The Supreme Court on Thursday sought the Union government’s response to a plea filed by the son of a woman who was forced into Bangladesh without any verification.

Sahida Fakir, who hails from Gobindapur in West Bengal and had been working in Mumbai for about 20 years, was detained on July 19 on “suspicion of being an illegal immigrant”, her son’s lawyer told Scroll.

The petitioner said that Fakir was kept in custody for more than 100 hours before being produced before a judicial magistrate. He alleged that she was neither informed of the grounds for her detention nor allowed to communicate with her family.

Also read: ‘She had stepped out to buy food’: Another Bengali woman forcibly pushed to Bangladesh from Mumbai

Five days later, she was handed over to the Border Security Force, which allegedly forced her across the international border into Bangladesh, the petition said.

Fakir managed to contact her family on July 31 after being provided temporary shelter in Bangladesh on humanitarian grounds.

The petition stated that her forced deportation violated Articles 14, 21 and 22 of the Constitution, which guarantee equality before the law, protection of life and personal liberty, and safeguards against arbitrary arrest and detention.

It also included several documents cited as evidence of her Indian citizenship, including a voter identity card issued in 2008.

Fakir’s parents were also included in the 2002 electoral roll, a copy of which Scroll has seen. However, during the recent special intensive revision of electoral rolls, Fakir was marked as “under adjudication”. An appeal against her exclusion is pending before the tribunal hearing similar challenges.

In May 2025, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs directed the states and Union Territories to verify the credentials of persons suspected to be undocumented migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar.

Since the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam in April 2025, the police in several states, most of them ruled by the BJP, have been detaining Bengali-speaking persons – mostly Muslims – and asking them to prove that they are Indian citizens.

Several persons have been forced into Bangladesh after they allegedly could not prove their Indian citizenship. In some cases, persons who were mistakenly sent to Bangladesh returned to the country after the state authorities in India proved that they were Indians.

Inputs from Rokibuz Zaman. Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read: ‘Disappeared’: In Bengal, Muslims picked up from homes in midnight raids, sent to detention centres

After the United States House of Representatives passed legislation that would allow tariffs of up to 100% on India and other countries that purchase Russian oil and gas, New Delhi said it remains committed to ensuring energy security for its people. We “will continue to do so through diversified sourcing and on the basis of evolving market dynamics”, said the Ministry of External Affairs.

The draft law passed on Wednesday said that the tariffs could apply to the five countries that imported the largest volumes of Russian crude oil or natural gas in the 12 months before the law takes effect, if they knowingly continue buying Russian crude oil 30 days after the law is enacted.

India has increased its purchase of Russian oil this year, while New Delhi and Washington negotiate a preliminary trade deal. Read on.

The Delhi High Court asked the police how it could impose a “blanket ban” on protests at Jantar Mantar against caste-based reservations and the University Grants Commission’s January regulations to address discrimination in colleges. The police had granted permission to the Rajput group Karni Sena for a demonstration on September 20, but withdrew it, anticipating that a large crowd would gather.

Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma asked the police how permission could be entirely denied “just because you apprehend that some people will come”.

The police told the court that such action has also been taken earlier because Jantar Mantar “is a very sensitive area”. Read on.

The external affairs ministry said that speculation on social media about some world leaders having fallen ill after attending the BRICS summit in Delhi was misleading. “We caution against such malicious posts on social media platforms,” it said.

The posts came after the South African government on Wednesday said that President Cyril Ramaphosa will not be participating in public events for a few days because of “ill health”.

Some of the posts and reports also cited speculation that Chinese President Xi Jinping had fallen ill during the summit. The claims were based on Xi skipping the leader’s dinner on Saturday and Prime Minister Narendra Modi pausing mid-speech during a session on Sunday to ask the Chinese president “is it okay?” Read on.

At least 75 government schools in Delhi have been directed to light diyas, or earthen lamps, on their premises to celebrate Modi’s birthday. The prime minister turns 76 on Thursday.

The Delhi government has mandated activities that the schools need to conduct for a month till October 17, including competitions for speeches, drawing and making reels, or short vertical videos for social media.

Saurav Das, the co-convener of the Cockroach Janta Party political campaign, alleged that Anganwadi workers in Madhya Pradesh had been directed to light diyas to celebrate Modi’s birthday, “record videos praising him” and government schemes. They have been warned of action if they do not comply with the directive, Das alleged. Read on.

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Decades ago, in the Banni grasslands of Kachchh, an invasive tree was planted to solve one environmental crisis. Today, big companies are paying to convert the same trees into a charcoal-like substance to solve another problem.

In January 2025, Google announced one of the largest biochar carbon removal deals to date, agreeing to purchase 1,00,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide removal credits from Varaha ClimateAg Private Limited, a Gurugram-based climate tech startup. Biochar is a carbon-rich charcoal produced by heating organic matter in low-oxygen conditions, which can store carbon in soil for hundreds of years.

By January 2026, Varaha had added Microsoft to its roster of corporate buyers, with Lufthansa, Swiss Re, and Capgemini also signing offtake agreements.

Among Varaha’s initiatives is a project in Kachchh, Gujarat, combining carbon sequestration with ecosystem restoration.

An invasive species

Prosopis juliflora was introduced to Kachchh around the 1960s to arrest desertification. The Banni grassland now has around 50% of its area dominated by this single invasive species, according to Khyati Thacker, a botanist who has spent over five years working on community-led ecosystem restoration in Kachchh and Saurashtra.

Research shows the grassland produced up to 4,000 kg of fodder per hectare in the 1960s; by 1999, that had fallen to around 620 kg. “This Prosopis juliflora has destroyed the jungle, the native trees (such as Vachellia nilotica, Prosopis cineraria, Senegalia senegal) and the grazing grass,” said Kaiyan Rabari, a herdsman from Sangnara village, Kachchh.

Around late 2022, a private project developer approached Sahjeevan, an NGO working in Kachchh, with a proposal to link the restoration work to the carbon market.

A pilot was launched in Dedhiya village, Kachchh, using low-cost Kon-Tiki kilns, cone-shaped metal structures in which Prosopis wood is burned under low-oxygen conditions and then doused with water to produce biochar. “All this was speculation,” said Kavita Mehta, Executive Director of Sahjeevan. “They weren’t sure either, and we weren’t sure either, so it was a pilot for both of us.”

Based on Sahjeevan’s 2023-’24 annual report, the Kachchh pilot processed around 800 tonnes of Prosopis, generating approximately 2,000 carbon credits sold on the European voluntary market at roughly $120 per credit.

A credit built on a promise about soil

The climate logic of a biochar carbon credit rests on one central premise: that the biochar produced ends up durably buried in soil, storing carbon for centuries. But on the ground in Kachchh, soil application is not being tracked with the same rigour as production itself.

In Sangnara village, farmer Umra Pala Jepar, 48, described a stockpile left behind after production. “The biochar has been lying in the open at the outskirts of the village since it was all made. Two years have passed, and it is lying just like that.”

In a written response to questions submitted by Mongabay-India on May 28, Varaha said, “In none of our projects does biochar leave the production site before it is mixed with cow dung or manure. Furthermore, Varaha’s systems are designed so that unmixed biochar cannot be submitted to the registry for credits.”

Sahjeevan, in its 2024-25 annual report, noted that in the same Sangnara village, the local Biodiversity Management Committees cleared Prosopis from 30 hectares, converted it into 100 tonnes of biochar, and generated 220 carbon credits.

Gafur Mutva, a contractor in Gorewali village, Kachchh, who produced biochar in Banni, explained the structural difficulty of soil application in the grassland context. “We produce biochar, but there is no agriculture here in this specific area to apply it to. If we transport it outside Banni, the logistics cost increases. That is why we dig a pit there and apply it directly into the soil.” He flagged an unintended consequence, “The biochar retains soil moisture, but we noticed that instead of helping native grasses, that moisture appeared to be benefiting the invasive Prosopis juliflora. Double the baval grows instead of native grass,” he said.

Shailesh Vyas, an agriculture expert who conducted biochar soil trials across multiple locations in Kachchh as an assessment for Sahjeevan, found the results troubling. “We experimented in the arid and semi-arid landscapes of Kachchh. The results were entirely negative. The crop production actually dropped across all biochar plots compared to the control plots.”

His explanation is rooted in soil chemistry, “Whenever you burn wood, the resulting product is largely alkaline. The soil in Kachchh is already naturally alkaline. When you introduce an alkaline additive to an already alkaline environment, it does not reduce the pH (a scale that tells us how acidic or alkaline soil is); it increases it,” Vyas said.

In response to Mongabay-India’s queries, Varaha said biochar is mixed with cow dung in a 1:1 ratio, saving farmers the cost of inputs such as urea and DAP. Vyas raised a fundamental methodological point, “Cow dung is globally recognised as one of the best soil inputs. If you apply one tonne of biochar with one tonne of cow dung, any benefit you see is highly likely coming from the cow dung itself, not the biochar.”

The ecological cost of restoration

Producing biochar in a Kon-Tiki kiln requires water to quench the burning biomass. Thacker’s field data put the requirement at 500 to 600 litres per kiln. “Kachchh is an arid landscape facing severe water scarcity, where people struggle for drinking water. You are providing funding to do something good, but in the process of doing that good deed, no one has considered how many other vital resources are being wasted,” she said.

Mutva, who ran up to 20 kilns simultaneously, said around 12,000 litres were needed each day, trucked from Khavda or Bhuj since saline water corrodes kilns. “The entire Banni population, along with thousands of pastoralist livestock per village, relies primarily on one Narmada pipeline. The water crisis here is severe.”

Varaha said approximately 500 litres are required per kiln cycle and that it recycles quench water by digging a trench beside each kiln. Mutva found this unworkable. “These theoretical solutions simply do not work on the ground. We made a genuine attempt to recover and save the water. However, at best, we might recover a very small portion from certain batches, which we can then reuse for the next cycle. Beyond that, the overall water consumption in this process is high.” He added, “The kilns are constantly relocated to wherever the raw wood supply is. The labourers handling the heavy wood simply will not take on the additional headache of managing water pipelines.”

The other concern is regrowth. “Babul (P. juliflora) grows back to its original state in just two years,” said Babubhai Ravabhai Lalwani, a contractor in Khanpar village, Kachchh. Mutva was more direct, “We destroyed the baval, clearing everything with a JCB. But it still comes back, and it comes back denser. Within a month, this Prosopis juliflora can grow nearly a metre.”

Thackar warned of a structural drift in the model’s purpose. “Rather than restoration, this may become a business model where, once removal is done, you wait three to four years for the Prosopis juliflora to grow back, and then you utilise the biomass again from the same landscape. This would benefit neither the native ecosystem nor the local community,” she said.

In Banni, Prosopis removed from degraded grazing lands when the first Kon-Tiki pilot began in 2022 had, by 2025, reinvaded the same areas, with growth nearly doubling, according to Thacker. “A similar pattern played out in Sangnara, where Prosopis was cleared from around 11 hectares in 2024. Within a year, the number of new recruits had nearly doubled. Villagers said that while funds are being allocated for biochar production and the removal of mature trees, there is no financial support for clearing the new recruits that rapidly regenerate,” Thacker said. “Without that, biochar production alone cannot restore the grasslands. For this reason, many of them were not in favour of biochar production.”

Varaha acknowledged that “significant restoration following Prosopis juliflora removal at a particular site would take at least three to five years of continuous effort.” Mutva said the economics of thorough removal were unworkable. “The compensation rate from the company is also low, so it is difficult to justify the expense of uprooting it every single time,” he said. He received Rs 7 to Rs 8 per kg of biochar; processing one metric tonne of raw biomass yielded only around 200 kg. Mehta confirmed that community institutions were paid Rs 7.2 per kg.

Communities may not know the price at which their credits are sold. “Are we transparently sharing with them at what price their carbon credit will be sold? All these are matters of transparency. With the community, it is necessary because it is their right,” Mehta said.

Varaha said it discloses credit sale prices and revenue breakdowns to communities, signs Free, Prior and Informed Consent agreements with participating communities and village panchayats before production begins, and makes all payments to communities in advance, before credits are issued. Asked for specific figures on how revenue is divided, including its own margin, the company did not provide them.

Mehta flagged issues related to auditing. “The auditor is paid by the same company whose project is being verified, creating a built-in conflict of interest,” Mehta argued. A July 2025 paper by the University of Pennsylvania concluded that the voluntary carbon market’s auditing process is inherently flawed, pointing to the financial relationship between project developers and verifying bodies as compromising genuine independence.

Varaha said its projects are validated annually by a Validation and Verification Body independently appointed by the registry, with unannounced site visits as part of the process. “The audit covers the entire chain, from biomass sourcing through to biochar application,” the company said.

The emissions question

Google has backed biochar as a carbon removal solution because of what it describes as its “ability to scale worldwide.” Even as it invests in such carbon removal projects, however, the company’s greenhouse gas emissions increased by 81% between 2019 and 2025. Mongabay-India contacted Google for comment and will update this story if a response is received.

Carbon Market Watch, a non-profit watchdog, argues that this reflects a broader problem with carbon offsetting. “Offsetting is a highly problematic practice because it diverts the focus away from the real emissions reductions that must be urgently achieved, provides ample opportunity for greenwashing and usually does not represent the claimed climate impact,” it said.

“The systems being normalised today will shape how carbon markets function in India,” Mehta said.

Based on Sahjeevan’s experience with carbon credits in the region, she added, “The invasion of Neltuma juliflora (Prosopis juliflora) has severely degraded grassland habitats, eroding native flora diversity and threatening endangered wildlife. Given the high per-hectare cost of initial removal and multi-year management, carbon credits offer a self-sustaining financing mechanism for Community Forest Resource Management Committees. Our long-term monitoring suggests systematic removal allowed native seed banks to recover, raising species richness by 10%-12%, further applying finely ground biochar back to grassland soil, reduced EC and pH levels, yielding a 30% increase in productivity. Rooted in strong community governance, this complete lifecycle approach transforms degradedlands into thriving ecosystems, offering a replicable model for invasive management across arid and semi-arid savannas globally.”

In Banni, where the monsoon is underway, gando baval is already sending up fresh shoots through land cleared just two years ago.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

This story was produced with support from Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.

Anshul Chhatrapati grew up knowing his father was different.

The name he inherited from him was itself a giveaway – Chhatrapati, a Sanskrit word for sovereign ruler, is most commonly associated with 17th century Maratha king, Chhatrapati Shivaji. That it was being used as a family name in Sirsa, a town in Haryana on the border with Punjab, was highly unusual.

“It was during his college days,” explained Anshul, speaking of his father Ram Chander Chhatrapati, “that one of his teachers had given him the title Chhatrapati for his leadership qualities and passion”.

It was Ram Chander Chhatrapati’s passion for truth and journalism that eventually cost him his life.

In October 2002, two assailants shot at him outside his home in Sirsa. As they fled, one was nabbed by the police. They turned out to be followers of Gurmeet Ram Rahim, a self-styled godman who had set up a religious organisation called the Dera Sacha Sauda, which had grown politically influential on the back of its following among the Dalits of Punjab and Haryana.

Ram Chander Chhatrapati died of his injuries a month later at the age of 52. In the run-up to the murder, he had been relentlessly publishing stories about rape allegations against Ram Rahim.

The godman’s driver later told investigators that he had overheard him instructing his followers to murder the journalist. But the driver dithered in court, taking years to eventually stand by his testimony. It took 17 years for Ram Rahim to be convicted for Ram Chander Chhatrapati’s murder.

In March, the Punjab and Haryana High Court overturned the 2019 conviction, taking the view that the driver’s word could not be relied upon.

Anshul Chhatrapati is unfazed by the setback. He has filed an appeal in the Supreme Court, which will hear his petition in November, just months before Punjab votes in the state assembly elections. Behind bars, Ram Rahim has continued to wield political influence: in the nine years he has spent in jail after being convicted on rape charges in 2017, he has been released on parole 17 times, often coinciding with elections.

“We are not going to stop,” said Anshul Chhatrapati. “The struggle is not over.”

It is a struggle that has reshaped his life. He was in college when his father was murdered. Pursuing justice through the legal system meant he could not attend classes and eventually had to drop out. Fighting the powerful godman came with its own risks: an armed guard of Haryana Police shadowed him for decades. The security cover extended to his entire family.

“My children haven’t had a normal childhood,” said Anshul Chhatrapati, now in his mid-40s. “For a better part of their childhood, going out for them only meant heading to school and back.”

But he has no regrets. “My father would have been very proud of me,” he said. “This struggle has made a man out of me.”

With this, the Dera Sacha Sauda chief has exhausted his annual entitlement of 10 weeks of parole and three weeks of furlough.https://t.co/L0wJsQicbG pic.twitter.com/jJM4FBaVdi

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

A fearless journalist

Like thousands of families in North India, Anshul Chhatrapati’s family traces its roots to Pakistan. After Partition, his grandfather had tried to build a new life. “Once he settled in India, the refugees were allotted agricultural land to derive their livelihood,” he recalled. “At that time, Sirsa’s land was not cultivable at all but our ancestors had no choice.”

Born in 1950, Ram Chander Chhatrapati, however, was a non-conformist. He did not have much interest in farming. “His true calling was writing and activism,” Anshul recalled. “He loved reading newspaper editorials, Munshi Premchand and Lenin.”

After he completed his college education in Haryana, Chhatrapati moved to Delhi. “My father spent quite a long time in Delhi with Swami Agnivesh, a follower of Arya Samaj,” Anshul said. The Arya Samaj is a Hindu reform movement. His parents felt he was wasting time and brought him back home to get married, said Anshul. “They felt it was the only way to make him serious about life and his share of land.”

After his marriage, Chhatrapati studied law and began practising at Sirsa district court. The family was also supported by the income from his share of the agricultural land. “But he was not satisfied being a lawyer,” said Anshul.

