The police in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar district have filed a case against a Muslim cleric for allegedly making derogatory remarks about kanwariyas, PTI reported.

The case has been filed against Sajid Rashidi, the president of the All India Imam Association.

In an interview with IANS, the cleric had questioned whether those who “sit on roads consuming alcohol and intoxicants” could be called devotees of the Hindu deity Shiva.

“Can those who assault police personnel in uniform be called Shiva devotees?” Rashidi had said, referring to a video of a group of kanwariyas assaulting police personnel in Meerut. “Can those who smash the windows of a school van and injure children be called Shiva devotees?”

The cleric, however, clarified that he was not speaking about all those who take part in the annual Kanwar Yatra.

During the Kanwar Yatra, devotees, known as kanwariyas, walk hundreds of kilometres to collect water from the Ganga near Haridwar and carry it back to their home states to offer at temples. The yatra began on July 30 and will end on August 11.

A complaint against Rashidi’s remarks was filed by Narendra Panwar, the chief of a Hindutva organisation named Hindu Sangharsh Samiti.

The police have filed a first information report against the cleric under a provision of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita which pertains to acts intended to outrage religious feelings, PTI reported.

Hindutva activists led by Panwar had held a protest on Friday, and demanded action against Rashidi.

On August 3, a group of kanwariyas who were travelling on motorcycles had allegedly attacked a school van in Lucknow after a minor accident.

The accident had taken place when the van was on its way to drop students to school. One of the motorcycles hit the rear of the vehicle after the van driver applied the brakes, which led to an argument.

The dispute prompted some of the kanwariyas to allegedly damage the van’s rear windshield and side mirror, before they fled.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Shiv Sena corporator Ramesh Mhatre, arrested last month for allegedly assaulting doctors and staff at a civic hospital in Maharashtra’s Dombivli, was released from jail on Saturday, NDTV reported.

Mhatre, who belongs to the Shiv Sena faction led by Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, was released from the Adharwadi jail in Kalyan.

The case relates to the corporator and his associates allegedly assaulting doctors at the hospital on July 6 after the family of a pregnant woman was asked to transfer her to another medical centre because there were no beds available in the neonatal intensive care unit, which the newborn was expected to require.

The Bombay High Court on Friday granted bail to Mhatre, but directed him to stay outside Maharashtra till the chargesheet is filed in the case, PTI reported. A bench of Acting Chief Justice Ravindra Ghuge and Justice Gautam Ankhad said that the corporator could be granted bail as the investigation is being carried out at a fast pace, and he had spent a considerable amount of time behind bars.

Mhatre spent over three weeks in jail in two separate stints. He was first arrested on July 8, and was granted bail by a sessions court on July 14.

However, the High Court had cancelled the bail four days later. Mhatre had surrendered before the police on July 19.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Bhagwat is scheduled to travel to Canada from August 31 to September 1 as part of a global outreach tour.

The RSS is the parent organisation of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the ruling party in India.

Heather Mcpherson and Jenny Kwan – both MPs from Canada’s New Democratic Party – wrote to the country’s ministers for public safety, immigration and foreign affairs seeking that Bhagwat be barred from entering Canada.

“We ask you to declare Mr Bhagwat inadmissible to Canada on account of his history of hate speech, advocacy of violence against religious minorities, targeted intimidation of critics in India and in Canada, and his association with criminal organisations and listed terrorist organisations,” the two MPs wrote.

Serious concerns: extremist networks linked to intimidation, hatred, violence, foreign interference targeting minority communities/critics. Govt must put public safety and rights of Canadians ahead of political interests. Anti-Sikh/Islamophobic hate speech have no place in Canada pic.twitter.com/sPLSDf1DgS

— Jenny Kwan (@JennyKwanBC) August 7, 2026

Mcpherson and Kwan said that there is “considerable evidence” of the RSS’ sphere of influence in Canada. “Muslim, Sikh, Dalit and other minorities in India have been targeted with intimidation and violent threats,” they wrote.

The MPs also noted that United Nations human rights experts have called on Canada to ensure that members of the Sikh community are “protected from violent threats” by Hindutva extremist groups, including the RSS.

“Let us be clear: Mr Bhagwat’s presence in Canada would be a danger to Canadians,” the letter read. “He is not welcome here.”

Civil society groups oppose Bhagwat’s visit

Separately, more than 40 Canadian civil society and faith-based organisations also called on the country’s Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree not to allow Bhagwat to enter Canada, Maktoob Media reported.

The organisations said that the RSS chief’s visit would raise public safety concerns and urged the minister to “protect our communities from far-right extremism, hate speech, and foreign intimidation”.

Among the organisations that made the demand were Canadian Forum for Human Rights and Democracy in India, Canadian Council of Indian Muslims, Canadians for Indian Democracy, South Asian Dalit Adivasi Network, World Sikh Organization and Canadian Council of Muslim Women, Maktoob Media reported.

Written by Neerad Pandharipande. Edited by Sara Varghese.

A Mumbai court on Friday denied anticipatory bail to two students of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences who were booked for allegedly shouting slogans in support of jailed activists Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam, The Indian Express reported.

The students have also been booked for possessing downloaded books and other material that the prosecution alleges reflects Maoist ideology.

Seven others, who were also booked after taking part in an event in October commemorating the death anniversary of former Delhi University professor GN Saibaba, were granted anticipatory bail, the newspaper reported.

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.

On Friday, the 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, The Indian Express reported.

“Being students, it was expected from accused persons to respect the law of land,” the newspaper quoted the judge as saying.

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.

In October 2025, some students of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences gathered on campus to light candles and display posters of Saibaba to commemorate his death anniversary.

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.

In their anticipatory bail applications, the two students denied shouting any slogans. They contended that they had been booked based on “false narratives” spread on social media.

They also stated that while the institute’s administration had claimed that other students had reported the slogans, there was no evidence on record to support the allegation, The Indian Express reported.

Special Public Prosecutor Shishir Hirey opposed the students’ pleas, arguing that “objectionable material” had been recovered from the electronic devices, the newspaper reported. The material relates to Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong, Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin and publications of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist).

The students’ lawyer argued that the material did not establish any links to Maoist ideology and that the literature was freely available for purchase.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Also read: ‘Your careers are ruined’: Judge tells TISS students booked for GN Saibaba death anniversary event

Ink was thrown at student leader Neha Bora on Friday during a protest in Ranchi against alleged irregularities in recruitment exams in Jharkhand. The police have detained the alleged attacker, PTI reported.

The man, who was detained by the police, said that he had targeted Bora because of her support for jailed activist Umar Khalid, PTI reported.

“I do not like Neha Bora because she supports Umar Khalid,” PTI quoted him as saying. “…They are all anti-nationals.”

Khalid has been in jail since September 2020 for his alleged involvement in the communal violence that broke out in North East Delhi in February 2020 between supporters of the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act and those opposing it. The violence had left 53 dead and hundreds injured. Most of those killed were Muslims.

Bora is the president of the All India Students’ Association, the student wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist).

इसी स्याही से लिखेंगे आने वाले देश का भविष्य! रोकने की हर कोशिश को करेंगे ध्वस्त!

( Video credits: @RanchiUpdates @The_FollowUp ) pic.twitter.com/EGyy8A5aJB

— Neha (@neha_aisa) August 7, 2026

Bora alleged that the man shouted “Jai Shri Ram” after throwing ink at her, PTI reported.

“To justify this criminal act, he did the same thing that persons affiliated with the [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh] do,” she said. “…He invoked religion.”

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is the parent organisation of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

She also alleged that “RSS-BJP goons” had thrown ink on 20 women, including herself.

RSS-BJP goons throw ink at me and around 20 other women in Ranchi, Jharkhand!

For them ink is a tool to try to shame others, we will write the future with ink! pic.twitter.com/52XvCZiwK5

— Neha (@neha_aisa) August 7, 2026

The All India Students’ Association also condemned the incident, calling it a “shameful act”. It alleged that BJP- and RSS-linked persons had been running a “hate campaign” against Bora’s participation in the protest.

Bora has emerged as one of the prominent faces of the nationwide youth protests against alleged irregularities in the conduct of competitive examinations.

Last month, she took part a 23-day hunger strike at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar as part of the protests that led to the resignation of BJP leader Dharmendra Pradhan as the Union education minister on July 25.

Protests in Jharkhand

The protests in Jharkhand began on July 25, inspired by the agitation across the country against the alleged mismanagement of national competitive exams. The protesters have been holding a sit-in at Ranchi’s Jaipal Singh Munda Stadium, with six demonstrators on fast.

The protesters have demanded the cancellation of the 14th Jharkhand Public Service Commission Combined Preliminary Test held on April 19.

They have also sought independent inquiries by the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate into alleged irregularities in recruitment examinations conducted by the Jharkhand Public Service Commission and Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has ordered a detailed inquiry into alleged donation irregularities at Mumbai’s Siddhivinayak temple, PTI quoted an unidentified official as saying on Saturday.

The chief minister has directed officials to examine the temple’s records for the last five years, the official said.

The development came after Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray alleged on August 2 that donations worth Rs 18 crore were being embezzled from the temple every year.

Thackeray claimed that the temple’s weekly donations were below Rs 50 lakh before the alleged theft came to light, but increased to about Rs 1.5 crore after those allegedly involved were caught.

Nine temple employees were arrested in connection with the alleged theft in March, Sada Sarvankar, chairperson of the Siddhivinayak Temple Trust and a leader of the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, said, according to The Indian Express.

The allegations came amid similar controversies over alleged thefts of donations at other prominent temples, including Badrinath in Uttarakhand and the Ram temple in Uttar Pradesh’s Ayodhya.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Election Commission on Friday extended the enumeration deadline for the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Karnataka by nine days to August 17. Earlier, the deadline was August 8.

This is the second extension in the state. On July 15, the poll panel had extended the enumeration deadline to August 8 from July 29.

The second extension came after citizens’ rights groups demanded more time, saying that lakhs of persons risked exclusion from the draft rolls, the Deccan Herald reported.

Data shared by the Election Commission showed that only 80.1% of the enumeration forms had been digitised in the state as of Friday. The digitisation rate was lowest in the northern, central and southern areas of the Bengaluru municipal corporation, where it ranged from 49% to 53%.

The digitisation rate was 55.8% in Bengaluru Urban district.

Udupi district recorded the highest rate of form digitisation, at nearly 94%.

Under the revised timeline, the draft voter list in the state will be published on August 24 instead of August 17.

The claims and objections by persons who are removed from the draft list can be filed between August 24 and September 23. The claims will be heard until October 22 before the final electoral roll is published by October 27.

Karnataka is among the 16 states where the voter roll revision is underway 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.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Sara Varghese.

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

In Upper Assam’s Rahmaria area in Dibrugarh district, the Brahmaputra river is central to people’s lives and imaginations. But since a massive earthquake in the region in 1950, Rahmaria has witnessed widespread river erosion, claiming several forests, paddy fields, villages, and shifting lands in its wake.

There was also rampant militarisation in the early 1990s under the influence of the United Liberation Front of Assam, creating an atmosphere of unsettling silence in Rahmaria. This is the backdrop against which visual artist and photographer Pallov Saikia sets most of his work.

Pallov, 36, works as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Fine Arts and Music, Rajiv Gandhi University in Arunachal Pradesh. He is also co-founder of the Assam-based Anga Art Collective, which has emerged as an important voice from the region.

Excerpts from an interview with the artist.

When I see your work, it feels very rooted in where you grew up, and where you come from. Could you talk about your growing up years, and the factors that influenced your work?

I grew up in Garpara village in Rahmaria mouza, located in Assam’s Dibrugarh district. Our village was situated on the banks of the Brahmaputra river.

One of the main things I remember is the backdrop of constant river erosion. So much so, that the river has now consumed more than 30 villages along its course, including my village.

When I was growing up, the erosion in our area was at its peak. The farmlands, the houses, the infrastructure, everything was swept away. There was a huge migration of people out of the area. Most of the families, including mine, were eventually forced to migrate out of Garpara.

The people of Rahmaria were also protesting at the time. They were demanding that the government construct an embankment to prevent erosion in the region. They even stopped Oil India Ltd, from extracting crude oil from Rahmaria as leverage against the government to fulfill their demands. The protest led to the closure of the crude oil site for a long time.

What was the erosion like and when did it start?

There was an earthquake in 1950, in Assam. After that the whole topography of the region changed. My father recalls a lot of stories from his childhood. He was very young when the earthquake took place. After the earthquake, there was a flood, and eventually that led to erosion.

My father recalls that when he was growing up, the Brahmaputra river was far away. He had to first cross the Dibru river to reach it, and it would take him at least three to four hours to reach the river. But now, the Brahmaputra is close by, since it has merged with the Dibru river, and is right next to our home.

At the same time, there is something very magical about the riverine landscape. Even now, when I go back to Rahmaria, I can make out that “Oh, there was a village in this area.” Or, “Oh, there was a bamboo forest there.” Now nothing exists anymore.

When you went to art college in Guwahati, what was the syllabus inside the classroom like?

It was very academic and colonial. We would do things like still lifes, model studies etc. I submitted my internals, but I was not very interested in these activities. I found the classes to be very dislocated from my background.

For example, I was coming from a rural background and I brought with me my own history, material practices, sensitivities etc. But the syllabus was not showing me a way on how I could engage with my background.

It was very common for art teachers to ask if we would define a work as an “illustration” or a “painting”, whether it would be classified as “art” or “craft”. We often had these kinds of conversations. But when I look back at them now, they feel meaningless to me.

For me now, it’s all about where someone’s practice is coming from, and the urgencies around it. Not about whether something is a painting or an illustration, whether it’s art or craft. We were into such traps when we were in art school.

But I made a group of friends in art college. Which is why I feel very fortunate about studying there. On top of that, since I studied in Guwahati Art College, I feel I did not have the institutional baggage that several other schools in the country carry, and that I could start from anywhere.

What you have pointed out feels like a pain point for several young artists. I’m sure you must have felt quite confused and frustrated at the time, because you were not able to relate to what was being taught in the classroom. Did you have any guiding light to help you through this period?

Yes, actually. There was Naskar da. He used to sell art books in Guwahati. We bought books from him in installments, and started reading together. These books were about art history and contemporary art practices. I remember reading a book called Making of Contemporary Art by Linda Weintraub, another one called Concise History of Modern Art by Herbert Read and Ways of Seeing by John Berger, and so on.

Naskar da played a very important role for us during our art school years. He exposed us to the art world through books. And even though he is not in Guwahati anymore, and has moved to Kolkata, we still have a very strong connection with him.

At the same time, we also rented a four room house in Ganesh Nagar, near our college, and converted it into an art studio. This happened quite organically, when I was in my fourth year. Our college was not open 24 hours a day. We asked the college authorities to keep the studio open at night, because we wanted to work for longer, but they refused. That’s when we realised that we needed a separate space where we could work even at night. This was in 2010.

For us as a group, the foundation of working together was already there. At this point we also wanted a space where we could critically discuss art, but the college was not fulfilling our desire to learn more or cultivate our interests. So the studio helped with that. We used the space to organise talks with various artists and writers like Nilmani Phookan, Harekrishna Deka, to name a few from the city. We also developed a strong connection with the community around us. Today many of us continue to work together under the banner of Anga Art Collective.

Now you are a professor yourself. How do you approach teaching differently from your college years?

I always want to know what background and life of my students are coming from. I want to understand their location, their urgencies, and the psyche of their place. And accordingly I want to have discussions with them.

The art they make needs to come from their urgencies. All I try to do is to understand their backgrounds, and nudge them to engage with it. In this process, I also learn a lot from them.

Can you talk a little about your current practice? How did you arrive at it? And what are some of the questions driving your work?

When I was doing my dissertation during my masters at SN School, University of Hyderabad, I was looking for photographs of Rahmaria. But I was unable to find anything. I was looking for photographs of theatre, but didn’t find much of that either. That is one of the reasons that I do a lot of documentation, and follow people from my village.

I was very clear that I wanted to go back home after getting my degree. I did not dream of going to Delhi or Baroda, like many other artists do. At that time, I bought a camera, and started going to Rahmaria again and again. And I started interviewing the people who still live there.

Who did you interview, and what kind of stories did you uncover?

I interviewed many people from different age groups.

Let me share a few anecdotes about it. One of the people I interviewed was my father’s friend. His name is Khagen Saikia. He told me that he had spent most of his life in the river, almost 60 years of his life, that is. He used to travel to a place called Ramsingh through the river with his small boat to bring vegetables and chicken, etc., to sell in the weekly market, and that he would carry essential things like kerosene to the families who stayed in Ramsingh, which was inhabited by a few families. He travelled alone, even in the monsoon when the water level was very high.

