At the end of a week of incessant rains in which nine Mumbai residents died in a house collapse or because trees had fallen on them, apologists of the administration swarmed on to social media to offer absolution.

“No infrastructure in the world is designed to handle so much rain, but life is on in Mumbai,” pronounced one user on X. Proclaimed another, “No country in the world can have a city unflooded with such huge [amount] of rain in a short spell. Mumbai does better than many despite all its faults.”

In the 24-hour period until Sunday morning, the Colaba weather station in South Mumbai recorded 265.6 mm of rainfall – its wettest July day in five decades. The gauge at the Santa Cruz station to the north received 227.7 mm of rain, the second-highest figure for July in five years.

While the intensity of the rainfall was unusual, the administration and its supporters are ignoring the obvious: in the era of climate change, the exceptional is the new normal.

There is no shortage of research about the risks that Mumbai faces from climate change. For instance, a climate action plan published by the city’s municipal corporation in 2022 noted that Mumbai “has been witnessing a steady increase in extreme rainfall events”.

Earlier this year, experts at Azim Premji University said that in suburban Mumbai, the southwest monsoon is projected to increase by 18% by 2040, from the baseline of 1,749 mm fixed in 2020. The southern section of the city, meanwhile, is expected to receive 2,003 mm of rain by 2040, up from 1,715 mm in 2020.

Mumbai’s administration is blundering on regardless, defying its own studies.

In March, for instance, it obtained the permission of the Supreme Court to fell 45,000 mangrove trees to allow it to construct the Versova-Bhayandar section of its coastal road project in North Mumbai.

This despite the fact that the municipality’s climate plan calculates that the loss of carbon-absorbing mangroves in Mumbai results in the emission of 1,572 tonnes a year of carbon dioxide – the gas that is the main driver of climate change.

Another example of conspicuous callousness was seen in April, when the Maharashtra government issued a notification converting a 13,843-square-metre plot of salt pan land in the eastern neighbourhood of Wadala from a natural zone into a residential zone, primarily to allow the construction of a gymkhana for IAS officers.

Like the mangroves, Mumbai’s salt pan lands act as a natural barrier against tidal surges. They also work as a sponge, absorbing rain spilloff.

Instead of strengthening the city’s natural defences, the municipality is allowing them to grow weaker despite climate threats.

Extreme heat

Ironically, just a fortnight before the deluge, Mumbai was baking in intense summer heat. Though the average summer temperature in the city is around 32 degrees C, temperatures rose to 35 degrees or more on at least 38 days between March and June. On June 12, the city sweated away as it experienced its hottest night in 57 years, with the mercury refusing to fall below 30.2 degrees.

These high nocturnal temperatures were the result of the “urban heat island effect” – the phenomenon that describes the heat absorbed by concrete and asphalt surfaces in the scorching day being released even after sunset. This effect is exacerbated by the loss of tree cover.

The escalation of the heat island effect isn’t surprising. Since the pandemic, Mumbai’s administrators have gone into overdrive to clad the city in concrete. They have offered builders incentives to tear down perfectly solid apartment blocks and “redevelop” them into soaring towers. Over the past six years, 1,094 “redevelopment” deals have been signed.

This process, as well the numerous road and flyover construction projects now underway, has resulted in thousands of trees being cut. Between 2016 and 2021, according to the municipal climate action plan, the city lost 2,028 hectares of urban tree cover.

In Mumbai, you never know what the rains will expose. This was Bhandup yesterday: a road caved in during ongoing excavation work and a vehicle fell into the pit. Heavy rain was the trigger, but was reckless construction the real cause? Why are redevelopment projects being allowed… pic.twitter.com/dUXVDAzOow

— Rajdeep Sardesai (@sardesairajdeep) July 5, 2026

Also under scrutiny this week is the Rs 17,000-crore programme to concretise 714.1 km of Mumbai’s roads. Not only has this boosted the heat island effect, the concrete seems to be choking the city’s trees – causing them to topple over.

Between July 1 and July 5, reported The Indian Express, at least 559 incidents of falling trees have been reported. Three people – including an 11-year-old school student – have been crushed by toppling trees over the past week.

Few of Mumbai’s recent urban planning decisions seem to reflect an awareness of a city attempting to build resilience against the effects of climate change.

The municipal climate action plan of 2022 ends with an exhortation to “Resident Welfare Associations, Advance Locality Management groups [and] civil society groups” among others to “participate, deliberate and catalyse” its success.

That is empty rhetoric. That year, for instance, citizens protesting against trees being cut for a metro car shed in Aarey were slapped with police cases. In other instances, once-vocal citizens organisations with useful urban expertise have been undermined or simply ignored.

On Thursday, a politician belonging to Maharashtra’s ruling coalition in an television interview with Rajdeep Sardesai brushed away criticism about the large number of trees being cut in the drive to concrete the city’s roads.

“You cannot have everything,” said Milind Deora of the Shiv Sena’s Shinde faction. “You cannot please everyone.”

That statement gave no cause for confidence. It did not reflect an understanding of the fact that coping with climate change does not involve pleasing people. It needs administrators courageous enough to fend off vested interests to implement projects that are in line with their own research and who listen to the creative, grounded solutions offered by those with the biggest stake in the city – Mumbai’s ordinary residents.

Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust accepted the resignation of its general secretary, Champat Rai, amid the row about alleged embezzlement of donations made to the Ram temple in Ayodhya. Trustee Anil Mishra’s resignation has also been accepted, said the trust’s treasurer.

On June 26, Rai and Mishra resigned from their posts on “moral grounds”. This came after a first information report was registered against eight persons in the case on June 25 on a complaint by the trust.

Opposition leaders and a whistleblower have claimed that cash and jewellery offerings made by devotees had been embezzled by temple staffers under the trust’s watch. Read on.

The RSS man at the centre of Ram temple trust’s controversial run in Ayodhya, reports Ayush Tiwari

Thirteen persons have been killed in rain-related incidents in Mumbai and its surrounding areas in the past three to four days, said the Maharashtra government. The India Meteorological Department has issued a red alert warning of heavy rainfall in the region in the next two days.

On Sunday, six persons were killed after a residential building collapsed in the city’s Mankhurd area. Two other men were killed in separate incidents earlier in the day.

Separately, traffic was stopped on the Mumbai-Pune expressway after a landslide blocked the route. The traffic on the old Mumbai-Pune highway was also halted because of a landslide and heavy rainfall in the Karjat-Lonavala Bhor Ghat section. Read on.

The Delhi High Court has sought the Union government’s response on two petitions challenging orders directing the Delhi Gymkhana Club to vacate its 27.3-acre premises. The matter has been posted for further hearing on July 28.

The Delhi Gymkhana Club is one of the national capital’s oldest and most exclusive social and sporting clubs. It is located near the prime minister’s official residence and other high-security installations.

In May, the Land and Development Office directed the club to vacate and hand over its premises to the Union government, saying that it was required for “strengthening and securing of defence infrastructure”, governance facilities and other “vital public security purposes”. Read on.

Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed has been named in a fresh chargesheet in connection with the April 2025 terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam district. Saeed has been accused of “waging war against India and hatching a conspiracy from across the border”.

In its main chargesheet, the NIA had named seven persons, including Pakistani handler Sajid Jatt of the Lashkar-e-Taiba and its affiliate The Resistance Front. The terror attack at Baisaran on April 22 left 26 persons dead and 17 injured. Read on.

Political leaders have condemned the removal of the film Satluj from the Zee5 streaming platform, criticising the move to censor one of Punjab’s “darkest chapters”. The film depicts extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances by the Punjab police in the 1990s.

Shiromani Akali Dal leader Sukhbir Singh Badal said that the “powerful film that courageously unveils Punjab’s painful history…cannot be silenced this way”.

The film by Honey Trehan was previously titled Punjab ‘95 and was released on Friday evening but was removed by Sunday evening. Zee5 posted on social media that “in light of the current developments, Satluj will be unavailable in India until further notice”. It did not elaborate on the nature of these developments. Read on.

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

The government’s think-tank NITI Aayog in April released a report on the Ease of Doing Research in India. Seventy-six percent of the respondents said the industry rarely supported funding for projects in their discipline.

This is hardly a surprise.

Private investment in R&D in India has historically been very low, even in sectors like the pharmaceutical industry where private corporations have made huge profits only to plough that excess capital into real-estate or failing movie studios. As a result, it has been the Indian state, not the private sector, which has traditionally had to cough up the capital for R&D in India.

Much of the Indian government’s funding for R&D is routed through various government institutions like the Technology Development Board, the Anusandhan National Research Foundation and the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council. Typically, these bodies invite grant applications from industry and academia, which are assessed before making the final grants.

While this funding has generally been modest, in November, the Indian government announced an ambitious fund of Rs 1,00,000 crore for R&D for the public and private sector. Officially called the Research Development & Innovation fund, it will be funded through loans and equity investments.

The Research Development and Innovation scheme targets sunrise sectors as well as sectors important for economic security and strategic purposes. Earlier this year, energy security, deep technology, including quantum computing and artificial intelligence, were identified as priority sectors under the RDI scheme.

The first tranche Rs 20,000 crore for the scheme was released in the last budget. These funds are to be administered through the Anusandhan National Research Foundation as the first-level custodian of funds. Other government bodies like the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council, the Technology Development Board, and non-banking financial corporations as second-level fund managers – “SLFM”. This is a significant increase in government spending on R&D. For contrast, the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council, since its inception in 2012, has reportedly disbursed only Rs 4,200 crore in grants.

While increasing government funding for R&D is always welcome, questions have been raised whether increased funding, without a reform of the culture of “red tape” in public universities and public research institutions, will achieve any significant outcomes, especially when the focus is on applied research and industry collaborations. To this, there are two more specific concerns: transparency and intellectual property management.

A legal framework for transparency

When Parliament gives the bureaucracy complete discretion to disburse Rs 1 lakh crore, one would have expected the government to create a legal framework to ensure transparency in how these funding decisions are made by those in charge of disbursing the funds.

In particular, these funding bodies should be releasing elaborate information on who exactly is making these funding decisions, while also making funding agreements available to the public with appropriate redactions. This does not happen in India.

Take, for example, the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council. It makes publicly available a list of projects it has funded, but it will fight a citizen to death if asked to disclose its funding agreements under the Right to Information Act.

This is unlike the position in the United States, where the “grants policy” of the National Institutes for Health clearly states that most information related to grants will be made publicly available:

“Except for certain types of information that may be considered proprietary or private information that cannot be released, most grant-related information submitted to NIH by the applicant or recipient in the application or in the post-award phase is considered public information and, once an award is made, is subject to possible release to individuals or organizations outside NIH.”

The policy emphasises that this information is made public “to foster an open system of government and accountability for governmental programs and expenditures and, in the case of research, to provide information about federally funded activities”.

Neither the Anusandhan National Research Foundation nor the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council, nor the Technology Development Board, have a similar clause on their websites. Without such disclosures, it is impossible for civil society to hold accountable either the funding bodies or those receiving public funding from these bodies.

These are important questions to ask at this stage because of the experience during the Covid-19 pandemic when the BIRAC handed out crores of public money to Indian pharmaceutical companies to develop new vaccines but refused to make publicly available the funding agreements even when some of these projects got caught up in controversy.

Take for example, the mRNA vaccine developed by Gennova Pharmaceuticals with significant financial assistance from the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council. The government touted the vaccine as a symbol of India’s self-reliance in vaccine technology. It then came to light that an American biotech company had alleged that Gennova had stolen its trade secrets related to the mRNA vaccine and initiated litigation against the Indian company. Both parties eventually settled the dispute out of court.

Union Minister @DrJitendraSingh launches the GEMCOVAC® -OM, an Omicron-specific mRNA-based Booster vaccine

India’s first mRNA vaccine developed using the indigenous platform technology by Gennova, with funding support from DBT & BIRAC pic.twitter.com/RLrxjN6jHA

— DD News (@DDNewslive) June 25, 2023

There was barely a word from Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council while this controversy was playing out in the courts and nobody knows how the public funding granted to Gennova was utilised by the company. Similarly, due to the opacity regarding funding agreement, it is impossible to know whether the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council negotiated a requirement for Gennova to share its publicly-funded mRNA technology with India’s relatively large public sector vaccine industry. The Council refused to make publicly available the funding agreement under the RTI Act.

A second example on why transparency is important, is the case of Covaxin, the vaccine developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Council for Medical Research, with funding from the government.

During the pandemic, the Indian Council for Medical Research refused to make available the funding agreement with Bharat Biotech available under the RTI Act – however some aspects of the MoU had to be disclosed in Parliament because of questions raised by the Opposition. Later, it came to light that Bharat Biotech had filed patent applications for Covaxin without including the Indian Council for Medical Research as a co-patentee or its scientists as co-inventors.