In 2002, Ram Chander Chhatrapati quit the legal profession and revived an old newspaper registered in his name under a new title – an evening daily called Poora Sach, the complete truth.

An anonymous letter

In May 2002, a three-page letter written to Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who was the prime minister then, began circulating in Sirsa. A female disciple of Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh had written the letter alleging that he had raped her. The letter, which was also copied to senior officials in Punjab and Haryana, mentioned that she was not his only victim.

On May 30 that year, Chhatrapati published a two-column front page story about the letter in his newspaper. He did not mention the name of the Dera where the incident had taken place or the guru accused of rape, but he followed the story very closely. Anshul said the anonymous letter had been published by national newspapers but there had been no follow-up reports on it.

Lekh Raj Dhot, Chhatrapati’s friend from his lawyer days, said the journalist had a “passionate” temperament. Everyone told Chhatrapati not to write against the Dera as they could harm him, but that did not deter him, said Dhot. “His psyche was different. There was no fear in him.”

Panicked by the circulation of the letter, there were numerous incidents around Sirsa that year where Dera followers targeted men accused of circulating the letter. “A couple of Xerox shops, accused of making copies of the letter, were vandalised by Dera followers,” recalled Anshul. “My father continued to file stories on these incidents but we had no idea that he had been receiving threats from the Dera henchmen.”

In July 2002, Chhatrapati wrote to the Sirsa superintendent of police, detailing the intimidation he was facing at the hands of Dera. “He mentioned a phone call in which he was threatened and how some suspicious people outside his office had created an atmosphere of terror for him and his staff,” said Anshul.

In September 2002, the Punjab and Haryana High Court took cognisance of the anonymous letter and sought a report from the district sessions judge of Sirsa. In a report to the high court, Sirsa district judge MS Sular recommended a probe by a central investigation agency. On September 24, 2002, the Punjab and Haryana High Court ordered the the Central Bureau of Investigation to investigate the rape allegations.

According to Anshul, his father had managed to get the copies of the correspondence between the two judges. “He filed stories on all these developments.”

The Dera Sacha Sauda soon approached the high court, seeking a stay on the directions for a CBI probe, but the court dismissed its application. “On October 23, 2002, my father published a story about that,” said Anshul. “The next evening, he was shot five times outside our home by two men from Dera Sacha Sauda.” Chatrapati died a month later in a hospital in Delhi.

Anshul recalled his father as someone who could not look away from wrongdoing, even if he knew the consequences could be harmful. “He used to tell his friends that if someone ever dared to hurl anything at him, it wouldn’t be a shoe but a bullet,” said Anshul. “And he will take that bullet on his chest.”

The fight for CBI investigation

In its initial statement on Chhatrapati being shot at, the Sirsa police had described the incident as a “property dispute.”

However, the police had to discard that theory immediately. “There’s a police post near our house and one of the shooters had run towards the post in panic,” recalled Anshul. “He ran directly into the policemen who were rushing towards the commotion.”

The shooter was identified as Kuldeep Singh, a Dera follower from Faridkot Punjab. The other shooter was his cousin Nirmal Singh, who was arrested a few days later. “The police recovered a walkie-talkie from their possession which was registered in the name of Dera Sacha Sauda and a pistol which was licensed in the name of Krishan Lal, a manager at the Dera,” Anshul added.

According to Anshul, the arrest of Kuldeep Singh on the spot was a fundamental piece of evidence in establishing the role of the in Dera Sacha Sauda his father’s murder. “We would have cried all our life about the Dera’s involvement but who would have trusted us?”

All the three accused whose names surfaced in the preliminary investigations were arrested by the Sirsa police, but Chhatrapati’s family was not satisfied. “The Sirsa police had avoided naming the Dera chief as the main conspirator behind the murder even when my father had given a statement on his death bed while being hospitalised,” said Anshul.

In early 2003, the family filed a petition before the Punjab and Haryana High Court, seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation probe.

Another development helped Chhatrapati’s family.

Three months before Chhatrapati’s killing, Ranjit Singh, a Dera follower and former manager of Ram Rahim, was shot dead on July 10, 2002, at his native village in Haryana’s Kurukshetra district. Ranjit Singh’s family had also approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court, demanding a CBI inquiry in his murder. “The high court clubbed both these petitions together.”

On November 10, 2003, the High Court ordered the CBI to investigate the journalist’s murder case anew. The CBI registered a first information report in Chhatrapati’s murder on December 9, 2003.

But the CBI could not start its investigation as some female disciples of the Dera Sacha Sauda challenged the High Court’s order in the Supreme Court. In 2004, the Supreme Court stayed the high court’s CBI probe order . “It took the Supreme Court a year to dispose of the Dera’s petition and uphold the high court’s order.”

This would become a permanent feature in the more than two-decade-long battle to pin down the role of Ram Rahim in Chhatrapati’s murder. “From day one, we wanted the investigation agency to go to the root of the murder which was the Dera chief Gurmeet Singh,” said Anshul. For Chhatrapati’s family, that meant a constant vigil on the developments in the case. “Every time we felt there were attempts to shield him, we approached the court. Once the court ruled in our favour, the sect would approach the Supreme Court.”

While these legal skirmishes took a lot of time and frustrated the family, they did not give up. “How could we face the world if Chhatrapati’s family gave up the fight against evil?”

Chasing a witness

In July 2007, the Central Bureau of Investigation filed a chargesheet against Dera chief Ram Rahim, his manager Krishan Lal and the two shooters, Kuldeep Singh and Nirmal Singh. The agency charged all four with murder and criminal conspiracy. Nirmal Singh and Krishan Lal were also charged under the Arms Act.

In its separate chargesheet filed the same year, the agency established that the Dera chief suspected Ranjit Singh of circulating the anonymous letter which accused the godman of raping female disciples in the sect’s premises. This was the same letter which Chhatrapati had written about extensively in his newspaper between May 2002 until his murder in October, 2002.

A key witness who helped the CBI pin down Ram Rahim was Khatta Singh, a long-time driver of the self-styled godman.

Khatta Singh had recorded a statement before the agency in 2007 in which he deposed that he had witnessed Gurmeet Singh ordering Krishan Lal, Nirmal Singh and Kuldeep Singh to “eliminate” Chhatrapati so that “he may not write against Dera Sacha Sauda in future.” Singh had recorded the same statement under section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure before a judicial magistrate in Chandigarh.

This testimony was crucial but Khatta Singh turned hostile during the trial in 2012. According to the CBI, Khatta Singh was under “tremendous pressure” due to “threats.”

Khatta Singh also happened to be a witness in the murder of Dera manager Ranjit Singh which was being investigated separately by the CBI.

It was only after the conviction of Gurmeet Singh for raping his two female disciples and subsequent imprisonment in August 2017 that Khatta Singh changed his mind.

Nearly three weeks later, Khatta Singh moved an application before the CBI court in Panchkula, seeking to be re-examined as a witness in the trial of Chhatrapati’s murder. However, the trial court dismissed Singh’s application, forcing him to move the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2018.

In January 2019, the Chhatrapati’s family found a semblance of justice. The CBI special court convicted Ram Rahim and three others for the journalist’s murder and sentenced them to life imprisonment.

Seven years later, the Punjab and Haryana High Court acquitted Ram Rahim in the journalist’s murder case in March. The court said “absolutely no reliance can be placed on a witness like Khatta Singh”. It observed that Khatta Singh had chosen to stay silent for a number of years after the incident and “kept on tossing from one side to the other like a ping pong ball.”

Earlier, in May 2024, the High Court had also acquitted Ram Rahim in the murder case of his former manager and follower Ranjit Singh. The Dera chief, however, remains in jail, serving a 20-year-long imprisonment for rape.

Dera Sacha Sauda Chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh granted parole to meet his ailing mother (reports 'The Indian Express').

He is currently undergoing a 20-year jail sentence on charges of raping two of his women disciples and murder of a journalist, Ram Chander Chhatrapati. pic.twitter.com/SVnkyb2XKO

— Live Law (@LiveLawIndia) May 21, 2021

‘Inspired by father’s sacrifice’

Ram Chander Chhatrapati was survived by his wife, two sons and two daughters. As the eldest child, it fell upon Anshul to take charge of the legal battle against his father’s murderers. Anshul was just like any other college student then, but his father’s death inspired him. “The struggle for justice became the purpose of my life,” he said.

“All my life, every stranger felt like a threat to me,” said Anshul. “But that never stopped me from going out and facing the world.”

“The common perception is that law took its course and eventually punished the culprit,” he continued. But the reality was different. “From day one, there were attempts to keep away Dera’s involvement in the murder. That’s why we had to fight from the very first step and follow the case’s development obsessively.”

This left him with no time to finish college. “During all these years, I had tried to restart my education but I couldn’t continue because there would be a development in the case and I had to act accordingly, meet lawyers and approach courts, etc,” he noted.

The family’s agricultural land proved to be a safety net. Anshul earns his living from farming even though he looks like a corporate employee, dressed in stylish clothes and shiny shoes.

A soft-spoken man, he joked as he wondered what his life might have been like, had his father not been murdered. “I was recently telling my daughter that we both should pursue our graduation together,” he chuckled.

At a post office in Assam, Bandana Devi, has found herself doing a job that has little to do with letters, parcels or money.

Since December 2025, Devi has been working as an accredited social eye care worker, testing the eyesight of people who come into the post office. She is part of a pilot project by the nonprofit VisionSpring Foundation, in partnership with India Post, to bring basic vision care closer to people who may have limited access to eye clinics.

“There have been a lot of footfalls since I began working on the programme,” said Devi. “People here suffer from short-sightedness and vision problems. I have seen over 3,000 people, and many are happy after coming here.”

Easier to reach a post office

The post office seems like an unlikely place to get an eye test. But for people in parts of Assam, the post office can be considerably easier to reach than a hospital or an eye clinic.

The early results of the pilot project indicate that basic eye care is a significantly unmet need. Five post offices are being used to screen eyesight and provide reading glasses to those who need them.

As of July, nearly 9,000 people had been screened. Around 72% – 6,421 people – were found to have presbyopia, which is the age-related difficulty in focusing on things close up, and were provided with eyeglasses.

Eighty-two per cent of those who received spectacles were wearing them for the first time. Anjali Deka, 47, who runs a small tea stall, said, “Since I started wearing them, life has changed so much.” It was a liberating experience for her. “I am able to help my children with their homework and one of them has got over 97% in her exams,” said Deka.

Romesh Chandra Sharma, a local priest, knew something was wrong with his sight. “My vision was dipping and things looked blurry,” he said. Then he visited the post office to get his eyes tested. “I can read my religious texts better now and it is proving a boon,” he said.

These experiences point to a problem that can easily go unnoticed: people often live with deteriorating near vision without seeking help.

In poorer households, an eye examination may not be a priority. Visiting a clinic can involve travel, time away from work, and the cost of spectacles. If a vision problem develops gradually, people may simply adjust.

Assam’s pilot project is trying to remove some of those barriers with a screening service where many people are frequent visitors. “We chose post offices because they are the most trusted address across India,” says Anshu Taneja, s managing director, India, at VisionSpring Foundation. “People in Assam may have never seen an eye doctor but they have been to their post offices several times.”

Millions may be living with blurred vision

India’s postal network gives the experiment considerable reach.

There are nearly 165,000 post offices across the country, a majority in rural areas and remote villages. Apart from mail, the local post office is also where people collect pensions, send money, make savings deposits and access a range of government services. Can that existing network now help close a gap in basic healthcare?

The financial circumstances of the people reached by the pilot underline why access matters. The average monthly household income among Assam’s beneficiaries is approximately Rs 7,000, while 41% come from households earning less than Rs 5,000 a month, according to VisionSpring Foundation which relied on data from the state’s Socio Economic and Caste Census from 2015.

On those incomes, even a relatively inexpensive pair of glasses can compete with immediate household needs.

Assam is a useful setting for the experiment because of its large tea industry. Thousands of people depend on tea gardens for their livelihoods, and some tea workers have been among those coming to the participating post offices for eye tests. Tea picking requires workers to distinguish between leaves, often while working for long periods. Declining near vision can make that more difficult.

Clement Songate, a senior social sector professional involved in the project, said tea garden workers are among those using the service, although the pilot does not yet have separate figures for them.

“Tea pickers are an important constituency,” said Songate. “We do have post offices where there are tea gardens, and some of the workers do come to the post offices and use the service.”

Expanding the programme

At the Baihata post office, 35 km from the state capital, postmaster Putesh Kumar Deka has watched the eye-testing service become part of the activity around his counters. “People come here for all kinds of postal work, and now they are also coming here to have their eyesight checked and get their glasses,” he said. “They are really happy with the service.”

The first phase of the Assam project has established that there is a need for such service. The next challenge is whether this model can continue. The organisations involved are looking at a possible incentive or paid model for every pair of glasses dispensed, as they consider how the service could be sustained.

In Bangladesh, VisionSpring Foundation’s research found that while providing reading glasses to low-income workers, they associated spectacles as something accessible to people with higher incomes. In Uganda, it has been working with health authorities and other partners to train community-level workers to identify and address presbyopia.

Now, it remains to be seen if India’s postal system can make basic vision care a part of its vast and busy network.

Murali Krishnan is an independent journalist.

The Supreme Court on Thursday told the Tamil Nadu government to change its “mindset” on teaching Hindi in the state’s schools while hearing a case about setting up Union government-run Navodaya schools in every district, Live Law reported.

Tamil Nadu has repeatedly resisted the establishment of the centrally funded schools, which come under the Union Ministry of Education, arguing that the Navodaya model is in conflict with the state’s two-language policy.

Political parties in Tamil Nadu have long opposed attempts to introduce Hindi as a third language under the three-language formula.

The three-language policy refers to teaching students English, Hindi and the native language of a state. It was introduced in the first National Education Policy in 1968, and was retained in the new policy from 2020.

During the hearing on Thursday, Nagarathna said that “you have to change your mindset, it can’t be that Hindi will not be taught in the soil of Tamil Nadu,” Bar and Bench reported.

The bench said that “having something in addition will not bring down your standards” and argued that Navodaya schools would instead “enhance the high standards” of education in the state.

“If Navodaya schools were going to lower the standard of education in Tamil Nadu we would have said that irrespective of what you would have said,” the court said.

The bench added that “people in Chennai should not alienate Delhi and vice-versa”.

In 2017, the Madras High Court directed the state government to set up Navodaya schools in every district, holding that doing so would not violate the Tamil Nadu Tamil Learning Act.

The state government approached the Supreme Court, arguing that education falls within the state’s domain and that the Navodaya school model was incompatible with Tamil Nadu’s two-language policy.

In December, the Supreme Court directed the state government to identify the land required to establish the schools within six weeks. The state filed an application seeking to recall this order.

On Thursday, the court refused to rescind the order and granted the state government three more months to comply.

The matter will be heard next on December 14.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Delhi High Court on Thursday asked the police how it could impose a “blanket ban” on protests at Jantar Mantar against caste-based reservations in jobs and education and the University Grants Commission’s January regulations to address discrimination in colleges, reported Live Law.

The police had earlier granted permission to the Rajput group Karni Sena for a protest at Jantar Mantar on September 20, the petitioner told the court. However, it withdrew the permission on Tuesday, apprehending that a bigger crowd than what was permitted would turn up.

Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma asked the police how permission could be entirely denied “just because you apprehend that some people will come”.

Sharma said the police could “put any restrictions or conditions” and that the protesters would “be there only for a few hours”.

Appearing for the Delhi Police, Additional Solicitor General Chetan Sharma said that Jantar Mantar “is a very sensitive area”. He added that “whenever there is a concentration in Jantar Mantar it affects the entire central government”, Bar and Bench reported.

“Others also we have refused,” said Chetan Sharma. “It is not that they have been singled out. The amount of likes and social media dissemination is so much, the executive thinks it will overspill.”

The court then asked if the protest could be allowed at a different venue, which the police said it would consider.

The Kshatriya Karni Sena had initially sought permission to hold a demonstration at Jantar Mantar on September 6. However, the Delhi Police had denied the request on August 28, citing preparations for the BRICS Summit.

The group approached the High Court against the refusal. On September 3, the court asked the organisers to consider changing the date, following which they decided to gather on September 20.

What do the UGC rules say?

The 2026 University Grants Commission Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions Regulations required institutes to set up special committees, helplines and monitoring teams to address complaints, particularly from members of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes.

The commission had in 2012 first released equity rules for higher education institutes, which required them to set up Equal Opportunity Cells and Anti-Discrimination Officers. However, those rules did not provide for action against institutions that did not comply with them.

In contrast, the 2026 rules required the commission to set up a monitoring committee to oversee their implementation.

Institutes that do not comply with the regulations could be barred from participating in the commission’s schemes, offering degree programmes and online courses, and could be removed from the list of institutes eligible to receive central grants.

The rules had led to protests by upper-caste students who argued that it could lead to discrimination against them. The protesters contended that the rules were biased against students from the general category as they did not provide for measures against “false complaints”.

On January 29, the Supreme Court stayed by the rules, observing that their provisions were “prima facie vague and capable of misuse”.

Edited by Sneha.

The Ministry of External Affairs on Thursday said that speculation on social media that world leaders had fallen ill after attending the BRICS summit in Delhi was “misleading”.

Sharing screenshots by accounts claiming that “multiple” or “numerous” leaders had become unwell after they attended the summit, the ministry described the claims as “fake” and misleading. “We caution against such malicious posts on social media platforms,” it said.

The summit was held on Saturday and Sunday.

Some of the posts on Thursday that made the claims had been viewed more than 7.7 million times on social media platform X as of 3 pm on Thursday.

The posts came after the South African government on Wednesday said that President Cyril Ramaphosa will not be participating in public events because of “ill health”.

Ramaphosa’s office said that he had returned from the BRICS summit in Delhi on Monday and “has been advised by his medical team to rest and recover”.

