workers in the region, among other subjects.

After his account was restored, Lokbhadra Singh alleged that attempts were being made to “harass the journalists and break their spirit”, but that they would not back down.

Earlier this month, Scroll reported that a mysterious measles and malaria outbreak in the region went undetected for at least two months, and led to the deaths of at least 25 children from the Baiga and Gond tribes.

The Press Club of India on Tuesday said it condemned the suspension of the journalists’ Instagram accounts and expressed concerns about attempts to intimidate or silence journalists engaged in public interest work.

The Press Club of India strongly condemns the suspension of the Instagram accounts of three independent journalists following their ground reporting from Balaghat, Madhya Pradesh, on a public health crisis involving the deaths of children from the Adivasi community. pic.twitter.com/3lcjVXcbEd

— Press Club of India (@PCITweets) September 8, 2026

“The journalists were reporting on allegations of around 30 suspected child deaths over approximately three months,” the press body noted in a statement on social media.

It added that the journalists faced repeated pressure from Balaghat district officials to meet local authorities privately while they were reporting on the incident. After they declined to meet the authorities, the journalists were allegedly asked to vacate their hotel rooms. They were also allegedly followed by plainclothes police officers and their movements were monitored for two days, the Press Club said.

“The Press Club of India calls for an impartial examination of these events, including the reported pressure and surveillance faced by the journalists while carrying out their professional duties,” the press body said.

Today IYC Incharge @ManishSharmaIYC ji met independent journalists Monika Singh, Bindu Gurjar and Lokbhadra Singh, who courageously reported from Balaghat and exposed the truth surrounding the deaths of 30+ Adivasi children despite the MP CM and administration claiming the toll… pic.twitter.com/FjIxwSFItZ

— Indian Youth Congress (@IYC) September 8, 2026

Indian Youth Congress In-charge Manish Sharma met the three journalists on Tuesday in Delhi.

The youth wing of the Congress party alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party government in the state was attempting to silence independent journalism.

“Instead of answering for the deaths and the collapse of Madhya Pradesh’s healthcare system, the BJP governments are targeting those who dared to report the truth,” the party said in a post on social media.

Edited by Anamika Pathak and Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read: For months, Adivasi children in Madhya Pradesh kept dying. The government woke up too late

In mid-August, an organisation that represents an indigenous community in Arunachal Pradesh blacklisted four researchers from carrying out research in the Dibang Valley.

The organisation, the Idu Mishmi Cultural and Literary Society, or IMCLS, is the “apex body” of the Idu Mishmi community in the valley. It stated in a press release that the researchers were blacklisted for violating the community’s “code of research ethics”, which it first published in 2024.

In an emailed statement to Scroll, the society said that the researchers “resorted to discriminatory practices and ventured into community areas despite final consent and approval pending” from the community’s Research and Ethics Review Board, or RERB.

The researchers were Rajkamal Goswami, affiliated with the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, or ATREE, Aavika Dhanda, who was formerly affiliated with the same organisation, Krushnamegh Kunte from the National Centre for Biological Sciences, and Fahim Khan, from the Indian Foundation for Butterflies Trust.

In a text message response to queries from Scroll, Goswami said, “We hold ethical research practices in the highest regard, and fully support the IMCLS code in spirit and intent.” He added that ATREE “had taken cognisance” of the body’s decision, and were “seeking to understand the circumstances and events that led to this action”.

The director of the National Centre for Biological Sciences, LS Shashidhara, told Scroll that the institution was “saddened” by the body’s decision. “Our researchers were making sincere efforts to obtain approval from the RERB of IMCLS, and there appears to have been some misunderstanding,” he said. Scroll also emailed Khan, seeking responses to the society’s move – this story will be updated if he responds.

The society’s move has its roots in efforts in recent years by indigenous and tribal groups to protect their culture and land from what they say are exploitative practices of researchers, rooted in colonial methods.

Outside India, such moves trace back to the late 1990s, when Indigenous communities in the global north and several African countries developed their own research guidelines or protocols to be followed by anyone conducting research with them or on their lands.

Tribal studies scholars welcome the introduction of such guidelines in India as a step towards decolonising harmful and colonial research practices. “There was a time when most tribal communities in India were not literate, and researchers, often anthropologists, could visit them and do anything they wanted,” said Adivasi sociologist Virginuis Xaxa. “They would often misinterpret these communities, their customs and context. It was a form of violence on these communities.”

Xaxa added that communities’ moves to develop “their own research protocols” was “a step towards their empowerment and self-determination”.

Other communities

The Idu Mishmi, is not the only Indian community to take steps recently to institute rules for researchers.

On August 10, the tribal council of Little and Great Nicobar published a set of 13 guidelines for researchers working on the islands.

The guidelines laid out several steps that any team of researchers that planned to visit an area that fell within the islands’ tribal reserves would have to follow. For instance, they would have to inform the chairman of the tribal council, and consult respective village captains before planning the visit. They would also have to submit several documents with the council, including details of the project and copies of tribal area permits issued to them by the relevant district administrations.

Barnabas Manju, chairman of the tribal council, explained that the move was prompted by an unprecedented rush of researchers on the Nicobar islands. “In the last few years we have been noticing a lot more researchers on the island,” Manju said. “We worry what their research might result in.”

The communities’ fears are particularly acute because, since 2021, the government has denotified protected areas for leatherback turtles and given permissions for lakhs of trees to be cut to make 166 sq km of the island available to develop the Great Nicobar infrastructure project.

Community bodies see such protective moves as particularly crucial because at present there exist no dedicated laws or policies in India that pertain to research ethics for researchers working with tribal and other marginalised communities.

While the bodies’ policies do not form official law, they are backed by both international and domestic conventions and laws to safeguard tribal and Indigenous communities, such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which India has endorsed, and the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006.