Since he spent most of his life in the river, he developed a soulful connection with it. And eventually became an expert of boating. He could tell just by looking at the river how deep the water was. Even during monsoons when the water level rises very high, he wasn’t worried about any unexpected calamities. His only concern was about the goods he was carrying, because he knew that if something were to happen to him, he was already well equipped to save his own life in such circumstances. I interviewed him on different occasions and used to stay at his place and had many wholesome conversations with him.

Then, there is an uncle whose name is Biswa Gogoi. He was telling me the story of a tiger. They had gone to the river island to collect firewood. One night the tiger came near their camp, and slept there. And they had to keep quiet, until the tiger left. Apparently, the tiger was snoring [laughs]. The way he was telling me the story was also very interesting. He was adding a lot of drama to it. The words he used, the way he expressed it. It was something very interesting, I thought.

So, I go to the village. I observe things. I observe the landscape, the seasonal changes. I have long conversations with people. And I take photographs. My process of practice is very slow. You can say, it is the opposite of today’s time, which is very fast.

And when I think about my practice, I feel like it goes beyond documentation. Because I am not merely documenting various activities or cultural practices.

That’s really interesting. And I agree with you. When I look at your work, it feels like it does more than just document a place and its people. What do you think you are trying to do?

Yes, my work goes beyond documentation. It is about observing various possibilities, through which the disappearing knowledge systems of my village can be retranslated, and reactivated. I am critically engaging with these systems. And I believe that this can give an alternative way of thinking, and practising art.

What are some of these disappearing knowledge systems?

So many things. For example, when I was growing up, there was a strong sense of community. Now, it still exists in parts, but it is slowly disappearing with time.

Then, there were people who sang Bihu songs. Now there are very few such people. These songs were very popular in the village. These songs are very much connected to the landscape. You can see a lot of elements of the river reflected in these songs. They are also very philosophical. They talk about the misery and the happiness of the people.

And the other interesting thing about these songs is that they talk not just about humans, but about non-human things as well. They talk about birds, different species, about the river situation, about the various changes taking place in the landscape.

That’s why I follow a Bihu singer from my village. His name is Sonel Gohain. We can call him a living archive of Bihu songs. I often take photographs of him, and have had long conversations with him.

How do you think these knowledge systems can be re-inculcated into our lives? Or even in your work?

In my photographic practice, for example, there is the element of imagination. It’s about how I imagine. And this imagination is not my imagination alone. It is the imagination of my people. For example, how do they imagine a folk character? Or a ghost?

I have been exploring various images of folk characters and ghosts in my village. And people in my village often believe in such characters…someone might see something mythical by the river, for example.

So, I explore these images in my work. This is also a kind of preservation. An attempt to reactivate such imagery. I want to bring that imagination; the collective imagination of the people of Rahmaria into my practice. Along with that, I explore the various changes of the river. I follow the people and the landscape and wait for certain moments and photograph them.

While you talk about disappearing knowledge systems, it is also clear that the narrative of development, comprising shiny bridges, world-class infrastructure, and large-scale industry, is here to stay. How do you see your work, and the knowledge systems of your community in this context?

There has always been a dominant narrative of development. Ironically, this narrative is often tied to resource extraction and environmental degradation. The place I come from has been treated as a site of extraction since the colonial period, and that logic continues today.

A recent example is the June 2025 Handbook on Geological Potential of Northeast India, which highlights the potential presence of rare earth materials in the North-Eastern region. While such discoveries are often celebrated as opportunities for development, they also raise important questions about who benefits, what is extracted, and what ecological and cultural costs these projects may bring.

In this context, I believe it is essential for a collective voice. As I mentioned earlier, the erosion of the sense of community has become one of the most pressing concerns of our time. Practising together as a collective allows us to carry forward the local knowledge systems, articulate the realities of the spaces we come from, and offer alternative ways of imagining development that are rooted in care for people, culture, and the environment, rather than extraction alone. It also creates the conditions for nurturing a grounded art ecosystem in this region.

There is a strong anti-Miya sentiment in Assam right now. How do you see such sentiments against perceived outsiders in relation to ideas of development and climate change in your state under the current political regime?

I don’t support any kind of communal politics. So far, we haven’t had the opportunity to work closely with the Miya community. However, I, as an art practitioner, as well as our collective, would love to collaborate with practitioners from the community. I think the practice of Miya poetry on social media a few years back has brought to the fore important young voices from the community.

Reflecting the multilingual channels of communication in the social world, the Miya poetry discourse was able to create a dialogic platform for a moment. Today, a project like Itamugur Community Media is continuing significant work in shedding light on the interconnected nature of exclusionary politics, developementalist paradigm and extractive policies. The social and cultural life of the community is also expressed in many of its presentations.

And finally, if I were to ask, why do you do this? Why do you practice art? What would happen if you stopped?

The thing about the practice is that I have to practice, otherwise I don’t feel good. I simply need to practice. I am very clear about that. Being a visual art practitioner, I feel I have a certain obligation to practice art.

Whenever I come home, I go to Rahmaria. I go to my friends’ houses, talk to them, spend time with them, and spend time in the landscape. For me spending time is more important than producing something quickly.

Purvi Rajpuria is a writer and illustrator from Kolkata. This conversation was first conducted as part of her podcast series, Documenting Culture.

The United States Senate on Friday cleared a bill targeting Russia and key buyers of its petroleum products, including India and China.

The draft legislation provides for Washington to impose tariffs of up to 500% on imports from Russia, including gas and oil. It also creates a framework for United States President Donald Trump to impose a 100% tariff on the five main importers of Russian energy, including India and China.

Washington has for long claimed that the purchase of Russian energy has been fuelling Moscow’s war on Ukraine that began in February 2022.

The bill, named after late legislator Lindsey Graham who had spearheaded the draft legislation before he died on July 11, was approved by the Senate by an 86-11 vote.

It will be placed before the House of Representatives. However, the lower chamber of the US Congress is not expected to consider it before September because of the congressional summer recess.

Jim Risch, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the bill passed on Friday “could finally bring Russia to the negotiating table and end this conflict”, AFP reported.

The bill will “cut off the flow of cash that powers” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “war machine”, the news agency quoted the Republican leader as saying.

There have been diplomatic tensions between Washington and New Delhi over India’s continued purchases of Russian crude.

The Trump administration had in August 2025 imposed a punitive levy on India for buying oil from Russia amid the Ukraine war. This had taken the combined US tariff rate to 50%.

In January, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed that India had stopped buying Russian oil after Trump imposed the punitive tariff.

In February, after New Delhi and Washington agreed to an interim trade deal, Trump issued an executive order to remove the additional 25% punitive levy linked to the purchase of Russian oil.

New Delhi has maintained that India’s decisions on sourcing crude oil are based primarily on commercial viability. Ensuring stable energy prices and secure supplies were the goals of India’s energy policy, it has said.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

They say that the first draft of history is written by journalists. This is mostly true, except perhaps in the case of legal history where the first draft is written in the records of the courts by its stenographers and judges. It is these records which capture the present and preserve it for posterity in public and private archives for historians of the future.

As the world moved into the digital age, the information technology revolution promised to make it easier than ever to store, index and organise records. The information revolution also converted much of the internet into an archive which was meticulously indexed by search engines for the common citizen to use for free. So much so that the first draft of history today depends upon the first page of search results displayed by Google’s algorithm.

All of this is at risk today because of a string of judgements tumbling out of the High Courts across India which have weaponised the fundamental right to privacy against journalism, databases and search engines. Two recent judgments on the right to be forgotten from the Delhi High Court and Bombay High Court present the dangers of this approach. The judgement of the Delhi High Court which decided a bunch of more than 30 cases together, invoked the “right to be forgotten” to allow many litigants acquitted or discharged in criminal proceedings and involved in matrimonial proceedings to scrub the internet of their past.

As a remedy, the court ordered private search engines and databases to “de-index” certain links to news reports and judgments on the websites of the courts. While this “de-indexing” exercise will not interfere with the content of the news report or judgment on the websites of their respective institution, it will impede the ability of citizens to search for the same information on search engines or databases.

The Bombay High Court has gone a step ahead and ordered the masking of the name of a litigant on its website after the court quashed a criminal case against him. Once the name is redacted on the website, the search engine will not display the case in response to a search conducted with the name of the litigant. On the consequences for journalists who publish the names of these litigants, the judgement is silent but the threat of litigation will likely pre-empt such publication.

The rich and the powerful are already lining up before the courts with petitions invoking this new “right to be forgotten” against search engines like Google and databases like Indian Kanoon, to scrub their past from our collective memory. The smarter ones will get the High Courts to scrub even the court’s own websites of any identifying details. The fallout is obvious. In the short term, journalists and other professionals who rely on search engines to conduct research for the purpose of journalism or due diligence will simply not be able to access any unflattering information about the rich and powerful unless they get convicted by India’s sclerotic courts.

The more troublesome outcome is that the custodians of this information, be it the media houses or the courts, will eventually decide to alter their information recording practices. For example, editors deluged with “right to be forgotten” litigation, may change the “house rules” for their journalists when it comes to reporting on the rich and powerful. Court registries may decide to anonymise litigant names and release their names only if they are convicted and not when they are acquitted, even if such an acquittal is due to a botched prosecution.

In the long term, this information once archived will be ridden with digital holes which will complicate the job of future historians. If nothing else, this will make it easier for history to be revised by the rich and powerful.

How did we get here? The rather dubious “right to be forgotten” was derived from the “right to privacy” by one of the nine judges who decided the Puttuswamy case almost a decade ago. The “right to be forgotten” was never at issue before the judges hearing this case but as often happens in India, judgement writing becomes a creative essay writing exercise without the restraints of judicial discipline expected of the Supreme Court. And so, one of the nine judges waxed eloquent about the “right to privacy” including the “right to be forgotten”.

On the other hand, a different judge on the same bench had concluded that the fundamental right to privacy applies only against the state and not, non-state actors (eg, search engines and the media). Against the latter, he concluded, a person can at most assert a common law right to privacy, which is far narrower than the fundamental right to privacy.

There are already pending appeals before the Supreme Court on the breadth of the “right to be forgotten” but its outcome will depend essentially on which bench of judges hears the final arguments in this case.

Over the last two decades as the Indian media became increasingly noisy, the court has also become more censorious. It once invented, out of thin air, a doctrine like “postponement of speech”. On another occasion it declared the right to reputation as a fundamental right. Hopefully, the appeals lands before a liberal bench who can discern the long-term consequences of enforcing the “right to be forgotten” in India on our collective memories and histories.

Prashant Reddy T writer is the co-author of Tareekh Pe Justice: Reforms for India’s District Courts (2025).

Gurgaon over many centuries was little more than a small rural hamlet in the periphery of the towering city of power Delhi. Across the ages possibly its best known resident was Hemu Vikramaditya, a general in the army of Sher Shah Suri who defeated the forces of Humayun and later Akbar. Gurgaon gained some modest standing only as the customary resting place for Akbar’s entourage when they marched to Amber.

Its fortunes altered after Independence. Badly singed by the fires of the Partition riots in 1947-’48, Gurgaon was substantially emptied of its Muslim population. But in the city of wealth and opportunities that Gurgaon metamorphosed into in recent decades, Muslims converged in droves. Yet they still struggle for dignity and rights in a habitat that they still find riven – under its skin-deep glitter – with prejudice and indifference.

Gurgaon began to transform when in the 1970s Maruti Suzuki opened a car manufacturing unit here. General Electrics was the first American company to establish its office here in 1997. Other companies, both Indian and international, followed in throngs.

Today it houses, in glittering glass and steel highrise towers, Indian offices of 250 Fortune 500 companies. Its smoggy skyline flaunts myriad skyscrapers containing offices, malls, condominiums and luxury villas. Gurgaon has become the 56th largest city in India by population and eighth by wealth, with the third-highest per capita income in the country. Its per capita income in 2020 was Rs 4.6 lakh, nearly three times the national average of Rs 1.3 lakh.

Gurgaon, renamed Gurugram in 2016, drew throngs of migrant workers from India’s vast rural interiors. Just between 2001 and 2011, Gurgaon’s population grew by 74%. We do not have census figures since then, but it is evident that the explosion in numbers (and wealth) has continued.

The boom in construction, eateries and offices in Gurugram transformed it into a powerful magnet for the most impoverished residents from India’s rural hinterlands in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Bengal, Assam and elsewhere. They found employment in factories, call centres, hotels, malls, street retail, construction and domestic work. Wages for unorganised workers were oppressively deflated, but still higher than what they would have earned in the villages and towns from where they had migrated.

The gleaming veneer of what is often called India’s Millennium City promised to the workers almost as a necessary corollary an assured cosmopolitanism, an escape from the communal and caste oppression that beleaguered their lives in their villages and towns.

But how wrong were these expectations. The last decade has exposed particularly Muslim residents of Gurugram to a repeated battery of hate politics, to organised communal prejudice, violence and exclusions. It is evident that India’s glittering hub of information technology, industry and finance near Delhi has submitted without resistance to the majoritarian politics of loathing, resentment and fear.

No place to pray

One troubling tinder box in Gurugram has been the often violent and always humiliating prohibitions of the congregational prayers of Muslim men on Friday afternoons. Hindutva formations have for many years since 2018 violently blockaded the Friday namaz of Muslim residents with cultivated prejudice, organised aggression and popular mobilisation, aided often stridently by the state administration.

After the Partition exodus of Muslims, only small numbers of Muslim residents had lived and worked in Gurgaon for several decades. The small neighbourhood had been emptied out of most of its Muslim residents in 1947-’48. Of the mosques that remained, an estimated 19 old mosques were occupied and repurposed by the Hindu residents for functions as diverse as dwellings and storage rooms for cow dung. Thirteen mosques were still available for community worship, many very small, but these were enough for the highly depleted Muslim population.

But the population of the city exploded in the 2000s, and many of the new migrants to Gurugram were Muslim. Circular migrants are not captured by census enumerators, and estimates of the numbers of Muslim workers in Gurugram are disputed. The 2011 census found that the Muslim share in the population of Gurgaon was 4.5%. Whatever the actual numbers, what is indisputable is that the 13 mosques that had provided adequate space indoors for the Friday prayers suddenly fell woefully short.

Recognising this quite early – even as the Muslim migrant population was only beginning to burgeon – Muslim leaders and organisations approached the state administration for allocations of land and the necessary clearances to build new mosques on these plots. However, the state administration stonewalled all such demands. Had they consented, mosques would have been accessible to the devout in every neighbourhood, forestalling the need to Muslims to offer their prayers in open spaces.

This was an unapologetic display of partisanship, because in this same period, the Haryana Urban Development Authority or HUDA allotted land and permitted the construction of 22 Hindu temples, 20 Christian churches, and nine Sikh Gurudwaras.

The acute shortage of mosques in Gurgaon was aggravated because 19 vintage mosques dating back to before 1947 continue – until the time of writing – to be under illegal occupation of Hindus in Gurugram city, with encroachers making and storing buffalo and cow dung cakes inside some of them. These mosques stand on waqf land. The wakf board has been making efforts unsuccessfully since 1977 to remove encroachments from these mosques in Gurugram.

For the devout Muslim, the Friday prayers are a religious injunction. Islamic teachings including in the Quran recommend congregational prayers for Muslims on Friday afternoons: the Prophet is said to have described the Friday prayer as the Haj of the Poor, symbolic of brotherhood and equality. But even for many less observing Muslims, it is a cultural congregational space, in the way that the Sunday church is for many less practising Christians.

Because the older 13 mosques could not accommodate the swelling numbers of Muslim residents, and the government did not enable the building of more mosques, they had no option except to pray in open spaces. Muslims had been congregating in open spaces since the 2000s to offer namaz, with no significant vocal opposition. The open spaces were mostly not public parks but places like parking spaces, dumping yards and shrublands. Until the organised protests started in 2018, these weekly prayers continued uneventfully in around 150 sites in various parts of the city (which was by now rechristened Gurugram).

Obstructing namaz in open spaces

From 2018, a collective of Hindutva affiliates under the banner of the Hindu Sanyukt Sangharsh Samiti, began a campaign to embargo the gathering of Muslim men for Friday prayers in open spaces of Gurugram. These included the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal, Hindu Kranti Dal, Gorakshak Dal, Hindu Jagaran Manch and the Shiv Sena.

The Hindutva organisations gathered under the banner of the Sanyukt Hindu Sangharsh Samiti justified the stoppage on several grounds. Traffic troubles were the least of these. They described the disruptors as “patriotic” and the men who offered prayers criminal-minded, Bangladeshi and Rohingya refugees, a threat to Hindu women and girls in the area, people who shout slogans against the country in the guise of prayers and men eager to illegally occupy open government lands.