However, the South African government did not state the nature of the illness and whether it was believed to be linked to Ramaphosa having attended the summit.

Some of the posts and reports also cited speculation that Chinese President Xi Jinping had fallen ill during the summit. The claims were based on Xi skipping the leader’s dinner on Saturday and Prime Minister Narendra Modi pausing mid-speech during a session on Sunday to ask the Chinese president “is it okay?”

However, videos posted on Thursday purportedly showed Modi asking the question as Xi’s staff helped him with his audio translation device.

No other leader who attended the summit is reported to have fallen ill.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

India on Wednesday rejected the “so-called” Pakistan-China Boundary Joint Commission, saying that it was constituted “without any legal basis”.

The commission was operationalised earlier in the day, with its inaugural meeting in Islamabad. It originates from a 2013 agreement between Pakistan and China to manage their boundary.

After the meeting, Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that the meeting had set the stage for “enhanced cooperation in border management, joint border surveys, trade flows and people-to-people connectivity”.

In response to queries about the development, India’s Ministry of External Affairs stated that instead of engaging in “such theatrics”, Pakistan should “immediately vacate the areas under its illegal and forcible occupation”.

It asserted that there was no boundary between Pakistan and China.

“Our position on this matter is clear and consistent,” said the ministry. “We have never recognised the so-called ‘China-Pakistan Boundary Agreement’ of 1963 and have consistently maintained that it is illegal and invalid.”

The agreement was signed on March 2, 1963, to demarcate the border between China’s Xinjiang region and the territory in Gilgit-Baltistan, part of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

As part of the agreement, Pakistan had ceded approximately 5,180 sq km of territory known as the Shaksgam Valley to China. New Delhi has consistently rejected the agreement, maintaining that the Shaksgam Valley is Indian territory under illegal occupation.

India has also opposed the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor as part of it passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

New Delhi reiterated this on Wednesday, saying that the “Union Territories of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh have been, are and will always remain integral and inalienable parts of India”.

“Pakistan has no locus standi to enter into arrangements concerning Indian territory under its illegal and forcible occupation,” it said.

The ministry added that it “resolutely opposes and rejects” any attempts to “legitimise illegal occupation, impinging on India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Sneha.

The Supreme Court on Thursday granted two weeks to Bajrang Dal member Dara Singh to challenge the Odisha government’s decision rejecting the petition for his early release, ANI reported. Singh is serving a life sentence for the 1999 murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons.

The director general of prisons and correctional services and the authorities at Kendujhar Jail had earlier recommended his release on grounds of good behaviour. Singh has spent more than 26 years in prison.

At a meeting on August 31, the state sentence review board decided against Singh’s early release stating that it could lead to communal disturbance in the area.

The board also noted that on August 15, a group of 200 to 250 persons associated with Dara Sena had assembled outside the Kendujhar district jail in connection with the proposed release of the convict, during which “provocative slogans” were shouted.

Dara Sena – named after Singh – is an outfit that campaigns for his release.

On Thursday, a Supreme Court bench was informed of the state government’s decision. The court will hear the matter next after three weeks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday said that “callous and criminal conduct” had led to the collapse of the five-storey building in the Satya Niketan area, in which seven persons were killed, reported Bar and Bench.

“It’s not an ordinary incident of any mishap,” said a bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Kari, referring to an article in The Indian Express that detailed why five of the students who were killed had come to Delhi.

The boys – all aged between 17 years and 19 years – were natives of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. They were enrolled in colleges of Delhi University.

The High Court said that the students had Delhi “with lots of hopes and dreams”, reported Bar and Bench.

“They came from small towns,” said the bench. “All of that has been shattered by such a callous and criminal conduct on the part of...Who doesn’t know the problem of hostel in the city?”

The bench added that students were “flocking to Delhi for higher education” and this was not a new phenomenon.

“It has been happening for 20 to 25 years in the hope that they will build their career,” it remarked. “See what has happened.”

The court was hearing a public interest litigation about the collapse of the building. It listed the matter for September 25, when other cases about the incident will be heard.

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

The owners allegedly knew the building could not bear the weight of four additional floors and still leased it out as paying guest accommodation, The Indian Express quoted an unidentified police officer as having alleged on Saturday.

The building’s owner, Hari Ram, his son Mahesh, his wife Urmila and labour contractor Saroj have been arrested. Sudhanshu, who ran the “Hostel Daze” paying guest accommodation in the building, has also been held.

The police are investigating whether Hostel Daze operators had conducted due diligence to ensure that the building was safe. They are also examining the rent agreement under which the accommodation was let out to the tenants.

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

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read: Why social media thinks government intentionally slowed internet after Delhi building collapse

Maratha quota activist Manoj Jarange-Patil on Thursday called off his hunger strike, but warned the Maharashtra government that he would launch a protest in Mumbai if his demands for reservations for the community were not considered within three months, PTI reported.

Jarange-Patil had been on an indefinite hunger strike since August 29 to press for the issuance of Kunbi caste certificates to eligible members of the Maratha community to help them avail reservations in government jobs and education.

The Kunbis form a sub-caste within the Maratha community. They are included in the Other Backward Classes.

Jarange-Patil’s announcement on Thursday came after he held talks with a government delegation comprising two ministers, legislators and officials in Beed district. The activist had halted in Beed while on his way to Mumbai.

The delegation informed Jarange-Patil about the step the government had initiated.

This came after Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said that the state government would not tolerate intimidating tactics and questioned the timing of the agitation during the Ganesh festival.

On Saturday, Jarange-Patil announced that he and his supporters will begin a march to Mumbai to hold an indefinite hunger strike at Azad Maidan from September 19. The announcement came on the same day that the Bombay High Court refused to issue an order against it.

In August 2025, Jarange-Patil and his supporters had launched an indefinite hunger strike in Mumbai to reiterate his demand for quotas for the Marathas under the Other Backward Classes category.

The High Court had observed at the time that Mumbai “had been practically brought to a standstill” because of the protests.

Jarange-Patil had broken his fast on September 2, 2025, after the Maharashtra administration issued a government resolution to give Kunbi status to Marathas of Marathwada.

On Saturday, the activist began the fresh hunger strike, alleging that the state government had failed to honour assurances given in September 2025 and again during his protest in May this year.

Quota demand

The Maratha community’s long-standing demand for reservations in education and government jobs resurfaced in 2023 with protests led by Jarange-Patil. The movement witnessed violence, suicides and the resignations of legislators.

In February 2024, the Maharashtra legislature passed a bill allowing for the creation of a 10% quota in government jobs and education for the Marathas. This would be in addition to the state’s 52% reservation quota, which includes a 10% quota for the Economically Weaker Sections.

The introduction of the 10% quota is similar to the 16% quota for Marathas under the Other Backward Classes category that was introduced in 2018 by the state government at the time comprising the Bharatiya Janata Party and the undivided Shiv Sena.

That decision was blocked by the Supreme Court in 2021, citing the 50% cap on a state’s total reservations that the court had ordered in 1992. The court said that there were no “exceptional circumstances” or “extraordinary situation” in Maharashtra for the state to breach the limit on quotas.

Jarange-Patil has insisted that reservations for Marathas be given under the Other Backward Classes category, on the grounds that the separate quota exceeds the constitutional ceiling of 50% and would likely be struck down by the judiciary.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

At least 75 government schools in Delhi have been directed to light diyas, or earthen lamps, on their premises on Thursday to celebrate Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s birthday, The Wire reported.

The programme is among several events planned in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states to mark Modi’s birthday on Thursday.

The earthen lamps will be lit at schools designated under the Chief Minister Schools of High Relevance and Innovation scheme, the news outlet reported. The schools were provided the lamps and other material by the administration. The school authorities have been told to record videos of the lamps being lit and upload them on a Google Drive.

Teachers have been asked to visit the homes of students who topped the Class 10 exam with earthen lamps and to give them blessings, The Wire reported.

Modi turns 76 on Thursday.

The Delhi government has mandated activities that the schools need to conduct for a month till October 17. The activities include competitions for speeches, drawing and making reels, or short vertical videos for social media.

The BJP governments in several states describe the month-long celebrations as a “Seva Sankalp Abhiyan”, or a resolution for public service. Similar events have been held in past years.

It was unclear whether only government schools under the CM SHRI scheme will carry out the activities or all government schools in Delhi.

#WATCH | Siliguri, West Bengal: On the occasion of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 76th birthday, schoolchildren in Siliguri celebrated the day in a unique way, dressed like PM Modi and wearing masks featuring the Prime Minister. The students cut a birthday cake and took part in… pic.twitter.com/rtefGklVlq

— ANI (@ANI) September 17, 2026

Saurav Das, the co-convener of the Cockroach Janta Party political campaign, alleged that Anganwadi workers in Madhya Pradesh had been directed to light diyas to celebrate Modi’s birthday, “record videos praising him” and government schemes.

They have been warned of action if they do not comply with the directive, Das alleged on social media.

“If BJP governments had spent this energy addressing the actual problems Anganwadi workers face – poor pay (Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000), crushing workloads, vacancies, no social security or healthcare, and centres functioning out of crumbling buildings – then perhaps these women wouldn’t need to be ‘ordered’ to praise anyone,” Das said.

If the government had “genuinely transformed their lives, their gratitude will come naturally,” Das said.

He added that governments were “focussed on manufacturing gratitude” for Modi through public relations activities.

#WATCH | Uttar Pradesh | 'Vedpathi Batuks' studying to become Vedic priests play 'Damrus' to mark PM Narendra Modi's 76th birthday, at Kashi Vishwanath temple in Varanasi pic.twitter.com/XexvAWKqmL

— ANI (@ANI) September 17, 2026

Government events mark Modi’s birthday

In Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain, more than 25 lakh earthen lamps will be lit to mark Modi’s birthday, PTI reported. About 30,000 persons will participate in the event, the district collector said.

The Delhi government will also organise the lighting of 1.2 lakh lamps at Kartavya Path in the national capital during an “Aashirwad Ka Diya”, or lamp of blessings, event. A yagya, a Hindu ritual, was performed by Chief Minister Rekha Gupta at the Khatu Shyam Dham in Delhi’s Alipur area on the occasion of the prime minister’s birthday.

In Haryana’s Rohtak, 10,000 lamps will be lit at the state-run Pandit Bhagwat Dayal Sharma University of Health Sciences, The Times of India reported. This comes even as patients complained about delays of up to 10 days to get ultrasound tests done at the facility, the newspaper reported.

The Times of India on Wednesday quoted the director of the institute as saying that it does not have enough staff to operate the ultrasound machines.

#WATCH | Delhi: CM Rekha Gupta performs hawan at the Shree Khatu Shyam Mandir on GT Karnal Road on the occasion of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 76th birthday. pic.twitter.com/ANTidY8a8I

— ANI (@ANI) September 17, 2026

More than 88 lakh lamps will be lit at 18,500 locations across Gujarat on Thursday as part of the event Ashirwad No Divdo, or lamp of blessings, to mark Modi's birthday, The Times of India reported. The earthen lamps will be lit in the evening to coincide with the temple aartis, a Hindu ritual of worship.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel will attend an event at Ahmedabad’s Kankaria lake where 1.2 lakh lamps will be lit.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read: How BJP governments, companies celebrated PM Modi’s 75th birthday

Two suspected militants were killed in a gunfight with security personnel in Jammu and Kashmir’s Udhampur district on Wednesday, the Indian Army said.

The Army’s White Knight Corps said that Operation Sohan was launched after inputs indicating the presence of militants in the Brattal area.

The security forces detected suspicious movement after a search operation was launched.

The militants opened fire at the security personnel during the search operation, prompting the forces to retaliate that triggered the gunfight in which the two militants were killed, The Indian Express quoted unidentified officers as saying.

They added that arms and ammunition were recovered from the militants. The process of establishing their identities and affiliations to militant groups is underway.

The counter-terrorism operation in “hostile weather, difficult terrain and poor visibility” involved personnel from the White Knight Corps, Jammu and Kashmir Police and the Central Reserve Police Force, the Army said.

It added that the search operation was still in progress and security forces remained deployed to track and counter any remaining threat.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The United States House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a legislation allowing President Donald Trump to impose tariffs of up to 100% on India and other countries that purchase Russian oil and gas.

The bill was passed with 262 votes in favour and 159 against, and will now be sent to the president for his assent. The US Senate had passed the bill on August 7.

On Thursday, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said that the government remains committed to ensuring energy security for its people. “It will continue to do so through diversified sourcing and on the basis of evolving market dynamics,” it said.

The foreign ministry also said that during discussions with US interlocutors, the potential implications of the matter on the bilateral relationship as well as the international energy market “have been very clearly articulated by the Indian side”.

“The Indian side has also made clear its determination to take all necessary measures to protect its trade and economic interests,” the external affairs ministry said. “Government will work closely with Indian trade and industry bodies to deal with the implications of these developments.”

Provisions of the bill

According to the draft law, the tariffs could apply to the five countries that imported the largest volumes of Russian crude oil or natural gas in the 12 months before the law takes effect, if they knowingly continue buying Russian crude oil 30 days after the law is enacted.

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 law is named after late legislator Lindsey Graham, who had spearheaded it before he died in July.

The tariffs could also target any of the five countries identified as helping Russia evade oil-related sanctions.

However, countries that have significantly reduced their imports of Russian natural gas, or whose Russian gas imports account for less than 15% of Russia’s gas exports, would be exempt.

India’s Russian oil imports

The legislation comes as India has increased its purchases of Russian oil this year, while New Delhi and Washington negotiate a preliminary trade deal.

India’s import of Russian oil rose to an 11-month high in April, following the US-Israel war on Iran, The Hindu reported.

Before this, India had reduced its purchases of Russian oil, which fell to a 38-month low in December.

The Trump administration had imposed an additional 25% tariff on India over its purchase of Russian energy, taking the total tariff to 50%. The US Treasury later paused sanctions on Russian oil shipments that were already in transit before March 11, amid supply disruptions caused by the US-Iran conflict.

Trade deal uncertainty

After an interim bilateral trade deal was agreed on February 2, US tariffs on Indian goods would have been reduced to 18% from a combined rate of 50%. The earlier rate of 50% had included a punitive levy of 25% imposed in August over India’s purchase of Russian oil.

However, negotiations on the final deal were postponed after the US Supreme Court on February 20 struck down global tariffs imposed by Trump, ruling that he had exceeded his authority.

On September 3, India’s Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal said that the final details of the trade deal with the US would be announced once Washington is able to give New Delhi a tariff advantage over competing countries. Goyal claimed that India had secured a good deal in “every sensitive sector”, such as agriculture, fisheries and micro, small and medium enterprises.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Union government on Wednesday reconstituted the Central Board of Film Certification, with actors Preity Zinta, Pankaj Tripathi, Roopali Ganguly, Pallavi Joshi and Suniel Shetty among those appointed to the new 18-member panel.

Pallavi Joshi is the wife of outgoing board member and filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri. She was among the producers and cast members of The Kashmir Files.

Ganguly has been a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party since May 2024.

The new board has been constituted with immediate effect and will remain in place for three years or until further orders, whichever is earlier.

Other members of the board include directors Prosenjit Chatterjee, Priyadarshan, Nila Madhab Panda, actors Manoj Joshi, Supriya Yarlagadda, Nishigandha Wad, writers Abhishek Jain, Yatindra Mishra, film critic Vinod Anupam, music composer Ricky Kej and singer and former BJP MP Hansraj Hans. Theatre director Waman Kendre and writer Ramesh Patange are the only members of the previous board who have been retained in the new panel.

The government last constituted the panel in August 2017 for a three-year term. However, it continued beyond 2020 as the government did not reconstitute it.

The board will function under Shashi Shekhar Vempati, who was appointed as the CBFC chairperson on May 6. Vempati replaced Prasoon Joshi, who stepped down from the post following his appointment as the chairman of Prasar Bharati.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

As the monsoon approached the National Capital Region, residents had to negotiate familiar challenges of waterlogged roads, overflowing drains and urban flooding.

Yet beyond Delhi and Gurugram lies another story that rarely makes headlines: the burden of protecting cities from floods is increasingly being shifted onto peri-urban villages that are at the margins of urban development.

Raota, a village located along the Najafgarh drain on the Delhi-Gurugram border, illustrates this reality. Like many villages on the expanding edges of Indian cities, Raota is neither fully rural nor fully urban.

As per official records, it is one of the remaining 49 rural villages of Delhi. Yet it has no elected village panchayat. In January 1990, the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi issued orders terminating the tenure of village pradhans across Delhi.

Even after the 73rd Constitutional Amendment strengthened Panchayati Raj institutions nationwide, Delhi’s villages were not provided with comparable mechanisms of decentralised local governance.

Such villages are now critical to the functioning of cities. They provide land, water and ecological services that sustain urban growth. At the same time, they absorb the environmental costs of that growth.

The Najafgarh Drain, once part of the Sahibi River system, now carries stormwater and wastewater from Delhi, Gurugram and Manesar. It is widely regarded as one of the most polluted stretches of water in the National Capital Region. Yet for decades, farmers in villages such as Raota, Daurala and Ghummanhera have depended on its water for irrigation.

What is remarkable is not merely the use of wastewater for agriculture, but the ingenuity with which farmers have organised themselves to access it. Faced with saline groundwater and unreliable rainfall, farmers collectively invested in underground pipelines, pumps and distribution systems that transport water from the drain to fields located up to 2 km away.

These systems are maintained through local norms of cooperation, cost-sharing and mutual accommodation. They demonstrate how communities adapt creatively to difficult ecological, political and institutional conditions.

The wastewater economy of the Najafgarh region also reveals the complex relationship between cities and their hinterlands. Urban wastewater, a nuisance in cities, becomes a valuable agricultural resource in nearby villages. Farmers use it primarily for paddy cultivation, while relying more heavily on groundwater for wheat grown for household consumption.