Community leaders of the Idu Mishmi and the Nicobarese said their guidelines were centred on the principle of free, prior, and informed consent, which has long underpinned the measures and policies of Indigenous communities across the world with respect to research, as well as administrative and legislative measures that impact them.

Xaxa noted that researchers often “impose their own interpretations on Indigenous communities” while “failing to understand the community’s worldview”. The Idu Mishmi code seeks to safeguard not just members of the community and their resources, but also their “cultural and spiritual values, customary practices, traditional knowledge, beliefs including among physical and non-physical entities in the world”, he said.

Similarly, the Nicobarese guidelines remind researchers that “what might be a research site for you is our home”. The guidelines thus seek to safeguard their neighbouring community the Shompen, “the trees, plants, birds and animals of the land, the nallahs, forest patches, rocky islets on the coast” and the “ancestral spirits who reside in these spaces”.

The Idu Mishmi code

The Idu Mishmi code was authored by community member Dr Tilu Linggi, and launched as a book by the chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh, Pema Khandu.

The code states that the Idu Mishmi are the “first indigenous community” in Arunachal Pradesh to have their own “community research protocol”. It describes the protocol as a step towards “decolonising and decentralising research and empowering local communities” based on “self-determination, respect, consent and equity”.

The society explained that the code was formulated after consultative community discussions in Dibang Valley about “several unethical and colonial practices of data appropriation and collection of geological and biological samples” that they had observed in the “Idu Mishmi areas in particular” and in “Arunachal Pradesh in general”.

They further noted that the “unethical use” of data taken from their land, “has led to policy-making that has impacted the community in negative ways”, such as their erasure from epistemology. For instance, “renowned research institutions” have, under the guise of discovering new species, given “taxonomic classification to species in their own institution’s name”, despite these species already being familiar to the community.

These concerns also extended to how governments classified lands that the community had historically used. The society stated that, “in the past the government had declared wildlife sanctuaries or protected/reserved areas without the consent of the community”. For instance, it described the notification of the Dibang Wildlife Sanctuary and the Mehao Wildlife Sanctuary by the state as “illegal” and a “betrayal” of the community.

Under the code, researchers looking to pursue research on Idu Mishmi land have to purchase a copy of the book, submit their proposal and additional documents to the body and undergo several rounds of online discussions with the review board, which may seek clarifications and suggest modifications to the proposal. This process applies to all researchers, including those from the community itself.

Researchers also have to obtain approval at the level of the village where the research will be conducted.

Since the code was announced, the society said, it has received over 44 research proposals from India and abroad. In the statement to Scroll, they noted that “most proposals are approved”.

The alleged violations

In the email to Scroll, the society stated that NCBS researchers failed to attend a planned in-person meeting despite committing in writing to do so. Meanwhile, the ATREE researchers, they noted, “never sought official permission from the IMCLS” to conduct their research “despite repeated requests”.

The society argued that such behaviour violated several principles of their community protocol. It also expressed displeasure with events that followed the researchers’ blacklisting, noting that they were “misleading reporters” and calling the development a “misunderstanding”.

NCBS’s Shashidhara told Scroll that while the institution’s researchers were “preparing responses to the queries” raised by the Idu Mishmi body, “they stayed at the same location with due approvals from the concerned officials for trekking and accommodation”.

He added, “No research activity was initiated. We remain committed to regulatory compliance and to conducting our work in accordance with IMCLS guidelines.” Further, he said, the institution would be taking “appropriate measures” to address the concerns raised by the society and “regain their confidence”.

Goswami, meanwhile, explained that in the Dibang Valley, the work he was involved with focused “on supporting the members of the Mekola clan of the Idu Mishmi Indigenous community in formalising a Community Conserved Area on their clan lands”.

He added, “We take the concerns raised around non-response seriously and have shared our full communication record directly with IMCLS. Based on our records, we responded to all communication received from them, and also attended all the meetings we were invited to. We have shared these details with IMCLS, and we are working to resolve all issues directly with IMCLS. We have reached out to the apex body for a dialogue.”

Further, he noted, ATREE was “committed to respecting the guidelines and ethos of the communities we work with. Once we have a clear understanding of the situation, we will take appropriate steps to address IMCLS’s concerns and continue strengthening our community-led conservation work together.”

In its statement to Scroll, the society said that while it did not intend to resort to “harsh measures” against researchers, if any proceeded with their work despite being blacklisted, they could face “legal repercussions”.

Going forward

Manju, the chairman of the tribal council of Little and Great Nicobar, meanwhile, noted that since the release of the guidelines, two researchers had complied with the initial steps and submitted all relevant documents with the Nicobarese community.

“We hope that the guidelines make researchers and their institutions a little more careful about their work here,” he said. He explained that usually researchers take a member of the Nicobarese community with them, as an assistant to navigate the forests, and that this also helps the community monitor the researchers’ compliance of the guidelines.

“If even after these guidelines they do not follow it, we will have to take a call on how they can make this more strict,” he said.

The Idu Mishmi society emphasised that there was a need for broader policies in the country to address these questions. But given the current atmosphere where “most of the decentralised aspects of power are being delegitimised”, it stated, there remained “little hope” of such a development. Nonetheless, the communities’ own efforts were a precedent toward “regulating unethical, extractive or undisclosed research practices”, they said, while also “balancing academic and community interests”.

The incident involving women staffers at the Eiffel Tower being removed from their work stations during a visit by a Hindu religious group was a “matter purely between the entities concerned”, the Ministry of External Affairs said on Tuesday.

The incident had taken place during a visit by a delegation of about 100 people associated with the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha to the monument on Saturday. The removal of the women staffers had led to a strike by employees at the Paris landmark, due to which the Eiffel Tower was shut on Monday.