Blocking of roads every week disrupts the economy, it can't be allowed constitutionally. #Muslims should practice their religion inside the mosques: BJP leader @KapilMishra_IND during a #govardhanpooja programe at a site in #Gurugram where namaz had been taking place evry Friday pic.twitter.com/fOhKrZJxyD

— Nitin Kumar (@nitinaayog) November 5, 2021

These troublemakers were backed by some panchayat members who threatened to organise religious havans at the same time and venues as the Friday prayers. The Hindutva zealots blocked the prayers in a variety of other ways as well.

Most degrading was when they threw cattle dung on the patch of ground where the prayers would be held. Elsewhere the volunteers of the organisation gathered at the precise time when the prayers were scheduled to recite slogans and Hindu prayers raucously. The namaz is always conducted mostly in silence, and the namazis were shouted out by the belligerently competing “prayers”.

Another innovation was to collect young teenaged boys and sometimes older men to play cricket precisely on the grounds that were customarily earmarked for the congregational namaz and precisely on Friday afternoons. And sometimes the namazis were physically pushed away from the prayer sites. One of the leaders of the anti-namaz campaign Dinesh Bharati threatened to open gaushalas at prayer spots unless the practice is forbidden across Gurugram, Delhi and eventually India.

#Gurugram: The Hindutva groups also organised a Govardhan puja at the spot in Sector 12 where Muslims gathered for prayers.

They left behind the cow dung cakes at the spot that Muslims used to pray every Friday. https://t.co/ZHsPwbT4W2

Report by @iyersaishwarya pic.twitter.com/RSfF1VDVyj

— Scroll.in (@scroll_in) November 18, 2021

The restraint of the namazis

“Musalmano ka dil dukkha [Muslims were heartbroken],” said Saleem after the protests. “Some have either left Gurguram or are planning on leaving. However, throughout the agitation, we didn’t let things escalate. In no video will you see Muslims getting angry and retaliating. When right-wing people come and create problems, we tell the imams not to conduct namaz. We don’t want conflict. We don’t want to fight,” said Saleem.

But when Saleem and Mohammad Adeeb, former Member of the Rajya Sabha, filed complaints against the hate speeches of the likes of Dinesh Bharati, the police instead filed an FIR against them for “disrupting communal harmony” and “trying to grab land”.

One remarkable feature of this systematic blocking of prayer by Hindutva mobsters and volunteers indeed has been the consistent absence of resistance or public protest by those who are blocked from their weekly prayers. The agitators would often arrive in jeeps to the namaz venue and shout abusive slogans. The police force present would often do nothing to stop the sloganeering and threats, and instead asked the namazis to disperse. Sometimes the imam leading the prayers would be hectored and even pushed to the ground.

I wrote in 2018 that there were “unprecedented scenes of people offering namaz getting up midway and running away in the face of slogan-shouting” in many crowded spots.

This was the norm. Whenever faced with such mayhem, if the police did not intervene for them, people who had come for the prayers would quietly fold their mats and leave.

There were private factories where for years, Muslim employees had been allowed to pray in the parking lot or any other open space. Even this was stopped by police or government officials, without explaining why or with what powers they were enforcing this ban. Again through all of this, not one instance of Muslims resisting or retaliating was reported. There was anguish and confusion, but no retaliatory confrontation or violence.

India’s so called Millennium city. Several foreign companies based here, swanky housing societies but small mentality, bigotry thriving. #Gurugram #bigotry #namaz #Haryana https://t.co/2vMsEPhPIu

— Gargi Rawat (@GargiRawat) October 9, 2021

Just to cite one report, I describe the scene reported by the Guardian of one of these embargoes on prayer imposed by a hectoring mob. Hannah Ellis-Petersen reporting from Gurgaon in December 2021 describes one of these protests, involving a car park outside sector 37 police station in Gurgaon, which she said was a “litter-strewn patch of concrete” that has become a religious battlefield. It was a Friday afternoon. A mob of saffron wearing men screaming “Jai Shri Ram” gathered.

The leader Dinesh Thakur declared, “Conducting namaz in the open is land jihad. It’s an international conspiracy. They do namaz outside, then they build a shrine, then they build a mosque and then inside the mosque they are harbouring terrorists and weapons and they are a threat to the nation. I will not stop my fight until this becomes illegal.”

Residents also joined the protests. One of them was Ravinder Kumar, a 45-year-old software engineer and joint secretary of Gurgaon’s Sector 47 residents’ welfare association. “So many unknown people were coming here for namaz, and it created an environment of fear,” he said “Afterwards they wander into our park, and we are worried they could be here for theft. A few days ago an AK47 rifle was seized from a Muslim in Gurgaon by police. We don’t want such things in our area.” But he conceded to The Guardian that so far no incidents of crime had been committed by anyone coming for Friday prayer.

Gurugram Namaz protests : Disruptions by Hindutva groups continue at Sector 37 in Gurugram as chants of 'Jai Sri Ram' are raised.

Last Friday a puja was held to commemorate the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks right here. @scroll_in pic.twitter.com/vvntYOeM38

— Aishwarya (@iyersaishwarya) December 3, 2021

People cry out “The Muslims are here.” And the mob began to charge. The leader Dinesh Thakur ran to Shehzad Khan, the Muslim imam leading the prayer, shouting “no namaz here”. The police pull him away.

”The Muslims filed silently into the area for namaz, heads down and clutching their prayer mats”. The slogans became more frenzied. Among these was “Desh ke gaddaron ko, goli maro saalon ko” “shoot the traitors”. They recited Hindu prayers and songs to drown out Qur’an readings. They had spread cow dung at the sites. The police tried to hold back the mob so that the namaz could continue.

The imam then led a prayer for Hindu-Muslim harmony. “Muslims are as much citizens of India as Hindus. Our forefathers have also sacrificed for this country,” he said. “Guide us, Hindu and Muslim brothers, to remain united in a bond of brotherhood.”

Those protesting against namaz at another parking lot in Sector 47 claimed that they wanted a market built on that spot. Now, reporters found, the lot stands empty, barring a solitary car.

Failed efforts for a reasonable compromise

The police, instead of meting out stern criminal action against the mobsters, repeatedly brought Muslim leaders to the table to “voluntarily” consent to reducing the numbers of sites for Friday worship. The same absence of assertion and resistance characterised the negotiations by Muslim leaders who elected to parlay with the local authorities.

I recall that in solidarity meetings which I joined in Gurugram in 2018, I had advised against this kind of yielding to police pressures that seemed to me a slippery slope of unreasonable compromises. The Constitution guarantees the right to worship as integral to the democratic freedoms of Muslim citizens.

If there is a prohibition on public worship, then it must apply to religious performances for people of every faith. Instead the same BJP administration, for instance, allows the blocking of highways for weeks for the Kanwan Yatris to trek. It is those violently preventing your right to worship who are breaking the law, I said to them.

The district administration invited people it chose to join what it styled as negotiations between Hindu and Muslim residents of the city. The problem was that the Hindus who were invited were hotheads from communal formations, not the large numbers of peaceable residents of the city who – I imagine and hope – believed in goodwill between communities. I met several of the Muslim negotiators who were invited. These were mostly well-meaning young, educated Muslim professionals and entrepreneurs. They believed that their educational capital gives them both the right and the responsibility to represent the working class members of their community.

In these meetings, they went to the table acutely conscious of their political, economic and social powerlessness. These leaders felt that rigidity by them would make both Muslim entrepreneurs and workers more vulnerable. They feared that state or mob violence would wreak havoc in the lives of highly vulnerable migrant Muslim workers.

It was in these negotiations that they consented to bring down the sites for Friday prayers from 150 to around 30. They were assured by the administration that permissions would be restored once the communal climate cools. This never happened.

Instead, at the time I write this, Friday namaz is permitted only at six sites. This is precisely the slippery slope that I had feared. And the government has still not permitted the construction of a single new mosque.

Those with cars or bikes drive to the sites, however distant, and there are sometimes four shifts of prayers because of the surge of worshippers. But many are too poor to pay for public transport to distant prayer locations during their short lunch breaks. Clerics call upon devotees to offer namaz at their “homes, offices, factories, jhuggis”. Only people “who have no other choice” should come, they counsel.

Many of the sites that have been ceded by the administration are open spaces with no tree cover, making it physically very demanding for the worshippers. These “public spaces” where Muslims offer namaz are random lands in front of shops, or dumping grounds where they work as cleaners. These aren’t public parks or “prime locations” that Hindus allege are being ‘hijacked’ by praying Muslim groups. The 13 mosques are now running several shifts for the Friday prayer.

For the devout Muslim, the location of prayer sites far from their place of work creates further complications. Soban Usmani explains, “The mosque is more than an hour away from my office, so I can’t travel in the 30-40 minutes of lunch break that I get.” Since Islamic rules forbid missing more than three consecutive Friday prayers, the best he can do is to take the day off every third Friday to offer namaz at the mosque.

Just six open sites for prayer

By all means, we do need a public debate about the blocking of roads, often for several days, for festivities (mostly Hindu), the building of shrines in public lands (I saw in my South Delhi colony a temple on public land grow from a stone to a grand structure), the use of public offices for festivals of only one religion and indeed the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh drills in public parks. But selectively attacking one practice is only feeding a toxic communal agenda.

All of these years later, Muslims are still restricted to their six sites for prayer. There is now no protest and little conversation about this today; it is as though the Muslim residents of Gurugram have learnt that they must live in a situation in which their government and their neighbours wilfully deny them their constitutional rights.

Some see in this the restoration of peace. But what appears to be “peace” is actually a thin camouflage for one more triumph of majoritarian politics and of the rule of the mob – that too in the country’s National Capital Region. The tried and tested template has been deployed with mounting regularity in recent years across the country.

It goes like this: left to themselves, Hindus and Muslims live together peacefully. Majoritarian Hindutva organisations incite communal trouble by entering Muslim spaces with taunts and provocative slogans, sometimes brandishing weapons. If Muslims are provoked, a communal skirmish ensues. If instead they maintain restraint, this is interpreted jubilantly as evidence of their weakness and defeat. Both ways, society is split wide open and the Bharatiya Janata Party reaps rich electoral harvests.

The disgraceful role of the state administration

Through all of this, the role of the state administration has been disgraceful. In 2018 itself, it should have dealt firmly with the troublemakers bent on fomenting communal hatred, and defended the freedom of worship of the Muslim citizens. Instead it took no stern action against the mobsters who organised the violent protests and incited the crowds with provocative slogans. The administration went further. It put up boards on disputed spaces where vigilantes had disrupted the prayers, declaring that these were government lands in which the status quo should be maintained.

The chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar signalled his sympathy with the demands of those who disrupted the prayers when he said that namaaz should be read in mosques or Idgahs rather than in public spaces. What he deliberately overlooked was that Muslim migrants who build, clean and run the city are too poor to be able to build mosques, and they also lack the political clout for land allocations and official permissions. And that the alternative is congregational prayers in the open in which working class and white-collar workers rub shoulders as they pray together.

If the administration thought it necessary in public interest that some sites of public worship should be closed, they should not have acted after namaz sites were overrun by inciting mobs. They should then have instead called the Muslim leaders, discussed their concerns with them; they should have passed legal orders after due process for each of the sites that they wished to see closed, giving reasons, after giving a notice to worshippers and a chance to present their points of view.

The actions of the administration were quite the opposite. The district administration and police preferred to defend the Hindutva mobsters instead of upholding their constitutional duties toward their Muslim compatriots who were violently being deprived of their fundamental right of freedom of worship. They overlooked that this is a mischievous and dangerous ploy to divide communities, and it seemed to have worked because they allowed it to. They actually helped secure one more victory for the majoritarian mob.

Some rays of light

In this gathering darkness of prejudice, some rays of light did penetrate in 2018. A small businessman Akshay Yadav opened his shop floor to the Muslims for the Friday prayers. Five Sikh gurudwaras in Gurugram took the brave decision amid the hatemongering of 2018 to open their gurudwaras for the Friday prayers of their Muslim brothers.

Six Muslim leaders led by former Rajya Sabha MP Mohammad Adeeb visited the gurudwara to express their immense appreciation of the gesture by the Sikhs, and were felicitated with orange scarves. Daya Singh, the spokesperson of the gurudwara committee, spoke of the importance of communal harmony.

Gurugram Namaz protests: For the second Friday now (12 and 19 November), prayers were offered at Akshay Yadav's shop in Sector 12.

Yadav is out on a family vacation. He gave the keys of his shop to a local Muslim, Taufiq, before he left.
More on this issue on @scroll_in soon. pic.twitter.com/NpocUGBM1j

— Aishwarya (@iyersaishwarya) November 19, 2021

This initiative by Sikh leaders however ignited vociferous opposition from the Hindutva groups. Some of their activists distributed to the Sikh devotees copies of a book about the ninth Sikh guru, Guru Tegh Bahadur, who was beheaded in 1675 by the Mughals.

The Sikh leaders held their ground. But before the next Friday when prayers were first scheduled, the Muslims decided to not use the gurudwara premises for their Friday prayers. They did this to protect them from possible violence from the Hindutva group members.

One Muslim leader said that a million Muslims would offer namaz in the hearts of their Sikh brothers in gratitude for their gesture of solidarity.

Its friday in #Gurugram again.#Namaz being offered at Akshay Yadav’s open garage in the automobile market in Sector 12.

Its a small start, may it lead to a show of solidarity between people that defeats forces of hate. pic.twitter.com/t18whPhBpU

— Natasha Badhwar (@natashabadhwar) November 19, 2021

But where is upmarket Gurugram?

Tina Das in The Print observes caustically that “the ‘suburb on steroids’, with neighbourhoods called Beverly Park, Nirvana County and Wellington Estate, now has street groups cheering Nathuram Godse. RSS shakhas grew inside the condominiums, only this time transformed as Sunday 10 am chai baithaks…”

Through the years of repeated hooliganism of Hindutva mobsters targeting fellow-citizens who were peacefully gathering for prayer, I never encountered an instance of organised protests or resistance by the young professionals working in the many highrise shining corporate offices.

Why did they not feel compelled to protest the Gurugram incidents? Why did it not trouble them that these were rampageous provocations by belligerent Hindutva mobs protected by a supine administration? Why did it not outrage them that the hectoring mobs and the state had joined hands against weekly prayers by mostly working-class migrant Muslims who had no other covered spaces for worship?

Could they for instance not emulate the luminous example of the gurudwaras? I may be foolish, but allow me to fantasise for just a moment. Could not the resident welfare associations of each of the gated colonies pass a resolution to open the parks in their colonies on Friday afternoons for their Muslim brothers to pray with dignity and peace?

I am grateful for the research support extended to me by Syed Rubeel Haider Zaidi.

Harsh Mander, peace and justice worker and writer, leads Karwan e Mohabbat, a people’s campaign in solidarity and support to victims of hate violence. He is a visiting faculty in the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University. His recent books are Under Grey Smoggy Skies: Living Homeless on the Streets of India’s Cities; and A Matter of Life and Death: The Unfinished Journey to Secure Healthcare for All.

The Jharkhand government on Friday held talks with representatives of students protesting in Ranchi against the alleged irregularities in the conduct of competitive examinations for government jobs, The Hindu reported.

The meeting between the student organisation JPSC-JSSC Reform Manch and the government delegation, which included four ministers, ended without an agreement.

These were the first talks between the students and the government after two weeks of protests.

The protests in Jharkhand began on July 25, inspired by the agitation across the country against the alleged mismanagement of national competitive exams. The protesters have been holding a sit-in at Ranchi’s Jaipal Singh Munda Stadium, with six demonstrators on fast.

The protesters have demanded the cancellation of the 14th Jharkhand Public Service Commission Combined Preliminary Test held on April 19.

They have also sought inquiries by the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate into alleged irregularities in recruitment examinations conducted by the Jharkhand Public Service Commission and Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission.

After the talks on Friday, student leader Ravindra Paswan said that the government had listened to the protesters’ demands, The Hindu reported.

No specific assurances were given, The Indian Express quoted Binay Kumar, one of the organisers of the JPSC-JSSC Reform Manch, as saying.

The students said that they will continue their protest until their demands are met.

State Education Minister Sudivya Kumar said that the talks took place in a “positive atmosphere” and that the government “will consider their demands before deciding on the next course of action”, The Hindu reported.

On Friday, Chief Minister Hemant Soren had said that the Jharkhand government was “moving forward with concrete and practical solutions” to the problems faced by students.