The result is a distinctive agricultural landscape shaped by the flows of water, labour and produce between villages and cities.

The same drain that provides irrigation also exposes surrounding communities to environmental risks. During periods of intense rainfall, the Najafgarh drain functions as a major stormwater outlet for the National Capital Region. As urban runoff pours into the channel, water levels rise rapidly, causing the drain to overflow into adjoining agricultural lands. Farmers located closest to the drain bear the greatest burden.

Tenant farmers and sharecroppers are especially vulnerable because they continue to owe rent or a share of produce even when crops fail.

In Raota, the consequences have become chronic rather than seasonal. According to farmers, more than 200 acres of agricultural land have been permanently inundated since the early 2000s. What was once productive farmland has gradually become unusable. For many households, this represents a loss of income and also the erosion of a way of life that has sustained generations.

“The state should buy our lands here and compensate us so that we can buy lands elsewhere,” many here say. “We cannot grow anything here now.”

This situation reflects a deeper governance challenge. While cities have expanded into surrounding rural landscapes, governance systems have failed to keep pace with these transformations. Delhi’s villages occupy an institutional grey zone where rural livelihoods continue but traditional mechanisms of local representation have weakened.

In Raota, the absence of an effective village-level governance structure has left residents with limited avenues through which to collectively negotiate, demand accountability or influence decisions affecting their land and water resources.

The experience of villages along the Najafgarh drain highlights a broader pattern observed across India’s urbanising regions. Urban expansion often depends on the acquisition of land, water and ecological resources from surrounding rural areas. While the benefits of growth are concentrated in cities, many of the environmental costs are externalised to villages. Floodwaters, wastewater, pollution and land-use pressures increasingly flow outward from cities to their margins.

The result is an unequal geography of development. Billions of rupees are invested in urban infrastructure, real estate and flood protection, while villages continue to struggle with inadequate drainage, drinking water, sanitation and public services.

As agricultural livelihoods become less viable, many farmers are pushed toward distress land sales, accelerating the conversion of rural landscapes into commercial, residential and other forms of real estate development.

The challenge, therefore, is a question of environmental justice.

Urban flood resilience cannot be achieved by transferring risk from cities to villages. Cities need a more integrated approach to water governance that recognises rural and urban villages as stakeholders rather than sacrifice zones.

This requires investment in decentralised stormwater management, restoration of natural drainage systems and wetlands, protection of floodplains, and institutional mechanisms through which villagers can participate meaningfully in decisions that affect their futures.

As climate change increases the frequency of extreme rainfall events, the costs of ignoring these questions will only grow. If Delhi and Gurugram are to become climate-resilient cities, they must stop treating villages such as Raota as flood buffers and begin recognising them as equal partners in the region’s future.

Vishal Narain is professor of public policy and governance at MDI Gurgaon. Paras Tyagi is co-founder of the Centre for Youth, Culture, Law and Environment (CYCLE) Delhi. Views expressed are personal.

A National Investigation Agency court on Wednesday sentenced 10 persons to death for their role in the 2013 Jhiram Valley Maoist attack that killed 29 persons, including senior Congress leaders, The Indian Express reported.

They were convicted on September 5 under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and sections of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to criminal conspiracy and murder.

On May 25, 2013, more than 150 Maoists had ambushed a Congress convoy in Bastar’s Jhiram Ghati ahead of Assembly elections. Besides the deaths, around 28 persons had been injured.

Among those killed were the Congress’ state unit chief Nand Kumar Patel and his son Dinesh, and former MLA Uday Mudliyar.

Party leader Mahendra Karma, who played an instrumental role in organising the anti-Maoist state-sponsored militia Salwa Judum, was also killed in the attack.

The campaign was launched in 2005 to target villages seen as harbouring Maoists. Armed vigilantes allegedly torched homes and forced villagers to flee to government-run camps.

Translated as “purification hunt” in the Gondi language, Salwa Judum was presented by the state government as a spontaneous movement by the region’s Adivasi community against the Maoists.

However, human rights activists have accused the Salwa Judum of coercing residents into leaving their villages and supporting the group. With the tribal community split between both sides, there were several deaths over several months.

An investigation into the Jhiram Valley attack showed that it was primarily targeted at Karma.

Apart from the Congress leaders, 10 security personnel were killed.

On September 25, 2014, the NIA filed a chargesheet against nine persons arrested in the case. The agency had filed a supplementary chargesheet on September 28, 2015, against 30 more accused persons.

While 11 persons accused in the case were arrested, one of them died during trial. At least 28 more accused persons are wanted.

The 10 persons who have been sentenced to death are Pramila Modiyam, Chaitu Lekam alias Munna, Sumita alias Punem Modiyam, Mukka Mandvi, Kosa Kavasi alias Kosaram, Aayata Markam, Madkami Deva, Joga Madkami, Banjami Sanna alias Chamru and Mahadev Nag.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Corrections and clarifications: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the 10 convicts were sentenced to life terms.

The Allahabad High Court on Wednesday ruled that a 31-year-old man who converted to Islam from Hinduism cannot be restrained by his birth family and upheld his freedom to choose his religion, Bar and Bench reported.

Justice Sandeep Jain noted that Ayush Malik had “voluntarily embraced Islam and that such decision was neither induced nor occasioned by any threat, coercion, undue influence or pressure”.

Jain said that there was “no lawful justification” for his continued restraint and allowed him to reside at a place of his choice.

“He is, therefore, set at liberty to reside at such place as he may choose and with such person as he may, of his own free will, choose to reside with,” the court said.

The court made the observations while dismissing a habeas corpus petition filed by Malik’s friend, PTI reported.

A habeas corpus is a petition through which courts can order the authorities to bring a person before it to verify if they have been detained.

The petition highlighted that after conversion, Malik married a Muslim woman against the wishes of his family, prompting Malik’s father to file a first information report under the 2021 Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act.

The High Court held that an adult’s choice of whom to marry is a “matter of individual autonomy”, Bar and Bench reported.

The court said the allegation of detention and the involvement of the state authorities were “serious in nature” and warranted immediate consideration.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Ministry of External Affairs summoned the Pakistani charge d’affaires in Delhi to register a “strong protest” about the collision of a Pakistani naval vessel with an Indian Navy ship. The incident occurred in international waters in the Arabian Sea.

It was not clear when the collision occurred and what cause it. However, New Delhi said that the conduct of Pakistani naval units at sea was “unacceptable and unprofessional”.

While the collision did not cause major damage, the conduct of the Pakistani vessel contravened a 1991 bilateral agreement that requires advance notice about military exercises, manoeuvres and the movement of soldiers, said the ministry. Read on.

Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi demanded that the Union government roll back charges on Unified Payments Interface payments. He urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to “have a spine” and “stop lying down in front of the United States”.

Aam Aadmi Party said the charges were part of Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government’s “new loot policy” and described it as an example of “Trump’s pressure on PM Modi’s decisions and his direct influence over India’s internal matters”.

However, the Union Ministry of Finance said claims that the charges had been introduced because of “foreign influence” were false and said decisions on UPI policy were “made independently. Read on.

Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra said in a video on social media that eggs had been thrown at her during a meeting in West Bengal’s Krishnanagar, allegedly by BJP workers. She said that the incident took place despite police personnel being present.

Moitra said that she was “facing eggs, just like she was told” to. The MP was referring to a comment made by Supreme Court Justice Dipankar Datta in August, when he asked Moitra: “Having taken the plunge into politics, you fear eggs? When our freedom fighters have taken bullets on their chest?”

She also pointed out that the Calcutta High Court had earlier this month directed the government to deal with the “menace of egg-pelting with an iron hand”. Read on.

The Union government has increased the gold hallmarking fee by 67%, hiking it to Rs 75 per article from Rs 45 ahead of the festive season. The fee for silver articles has been fixed at Rs 35, with a minimum charge of Rs 150 per consignment.

Hallmark gold refers to jewellery that has been certified purity by the Bureau of Indian Standards.

The All India Gem and Jewellery Domestic Council has opposed the hike, urging the government to review the decision and retain the existing charge until consultations are held with stakeholders.

The increased operating cost might lead to jewellers opting to add fake hallmarks to jewellery, the body warned. Read on.

All the supporting acts for British singer Ed Sheeran’s United States tour have quit after rapper Macklemore was removed from the tour for his pro-Palestine remarks on stage. The rapper faced criticism from Jewish groups for saying “Free Palestine” and making political speeches at two concerts.

Sheeran attributed the decision to drop Macklemore to the promoters of the tour, alleging that they said they would pull the shows if he continued to be a part of the shows.

Following the announcement, three of Sheeran’s supporting acts – Aaron Rowe, Lukas Graham and Finneas – as well as backing band Beoga said they were leaving the tour in solidarity with the rapper. Read on.

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Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra on Wednesday alleged that Bharatiya Janata Party workers threw eggs at her again during a meeting she was attending in West Bengal’s Krishnanagar.

In a video she shared on social media, eggshells could be seen entangled in her hair. She alleged that the incident took place despite police personnel being present.

Moitra said that she was “facing eggs, just like she was told” to.

Big shout out to Hon’ble Justice Dipankar Datta ! MiLord - I came to my constituency for a mtng informing @WBPolice & BJP workers with their help pelted eggs on me. True to your advice I faced them as a freedom fighter faced bullets. pic.twitter.com/CxO3ApzjPL

— Mahua Moitra (@MahuaMoitra) September 16, 2026

The MP was referring to a comment made by Supreme Court Justice Dipankar Datta in August while hearing her petition to appear virtually before the police citing incidents of eggs being thrown at her in her constituency.

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

The case pertained to a remark she had made after women workers of the BJP had allegedly gathered outside a court in Krishnanagar with eggs and tomatoes ahead of Moitra’s scheduled appearance in a case on June 14.

Following the incident, she had said in a social media post that those wanting to throw eggs at her “should wear a burqa” if they wish to stay hidden.

This led to a BJP leader filing a complaint against the Krishnanagar MP, alleging that her comment had hurt the sentiments of the Hindu community.

On July 1, vegetables and eggs were hurled at a TMC office in Krishnanagar while Moitra was inside. She alleged that “goons” from the BJP were responsible for the incident.

Soon after, the MP had moved the Supreme Court, asking that she be allowed to appear virtually before the police in the case filed by the BJP leader.

In her post on Wednesday, the MP referred to the Calcutta High Court order from September 1, when Justice Saugata Bhattacharya directed the government to deal with the “menace of egg-pelting with an iron hand”.

He had directed Moitra to email the superintendent of police in Krishnanagar 48 hours before she is required to visit her constituency, reported Bar and Bench.

“Superintendent of police, Krishnanagar police district, is directed to provide protection to the petitioner by deputing two police personnel whenever petitioner will enter into her constituency in order to avoid egg pelting and other forms of harassment,” the High Court had ordered.

The direction had come on a petition filed by Moitra in which she alleged that she had been unable to go to her constituency because BJP workers had been throwing eggs, tomatoes and stones at Opposition leaders.

The High Court had listed the matter for October 1.

There has been 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.

Written by Sneha. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Union government on Monday increased the gold hallmarking fee by 67%, hiking it to Rs 75 per article from Rs 45 ahead of the festive season, PTI reported.

The Bureau of Indian Standards certifies the purity and quality of precious metals by adding a hallmark to articles. The mark allows consumers to verify a jeweller’s claim about the purity of the metal by checking the grade printed on the hallmark. The Bureau of Indian Standards operates under the Ministry of Consumer Affairs.

Under the new certification framework, recognised jewellers will have to pay a hallmarking fee of Rs 75 per gold article, subject to a minimum charge of Rs 200 per consignment. This means that even if the calculated fee for the articles in a consignment is less than Rs 200, the jeweller will have to pay at least Rs 200.

The fee for silver articles has been fixed at Rs 35, with a minimum charge of Rs 150 per consignment.

The All India Gem and Jewellery Domestic Council has opposed the hike, urging the government to review the decision and retain the existing charge until consultations are held with stakeholders.

The body said that it was not opposed to hallmarking but only against the “sharp escalation in the cost of mandatory compliance at a stage when hallmarking volumes and geographical coverage have substantially expanded”.

It said that the increase in hallmarking volumes should have resulted in “greater efficiencies and economies of scale” rather than higher charges.

The increased operating cost might lead to jewellers opting to add fake hallmarks to jewellery, the body warned.

“Increasing the hallmarking charge…without simultaneously addressing fake hallmarking, unauthorised centres and other market distortions – risks producing precisely the opposite incentive,” the body said.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday demanded that the Union government roll back charges on Unified Payments Interface transaction, urging Prime Minister Narendra Modi to “have a spine” and “stop lying down in front of the United States”.

Gandhi alleged that the prime minister had “taxed” every Indian to give a “huge amount of money” to the US.

On Monday, the Union government said that UPI transactions to merchants valued above Rs 2,000 will attract a merchant discount rate of 0.4%.

Merchant discount rate is a fee charged to businesses by banks to cover the costs of processing transactions. The rate typically ranges between 1% and 3% of the transaction value for credit card payments and can be up to 0.9% for debit card transactions.

Modi ji, roll back the UPI tax. Now. pic.twitter.com/IIt46zMgCG

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) September 16, 2026

Congress MP Jairam Ramesh questioned whether the move was a means to allow United States’ card companies to compete with UPI payments in the Indian market.

“The Modi government has given into a US demand to get rid of zero [merchant discount rate] and charge for UPI,” Ramesh said in a social media post. “The US trade representative earlier this year criticised UPI for being free and having driven out visa and mastercard.”

“The PM has redefined NOTA – Narendra’s Ongoing Trump Appeasement,” Ramesh added.

Congress leader Supriya Shrinate alleged that Indians were being forced to pay charges on UPI transactions because the government was “surrendering to American pressure” and wanted to help US companies increase their valuations.

“People in India who are already struggling with inflation and unemployment are now being forced to boost the valuation of an American company before they sell shares to the public,” Shrinate alleged.

The Congress leader said that Walmart-owned PhonePe and Google Pay together command more than 86% market share of UPI payments in India and claimed that the charges will help them increase their valuations.

❓What is the market share of UPI payment apps in India?
- PhonePe: 48.9%
- Google Pay: 37.7%
- Paytm: 8.3%
- Others: 3.6%
- Cred: 1%
- Amazon Pay: 0.5%

❓Who are the biggest beneficiaries
- PhonePe (72% stake owned by America's Walmart)
- Google Pay (100% owned by America's… pic.twitter.com/T8kNMZ7uYF

— Congress (@INCIndia) September 16, 2026

Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge said that the government’s “surrender” by introducing the charges was an example of its “meekness”.

Other Opposition parties also criticised the new charges on UPI transactions.

Aam Aadmi Party said the charges were part of Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government’s “new loot policy” and described it as an example of “Trump’s pressure on PM Modi’s decisions and his direct influence over India’s internal matters”.

Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar)’s Anish Gawande alleged that the government had taken the decision because it had run out of money.

“Income Tax rebates are delayed,” he said. “Taxes are charged on UPI in the name of convenience fees. We are the World Bank’s biggest borrower.”

On Wednesday, the Union Ministry of Finance said claims that the charges had been introduced because of “foreign influence” were false.

“India’s UPI policy decisions are made independently, with the clear goal of building a self-sustaining, inclusive, and affordable digital payments ecosystem,” the ministry said on social media.

🔰 UPI Remains Free for Consumers

UPI continues to be free for customers. Sending money to friends, paying at shops, or scanning a QR code — all remain without charges.

Key Facts:
✅ No charges on P2P: Person-to-Person transfers are always free, regardless of amount.
✅ Small… pic.twitter.com/PyQ7hotNMN

— Ministry of Finance (@FinMinIndia) September 16, 2026

The government had clarified on Tuesday that the 0.4% fee had been capped at Rs 300 per transaction for payments of Rs 75,000 and more.

The ministry said that the new framework will have no impact on person-to-person transactions, “irrespective of the amount transferred”.

It also “advised” banks to ensure that the charges are not passed on to the customers.

In 2025-’26, while transactions exceeding Rs 2,000 accounted for just 4% of person-to-merchant UPI payment, they represented nearly two-thirds of the total value of such transactions.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

New Zealand’s Parliament on Wednesday passed legislation to implement its free trade agreement with India, Reuters reported. Once it takes effect, tariffs on about 95% of New Zealand’s exports to India will be eliminated or significantly reduced.

The legislation was passed with 93 votes in favour and 29 against. The Opposition Labour Party supported it.

India and New Zealand signed the free trade agreement on April 27. It will take effect after New Delhi and Wellington complete domestic ratification, the timeline for which is unclear.

New Zealand Trade Minister Todd McClay said the agreement would provide exporters with “immediate and substantial” benefits.

“Once fully implemented, tariffs are eliminated or significantly reduced on 95% of our exports,” McClay stated. “The kiwifruit industry alone expects to save around $125 million in tariffs over five years.”

Under the agreement, all Indian goods will get duty-free access to New Zealand, Reuters reported. Wellington has also committed to investing $20 billion in India over the next 15 years.

Bilateral trade stood at NZ$3.99 billion, or approximately Rs 22,038.41 crore, in the year leading up to June 2026. This meant that India was New Zealand’s ninth-largest market for goods and services exports.

Edited by Sneha.

Also read: For New Zealand, real test of trade deal will be India’s regional diversity and complex economy

The Union government on Tuesday clarified that Unified Payments Interface transactions to merchants valued above Rs 2,000 will attract a fee of 0.4%.

“Banks have been advised to ensure that merchants do not pass Merchant discount rate charges on to customers,” the Ministry of Finance said. “Application providers are expressly prohibited from imposing platform fees or hidden charges.”

Merchant discount rate is a fee charged to businesses by banks to cover the costs of processing transactions. The rate typically ranges from 1% to 3% of the transaction value for credit card payments and can be up to 0.9% for debit card transactions.