On Sunday, the group consecrated its first major temple in France, located in the suburbs of Paris, in a ceremony attended virtually by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on Tuesday that the government was aware of the opening of the BAPS temple in Paris. “As to the particular issue pertaining to the Tower, this is a matter purely between the entities concerned,” he said.

The controversy

The Eiffel Tower staff said on Monday that female employees had been instructed “to make themselves invisible” in order to welcome the BAPS delegation, AFP reported.

“Some were asked to leave their posts and withdraw to other areas,” the staffers were quoted as saying. “In some posts, they were replaced by men. And all female employees were instructed not to go through or cross certain areas while the delegation was present.”

SETE, the company that manages the monument, said that the Hindu delegation had asked for the visit to be arranged to minimise “interactions with women”, AFP reported. The company said that such conditions “should not have been accepted”, as they were inconsistent with its values and the principle of gender equality.

The company said that it would “accept the consequences” of the incident.

Later, BAPS Paris said that it respects “the concerns raised” and takes them very seriously. The group said that to the best of its knowledge, at no point was anyone prevented access to the Eiffel Tower.

However, it apologised for “any pain or inconvenience caused” and said it believes in the universal values of mutual respect and service.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The National Investigation Agency on Tuesday filed a chargesheet against seven foreign nationals who had been arrested in March for allegedly having links to ethnic armed groups in Myanmar that are hostile to India, reported PTI.

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

They have been chargesheeted for illegally entering, staying and moving in India under the 2025 Immigration and Foreigners Act.

Of those named, one person Matthew Aaron Van Dyke is from the United States. The other six, Hurba Petro, Slyviak Taras, Ivan Sukmanovskyi, Stefankiv Marian, Honcharuk Maksim and Kaminskyi Viktor, are Ukrainian citizens.

The agency arrested all seven on March 13. They were allegedly involved in supplying weapons and military equipment to ethnic armed groups operating in Myanmar, as well as providing them with training.

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

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

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

On Tuesday, Special Public Prosecutor Rahul Tyagi told Special Judge Prashant Sharma that although the anti-terror law had not been invoked in Tuesday’s chargesheet, investigation into possible UAPA offences would continue, The Print reported.

He said the agency could file a supplementary chargesheet if further investigation establishes an offence under the Act.

Edited by Sneha.

India’s leaders must find systemic solutions to the country’s employment problems. The economy is not creating enough good jobs for young people, even if more were to pursue higher education and the examination system functioned smoothly. More technology to fix the examination system will not solve the deeper problem of the economy.

Moreover, there is increasing evidence that use of more technology and AI will worsen India’s unemployment crisis. While it may be unclear whether AI will create more jobs ultimately, it is sufficiently clear that inequality will rise during the transition, increasing further the distance between “haves” and “have nots”.

India’s youth need a ladder to climb to reach their aspirations. They want gainful employment, and to earn enough to secure their own and their families’ futures. The economy has not provided them a good ladder to climb from where they are, to the higher floors above where they can live well and safely. The ladder provided so far is both broken and misaligned. It is missing the lower rungs necessary for those who do not have the means to reach the higher rungs of education from which they can climb further. And those who can climb up find there is nothing up there for them.

For many decades now, solutions for the jobless growth of the economy have been to grow GDP faster, skill more youth, and build institutions of higher education. The principal reform of the economy that has being pursued, fruitlessly, is to move more people out of agriculture, with the hope that they will find employment in manufacturing, services, and in urban areas. Most jobs in those sectors are insecure and do not pay well. The young are losing hope in the “ache din” promised in 2014 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The State of Working India 2026 report compiled by Azim Premji University shows that the real earnings growth of graduate men, who are already employed, has declined by 0.1% per annum since 2017. The Economic Survey 2024-’25 reveals that over 50% of Indian graduates are classified as unemployed; and that only 8% of those employed are in jobs that match their qualification.

Economists worry that India’s unorganised and informal sector is too large. They want the formal and organised sector to grow larger. However, jobs in the formal sector are becoming fewer with firms deploying more technology and AI to improve productivity. In fact, India’s IT firms, who were large providers of jobs for India’s graduates, are now using more AI themselves and reducing employment.

Moreover, contractualisation of work in the formal sector, with the replacement of full-time employees with employees on short term contracts – to provide the firms with “hiring and firing flexibility” to keep down their costs, has resulted in wage compression. The Economic Survey estimates that the real (inflation adjusted) earnings of workers have fallen by 6.4% between 2017-’18 and 2023-’24.

Contractualisation of work has other harmful effects for the economy. Workers lose social security; and they are deprived of opportunities to continue learning on the job and upgrading their skills. This adds further burdens on the government for resources for social security, when it is already under pressure from its economic advisers to cut back its expenditure, and not increase taxes on corporations and the rich because that will reduce their incentives to invest more in their enterprises, to install more automation and AI to improve their productivity and reduce employment further!

Systemic reforms

Let us apply “systems thinking” to the economy. To connect the many fixes applied, and understand why they backfire on each other, and slow down the creation of jobs and dampen income growth. Some of these fixes are flexibility for employers to adjust employment costs; more AI to improve performance in all sectors; reduced taxes on corporations to encourage more investment; reduction of government borrowing to make more room for private borrowing; reduction of governments’ health and education budgets and encouragement of private enterprises in health and education (who will employ people on contract, use more AI, etc. to improve their internal efficiencies).

Pushing harder on each of these seemingly good fixes is jamming income growth. Since incomes and social security are not growing faster than inflation, consumption is slowing, and investments are not forthcoming, though the government is pleading for more.