Only after the issue was raised in Parliament did Bharat Biotech move to include the Indian Council for Medical Research as a co-patentee. This was possible only because the Opposition had asked the government to disclose the terms of the MoU during the pandemic.

#TodayInParliament ||

Union Health Minister @JPNadda during Question hour in #LokSabha:

💠#ICMR got Rs 172 crore as royalty from Bharat Biotech International Limited (BBIL) for jointly developing #Covaxin.

💠Mr. Nadda said that after the government’s objection to not putting… pic.twitter.com/db8KtLTSo3

— All India Radio News (@airnewsalerts) August 2, 2024

These concerns of transparency are severely magnified in the context of Anusandhan National Research Foundation, given its budget of Rs 20,000 crore for just one year.

As of today, the ANRF Act is lacking in statutory safeguards mandating transparency. At most this law requires grantees to submit a “statement of expenditure” and “utilisation certificate” but these statements reveal little useful information. Hopefully the Foundation will develop a transparency charter before waiting for the first controversy to make it to the news.

The Intellectual Property issue

A second issue pertains to the intellectual property in the research generated from public funding provided by the RDI Fund. Like many other countries, India has traditionally allowed private companies to seek patents, in their name, for inventions resulting from public funded research.

The terms on which such intellectual property can be commercialised, the royalty rates payable to the government and the terms on which the invention can be used in public interest by the state is generally determined by the funding agreement between the funding body and the recipient. This is not ideal because it delegated a lot of discretion to the bureaucracy which makes these decisions in complete secrecy.

Other countries, such as the United States, have enacted laws like the Bayh-Dole Act to regulate public funding of research and development. This law also secures public interest in all intellectual property generated through federal funding. For example, in certain cases of public emergency or non-commercialisation or national security, the Bayh Dole Act allows the American state “march-in” rights to protect public interest by over-riding exclusive patent rights.

The ANRF Act, 2023 enacted by Parliament is silent about the intellectual property generated via public funding. A few months ago, the Anusandhan National Research Foundation publicly announced an IP policy, which provides some “guiding principles” for grants that it makes. For instance, on the issue of “march in” rights, the ANRF’s policy document states the following:

Any licensing arrangement should consider preserving for the Government of India the irrevocable, royalty-free right to practice or require the licensee to grant sub-licenses to responsible applicants, on reasonable terms, when it may be necessary to fulfil public interest, including, health or safety or security needs of the country. This is without prejudice to the right of the Government of India under law for compulsory licensing.

As the language above indicates, crucial decision-making powers regarding IP are delegated to unknown bureaucrats at ANRF – the policy only makes a non-binding recommendation.

Enforcing “march-in” rights through contractual agreements or via the remedies under the Patents Act, (such as compulsory licensing or “government use” provisions) tends to be legally complicated and may require payment of reasonable compensation, thereby opening the door for litigation and delaying the ability of the government to use the new technology in public interest. It is easier to achieve these objectives through statutory safeguards in a law.

Robust legal framework

In the past, India has attempted to enact its own version of the Bayh Dole Act, after a recommendation on these lines was made by the erstwhile National Knowledge Commission. That attempt failed in 2010 after a poorly drafted legislation was torpedoed by a Parliamentary Standing Committee.

Since then, the bureaucracy in control of India’s scientific establishment has preferred to tackle these issues through guidelines, instead of a binding statutory law which guarantees transparency and accountability. The bureaucracy seems reluctant to recommend a legislation to govern public-funded intellectual property since that would curb the vast and opaque discretionary powers they enjoy right now.

Hopefully the political establishment will soon realise that it is a bad idea to hand over Rs 1,00,000 crores to this bureaucracy without having in place a robust legislative framework to ensure both transparency and protection of public interest in the IP generated through the funding.

Prashant Reddy T is the coauthor of Create, Copy, Disrupt: India’s Intellectual Property Dilemmas (OUP). Yogesh Byadwal is a final year student at NLSIU.

Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust on Monday accepted the resignation of its general secretary, Champat Rai, amid the row about alleged embezzlement of donations made to the Ram temple in Ayodhya, ANI quoted the trust’s treasurer as saying.

The trust manages the temple.

On June 26, Rai and trustee Anil Mishra resigned from their posts on “moral grounds”. Mishra’s resignation has also been accepted, reported ANI.

A first information report was registered against eight persons in the case on June 25. The FIR was filed based on a complaint by the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust.

All eight accused named in the FIR have been arrested. They were booked under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.

On June 23, the Special Investigation Team probing the alleged irregularities at the Ram temple submitted its preliminary report to the Uttar Pradesh government. The contents of the report have not been made public.

However, unidentified persons aware of its contents told The Indian Express that the report highlights alleged lapses, inadequate supervision and negligence in the handling, maintenance and counting of donated cash and valuables.

The SIT is expected to submit a final report next week.

The team was set up by the state government on June 13 following a request from the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust.

Opposition leaders and a whistleblower have claimed that cash and jewellery offerings made by devotees had been embezzled by temple staffers under the trust’s watch.

The Ram temple in Ayodhya was built on the site of the Babri Masjid, which was demolished by Hindutva extremists on December 6, 1992, because they believed that it stood on the spot where the Hindu deity Ram was born.

In 2019, the Supreme Court held that the demolition of the Babri mosque was illegal, but handed over the land to a trust for a Ram temple to be constructed. At the same time, it directed that a five-acre plot in Ayodhya be allotted to Muslims for a mosque to be built.

The Ram temple was inaugurated in a ceremony led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in January 2024.

Edited by Sneha.

Also read:

• In Ayodhya, it’s Sangh Parivar vs Sangh Parivar as Ram temple fund ‘theft’ charges blow up

• The RSS man at the centre of Ram temple trust’s controversial run in Ayodhya

A day after the film Satluj – which depicts extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearances by the Punjab police in the 1990s – was removed from the streaming platform Zee5, political leaders condemned the move to “censor” one of the state’s “darkest chapters”.

The Honey Trehan film, previously titled Punjab ’95 and led by Diljit Dosanjh, was released on Zee5 on Friday evening. By late Sunday evening, the movie had been removed from the platform.

Zee5 posted on social media that “in light of the current developments, Satluj will be unavailable in India until further notice”. It did not elaborate on the nature of these developments

On Monday, Shiromani Akali Dal leader Sukhbir Singh Badal said that the “powerful film that courageously unveils Punjab’s painful history…cannot be silenced this way”.

“This is not mere censorship,” Badal said on social media. “It is an assault on our collective memory, truth and freedom of expression.”

He added: “Punjab deserves to confront its past with honest not suppression.”

Shocked and saddened by the arbitrary removal of #Satluj from #ZEE5 in India.
A powerful film that courageously unveils Punjab’s painful history and honours the supreme sacrifice of S. Jaswant Singh Ji Khalra cannot be silenced this way.
This is not mere censorship — it is an… pic.twitter.com/yfrkMKYq5D

— Sukhbir Singh Badal (@officeofssbadal) July 5, 2026

The film is based on human rights activist Jaswinder Singh Khalra’s efforts to expose the culture of brutality and impunity that prevailed in Punjab under the guise of fighting the Khalistani movement.

Khalra was abducted in September 1995, never to be seen again. A Central Bureau of Investigation team found that a Punjab police unit had held Khalra without charges, murdered him in October 1995 and dumped his body. A handful of police officers were eventually convicted for the murders.

In the film, Diljit Dosanjh’s character Jaswant investigates a death squad that has the protection of Bitta, the state police chief.

Congress leader Sukhpal Singh Khaira said on Monday that the “removal of this fact-based film is in contradiction to the decision of the Supreme Court that upheld the conviction of guilty police officers responsible for the abduction of [Khalra]”.

“I urge the government of India to release the film so that our present and future generations know what a police state is,” he added.

I strongly condemn the removal of film Satluj from @ZEE5India platform in India. We all know about the gross human rights violations prevalent then in Punjab and the subsequent mysterious disappearance of Prof Jaswant Singh Khalra !

The removal of this fact based film is in… https://t.co/PStilrhBfB

— Sukhpal Singh Khaira (@SukhpalKhaira) July 6, 2026

Aam Aadmi Party MP Malvinder Singh Kang said that “when a nation begins to fear its own history, censorship becomes its most dangerous weapon”.

Beyond shocking.
When a nation begins to fear its own history, censorship becomes its most dangerous weapon.
I unequivocally condemn the unexplained removal of #Satluj from Zee5 India. A film that compels India to confront one of Punjab's darkest chapters and portrays the alleged… pic.twitter.com/kEZOxHSL1L

— Malvinder Singh Kang (@kang_malvinder) July 6, 2026

“Propaganda-driven films such as The Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story were promoted and screened without obstruction,” Kang said in a social media post. “Yet when a film raises uncomfortable questions about the human rights violations and atrocities in Punjab, it disappears from an OTT platform.”

Punjab ’95 had faced strict censorship after it was completed in 2022. Over the course of several months, the censor board had demanded 127 cuts, effectively scuttling the release, Trehan had told Scroll in an interview last year.

The version that was briefly available on Zee5 was uncut.

Written by Tanya Shrivastava. Edited by Sneha.

Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed was named on Monday in a fresh chargesheet in connection with the April 2025 terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam district.

In a supplementary chargesheet filed before a National Investigation Agency special court in Jammu, the anti-terror agency charged Saeed in his individual capacity and also as chief of the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba and its affiliate, The Resistance Front.

He has been charged under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, the agency said in a statement.

Saeed has also been accused of “waging war against India and hatching a conspiracy from across the border”, it added.

The agency said that Saeed’s name was added to the chargesheet after it collected supporting evidence of his role as well as “Pakistan’s conspiracy” in the April 2025 attack.

In the main chargesheet filed in December 2025, the NIA had named seven persons including Pakistani handler Sajid Jatt of the Lashkar-e-Taiba and its affiliate The Resistance Front.

The Pakistan-based organisations were also charged as one legal entity for their role in planning, facilitating and executing the attack.

The chargesheet also named three Pakistani terrorists who were killed by the Indian security forces during a security operation codenamed Mahadev on July 28. They were identified as Faisal Jatt alias Suleman Shah, Habeeb Tahir alias Jibran and Hamza Afghani.

In June 2025, the agency arrested two men, Parvaiz Ahmad Jothar and Bashir Ahmad Jothar, for allegedly harbouring the terrorists who carried out the attack. They had also been named in the December chargesheet.

Saeed has been in jail in Pakistan since 2019 on multiple charges of terror financing along with other leaders of the banned terrorist outfit Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the front organisation of the Lashkar-e-Taiba. He is also a United Nations-designated terrorist and has a $10 million bounty on him.

He is wanted in India for carrying out the 2008 Mumbai attack that killed 166 people, including six Americans.

In 2023, New Delhi had asked the Pakistan government to extradite Saeed.

The terror attack at Baisaran on April 22 left 26 persons dead and 17 injured. The terrorists targeted tourists after asking their names to ascertain their religion, the police said. All but three of those killed were Hindu.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read: One year after terror attack, Pahalgam remains off the tourist map

The Delhi High Court on Monday sought the Union government’s response on two petitions against the government’s eviction orders directing the Delhi Gymkhana Club to vacate its 27.3-acre premises, Live Law reported.

The matter has been posted for further hearing on July 28.

The Delhi Gymkhana Club is one of the national capital’s oldest and most exclusive social and sporting clubs, frequented by diplomats, bureaucrats and military officers, amongst others. It is located near the prime minister’s official residence and other high-security installations.

On May 22, the Land and Development Office directed the club to vacate and hand over its premises to the Union government, saying that it was required for “strengthening and securing of defence infrastructure”, governance facilities and other “vital public security purposes”.

The club had moved the Delhi High Court against the order on May 25.

The next day, the court refused to grant interim relief to the club. However, it issued summons on the suits filed by the members and employees of the club against the Union government’s order.

This came after the Centre informed the bench that any eviction action would be taken only after due notice.

In the May 22 order, the Centre said that the land had originally been leased for maintaining a social and sporting club.

The Land and Development Office, which functions under the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, had invoked clause 4 of the lease deed, which allows the lessor to re-enter the premises if the land is required for a public purpose.

The government stated that when such action is taken, the entire plot, along with all buildings, structures, lawns and fittings, would vest in the President of India.

On June 29, the Centre also sent the club a show-cause notice asking it to explain why it should not be evicted.

In the June notice, the Centre stated that the club’s continued occupation of the property is “unauthorised” after the termination of its lease on May 22.

The premises in question “constitute valuable public premises vested in the Union of India and the government is under an obligation to regulate, protect and utilise such public property in accordance with public interest and public purpose”.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Landslides and waterlogging triggered by heavy rain in the last three days threw life out of gear in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region and Pune on Monday.