This 0.4% fee has been capped at Rs 300 per transaction for payments of Rs 75,000 and above.

The ministry said that the new framework will have no impact on person-to-person transactions, “irrespective of the amount transferred”.

Regarding Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) on Select UPI (P2M) Transactions

Please refer to the FAQs here: https://t.co/DTOZFVHAVB pic.twitter.com/4HMU0YZ2AC

— NPCI (@NPCI_NPCI) September 15, 2026

Small merchants who receive up to Rs 1 lakh per month will also continue without being liable for paying any merchant discount rate on their transactions.

Essential sectors that operate on “narrow margins” such as railways, telecommunications, insurance, fuel and agricultural inputs, will attract a flat merchant discount rate of Rs 5 per transaction.

Capital market transactions relating to mutual funds, securities, stockbrokers and dealers will incur a fee of 0.02% or Rs 300 per transaction, whichever is lower.

On Monday, the ministry had said that banks and system providers cannot charge fees on UPI transactions of up to Rs 2,000 and payments made using RuPay debit cards.

The Union Ministry of Finance issued the notification under Section 10A of the 2007 Payment and Settlement Systems Act.

In 2025-’26, transactions exceeding Rs 2,000 accounted for just 4% of person-to-merchant UPI payment, The Indian Express reported. However, these transactions represented nearly two-thirds of the total value of person-to-merchant UPI payments.

Parliament passed the 2026 Taxation and Other Laws Amendment Bill in August, allowing banks and other service providers to levy charges on payments through UPI and RuPay debit cards.

The legislation amended the 2007 Payment and Settlement Systems Act, leading to fears that merchants, who would face a Merchant Discount Rate, would pass off the cost to consumers in the future.

Written by Sara Varghese and Anamika Pathak. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande and Tanya Shrivastava.

I agree with the author’s strong criticism of the attacks on book readers in Ahmedabad, but would debate the headline “How Ahmedabad became an unwelcoming city”. Ahmedabad was never a welcoming city. Unlike what the author claims, the city has had a stunted history of public debate and left-wing or lower-caste movements.

Except for a smattering of liberal citizens and activists such as Indulal Yagnik or the Citizens’ Initiative, the city has refrained from embracing a robust liberal or left-leaning tradition. For example, a significant proportion of students in the large-scale Navnirman Andolan of 1974 and anti-reservations protests in the 1980s belonged to the Sangh and its affiliates.

If Mohandas Gandhi made the city his home from 1915 to 1930, his decision was as much stimulated by the financial sustenance that the citizens could provide as it was in the anxiety over imminent violence between caste and religious groups.

Powerful institutions which he went on to establish in Ahmedabad, such as the Textile Labour Association, served as effective centres of peace-building. Yet, the textile industry had its own caste-based hierarchy. Dalits spun cloth, but never weaved because threads broken during weaving had to be joined with saliva. Once handled by Dalits, such cloth would not be touched by other castes. Once the textile industry collapsed, the facade of peace broke and the city became one of the worst offenders of communal and anti-reservation violence.

Earliest signs of Ahmedabad’s parochialism can be found in the centuries-old pols in Ahmedabad–tightly packed houses famous for their architecture – that were spatially segregated with different Hindu caste groups residing in distinct pols; Muslims resided in separate homogeneous pols. Today the city is notorious for being one of the most segregated on Hindu-Muslim lines.

In a city with a history bereft of liberal thought and debate, the attack on those reading about Malala Yousufzai or Anne Frank is not surprising. It is, after all, a city where asking a stranger her caste and religion in the first meeting, “Tame keva?” (literally: “What are you?”), rarely evokes embarrassment. Speaking of Anne Frank, incidentally, Gujarat textbooks faced flak in the local media in the noughties for championing Adolf Hitler. – Raheel Dhattiwala

Reservations and ‘creamy layer’ debate

The anti-reservation ideologues love the creamy layer because that is the only way through which the actual deserving members of the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes get a fair chance to compete (“Why do anti-reservation ideologues love the creamy layer so much?”).

Admission data for Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Management and other prestigious institutions shows that seats are dominated by members of a one or a few castes because they have become a part of the mainstream.

The actual deserving members of reserved classes are stuck where they are since Independence. The actual purpose of reservation was to bring these actual deserving candidates in the mainstream. If such candidates are brought into the mainstream, only then can reservation fulfill its objective and be ended some day. – Yash Dhoka

***

This article makes no logical sense. Shame on Scroll for publishing articles which favour the rich over the poor. Real equality does not come from creating elite within a caste. – Kanishk Aggarwal

***

Reservations should have been linked to economic status of families, apart from caste (“‘Abolish reservations after 10 years’: The illusion of merit and what BR Ambedkar never said”). In modern times, financial status provides more opportunities than caste. That would have meant justice for those really struggling and in need of government support.

There should have been well-defined parameters to exclude those whose positions had improved and didn’t need reservations anymore. That would have allowed us to evaluate effectiveness and success of reservation system. Reservations were necessary when we got independence but unfortunately there was nothing well-defined about reservations. After all, even affirmative action is a discriminatory action. Anil Kaushik

UP police and the ordinary people

In Uttar Pradesh, it is the police who terrorise the common people (“Uttar Pradesh using Goondas Act as ‘tool of oppression’, says Allahabad HC”). No ordinary person, unless accompanied by an influential political leader or a supporter of the police would dare enter a police station. – Suresh Gangwar

The Ministry of External Affairs on Wednesday summoned the Pakistani charge d’affaires in Delhi to register a “strong protest” about the collision of a Pakistani naval vessel with an Indian Navy ship.

The incident occurred in international waters in the Arabian Sea, the ministry said. It was not immediately clear when the collision took place and what caused it.

New Delhi said that the conduct of Pakistani naval units at sea was “unacceptable and unprofessional”.

The ministry said that while the collision did not cause major damage to the Indian ship, the conduct of the Pakistani vessel contravened a 1991 bilateral agreement under which advance notices are provided about military exercises, manoeuvres and the movement of soldiers.

The Pakistani charge d’affaires was asked to convey New Delhi’s concerns to Islamabad, “the need for all military units to observe due care and respect” bilateral agreements to prevent a repeat of the incident, the ministry said.

The Indian charge d’affaires in Islamabad was also told to lodge a similar protest with Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, New Delhi said.

Both countries’ diplomatic missions have been led by chargés d’affaires instead of the high commissioners after Pakistan downgraded its ties with India in August 2019 over New Delhi’s decision to abrogate the special status of Jammu and Kashmir.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to reconstitute an enquiry committee it has formed to investigate the alleged police excesses during the youth protests in July and violence against security forces, Bar and Bench reported.

The bench said that aspersions had been cast on the committee “in a manner that is both premature and precipitate”.

On August 18, the court had formed the committee in response to petitions alleging that the police used excessive force against protesters marching to Parliament in Delhi on July 20.

The panel is headed by Justice R Subhash Reddy, a retired Supreme Court judge. The other members are former Punjab and Haryana High Court Chief Justice Ravi Shankar Jha, former Delhi High Court Justice Shalinder Kaur, former Central Bureau of Investigation Director Rishi Kumar Shukla and retired Meghalaya police chief LR Bishnoi.

During the protests in July, several demonstrators were injured after the security personnel used lathis, fired tear gas and pellet guns to disperse the crowd.

The petitioners in the original matter also pointed out instances of the police in Bihar using allegedly excessive force against protesters who were demonstrating in solidarity with the youth agitation in Delhi.

The court ordered the committee to examine the suggestions made by the petitioners as well as the respondents, which includes the Union government.

Scope of the probe

The petitioners in the original matter suggested that the panel should examine the use of allegedly “excessive and disproportionate” force by the police, including the use of lathi-charge and tear gas against the protesters, the use of pellet guns and electric batons, and the “monitoring and surveillance” of demonstrators.

The petitioners also urged the committee to look into alleged cases of “targeted violence, harassment and molestation” of female protesters.

They further called for the panel to look into aspects such as ensuring that the police and security personnel wear proper uniforms and visible nameplates while carrying out arrests or while using force, and preventing the routine use of orders prohibiting public gatherings to stop peaceful protests.

The court said that the allegations of targeted violence and sexual harassment against women protesters should be taken on priority.

The respondents submitted that the committee should examine the alleged use of force and violence by protesters against the police and damage to public property allegedly caused during the demonstrations.

The bench had asked the panel to submit its interim findings periodically so that the court can “take appropriate measures” and issue directions.

The court clarified that setting up the panel would not prevent the police or the authorities from taking administrative or disciplinary action against officers found to have violated service rules.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs on Tuesday said that Pakistan increasing the bounty on Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar was a “gimmick”.

Pakistan recently raised the bounty on Azhar to 70 lakh Pakistani rupees from 50 lakh Pakistani rupees. This came ahead of a meeting of the Financial Action Task Force in October. The international money laundering watchdog will review Islamabad’s anti-terrorism efforts during the meeting, according to media reports.

The country had been put on the grey list of the watchdog between 2018 and 2022 for its failure to counter terror financing.

Azhar is wanted in India for the 2001 Parliament attack, the 2008 Mumbai attacks, the 2016 Pathankot airbase attack and the 2019 Pulwama bombing.

Responding to a question about Pakistan increasing the bounty on him during a press briefing on Tuesday, external affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that such “hoodwinking” by Islamabad was not new.

“We have seen such gimmicks in the past as well,” Jasiwal added. “For a state sponsor of terror to make an announcement, phoney announcement, we all know how hollow it is.”

He said that instead of making such announcements, Pakistan should arrest the terrorists “because they themselves know where these people are”.

India has long accused Pakistan of sheltering Azhar. However, Islamabad maintains that it does not know where the terrorist is. It has claimed that he fled to Afghanistan.

Afghanistan’s Taliban government has rejected the claim.

Several of Azhar’s relatives were killed during Operation Sindoor, when the Indian military struck a Jaish-e-Mohammed base in Bahawalpur in May 2025 in response to the Pahalgam terror attack.

Written by Anamika Pathak.

The Central Bureau of Investigation has filed a case against Arunachal Pradesh-based lawyer and environmental activist Bhanu Tatak for allegedly receiving funds from abroad in violation of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act.

Tatak is a legal adviser to the Siang Indigenous Farmers’ Forum and the coordinator of civil society organisation Dibang Resistance. The CBI alleged that she received foreign contributions for research projects between 2022-’25 in violation of the Act.

She and the organisations have been protesting against the Siang Multipurpose Project, a proposed 12,500-megawatt power project on Arunachal Pradesh’s Siang river. The organisation Dibang resistance has also been protesting against a 2,880-megawatt power project on the Dibang river.

The CBI has alleged in its first information report, seen by Scroll, that Tatak had received more than Rs 17.6 lakh in funds from “different foreign organisations and individuals directly into her personal savings bank account without obtaining mandatory certification of registration” under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act.

The central agency has alleged that Tatak received the funds from foreign entities such as Philippines-based Asia Indigenous Peoples Network on Extractive Industries and Energy and Indigenous Peoples Rights International, Ireland-based Front Line and United Kingdom-based Human Rights Resource Centre.

The CBI claimed that Tatak has never filed income tax returns and that the foreign funds that she allegedly received were not reflected in any official records.

The central agency further alleged that the funds were “being utilised to organise and sustain anti-dam protests” in Arunachal Pradesh “thereby adversely affecting economic and strategic interests of the country”.

Tatak did not comment on the matter when contacted by Scroll. This article will be updated if she responds.

Tatak told the Hindustan Times that the matter was under investigation and that she was cooperating with the authorities. “I am a law-abiding citizen and have committed no violation of the law,” she told the newspaper.

The Siang Indigenous Farmers’ Forum has alleged that the Siang Multipurpose Project poses an existential threat to the indigenous community, the Adi tribe.

In September 2025, Tatak was stopped by the immigration authorities from boarding a flight to Ireland at the Delhi airport based on a lookout circular issued against her by Arunachal Pradesh Police. The circular is used by law enforcement authorities to check whether a person leaving the country is wanted by the police.

Tatak was scheduled to attend a three-month academic programme at Dublin City University. At that time, the activist had described the travel ban as part of an “arbitrary abuse of administrative power”, which she claimed was increasingly being normalised in India under pressure from corporate interests.

Such actions risk undermining the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution, she had said on social media.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande and Nachiket Deuskar.

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

Two Kuki-Zo women were killed on Tuesday in a suspected militant attack in Manipur’s Tamenglong district, a police official told Scroll.

The victims have been identified as 70-year-old Chonga Sitlhou and 28-year-old Kimneo Singson.

The attack took place around 3 pm in Leisangphai village. Sitlhou was collecting firewood when she was killed. Singson was also shot dead at the same spot.

The attack took place two days after four persons from the Kuki community were killed in two incidents in Tamenglong on Sunday.

The Kuki-Zo Council condemned Tuesday’s attack, calling on the Union government and the Manipur government to “end this impunity”. It accused the Naga insurgent group National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah) and armed Naga group Zeliangrong United Front (Kamson) of carrying out the attack.

“The continued targeting of civilians raises serious concerns about attempts to terrorise and drive Kuki-Zo communities from their settlements,” the council said in a statement.

The council also directed all Kuki-Zo civil society organisations not to bury any Kuki-Zo person “killed by Naga armed groups” in Manipur until further notice. It said that the mortal remains of such victims would be preserved at the nearest available cold-storage facility until further directions from the council.

Tensions between the Kukis and the Nagas escalated in Manipur in February after an alleged assault involving members of the Tangkhul Naga and the Kuki-Zo communities in the Ukhrul district.

This followed the ethnic clashes that broke out in Manipur in May 2023 between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo-Hmar communities. More than 300 persons have been killed and more than 59,000 persons displaced since then in the conflict.

The latest killings take the toll in the Kuki-Naga conflict to at least 40 since the conflict began in February this year.

Inputs by Rokibuz Zaman. Edited by Anamika Pathak and Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read:

• How ambush of church leaders on a forested road escalated Naga-Kuki conflict across Manipur hills
• Naga-Kuki strife began with a drunken brawl. But five months later, Manipur fault lines run deeper
• ‘We thought peace was coming’: Manipur’s buffer zones are back in grip of violence

The Goalpara district administration bulldozing of the homes of 73 Bengali Muslim families built on private agricultural land was unauthorised, the Gauhati High Court said.

The administration had bulldozed the homes on September 7. The demolitions were carried out within two days of the residents being served a notice by the circle officer on September 5 warning of legal action if they did not raze within 24 hours the homes built on their own agricultural land.

The action against the residents would be taken under the settlement rules of the 1886 Assam Land and Revenue Regulation and the 2005 Disaster Management Act, the authorities had said in the notice.

Twenty-one residents had challenged the notice in the High Court, contenting that they had not been given the opportunity to contest it.

While hearing the matter on September 7, the court took note of the 2015 state land reclassification and transfer Act as stating that no permission is required when an agricultural land up to one bigha is to be used for constructing a person’s own home not more than two-storeys.

The court had said that the actions by the state “prima facie appear to be illegal and unauthorised”. It said that the actions seemed to have violated the principles of natural justice under the Constitution.

“It is absolutely unthinkable in the present day when there are galore of settled principles that such notices were issued in this manner without providing even an opportunity to the petitioners,” the court had said.

The court also said that the notices “do not reflect any imminent danger to invoke such drastic powers on private lands”.

The court had asked the administration to submit a report explaining what was the imminent danger that necessitated the demolitions.

In its September 11 order, the court said that the instructions placed before it by the administration do not show that there was a case of imminent danger for carrying out the demolitions.

The court said that at a cursory reading, it appears that the bulldozing of the homes was a misuse of the Disaster Management Department Act.

Since the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in Assam in 2016, multiple demolition drives have been conducted across districts, mostly targeting areas populated by Bengali-speaking Muslims.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration has suspended the licences of four Mumbai restaurants, including Colaba’s iconic Café Mondegar, after food safety violations were found during inspections, The Indian Express reported on Tuesday.

The FDA inspected Café Mondegar on Saturday and found several food safety and hygiene violations. The agency said hot food was not being kept above 60°C, while cold storage was not being maintained below 5°C. It also found that food was being thawed improperly and cooked food was not being cooled quickly enough.

The FDA also found damaged and damp floors, poor drainage near the food preparation area that could lead to cross-contamination, and equipment that was not being cleaned and sanitised properly, the newspaper reported.

Other establishments in Mumbai whose licences were suspended following inspections were Maharashtra Biryani Center in Kandivali East, Tribhuvan Dairy Farm in Ghatkopar West, and Mahavir Cashew & Foods Pvt Ltd in Ghatkopar East.

The inspection found that the establishments had failed to meet the required hygiene and sanitation standards for handling, preparing, storing and processing food, The Indian Express reported.

The action was part of the FDA’s ongoing drive against eateries and other establishments for alleged violations of food safety norms during the festive season.

In the Pune division, the FDA suspended the licence of Hotel Malhar Wada in Kolhapur after finding violations, the newspaper reported. It also suspended the licence of Puramchand and Sons in Pune’s Market Yard after finding violations and an expired food product during an inspection.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

In April, an Indian-born cheetah, KP-2, walked several hundred kilometres from Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh to Rajasthan’s Ranthambore National Park.

KP-2’s mother, Asha, was one of eight cheetahs brought to Kuno from Namibia in September 2022, as a part of India’s cheetah reintroduction project. Today, there are a total of 48 cheetahs in the country, including 28 Indian-born cubs – most of them, however, remain in enclosures in Kuno. Three are roaming free in Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh, which was developed as a second site for the cheetahs.

KP-2’s walk was not unusual – since their arrival, several instances have come to light of cheetahs who walked out of Kuno, and crossed the state border to Rajasthan in search of prey and mates. Experts argued that this pointed to a crucial problem with the project – that at 750 sq km, Kuno was far too small to host the planned population of 21 cheetahs, which are known to have large home ranges.