A nation is a socio-economic system sustained by its natural environment. The modern model of an economy is a system designed to enable more efficient extraction of natural resources and exploitation of human beings’ labor and intelligence. This is not sustainable. For one, the natural environment is running out of resources to feed greed for economic growth. Also, with the masses not earning enough, who will pay for the products and services of technology (and AI) empowered enterprises?

Policy makers must return to the drawing board and redesign the earnings ladder. Economists must reimagine “work”. Especially the work done within families, and the work that is done “informally”, outside formal, factory-like settings. Also, the unpaid, or insufficiently paid work that women (and men) do in “social” enterprises like families and communities to provide care for others. It may not contribute much to the money-measured GDP that work in “economic” enterprises does. But it is essential work for society’s sustenance.

The contradictions between prudent management of the economy, provision of care services, and employment of more women are starkly visible in India. Approximately 4 million women are employed as ASHA workers, anganwadi workers, and anganwadi worker helpers to provide medical care and care of children in communities. Their approximate, average monthly earnings are: ASHAs Rs 3,000 to Rs 8,000, anganwadi workers Rs 4,500, and anganwadi helpers Rs 3,000. The exact amounts are not important: the sums are so small. They have been protesting across the country for more wages, but central and state governments say they cannot afford to pay them more.

In summary, more GDP cannot be the solution for increasing employment and incomes until the employment elasticity of the Indian economy is improved (ie, the numbers of good jobs generated with each unit of GDP). Economists estimate that the GDP of an unreformed economy will have to grow at least 8.5% per annum for the next decade, starting now to provide enough jobs, whereas with difficulty it is growing around 6%.

An unreformed economic structure, with more privatisation, can no longer provide decent jobs with sustainable income growth for Indian citizens. Exporting human beings abroad to earn and remit money home to sustain their families and the Indian economy is not a dignified solution for a country that wishes to be seen as a beacon of wisdom and compassion in the world.

India’s economy must be reformed. It must return to the vision of “poorna swaraj” – equal political, social, and economic opportunities for all citizens, whatever their castes or religions. That is its “tryst with destiny”, that “India ie Bharat” set out for on August 15, 1947. Our policymakers lost their way when they began to pursue targets of GDP growth.

Arun Maira is the author of Reimagining India’s Economy: The Road to a More Equitable Society.

Days after Bharatiya Janata Party leader Raghav Chadha claimed that his name was deleted from the draft voter list prepared during the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Punjab, the Rajya Sabha MP’s name was included in the draft rolls in Delhi, The Indian Express reported.

The Aam Aadmi Party on Tuesday alleged that Chadha had illegally registered himself as a voter in Delhi’s Rajinder Nagar assembly constituency.

AAP National Media In-charge Anurag Dhanda claimed that the Rajya Sabha MP’s name was added to the Delhi draft electoral roll in a “backdoor manner”, ANI reported. Dhanda claimed that the original roll released on August 31 showed 746 names, while Chadha’s name figured as the 747th entry later.

Responding to the allegations, Chadha said that he had complied with all applicable Election Commission guidelines and procedures and availed of the remedies prescribed under the law, The Indian Express reported. He described the allegations as “frivolous”.

He alleged that the AAP leadership was targeting him since he left the party, ANI reported. Chadha had left the AAP to join the BJP in April.

On Thursday, Chadha had claimed that the Election Commission had classified him as having shifted from his registered address in Mohali. He alleged that this was a “clear case of political vendetta” by the AAP government in Punjab.

On the inclusion of Chadha’s name in Delhi’s electoral roll, the office of the Delhi chief electoral officer said that names are added, deleted or modified in the electoral rolls only on the basis of Forms 6, 7 and 8.

In a statement on social media, it said that around 2.14 lakh Form 6 applications for the enrolment of new electors were received between June 16 and August 31, when the electoral roll was kept frozen for preparation of the SIR draft. Applications for new voter registration are not processed for inclusion during the draft roll stage, it said.

Since the draft roll was published, more than 25,000 Form 6 applications have been submitted across Delhi in the eight days up to Monday, according to the CEO’s office. Of these, electoral registration officers had approved 700 applications as of Tuesday. The statement did not provide any specific information on Chadha’s application or voter status.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

On August 21, several cities of Punjab woke up to a complete shutdown in support of a call to release Sikh convicts lodged in different jails across the country.

Popularly called “Bandi Singhs”, the prisoners were convicted and sentenced by different courts for their involvement in the Punjab militancy during the 1980s and 1990s. Some of them are serving life sentences.

The call for a statewide shutdown had come from Qaumi Insaaf Morcha, a Sikh advocacy group that has fought for the release of the prisoners for decades.

At the centre of the Morcha’s agitation is Jagtar Singh Hawara, a man convicted for the assassination of Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh.

Hawara and Balwant Singh Rajoana, both members of the banned militant group Babbar Khalsa, were sentenced to death by a trial court in 2007 for carrying out a bomb blast outside the Punjab Civil Secretariat in Chandigarh in 1995. Along with the chief minister, the blast had also killed 16 people. Hawara’s sentence was later commuted to imprisonment for life.

The Qaumi Insaaf Morcha is seeking a four-week parole for Hawara. “His mother is 81 and suffering from Alzheimer’s,” said Gursharan Singh Dhaliwal, Hawara’s lawyer. “We are seeking parole in order to allow a son to meet his mother.”

In Punjab, the demand to release “the Bandi Singhs” goes back several decades. In 2013, the number of such prisoners were estimated to be around 119. Over time, and with sustained advocacy by Sikh religious groups, that number has been whittled down to nine.

But the demand for a remission of their sentence continues to resonate with the Sikh religious community – or the Panth.

As the state heads for an Assembly election early next year, the Morcha’s call has found support from political parties that seek the “Panthic” vote such as the Shiromani Akali Dal (Punar Surjit) and Shiromani Akali Dal Waris Punjab De.