“...the government will gather opinions and suggestions from students in all districts, so that the solutions are comprehensive and inclusive,” he said on social media.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

A 24-year-old Muslim truck driver died of his injuries four days after he was assaulted by a group of kanwariyas in Hapur district in Uttar Pradesh, The Print reported on Friday.

The assault followed an argument after Azeem Ali’s truck collided with an auto-rickshaw hired by the kanwariyas in Garhmukhteshwar town on July 31. The collision allegedly injured the auto-rickshaw driver, Farman, who was standing near the vehicle. Ali was then allegedly pulled out of his truck and assaulted.

A purported video of the incident has been shared widely on social media which shows Ali being assaulted by a group of men in the presence of a police officer.

Ali was initially taken to hospital in Meerut and later shifted to Delhi as his condition worsened. He reportedly went into a coma and died at a Delhi hospital on Tuesday, The Print reported.

A first information report has been registered against seven persons, including four kanwariyas, in connection with Ali’s murder.

Five persons identified as Manish, Ankit, Lokesh, Shivam and Farman, along with two unidentified persons, have been booked under provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to murder, rioting and voluntarily causing hurt, The Print reported.

No arrests have been made so far.

The Hapur Police said that a case was filed on the basis of a written complaint and proceedings were under way.

Meanwhile, Farman’s father filed a counter-complaint alleging that his son was hit by Ali’s truck, The Print reported.

Based on the complaint, the police have registered a separate case against Ali on charges of attempted murder.

According to the second FIR, Farman suffered serious injuries and was undergoing treatment at hospital.

During the Kanwar Yatra, devotees, known as kanwariyas, walk hundreds of kilometres to collect water from the Ganga near Haridwar and carry it back to their home states to offer at temples. The yatra began on July 30 and will end on August 11.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Supreme Court on Friday refused to entertain a petition by Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra that she be allowed to appear virtually before the police in a case about purportedly provocative remarks she had made in July, reported Bar and Bench.

On July 1, vegetables and eggs were hurled at a TMC office in West Bengal’s Krishnanagar while Moitra was inside. She alleged that “goons” from the Bharatiya Janata Party were responsible.

Moitra later said in a social media post that she would file a police complaint against persons responsible for the incident. In a video, she said that those wanting to throw eggs at her “should wear a burqa” if they wish to stay hidden, reported Bar and Bench.

A BJP leader filed a complaint against the Krishnanagar MP, alleging that her comment had hurt the sentiments of the Hindu community.

On July 21, the Calcutta High Court granted interim protection from arrest to Moitra till October 5. However, the bench had asked her to appear before the investigating officer on August 14.

Her counsel, Gopal Sankarnarayan, told the Supreme Court on Friday that she has no problems in appearing before the police, but sought permission to do so virtually, reported Live Law.

“Just because you are an MP?” Justice Dipankar Datta asked in response.

Referring to the July 1 incident, Sankarnarayan told the court that eggs could be thrown at Moitra again if she went to the police station.

“Having taken the plunge into politics, you fear eggs?” Datta asked the MP. “When our freedom fighters have taken bullets on their chest?”

He added: “These are applications that should not come before this court at all.”

Sankarnarayan then sought to withdraw the petition, which the court allowed.

The incident on July 1 was the latest in a series of attacks on TMC leaders since the BJP came to power in West Bengal on May 4.

TMC National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee was attacked by a mob with eggs and stones during a visit to Sonarpur on May 30. Party MP Kalyan Banerjee alleged the next day that he was also attacked in the Hooghly district.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Ministry of External Affairs on Friday said that proposed amendments to the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act were India’s “internal affairs”, three days after a United States Congressman raised concerns about the move.

Registration under the Act is mandatory for non-profit organisations to receive foreign funds. A key provision of the draft legislation allows the Union government to take control of a non-governmental organisation’s foreign funds and assets if its FCRA registration lapses or is cancelled.

On Tuesday, Riley Moore, a Republican representative from West Virginia, criticised the proposed amendments, claiming that the Indian Parliament was trying to take control of churches and religious charities.

“Christians have been in India since St Thomas the Apostle travelled to the Malabar Coast just decades after the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Moore said on social media.

Despite this long history, India’s Parliament is considering amending the rules “to permit government takeovers of churches and religious charities”, he alleged.

He said that the bill would be “a clear attack against Christians” and claimed the move could hurt relations between Washington and New Delhi.

The bill was introduced in Parliament in March during the Budget Session but has not been cleared by either of the Houses.

On Friday, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that “legislative matters concerning India are our internal affairs on which decisions are taken by the Parliament of the country”.

He added that several countries, including the US, regulate the flow of foreign funds.

The proposed changes

Under the proposed framework, foreign funds and assets will provisionally vest in a government-appointed “designated authority”. If the organisation fails to regain registration, this control would become permanent. The authority would then be empowered to use, transfer or dispose of these assets for “public purposes”.

The provision applies to all institutions, not just churches. The proposed amendment specifies that the religious character of the place of worship would be preserved.

Opposition MPs have opposed the proposed law, describing it as “dangerous” and “draconian”. Civil society groups have also criticised the bill, saying that the changes would expand state control over NGOs.

Between 2016-’17 and 2021-’22, more than 6,600 NGOs lost their FCRA licences, the government had told Parliament in December 2022. In 2023, it informed Parliament that 13,520 registered non-profit organisations had received more than Rs 55,700 crore in foreign contributions between 2019-’20 and 2021-’22.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Instagram has blocked four posts by Scroll on the social media platform since June, citing “legal requirements” under the Union government’s Information Technology Rules.

The platform informed Scroll through a message on its dashboard that access to the content had been restricted in India “through an automated system implemented pursuant to legal requirements” under the rules.

On August 6, a post about Scroll’s report on how most pellet gun victims in Kashmir have not received compensation even a decade after they were injured was blocked. A second post with a photo in which pellet injuries were not visible, published later in the day, was also restricted. Instagram did not provide a specific reason for the actions.

On July 5, a post relating to a Scroll article about how Kashmir’s turbulent history has, for several years, provided grist for Bollywood creators looking to generate xenophobic content, was initially restricted when it included a screenshot from teaser of the film Chauhaan, showing pellet injuries. A separate post with a photograph of Srinagar’s Lal Chowk was allowed, and is still available. No specific reason was provided for this.

The platform also blocked a post on June 22 about an article explaining how a ban on the sale of meat in Amritsar had triggered a legal challenge and raked up a contentious history. It did not specify a reason for doing so, apart from citing legal requirements under the IT rules.

Three weeks prior to this, on June 1, the platform restricted a post relating to a Scroll article reporting about a United States court postponing the sentencing of Indian citizen Nikhil Gupta, who pleaded guilty in an alleged plot to kill Khalistani leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. In this case as well, Instagram did not provide a specific reason for why the post was blocked.

The posts were restricted only on Instagram, and remain visible on other Meta-owned platforms such as Facebook and Threads, even though they include the same visuals.

Scroll has requested comment from Meta, the parent company of Instagram. This story will be updated if we receive one.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

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

The Union government claimed before the Supreme Court that the audio clip allegedly linking former Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh to the ethnic violence in the state was manipulated. The clip had 41 alterations, the counsel representing the Centre quoted an expert at the Central Forensic Science Laboratories as having stated.

The National Forensic Sciences University in Gujarat’s Gandhinagar placed on record a forensic report evaluating the authenticity of the clip. The court ordered that a copy of the report be provided to the Kuki Organization for Human Rights Trust, the petitioner in the case, and the government. Read on.

Ink was thrown at student leader Neha Bora during a protest in Ranchi against alleged irregularities in recruitment exams in Jharkhand. The police have detained the alleged attacker.

The man said that he had targeted Bora, the president of the All India Students’ Association, because of her support for jailed activist Umar Khalid. Bora alleged that the man shouted “Jai Shri Ram” after throwing ink at her. Read on.

The Supreme Court refused to entertain a petition by Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitr, to allow her to appear virtually before the police in a case about purportedly provocative remarks she had made in July. She was seeking the direction fearing that eggs would be thrown at her if she went to the police station, as was done on July 1.

“Having taken the plunge into politics, you fear eggs?” the bench asked the MP. “When our freedom fighters have taken bullets on their chest?” It added that such “applications that should not come before this court at all”. Read on.

The Supreme Court dismissed a petition by Chhattisgarh’s former Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, asking it to reject a plea challenging his victory in the 2023 Assembly elections. He can raise his objections during the trial before the Chhattisgarh High Court, said the bench.

The Congress leader’s victory from the Patan constituency was challenged by his rival, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Vijay Baghel. He alleged that Bhupesh Baghel conducted a roadshow the day before the election on November 17, 2023, in violation of the Representation of the People Act, 1951. Read on.

Instagram has blocked four posts by Scroll on the social media platform since June. The platform informed Scroll that the content had been restricted in India “through an automated system implemented pursuant to legal requirements” under the Union government’s Information Technology Rules.

Among the content that has been blocked is an August 6 post about Scroll’s report on how most pellet gun victims in Kashmir have not received compensation even a decade after they were injured.

On July 5, a post relating to a Scroll article about Kashmir’s turbulent history providing grist for Bollywood creators looking to generate xenophobic content was initially restricted when it included a screenshot from a teaser of the film Chauhaan, showing pellet injuries. Read on.

In Kashmir, most pellet gun victims wait for compensation even a decade later, reports Safwat Zargar

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Two Bharatiya Janata Party workers were among the 11 persons named in a chargesheet filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation in connection with the murder of an aide to West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, PTI quoted unidentified officials as saying on Thursday.

Chandranath Rath was shot dead near Kolkata on May 6, two days after the West Bengal Assembly election results were declared. Adhikari, who became the chief minister on May 9, was not with Rath at the time of the attack. The BJP leader has alleged that it was a “pre-planned murder”.

Since taking over the investigation into Rath’s murder on May 12, the CBI has arrested 11 persons.

The two BJP workers named by the investigation agency are brothers Sagar Sonkar and Sahib Sonkar, The Hindu reported. They were arrested on August 1.

Sagar Sonkar had worked with Rath and was one of the key conspirators in his murder, an unidentified official was quoted as claiming by the newspaper. He allegedly arranged and financed the killing by hiring shooters from Uttar Pradesh.

He worked for an MLA from a rival political party until 2020, before joining the BJP, PTI quoted the CBI as claiming.

Among those arrested by the agency so far are six alleged contract killers – Sonu Singh, Raj Singh, Golu Singh, Mayank Raj Mishra, Vickey Maurya and Naveen Kumar Singh.

The CBI has also arrested three alleged middlemen – Vinay Rai, Sanjay Rai and Vikas Mishra. One suspect remains absconding, PTI reported.

Rath had reportedly been associated with Adhikari since 2018, handling political coordination and organisational work. He became the BJP leader’s executive assistant after Adhikari became the leader of the Opposition in West Bengal.

The Trinamool Congress had condemned Rath’s killing and expressed grief about the deaths of party workers in separate incidents of violence in the state. The party alleged that “BJP-backed miscreants” had been involved in post-poll unrest and called for a court-monitored CBI probe into the killing of Rath.

Edited by Sneha.

The Union government on Friday claimed before the Supreme Court that the audio clip allegedly linking former Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh to the ethnic violence in the state was manipulated, Bar and Bench reported.

The court was hearing a petition filed by the Kuki Organization for Human Rights Trust, which has demanded an independent investigation into the audio clips purportedly featuring Singh’s voice.

The government’s submission came after the National Forensic Sciences University in Gujarat’s Gandhinagar placed on record a forensics report about the authenticity of the clip.

Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati, representing the Union government, quoted an expert at the separate Central Forensic Science Laboratories as having stated that the full audio clip had 41 alterations, Bar and Bench reported.

The counsel urged the bench of Justices Sanjay Kumar and Sanjeev Sachdeva to dismiss the petition.

However, the bench ordered that a copy of the National Forensic Sciences University’s report be provided to the petitioner and the government, saying that both sides will be given an opportunity to address its content, the legal news outlet reported.

The recording

In the recordings believed to be from 2023, a voice purported to be that of Singh is heard taking credit for “how and why the conflict started”, bragging that he had defied Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s order against the use of “bombs” in the conflict and shielding from arrest persons who snatched thousands of weapons from the state police armouries.

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

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

On April 30, the Supreme Court asked the National Forensic Sciences University to examine the complete audio clip, which was more than two hours long, instead of a shorter clip that had been analysed earlier. It directed the laboratory to analyse the recording and compare the voice sample in it with that of Singh.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Maharashtra Police has arrested All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen corporator Matin Patel for not responding to summonses issued by a court in connection with a sexual harassment case at the Tata Consultancy Services in Nashik, The Indian Express reported.

Patel was held after the court issued a non-bailable warrant against him for skipping two summonses.

The corporator has been named in the chargesheet for allegedly providing refuge to Nida Khan, the main accused in the case, despite knowing that her anticipatory bail plea had been rejected.

While the police were searching for Khan in April and May, “it was revealed through confidential information and technical analysis” that Patel had provided her shelter to help her evade arrest, The Indian Express cited the chargesheet as having alleged.

Khan was arrested on May 7 from a bungalow in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar’s Naregaon area that was owned by Patel.

She was held more than 40 days after being named in a first information report for allegedly hurting religious sentiments.

The case

The complainant in the sexual harassment case, a 23-year-old woman, alleged that Khan taught her to recite the kalma – the Islamic declaration of faith – observe the roza fast and change her dressing behaviour.

As the complainant is a member of the Scheduled Caste community, Khan has also been booked under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act.

The police have alleged that Khan, along with two others named Danish Sheikh and Tausif Attar, had made derogatory remarks about Hindu deities.

They also alleged that while Sheikh sexually assaulted the complainant on the pretext of marriage, Attar molested her by seeking sexual favours and threatening to reveal to her family that she had physical relations at the workplace.

Between March 26 and April 3, the Nashik Police filed nine cases against eight Tata Consultancy Services employees for allegedly sexually harassing nine persons and hurting religious sentiments. The other seven TCS employees have also been arrested.

After the matter came to light, TCS suspended all the employees accused of involvement in the case and launched an internal inquiry.

Patel’s properties demolished

On May 13, the Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar Municipal Corporation demolished allegedly illegal constructions at two properties linked to Patel, including the house where Khan had been allegedly sheltered.

The civic body had said at the time that it had issued notices to Patel over the alleged unauthorised constructions at his residence and an office in the same locality.

There are no provisions in Indian law that allow for the demolition of property as a punitive measure. However, the practice has become commonplace in states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party.

In November 2024, the Supreme Court held as illegal the practice of demolishing properties of persons accused of crimes as a punitive measure.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a petition by Chhattisgarh’s former Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, seeking that a plea challenging his victory in the 2023 Assembly elections be rejected, Live Law reported.

Bhupesh Baghel can raise his objections during the trial before the Chhattisgarh High Court, said a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana.

The Congress leader represents the Patan constituency in the Chhattisgarh Assembly.

His victory was challenged by his rival, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Vijay Baghel, who alleged that Bhupesh Baghel conducted a roadshow a day before the election on November 17, 2023.

This violated Section 126 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, which requires candidates not to campaign 48 hours before the polling, alleged the BJP leader.

Appearing for Bhupesh Bhaghel, advocate Kapil Sibal told the court on Friday that the allegation amounted to a violation of the Act and could not be treated as a “corrupt practice”, Live Law reported.

There was no basis to suggest that the alleged roadshow had influenced the election outcome, Sibal added. He pointed out that Bhupesh Baghel had won by a margin of nearly 20,000 votes while Vijay Baghel alleges that only around 200 persons attended the event.

However, the court said that whether the roadshow had any impact on the election result needed “to be decided on evidence”.

“...if I carry a message to one, it can be given to another”, Live Law quoted Bagchi as saying. “Is it a secret meeting of 200 or is it a public meeting of 200?”

The Chhattisgarh High Court has held Vijay Baghel’s plea as maintainable.

Edited by Sneha.

The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a petition seeking a probe by a Special Investigation Team into the recovery of unaccounted cash from former Allahabad High Court judge Yashwant Varma’s residence in Delhi, reported Bar and Bench.

The petition was filed for “cheap publicity”, said a bench of Justices PS Narasimha and Alok Aradhe.

Unaccounted cash was allegedly recovered at Varma’s official residence in Delhi when emergency services responded to a fire there on March 14, 2025. He was a judge at the Delhi High Court at that time.

The judge said that he was in Bhopal when the cash was discovered and claimed that it did not belong to him or his family.

The controversy prompted his transfer to the Allahabad High Court.

In April, he resigned from his post, more than two months after Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said the process to impeach the judge was underway.

The petitioner in the present plea had told the Supreme Court that Varma is not immune from criminal liability merely because he had resigned, reported Bar and Bench. He sought a first information report against him.