The same month that KP-2 was spotted in Ranthambore, another development came to light that could further reduce the habitat of Kuno’s cheetahs. In April, the ministry of environment, forest and climate change granted environmental clearance to the Chentikheda irrigation project, which would submerge eight villages around Kuno. Of the total 1,361 hectares of land it will need, 72 hectares are from Kuno’s forests.

“The project authorities themselves have admitted that Kuno alone cannot hold the cheetah population, and that is why they have been talking about a cheetah corridor across Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh to allow for their movement,” said Ravi Chellam, a senior biologist who has worked in the landscape and is a coordinator of the Bengaluru-based Biodiversity Collaborative. “Any attempt to further destroy or fragment their habitat will have negative consequences. We are destroying Kuno, which was seen as the prime habitat, the first site of the cheetahs.”

But the project will not only affect cheetahs. Around 1,200 families living around the forest, of which around 900 are Adivasi, will lose lands and livelihoods.

In fact, of the eight villages being submerged and relocated, three will be seeing displacement a second time in 25 years. In the early 2000s, 24 villages were displaced from within the Kuno forest to make way for Asiatic lions from Gir. However, in 2004, the Gujarat government declined to part with the lions; by then, around 1,500 families had already been relocated outside the forest, away from its produce and fertile lands.

“First, they took us away from fertile lands, then when we finally established some footing here, they are asking us to move again,” said Shivlal Khushwa, a resident of village Pera-B, who is among what he refers to as the “double displacement families”.

Further, as the Chentikheda project moves forward with public hearings and resettlement surveys, locals say that many aspects of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, or LARR, are not being complied with.

For instance, under the law, the revenue department is required to conduct public hearings in which it gives out crucial information, such as timelines for relocation, rehabilitation and resettlement plans, and calculations of the area of land it proposes to give displaced families as compensation. But those who attended these meetings told Scroll that the department provided only general, indicative information, and not specific details.

“They told us about the kind of facilities we will get in our relocated site, like hospitals and schools, but did not tell us exactly how much land will be given and when,” said Khushwa, who attended a meeting at the end of July this year. “They told us that they will take this up in the next meeting.”

How it impacts cheetahs

The project’s environmental impact assessment report acknowledges the presence of several species on the site that enjoy the highest degree of protection under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972. These include sloth bears, leopards and cheetahs. However, it notes that “no nesting or breeding sites were observed within the project footprint”, implying that that the project would have limited adverse impacts on these animals.

Experts disagree. “The proposed 70 hectares of submergence could be a part of the home range or territory of the cheetahs,” said Chellam. “This means that it’s possible that you may not find a den within this area, but the cheetahs could be using the space, and a restriction could still impact them.”

This is particularly worrying, experts say, because the wider cheetah corridor is also seeing other infrastructure work – specifically, an upcoming pumped hydro energy storage project in a forested area in Shahbad in Rajasthan’s Baran district, around 200 km away. Cheetahs from Kuno, including KP-2, have frequented that forest, they note. “Where is the cumulative assessment of all of these impacts on the cheetahs?” said Chellam.

The irrigation project also appears to have benefited from the fine print of regulations that bar several kinds of work in protected areas. Maps of the proposed project that Scroll has seen show that the project’s submergence area expands into Kuno’s eco-sensitive zone – this is a strip of land between two and 15 km from the forest, which was first demarcated in 2022, before the cheetahs arrived, and then finalised in February 2023, after they had been released.

Under the eco-sensitive zone notification for Kuno National Park, activities that are prohibited in the zone include “felling of trees” and “large hydropower projects” – categories that, experts confirmed to Scroll, the Chentikheda project does not strictly fall in, since it is a major irrigation project and does not produce electricity.

Kanchi Kohli, an independent legal policy researcher, argued that assessment of any project’s impact on wildlife and forest-dwelling population should not be restricted only to specific regulations “of what the ESZ allows or not”. Rather, she said, the feasibility should be seen “together with mandate and scope of other regulations and legislations” that govern forests and the environment. This includes prevailing tenurial and use rights and clearances pertaining to the environment, forest, and wildlife from the environment ministry.

These should be evaluated together “when making the decision on whether a project should be taken up”, Kohli said.

Among the forums at which such regulations are discussed is the National Board for Wildlife, which issues wildlife clearances to the project, and the forest advisory committee, which gives clearance for steps such as deforestation or submergence of forests for projects. The Chentikheda project was discussed at a wildlife board meeting this March. The board recommended a site visit by a committee that included members from the environment ministry, the Wildlife Institute of India and the National Tiger Conservation Agency “to assess the area impact of the project on the habitat of cheetah and tiger”.

Undercounting affected people

The 2013 land acquisition act spells out who is to be counted as a project-affected family in any project. But developments so far with the Chentikheda project indicate that the number of affected people has been underestimated, and that several have not been counted, leaving them at the risk of being denied compensation or rehabilitation.

Section 19 of the act mandates that before the government acquires any land for a project, it has to declare a list of specific pieces of land that it intends to acquire, along with details of the land that will be allocated for resettlement, as well as information about a rehabilitation and resettlement scheme that will include all project-affected families. It specifies that such affected families are not just those who will lose land or property for an upcoming project, but also those who are landless, but whose livelihoods will be impacted by the acquisition, such as share-croppers or agricultural labourers, as well as those who depend on the forests being acquired.

The Section 19 notifications available on the district collector’s website pertaining to the Chentikheda project only declare lists of affected people for four of the eight villages, with a total of only 177 families. This is a list of only those individuals who own land in the area under submergence,” said Budhaditya Das, a professor of development at Azim Premji University’s Ranchi campus, who has worked in villages around Kuno. “This means that the administration has complied with only one part of Section 19 until now.”

The land acquisition act also mandates that a rehabilitation and resettlement scheme has to be put in the public domain, which will also cover families whose livelihoods will be affected by the project. “Landowners are just a fraction of the people impacted by the project,” Das said.

In a notification dated August 20, the collector’s office announced that it had postponed the publishing of a rehabilitation and resettlement scheme from August this year to February 2027. They attributed this delay to “practical challenges”, such as that land records were not organised and that impacted farmers were not living in the villages at the time of the survey.

“We hope the government follows the letter and spirit of the law when it fully implements Section 19,” Das said. “Especially since the LARR Act has widened the definition of project-affected families beyond only land-owning households and has incorporated the loss of forests, commons and informal livelihoods as significant impacts that must be counted and compensated.”

Kohli noted that communities affected by the project could be at a disadvantage because of “a siloed approach” to environmental decision making. Specifically, though the land acquisition act mandates that project authorities must carry out social impact assessments, irrigation projects are exempt from this requirement. “The assumption is that the environmental impact assessment would be enough to document these impacts as well,” Kohli said. But these “do not mention details of compensation packages or a detailed account of livelihoods lost”.

Increasing local conflicts

Locals also fear that the relocation could give rise to conflicts.

In Umri, several farmers have been cultivating land for which they have not been issued land titles. Now, the same land is being offered to those from villages such as Agara, around 10 km away who are being relocated for the Chentikheda project. “In the future, this will cause a lot of fights,” said Deependra Singh Bhadouriya, a resident of Agara who is losing around 80 bighas of land.

Another resident who attended the July public hearing meeting, but did not want to be named, said that locals from Umri had also been attending the public hearing meetings and voicing their concerns about other families being relocated on their cultivated land.

Those being resettled also noted with concern that Umri is upstream of the dam. The land acquisition act states specifically that in an irrigation project, land for resettlement has to be provided in the command area of the project – this refers to the area that is below the main canal system, fed by the irrigation channels. This would allow resettled families to also benefit from the irrigation project.

“Umri is upstream of the dam, so how will we be able to benefit from the irrigation facilities?” said Bhadouriya. “On the other hand, the land that we are losing is right next to the river and has irrigation facilities.”

Chellam argued that there was “a need to take a much more inclusive, comprehensive approach to the project in this landscape”. He pointed out that among the aims of the cheetah project was to protect the grassland and forest habitats they would inhabit – but now, he noted, these habitats faced threat from projects like Chentikheda. “It’s almost as if the right hand is not speaking with the left hand,” he said.

He added: “People and livelihoods have been moved around for this. It is not only a question of ecology, but also a question of equity.”

Balakrishnan V, a 44-year-old auto driver, has lived in the same locality all his life, an area predominantly occupied by low-income households, in Tamil Nadu’s Salem district.

Balakrishnan has four children: a son and three daughters.

The older two attend private schools. The son, who is in Class 11, is enrolled in a school that charges around Rs 50,000 a year. Balakrishnan’s eldest daughter, a Class 8 student, pays fees of around Rs 20,000 per year.

In contrast, the other two children study for free. His third child studies in a government-aided school and his fourth studies in a government school.

Balakrishnan would have liked to send his younger children to private schools also, but the fees for the first two are already a huge burden on the family. He explained that sometimes they have to even take loans to pay them.

But he has no doubt about the kind of schools he prefers. “Teachers are a lot better in private schools,” he said. “They pay more attention to individual students, and that will eventually help the child prepare well for their future as well.”

Such a preference among parents is reflected in attendance at the neighbourhood government school, where Balakrishnan studied as a child. He recounted that when he was there, the school had between 200 and 300 students. Today, it has only 30 students.

Balakrishnan’s neighbour Preetha also believes that children are better off in private schools. Her daughter used to study in a government school, but now studies in a private school. Preetha’s husband died years ago. She only has her earnings as a domestic worker to manage her expenses and her daughter’s fees of about Rs 50,000 a year.

This is a strain but she and her family say that only a private school education will guarantee her daughter a chance of landing a good job.

A key reason for this, Preetha said, is that teachers in government schools have assured salaries, so do not have any pressure to ensure that their students perform well. But as Preetha’s mother explained, “…If the child is not studying well, we can question private school teachers because we are paying fees.”

Balakrishnan, the auto driver, echoed this contention. Government school teachers “just come and teach but it’s up to the student whether or not they want to learn”, he said, “There is no pressure to push students to perform.”

Their perceptions are at odds with the findings of a recent study on low-fee private schools in Tamil Nadu. Researchers from the Centre for Public Policy and Research analysed the academic performance of students in Classes 3, 6 and 9 across several categories of schools and found that “once socio-economic factors, household characteristics and parental education levels are taken into account, the learning differences between government and private schools become minimal”.

In fact, when it came to primary education in the state, the study found that government school students showed better outcomes than private school students. Specifically, Class 3 students of state government schools and aided schools, as well as central government schools, performed better in both maths and languages than their counterparts in private schools.

The study noted that a key problem private schools struggled with was the quality of teachers. “There is a lack of teacher motivation; few are entering the profession owing to low salaries,” it noted. “Low-fee schools, especially, cannot afford to pay a lot to qualified teachers.”

In fact, other research also found that among teachers it looked at, government-school teachers were more qualified. A 2018 paper by Azim Premji University, on school choices in “low-information environments” studied 121 public and low-fee private schools and 1,210 families, in 10 districts across four states and found that 64% of public school teachers had a postgraduate degree, while only 44% of teachers from private schools had a postgraduate degree.

Preetha’s daughter, disagreeing with her mother, said she preferred her government school teachers, instead of the teachers she now has in the private school. “They taught us better,” she said. “These teachers don’t teach us properly. The one difference is that I speak English better now. But with regard to other subjects, I think the government school was better.”

And yet, data shows enrolment in private schools continues to grow even as government school enrolment declines. What is driving this shift to private school education in India? We looked for answers in Tamil Nadu, a state where around half of all school students now study in private schools.

Many parents Scroll spoke to cited surprising explanations for their preference for private schools. The conversations provided a snapshot of the fears and hopes that are driving Indian parents to move their children away from the government school system and into private schools.

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

The state of India’s government school system has been in the headlines ever since the Cockroach Janata Party recently launched its School Thik Karo – Fix the Schools – campaign. Fresh from their success at leading youth protests against the Modi government in Jantar Mantar, the activists of the new political outfit visited schools across the country including Rajasthan and Maharashtra in July and August. Videos from these visits showed a range of problems in these schools, including shortages of teachers, crumbling infrastructure and poor hygiene.

For many, these accounts from the ground are enough to explain why Indian parents’ preference has been shifting towards private schools.

In 2023-’24, government schools had 35.21 crore students enrolled in them, while private schools had 15.67 crore students. Within two years, the number of students enrolled in government schools fell to 32.48 crore, while private school enrolment shot up to 26.07 crore. (This period also coincided with a trend of students returning to private schools after families in economic distress during the Covid-19 pandemic shifted them to government schools.)

Currently, according to the Unified District Information System, which collects and maintains information on the public and private school system in India, 51.9% of students in India are enrolled in private, government-aided schools and “other schools”, while 48.1% are enrolled in government schools.

In contrast, in most Western countries, public schools form the bulk of the school systems. In the United States, for instance, only around 10% of students go to private schools, while in the United Kingdom around 7% do so.

While the term “private school” usually evokes an image of elite institutions that charge several lakhs in fees, these form only a small fraction of schools. A large proportion of the India’s private schools are of the kind that Balakrishnan and Preetha’s children study in, which charge much lower fees and cater to low-income or lower-middle income families.

These schools are referred to by educationists and researchers as low-cost or low-fee private schools, often defined as schools where monthly fees range between Rs 400 and Rs 3,500.

According to the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, 70% of students in private schools paid less than Rs 1,000 per month as fees.

In Tamil Nadu, too, a large number of private schools fall in this category. A 2026 paper on private schools in the state noted that “77.4% of schools in Tamil Nadu charge less than Rs 20,000 per year” and this includes “35.6% charging between Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000, and 38.5% charging between Rs 10,000 and Rs 20,000”. At the higher end of the low fee private schools were those that charged between Rs 30,000 and Rs 50,000 per year, which made up 6.8% of the total.

On the face of it, data on the number of schools in the state, often lauded for its public schooling system, does not reflect a shift towards private school education. The total number of government schools in the state is 37,478, compared to 11,638 private unaided schools.

But student enrollment numbers tell a different story, more in keeping with trends across the country: according to Unified District Information System data, 46 lakh students are enrolled in government schools and 62 lakh are enrolled in private schools.

In some areas, the difference is stark. For example, in Tamil Nadu’s capital, Chennai, 1.64 lakh students are enrolled in government schools and 8.3 lakh students are enrolled in private schools. In Salem district, though only 20% of schools are private, around 2.75 lakh students study in them, while around 2.45 lakh study in government schools.

“It is understandable that parents don’t want to send their children to government schools, we cannot blame them for it,” said Prince Gajendra Babu, general secretary of the State Platform for Common School System Tamil Nadu. “The government has pushed parents to private schools, by refusing to invest more and run government schools better.”

Parents cited more complex reasons for their choice.

Balakrishnan, for instance, said better communication was one reason parents preferred private schools. “In private schools they call us frequently, if a child is sick, they will call and tell us, but government school teachers don’t do that,” he said.

Preetha’s family, meanwhile, explained that they felt reassured by the hours that private schools maintained, a sentiment that other families also echoed. “When she was in the government school, she would come back home early. Now she comes back very late,” Preetha’s mother said. “The teachers keep the children back after school and do extra coaching, so we know that the child is studying.”

Christuraj S, a child rights activist based in Salem said many parents told him they preferred private schools because they seemed safer. “A van comes and picks the kids,” he said. “If the child goes to a government school, they have to rely on the bus, which they deem unsafe.”

Babu, meanwhile, characterised the shift to private schools as part of a larger shift towards exam-oriented schooling, in response to which many of these schools began to advertise 100% pass rates. “Government schools never had 100% pass rates initially,” he said. “Kids would fail but pass in the supplementary exams, and then go on to do great things in their life.”

He added, “Exams weren’t everything, but learning was crucial, today that has changed.”

Among the surprising insights that many parents offered in conversations with Scroll was that they saw schools close to their homes as undesirable for their children.

This attitude presents a contrast with the direction of government policy on the matter – under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, it is mandatory for the government to ensure that children at the primary level have a school within a one-kilometre walking distance of their homes.

But 43-year-old Krishnamurthy A, an electrician who also works as a preacher and lives in the same locality as Balakrishnan, explained that he was wary of the social environment in the vicinity of his home, which has a government school within a kilometre. He said that he often finds boys and young men who use “bad words” loitering outside the school. “I cannot bear to hear the kinds of words they use,” he said.

He also said that there were problems of violence and drug abuse among youngsters in the area. “Since my wife is a nurse, a lot of children go there for treatment, and I hear very bad things about what the children are up to,” he said.

Thus, Krishnamurthy has chosen to send all his three children to different private schools, which are more than 5 km away, even though the family often has to borrow money to pay their fees. “Money will come and go but my children’s education is of utmost importance,” he said.

He hopes that this decision will be a step towards ensuring that his children can grow up and move out of the neighbourhood. “I wanted them to go to a school that is far away from this area,” he said. “And I hope they find a way to get out of here.”

Another fear loomed large over Krishnamurthy, one that was rooted in his own experience of studying in a government school: that his children would always be identified by their caste identity if they went to a nearby government school. “It’s because I know what that experience would be like,” he said. “I don’t want my children to face the same issues I faced.”

He recounted, “My teachers always identified me with my community. No matter what I did, I was the student who was from a lower caste.”

Indeed, Nandamma, a neighbour who is identified by a pseudonym for the story, said that her son, who went to the neighbourhood government school, faced discrimination in the classroom. “He would study well, but the teachers would say, ‘Oh even though you are from the cheri, you are studying well,” she said, referring to a derogatory term for a marginalised community settlement. “They always treated children who went from this area in an inferior manner.”

This problem extended even to activities outside school, the family explained.

Nandamma’s sister explained with pride that her daughter, who is now in the second year of her engineering degree, had learnt bharatanatyam, and had even had her inaugural performance – but for her training, the family had to find her a teacher far away from their residence. “We tried to find teachers nearby but because they knew where we were from, they knew what caste we were,” Nandamma said. “They did not allow her to attend classes.”