Strikingly, the Aam Aadmi Party, too, has jumped on to the bandwagon.

On August 8, Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann wrote a letter to the state’s governor Gulab Chand Kataria, seeking parole for Hawara.

It was the first instance of a sitting Punjab chief minister formally seeking parole for a convict in the assassination of a former chief minister.

A ‘Panthic’ issue

In the early 1980s, a movement seeking greater autonomy for Sikhs within the Indian union coalesced into a full-blown insurgency after the Indian Army stormed the Harmandir Sahib or the Golden Temple in Amritsar to remove Sikh militants holed up inside the sacred structure in what was called Operation Blue Star.

In the decade that followed, the border state was engulfed by a violent insurgency led by Sikh militants. “They were responsible for numerous human rights abuses during the violent separatist struggle for an independent Khalistan, including the killings of Hindu and Sikh civilians, assassinations of political leaders, and the indiscriminate use of bombs leading to a large number of civilian deaths in Punjab and other parts of India,” a Human Rights Watch report released in 2007, said.

A collective effort to seek the release of Sikh prisoners began in 2012, days ahead of the hanging of Balwant Singh Rajoana, who was convicted of killing chief minister Beant Singh.

The state government led by Akali Dal patriarch Parkash Singh Badal had sought the Centre’s intervention, as it feared violence if Rajoana were to be hanged.

The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, the apex governing body of Sikh Gurdwaras, also filed a mercy petition on behalf of Rajaona before the President. Eventually, the Union Home Ministry ordered a stay on Rajoana’s execution in 2012.

In 2013, Gurbaksh Singh Khalsa, a militant-turned-activist from Haryana, observed a 44-day-long hunger strike to demand the release of Rajoana and five other Sikh prisoners sentenced to life.

A person sentenced to imprisonment for life can appeal for remission of the sentence after 14 years – a decision that is up to the political executive. It is not a right of the convict, the Supreme Court has ruled.

The activist’s fast had led to the release of four prisoners on parole.

The same year, Sikh organisations drafted a list of 119 Sikh prisoners who were languishing in different jails across the country.

While not all of those prisoners were serving life sentences, many of them had spent decades in jail. “Some were undertrials and some had completed their terms. There were many who had not come out of jail for a long time despite being eligible for premature release,” said Jaspal Singh Manjhpur, a lawyer-activist, who has been documenting the cases of Sikh prisoners for several decades now.

Over the last 13 years, however, the number of prisoners around whom the current agitation is centered has just come down to nine. “During all these years, many of these prisoners were either bailed out or were released following mobilisation and hunger strikes by Sikhs,” said France, the convener of Qaumi Insaaf Morcha.

Out of the nine, seven are convicts in the assassination of former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh while two others are facing life imprisonment for the 1993 Delhi blast and the 1990 Delhi and Karnataka blast.

Although there is little support for Khalistani militancy within Punjab, the demand to release the Bandi Singhs does strike an emotional chord.

“In Punjab, the general perception among Sikhs about the Bandi Singhs is that whatever they did, it was for the Panth,” said Ashutosh Kumar, professor of political science at Panjab University. “There is an acknowledgement that even if they have done something wrong, they have sacrificed enough for it. That they had no personal agenda and they should be freed now.”

The Punjab government has a limited role in remitting the punishment of a convict. The discretion lies with the central government. “If BJP wishes, Modi can put an end to this issue tomorrow. But the question is does the BJP want to?” asked Pal Singh France, the convener of the Qaumi Insaaf Morcha.

For many in Punjab, the pending issue of prisoners is a reflection of a deeper gulf. “If Gurmeet Ram Rahim, who is a convicted rapist as well as a murderer, can be given parole 17 times by the BJP government, why is there discrimination when the convicts are Sikhs?” asked France. This treatment, France says, spawns a feeling of doubt within the Sikh community. “Are our issues and sensitivities not important for New Delhi?” he asked.

Elections in mind

It is not as if the BJP has not responded to the demands before.

In October 2019, the Narendra Modi government had released eight Sikh prisoners and commuted the death sentence of one to life imprisonment, ahead of the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev. A Congress government was in power in the state at that time, while the BJP had an alliance with Punjab’s grand old party Akali Dal.

Since then, Punjab’s political arithmetic has changed dramatically.

In 2020, the Akali Dal, BJP’s oldest ally, quit the ruling National Democratic Alliance over the now-scrapped three farm laws. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, two pro-Khalistan leaders, contesting as independent candidates, won two parliamentary seats in Punjab.

One of them was Amritpal Singh who styles himself after the slain Khalistan leader, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. Another winner was Sarabjeet Singh Khalsa, the son of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassin Beant Singh.

“Earlier, the release of prisoners was more a Panthic (Sikh community) issue than a human rights issue. Being a party that represented Panthic interest, it was an issue closer to Akali Dal,” said Kumar, the professor of political science at Panjab University

Now, there are other contenders to that pie. With the marginalisation of Akali Dal over the last decade or so, the issue has become a rallying cry for new political outfits in Punjab who are championing Panthic issues.

“It would be a bigger electoral issue this time than the previous years,” said Kumar.

Groups like Amritpal Singh’s party, Waris Punjab De, and Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar), a splinter group of the Akali Dal, are likely to raise the issue in a significant way ahead of elections, Kumar said. “In order to recover their credibility as a Panthic party, Akali Dal would also not be behind.”

In July, supporters of Waris Punjab De clashed with Chandigarh police after they were stopped from marching to the residence of Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann. The protesters were demanding the release of jailed MP Amritpal Singh and the Bandi Singhs.

“There is a definite rise in radical politics in Punjab over the last several years,” said a senior journalist in Punjab, speaking off the record. But the established political parties have not risen to the occasion to counter these forces, he added.