“Earlier similar petition was dismissed on technical ground that no complaint was filed before filing the petition,” Bar and Bench quoted him as saying. “That is done now.”

However, the bench held that it was not inclined to hear the plea.

Less than two months before Varma resigned, a three-member committee set up under the 1968 Judges Inquiry Act by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla was reconstituted to investigate the charges against the former judge.

Proceedings before Varma resigned

On March 22, 2025, the Supreme Court released a report, including a video and three photographs, showing bundles of notes that were allegedly recovered from the judge’s home.

The court had also set up a three-member committee to look into the allegations against Varma.

The redacted report showed that Delhi High Court Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya had written to Varma on March 21, 2025, asking him to “account for the presence of money/cash” in a room located in his bungalow.

As Varma had at the time declined to voluntarily retire or resign, Sanjiv Khanna, the chief justice of India at the time, sent the final inquiry committee report on the incident to the president and the prime minister.

The committee, in its report, had concluded that there was “sufficient substance” in the charges against Varma. The report dated May 3, 2025, held that the judge’s misconduct was “serious enough to call for initiation of proceedings for removal”.

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

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

The Lok Sabha speaker on August 12 formed the three-member committee, comprising Supreme Court Justice Aravind Kumar, Shrivastava and advocate B Vasudeva Acharya.

While Birla had stated in the House that the committee would submit its report at the earliest, the investigation was delayed since Varma challenged the legality of the inquiry committee in the Supreme Court.

On January 16, the Supreme Court rejected his petition.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Union government on Thursday opposed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking directions for income-based prioritisation within reservations for the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and the Other Backward Classes, Live Law reported.

The government maintained that the quotas are based on historical and social backwardness, not just on economic status.

Responding to the plea, the Centre stated that framing a policy on reservations in government jobs and educational institutes was within the executive’s domain, and not that of the courts.

The petitioners had sought directions from the court to the government to introduce sub-classification within the reservation matrix so that economically weaker persons in each quota category get priority.

The government said that the Constitution does not allow for changes to be made to reservations merely on economic criteria. Only Parliament can make changes to the quota lists based on historical, social and educational backwardness, Live Law quoted the government as having stated.

“These criteria are not spelt out in the Constitution but have become well established,” The Indian Express quoted the government as having stated.

It added that the creamy layer principle is not applicable in the context of reservations for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

The creamy layer debate

There have long been calls to exclude the creamy layer from benefiting from reservations meant for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

The creamy layer refers to the wealthier and more advanced members within a group that is eligible for affirmative action benefits. The concept was introduced for Other Backward Classes in the 1992 Indra Sawhney versus Union of India judgement.

In August 2024, a seven-judge Constitution bench ruled that the sub-classification of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes is permissible for providing reservations in government jobs and education based on empirical data.

The bench, in a 6:1 majority verdict, overruled the court’s 2004 judgement, which held that Scheduled Castes formed a homogenous group and hence could not be subdivided into categories.

Further, four of the seven judges called for identifying the creamy layer among the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes categories so that they could be removed from the reservation matrix.

However, as the application of the creamy layer was not one of the questions before the bench, the suggestions of the four judges lacked legal enforceability.

The Union government had at the time clarified that it would not act on the court’s non-binding recommendation as there is no provision in the Constitution for applying the creamy layer concept to reservations for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

In March, the Supreme Court held that parental income alone cannot be used to determine whether a candidate falls in the creamy layer of the Other Backward Classes category.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read:

• Explained: Supreme Court Constitution bench verdict on sub-classification in SC/ST reservations
• Why activists decry court suggestion to deny reservations to a ‘creamy layer’ among SC/STs

Nineteen persons have been arrested in connection with the alleged irregularities in the Jharkhand civil service examinations, state minister Shilpi Neha Tirkey told ANI on Thursday.

Tirkey described the alleged irregularities as “quite shameful” and said that the coalition government led by Chief Minister Hemant Soren was investigating the matter thoroughly.

Her statement came amid an ongoing student protest in Jharkhand, which entered its 14th day on Friday.

The protests began on July 25, inspired by the agitation across the country against the alleged mismanagement of national competitive exams. The protesters have been holding a sit-in at Ranchi’s Jaipal Singh Munda Stadium, with six demonstrators on fast.

The protesters have demanded the cancellation of the 14th Jharkhand Public Service Commission Combined Preliminary Test held on April 19.

They have also sought independent inquiries by the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate into alleged irregularities in recruitment examinations conducted by the Jharkhand Public Service Commission and Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission.

On Thursday, the protesting students formed an 11-member delegation to hold talks with the government about their demands, The Hindu reported.

The delegation comprises eight students – Ravindra Paswan, Piyush Kumar Singh, Ravindra Kumar Ravi, Rajesh Prasad, Neetu Kujur, Kartik Soren, Sandeep Kumar and Shaalu Singh – along with a journalist representing the media, a guardian representative and a legal expert, the newspaper reported.

The state government has also formed a four-member ministerial committee to hold talks with the protesting students.

Rahul Gandhi speaks to protesters

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday had a phone conversation with student leader Ravindra Paswan.

The student leader said he spoke to Gandhi about the situation in Jharkhand, and told him “that the exam mafia is flourising”, PTI reported.

Paswan said that he told Gandhi to make his stand clear on the protests, as the Congress is a part of the coalition government in the state.

He said that Gandhi asked him to send the demands of the demonstrators to him on WhatsApp, PTI reported.

“We are serious about this issue, and we will do whatever we can,” Gandhi told Paswan.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat told an audience of more than 2,000 students, most aged between 15 and 20, on Thursday that youngsters who protest are not “anti-nationals”.

The RSS is the parent organisation of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Addressing an event at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Centre in Mumbai, Bhagwat said that the grievances of the youngsters were genuine and reflected shortcomings in the education system.

“If the Gen Z is agitating, they certainly are not anti-nationals,” Bhagwat said. “They are our own people, our next generation.”

He said that while previous generations did as told, the “Gen Z and Gen Alpha want logical answers”.

“Gen Z” refers to persons born between the late 1990s and 2010. “Gen Alpha” are persons born between 2010 and 2024.

Bhagwat’s comments come after nationwide student protests last month led to the resignation of BJP leader Dharmendra Pradhan as the Union education minister on July 25. That prompted the RSS to launch a youth outreach campaign.

The protests against alleged mismanagement of several competitive examinations had begun on June 6, when the Cockroach Janta Party political campaign staged a demonstration at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar to demand that Pradhan resign.

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 the police. Dozens were injured as the police used lathis, fired tear gas shells and pellet guns against the demonstrators. The police action turbocharged the agitation, which spread to other parts of the country.

The Cockroach Janta Party had agreed to call off the protests after Pradhan’s resignation.

Bhagwat said that he does not have answers to what happened when the police lathi-charged protesters at Jantar Mantar or why it happened. “We need to look into why this happened and what led to it,” he said.

He added that that he understood why students chose to protest, adding that “conversation did not initially work” with the government.

Describing the Gen Z as “more honest” than previous generations, Bhagwat urged them to choose role models who do not promote violence.

“If Gen Z do not subscribe to violence, then why do they follow role models who are violent?” he asked.

Bhagwat also called for greater public investment in education and said that there is a need to train teachers.

He also addressed the LGBTQ demands for same sex marriage. "LGBTQ is part of the society to which we belong,” he said. “In our society we accommodate them.”

But marriage, he added, is not a convenience created for two people to live together. “It is an institution to create a family,” Bhagwat asserted. “Next generations are trained to be good citizens by these family...If we disrupt existing system, that will create conflict.”

Instead, he suggested a law to allow people of the same sex to live together and not marry.

“If we tamper with marriage system that will create other side effects,” he said.

The RSS chief also spoke about India’s ties with its neighbours. “Pakistan was part of India less than 100 years ago,” he said. “That should not be forgotten.” He said that while ties with Pakistan cannot be severed, they can be kept on hold until the conflict was resolved.

“Permanent hatred and permanent enmity is not the solution,” he said. But he added that until the conflict is resolved, students and civil society members from Pakistan should be invited to India.

Bhagwat’s remarks did not impress everyone in the audience. Niwas Rajagopal, a 16-year-old student who had travelled from Puducherry to attend the event, said that while he had not participated in any local protests, the cause to protest was genuine.

“The government responded very late,” he said. “The protest and its reasons were fair. How police acted in Delhi, using expired tear gas, was brutal.”

But Rajagopal said that he expected more “honest answers” from Bhagwat. “We realise what is political and what is genuine,” the Class 11 student said. “His address seemed more for political gains.”

Tarun Kumar, a 15-year-old student, said that while he did not support the protest at Jantar Mantar and did not endorse the demand for education minister’s resignation, he felt disappointed in the RSS chief, especially his position on LGBTQ rights.

“RSS is the right hand of the government,” said Kumar. “If this is the thought process, no wonder students are enraged with BJP.”

Inputs by Tabassum Barnagarwala. Edited by Sara Varghese.

Dear Abhijeet,

I am writing to you from Lahore, a city that breathes the same dusty air as Delhi. I am a young activist here, part of a generation that has grown up in the long, flickering shadow of a border. I am writing to you because, after a long time, the news coming from your side of the fence felt like staring into a mirror.

When the Chief Justice of India used the word “cockroach” to describe the young and unemployed, young people I know here in Pakistan recognised that word instantly. It is the way the powerful across South Asia look at the millions of us who are “surplus”, the graduates without jobs, the students whose dreams are sold in leaked exam papers, the young who are expected to be grateful for the crumbs.

By naming your movement the Cockroach Janata Party, you took the stone thrown at you and used it to start building a house.

In Lahore, we often feel like we are living in a silent version of your protest. Our struggle is the same: the Medical and Dental College Admission Test scandals mirror your crisis where the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test was leaked. Our families go into the same crushing debt for coaching centres, our youth bulge is also becoming a youth burden. But in Pakistan, the air is sometimes a little heavier.

Exam leaks are just the tip of it. Zooming out, we all face common issues: unemployment, poverty, poor living standards across borders. Your protest feels refreshing and full of hope for millions of us here as well.

There could be no better month than August to rethink our collective freedom from imperial rule. We lost millions during the Partition of 1947. But what did we achieve if millions of us still lack the basics of life after 80 years of independence?

Gen Z is in the best position to raise these questions to governments and to themselves. We cannot wait for another century to get the basics right. We must act now by educating, uniting and mobilising youngsters.

We look at the images and videos from India with a sense of wonder. There is a courage in being “visible”. Here, we have learned that visibility comes with a high price. We have had to find quieter ways to exist, to organise in the margins, and to keep the fire alive when the cameras are turned away.

I won’t lie to you: there is envy here – not a bitter envy, but a longing. We watch your digital space, 22 million followers in a fortnight, and we think of what we could do if our own digital corridors were as wide.

We watch the way your civil society shows up for you, and we dream of a day when the youth of the entire subcontinent can stand together, not as “Indians” or “Pakistanis”, but as a people who have been denied a future by the same, old-world politics.

The “cockroach” is the perfect metaphor for us, isn’t it? The cockroach doesn’t care for the Radcliffe Line. It survives in the cracks of the walls we build between us. It outlives empires. It is the ultimate witness to the failures of the powerful.

I see your struggle as a warning and a promise. The warning is that the tactics used to silence youth, internet shutdowns, the dismissal of student grief, the branding of dissent as “anti-national”, are a shared regional language. But the promise is in your resilience. If you can stand up in Delhi, it gives a little more oxygen to a student in Lahore or Karachi who feels like they are suffocating.

But in the young Indian student crying over a leaked exam paper, I see a sibling. When I see you standing against a system that calls you a parasite, I see a version of myself that is allowed to speak.

Keep the streets, Abhijeet. Keep the satire. Keep the pestilence of your presence alive. As long as you are standing, the idea of a Young South Asia remains possible.

We are watching from the other side of the mirror. We are different, yet we are the same. We are the ones they forgot to count, but we are the only ones who can count the cost of their failures.

They can spray all they want. We have already learned how to breathe underwater.

With hope and shared history,

A Voice from Lahore

Ehtesham Hassan is a freelance brand designer and a progressive activist in Lahore.

Last summer, I taught a course called Quantitative Reasoning and Mathematical Thinking. Much of it was focussed on the history of mathematics in India: numbers in the Vedas, the geometry of the Sulbasutras and the work of Pingala, Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, Bhaskaracharya, and Ramanujan.

Teaching this course was among the pleasures of my year.

It was also difficult. A large part of what I did in that classroom was not teaching what Indian mathematicians had achieved, but separating it from what they did not.

We read SG Dani’s Myths and Reality: On ‘Vedic Mathematics’ to see why a set of arithmetic shortcuts compiled and published in 1965 has nothing to do with the Vedas, and Rick Briggs’s Knowledge Representation in Sanskrit and Artificial Intelligence to trace where the claim that Sanskrit is “the language of AI” or the most logical programming language ever, came from – and to see that the paper itself says no such thing.

We worked through why a genuine theorem from the Sulbasutras is not made truer, or more Indian, by attaching to it claims it does not support.

Teaching topics in Indian Knowledge Systems meant defending it from pseudoscience. The boundaries between science, culture, belief and pseudoscience are narrow, and a lot of work in this field involves keeping them clear and separated.

What helps tell science from pseudoscience is a single test. A scientific claim can be refuted: it commits to a prediction that could fail, and if the prediction fails, the claim is wrong. A claim that no possible observation could contradict is not science – whatever its mathematics or its numbers.

While this is not a complex idea, applying it takes training. Most people starting out in science, reasonably, rely on a shortcut instead: if a claim comes from a respected institution, they take it to be sound. That shortcut works only as long as the institutions hold the line themselves.

Increasingly, in Indian science, they do not.

Mind, Brain and Consciousness Conference 2026

In June, IIT Mandi’s Indian Knowledge System and Mental Health Applications Centre hosted the third edition of its Mind, Brain and Consciousness Conference. This was held under the patronage of the Indian Knowledge Systems Division of the Ministry of Education and included a 275-page abstract book, 19 keynote lectures, 250 technical presentations, and eminent scientists among attendees and chair.

On page 13, the book of abstracts lists the conference themes in a single sequence: cognitive neuroscience, brain-computer interfaces, yoga and meditation, science of reincarnation, energy chakras and Pancha Kosha – the “Vedic framework that maps human existence from gross matter to pure consciousness”. The sequence helps transfer the credibility of the first items to the last.

Delighted to share that the home-grown flagship conference of the IKSMHA Centre at @iit__mandi, the 3rd Mind Brain Consciousness Conference (MBCC 2026), is set to bring together leading minds exploring consciousness, neuroscience, cognition, meditation, philosophy, and Indian… pic.twitter.com/iuECunfHIH

— Director, IIT Mandi (@Dir_IIT_Mandi) May 29, 2026

The rest of the book tells the same story. Some of the work was legitimate: Alzheimer’s detection through electroencephalogram, brain-computer interfaces for paralysed patients, Sanskrit natural language processing.

Much of it was not. A full special session was devoted to a “Theory of Quantum Emotion” running three hours across 14 papers. Another paper constructed a “Kalpa Recurrence Operator acting on civilizational phase space” with sophisticated mathematical notation, but no physical mechanism.

A session presented jyotisha, the traditional system of astrology, as a scientific theory with applications to criminology. Papers on Pranic Healing that taps into “the universal life force” reported a 114% improvement in anger control.

Nasa’s ‘Om’, cow urine and medicine

The 102nd Indian Science Congress of 2015 is a well-known example of this trend, but this year alone has produced several more.

In March, IIT Madras marked the 250th anniversary of the Carnatic composer Muthuswamy Dikshitar. The keynote speaker spent the address conflating modern physics with Vedic metaphysics, presenting a NASA sonification of Big Bang pressure waves as proof that the early universe produced the syllable “Om” and misdating and misquoting the physicists he cited.

In June, IIT Roorkee announced a study claiming that distilled cow urine has antiviral activity against chikungunya, one of about 10 papers from the government’s SUTRA-PIC programme, which received nearly Rs 98 crore for research on cow-derived products. After a physician raised concerns about research integrity, the journal opened an investigation, as The Print reported.

By the 1980s, home-grown institutions were producing a stream of outstanding PhDs themselves. Indian science could draw as much on domestically trained talent as on people returning from overseas. All this has changed since 2014.https://t.co/5LL7bmXe00

✍️Ramachandra Guha pic.twitter.com/r3Un8ec9Wm

— Scroll.in (@scroll_in) March 25, 2026

On accountability

Institutions and conferences like these draw genuinely accomplished researchers and academics. These are people who sit on funding committees and help decide what counts as legitimate inquiry. When they place pseudoscience beside science, they send out a larger signal. It reaches students choosing what to study, administrators deciding what to fund and a public that reasonably assumes someone checked.