Parents also cited a range of other factors that guided their decision to send their children to private schools. Some, for instance, said they felt that the number of teachers in government schools had declined, as had their skill and enthusiasm.

Balakrishnan noted, for instance, that in the government elementary school in his locality, there were currently only two teachers for the 30 students. He recounted that earlier, government school teachers would go from house to house, urging families to enroll their children in the neighbourhood school. “But now nobody comes,” he said.

One government school teacher at an elementary school agreed that there had been an overall decline in the number of teachers in public schools – a key reason for this, she said, was that students had begun to opt for private schools in larger numbers. She recounted that when she joined 15 years ago, the school had a few hundred students. Today, they only have 30 students and two teachers. “According to the education policy, there must be two teachers for 30 students, so there are only two postings here,” she said. “The teachers we had got transferred to other schools.”

But this smaller number of students is also spread out across several grades – thus, teachers are forced to teach two or three grades simultaneously during a single period. “We also have both English and Tamil mediums at the school, so we have to speak once in one language and then in the other,” she said.

The teacher, who spoke to Scroll on the condition of anonymity, echoed Krishnamurthy’s reasoning for parents’ decision to opt for private schools. “They feel if a child goes to a school far away, they will get better education.”

Another key reason parents cited for preferring private schools is that most were English medium, whereas most government schools use the local language as the medium. “Parents feel English medium schools are better,” the teacher said.

Nandamma’s niece explained that though she and her schoolmates had found “decent jobs” after studying in government school, “because I don’t know English, I lose out on so many opportunities and I also struggle with simple tasks that I’m supposed to do in English”. She added, “Even during placements, government students lose out because we have not studied in English medium schools.”

These include opportunities outside the state. “If children only study in Tamil medium, then they will only be able to get jobs within Tamil Nadu, but if they want to go outside Tamil Nadu, or India, they need English,” Nandamma said. “Private schools also offer Hindi. It’s good for students to learn an extra language.”

Many also noted that children were exposed to more extracurricular activities at private schools. Balakrishnan recounted that in the past, government schools also offered these activities. “There would also be small programmes and festivals, fancy-dress competitions on Independence day,” he said. “But nothing of that kind happens these days either.”

Nandamma echoed this observation. “In government schools, there are hardly any activities for students, but private schools have such a wide range of activities,” she said. “Academics is just one part of school, it’s important to learn other things as well.”

Elsewhere in Salem district, some of the concerns about government schools were even more pronounced.

In the semi-urban area of Omalur, for instance, Ramya R, a parent of two children who study in government-aided private schools, said that the elementary government school in her neighbourhood was in such a dilapidated condition that she sometimes spotted snakes near it. “There’s no compound around the school either,” she said. “We’ve noticed all this when we have gone there to vote. It’s falling apart.”

In the same neighbourhood, the parents of a joint family of six, with three children, send all of them to a private school – their rationale echoed other parents’ desire that their children move out of the circumstances they were born into. “I feel so happy when I see her in a full neat uniform with proper shoes. I didn’t have that,” said the father, Surya Prakash, said about his eight-year-old daughter, Yashika. “I would be treated badly because I could not afford to wear shoes.”

The mother, Viveka, said, “When I was in school, I had to go home to use the toilet, and the food used to be terrible.”

At this, Yashika chimed in. “But I prefer the government school,” she said. “I don’t want my parents to struggle to pay my fees.”

Around 60 km away from Salem city, in the rural area of Attur taluk, locals told Scroll that many of the private schools in the area had come up only in the last few years – nevertheless, many preferred these schools, and cited similar rationale as their counterparts in the urban parts of the district.

Among the main reasons the parents preferred private schools here, too, were that they were English medium. “English is more important today than ever,” said one parent in the town of Yethapur, whose daughter is in upper kindergarten. “They need to be able to speak to get good jobs.”

In fact, the desire for an English-medium education was so pronounced that some parents said they only intended to enroll their child in a private school for as long as they needed to learn it. One mother, A Jayapradha, said that she planned to enroll her daughter in a private school until Class 5, because by then she would have mastered English. “Once they learn English well, then they can join Tamil medium school in high school,” she said.

Other parents had also planned to enroll their children in private schools up to Class 5, and cited better safety and attention from teachers as key factors for this decision. Another mother said, “The child is too young to manage on their own. Government school kids are usually left on their own in the schools.”

In these parts of the district, too, the cost of these schools was a major concern for parents.

Uma Maheshwari, who lives with her husband and two children in Yethapur, explained that their son studies at a private school that charges around Rs 30,000 a year. Maheshwari’s husband works as an accountant and the family is struggling to make ends meet.

As a result, their son’s education had seen a rocky path. During the years of the Covid-19 pandemic, the couple were forced to shift their son from a private school to a government school, because they could not afford his fees.

However, they were unhappy with their son’s performance in the government school, and shifted him back to a private school when they could afford it again. “He had learnt so much at the private school that he was in and then he forgot everything when he went to the government school,” she said. “I would check his notes too and felt like the teachers were not teaching well.”

Despite parents’ strong preference for private schools, conversations with them and teachers specifically about children’s academic performance revealed a more complex picture, which suggested that students were not necessarily assured a better education in the private schools.

This was reflected in the study by the Centre for Public Policy and Research on low-fee private schools in Tamil Nadu.

It found that while both categories of schools displayed “persistent gaps in student proficiency”, “private schools do not demonstrate a consistent or significant advantage over government schools, particularly in foundational literacy and numeracy”.

The principal of a government-aided school in Salem city said that she felt that these results corresponded with her experience. The management of her school also manages a private school. “So I know the kind of students who study there and study here,” she said.

The principal, who asked not to be named, said that she found that when students from the aided school decided to move to the private school, they had no difficulties catching up. “But students who come from there know very little. They struggle with basics,” she said. “It’s because the teacher quality is so poor.”

She argued that government-school teachers were often more qualified and skilled. “The teachers who come here are paid good salaries from the government and they are very experienced and are highly educated,” she said.

She added, “Private schools charge high fees, but don’t pay their teachers, and they don’t have any experience. And so the child learns nothing.”

Some parents’ accounts also reflected these observations on academic performance. Most who had children enrolled in private schools told Scroll that their children were average academic performers, and that they would attempt to discuss their worries with their teachers. “Sometimes they’ll tell us to send him to tuition, but we cannot afford it,” Maheswari said.

Balakrishnan said that his last daughter, who is enrolled in a government school, is happy to continue there and doesn’t want to change to a private school. In fact, he explained with pride that she “was studying very well in Tamil medium” and that her teachers had told them to shift her to an English medium government school. “She’s a very smart child,” he said.

The Azim Premji University study also suggested that the basis for parents’ preference for private schools was not always sound. “Data told us that there are mismatches between parental perceptions and school realities,” it stated. In large part, it observed, this was owing to private schools’ emphasis on marketing themselves heavily. “Most private schools organised systematic enrolment drives to generate admissions. These drives advertised safety elements like conveyance, CCTV cameras,” the study said.

Babu agreed with this assessment. “All private schools do is advertise,” he said. “It’s all marketing.”

A Muslim man who had been detained on suspicion of being an undocumented Bangladeshi citizen and sent to a detention centre in June was released from jail on Tuesday, his cousin told Scroll.

Jalil Akhtar, a resident of Uttar Dinajpur district in West Bengal, secured bail on Monday, his cousin Matiur Rahman said.

He had been picked up from his home on June 19. His family had told Scroll that there was no basis for police to suspect that he was a Bangladeshi citizen. They said Akhtar’s name appeared in the electoral rolls prepared after the special intensive revision in both 2002 and 2026.

Since he was detained, the police made at least one attempt to deport him, according to a report filed by the Dalkhola police in the Uttar Dinajpur court on August 1.

Akhtar was kept at a temporary holding centre in Nizampur “and all biometric and deportation formalities were completed”, the report said. He was handed over to the Border Security Force on July 4 and asked to be deported.

Having failed to force him out, the police had filed a suo moto case against him under the Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025, alleging that he had entered the country without a valid passport, travel document or visa.

Akhtar’s family members told Scroll that they have submitted land records from 1967, in his father Roshan Ali’s name, to the police. But in its report, the police said that Akhtar could not produce any documentary evidence to prove that he was Ali’s son.

On Tuesday, Trinamool Congress leader Samirul Islam asked “who will take responsibility for such inhumane treatment of a poor person?”

“Will the higher authorities not take steps against those who are behind such torture and harassment of a poor fellow?” he asked on social media. “Will those police officers not be punished for their wrongful actions?”

I hail the judiciary!!!Finally, Jalil Akhtar of Islampur in North Dinajpur, who was illegally detained after being suspected of being a Bangladeshi and falsely implicated in a case by the state police, has got bail from the court. He was released from jail today, leaving many… pic.twitter.com/gBbQX6STWU

— Samirul Islam (@SamirulAITC) September 15, 2026

Since the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam in April 2025, the police in several states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party have been detaining Bengali-speaking persons – mostly Muslims – and asking them to prove that they are Indian citizens.

Several persons have been forced into Bangladesh after they allegedly could not prove their Indian citizenship. In some cases, persons who were mistakenly sent to Bangladesh returned to the country after state authorities in India proved that they were Indians.

Scroll has also reported on several cases of persons who were forced into Bangladesh being brought back to India, as the authorities had failed to follow the process laid down by the Union home ministry for such deportations.

Inputs from Rokibuz Zaman. Written by Tanya Shrivastava. Edited by Sneha.

Also read: In Bengal, Muslims picked up from homes in midnight raids, sent to detention centres

The Odisha government has rejected the early release of Bajrang Dal member Dara Singh, who is serving a life sentence for the 1999 murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons, PTI reported on Tuesday.

The director general of prisons and correctional services and the authorities at Kendujhar Jail had earlier recommended his release on grounds of good behaviour. Singh has spent more than 26 years in prison.

At a meeting on August 31, the state sentence review board decided against Singh’s early release noting that it could lead to communal disturbance in the area, The Hindu reported.

The board also stated that on August 15, a group of around 200-250 persons associated with Dara Sena had assembled outside the Kendujhar district jail in connection with the proposed release of the convict, during which “provocative slogans” were shouted, the newspaper reported.

Dara Sena – named after Singh – is an outfit that campaigns for his release.

In a 2024 remission plea before the Supreme Court, Singh argued that he should be considered for early release as he was above 60 and had spent more than 24 years in prison. He said he regretted his actions, which the petition described as having been committed in the context of “protecting the nation”.

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

On September 8, the Supreme Court had criticised the Odisha government for failing to decide on Singh’s plea and verbally stated that it would take the decision in the matter if the state failed to do so by the next hearing.

The Supreme Court will hear the case next on Thursday.

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

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Swatantra Bharadwaj, a Hindutva influencer who allegedly assaulted the father of a student activist during the Delhi youth protests, was granted three weeks of interim bail. He had been detained on September 4 after a purported video featured him claiming that a phone call from Delhi minister Kapil Mishra helped him avoid arrest for the assault.

The purported video showed him claiming that he had not been jailed despite having “cracked the skull” of Kumar. After it was widely shared, Bharadwaj was booked for causing simple hurt and wrongful restraint.

Bharadwaj has claimed that he acted in self-defence and that, had he not done so he could have “lynched by the mob or killed”. Read on.

A man accused of ramming a car into a woman biker in Gurugram was arrested in Rajasthan. The police have added attempt to murder charges in the first information report they had registered on suo moto basis.

The FIR was registered on Monday after the woman biker shared a video on social media showing a car ramming into her and speeding away as she fell to the ground. The FIR had initially only mentioned charges related to rash driving. Read on.

The Central Bureau of Investigation has filed a case against Arunachal Pradesh-based lawyer and environmental activist Bhanu Tatak for allegedly receiving funds from abroad in violation of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act. Tatak is a legal adviser to the Siang Indigenous Farmers’ Forum and the coordinator of civil society organisation Dibang Resistance.

She and the organisations have been protesting against the Siang Multipurpose Project, a proposed 12,500-megawatt power project on Arunachal Pradesh’s Siang river. The organisation Dibang Resistance has also been protesting against a 2,880-megawatt power project on the Dibang river.

The CBI claimed that Tatak has never filed income tax returns and that the foreign funds that she allegedly received were not reflected in any official records. Read on.

Canada has deported four Indians in an immigration crackdown targeting foreign citizens allegedly linked to extortion groups. The deported persons were allegedly connected with criminal organisations targeting South Asian businesses and families in Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario.

The country’s border services agency said that it had issued 188 removal orders and deported 111 persons by September 3. Fifty of the orders were issued to persons in the Greater Toronto Area, and 23 individuals in the region had been deported. Read on.

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A Hindutva influencer who allegedly assaulted the father of a student activist during youth protests was granted three weeks of interim bail on Tuesday, Live Law reported.

On July 23, Sanjay Kumar, the father of student activist Nishu Aazad, was assaulted at Jantar Mantar during demonstrations against the alleged irregularities in competitive examinations.

Swatantra Bharadwaj, a Hindutva influencer, had been detained on September 4 after a purported video featured him claiming that a phone call from Delhi minister Kapil Mishra helped him avoid arrest over the assault.

The purported video showed him claiming that he had not been jailed despite having “cracked the skull” of Kumar. After it was widely shared, Bharadwaj was booked for causing simple hurt and wrongful restraint.

Following the controversy over the video, members of the Cockroach Janta Party, protested on September 4 outside the Parliament Street police station in Delhi, demanding that charges under provisions relating to attempt to murder be added to the first information report.

After the protest, the police invoked sections of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act and criminal intimidation, Live Law reported.

Bharadwaj has claimed that he acted in self-defence and had he not done so he could have “lynched by the mob or killed”.

On Monday, the Patiala House Courts reserved the order on Bharadwaj’s plea seeking regular bail.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Canada has deported four Indians in an immigration crackdown targeting foreign citizens allegedly linked to extortion groups, the country’s border services agency said on Monday.

The deportations were part of a law enforcement campaign against persons with alleged links to criminal organisations targeting South Asian businesses and families in Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario.

The agency said that it had issued 188 removal orders and deported 111 persons by September 3 as part of the crackdown. Fifty of the orders were issued to persons in the Greater Toronto Area, and 23 individuals in the region had been deported.

Amitoz Bajwa, Jasmer Singh, Palwinder Singh and Sahibjot Singh were deported after they were found inadmissible under Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

Palwinder Singh was removed from the country after the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada found him inadmissible under the Act for being a member of a criminal group linked to extortion-related violence, the border services agency said.

Jasmer Singh, convicted in Canada for forcible confinement, was found inadmissible for serious criminality, the agency said.

Amitoz Bajwa and Sahibjot Singh were deported after being found inadmissible on the grounds of having links to groups involved in criminal activity. Bajwa was also allegedly linked to firearms-related activity and an extortion-related shooting, the Canadian agency said.

Canada deported more than 3,320 Indian citizens in the first six months of 2026. In 2025, the country had deported 3,779 Indians.

Indians also made up the largest group in Canada’s “removal in progress inventory”, with 7,669 people awaiting deportation.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a plea filed by former Delhi Mayor Farhad Suri seeking that a first information report be registered against Uttar Pradesh Police officers who raided his home, allegedly without a warrant, while searching for journalist Abhishek Upadhyay, Live Law reported.

Upadhyay was among the first to flag the alleged donation theft at the Ram temple in Ayodhya.

In his petition, Suri had sought directions from the court for an FIR to be registered and for guidelines about inter-state police operations, particularly pertaining to searches of residential premises, Bar and Bench reported.

The bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana refused to pass the guidelines and told Suri to approach the Delhi Police for a case to be filed. The court said that it had “no reason to doubt that competent police will strictly act in accordance with law”.

According to the petition, at around 12.45 am on August 23, an “unusually large” team of the Ghaziabad Police in a convoy of about 15 police vehicles arrived to search Suri’s Nizammuddin East residence, The Hindu reported.

Suri claimed that some officers were in plainclothes and did not furnish a search warrant.

The plea contends that Suri was initially told by the police that they were looking for a suspect in a double murder case that they believed was hiding in his home. However, he later learnt that the searches were in connection with a road rage case in which Upadhyay has been booked, Bar and Bench reported.

On August 18, a FIR was registered against Upadhyay in connection with an alleged road rage incident in Ghaziabad. The journalist has claimed that the case, which invokes provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act, was filed to harass him for his reports on alleged corruption at the Ram temple.

On August 25, the Supreme Court granted Upadhyay protection from arrest in the case.

During the hearing on Tuesday, the counsel for the Uttar Pradesh government said that Suri was “hypersensitive”, Live Law reported.

The counsel said Ghaziabad Police was acting on a warrant after having tracked a suspect to a building within 200 yards of Suri’s premises, The Hindu reported.

Further, the court was told that the police officers had followed due procedure and had left the premises after being told that no such person was there.

“We did not even enter his house,” Live Law quoted the Uttar Pradesh additional advocate general as saying.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Journalist Tarun Tejpal surrendered before a Goa court to serve his 10-year sentence for raping and sexually harassing a junior colleague in 2013. He had been convicted by the Goa bench of the Bombay High Court on August 6, overturning a 2021 sessions court verdict.

On August 20, the journalist moved the Supreme Court, challenging the High Court’s decision. A bench of Justice Alok Aradhe had on August 25 directed Tejpal to surrender to the authorities within two weeks. The court agreed to list Tejpal’s appeal, provided he submits his surrender certificate by September 22.

He has been sent to Central Jail in North Goa. Read on.

Seventeen of the 20 Trinamool Congress MPs who had merged with the Tripura-based Nationalist Citizens Party of India in June will join the Bharatiya Janata Party, rebel TMC leader Jagadish Chandra Barma Basunia said. “Since more than two-thirds of the 20 members will be moving, the anti-defection law will not apply to us,” Basunia added.