Six months before Bhagwant Mann changed his stance, the AAP government had refused to endorse the demand for Hawara’s parole. But now, “even a non-religious party like AAP is venturing into Panthic politics,” the journalist said.

As a result, the politics around the Bandi Singhs issue is likely to intensify as the election nears, the journalist underlined.

Since the central government holds the key in deciding the fate of Sikh political prisoners, it may give some room to the BJP to improve its dented image in Punjab, following the farmers’ agitation.

“In the 2022 assembly elections, the BJP’s candidates were not allowed to enter villages,” said France, the convener of the Qaumi Insaaf Morcha, sharing a common refrain about the saffron party’s image in the state. “If they release Bandi Singhs, people may allow them inside villages this election.”

The Congress’ West Bengal unit on Tuesday filed police complaints against Dhirendra Shastri, the head of the Bageshwar Dham temple, after he asked Hindus in the state to avoid eating non-vegetarian food during the Durga Puja festival and at pandals in the state, PTI reported.

Speaking at an event in Kolkata on Sunday, Shastri said he does not like it when “dirty” non-vegetarian food is eaten during Durga Puja and at gatherings linked to the festivities.

In one of the complaints filed against him in Kolkata, the Congress accused Shastri of “hurting the sentiments” of Bengalis and insulting the state’s culture and traditions, The Telegraph reported.

Complaints have been filed against Shastri in all districts of West Bengal, PTI quoted unidentified Congress leaders as saying.

Seeking the registration of a first information report against Shastri, Pradip Prasad, the Congress’ South Kolkata district unit chief, said that his remarks could spark “disharmony in the society, including division, which is against the democratic and peaceful spirit”, The Telegraph reported.

Prasad alleged that Shastri had made “vile” remarks about what people should eat during the festival and described the language he used as being “derogatory and insulting to Bengali culture”, PTI reported

Shastri had said on Sunday that those who eat meat during Durga Puja “cannot be considered religious”. Meat must not be sold near the goddess’ idol during the festival, he added.

The festival will begin on October 6 and conclude on October 10 this year.

Eating meat during Durga Puja is common among Bengali Hindus and animal sacrifice is an important ritual for some in the community.

Following Shastri’s remarks, the Opposition Trinamool Congress claimed that the Bharatiya Janata Party “wants to snatch fish and meat from the plates of Bengalis”. “For this purpose, raids are being conducted in all restaurants before the puja,” the TMC said on social media.

The party said that Bengalis “will not let go” if somebody tries to dictate what they eat or celebrate their festival.

BJP leaders in the state have rejected Shastri’s remarks. The party’s West Bengal unit chief Samik Bhattacharya said that “what one eats or wears is a personal choice”.

“Bengal’s food culture is diverse, and everyone has the freedom to follow their own preferences,” said Bhattacharya. “Bengalis won’t have fish or mutton? Even Swami Vivekananda approved of it. No saint, leader or anyone else has the right to decide what you should eat.”

The row comes after the Vishva Hindu Parishad on August 26 urged Durga Puja organisers in the state to follow “traditional” religious practices, including keeping meat outside the pandals.

It clarified that it was not asking for organisers to adopt an exclusively vegetarian approach, but suggested that “non-vegetarian” food stalls be kept in designated areas outside pandals. The organisation warned that it could “intervene” if committees do not comply with its suggestions.

The Vishva Hindu Parishad is a part of a group of Hindutva organisations led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organisation of the BJP.

The Durga Puja in Kolkata was added in 2021 to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s representative list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity.

Edited by Sneha.

French politicians across the spectrum on Tuesday said that the country’s values about gender equality were not negotiable, soon after women staffers at the Eiffel Tower were removed from their workstations during a visit by a Hindu religious group.

On Monday, the staff at the monument went on a brief strike to protest the removal of women colleagues during a visit by a delegation of the Hindu denomination Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha on Saturday.

The group consecrated its first major temple in France, located in the suburbs of Paris on Sunday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended the ceremony virtually.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right political party National Rally, said on Tuesday that France will never accept restrictions on women’s presence.

Le Pen, who is viewed as one of the main contenders in next year’s presidential election, also demanded greater transparency about what happened on Monday.

En France, nous n’accepterons jamais que la présence des femmes soit « limitée ».

Toute la lumière doit été faite sur ce qui s’est passé lors de cette visite de la Tour Eiffel. https://t.co/rxdGKHjhfQ

— Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) September 7, 2026

Jordan Bardella, the president of the National Rally, said that the “degrading demand” allegedly made by BAPS should never have been met.

“In a free country like France, gender equality is respected, and no religious reason can override women's dignity,” Bardella said on social media. “Our civilisational values are not negotiable.”

Former French Prime Minister Michel Barnier said that the Eiffel Tower, located in the heart of his parliamentary constituency, is “the common heritage” of all Parisians and the French people.

Therefore, the order “aimed at making women disappear from this space” was “utterly unacceptable”, said the leader of the centre-right party, The Republicans.

“In France, it is not practices from elsewhere that dictate to women how to dress or exist in public spaces,” Barnier said on social media. “Women are not hidden. They are not erased. They are respected, and their freedom is defended.”

He demanded an explanation from the company that manages the Eiffel Tower.

Je prends connaissance du mouvement de colère des salarié·es de la tour Eiffel et je veux leur dire que leur mécontentement est légitime.

Il n’est pas acceptable que de telles conditions puissent être tolérées. Ce ne sont ni mes valeurs, ni celles que doit porter la tour Eiffel,… https://t.co/3srttJpxPo

— Emmanuel Grégoire (@egregoire) September 7, 2026

Paris Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire also said that conditions being placed on Eiffel Tower staffers cannot be accepted. He said that women and men must be able to move freely at the site without any gender discrimination and promised an investigation into the matter.