After incessant rainfall and strong winds in Mumbai, flooded roads and felled trees made commuting difficult. The administration has urged residents to remain indoors unless necessary.

Andheri subway: A water logged Andheri subway today around an hour ago. #Mumbairains. pic.twitter.com/ynDLFPcgDe

— Richa Pinto (@richapintoi) July 6, 2026

#MaharashtraRains Heavy monsoon downpours trigger severe flooding across Mumbai & nearby areas! Waterlogged railway tracks delay local trains while submerged roads leave commuters wading through knee-deep water Stay safe and avoid travel! 🌧️🚆 #MumbaiRains #Monsoon #TrafficUpdate pic.twitter.com/6Onw0tdW3I

— Gummalla Lakshmana (@GUMMALLALAKSHM3) July 6, 2026

On Monday, the Mumbai-Pune expressway and the old Mumbai-Pune highway were blocked due to landslides.

Videos posted on social media showed debris blocking the carriageway between the opening of the tunnel and the cable-stayed bridge located in the “Missing Link” section of the expressway.

Food Mall Visual #PuneMumbaiExpresswayHighway pic.twitter.com/BkPIswlo9A

— Pune Pulse (@pulse_pune) July 6, 2026

#पुण् मुसळधार पावसाचा आळंदीला फटका. 2 दिवसांवर आषाढी वारी प्रस्थान आलेले असताना इंद्रायणी नदीवरील पूल पाण्याखाली गेल्याने वारकऱ्यांची आळंदी प्रवेशाची वाट बंद झाली आहे. पाणी ओसरण्याची नागरिक-वारकरी वाट पाहत आहेत.
येथील नदी काठच्या आश्रम शाळांनाही फटका बसला आहे#Pune #Punenews pic.twitter.com/4pB70ZOnEa

— Brijmohan Patil (@brizpatil) July 6, 2026

On Monday morning, waterlogging was reported in several areas of Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad.

#WATCH | Pimpri-Chinchwad, Maharashtra: Water enters Morya Gosavi Ganpati Temple in Pimpri-Chinchwad as the water level of Pawana river rises following incessant rainfall in the area. pic.twitter.com/LIM2Z7frL8

— ANI (@ANI) July 6, 2026

Trains between Mumbai and Pune were also suspended, the Central Railways said.

At least 18 trains operating out of Mumbai had been diverted, while one was rescheduled. Four trains each had also been short-terminated and short-originated, the Central Railways added.

On the Western line, at least six trains had been cancelled and eight others were rescheduled.

Suburban trains in Mumbai were also delayed. The services between Karjat and Khopoli were suspended after the heavy rainfall led to the ballast under the tracks getting washed away.

Landslide at Khandala. The tree came in contact with OHE and caught fire. It has been extinguished and the muck is being cleared from the tracks. #MumbaiRains pic.twitter.com/8z9oH60lIe

— Rajendra B. Aklekar (@rajtoday) July 6, 2026

After Mumbai-Pune rail section, Karjat Khopoli ballast washed away suspending services #MumbaiRains @mid_day pic.twitter.com/PL44wi3xNU

— Rajendra B. Aklekar (@rajtoday) July 6, 2026

#WATCH | Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra: Heavy rainfall causes severe waterlogging in the Chirner village.

A resident says, "...No one has come to check on us yet. We have been in this water for two days now... Yesterday alone, we killed at least 10 to 12 snakes..." pic.twitter.com/iEaUjTZTa9

— ANI (@ANI) July 5, 2026

Thane pic.twitter.com/ReO25ClDtp

— Singh Varun (@singhvarun) July 6, 2026

Palghar Railway station @IndiaWeatherMan @shubhamtorres09 @rushikesh_agre_ @s_r_khandelwal
Turned into a river pic.twitter.com/8IoofwCIAt

— varun mundra (@varunpgd) July 6, 2026

Nalasopara railway station on Western Railways.#Mumbairains. pic.twitter.com/aDMYNJOE6c

— Richa Pinto (@richapintoi) July 6, 2026

Indrayani River flooding, Alandi, Pune !!

Indrayani River is currently at one of its highest flood levels in recent years after intense rainfall in the Khandala–Lonavala region. Continued heavy precipitation across the Lonavala–Pune corridor raises the risk of further flooding… pic.twitter.com/g7CUkZU8yE

— Naveen Reddy (@navin_ankampali) July 6, 2026

#WATCH | Vasai, Maharashtra: Heavy rainfall causes widespread waterlogging in several areas of Vasai. pic.twitter.com/BAgd1XPfeW

— ANI (@ANI) July 6, 2026

The India Meteorological Department has warned that there will be no immediate relief from the rain.

On Monday, a red alert was in place in Mumbai and neighbouring Thane, Palghar and Raigad districts.

Thirteen persons have been killed in rain-related incidents in the past three to four days in Mumbai and nearby regions, the state disaster management minister said.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Hindi has been introduced in the Assam legislative Assembly as a fourth language, alongside Assamese, English and Bodo, ANI quoted Assembly Speaker Ranjeet Kumar Dass as saying.

“For the first time Hindi language has been introduced,” the news agency quoted him as saying. “Hindi is Rashtra Bhasha [national language], and to recognise it, we have decided to introduce the Hindi language.”

India does not have a national language, although the Constitution recognises Hindi in the Devnagari script as the official language of the country. The Official Languages Act of 1963 allows for English to be used for official communication alongside Hindi.

The language policy will come into effect starting Monday, the first day of the Budget session of the Assembly, The Times of India reported.

Dass also announced that ALA TV, which broadcasts Assembly proceedings, will be renamed Assam Bidhan Sabha TV, the newspaper reported.

The announcement has raised more concerns in the state about the status of the Bodo language.

On Friday, the All Bodo Students’ Union organised a protest after reports alleged that the government intended to remove Bodo from the logo of the state Assembly, India Today NE reported.

However, on Sunday, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma clarified that “there is no proposal to withdraw the use of the Bodo language from the proceedings or any other official business of the Assembly”.

He described Bodo as “an inseparable part of Assam’s rich cultural heritage and identity”, adding that it “carries the history, traditions, and aspirations of the Bodo community and enriches the vibrant diversity that defines our state”.

I have been informed by the Hon’ble Speaker of the Assam Legislative Assembly that there is no proposal to withdraw the use of the Bodo language from the proceedings or any other official business of the Assembly.

The Bodo language is an inseparable part of Assam’s rich cultural…

— Himanta Biswa Sarma (@himantabiswa) July 5, 2026

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Thirteen persons have been killed in rain-related incidents in Mumbai and its surrounding regions in the past three to four days, PTI quoted Maharashtra Disaster Management Minister Girish Mahajan has having told the Legislative Council on Monday.

Mahajan said that the India Meteorological Department has issued a red alert warning of heavy rainfall in the next two days.

The minister made the statement a day after six persons were killed when a residential building collapsed in Mumbai’s Mankhurd area amid heavy rainfall, according to The Hindu. Two men were killed in other rain-related incidents earlier in the day.

Several persons had been trapped under the debris of the building in Mankhurd and were being rescued, The Indian Express reported.

The collapse occurred at 8.30 pm. While one person died on the spot, five succumbed to their injuries after being taken to hospital, the newspaper reported.

Five of the six persons killed were minors.

One person was injured but stable, The Hindu reported. The exact cause of the collapse was unclear.

This came hours after a 63-year-old man died in the city’s Kurla area when a tree collapsed on a shop amid heavy rainfall.

An 18-year-old man died after a tree branch fell on him, The New Indian Express reported. He was taken to hospital, where he was declared dead.

Heavy rainfall since Friday has disrupted normal life in the city, with several areas reporting waterlogging and traffic.

#WATCH | Mumbai, Maharashtra: Morning visuals from the spot after two to three shanties in a 'ground-plus-three' structure collapsed in Mankhurd's Janata Nagar. A total of 6 people died and one person was injured. pic.twitter.com/PEpyXOycOW

— ANI (@ANI) July 6, 2026

Red alert, train services disrupted

On Monday, a red alert was in place in Mumbai and neighbouring Thane, Palghar and Raigad districts. Intense spells of rain with gusty winds reaching 50 km per hour to 60 km per hour were very likely in isolated places, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation said.

Waterlogging was reported in Andheri on Monday morning.

Schools in Mumbai, Pune, Thane and Navi Mumbai will be closed on Monday amid the red alert.

Local trains on the Western Line had been delayed by 15 to 20 minutes because of waterlogging between Vasai Road and Virar stations, the Western Railway said.

The Central Railway said that its suburban services on all four corridors were running normally as of 7 am. There was a six to eight-minute delay on the Main Line and a minor delay on the Harbour Line, it added.

Trains between Mumbai and Pune were suspended on Monday amid the heavy rainfall and landslides in the ghat section, the Central Railways said. Sixteen trains had been cancelled and nine diverted.

#WATCH | Maharashtra: A major landslide occurred on the Missing Link section of the Mumbai–Pune Expressway near the Khandala Exit. Consequently, the Mumbai-bound lane has been completely closed.

According to preliminary information, no casualties have been reported. Efforts are… pic.twitter.com/pRUSGhHabx

— ANI (@ANI) July 6, 2026

On Monday, traffic on both sides of the Mumbai-Pune expressway and the old Mumbai-Pune highway had been stopped because of a landslide and heavy rainfall in the Karjat-Lonavla Bhor Ghat section, said the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation.

“Citizens are requested not to undertake any journey between Pune and Mumbai until further directions are issued,” the authority said.

On Sunday, Mumbai Mayor Ritu Tawde urged residents to remain indoors unless necessary and to take precautions amid strong winds and falling trees.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Traffic on the Mumbai-Pune expressway was stopped on Monday after a landslide blocked the route.

The traffic on the old Mumbai-Pune highway was also stopped because of a landslide and heavy rainfall in the Karjat-Lonavala Bhor Ghat section, said the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation. No casualties were reported.

The incidents occurred amid heavy rainfall since Friday that disrupted normal life in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region and its surrounding areas. Rain-related incidents have left 13 dead in the past three to four days in Mumbai and the neighbouring Palghar and Raigad districts, state Disaster Management Minister Girish Mahajan told the Legislative Council on Monday.

Videos posted on social media from the Mumbai-Pune expressway showed debris blocking the carriageway between the opening of the tunnel and the cable-stayed bridge located in the “Missing Link” section.

While the expressway has been operational since 2002, the 13.3-km Missing Link, which bypasses the Khandala Ghat and was built at a cost of Rs 7,000 crore, was inaugurated on May 1.

मुंबई-पुणे एक्स्प्रेस वेवर मिसिंग लिंकवर मोठी दुर्घटना, स्लॅब कोसळून छतातून पाणी अन् माती खाली कोसळली, भयानक व्हिडीओ#Mumbai #Pune #Rain #MissingLink pic.twitter.com/Ka9KidTVbC

— ABP माझा (@abpmajhatv) July 6, 2026

Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde said that efforts were underway to clear the debris and reopen the expressway. “However, continuous rainfall and gusty winds are posing some challenges to these efforts,” Shinde said on social media.

The minister, who holds the urban development and public undertakings portfolios, urged citizens to exercise caution and avoid non-essential travel between Mumbai and Pune.

It was unclear if the highway had been reopened for traffic.

The incident led to criticism from social media users and Opposition leaders.

Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Aaditya Thackeray said that the cost of the Missing Link project “has been escalated by thousands of crores” and that it has had a “landslide and much more within two months of its checks” and inaugurations.

“More so, using it while on the way to Pune and back, I noticed and stated publicly also that not even 50 ft of the road is flat,” Thackeray said on social media. “It is all undulated and feels like one is sitting in a boat, riding the waves.”

On Saturday, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis sought to downplay the appearance of potholes in the Missing Link. He said that “durability of the work is tested” during initial rainfall and “possible problems that could crop up are assessed”.

Missing link inaugurated: 1st May 2026
Cost of the project: 7000 crores

6th July 2026: A major landslide occurred on the Missing Link section of the Mumbai–Pune Expressway. pic.twitter.com/iLTidMs31D

— Priyanka Chaturvedi🇮🇳 (@priyankac19) July 6, 2026

Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) leader Rohit Pawar asked on social media, “potholes were dug on the Missing Link for durability checks, so has a landslide occurred today for durability checks?”

“Due to only the link of brokerage and corruption emerging in the Missing Link’s work, even safety has gone missing,” Pawar said. “In the last four-five days, the rains from Pune to Mumbai have exposed the hollow claims of this corrupt government, revealing the dark deeds of this corrupt government.”

The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena asked if precautionary measures were not provided considering that the incident occurred in a landslide-prone area.