Equally important is the impact of such a phenomena on the work on Indian Knowledge Systems. There is excellent research to be done in the space of Indian philosophy, the history of mathematics and sciences and even pharmacology and traditional medicine.

The condition is that it be done as science: claims that can be falsified, results that can be replicated and honest engagement with the evidence that already exists. Held to that standard, this work strengthens Indian science. Exempted from it, it does the opposite.

I doubt that Chanakya, Sushruta, Dignaga, Hemachandra, or Ramanujan would have been proud of this daily legitimisation of pseudoscience.

Aalok Thakkar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Ashoka University.

The Rajasthan Education Department suspended the principal of a government school in Jaipur for hearing and speech-impaired students after they staged a protest about poor infrastructure and a lack of basic facilities, The Indian Express reported on Thursday.

On Wednesday, more than 100 students of the Government Seth Anandilal Poddar Senior Secondary School gathered outside the campus gate. Using sign language, placards and written messages, they alleged that repeated complaints against the mismanagement had gone unaddressed.

The students alleged that toilets were unhygienic, drinking water was in short supply, classrooms had cracked walls and parts of the building were in a dilapidated condition, The New Indian Express reported. They also complained about food in the hostel.

Some students claimed they had to pay to speak to their parents over the phone or to be taken to hospital. They alleged that there were too few teachers proficient in Indian Sign Language. The protesters also accused a male staff member of harassing female students, The New Indian Express reported.

The protest reportedly took place after plaster fell from a classroom ceiling and struck a student.

The school has 583 students, including 282 hostel residents.

Following the protest, education authorities conducted an inspection, after which the district education officer submitted a report recommending disciplinary action against those found responsible.

Principal Bharat Joshi was suspended with immediate effect, The Indian Express reported.

Disciplinary action was also initiated against a teacher and a Class IV employee.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Over the past few weeks, young people have mobilised to protest India’s broken education system, against the background of a shortage of job opportunities.

The protests were initially sparked by the cancellation of a medical school entrance exam after questions were leaked, leading some despondent young people to take their own lives. The movement repurposed the image of a cockroach as their symbol – inspired by a comment by India’s chief justice, allegedly comparing jobless young people to “cockroaches”. Humour and satire were integral to the recent unrest.

On Saturday, the cockroach movement claimed its biggest victory since the protests began with the resignation of India’s education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan.

But this move will only do so much. These issues did not appear overnight, nor can they be easily fixed.

Decades of frustration

Irregularities and shortcomings in education, as well as rampant unemployment, have been major issues in northern India since at least the early 1970s. One of the main reasons for this is the economic growth that occurred in the late 20th century was not accompanied by broad-based investment in education. It also failed to create jobs in the private sector, leaving many young people dependent on government jobs.

As I wrote in my book Timepass: Youth, Class and the Politics of Waiting in India, for example, by the late 1990s, thousands of graduates were chasing a single government job in the northern city of Meerut.

In response, many young people engaged in what they called “timepass” – spending time hanging out at street corners while continuing to study for degrees. One set of students started a club called “Generation Nowhere”.

Many of the young people I interviewed were bitter about their predicament. Many could not afford the best schools. The education system was also rife with problems, from the frequent leaks of exam papers to teacher shortages.

When I was doing fieldwork relating to young people and social change in the state of Uttar Pradesh in 2004, I met students satirically campaigning for their “democratic right to cheat” in examinations. Like the young people at the heart of the cockroach movement, these students, too, complained of questions being leaked in advance of exams and the cheating inherent in the educational system.

They also believed talented students were cheated out of a job after graduating because of the scale of unemployment in India. “Why shouldn’t we cheat, when the system is cheating us?”, one student quipped.

Students also said the system of applying for government jobs was unfair. One told me: “Everywhere, you need source [social connections] and force [money power]”.

Today’s distinctive challenges

Young people today have similar feelings of anger and being stuck in limbo. But their daily realities have changed.

As Avishek Jha and Nilanjana Sen, two researchers at the University of Melbourne, recently argued, Indian youth are often channelling considerable effort into preparing for government exams, rather than engaging in “timepass”. This reflects a growing awareness of the real threat of youth unemployment in India and a determination to find ways to maximise their chances.

An enormous number of “tuition centres” or cram schools, coaching centres, and study spaces have emerged to cater to this more driven generation, but the odds stacked against young people in competition for scant government jobs remain the same. Cockroach protesters are frustrated by all the effort and resources they are forced to expend to prepare for exams that don’t ultimately lead to better lives.

This points to the deeper, systemic problems at the heart of India’s massive youth unemployment problem.

Four main issues to address

With their main demands now met by the government, those in the cockroach movement will likely shift their focus to these broader questions of fairness in education and employment.

First, tackling structural educational problems is an obvious priority. This may require decentralising the management of examinations. But as Professor Manisha Priyam pointed out in research in Bihar, the problem is wider than the leaking of examination papers. The government must also better regulate tuition and coaching centres to ensure their marketing and activities are transparent and above board.

Second, many Indian commentators are again emphasising the issue of job creation. The government should also look at ways to improve work-integrated learning to give students better training in key fields.

Another priority is reforming school and university courses so young people can obtain the skills necessary to compete for private and public jobs, while also creating opportunities for themselves through start-ups.

This is linked to a third issue – greater investment in schooling and higher education. Sixty years ago, a commission set up by the government to examine the state of education in India recommended the government increase spending to 6% of gross domestic product (GDP). This hasn’t happened: spending is currently just 4.1%.

Several experts have pointed out that education investment also needs to be smart. It should be targeted at curriculum review, improving the performances of institutions and staff, and speeding up the technological and infrastructural transformation in education.

A final theme emerging from the cockroach movement is the need for Indian authorities across the board to respect and value young people. This starts with a better understanding of the capabilities, talents and skills of those in gen Z.

Where to look for inspiration

Crucially, the cockroach movement is focusing attention on the realities of mainstream, public education – starting in primary schools – rather than simply what is happening in elite institutions.

There are some important initiatives underway that build on India’s National Education Policy. But to take a holistic approach to education reform and job creation, Indian policymakers should also look at developments in other large, developing countries, such as Brazil.

Policymakers must also look at India’s own history of successful community-government partnerships.

Above all, reforms that involve young people should now be the priority. Those in the cockroach movement have demonstrated their desire to become genuine collaborators in education reform. They deserve a seat at the table.

Craig Jeffrey is Deputy Vice-Chancellor (International) and Senior Vice-President, Monash University.

This article was first published on The Conversation.

Journalist Tarun Tejpal was sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment for raping and sexually harassing a junior colleague in 2013. The Goa bench of the Bombay High Court has directed him to surrender within two weeks.

The bench set aside a 2021 verdict of a sessions court that had acquitted Tejpal.

He has been held guilty of rape by a person holding trust or authority, rape by a person who is in a position of control or dominance over a woman, sexual harassment and criminal force against a woman with an intent to disrobe her. Read on.

Rajya Sabha Chairman CP Radhakrishnan asked the Centre to consider the Opposition’s request that Union Home Minister Amit Shah be present in the House. “You can echo the sentiments of the Opposition to the home minister,” Radhakrishnan told Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju.

The Opposition has been demanding that Shah attend Parliament during the Monsoon Session for a discussion on the crackdown on youth protesters in Delhi on July 20. They have said that the home minister should make a statement about the use of excessive force by security personnel. Read on.

The Union government has spent Rs 557.5 crore on foreign trips made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi since 2021. The most expensive trip by Modi during this period was to the United States in February 2025, which cost more than Rs 25.5 crore, the Ministry of External Affairs informed Parliament.

While Rs 36.1 crore was spent on the prime minister’s foreign visits in 2021, the expenditure was Rs 55.8 crore in 2022. Modi undertook fewer trips in the two years amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

In 2023, Rs 93.6 crore was spent on his visits abroad, followed by Rs 109.5 crore in 2024 and Rs 187.8 crore in 2025. The government has spent Rs 74.5 crore in 2026 so far on six trips that covered 13 countries. Read on.

A decade under Modi: Aggressive foreign policy yields mixed returns, writes Nachiket Deuskar

The Supreme Court refused to make further concessions on the bail conditions imposed on Ashish Mishra, the main accused in the 2021 Lakhimpur Kheri violence case. He is the son of former Union minister Ajay Misra Teni.

Ashish Mishra’s counsel told the court that the bail terms prevented him from attending family events, including his daughter’s birthday celebrations. However, the court dismissed the plea, observing that there were no grounds to entertain it. Read on.

The management of a college in Uttar Pradesh’s Prayagraj revoked permission for an event at which Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was to speak with students about paper leaks and exam irregularities. The “Chhatron Ki Goonj”, or call of students programme, was scheduled to be held on Saturday at the KP College sports ground.

The college management claimed that an August 2025 Allahabad High Court order had restricted the use of the ground to sports and educational activities. Read on.

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The Union government has spent Rs 557.5 crore on foreign trips made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi since 2021.

While Rs 36.1 crore was spent on the prime minister’s foreign visits in 2021, the expenditure was Rs 55.8 crore in 2022. Modi undertook fewer trips in the two years amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

In 2023, Rs 93.6 crore was spent on his visits abroad, followed by Rs 109.5 crore in 2024 and Rs 187.8 crore in 2025.

The government has spent Rs 74.5 crore in 2026 so far on six trips that covered 13 countries.

The most expensive trip by Modi during this period was to the United States in February 2025, which cost more than Rs 25.5 crore, the Ministry of External Affairs informed Parliament on Thursday.

In 2026, the largest amount of funds was spent on the prime minister’s trip to Norway in May, which cost Rs 17 crore.

The data released by the ministry did not specify what the money was spent on.

However, in a submission made to the Rajya Sabha in March 2025 about Modi’s foreign visits, the government had said that the cost includes the expenditure on accommodations for the prime minister’s delegation, transportation, security and hardware, venue charges and “miscellaneous” expenses.

The miscellaneous expenses were not defined.

In 2022, Modi visited Germany, Denmark, France, Nepal, the United Arab Emirates, Japan, Uzbekistan and Indonesia. In 2023, Papua New Guinea, Australia, Japan, the US, the UAE, Egypt, South Africa, Indonesia and Greece were among countries visited by the prime minister.

In 2024, the prime minister travelled to the UAE, Bhutan, Qatar, Italy, Austria, Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Brunei Darussalam, the US, Singapore, Laos, Brazil, Guyana and Kuwait.

France, the US, Mauritius, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia, Cyprus, Canada, Croatia, Trinidad and Tobago, Namibia, Argentina, China, Jordan and Ethiopia were among the countries Modi visited.

In 2026, Modi has so far visited Italy, Israel, Norway, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, France, Indonesia, the UAE, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Seychelles and Slovakia.

The data was released on Thursday in response to an Opposition MP’s question about how much money had been spent on the prime minister's foreign visits and the foreign direct investment India had received through commitments made during the trips.

The ministry listed country-wise memoranda of understanding signed during the visits between April 2021 and December 2025, valuing the foreign direct investment received through them to be $381.8 billion, or Rs 36.3 lakh crore.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Sneha.

Also read: A decade under Modi: Aggressive foreign policy yields mixed returns

Rajya Sabha Chairman CP Radhakrishnan on Thursday asked the Centre to consider the Opposition’s request that Union Home Minister Amit Shah be present in the House.

Speaking to Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju, Radhakrishnan said: “You can echo the sentiments of the Opposition to the home minister.”

The Opposition has been demanding that Shah attend Parliament during the Monsoon Session for a discussion on the crackdown on youth protesters in Delhi on July 20.

The Opposition leaders have said that the home minister should make a statement about the use of excessive force by security personnel.

The Delhi Police and the Central Armed Police Forces report to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs.

As the session began on Thursday, Opposition MPs shouted slogans: “Amit Shah must answer, come to the House.”

Responding to the sloganeering, Rijiju mentioned two parliamentary rules – 235, which is about seeking to end the Opposition’s interruptions, and 240, on irrelevance or repetition in member’s speeches.

He alleged that Leader of the Opposition in the Upper House Mallikarjun Kharge had been repeating the same remarks every day.

Radhakrishnan allowed Kharge to respond, but members of the treasury benches protested, leading to the House being adjourned.

When the proceedings resumed during Question Hour, Kharge said he did not need to learn the rules of the House from Rijiju.

“In this House, [Arun] Jaitley ji said disruption is a part and parcel of democracy,” said the Congress leader. “You can raise questions which are relevant to the proceedings. Here they are escaping.”

He added that the Opposition was only asking for Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to be present in Parliament.

The student protests in Delhi last month led to the resignation of Bharatiya Janata Party leader Dharmendra Pradhan as the Union education minister on July 25.

The protests against alleged mismanagement of several competitive examinations had begun on June 6, when the Cockroach Janta Party political campaign staged a demonstration at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar to demand that Pradhan resign.

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 the police. Dozens were injured as the police used lathis, fired tear gas shells and pellet guns against the demonstrators. The police action turbocharged the agitation, which spread to other parts of the country.

The Cockroach Janta Party had agreed to call off the protests after Pradhan’s resignation.

Written by Sneha. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

A first information report was registered against the head teacher and cook of a government school in Uttar Pradesh’s Sitapur district after a video of students at the school being served poor-quality mid-day meal was widely shared on social media, The Indian Express reported on Thursday.

The video showed students at the school in Chhangapur village in Mahmudabad block eating an excessively watery vegetable curry and burnt rotis, with one roti falling to the floor before a child picked it up and placed it back on his plate.

A complaint filed by the block education officer accused head teacher Kalpana Verma and the cook, Aneeta, of embezzling government-supplied food items and engaging in corrupt practices, The Indian Express quoted the station house officer of Mahmudabad police station as saying.

Some veggies dropped in water + burnt chappatis - This is the mid day meal serve to students at a government primary School in Sitapur district of Uttar Pradesh. pic.twitter.com/rK06irGJaG

— Piyush Rai (@Benarasiyaa) August 5, 2026

Separately, the district administration suspended Verma and terminated Aneeta’s services.

Sitapur District Magistrate Rajaganapathy R said that the two had failed to serve food and milk in accordance with prescribed norms despite receiving government supplies on time, the newspaper reported.

The district magistrate also held the block education officer accountable for dereliction of duty, The Indian Express reported. An adverse entry was made in his service record.

The mid-day meal scheme, which is officially known as the National Programme of Nutritional Support to Primary Education, was launched in August 1995 to boost universalisation of primary education, while improving nutrition levels of children.

The scheme simultaneously lays emphasis on providing cooked meals with minimum 450 calories, between eight and twelve grams of proteins, and adequate quantities of other nutrients. The 2013 National Food Security Act made the mid-day meal up to Class 8 a legal right.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to further relax the bail conditions imposed on Ashish Mishra, the main accused in the 2021 Lakhimpur Kheri violence case, Bar and Bench reported.

This came after the counsel for Ashish Mishra, the son of former Union minister Ajay Misra Teni, told the bench that the bail terms restricting his travel prevented him from attending family events, including his daughter’s birthday celebrations.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant observed that there were no grounds to entertain the plea and dismissed it.

On October 3, 2021, violence had broken out after a vehicle belonging to Ashish Mishra had allegedly run over a group of demonstrators in Lakhimpur Kheri. Eight persons had died.

They had been protesting against the Union government’s now-repealed agricultural laws

Ajay Misra Teni was the Union minister of state for home affairs at the time.

Ashish Mishra was arrested on October 9, 2021. Four months later, the Allahabad High Court granted him bail.

However, families of those killed in the violence challenged the bail order in the Supreme Court. It cancelled Mishra’s bail in April 2022.

After setting aside the High Court’s bail order, the Supreme Court asked that another bench be assigned to hear his plea against the cancellation of his bail. The new bench denied Ashish Mishra bail in July 2022, after which he moved the Supreme Court once again to challenge the order.

In July 2024, Ashish Mishra was granted bail by the Supreme Court, but he was restricted to staying only in Delhi or Lucknow. In May, the bail conditions were relaxed to allow him to visit Lakhimpur Kheri every Saturday evening and return to Lucknow on Sunday.

Edited by Sneha.

Journalist Tarun Tejpal was on Thursday sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment for raping and sexually harassing a junior colleague in 2013, Bar and Bench reported.

The Goa bench of the Bombay High Court asked him to surrender within two weeks.

Allowing the appeal filed by the Goa government, a division bench of Justices Neela Gokhale and Amit Jamsandekar set aside the verdict of a sessions court from 2021 that had acquitted Tejpal.