“Equality between women and men will never stop at the foot of our historical monuments, nor anywhere in this city,” the Socialist Party leader asserted on social media. “It must be applied everywhere, for everyone.”

French Equality Minister Aurore Bergé said that France does not ask women to “erase themselves” and that “no dogma, no religion is above the laws of the Republic”.

The strike by the staffers was widely covered by French media, including reports by Paris-based news agency AFP, state-owned international news television network France 24, and newspapers Le Parisien and Le Monde.

Indian Alliance Paris, a collective of Indian students and professionals in Paris, said the incident should not become “fodder for more racism”.

In a social media post, it described BAPS as a “regressive sect” and said that it did not represent all Hindus or India.

“BAPS is a regressive sect, politically connected to India's far-right,” said the collective. “It should be treated like the sexist casteist backward sect it is.”

The strike against gender discrimination

On Monday, the Eiffel Tower staff said that female employees had been instructed “to make themselves invisible in order to welcome this delegation”, AFP reported. The staffers said they were shocked to have been put in such a situation.

“Some were asked to leave their posts and withdraw to other areas,” the staffers were quoted as saying. “In some posts, they were replaced by men. And all female employees were instructed not to go through or cross certain areas while the delegation was present.”

The Société d’exploitation de la Tour Eiffel, the company that manages the monument, said that the Hindu delegation had asked for the visit to be arranged to minimise “interactions with women”, AFP reported.

The firm stated that such conditions “should not have been accepted”, as they were inconsistent with its values and the principle of gender equality. It said that it would “accept the consequences” of the incident.

BAPS Paris said that it respects “the concerns raised” and takes them very seriously. The group said that to the best of its knowledge, at no point was anyone prevented from accessing the Eiffel Tower.

However, it apologised for “any pain or inconvenience caused” and said it believes in the universal values of mutual respect and service.

“Due to the size of our delegation, the visit was arranged in conjunction with the Eiffel Tower team at the start of normal opening hours to avoid disrupting or inconveniencing others,” BAPS Paris said.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Sneha.

Also read: France riots: Why Hindu nationalists in India are backing the French far right

“Very low rain this year; only one rain in this season till now,” said 35-year-old farmer Vipin Kumar Yadav from Manipur village in Mahua block of Uttar Pradesh’s Banda district, this July, as the agriculture-dependent region waited for rains.

Pointing to the farm pond, or khet talab, dug on his land, Yadav said the difference from last year was stark. “Look at this, how little water is in my pond this time. Last year around this time, the entire pond was full. I used that water in October-November to irrigate my wheat crop. This year the water is low; the 10-foot-deep pond couldn’t even fill up to five feet. I am worried: how will the wheat and mustard crops get water this year?”

The concern is significant in a region where much of agriculture remains dependent on rainfall. By August 1, rainfall in Banda was 26% below normal for the monsoon season.

The pond was dug in Yadav’s field in May 2024. Last year, he used the stored water to irrigate four acres of wheat twice, more than doubling his wheat yield from about 3.5-4.5 quintals per acre to 9-10 quintals per acre. This year, however, the pond has received much less water.

The concern over rainfall comes as forecasts point to a strengthening El Niño. On July 30, the Union Ministry of Earth Sciences said in a press release that El Niño had intensified from weak conditions in June to moderate levels in July and could strengthen further to the very strong category during October-December.

On August 13, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in an advisory that there is a more than 90% chance that El Niño will become very strong in the coming months. It also estimated a 69% chance that the October-December period could see an El Niño stronger than any recorded since 1950.

The Indian government has responded by pushing for greater water storage. Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has directed that ponds, farm ponds, check dams and other water-conservation structures be repaired and strengthened, while water-harvesting work under employment scheme Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act (VB-G RAM G) and other rural development programmes, have been prioritised.

Vipin’s experience shows the potential of such measures. But his elder brother Keshav Yadav’s experience offers a different perspective.

A pond was dug in Keshav’s farm alongside Vipin’s. Within a year, its embankment on one side broke. Following that, silt collection reduced the depth of the 10-foot deep pond.

“Water doesn’t stay in my pond at all. If water remained in it, I would have irrigated the mustard crop this year. Last year, I managed to irrigate two acres of mustard with this very pond. This time I won’t be able to irrigate it,” Keshav said.

A few studies have shown that farmers in Bundelkhand, where Vipin and Keshav’s farms are located, who have adopted soil and water conservation measures have seen increased crop productivity and net farm revenue.

An old idea

Farm ponds are common in Bundelkhand, which is among India’s most climate-vulnerable semi-arid regions, where recurrent droughts, rising temperatures and increasingly erratic monsoon rainfall have made farming more uncertain.

The region has a long tradition of storing rainwater in ponds, tanks, lakes and wells. A study published in the Indian Journal of History of Science documents how the Chandelas and, later, the Bundela rulers developed interconnected systems of water-harvesting structures to manage the region’s scarce water resources.

The study also notes that while the region experienced a major drought roughly once every 16 years during the 18th and 19th centuries, the frequency of droughts tripled between 1968 and 1992. The paper quotes a media report published in 2016 and highlights that the region has experienced “15th consecutive crop losses and 13 droughts in the previous 15 years.”

Even now, much of Bundelkhand’s agriculture remains dependent on rainfall. According to the Uttar Pradesh Agriculture Statistics 2022-’23, only 47% of Chitrakoot’s net sown area is irrigated, compared with 54% in Mahoba and 61% in Banda.

As a result, governments in the recent past have sought to expand this traditional approach. In 2009, the Union Cabinet approved a Rs 7,266 crore special package for drought mitigation and integrated development in Bundelkhand. It included a target of constructing 30,000 farm ponds across Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, along with 20,000 new dug wells in each state.