“...What’s the purpose behind starting public travel and then conducting testing?” the Opposition party asked. “You took the credit, but will you now take responsibility for this negligence?”

A social media user posted: “We can keep blaming rains all we want but if we don’t build infra keeping that in mind – then the blame is on us.”

अवघ्या २ महिन्यांपूर्वी गाजवाजा करत उदघाट्न झालेल्या मुंबई-पुणे कनेक्टिंग लिंकवर दरड कोसळून वाहतूक ठप्प झाली. हा दरडप्रवण भाग आहे याचा विचार करून काही उपाययोजनांची तरतूद केली नव्हती का ?
त्यात मुख्यमंत्री देवेंद्र फडणवीस म्हणत आहेत की अजून या पुलाची टेस्टिंग सुरू आहे.. टेस्टिंग… pic.twitter.com/XK3oUxgDG3

— MNS Adhikrut - मनसे अधिकृत (@mnsadhikrut) July 6, 2026

There is no way anyone could have predicted the rains in the ghats https://t.co/M7UrBjV800

— dorku (@Dorkstar) July 6, 2026

Mumbai region red alert

At least eight persons died in rain-related incidents in Mumbai on Sunday.

On Monday, a red alert was in place in Mumbai and neighbouring Thane, Palghar and Raigad districts. Intense spells of rain with gusty winds reaching 50 km per hour to 60 km per hour were very likely in isolated places, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation said.

Waterlogging was reported in Andheri on Monday morning.

Schools in Mumbai, Pune, Thane and Navi Mumbai will be closed on Monday amid the red alert.

Trains between Mumbai and Pune were suspended on Monday amid the heavy rainfall and landslides in the ghat section, the Central Railways said. Sixteen trains had been cancelled and nine diverted.

Local trains in Mumbai had also been delayed. The services between Karjat and Khopoli had been suspended after the heavy rainfall led to the ballast getting washed-out.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The United States’ Department of Justice on Saturday told a New York court that it wanted to drop fraud charges against Adani Group chairperson Gautam Adani because the case is primarily a foreign one, difficult to establish and inconsistent with the agency’s current priorities, Reuters reported.

The department also said that the US “pretending to be the world police” could cause diplomatic strife and waste resources that would be better utilised on domestic concerns, The Hindu reported.

The US authorities had in November 2024 indicted Gautam Adani and his nephew Sagar Adani for allegedly orchestrating a $265 million fraud scheme to bribe officials in India for solar energy contracts, and then misrepresenting the company’s anti-bribery practices to investors in the US.

The details of the alleged bribes were concealed to secure financing, the US justice department had claimed.

The Adani Group has denied the allegations. In a stock exchange filing in November 2024, the conglomerate said that Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani had been charged in the US for securities fraud, not bribery.

However, on May 18, the Donald Trump administration asked the court to dismiss the fraud charges against Gautam Adani.

Judge Nicholas Garaufis at the US District Court in the Eastern District of New York had on June 26 directed the justice department to justify its decision to drop the charges.

In response, the Department of Justice claimed on Saturday that prosecutors under the previous Joe Biden administration had launched a baseless case against Gautam Adani that had no realistic prospect of reaching the stage of trial, Reuters reported.

The department contended that US government attorneys should not pursue a “foreign case” that involves no criminal organisations and no American companies, and has no bearing on national security.

“The alleged ‘payments’ in this case ‌were ⁠made by Indian nationals, working for Indian companies, to the Indian government, with no US interests implicated in any way,” Reuters quoted the filing as having stated.

The department said that the Indian authorities have already investigated several of the allegations in the case and found no actionable misconduct.

“So, the country with by far the strongest interest here seems to have concluded nothing inappropriate happened,” The Hindu quoted the department as having told the court.

The request to drop the charges came days after reports said that Gautam Adani’s lawyers had told the justice department that he would invest $10 billion in the country’s economy and help create 15,000 jobs if the charges against him were dropped, The New York Times reported.

On May 14, the newspaper reported that the justice department was planning to drop the charges against Gautam Adani after he hired a legal team led by Robert J Giuffra Jr, one of Trump’s personal lawyers.

Giuffra was said to have met officials at the justice department’s headquarters in Washington in April. He presented about 100 slides arguing that the prosecutors lacked evidence and jurisdiction in the matter, The New York Times quoted unidentified persons familiar with the meeting as saying.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

More than 22 lakh names were removed from the voter lists of four states – Odisha, Manipur, Mizoram and Sikkim – as the Election Commission on Sunday published draft electoral rolls as part of the special intensive revision exercise, the Deccan Herald reported.

The names accounted for 6.1% of the voters in the states’ earlier electoral rolls.

The four states were part of the third phase of the special intensive revision exercise, which is taking place in 16 states and three Union Territories.

Odisha

In Odisha, the names of more than 20 lakh people were deleted from the electoral rolls after the enumeration phase of the special intensive revision, PTI reported. Of these, 8.3 lakh have died, 10 lakh have shifted or were absent during the exercise and 1.5 lakh persons were found to be registered in multiple places, the state’s Chief Electoral Officer RS Gopalan said.

Further, about 14,000 voters did not return their enumeration forms to booth-level officers, Gopalan was quoted as saying by PTI.

“The voters, whose names were not there in the draft electoral roll, can submit their claim or objection either through the BLO [booth-level officers] or through the ECINET mobile app or voters.eci.gov.in,” the chief electoral officer said at a press conference.

Odisha had 3.3 crore voters when the electoral list was frozen on May 20. It now has 3.1 crore electors.

The claims and objections against removal from the list will be heard till August 4, while the final electoral roll will be made public on September 6, Gopalan was quoted as saying by PTI.

Manipur

More than 1.5 lakh out of 20.9 lakh voters have been removed from the electoral rolls of Manipur after the enumeration phase, the Deccan Herald reported.

About 43,000 voters have died, more than 1 lakh have shifted and nearly 7,400 were found to have been enrolled in more than one place.

Manipur now has 19.3 lakh voters in the draft electoral rolls, The Hindu quoted state Chief Electoral Officer Arun Kumar Sinha as saying.

The final electoral rolls will be published on September 6.

Mizoram

Mizoram had the least share of deletions from among the four states, at 5.2%, the Deccan Herald reported. More than 46,000 voters were removed from the voter rolls, while the names of 8.2 lakh out of 8.7 lakh electors were retained.

More than 21,200 voters have died, over 22,300 have shifted and nearly 2,250 have been registered in multiple places, the newspaper reported.

Sikkim

More than 37,000 voters, or 8% of electors in the old list, have been removed from the rolls in Sikkim, the Deccan Herald reported.

The state had 4.7 lakh voters before the special intensive revision process started. It now has 4.3 lakh voters in the draft list.

Sikkim Chief Electoral Officer Raj Yadav said that no eligible voter would lose the right to ballot without due franchise, NDTV reported.

Yadav said that the house-to-house survey started on June 20 and ended on June 28.

“The draft electoral roll was prepared between June 28 and July 5, and today we have shared it with all recognised political parties,” the official was quoted as saying by NDTV. “The entire data has also been uploaded to the CEO website so that the general public can access and verify it.”

Opposition concerns

During the first two phases, concerns were raised by opposition parties and activists that such a revision process could arbitrarily disenfranchise several voters.

In the first phase, the exercise took place in Bihar between July and September ahead of the Assembly elections in November. Forty-seven lakh voters in the state were excluded from the final electoral roll.

Twelve states and Union Territories, including West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, were covered in the second phase.

In West Bengal, about 91 lakh voters, nearly 11.9% of the electorate before the process began, had been removed as of April 6.

Ahead of the state polls, about 34 lakh appeals were reportedly pending before the tribunals. Of these, 27 lakh were filed by persons who were excluded. Appellate tribunals had allowed 1,607 names to be added back to the electoral rolls.

Scroll’s analysis of the poll results found that in half the seats that the Bharatiya Janata Party won in West Bengal, the total deletions that took place during the voter list revision exercise outnumbered the victory margin.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The treasurer of the trust that manages the Ram temple at Ayodhya on Sunday claimed that he had no role in the daily donations collection process there, PTI reported.

Govind Dev Giri, the treasurer of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, made the assertion in the context of allegations about the embezzlement of donations made to the temple. The statement came a day before a key meeting of the trust, the first one since the controversy erupted.

Since the allegations first surfaced, a group of seers in Ayodhya has demanded that Giri’s role be investigated, contending that as the treasurer of the trust, he cannot be absolved of accountability.

Giri claimed on Sunday that the donations process had been overseen by local trustees, PTI reported. He said that all audit reports were safe and could be inspected by authorised persons.

The treasurer said that while maintaining accounts is his responsibility, because he travels often, chartered accountant associates from the trust’s Pune office go to Ayodhya in the last four to five days of every month to check the accounts and provide assistance to the trust’s office staff, India Today reported.

Giri further claimed that all trust expenditures are made directly through banks, and that he is not an authorised signatory for the transactions.

“We are neither for nor against anyone,” PTI quoted the treasurer as saying in the statement. “We stand with the truth and urge the investigators to bring the culprits to justice.”

Giri said that the alleged theft of donations made to the temple had “shattered the hearts of the devotees of Lord Ram”.

'मैं अधिकृत हस्ताक्षरकर्ता नहीं हूं '
' हमारे पास कोई चेक बुक नहीं है '
'मेरे हस्ताक्षर वहां नहीं चलते हैं '
'चढ़ावा की गिनती से मेरा कभी कोई रिश्ता नहीं रहा '
'चढ़ावा गिनने का काम स्थानीय न्यासी लोग ही करते हैं '
' चढ़ावा गणना प्रक्रिया के लिए SOP उन्होंने ही बनाया है '
'मुझे… pic.twitter.com/IFocDkIWYD

— Ajit Anjum (@ajitanjum) July 5, 2026

A first information report has been filed against eight persons in the case, all of whom have been arrested. Those named in the FIR are Ramashankar Yadav alias Tinnu, Anukalp Mishra, Avinash Shukla, Karunesh Pandey, Manish Yadav, Lavkush Mishra, Ramashankar Mishra and Subhash Srivastava.

However, several persons, including Opposition leaders and the president of the Ayodhya Bar Association, have claimed that the alleged misappropriation could not have taken place without the knowledge of the trust’s General Secretary Champat Rai, trustee Anil Mishra and temple construction in-charge Gopal Rao.

Rai and Anil Mishra resigned from their posts on “moral grounds” on June 26.

The FIR in the case was filed on a complaint by the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust. It invoked provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to theft by a clerk or servant, criminal breach of trust, stolen property and criminal conspiracy.

The Ram temple was built on the site of the Babri Masjid, which was demolished by Hindutva extremists on December 6, 1992, because they believed that it stood on the spot where the Hindu deity Ram was born.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

• In Ayodhya, it’s Sangh Parivar vs Sangh Parivar as Ram temple fund ‘theft’ charges blow up
• The RSS man at the centre of Ram temple trust’s controversial run in Ayodhya
• An SBI manager questioned in Ayodhya ‘theft’ case was a tenant of Ram temple trustee

A 63-year-old man died after a tree collapsed on a shop in Mumbai’s Kurla West on Sunday afternoon amid heavy monsoon rainfall, the Mid-Day reported.

The incident was reported around 12.40 pm, when the tree fell onto the shop, trapping Yunus Kundawala inside. He was taken to hospital, where doctors declared him brought dead.

Heavy rainfall over the past 48 hours has disrupted normal life in the city, with several areas reporting waterlogging and traffic slowdowns.

The India Meteorological Department on Sunday issued a red alert for Mumbai and Raigad, warning of intense rainfall, ANI reported.

Mumbai Mayor Ritu Tawde urged residents to remain indoors unless necessary and to take precautions amid strong winds and falling trees.

Earlier in the day, Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport suspended runway operations for about an hour from 10.17 am due to heavy rain and poor visibility, PTI reported.

According to the flight-tracking website FlightRadar24, 87% of departing flights and 62% of arriving flights at the airport were delayed, the news agency reported.

Two injured in Thane

Two pedestrians were injured after a portion of a first-floor balcony of a two-storey building collapsed in Thane’s Wagle Estate area on Saturday night, PTI reported.

The incident occurred at the 45-year-old Tiwari Bhawan building in the Kisan Nagar area. The injured were identified as Noori Islam Sheikh (65) and Suresh Thapa (36).

Wall collapse in Pune

At least 14 vehicles were damaged after a residential society’s compound wall collapsed in Pune’s Katraj area on Sunday after heavy rainfall, PTI reported.

No injuries were reported. The wall fell onto a parking shed around 3 am on Jambhulwadi Road, damaging several two-wheelers and cars, a fire official was quoted as saying.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read: Mumbai man dies after falling into manhole, third rain-related fatality this week

The Monsoon Session of Parliament will be held from July 20 to August 13, said Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju on Saturday.