He said that the MPs will join the Hindutva party “before or after Durga Puja”, which will begin on October 6 and conclude on October 10 this year. Basunia added that Abu Taher Khan, Khalilur Rahaman and Yusuf Pathan would not formally join the BJP but extend support to the National Democratic Alliance.

However, the BJP’s West Bengal unit chief Samik Bhattacharya said that “no one from the TMC or NCPI is joining” the Hindutva party. Read on.

The Central Bureau of Investigation has named former Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and his son Aaditya in the first information report filed in the death of Disha Salian, the former manager of late actor Sushant Singh Rajput. Actors Dino Morea and Rhea Chakraborty, ex-Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh and suspended police officer Sachin Vaze have also been named.

None of the persons have been listed as an accused. They need to be investigated, the CBI said.

Disha Salian had allegedly died by suicide on June 8, 2020, in Mumbai. Six days later, Rajput was found dead at his residence. The police had closed the case in 2021 and said that no evidence of foul play had been found in her death.

On September 2, a division bench of the Bombay High Court directed the CBI to register an FIR based on a statement by Satish Salian, the celebrity manager’s father. Read on.

The Allahabad High Court has stayed the suspension of a teacher even as an enquiry against him is pending for allegedly forcing students at a government school to take part in Islamic religious practices. Mohammed Anzar Ahmad was booked in May after it was alleged that he had forced girl students at a school in Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal district to wear hijab and boys to wear skull caps.

It was also alleged that he made the students recite poet Muhammad Iqbal’s Urdu verse Lab Pe Aati Hai Dua before the morning prayers. In the order passed on September 7, the bench directed that the enquiry against the teacher, Ahmad, be concluded at the earliest, preferably within 15 days. Read on.

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A man accused of ramming a car into a woman biker in Gurugram was arrested in Rajasthan on Tuesday, India Today reported.

The Gurugram Police had on Monday registered a suo moto case against the man, Kalyan Bainsla, for rash driving. The action came after the woman biker shared a video on social media showing a car ramming into her, throwing her off the two-wheeler and speeding away.

The police later added attempt to murder charges to the first information report, The Indian Express reported.

The collision, which occurred on Sunday, was captured on an action camera mounted on her bike.

The woman, who runs the Instagram page “rebelwheels_sia_”, alleged that persons in a white car had been chasing her for some distance.

She said that they repeatedly came close to her two-wheeler while she was riding with members of her biking group.

The biker alleged that despite signalling to the driver to maintain a safe distance, the vehicle continued pursuing her before hitting her.

The woman also said that she would file a complaint with the police.

In the suo motu case, the police had said on Monday that the suspect had been identified.

The owner of the car, Manish, claimed that his friend, Bainsla, had borrowed the vehicle from him two days ago, ANI reported.

Bainsla, in an interview to India Today on Monday, denied intentionally ramming into the motorcycle, and claimed he did not know that a woman was riding it.

Edited by Sneha.

The Central Bureau of Investigation has named former Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and his son, MLA Aaditya Thackeray, in the first information report filed in the death of Disha Salian, the former manager of late actor Sushant Singh Rajput, NDTV reported on Monday.

Others named in the FIR include actors Rhea Chakraborty, Dino Morea and Sooraj Pancholi, ex-Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh, and suspended police officer Sachin Vaze, IANS reported.

None of the persons have been listed as an accused in the case so far. They need to be investigated, the CBI said.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Monday registered an FIR in connection with the death of Disha Salian, the former manager of late actor Sushant Singh Rajput, following an order of the Bombay High Court pic.twitter.com/mucZ8tkFc8

— IANS (@ians_india) September 15, 2026

The FIR filed on Sunday alleged that Uddhav Thackeray, the chief minister at the time, and others had played “a significant role in the conspiracy and subsequent cover-up”, IANS reported.

“The concerned public servants and police officers are also liable to be investigated for destruction or suppression of case papers, files and other public records, fabrication of official records, and misuse of public funds, manpower and police machinery for unlawful purposes and for shielding the offenders,” the FIR said.

Further, the agency called for an investigation into the alleged “commission of the principal offences, criminal conspiracy, subsequent creation and propagation of the false suicide story and suppression, destruction and/or fabrication of evidence”.

Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Sanjay Raut on Tuesday alleged that the CBI’s FIR was part of a “political conspiracy” to tarnish the image of the Thackeray family, The New Indian Express reported.

Raut said that the Mumbai Police had already investigated Disha Salian’s death and found no link between the case and Uddhav Sena leader Aaditya Thackeray. Raut alleged that the fresh CBI probe was being used to target Aaditya Thackeray, who has been critical of the Devendra Fadnavis government in Maharashtra.

“The way the matter was taken to court, which gave an order [to hand over the case to CBI], is a conspiracy,” The New Indian Express quoted Raut as saying. “It has specifically said to conduct a CBI probe but do not name anyone. Yet names are being taken in the media.”

Salian death case

Disha Salian had allegedly died by suicide on June 8, 2020, in Mumbai. Six days later, Rajput was found dead at his residence.

The police had closed the case in 2021 and said that no evidence of foul play had been found. In March 2025, the celebrity manager’s father, Satish Salian, had moved the High Court seeking a CBI probe into her death.

Satish Salian claimed that his daughter had died under suspicious circumstances. In his petition, he alleged that she was gangraped and murdered. He also claimed that there had been a politically driven cover-up to shield “influential persons”.

He said he initially believed that the investigation was “genuine, but later found it to be a cover-up”.

On September 2, a division bench of the Bombay High Court directed the CBI to register an FIR based on a statement by Satish Salian.

The bench said the failure of the police to register an FIR for six years “raises more questions than answers”, PTI reported.

It also pulled up the police for continuing to treat the matter as an accidental death case and pointed to “glaring discrepancies” in the investigation.

The court also said that no one should be treated as a suspect in the case unless the investigating officer finds enough material to reasonably suspect their involvement.

Edited by Sneha.

Clarifications and corrections: The story has been updated to reflect more clearly that the persons named in the FIR have not been listed as accused in the case.

The Delhi High Court on Monday granted bail to a man who had spent eight years in jail after being arrested under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act in 2018, reported Bar and Bench.

Noting that only 40 out of 120 witnesses have been examined by the prosecution so far, a bench of Justices Navin Chawla and Ravinder Dudeja said it was “moved, particularly by the long period of incarceration”, reported ANI.

“We are of the opinion that the appellant has been able to make out a case for being released on bail,” the bench held.

The man, Mohammad Saqib, had been arrested in December 2018 under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, the Explosive Substances Act and the Indian Penal Code.

The National Investigation Agency had alleged that he was a member of the Islamic State-inspired terrorist group Harkat-ul-Harb-e-Islam.

The agency also alleged that Saqib had facilitated meetings with Jaish-e-Mohammed militants for training and procured arms for “waging war” against the government, reported Bar and Bench.

Saqib moved the High Court after his petition seeking bail was rejected by the Patiala House courts on May 27, 2024, reported ANI.

Opposing his petition, the National Investigation Agency said that Saqib cannot be granted bail only because there was a delay in the trial.

The court, however, said that the statements of the witnesses so far have not been grave enough to prolong Saqib’s detention. It also held that although the material allegedly recovered from his phone was serious, it does not warrant him remaining in jail.

Setting aside the Patiala House courts’ order, the bench directed Saqib not to travel out of his native place in Uttar Pradesh’s Hapur while out on bail.

He has only been allowed to travel to Delhi to attend the trial against him or report to the National Investigation Agency’s office. The court also directed him to report to the agency’s office in Lucknow once every 15 days.

Saqib was told to surrender his passport to the trial court and use only one mobile phone or landline until the trial against him is completed. He cannot change his contact details or residence without informing the investigating agency and the trial court seven days in advance.

The court also told him not to share or circulate any “anti-national material” on social media or otherwise, reported Bar and Bench.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The West Bengal government has withdrawn its approval for the ISKCON-linked Akshaya Patra Foundation to supply mid-day meals to schools in four districts, reported The Indian Express on Tuesday.

The foundation had been given approval to provide the meals to schools in Howrah, Purulia, North 24 Parganas and Purba Medinipur through an order issued on August 21.

On September 11, Paromita Roy, the joint secretary of the State Education Department, rescinded the order without specifying any reason, the newspaper reported.

The heads of several schools said that arrangements had not been made for the foundation to supply cooked meals in the districts, reported The Times of India. They also flagged difficulties in providing boiled eggs separately to students, as was being done in schools in Kolkata.

It is unclear whether the Akshaya Patra Foundation had said it would exclude eggs from the mid-day meals in the four districts. However, in states such as Karnataka and Odisha, the foundation has faced criticism from Right to Food activists for excluding eggs, onions and garlic from its menus in line with ISKCON’s religious dietary principles.

Mid-day meal arrangement in Kolkata

Soon after coming to power in West Bengal, the Bharatiya Janata Party government had empanelled the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, or ISKCON, to supply mid-day meals served in government and aided schools in Kolkata.

On its part, the Hindu religious organisation had said that eggs would not be part of the meals they provide. Radharaman Das, the Kolkata spokesperson of ISKCON, said that the meals would include ingredients such as paneer, rajma, soybeans, pulses and other vegetarian protein sources.

Prior to this, students in West Bengal were usually served eggs once a week, with rice, dal and potato curry on the remaining school days.

Eggs are a wholesome, nutritious food with high nutrient density. It is a high-value protein and provides other nutrients such as vitamins, essential amino acids and minerals that are crucial for growth and good health, according to the Union government’s Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries.

ISKCON’s announcement had led to criticism from the Opposition parties in the state, with the Trinamool Congress saying that the BJP government was depriving children of nutrition by removing eggs from the midday meals.

Party MP Deren O’Brien had alleged that the Hindutva party was “imposing vegetarianism”.

A public interest litigation had also been filed in the Calcutta High Court against the government’s decision to hand over the responsibility of supplying mid-day meals to ISKCON.

Amid the row, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari had announced on July 29 that the state government would provide eggs separately to students in Kolkata through self-help groups, reported PTI.

Adhikari said the decision was taken “keeping in mind the students’ need for a wholesome protein diet”.

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 a minimum of 450 calories, between eight and twelve grams of protein, 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 Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read:

• Eggs to go off school menus in West Bengal, Hindutva will deprive children of vital nutrition

• Not just Madhya Pradesh: Denying eggs to malnourished children is common in BJP-run states

The Janata Dal (United) on Monday said that it supported the introduction of a Uniform Civil Code at the national level, but would not allow it to be implemented in Bihar, ANI quoted party leader Shyam Rajak as saying.

“When this bill came to Parliament, our leader [Nitish Kumar] had clearly said that he supports the bill, but will not allow it to be implemented in his state,” the news agency quoted him as saying. “We stand by that.”

The statement came a day after Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that governments led by the Bharatiya Janata Party and its National Democratic Alliance partners in all 21 states would introduce the Uniform Civil Code before 2029. The next Lok Sabha elections are scheduled for 2029.

The JD(U) is part of the National Democratic Alliance.

Another alliance partner, the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) said that the party would state its position after the draft is made public for discussion.

Union minister and LJP (RV) chief Chirag Paswan in a social media post said that India’s social fabric is diverse and “every community has its own traditions and customs”.

“The Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), is committed to both equality and diversity,” Paswan wrote. “Let the draft be made public, let there be an assessment of the interests of all stakeholders, let there be extensive discussions, then, after review, the party will state its position.”

Several other alliance partners of the BJP expressed support for the move, including the Telugu Desam Party, the Shiv Sena faction led by Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and the Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular), The Indian Express reported.

Before the TDP joined the NDA following the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, party chief and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu had said the party would “stand with the Muslim community” when it came to a Uniform Civil Code.

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

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

In January 2025, Uttarakhand became the first state to implement the Uniform Civil Code after Independence when it brought the code into force. Gujarat, Assam and Madhya Pradesh have passed similar legislations but are awaiting presidential assent and notification.

The Maharashtra, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh governments have formed committees to draft Uniform Civil Codes. The Rajasthan Cabinet also approved a bill to introduce such a legislation in August.

A common civil code has been in place in Goa since the Portuguese Civil Code was adopted in 1867.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Indian Police Service officer Bushara Bano was transferred by the West Bengal government on Monday, two days after Hindutva groups criticised for using Islamic greetings in a video posted online, The Times of India reported.

In the video posted on Sunday, Bano had spoken about how the Residential Coaching Academy of the Aligarh Muslim University in Uttar Pradesh had helped her prepare for the Union Public Service Commission exam.

Some social media accounts including The Jaipur Dialogue and the Hindu Legal Fund, had criticised the Muslim IPS officer for saying “assalamualaikum”, a greeting that means “peace be unto you”, as well as “inshallah”, a phrase meaning god willing, and “jazakallah”, which means “may god reward you”.

They said that she had not said “Vande Mataram” or “Jai Hind”.

“A serving officer representing the Indian state should maintain neutrality and use national expressions in public communication,” The Hindu Legal Fund had said.

The group said that it had filed a complaint with the West Bengal home secretary and sought action.

Bano, a 2021 batch officer, was the additional superintendent of police in Paschim Medinipur district’s Kharagpur. On Monday, Bano was made the deputy commanding officer of the State Armed Police’s 4th battalion.

Two other officers were also transferred as part of the same order.

The Opposition criticised the government’s decision.

Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra said that while one Bharatiya Janata Party government at the Centre was “showing off secular credentials” at the BRICS summit in Delhi “by creating ‘prayer room’”, another at the state level “sidelines Muslim woman IPS officer...simply for saying ‘assalamalaikum’ and ‘jazakallah’”.

The state government was “furthering hate spread by godimedia TV”, of lapdog media, Moitra said.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

A federal judge in the United States on Monday blocked the Donald Trump administration from implementing a new rule that would limit how long foreign students and journalists can remain in the US without applying to extend their visas, Reuters reported.

The judge ruled in favour of unions and higher education advocacy groups a day before the new rules were scheduled to take effect.

In July, the Trump administration had announced the new rules, under which international students would only be able to remain in the country for a maximum of four years. The changes would curb “visa abuse”, the Department of Homeland Security had said.

Since 1978, foreign students, or F visa holders, could stay in the US for their “duration of status” or as long as they were enrolled as a full-time student.

The new rule would impact visitors on cultural exchange programmes who possess a J visa and international journalists with an I visa. The visa for members of the media will be limited to 240 days.

These visas are currently available for the duration of an educational programme or employment in the US.

On Monday, the judge at a district court in Boston said that the homeland security department was adopting the policy based on “exceptionally weak” rationales.

The new regulations would change a system through which the US had for nearly 50 years issued visas to foreign students for their “duration of status”, Reuters quoted the court as saying.

The current system had permitted tens of millions of foreign students and researchers to lead “groundbreaking research in ​science, medicine, and technology, substantial economic growth, and a host of other benefits, often on a vast scale”, the court was quoted as having added.

The new rule that was to take effect on Tuesday would significantly reduce the number of foreign students, academics and journalists in the US, the judge said.

James Percival, the general counsel for the homeland security department, criticised the court order, contending that it would allow foreigners to stay in the US for decades even if they only “take one class per semester”. He remarked that the verdict would mean that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement must permit “rampant abuse of our immigration system”.

Impact of proposed rules

The proposed changes were expected to hurt students enrolled in doctoral programmes the most, which typically require five years to seven years to complete.

These programmes have attracted heavy Indian enrolment, with 3.3 lakh students from the country currently studying in the US.

In 2020, a similar proposal was announced at the end of Trump’s first term. But it was withdrawn by the Joe Biden administration in 2021.

As of 2024, there were about 1.6 million international students on F visas in the US.

In 2023-’24, the authorities also granted 13,000 visas for journalists and more than 3.5 lakh J visas meant for cultural exchange visitors.

Since taking office in his second term in January 2025, Trump has announced several measures as part of his immigration crackdown.

Edited by Anamika Pathak.

The Delhi High Court on Monday rejected a petition filed by the makers of Vimal Elaichi against show-cause notices issued by the Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration to their brand ambassadors Shah Rukh Khan, Ajay Devgn and Tiger Shroff, Live Law reported.

Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma rejected the plea, observing that the High Court did not have territorial jurisdiction over the matter, since the notices originated in Maharashtra.

“The mere fact that Food Safety and Standards Authority of India is the apex body under the enactment, or that it is situated in Delhi, cannot alter the source or character of the show cause notice impugned in the present petition,” Live Law quoted the court as saying.

The petition had sought directions to quash the notices issued to the actors on August 11 in connection with an advertisement for Vimal Elaichi mouth freshener, which the food and drug agency alleged amounted to surrogate promotion of Vimal Pan Masala, a product banned in the state.

The agency had asked the actors to provide documentary evidence showing that Vimal Elaichi is an independent product available for sale in the market. They had also been directed to immediately stop participating in or endorsing the advertisement and remove the promotional content from their social media accounts, websites and other digital platforms.

PB Agro, the manufacturer of Vimal Elaichi, argued that the food and drug agency’s notice was issued only to the actors and not to the company, even though the company would suffer “irreparable harm” from the action.

The company argued that its petition was maintainable as the company operated from Delhi, its advertising campaign was handled there, payments to its brand ambassadors were made from the capital, and the alleged harm was suffered in Delhi, the legal news outlet reported.

The court, however, rejected the arguments, and said that the impugned notice stemmed from an independent action taken by the Mumbai Food and Drug Administration.

In the petition, the company had argued that the allegation of surrogate advertising was baseless, claiming that Vimal Pan Masala had neither been manufactured nor sold in Maharashtra since 2001, the legal news outlet reported. It added that the Supreme Court had imposed a nationwide ban on pan masala containing tobacco in 2013.

Maharashtra has prohibited gutka and pan masala containing tobacco or nicotine since 2012 under the Food Safety and Standards Act, with the ban renewed annually. The latest prohibition order was issued by the state food safety commissioner on July 13.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.