The High Court convicted Tejpal under provisions of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to rape by a person holding trust or authority, rape by a person who is in a position of control or dominance over a woman, sexual harassment and criminal force against a woman with an intent to disrobe her, Live Law reported.

Tejpal, the former editor-in-chief of Tehelka magazine, was accused of raping a junior colleague in an elevator in 2013. He had been arrested in November 2013 and was in jail for seven months before being granted bail by the Supreme Court in July 2014.

A sessions court in Goa’s Mapusa had acquitted him in May 2021.

Additional Sessions Judge Kshama Joshi had said at the time that Tejpal was granted “benefit of doubt” in the absence of corroborative evidence to support the allegations made by the complainant. The judge had also remarked that the complainant did not show the “kind of normative behaviour” expected from her.

During the hearing, the state alleged that the trial court’s verdict was prejudiced, and contended that it had wrongly focused on the complainant’s character and post-incident behaviour instead of the conduct of the accused, Bar and Bench reported.

On the other hand, the counsel representing Tejpal had argued that the complainant’s account was inconsistent with evidence such as the security camera footage and how the elevator worked, the legal news outlet reported.

After the judgement on Thursday, Tejpal’s lawyer requested the court to show leniency in its sentencing, saying that the offence had been committed 13 years ago, Live Law reported. The counsel also sought a stay on the conviction order for at least two months for Tejpal to file an appeal in the Supreme Court.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the state, opposed Tejpal’s plea for leniency, saying that “a precedent must be set”. The court “must give out a clear message to society that when a girl says no, it means no”, Mehta was quoted as having said.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The management of a college in Uttar Pradesh’s Prayagraj has revoked permission for an event at which Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was to speak with students about paper leaks and exam irregularities, ANI reported.

The “Chhatron Ki Goonj” or call of students programme was scheduled to be held on Saturday at the KP College sports ground. It is part of a campaign by the Congress to demand accountability from the government about the education system.

The acting president of the Kayastha Pathshala Trust, which runs the college, told PTI that an Allahabad High Court order, dated August 14, 2025, restricted the use of the ground to sports and educational activities.

He also said that the permission granted to Congress was subject to approval from the district magistrate.

The trust also cited waterlogging caused by recent rains as the reason for the cancellation, PTI reported.

Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Ajay Rai on Wednesday said that Gandhi will travel to Prayagraj on August 8 and meet the students, despite the trust revoking permission for the programme, PTI reported.

He also urged the state government and district administration to provide an alternative venue for the programme. He alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party government was blocking the event for political reasons, as it was “afraid” of Gandhi.

Gandhi has addressed students in Rajasthan’s Kota and Uttarakhand’s Dehradun as part of the “Chhatron Ki Goonj” programmes.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Congress on Thursday said that it supports the students protesting against alleged irregularities in Jharkhand civil service examinations.

The Congress is part of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha-led state government.

K Raju, the All India Congress Committee’s in-charge for Jharkhand, said that he met Chief Minister Hemant Soren along with other Jharkhand Congress leaders and submitted a memorandum on the demands of the students.

The state government has formed a four-member ministerial committee to hold talks with the protesting students, Congress MP Pramod Tiwari told IANS.

“We fully support every legitimate demand of the students,” IANS quoted Tiwari as saying.

Alluding to the police action against youth protesters at Jantar Mantar in Delhi, Tiwari said: “The difference is that in Jharkhand, there were no nail-studded lathis used, no pellet firing took place.”

The protests in Jharkhand began on July 25, inspired by the agitation across the country against the alleged mismanagement of national competitive exams. The protesters have been holding a sit-in at Ranchi’s Jaipal Singh Munda Stadium, with six demonstrators on fast, PTI reported.

The protesters have demanded the cancellation of the 14th Jharkhand Public Service Commission Combined Preliminary Test held on April 19.

They have also sought independent inquiries by the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate into alleged irregularities in recruitment examinations conducted by the Jharkhand Public Service Commission and Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission.

On Thursday, the protesters said that they will surround the Vidhan Sabha as part of the agitation on August 10 if the state government fails to address their demands, ANI reported.

The Monsoon Session of Jharkhand Assembly began on Thursday with MLAs of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party staging a protest in support of the student agitation, PTI reported.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The toll in flood-related incidents in Assam has risen to 95 since the third week of July, with five more fatalities being recorded on Wednesday.

River embankments were breached at five places in Biswanath district and two places in Darrang district on Wednesday following heavy rainfall, the state disaster management authority said.

Water was overflowing at several places along the northern bank of the Brahmaputra river, especially in the foothills of Bhutan, it said. As a result, large swathes of land in Udalguri, Darrang and other districts in the region had been submerged.

The Dhansiri river was flowing above the danger level as of Wednesday, the disaster management authority said.

More than 560 villages in 14 districts were affected by flooding. The districts were Golaghat, Lakhimpur, Charaideo, Sivasagar, Biswanath, Dhemaji, Kamrup Metropolitan, Jorhat, Sonitpur, Tinsukia, Nagaon, Darrang, Karbi Anglong and Udalguri.

The flooding has affected 1.6 lakh persons, with more than 12,300 having been taken to relief camps. An additional 32,000 persons were relying on assistance from relief distribution centres.

Several houses were damaged and more than 8,500 animals had been washed away, the disaster management authority said.

The India Meteorological Department had warned of thunderstorms in most districts on Thursday. It had also issued an orange alert warning of heavy rainfall in Kokrajhar and Hailakandi districts.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Pakistan observing August 5 – the day that Article 370 of the Constitution was abrogated in 2019 – as “Youm-e-Istehsal”, or the day of exploitation, was “political absurdity” and “malicious propaganda” against India, stated the Ministry of External Affairs on Wednesday.

The article gave special status to the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. While abrogating it, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government had also bifurcated the state into two Union Territories: Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.

Pakistan Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar recently said that the Indian government’s decision had posed a “grave challenge” to the established international framework and expressed solidarity with the residents of Jammu and Kashmir, The Indian Express reported.

“We reaffirm our unwavering support for their [Kashmiris] fundamental rights, as enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and reflected in the relevant UN Security Council resolutions,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. He added that the developments of August 5, 2019, continued to be a “matter of deep concern”.

Responding to a question about Dar’s comment, Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on Wednesday that the abrogation of Article 370 was an internal matter of India and Pakistan has no authority to comment on it.

Describing Pakistan as “the global epicentre of terrorism”, Jaiswal added that Islamabad was peddling falsehoods to divert international attention from its own “dismal human rights record”.

“The international community is currently witnessing the brutal suppression of fundamental rights in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir,” he said.

In recent weeks, Pakistani security forces have resorted to “lethal violence, targeted killings and draconian bans to silence peaceful civil rights protests” in the country, added Jaiswal.

Residents of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir have been protesting against rising inflation and an opaque system of governance, according to media reports. Tensions escalated on June 5 when authorities banned the Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee, a pressure group, for holding demonstrations.

“Instead of engaging in predictable diplomatic theatre, Pakistan would be well-advised to stop the bloodshed in PoJK [Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir], take credible, verifiable, and irreversible action against terror networks operating from its soil, and immediately vacate all Indian territories under its illegal and forcible occupation,” said the spokesperson.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Sneha.

Bangladesh’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday said it was outraged by former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina being allowed to speak to the media in Delhi, and remarked that such events are detrimental to relations with India.

Dhaka said that it “deeply regrets” that the programme had been allowed despite having conveyed its concerns to New Delhi about the “likely ramifications of this event on the reset” of bilateral relations.

“Upholding the spirit of the July Revolution, our people have firmly resolved that our nation will never again go back to the dark days of fascism and that Bangladesh will never be a client state,” the Bangladeshi foreign ministry said.

It added that Bangladesh wants to maintain a “constructive, mutually beneficial and forward-looking” relationship with India based on “sovereign equality, mutual respect, non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, and national dignity”.

During an audio-only virtual press conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club on Wednesday, Hasina said that she was determined to return home in December to put the country on the “right track”.

The interaction was Hasina’s first public media appearance since she fled to Delhi in August 2024 amid widespread protests against her government.

Hasina said that she would return to Bangladesh to restore democracy despite the risk of imprisonment or even a death sentence.

She also demanded that the ban on her party, the Awami League, be lifted and political prisoners be released. The former prime minister urged the international community to support the people of Bangladesh in their struggle for democracy and justice.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs has not yet commented on Dhaka’s statement. However, it had stated on Tuesday that Hasina’s press conference was organised by a private media entity and that New Delhi was not involved in it.

On Wednesday, Dhaka also accused Hasina of denying “facts established by the United Nations” that her government was responsible for killing civilians, including children, during the 2024 unrest. The ministry alleged that Hasina was attempting to rewrite history and said that the people of Bangladesh had repeatedly rejected such efforts.

In February 2025, the United Nations said that the Hasina government was behind systematic repression and killings of protesters in 2024, suggesting that the abuses could amount to “crimes against humanity”.

During the press conference, Hasina described India as a “great friend” of Bangladesh. She said that India always stood by her country in times of difficulty.

The Awami League leader also dismissed any back-channel talks with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party government about her return. “I may be detained, I may be sent to prison,” she said, adding that Dhaka may try to “enforce verdicts issued in fabricated cases”.

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

Dhaka has repeatedly demanded that Hasina be extradited. It has also expressed concerns about the ousted leader being allowed by the Indian authorities to address her supporters from Delhi in January.

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

Meanwhile, the home of former Bangladeshi ‌cricketer Shakib Al Hasan in Magura town was vandalised after he joined Hasina’s press conference on Wednesday, Reuters reported. He is a former Awami League legislator.

On Wednesday, Hasina further claimed that the 2024 protests that toppled her government were not a peaceful student movement. She alleged that “organised groups” transformed the protests into a “violent political instrument”.

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.

In May 2025, the interim government in Bangladesh at the time banned all activities of the Awami League, including its online platforms, under the country’s anti-terrorism act.

In October, Hasina described the ban as unjust and said that it could undermine the legitimacy of the elections, which were held in February. The Tarique Rahman-led Bangladesh Nationalist Party, a rival of the Awami League, came to power in the polls.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande and Nachiket Deuskar.

The November 2024 violence in Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal was “pre-planned” by Samajwadi Party MP Zia-ur-Rahman Barq, MLA Iqbal Mehmood’s son Suhail Iqbal and members of the Shahi Jama Masjid’s management committee, The Indian Express quoted a judicial commission as having alleged in a report on Wednesday.

The three-member judicial panel, which had been set up to investigate the violence, cleared the police in the matter. The report, submitted in August 2025, was tabled in the Assembly on Wednesday.

The violence left five persons dead, with locals alleging that four of them were killed in police firing.

The violence had broken out on November 24, 2024, after a group of Muslims objected to a survey of the Shahi Jama Masjid in Chandausi town of Sambhal. The survey had been ordered in a suit claiming that the mosque had been built in 1526 by Mughal ruler Babar on the site of an ancient Hindu temple.

In its report, the investigation committee headed by former Allahabad High Court judge Justice Devendra Kumar Arora alleged that the circumstances preceding the violence indicated that the gathering on November 24 was “well-planned” and not spontaneous, The Indian Express reported.

The panel alleged that the violence was “primarily the result of abetment” by Barq, Iqbal and several persons associated with the masjid’s management, linking it to what it described as “political ambitions and an attempt to retain influence and control over the mosque”, the newspaper reported.

The commission also claimed that four of the five persons who died during the violence were not killed in police firing, The Indian Express reported. It said that firearm injuries could have been caused by .315 bore weapons and that there was no evidence that the police personnel present at the spot had that type of gun.

The persons appeared to have been killed in alleged cross-firing among miscreants in the crowd, the panel said. It identified the alleged miscreants as members of “local Turk and Pathan groups”, the newspaper added.

In June 2025, a chargesheet was filed against Barq and 22 others in a case. He has been accused of inciting the crowd by giving allegedly provocative speeches.

The police claimed that they had found that allegedly inflammatory speeches and incitement to violence led to the clashes, which resulted in arson, the throwing of stones and damage to public and private property.

Barq has denied the allegations, stating he was in Bengaluru at the time of the clashes.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

There was a time when we called the monsoon month of Sawan by its name. In traditional lore, with its arrival, swings would appear in orchards. The air would be filled with the melodies of the kajri folk form and Raag Malhar. The Earth changed its attire as nature draped herself in a green veil.

Sawan meant relief and hope.

For farmers, Sawan is still Sawan. Even today, they call it by that name. Few other lives are bound to rain and drought as intimately as theirs. They await Sawan with particular longing. They know that the rhythm of cultivation changes with it.

Farmers know what the month means for paddy, maize, jowar, chana, black gram, cotton and other crops. Many of their festivals, too, fall in this month. There is Teej. There is Nag Panchami. The agricultural calendar and the Hindu ritual calendar have long lived together.

But we no longer inhabit that older sense of time. We now live within an official Hindutva calendar. It is no longer Sawan that begins but the auspicious month of Shravan. Every mention of Shravan must now be preceded by adjectives such as “holy, sacred or auspicious”.

Sawan has been stolen from ordinary people. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Sawan has been abducted. Its abductor is the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Over the past decade or so, Sawan has been subjected to a process of thorough Hindutvaisation. Governments led by the Bharatiya Janata Party welcome the sacred month of Shravan with full-page newspaper advertisements. It is as though Indians no longer learn of its arrival from the changing colour of the sky or the scent of wet earth, but from government announcements.

Nor is one advertisement considered sufficient. Governments repeatedly remind people that Shravan has arrived and is very much there. More than that, they also tell Hindus what their principal duty during the month is.

There was a time when Krishna exhorted Arjuna: “Rise, Partha. Lift your Gandiva.” Now, governments issue a different command. Shravan has begun. Rise, O Hindus. Raise your kanwar to your shoulders.

Take Bihar. On July 28, the Hindi newspapers in the state carried a full-page advertisement issued jointly by the Bihar government and its Department of Tourism announcing the inauguration of the Shravani Mela or Shravan fair.

Government advertisements in Bihar these days invariably come bathed in saffron and this one was no exception. At the top of the advertisement, next to the words “Shravani Mela” were a saffron triangular flag, a damru drum and a trident. At the centre was an image of Shiva himself, holding a trident in his hand.

The chief guest at the inauguration was Bihar’s chief minister, Samrat Choudhary. Among the distinguished guests were the two deputy chief ministers belonging to the Janata Dal (United), Vijay Kumar Choudhary and Bijendra Prasad Yadav. Several ministers of the Bihar government and many legislators were also listed as participants.

Earlier, on July 15, the Bihar government had released another advertisement. This one announced an “attractive prize scheme” to promote the Shravani Mela. The Tourism Department invited participants to "take the spiritual, cultural and tourism experiences of Shravani Mela 2026 to the world through your camera and creativity and win attractive prizes”. The first prize was at Rs 3 lakh, the second Rs 2 lakh and the third Rs 1 lakh. There were two fourth prizes of Rs 50,000 each and five consolation prizes of Rs 25,000.

Curious about the changing language of official celebration, we looked for last year's advertisement about the event. It was considerably smaller. There was no announcement of an inaugural ceremony. It merely informed devotees about the facilities that would be available between July 11 and August 9.

At the top appeared the line: “For the comfort of devotees, the Kanwar Yatra has now been made easier.” Below was the phrase “Shravani Mela”, accompanied only by a trident and a damru. Nothing more.

During the Kanwar Yatra, devotees walk hundreds of kilometres to collect water from the Ganga near Haridwar. They fill it into two pots balanced on a stick and carry this kanwar back to their home states to offer the water at temples. The Kanwar Yatra began on July 30 and will end on August 11.

The Bihar advertisement went on to list the facilities that Bihar Tourism had arranged to make the pilgrimage easier – night shelters, tent cities, medical camps, cafeterias, safe drinking water, fans, coolers, tourist assistance centres, kanwar stands, CCTV surveillance, toilets and a 24-hour helpline. On one side was an image of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. On the other stood a few Kanwar pilgrims.

The difference between last year’s official welcome to Sawan and this year’s is not difficult to explain. Last year, too, Bihar was governed by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance coalition. But the chief minister was Nitish Kumar. This year, the chief minister is from the BJP. Last year, in the government advertisement, Shiva did not carry a trident.

This year, the trident has been placed firmly in his hand.

Once upon a time, the Shiva of Sawan was the bearer of the damru. He was Bhole Baba. He no longer seems permitted to remain so. Both Shiva and his devotees are being absorbed into the machinery of the state.