In a social media post, Rijiju said President Droupadi Murmu had approved the summoning of both Houses of Parliament for the 2026 Monsoon Session on the recommendation of the Union government.

The session would provide an opportunity for “meaningful debate, discussion and decisions on issues of national importance”, he added.

On the recommendation of the Govt of India, Hon’ble President, Smt. Droupadi Murmu ji has approved the summoning of both the Houses of Parliament for the Monsoon Session 2026.
The Session will commence on 20 July, 2026 and continue till 13 August, 2026 for meaningful debate,… pic.twitter.com/TaEYH4F1cK

— Kiren Rijiju (@KirenRijiju) July 4, 2026

What to expect in the House

The Parliament may see discussions on reforms to strengthen the National Testing Agency following several alleged paper leaks and the establishment of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Institute of Medical Sciences.

Ahead of the Monsoon Session, several parliamentary committees have met in the past week to discuss the proposals.

A Joint Parliamentary Committee examining the Constitution 130th Amendment Bill is also scheduled to meet on July 17 to consider and adopt its report before submitting it to Parliament, reported ANI.

The bill proposes the automatic removal of the prime minister, chief ministers and ministers who are “arrested and detained in custody on account of serious criminal charges”.

The Opposition is also expected to raise its demand for privilege proceedings against Defence Minister Rajnath Singh for his remarks on casualties during Operation Sindoor.

Separately, recent political realignments could affect the composition of the Lok Sabha.

Speaker Om Birla is yet to decide on petitions related to the proposed merger of 20 rebel Trinamool Congress MPs with the Tripura-based Nationalist Citizens’ Party and six MPs from the Uddhav Thackeray-led faction of Shiv Sena with the Shiv Sena led by Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.

The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam has also sought a change in its seating arrangement following its split with the Congress after it lost the Tamil Nadu Assembly elections, NDTV reported.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Sneha.

Every morning as the clock strikes five, Baleshwar Kujur, a blind Adivasi man from the Kurukh community, sets out from his home and walks more than thirty minutes to reach St Mary’s Cathedral, Ranchi’s central Roman Catholic church.

Upon reaching, he enters a side street and takes out a foldable plastic stool, sits down and places a steel bowl near his feet. He spends the next eight hours there, seeking alms from passersby.

In the mornings, Kujur noted, the roads are empty so he walks quickly, without any fear. “Early mornings are the best. There is hardly anyone around, and I feel like I could run in the middle of the streets,” he said with a laugh.

The return journey in the afternoons alone is a different matter.

On April 29, I met Kujur at his regular spot near the cathedral. As the sun blazed at 36 degrees, Kujur sat with an umbrella, adjusting his stool and walking cane to not take up too much space as the crowds from nearby schools and colleges passed by. It was only after the crowd and traffic had dissipated that Kujur got up and began his long walk home.

While the shorter route from the cathedral to the bus stand would have been through the main streets, Kujur avoided those in favour of less crowded inner roads. Yet here too he met with several obstacles – he constantly bumped into autos and scooters passing by. Most drivers did not pause for Kujur to pass, but instead honked their horns impatiently, despite the fact that Kujur is very evidently blind. “It’s very common for me to bump into vehicles,” he said. “And most people just drive by, they don’t even apologise.”

While Kujur used his support cane to sense the inside roads, as we approached a busy intersection on the main road, he raised the cane by a few feet to ward off vehicles. He said he did not like asking people for help. But as we approached a rickshaw stand, a rickshaw driver came up to him, held his elbow and directed him through the traffic, leaving him in a quieter lane. “That man is my friend. If he’s around at this time of the day he usually helps me out,” Kujur said. “There are few people who help you out sometimes, but most don’t.”

Besides vehicles, Kujur, who stuck to the side of the streets as much as possible, often bumped into electric poles and veered dangerously close to open gutters. “In Ranchi, the open gutters make it dangerous to walk around for blind people,” he said. “I’ve only found proper footpaths near the chief minister’s house, nowhere else.” While he has never fallen into an open gutter, he has sometimes had one foot slip into them.

At the end of his harrowing walk, Kujur turned into a parking lot for buses, and entered a narrow pathway. Around fifty metres down the pathway, he reached a small yard with garbage scattered around it. Feeling the area with his cane, he carefully stepped on top of a narrow set of arranged bricks to cross over to a courtyard, around which were 10 or so houses – one of them was his home.

The group of houses looks like many other small low-income settlements in the city, but there is something that sets it apart – it is a self-formed community set up by a group of blind people almost 30 years ago. The community, which came to be called andra basti, or blind settlement in the local Sadri language, offers its residents some refuge from the harsh challenges that they face in the city outside, and allows them to serve as a support system for each other.

Stepping into the courtyard after facing harrowing traffic, Kujur relaxed his shoulders. “This basti is small, but at least things here are familiar,” he said. “In the middle of the city, we have found ourselves a space where blind persons can live freely without fear of sighted people taking advantage of us.”

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.

Kujur moved into the basti in 2018. He was in his mid-thirties then, and was beginning to feel frustrated with his circumstances.

He had grown up in Ranchi with his parents, who worked as labourers in the city – but they had died several years earlier, after which he moved to live with relatives in his ancestral village in Lohardaga district.

Kujur had strived for years to ensure that his disability did not get in the way of his education and employment. But after he moved to the village, he came to depend on his relatives for the basics: food, clothing, shelter.

After a point, that became difficult. “My uncles were aging,” he said. “How much longer could I depend on my relatives to take care of me?”

That’s when Kujur decided to contact Birsa Dhan, a friend and blind elder who lived in Ranchi. Both had studied at the city’s St Michael’s School for the Blind, decades apart from each other. They had come into contact through mutual friends over the phone, and remained in touch with each other.

In 1999, Dhan, along with around 10 other classmates from St Michael's School set up home for themselves in what was then vacant land in the city, next to the main Khadgarha bus stand, in the locality of Kumhartoli.

“Some people came from families who were able to look after them, but some of us came from families who had no money,” Dhan said. “We used to struggle to feed and clothe ourselves, so we decided to live together and start our own blind community where we could look out for each other.”

Dhan recounted that before he and the others set up the community, they encountered considerable governmental apathy. “We met many politicians and officials in those days, who promised to construct homes for us and did nothing,” he said.

That was when they decided to take matters into their own hands, and identified a plot of vacant land on which they decided to settle – Dhan noted that at the time, they received a verbal endorsement of their plan from the district commissioner.

With the help of friends, the group began constructing their initial homes using tarpaulin and mud. “We constructed our homes by ourselves, and with our friends’ support,” said Dhan. “We scraped money together so that we would have a place to call our own.” Over time, the families managed to save money to buy bricks and cement and construct pucca homes in the settlement. Soon, five other blind friends and their families moved in, and the basti began to be called andra basti.

For several years, the residents depended on two nearby wells for water, but around 2010, the administration installed two water pumps and a public tap in the basti. All the houses in the basti also have electricity connections, some of them metered.

In all, over the past three decades, more than 20 blind persons and their families, from within Jharkhand and neighbouring states like Chhattisgarh and Odisha have lived at the basti. The community grew more mixed over the years as some original blind inhabitants died or moved away. The number of sighted people in the basti grew, both new residents who moved in and children of earlier residents – eventually, the number of sighted persons overtook the number of blind people. Today, it comprises six households with 10 blind persons, and around 15 other households with several sighted members.

Dhan had encouraged Kujur and other blind persons to move into the basti in an effort to ensure that it retained its identity as a refuge for the community. Now, however, he and others said they cannot accommodate more people, though they would have liked to. “Blind persons keep hearing of us and they come to meet us to see if there is space for them to stay,” Dhan said. “They have nowhere else to go and they are homeless. We feel sad to turn them away, but the space here is finite.”

All the blind men and a few women in the basti seek alms for a living – its central location is an advantage in this regard. “We are right next to the bus stand. The railway station is also not too far from here,” Dhan said. “Most hotspots in the city are accessible from here. It is easy to go to busy places to earn money.”

He added, “If we lived in the outskirts or in a village, we would not be able to earn money like we can near here.”

Many blind persons at the basti explained that they did not choose this livelihood, but were forced to take it up because they had no other options. They call the work kamai, or simply earning, and not bheek mangna, or begging. “We have tried a lot to look for work to be able to earn a dignified livelihood, but people refuse to give us jobs,” said Alka Kerketta, a Kharia Adivasi woman from Simdega district.

Dhan also noted that staying together helped protect those in the basti from others who might seek to take advantage of their disability. “There are more chances of blind people getting cheated by others when they live alone,” he said. “But here we look out for each other. From illnesses to celebrations and funerals, the community is there for each other in times of need.”

Kujur is glad that he made the move to the basti. “Moving to the basti led me to stand on my own two feet and live life on my own terms,” he said. He explained that blind people often struggled when they lived only among sighted people. “When blind people live with sighted people, they are not valued most of the time,” he said. “We often tend to get ignored or neglected. But living near each other, blind people value and support each other.”

The spirit of cooperation in the basti also drew in Punai Oraon, who has a locomotor disability, and used to visit his friend Santosh’s blind parents at the basti when he was growing up. “They treated me like a son, I will always remember their kindness,” he said.

After Punai’s family arranged his marriage with Tara Oraon, a young blind Kurukh Adivasi woman from Gumla district, the couple married and moved into the basti. “I prefer living here with other blind people around me,” Tara said. “We feel safe here together.”

Punai added, “As people with disabilities, we all have our vulnerabilities, but living together we are able to look out for each other.”

But despite the advantages of the basti, life for its residents is far from easy. The houses are packed tightly next to each other and besides a space of around 40 square feet that serves as a public courtyard, there is little room to move around.

Getting in and out of the basti’s two entrances is also a challenge. One entrance is a narrow pathway right behind a parking lot for buses, which is typically crowded and filled with the chaotic activity of vehicles entering and leaving. The other entrance is a vacant lot that serves as a garbage dump.

Kujur, who goes out of the neighbourhood almost daily, recounted one distressing incident that occurred a few weeks ago, when he and Dhan were walking back home from near the bus stand. As they walked, a large auto suddenly reversed into them, knocking them down. Furious, the two got back on their feet and shouted at the driver who, in turn, began arguing with them.

Others, too, joined both sides of the fight. This further enraged Kujur, who began waving his cane around and accidentally struck someone, who began to bleed. It was only with the intervention of others that the argument was finally stopped. “They made the driver realise his mistake, but he did not apologise,” Kujur said. “All this could be avoided if people just paid better attention on the road.”

The basti’s women residents feel an even greater sense of risk in navigating the cramped routes. “I’ve lived here for over 15 years but I never go out alone,” said Mahima Ekka, a blind resident in her fifties. “It’s either with my husband, my daughters or neighbours.”

Monica Kujur, a former resident who lived in the basti for some four years, before moving out and living in the outskirts of the city, echoed this sentiment. “It is dangerous to walk out of the basti, as you always find giant buses speeding by,” she said. “There were also many nefarious people in the area who drink illicit alcohol and do drugs.”

“Even though the basti was safe, I felt the overall area was not safe for me as a blind woman,” she added.

Residents also struggle for some basic amenities – the basti does not have a proper drainage system, and residents have had to fashion a rudimentary drain line on their own. Despite this, another former resident, who did not want to share his name, said that the basti often flooded with rainwater, leading to the accumulation of sludge in the narrow path connecting the houses. “The path becomes very dirty and slippery,” he said. “So, a few years ago I moved to another basti a few blocks away. But I visit regularly.”

In April and May when I was reporting the story, the weather had turned unpredictable. Days would begin with blistering heat only to suddenly break into scattered thunderstorms. Most residents had thus taken a pause from their work. Dhan was busy with preparations for an upcoming wedding in his family.

But Kujur set out every morning as he always did to St Mary’s Cathedral. He and others said they earn between Rs 150 and Rs 200 on a good day. Some days they return empty handed. “There are people who show up every day to give me money,” he said. “When I don’t turn up they ask me how I’m doing and why I didn’t turn up. It’s because of them that I try to go daily and don’t like to skip days.”

Most of the community’s residents did not have a path open to a more comfortable life because in earlier years, they did not have the means to pursue higher education. “We didn’t have enough food to eat or money to buy new clothes at home, so education was an afterthought,” said Dhan.

When Kujur finished his Class 8 studies in St Michael’s, he went to Delhi to continue his education – the Ranchi school did not have higher grades at the time. “I managed to stay there and attend classes for a few months with the support of friends,” he said. “But it did not work out financially.”

Mahima Ekka recounted that she did not even have the option to consider this. “The men were still able to go to Delhi, supported by their friends’ circles,” she said. “But I couldn’t afford to go to another city without support on my own.”