Uttar Pradesh launched the Khet-Talab Yojana in 2016-17 under the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana. In the first phase of the scheme, 2,000 ponds were constructed across all development blocks of the seven districts of Bundelkhand at an expenditure of Rs 1.22 core. It is now operated under the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana. Under the scheme, the government provides 50% of the cost of a small 22×20×3-metre pond, amounting to Rs 52,500.

Ground experience

On the evening of July 20, it rained for the second time that season in Doda Mafi village of Chitrakoot’s Manikpur block. But 65-year-old farmer Sunder Kol was not excited by it. His farm pond, he said, could not retain water because of sandy soil.

“I haven’t received any benefit from the pond. Last year too, I couldn’t irrigate my mustard crop; I only got a yield of two quintals,” he said. Kol farms two acres but now depends on daily wage labour to support his family. He also lost 0.25 acre of land to the pond.

In Mangawan panchayat, 42-year-old Mullu Kol’s pond, dug in 2009-10, has lost much of its capacity because of siltation. Its depth has fallen from six feet to about three feet. Mullu said it once irrigated two acres but can now irrigate only one acre. Since wheat requires three rounds of irrigation, he grows mustard instead. “Not being able to cultivate wheat creates grain and fodder shortages for us,” he said.

The experience of 65-year-old Bulli Mawasi from Bambiya gram panchayat is even more stark. His pond was constructed under the Bundelkhand Package through the rural employment scheme Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in 2009-10. It was supposed to be 10 feet deep but was dug only five feet before the work stopped, reportedly due to insufficient funds.

“In the last 15 years, I haven’t been able to do a single drop of irrigation from this pond,” Mawasi said. Water seeps away. To resolve the seepage issue, departmental officials had discussed installing a plastic lining (mulching) for the pond, but it was never carried out. About 0.25 acres of his land were also taken for the pond. “I suffered losses from the pond rather than gaining any benefit,” he said.

The pond is not located in the farm’s natural catchment area and lacks a properly designed inlet to channel runoff. Mawasi now pays Rs 250 an hour to rent irrigation equipment and about Rs 1,000 for diesel. One 10-hour irrigation costs him Rs 3,500, which he borrows.

Hydrogeology expert and retired professor Shashikant Tripathi of Mahatma Gandhi Chitrakoot Gramodaya Vishwavidyalaya, a government university in Satna district, said poor site selection is a major reason for such failures. In Bundelkhand’s plateau terrain, he said, “The failure to choose the right site is a major reason why the ponds fail.” He said that site selection should consider the underlying rock, slope, drainage density, soil type and land use. A scientifically selected pond can retain water for four to five months.

Chitrakoot Soil Conservation Officer Baljeet Bahadur acknowledged that seepage is a problem in sandy-soil areas but said, “There is no budget for seepage control, desiltation or maintenance.” A 22×20×3-metre pond costs Rs 1.05 lakh, with the government providing Rs 52,500. He said farmers often limit excavation to the amount covered by government assistance, which affects pond quality.

The problems are not limited to older ponds. In Mahoba, where rainfall was 43% below normal by August 1, 28-year-old Mukesh Kumar’s pond, dug in April 2023, had lost up to three feet of depth due to siltation. He said even one irrigation this year would be significant, but he could not afford to have the pond desilted. He also suggested that drip or sprinkler irrigation could reduce the amount of water needed.

The ground experience points to four recurring problems, including inadequate water, seepage, siltation and poor maintenance, that have made several ponds useless.

A 2023 case study published by Erasmus University Rotterdam, which traced the scheme’s roots to a community initiative launched in 2003, noted that the focus shifted towards creating visible physical structures after the government adopted it under a new scheme.

The paper said that it was originally intended to revive traditional rainwater-harvesting practices, raise awareness among local farmers, rejuvenate old community ponds and promote small-scale individual ponds. When the government adopted it in 2018, it helped scale up pond construction. But communication with farmers, frugality, design flexibility and the incorporation of local and experiential knowledge were sidelined.

What needs to change

Experts and officials say farm ponds can be made more effective, but their design and maintenance need to change.

Gaya Prasad Gopal, founder of a non-profit organisation Akhil Bhartiya Samaj Seva Sansthan, which works for the conservation of water and natural resources in Bundelkhand, said seepage can be reduced by lining the pond bed and walls with black polythene and covering them with a layer of black clay soil.

Mahoba soil conservation officer P. C. Vishwakarma said schemes like farm ponds are extremely important for Bundelkhand. A standard 22×20×3-meter pond can hold about 11.5 lakh litres of water, theoretically enough for three rounds of irrigation for a hectare of wheat. The ponds can also reduce soil erosion and help recharge groundwater, but he acknowledged that they may not provide sufficient irrigation water in years of low rainfall.

Tripathi said, “Maintenance remains another major hurdle. Farmers often assume maintenance is the state’s responsibility, but since they are the direct beneficiaries, they must also take ownership of upkeep. The government should introduce provisions that encourage farmers by offering financial assistance for maintenance, bearing a share of the costs incurred in desiltation and other structural repairs.”

Pond dimensions should not be fixed but determined by the farm’s cultivable area, crops and irrigation requirements. He also called for financial support for maintenance and desiltation.

Vishwakarma said there is currently no provision in the scheme for pond maintenance, which is left to farmers. Kaushal Garg, senior hydrology scientist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), said Gram Panchayats should also take responsibility for maintenance, with activities such as desiltation, bunding and repairs supported through programmes such as VB-GRAM-G. “Such initiatives will only remain sustainable if local community participation is ensured,” he said.

Garg said pond construction should begin with a scientific assessment of water availability, rainfall patterns, soil and slope conditions. “These interventions must be science-led,” he said.

This article was first published on Mongabay.