राजकीय श्रावणी मेला, 2026 के छठे दिन प्रातः 04:08 बजे मंदिर का पट खुलते ही जलार्पण शुरू हो गया। शिवभक्तों की गूंज से रूट लाईन गुंजायमान है और सभी कांवरिया कतारबद्ध हो बाबा का जयघोष करते हुए निरंतर आगे बढ़ रहे हैं।#ShravaniMela2026#babadhaam @JharkhandCMO @prdjharkhand pic.twitter.com/jZIloYVkLz

— DC Deoghar (@DCDeoghar) August 4, 2026

Traditional kanwariyas call themselves “bam”. Chanting “Bol Bam” and carrying water, they journey towards Baidyanath Dham. Some run the entire distance. Some roll upon the ground. Some walk slowly, resting every few miles.

Today, they have been transformed into religious tourists. The government waits upon them. The BJP hopes to make worldly gains from the spiritual labour that these pilgrims undertake.

Even so, Bihar still places Hindus at the centre of its narrative.

In Uttar Pradesh, however, the government's attention seems fixed less upon Hindus than upon Muslims. Meat shops are being shut down. Hotels along the pilgrimage routes receive warnings to only serve vegetarian food. The very people who describe a single hour of collective Friday prayers on a public road as being an unacceptable obstruction to traffic now close highways and roads altogether for ordinary citizens. The roads are reserved exclusively for kanwariyas

Sawan has been stolen. Shankar, the lord of the three worlds, has been nationalised. In the larger project of transforming Hinduism into Hindutva, the appropriation of Sawan is only one stage.

Apoorvanand teaches Hindi in Delhi University.

Sami Ahmad is a journalist and a translator.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday alleged that persons who had taken part in the protests in July against the alleged mismanagement of competitive examinations were being harassed and goons were being sent to their homes.

Speaking at a press conference along with protesters from New Delhi, Mumbai, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh, Gandhi said that nobody needs to “accept” their apology as they had not done anything wrong.

The leader of Opposition’s statements were purportedly in reference to a video posted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday, in which he said that he wanted to forgive the students who had allegedly made objectionable remarks about him.

“I understand the anger in our society,” Modi had said. “There is a cultural shock about our daughters using such language. This is the time to show them the right path. They are misguided.”

On Wednesday, Gandhi said that while the students who had participated in the protests were standing in front of the media, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and the prime minister “do not have the courage to do so”.

We had a free and frank conversation with some of the young protesters. They spoke about how they were assaulted, beaten and threatened.

I am very proud of them and of what they, along with thousands of young Indians like them, have done. They have defended the Constitution.… pic.twitter.com/tytSOD9U1w

— Congress (@INCIndia) August 5, 2026

“It is not easy for them to come here,” said the Congress leader. “They are facing harassment, violence and torture. And I am impressed that they have the courage to speak so eloquently. I am extremely proud of what they have done.”

Among the persons present at the press conference alongside Gandhi was a 32-year-old woman who had been injured in her ear after pellet gun was fired at her on July 20. Another woman present had purportedly been struck by a police officer on her private parts.

Amit Shah responsible for violence: Gandhi

Gandhi further alleged that Shah was responsible for the violence against protesters who marched to Parliament on July 20.

“Either he did not know that this violence was being carried, in which case he is incompetent,” said Gandhi. “And if he ordered the violence against the students, then he is culpable.”

The police in the national capital and the central armed police forces report to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs.

भारत के भविष्य को देखिए - युवा, निडर, बेबाक, देशभक्त।

और प्रधानमंत्री-गृह मंत्री? न संसद आने का साहस, न जवाब देने की हिम्मत। pic.twitter.com/XkNq1XohW7

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) August 5, 2026

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

On July 20, 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 the police. Dozens were injured as the police used lathis, fired tear gas shells and pellet guns against 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.

Modi’s video message on Friday, the fifth in a week, came a day after a 15-year-old girl in Noida was booked for making purportedly objectionable remarks about him on social media during the youth protests at Jantar Mantar.

Singh later apologised for the remarks she had made about the prime minister.

Speaking about this on Wednesday, Gandhi said that “forcing a 15-year-old to apologise, and then accepting the apology, is complete nonsense”.

Reacting to FIRs being filed against several young protesters in recent days, Gandhi had said on Friday that Modi and Shah “cannot threaten” Gen Z into silence.

With the Monsoon Session ongoing, the Opposition parties have been demanding that Shah make a statement in Parliament about the use of force by security personnel against student protesters in Delhi on July 20.

Written by Sneha. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read:

• ‘We will kill, rape you’: Online mobs are targeting women protesters for ‘abusing’ Modi

• Modi is one of India’s most powerful prime ministers – so why is he so bothered by Gen Z profanity?

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi alleged that goons were being sent to the homes of young people who had taken part in the protests in July against the alleged mismanagement of competitive examinations. While the students had faced the media, Union Home Minister Amit Shah or Prime Minister Narendra Modi “do not have the courage to do so”, Gandhi said.

He was speaking at a press conference with protesters from New Delhi, Mumbai, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh. They included a 32-year-old woman who had been injured after pellet guns were fired at her on July 20. Another woman present had purportedly been struck by a police officer on her private parts.

Gandhi alleged that Shah was responsible for the violence against protesters. “Either he did not know that this violence was being carried, in which case he is incompetent,” he said. “And if he ordered the violence against the students, then he is culpable.” Read on.

‘We will kill, rape you’: Online mobs are targeting women protesters for ‘abusing’ Modi, reports Ayush Tiwari

Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg has been directed by an Indian parliamentary panel to apologise within three days for Facebook’s action of temporarily removing a video posted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Meta is the parent organisation of social media platform Facebook.

Nishikant Dubey, the head of the panel, said that if Zuckergberg’s fails to apologise, “we will revoke the ‘safe harbour’ protection currently provided to his social media platforms, a privilege that they have been misusing”.

Considering the allegedly abusive language, and violent and objectionable content that is shared on the platforms, “a flood” of first information reports will be filed against the Meta chief in the country, he said. Read on.

The authorities should seek to understand the concerns of young people who had been protesting against alleged irregularities in the conduct of exams, said the Supreme Court. “We need to tread carefully so that these youngsters do not indulge in violence,” said Chief Justice Surya Kant.

He added that the better option would be to “counsel and pacify them”. “Listen to them and understand why they are shouting,” Kant said.

The court was hearing a petition by retired Air Force officers seeking action against the organisers of the protests that spread across the country in July. The petitioners claimed that allowing protesters to march to Parliament despite permission being denied for it would set a dangerous precedent. Read on.

Cockroach Janta Party founder Abhijeet Dipke said that the political campaign would operate as a pressure group for now. The decision was taken because “what India needs right now is a pressure group”, he added.

Dipke said that the protests held in Delhi against alleged mismanagement of competitive examinations showed the citizens’ dwindling trust in “the political system, the judiciary, the media or the Election Commission”. Read on.

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The Supreme Court has clarified that its interim order restricting the sharing of audio and video recordings of court proceedings does not prevent “recognised news organisations” from reporting on hearings, Bar and Bench reported on Wednesday.

In its July 24 interim order, the court prohibited the extraction, editing, dissemination, reposting, uploading or monetisation of audio and video recordings of judicial proceedings on social media and other digital platforms without permission from the court authority.

A bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant has clarified that the restriction should not be “construed as imposing a blanket prohibition on the reporting of court proceedings” but applies only to the use of audio and video recordings of hearings.

The interim order came on a public interest litigation filed by a journalist who has sought guidelines to regulate the clipping, editing, dissemination and monetisation of audiovisual recordings of court proceedings on digital platforms, Live Law reported.

The petition argues that the selective and decontextualised circulation of courtroom exchanges undermines the dignity of the courts and erodes public confidence in the justice system.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Calcutta High Court on Tuesday verbally observed that “heavens will not fall” if all six stanzas of Vande Mataram are sung in madrasas, Live Law reported.

The bench of Acting Chief Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty and Justice Partha Sarathi Sen was hearing a public interest litigation challenging a May 19 West Bengal government notification mandating that the song be sung in all madrasas under the state’s Minority Affairs and Madrasah Education Department.

The newly-formed Bharatiya Janata Party government has directed government model madrasas, recognised government-aided madrasas and recognised unaided madrasas to sing all six stanzas of the patriotic song.

During the hearing, Chakraborty remarked: “Heavens will not fall...today if I am asked to utter a quote that is not in my religion...what will happen? I will become a person not belonging to that religion?”

The court also pointed to educational institutions run by other religious communities where students recite prayers, Live Law reported.

“There have been thousands of Christian schools where all students are asked to pray to the Lord,” the court said. “Then, do students belonging to a particular community ask why they are being asked to sing certain things which are in the Christian religion?”

The petitioner’s counsel argued that the national anthem “stands on a higher pedestal when compared to the national song” and therefore singing Vande Mataram could not be made mandatory.

The acting chief justice, however, questioned whether the government had taken any punitive measures to enforce the notification.

“Only if any punitive action is taken, can you contend that it was mandatory,” the court said. “Has anybody suffered yet?”

Additional Solicitor General Dhiraj Kumar Trivedi, representing the state government, sought time to file an affidavit explaining the government’s position. He argued that the petitioners could not seek an injunction based solely on apprehension.

Schools in West Bengal had traditionally sung only the national anthem, Jana Gana Mana, during assemblies. In recent years, the previous Trinamool Congress government had also introduced singing of Banglar Mati Banglar Jol, the state song.

Vande Mataram was written in Sanskrit by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee in 1875 and is a popular patriotic song from India’s freedom movement.

A Press Information Bureau note issued on November 6 to mark 150 years of the song stated that the Constituent Assembly had adopted Jana Gana Mana as the national anthem and Vande Mataram as the national song.

The note quoted Rajendra Prasad, the first president, as having told the Assembly in January 1950 that Vande Mataram, because of its role in the freedom movement, “shall be honoured equally with Jana Gana Mana and shall have equal status with it”.

However, the Constitution mentions only the national anthem, not Vande Mataram.

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 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.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg must apologise within three days for Facebook temporarily removing a video posted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, ANI quoted the head of the parliamentary panel on information technology Nishikant Dubey as saying on Wednesday.

Meta is the parent organisation of social media platform Facebook.

“If he fails to do so, we will revoke the ‘safe harbour’ protection currently provided to his social media platforms, a privilege that they have been misusing,” the news agency quoted Dubey as saying.

He told reporters that the parliamentary standing committee had told the Union ministries of home affairs and information technology that removing Modi’s video “was not the responsibility of an intermediary but that of a publisher”.

“Therefore, Zuckerberg must apologise within three days,” Dubey added.

Considering the allegedly abusive language, and violent and objectionable content that is shared on the platforms, “a flood” of first information reports will get filed against the Meta chief in the country, he said.

The safe harbour provision under the Information Technology Act gives online intermediaries such as social media firms immunity from liability for content posted by a third party on their platforms, as long as they comply with the government’s directions. Removing the status would mean that the platforms would become liable for the content posted on them.

Modi’s video briefly removed

On July 23, the prime minister posted a late-night video on social media assuring strict action on cases of paper leaks in competitive examinations, amid nationwide youth protests over alleged irregularities in the process. On July 28, the video was briefly unavailable in India. Users saw a notice that access had been withheld following a legal request. It was restored later.

Dubey alleged that the video was inaccessible for five hours.

On July 28, the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology summoned Meta’s global head of public policy in connection with the matter. Secretary S Krishnan had told ANI at the time the firm contended that it happened because of a technical error, but said that the reasoning was not “acceptable in its entirety”.

Dubey has argued that temporarily removing Modi’s video reflected conduct by the platform beyond that of a neutral intermediary, the Hindustan Times reported.

The BJP MP’s comments came ahead of a meeting between a Meta team led by its Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan and information technology ministry officials on Wednesday.

The ministry said that the discussions will also cover the technology firm’s compliance with Indian laws, child sexual abuse material on its platforms, content generated using artificial intelligence and safeguards for verified accounts.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Cockroach Janta Party founder Abhijeet Dipke said on Wednesday that the political campaign would operate as a pressure group for now, ANI reported.

Speaking to reporters in Maharashtra’s Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, he said the decision was taken because “what India needs right now is a pressure group”.

Pressure groups are viewed as formal or informal organisations that seek to influence government policies and decisions without contesting elections. They can act as a bridge between citizens and the government.

Ahead of a meeting of the core members of the CJP, Dipke said on Wednesday that the protests held in Delhi against alleged mismanagement of competitive examinations showed the citizens’ dwindling trust in “the political system, the judiciary, the media or the Election Commission”.

In view of this, the CJP would hold discussions about the government’s Ethanol Blended Petrol programme and rising unemployment in the future, PTI quoted Dipke as saying.

“The support that our movement received was not limited to education,” he said. “That is why we believe that, to restore accountability and neutrality in these institutions, a public movement and public pressure are needed.”

Dipke added that the CJP’s call to action was successful because “people rose above their own ideologies and political party lines to come together against things that are weakening our democracy”.

He also said that activist Sonam Wangchuk would continue to mentor the members of the political campaign.

#WATCH | Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar, Maharashtra | On being asked if he will start a political party, Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) Founder Abhijeet Dipke says, "Our movement was successful because people rose above their own ideologies and political party lines to come together… pic.twitter.com/xQqgNBjzKk

— ANI (@ANI) August 5, 2026

The protests against alleged mismanagement of several competitive examinations had begun on June 6, when the CJP staged a demonstration at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar to demand the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, the Union education minister at the time.

On July 20, 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 the police. Dozens were injured as the police used lathis, fired tear gas shells and pellet guns against 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.

The CJP had agreed to call off the protests after Pradhan’s resignation.

Edited by Sneha.

Also read: How Abhijeet Dipke created a broad-based idea of politics that put the BJP on the backfoot

The Supreme Court on Wednesday said that the authorities should seek to understand the concerns of youngsters who had been protesting against alleged irregularities in the conduct of exams, reported Bar and Bench.

“We need to tread carefully so that these youngsters do not indulge in violence,” said Chief Justice Surya Kant while hearing a petition by retired Air Force officers seeking action against the organisers of the protests that spread across the country in July.

Kant added: “The better course is to counsel them and pacify them. The most powerful tool is listening. Listen to them and understand why they are shouting.”

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

On July 20, 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 the police. Dozens were injured as the police used lathis, fired tear gas shells and pellet guns against 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.

In their petition, the retired officers said that action should be taken against the organisers of the protest for the violence on July 20. They claimed that allowing protesters to march to Parliament despite permission being denied for it would set a dangerous precedent, reported Bar and Bench.

“What if they had opened fire?” the officers’ counsel told the court. “They were not marching on a national highway. They were not marching on a railway line. They were marching towards the temple of democracy. Everyone must be held accountable.”

However, Kant said that the priority should be to facilitate peaceful protests.

“If some incident takes place, the police also need to exercise a great deal of restraint to ensure that the situation does not go out of hand,” Bar and Bench quoted the chief justice as saying.

He also added that decisions on dealing with such situations should be left to the law enforcement authorities.

On Monday, the Supreme Court said that states can withdraw first information reports filed against youth protesters wherever permissible.

The clarification came in response to concerns raised by petitioners that the court’s July 28 order, which allowed states to continue investigations into the FIRs, could hinder the withdrawal of cases.

In its July 28 order, the Supreme Court had directed that minors who had been detained should be released and no coercive action should be taken against protesting students as long as they did not have any “criminal antecedents”.

Closing the FIRs was part of the Union government’s promise to leaders of the Cockroach Janta Party to end the protests, the petitioners said on Monday.

In response, the bench clarified that the term “criminal antecedents” in the order referred only to “grave and heinous offences”.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The toll in rain-related incidents in Kerala has risen to 25 in the past six days, The Hindu reported on Wednesday. Four persons were missing.

The state has been receiving heavy and incessant rainfall since Friday, triggering flash floods and landslides.

While rainfall had reduced, the state was expecting another spell of intense rain by the weekend because of a low-pressure area over the Bay of Bengal, the newspaper reported.

The India Meteorological Department has forecast heavy rainfall in parts of central Travancore region, including Ernakulam, Idukki and parts of Kottayam, and in the northern districts of Kozhikode, Wayanad, Kannur and Kasaragod, the newspaper reported.

The rest of the state is likely to receive above-normal rainfall, except Thiruvananthapuram and parts of Kollam.

The state has set up 418 relief camps to shelter more than 18,400 persons, The Hindu reported.

An ex-gratia payment of Rs 8 lakh will be made to the families of those who died, Chief Minister VD Satheesan on Monday. Compensation of Rs 12 lakh will be given to those who lost their homes and land due to landslides. Families will be provided Rs 6 lakh to reconstruct their homes.

He also announced that the state government will provide Rs 10,000 in funeral expenses to the families of those who died. Persons returning home from relief camps would receive Rs 10,000 as an immediate measure.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.