The other three blind women in the basti – Alka Kerketta, Ashrita Kujur and Tara Oraon – never had a chance to attend school. “I had wanted to study and learn braille, but my mother was too scared to send me out of the house because I was blind,” said Alka Kerketta.

It was only after her mother passed away that Kerketta began, in her early twenties, to seek out opportunities for an education – but her search was unsuccessful. Likewise, her husband George Surin, a blind Munda Adivasi man from Odisha’s Sambalpur district, did not receive an education while growing up. “My village is deep in the interiors of Odisha,” he said. “There were no opportunities for blind persons to receive an education there. So the question of attending school never came up.”

Earlier, St Michael’s School had also sought to help those who could not complete their higher education become independent – for instance, it put the group of men who set up the basti through training in making cane furniture. In the 1980s, after leaving the school, Dhan along with other blind friends rented a space in the city where they could make cane chairs and sell them. However, after a few years, cheaper plastic furniture entered the market. “The demand for cane furniture decreased,” he said. “And by the early 1990s, we did not have the capital to continue our business, so we had to stop our work.”

He added, “We would have liked to take up some or the other work to stand independently on our own two feet, but we never got a chance to do so.”

Today, the basti’s residents struggle to find even other, more general, work. “I looked very hard for cleaning work such as mopping floors or washing dishes,” Kerketta said. “But people tell me I’ll break their vessels while washing them because I’m blind.”

Sandeep and Mohri Munda, a blind couple, lived at the basti from 2006 to 2019, but then decided to move back to a village. Along with three other blind friends, Bhagwan Kujur, Ajay Oraon and Kamri Pandu, they decided to return to Mohri’s ancestral village of Maheshpur, on the outskirts of the city. There, they staked claim to her parents’ land, which they said had been captured by outsiders.

“Around Ranchi, a lot of Adivasi land which is protected by laws like the Fifth Schedule has been captured by the diku,” Sandeep said, using a local language word for non-Adivasis. “We are also fighting for one such parcel of land that was grabbed.” He said that a court case about the ownership of the land was reaching its conclusion, and that they hoped for an order in their favour.

The five live with the Mundas’ sighted daughter Nilima in a rundown house in the village. “When we came here, we found this abandoned house that seems to have served as some sort of factory earlier, so we began living here,” said Sandeep. “We hope to earn money and build our own house.” They wanted to apply to the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana scheme for funds for this work, he added, but had not been able to do so because of the ongoing case over the land.

Mohri said that she preferred the village to the noisy neighbourhood of the basti, where people often drank alcohol, did drugs and fought. “One time Kamri got hit by a bus, she wasn’t grievously injured but she did get hurt,” she said. “That area is dangerous for blind people.”

The five said that while they liked having several blind neighbours around in the basti, they left because they wanted to become financially independent. “How long should we survive on alms given by others?” said Sandeep. “As blind people, we had been forced to become beggars. We came here to start our own business.”

Years ago, Sandeep had received training in manufacturing paper plates through a programme organised by the National Federation of the Blind in Faridabad. When he moved with his family and friends to Maheshpur, he was confident that they would be able to earn a living by making and selling the plates.

The group saved money, asked for donations and even took loans from others to invest in a paper-plate-making machine. They bought the machine last year, but a few months after starting operations, they realised they were not finding buyers. “Everywhere we went, we were told that our paper plates are too thin and nowadays consumers want thicker plates,” Bhagwan said.

For now, they have paused the business. Bhagwan noted that they can still make smaller paper bowls that chaat vendors use, but that the plates were their key product. The five hope that if they obtain a judgement in their favour in the land case, they can lease or sell some of the property to raise capital to develop further business plans.

Almost every Sunday, the five visit the blind basti in the city to meet their friends.

“We still feel a sense of community at the basti,” Mohri said. “So we go there often and celebrate events together.”

In January this year, the city administration announced that informal settlements near the bus stand would be razed so that it could be expanded. While the andra basti itself did not receive any official notice, when announcers from the municipality arrived to warn people to empty their homes, they also visited the basti. “We got scared that we too will be kicked out of our homes, which we have built over the years with so much hard work,” said Kujur. The residents felt somewhat reassured that they would not be evicted when Roshni Xalxo, then a mayoral candidate for Ranchi, and now the city’s mayor, spoke in support of the basti.

Nonetheless, because the residents do not have papers documenting their ownership of their homes, they remain anxious that they might be relocated elsewhere in the future. But Dhan struck a note of hope about the situation. “If we are moved,” he said, “then I hope it is to a bigger place, where other blind people can join us and we can all live together.”

This story was supported by the International Foundation for Disability Inclusion’s (IFDI) Journalism Fellowship on Disability Inclusion.

The environment minister’s Forest Advisory Committee has granted “in principle” approval to a hydropower project in a region of Arunachal Pradesh that is inhabited by the white bellied heron, a critically endangered bird whose species number was estimated to be less than 60, globally, in 2015.

To compensate for the forest loss resulting from the project, the Forest Advisory Committee approved afforestation thousands of kilometres away, in Madhya Pradesh, a decision experts termed futile for the bird’s conservation.

The Forest Advisory Committee, a statutory body under the environment ministry which evaluates project proposals on forest land, gave its approval to the Kalai II hydroelectric power plant in a meeting on May 8.

The 1,200-megawatt run-of-the river dam is planned on the Lohit river, a tributary of the Brahmaputra, in the border district of Anjaw. The river’s catchment area is flanked by tropical wet and dense mixed forest types and sits in the Eastern Himalaya biodiversity hotspot. A total of 33,338 trees are proposed to be felled within this landscape for the dam.

In its meeting, the Forest Advisory Committee noted that the white-bellied heron was absent in the list of important species that could be impacted by the project, and granted its approval on the condition that the Wildlife Institute of India vet the project’s Wildlife Management Plan.

The Forest Advisory Committee insisted that the assessment put a special emphasis on conserving the bird’s habitat. However, conservation experts say that the hydropower project is likely to cause major disruptions to the species’ survival in India. Approximately six to nine individuals are estimated to exist in Arunachal Pradesh.

“The white-bellied heron needs clear, shallow, and fast flowing river streams to fish. They wait for the fish to come, and unlike other herons, they don’t move around too much. Their inability to adapt to changing habitats comes down to this foraging behaviour,” explained Yumlam Benjamin Bida, a project manager at ATREE who has studied the bird. “Fish is their only form of nutrition, and if there is any disturbance, it will reduce their energy intake drastically,” he added.

Environmental impact assessment

The white-bellied heron is listed in the first schedule of the Wildlife Protection Act, granting it the strictest protections under the law. While it was never found in abundance, its distribution and population have shrunk sharply in recent decades.

In the early 1900s, the bird was found across Nepal, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. Today, it is found only in parts of Arunachal Pradesh, Myanmar, and Bhutan, in regions that are relatively undisturbed by [development]. “The white bellied heron is an indicator species of a pristine habitat,” said Bida. Significantly, the bird found no mention in the Environmental Impact Assessment for the Kalai II project.

The dam is being developed by THDC Limited with the state government, and the Environmental Impact Assessment report was prepared by WAPCOS, a consultancy firm under the ownership of the Ministry of Jal Shakti. In the Forest Advisory Committee’s minutes, a state official said it wasn’t included because the bird was not recorded at the project site. Conservationists have found its presence 50 kilometres upstream along the Lohit river, in Walong.

The dam is slated to come up in Hawai, 26.5 kilometers away from the Namdapha Tiger Reserve and 11 kilometers away from the Kamlang Wildlife Sanctuary. Apart from the white- bellied heron, other significant species likely to be impacted include takin, a large ungulate endemic to the region, and the large indian civet, Assamese macaque, and jungle cat, among others.

For the takin, the EIA report says a budget of Rs 100 lakh has been proposed to design a conservation plan which includes habitat protection, anti-poaching, monitoring and research, and training and awareness.

The project’s likely impact on species endemic to Arunachal Pradesh demonstrates the inadequacy of carrying out compensatory afforestation in a different landscape, said Umesh Srinivasan, an Associate Professor at the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science. “The white-bellied heron, for example, requires habitats with fast flowing rivers and forest, and Madhya Pradesh is simply out of that habitat range,” he said.

The FAC directed THDC Limited to carry out compensatory afforestation on 51 patches of degraded land in Guna, Madhya Pradesh, where the forests are primarily dry and mixed deciduous. “Even if afforestation is done scientifically, using native species, it will bring back diversity that is native to Madhya Pradesh, not what is native to Arunachal Pradesh, which is one of the most diverse regions in the world,” Srinivasan added.

Impacts on community

Approximately 33 villages will be affected by the Kalai II hydropower project. Its development is supported by the central government, which provided the state with financial assistance worth ₹1,300 crores. “There will be significant improvement in infrastructure in Namsai and Anjaw District of Arunachal Pradesh, including the development of around 29 kilometres of roads and bridges for the project which shall be mostly available for local use,” the central government’s press release says, adding that local population shall be benefitting “from many sorts of compensations, employment and CSR activities.”

Community support for the project appears divided, with some groups welcoming the project and others opposing it entirely. Roshman Tawsik, president of the District Congress Party Committee and a resident of Nukung, a [partially-affected] village, said his community opposed the project because of threats to livelihood. He filed a legal notice with WAPCOS in October 2025 alleging parts of the EIA were “copy-pasted” from a previous version. “We have opposed the project since 2008, when it was first proposed. We don’t want to sacrifice so much of our land and watch it get submerged.”

In the public hearing, held on August 20, 2025, community leaders raised concerns about inadequate surveys by WAPCOS on flora and fauna, and expressed apprehensions about noise and water pollution. The EIA report records 209 plant species within a 10-kilometre radius of the project, and 20 mammalian species.

WAPCOS responded saying specific flora like the Mishimi Teeta, an endemic medicinal plant, had been added to the report. “An oil and grease separator unit has been proposed to treat the effluents from workshops, parking areas, etc. to treat the effluent before disposal, so that there is no impact on aquatic ecology,” WAPCOS said in response to concerns about pollution.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

Former Supreme Court judge Justice Madan B Lokur on Saturday said that the Ministry of External Affairs’ statement that a passport is only a travel document and not proof of Indian citizenship is a “misreading” of the law with potentially serious constitutional consequences, Live Law reported.

Addressing an event in New Delhi, Lokur said that the Passports Act distinguishes between a “passport” and a “travel document”, making it legally untenable to treat the two as synonymous.

Referring to the preamble of the Passports Act, Lokur noted that the legislation was enacted “to provide for the issue of passports and travel documents, and to regulate the departure from India of citizens of India and other persons”.

He said Parliament had deliberately used the terms “passport” and “travel document” separately throughout the law.

“Parliament does not make laws and use superfluous words or words that have no meaning,” Live Law quoted Lokur as saying. “Therefore, when the Passports Act talks about a passport and a travel document, it means these are two separate documents. To say that a passport is nothing but a travel document is a complete misreading of the provisions of the Passports Act.”

Lokur said the legal position should be made clear that “a person who holds an Indian passport is a citizen of India”.

He also said that Indian embassies and foreign consulates issue visas on the understanding that the passport holder is an Indian citizen. If the Indian government itself does not recognise a passport as proof of citizenship, it could create complications internationally, Lokur said.

He added that the Centre’s position was “totally contrary to the law and totally contrary to the Constitution of India”.

After the ministry’s statement on June 24, Opposition leaders questioned the Centre on what documents Indians could rely on to prove their citizenship. The following day, the Centre clarified that passports have never been considered proof of citizenship, adding that no such decision was taken either recently or in the last 12 years.

The government cited Section 20 of the 1967 Passports Act, which grants the Union government discretionary authority to issue a passport or travel document to a person who is not an Indian citizen if it deems it necessary in the public interest.

It also pointed to Bombay High Court judgements from 2013 that observe that possessing a passport does not establish citizenship.

The Supreme Court and different High Courts have, over the years, held that documents such as Aadhaar card, voter identity card, permanent account card and a certificate issued by the Gram Panchayat Secretary, as well as ownership of a bank account or property, are not evidence of citizenship.

There is no single document that proves Indian citizenship. Only foreign nationals who take up Indian citizenship are granted actual citizenship certificates. People born in India do not have any such document.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Jan Suraaj party on Sunday announced that its founder Prashant Kishor will contest the upcoming bye-poll from Bihar’s Bankipore Assembly constituency.

The seat fell vacant after Bharatiya Janata Party chief Nitin Nabin was elected to the Rajya Sabha in March.

The Election Commission has said the notification for the bye-election will be issued on Monday. Polling will be held on July 30 and the votes will be counted on August 3.

Jan Suraaj made its electoral debut in the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections, fielding candidates in 238 of the state’s 243 constituencies. The party failed to win a single seat in the November elections.

After the results, Kishor had said that his decision not to contest the Assembly elections himself could be considered a “mistake”. The former political strategist had also said that he had not expected the party to secure less than 4% of the vote. Jan Suraaj had lost its deposits in 236 constituencies, where its candidates failed to secure at least one-sixth of the votes polled.

Kishor had launched the party in October 2024, saying that it would seek to end political helplessness in Bihar by creating an alternative for the voters.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Union government has issued a notice to social media conglomerate Meta, directing it to disable all advertisements and content allegedly promoting access to child sexual abuse material, ANI reported.

The government has demanded that the company provide a detailed explanation on the matter within seven days, the news agency quoted unidentified sources as saying.

On Friday, the BBC reported that it had found that social media platform Instagram, which is owned by Meta, had been running paid advertisements that promote child sexual abuse material in India.

Publishing or transmitting child sexual abuse material is illegal and constitutes a serious criminal offence under the 2000 Information Technology Act and the 2012 Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.

The advertisements use phrases such as “rape video” and “child video”, and direct users to channels on the messaging application Telegram, where such material can be purchased, the BBC reported.

Advertisements on Instagram are published only after they are approved by its moderation technology.

Meta subsequently told the BBC that the material being reported, besides other similar advertisements, had been removed and the accounts posting it were suspended. It also told the BBC that “no system is perfect, and our review process may not detect all policy violations”.

“We continue to run proactive detection technology on ads once they’re live, and anyone can report an ad to us that they think breaks our rules,” the platform was quoted as saying.

On Friday, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights took suo motu cognisance of the allegations, and said it is closely following the matter.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights on Friday took suo moto cognisance of the child sexual abuse material allegedly being promoted through advertisements on social media platform Instagram following a BBC report.

The panel said it was closely following the matter.

On Friday, the BBC reported that it had found that Instagram had been running paid advertisements that promote child sexual abuse material in India.

Publishing or transmitting child sexual abuse material is illegal and constitutes a serious criminal offence under the 2000 Information Technology Act and the 2012 Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.

The advertisements use phrases such as “rape video” and “child video”, and direct users to channels on the messaging application Telegram, where such material can be purchased, the BBC reported.

Advertisements on Instagram are published only after they are approved by its moderation technology.

The BBC said that when it reported one of the advertisements to Instagram, the platform responded that the post had not violated its “community guidelines”.

Meta, the parent company of Instagram, subsequently told the BBC that the material being reported, besides other similar advertisements, had been removed and the accounts posting it were suspended. It also told the BBC that “no system is perfect, and our review process may not detect all policy violations”.

“We continue to run proactive detection technology on ads once they’re live, and anyone can report an ad to us that they think breaks our rules,” the platform was quoted as saying.

Telegram told the BBC that it had removed more than 2.7 lakh groups and channels related to child sexual abuse material this year.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has summoned Meta executives for an explanation, The Hindu quoted unidentified officials as saying on Friday.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Sara Varghese.

Manipur Chief Minister Yumnam Khemchand on Saturday travelled to Churachandpur district to attend the funeral of Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Vungzagin Valte, a victim of ethnic violence in the state.

This was the first visit by a chief minister to the Kuki-majority district since ethnic violence broke out in Manipur on May 3, 2023. The visit also came in the backdrop of a shutdown and boycott call by some Kuki-Zo organisations, the Hindustan Times reported.

Valte, a minister in the previous state government led by N Biren Singh, died on February 20, nearly three years after he was assaulted by a mob, allegedly comprising members of armed Meitei group Arambai Tenggol. The attack on May 4, 2023, took place at Nagamapal in Imphal when the MLA was returning from a meeting with Singh.

Valte died at a hospital in Gurugram, and his body was subsequently brought to Churachandpur, where it had been placed in a mortuary till Saturday. His family had refused to bury his body till the Union government agreed to carve out a separate district for the Zomi tribe, to which the MLA belonged, and an inquiry by the National Investigation Agency into his death.

However, the family eventually decided to cremate Valte as his wife was unwell and wanted her husband to be laid to rest, the Hindustan Times quoted an unidentified member of his family as saying.

About five months before his death, Valte had also written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, supporting the demand for a separate administration for the Zomi-Kuki-Hmar community. He had said that the community had been driven out of Imphal and from the Manipur valley, leading a “complete physical and social divide”.

On Saturday, Khemchand travelled to Churachandpur by helicopter as he had to return to Imphal to attend a virtual meeting with Union Home Minister Amit Shah later in the day, a statement from the chief minister’s office said.

Khemchand said it was a “huge honour” for him to be able to attend Valte’s last rites. “My deepest regret is that on that particular afternoon, if I were with him, that incident would not have taken place,” he said.

The attack in which Valte was injured took place a day after ethnic clashes broke out between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo-Hmar communities in the state. Since then, at least 260 persons have been killed and more than 59,000 displaced. There were periodic upticks in violence in 2024 and 2025.

Fresh tensions between Kukis and Nagas also broke out in February in the Ukhrul district after an alleged assault involving members of the Tangkhul Naga and the Kuki-Zo communities escalated into clashes. At least 25 persons from the two communities have been killed since tensions erupted.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Former West Bengal Finance Minister Chandrima Bhattacharya, who was a key loyalist of Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, on Saturday resigned from all party posts, The Hindu reported.

Soon after resigning, Bhattacharya went to the state Assembly and joined a meeting with rebel Trinamool Congress leaders, including Leader of Opposition Ritabrata Banerjee, indicating that she may switch to their camp.

Bhattacharya claimed that she was not consulted in important decisions, including the preparation of the state Budget, when the Trinamool Congress was in power, according to The Hindu.

The TMC has been beset by internal divisions and rebellions after it lost the Assembly elections to the Bharatiya Janata Party in May. On June 3, nearly 60 out of the TMC’s 80 MLAs rebelled against the party leadership to choose Ritabrata Banerjee as the leader of the Opposition in the House.

On June 14, a delegation of 20 TMC MPs met Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and requested that their group be merged with the Tripura-based Nationalist Citizens’ Party, which is a part of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance.

Trinamool Congress National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee, on his part, wrote to Birla on June 19 demanding that the rebel MPs should be disqualified on the grounds of leaving the party.

Commenting on Bhattacharya’s resignation on Saturday, Mamata Banerjee called party rebels “traitors” and asserted that she would continue to lead the TMC, The Indian Express reported. She added that party workers were more important to her than leaders.

“I ask such traitors if you have guts, go join the BJP,” she said, according to the newspaper. “Do you think I am dead? TMC workers are dead? Those who left had a lot of baggage and properties to save. We have TMC family to save.”

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read: Why the Trinamool Congress is collapsing like a house of cards

The Jammu and Kashmir administration on Saturday suspended eight officials and terminated a contractual employee from service after “pro-separatist content” in two books in school libraries sparked protests by the Bharatiya Janata Party, The Hindu reported.

The books – Personalities and Legends of J&K by Hilal Ahmed and Santosh Meena, and Great Personalities of Jammu and Kashmir by Dr Sushant Giri – have been withdrawn from school libraries. The first book was published by Oberoi Book Service, Jammu, while the second one was published by Anurag Prakashan, Delhi.

An official spokesperson said that the book Personalities and Legends of J&K contained a detailed passage on J&K Liberation Front founder Maqbool Bhat, who was hanged in 1984 for seeking independence for Kashmir, The Hindu reported. The spokesperson said the inclusion of the reference reflected “serious negligence, dereliction of duty and lack of proper due diligence”.

The books were supplied to school libraries as part of the Samagra Shiksha education

The order by Ram Niwas Sharma, Commissioner/Secretary, School Education Department, also blacklisted the authors and publishing houses from publishing any other material in Jammu and Kashmir, The Indian Express reported.

The officials who have been suspended are Fazil Imran Saddiqui, Gurjeet Singh, Sanjeev Sharma, Kore Pannu, Shazia Kouser, Imtiaz Ahmad Mir, Niranjan Sharma, Renu Mengi and Rajmohini.

The BJP had protested the inclusion of the books in school libraries, with Leader of Opposition Sunil Sharma accusing the Union Territory’s National Conference government of promoting “academic jihad”, The Hindu reported.

“This is not history or education,” Sharma was quoted as saying by the newspaper. “This is academic subversion. It is academic jihad against India. The book attempts to revive separatist ideology among the youth.”

Jammu and Kashmir Minister for School Education Sakeena Itoo assured strict action against those who allowed the books in school libraries.

“It is unfortunate,” she said, according to The Hindu. “The moment it came to my notice, I instructed the Education Secretary to act immediately. I had asked for termination, but suspension orders have been issued and an inquiry has already been ordered.”

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Few Kashmiris have not heard the name of Insha Mushtaq. Even if they haven’t heard her name, almost every Kashmiri is likely to have seen an image of her disfigured face.

On July 11, 2016, as protests broke out in southern Kashmir’s Shopian district, Mushtaq, as you’d expect any curious adolescent to do, opened her window to see what was happening in the street below. Three days earlier, the security forces had killed popular militant commander Burhan Wani in an encounter and the Valley was angry. In a flash, Mushtaq’s face was hit by a volley of pellets fired by security personnel trying to quell protesters.

The pellets hit her face, skull and eyes. That was the last time she saw anything. Mushtaq’s bloodied face, with dozens of small wounds caused by pellets, has come to exemplify the horrors unleashed by the use of pump action pellet guns by security forces in Kashmir.

She wasn’t alone. In 2018, Mehbooba Mufti, the Jammu and Kashmir chief minister at the time, informed the state Assembly that more than 6,000 persons had been injured by pellet guns in Kashmir between July 2016 and February 2017. Of these, 728 had been hit by pellets in their eyes.

At least 54 persons had their vision impaired due to pellets. Between July 2016 and August 2017, seventeen civilians succumbed to injuries sustained from pellets, data presented in Parliament showed.

International media outlets such as The Guardian and The New York Times described the action by the security forces as the world’s first “mass blinding” and an “epidemic of dead eyes”.

However, the makers of actor Ajay Devgn-starrer film Chauhaan seem to believe that the pellet guns inflicted only “limited damage”. In a 2.24-minute teaser released on June 25, Devgn’s voiceover describes traditional crowd control methods such as tear gas, water cannons and pellets used by security forces in Kashmir as ineffective.

Pellet guns were first used in Kashmir during the 2010 summer uprising when the Centre, during the tenure of the Omar Abdullah government, introduced pump action shotgun pellet guns as an “alternative method” for crowd control. That year, more than 100 civilians were killed in police firing during the protests.

The Chauhaan trailer has outraged Kashmiris. “The movie is bluntly demanding more violence against Kashmiris next time they dare to come out on the streets,” said a political observer in Srinagar. “At the same time, it negates the suffering of thousands who have been killed, wounded or blinded by pellets or tear gas shells in Kashmir.”

However, for many the teaser is hardly surprising. For several years, Kashmir’s turbulent history has provided grist for Bollywood creators looking to generate xenophobic content that portrays Muslims as bloodthirsty invaders, traitors and conniving radicals.

Many of these projects have been endorsed from the highest realms of the power.

Chauhaan, through its action and bravado, tries to showcase a protagonist adept at dealing with Kashmiris for whom even pellets aren’t enough.

But in Kashmir, pellets represent death, ruined lives, blinded youngsters, maimed faces and a nightmare. There is an army of people across Kashmir whose bodies still carry these metal balls because the doctors extracting them will cause even more damage.

Millions of Indians may have watched the Chauhaan teaser. Mushtaq is unable to be among them. Who cares, anyway, when it’s only “limited damage”?

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

Ram temple embezzlement case. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh urged Hindus to “thwart the conspiracies of anti-Hindu and anti-national forces”, who it claimed were trying to exploit the case about the alleged embezzlement of donations made to the Ram temple in Ayodhya.

The general secretary of the Hindutva organisation, Dattatreya Hosabale, said the alleged thefts from the donation boxes at the temple had “deeply hurt the sentiments and faith of the entire society and Ram devotees”.

He added that the RSS expects the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, which manages the temple, to treat the matter as an extraordinary one and “take effective steps to rectify all shortcomings in temple management and operations”.

This was the first public response of the RSS, the parent organisation of the Bharatiya Janata Party, since allegations emerged.

Voting rights and electoral outcomes. Twenty-three Opposition parties sent a letter to Chief Justice Surya Kant expressing their concern about the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

Trinamool Congress MP Sagarika Ghose said that the Opposition had urged the judiciary to look into the manner in which the exercise was “being manipulated” by the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The decision to write to the chief justice was taken at the INDIA bloc meeting on June 8. Though the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Aam Aadmi Party had skipped the Opposition alliance meeting, they also signed the letter.

Bengal political crisis. Eggs and vegetables were thrown at Trinamool Congress office in West Bengal’s Krishnanagar when party MP Mahua Moitra was inside. On social media, she alleged that “goons” from the Bharatiya Janata Party were responsible. In a video she shared online, a group of persons were seen carrying the BJP’s flag.

The police were also at the spot. “These are no public outbursts,” Moitra said. “These are coordinated BJP attacks. See the BJP flags.”

The TMC alleged that West Bengal has been “spiralling into unchecked violence, fear, and absolute anarchy every single day” since the BJP came to power in the state.

Also on Scroll last week

• An SBI manager questioned in Ayodhya ‘theft’ case was a tenant of Ram temple trustee
• To counter drugs, Ladakh promotes alcohol. Experts say it won’t work
• Why a scholar of citizenship is taking on Bengal SIR exclusions
• How the ‘cockroaches’ at the Jantar Mantar sit-in are keeping themselves busy
• In MP village, Adivasi farmers’ land goes missing from digital records
• As Kshama Sawant runs for US Congress, she’s hoping to shake up both Democrats and Republicans
• El Niño likely to intensify as India’s monsoon advances slowly
• As US switches focus in the Pacific, it’s time for New Delhi to strengthen ties in the Indo-Atlantic
• ‘Pritam and Pedro’ review: A light-hearted exploration of friendship and redemption
• ‘Isakapatnam’ review: Lots of bluster but remarkably little to say

Follow the Scroll channel on WhatsApp for a curated selection of the news that matters throughout the day, and a round-up of major developments in India and around the world every evening. What you won’t get: spam.

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

The systematic annihilation of Muslim livelihoods has been a central marker of the Modi years. This has been caused in part by the frequently violent activism of non-government formations fraternal to the Bharatiya Janata Government and affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh. What is sometimes missed is the central role in all of this of the state.

It is important to understand that what the country has witnessed – and India’s Muslim citizens have endured – under Narendra Modi’s leadership is not merely a random conglomeration, a massing of unconnected individual hate attacks on Muslim livelihoods. The years of Modi’s leadership have witnessed a conscious and catastrophic dismantling of the livelihoods and economic foundations of an already highly dispossessed community through both law and policy.

Analysts observe that “while Muslim disadvantage has been widely noted… there are few policies in place to protect them”. Such policies could include building better educational infrastructure in Muslim majority areas, training more Muslim teachers, enhancing the quantum and coverage of scholarships for Muslim children and youth, and taking strict action against discrimination. On the contrary, the effort is in the reverse direction, with many scholarship schemes for minority children either wound up or severely under-budgeted.

Worse, during the Modi era, there are many state policies that target Muslim livelihoods directly. These include hardened cow protection laws. Under-budgeting and poor public provisioning of schools, medical centres and infrastructure in settlements with high density of Muslim populations is the rule, not the exception. Bulldozers have in these years deliberately targeted Muslim properties.

But these are not all. I will speak here of examples of other state policies and laws of the union and Bharatiya Janata Party state governments which have been deleterious to Muslim livelihoods. These are laws that openly or tacitly abridge or extinguish Muslim livelihoods on the pretext of many outlandish jihad conspiracy theories; the halal ban; and changes in the waqf law. Each of these state policies and laws have had a direct inimical impact on the livelihood opportunities of Muslims, and their security and dignity at work.

Halal bans

“Halal” in Arabic means “permissible”. Aditya Menon’s thoughtful essay for The Quint reveals many flaws in the understanding of the idea of halal. Halal is widely understood by its opponents only as a way of slaughtering animals for meat, by slitting of the throat while reciting the Kalma. This is an important part of halal, but halal is a much broader concept. And in fact, the Quran describes anything that is “permissible” or “lawful” as halal and dubs what is “forbidden” and “unlawful” as haraam.

For instance, banking that earns interest or unlawfully earned wealth is haraam. Islamic Banking (that does not charge or earn interest) is halal, as is halal tourism in which hotels do not serve alcohol and provide separate swimming pools for men and women. In food items, foods and drinks containing the meat of pigs, blood, carrion (meat of an animal that is dead already), alcohol and most narcotic substances are haram. A pharmaceutical product that does not contain alcohol or pig gelatin would be certified as halal.

A significant example of state actions directly aiming to damage Muslim livelihoods is the halal bans. The Uttar Pradesh government in 2020 imposed a ban on halal-certified food products in the entire state. The Uttar Pradesh ban covered not just food products, but also drugs, medical devices, and cosmetic products with halal-certified labels.

This ban followed many agitations by Hindutva organisations against halal-certified products. A “#BoycottHalalProducts” campaign was launched around 2019 by Hindutva organisations Sanatan Sanstha and Hindu Jagruti and vigorously supported by Sudarshan News TV channel.

Sanatan Prabhat, a Hindutva group of periodicals, described halal certification as a kind of “economic jihad” aiming at the “Islamisation of India”. They maligned the meat trade as somehow linked to terror, and hoped to win the support of Sikhs who have a religious injunction against eating halal meat, as well as the Dalit Khatik community whose traditional occupation is the sale of meat. It hoped to pit both Sikhs and Khatiks against Muslims.

Menon explains that the Sikh religious bar is not just on halal, but on the meat of any animal slaughter that involves rituals (and therefore would also include Hindu animal sacrifices that are common among Nepali Hindus among others). He quotes a Sikh tweet that reflects a common sentiment among the Sikhs he interviewed: “I don’t eat halal or any other meat that has been slaughtered under a religious/belief custom/ceremony/ritual, I don’t have any problem with people eating halal or anything else, Sanghis trying to pit Sikhs against Muslims is a joke! ....”

The Tender Chicken you buy in Karnataka, which was promoted by BJP MLA @CTRavi_BJP is halal certified too... pic.twitter.com/coV7pI5SWD

— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) April 1, 2022

Ravi Ranjan Singh, a resident of Delhi’s Mayur Vihar, formerly a journalist who became a self-professed acolyte of Yati Narsimhanand was a passionate campaigner against halal. “They threaten my identity,” he declared. “...Halal is not just meat, it is everywhere...These are economic black holes which lead to economic slavery. Non-Muslims are being deprived of employment. We will all be slaved.” He accused the halal industry of “employment discrimination”, falsely claiming that it only employs Muslims for all jobs from the butchering of the meat to its sale to a customer. “They [Muslims] are forcing (halal) on us,” in hospitals, housing complexes, schools and airlines – all part of a halal nexus to keep non-Muslims out.

The protests seeking a ban on halal certification gathered momentum when many more Hindutva organisations joined it. They campaigned against state-owned Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation, Air India, and others for offering halal-certified products. The campaigners argued that halal certification promotes Islamic practices and sought a ban on such products, including halal-certified meat in public institutions.

The Hindutva group Hindu Janajagruti Samiti Karnataka spokesperson Mohan Gowda also targeted the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation and other organisations that offer halal-certified chicken products, soft drinks, flour, and chocolate brands. It campaigned to ban halal-certified products in Karnataka, stating that animals are killed by offering them to Allah, which they found offensive to Hindu gods. Hindutva organisations also urged Hindus to eat jhatka meat, which kills animals in one strike, claiming it is less cruel than the halal method.

Bajrang Dal, Vishva Hindu Parishad and other Hindutva outfits in 2022 ran a door-to-door campaign in Karnataka asking people not to buy halal meat, reportedly with the tacit support of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

The BJP national general secretary CT Ravi even called halal food “economic jihad”. During the Ugadi festival, a section of Hindus prepare non-vegetarian feasts, and the campaigners urged them to not buy meat from Muslim meatsellers. During the statewide call for boycott of Muslim traders, led by Hindutva activists, members of the Bajrang Dal physically attacked a Muslim meat seller in Karnataka’s Shivamogga district. Five men were arrested.

The Vishva Hindu Parishad demanded a legal challenge against halal certification in India, arguing that it discriminates against non-Muslims and funds terrorism. Halal and halal certification, they said, is discriminatory, economically, socially and against all non-Islamic religions.

The Adityanath government, in November 2023, lodged an FIR in Lucknow against the Halal India Private Limited Chennai, Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind Halal Trust Delhi, Halal Council of India Mumbai and Jamiat Ulama Maharashtra.

UP govt bans manufacturing, storage, distribution and sale of Halal products. pic.twitter.com/aAccIYqPgE

— Piyush Rai (@Benarasiyaa) November 18, 2023

The charges were of issuing halal certificates for some products on the basis of forged documents to exploit the religious sentiments of customers of a particular community (Muslims) for financial gains. It also spoke of companies and staff involved in an “anti-national conspiracy”, namely “funding notified terrorist organisations and organisations involved in anti-national activities” and “conspiring to incite large-scale riots by messing with public faith”.

The next day, the state government issued an order banning the manufacture, sale, storage and distribution of halal-certified products with immediate effect in the state from the view of “public health.” Food products made for export were notably excluded from this list.

Protests against halal products also spread to other parts of the country. A protest in February 2023 in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, was led by the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti and the Halal Sakhti Virodhi Kriti Samiti against halal certification. Protesters claimed that there was an increasing demand for halal products forcing Hindu business owners to obtain halal certification, even for items like sugar, oil, and cosmetics. This, they said, was part of a campaign against “Halal Jihad”.

In Kerala too matters went out of hand with right-wing groups raging against the so-called “halal invasion” in Kerala, or the supply of halal-certified jaggery to the Sabarimala temple – which they even challenged in court. Christian groups also joined the campaigns against halal-certified groups. The hostility of sections of the Christian clergy against Muslims in Kerala has long been simmering.

In January 2020, chief Cardinal Mar George Alencherry of the Syro Malabar Church issued a circular warning Christians against “love jihad” claiming that “Christian women from Kerala are even being recruited to Islamic State through this”. The Pala archdiocese’s Bishop Mar Joseph Kallarangat said that non-Muslims in Kerala are targeted with “narcotics jihad”, a project to lure women and turn them into drug addicts. Social relations were further strained in June when a group of Christian youths made several disparaging comments about the Muslim community on the conferencing app ClubHouse.

Joy Abraham, a member of the Church's Auxiliary for Social Action , said “For the last few years, Arab food culture has massively invaded the state. Being citizens of India, we cannot allow this to happen. Muslim food manufacturers are getting reservations in the name of ‘Halal’ certification while others are denied opportunities. For example, manufacturing a ‘Halal’ certified product requires the company to employ at least 10 members from the Muslim community. We are against this invasion of a particular culture,” said Joy.

This, Muslim entrepreneurs said, is a falsehood. Syed Mohamed Imran, the Operations Head of Halal India, said non-Muslim staff are recruited and trained in Halal. “Halal food means hygienic, safe, non-toxic, ethical for mankind to consume, according to the Quran”.

BJP state president K Surendran did not agree, alleging that “Halal” is “a planned attempt to divide people and create communal riots” and called for a ban on the practice of Halal certification and Halal boards at Kerala hotels. In a press conference, Bharatiya Janata Party state general secretary P Sudheer equalled “Halal” to triple talaq.

Amendments to the Waqf Act

The Lok Sabha in 2025 passed, without any prior consultation with Muslim leaders or the political opposition, far-reaching changes in the Waqf Act. The Waqf Act, 1995, allowed Muslims the right to donate property for the welfare of their community, particularly the dispossessed among them. The amendments bring these Muslim properties donated for charity, which were until now governed by the community, substantially under state control. It also brings in non-Muslim non-officials into the systems of governance of these properties.

The amendments are presented by the government as long-delayed administrative reforms that were necessary to bring transparency into the management of these vast properties, and to ensure that these are suitably deployed for the welfare of the people. The government speaks of bringing in “unified management,” “efficiency,” and “inclusiveness”.

Organisations of Indian Muslims, in India and the diaspora, however, have expressed grave disquiet over how the move was thrust upon the community without consultation, which they see as a thinly veiled bid to deprive the Muslim community of control over its legitimate assets.

Rasheed Ahmed, Executive Director of The Indian American Muslim Council, for instance, summarises these concerns. Waqf properties, he says, “support countless educational institutions, healthcare facilities, and social welfare programs that serve Muslim communities across the country. He describes the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025 as “a blatant attempt to strip the Muslim community of its control over waqf properties and place these institutions under state control”. The intention, he says, “is to dilute the authority of the Muslim community and weaken its ability to safeguard religious endowments”. This undermines “not only the religious autonomy of Muslims but also threatens the very purpose of waqf, which is to serve the socio-economic needs of marginalised communities”.

For the purposes of this essay, I will limit my discussion to the possible impacts the amended law could have on the livelihoods of Indian Muslims. Centrally, the law ends the autonomy of the community to manage these properties and charity endowments and brings in significant state control. What may this mean in practical terms for impoverished Muslim livelihoods? This could undermine the economic and social infrastructure that many poor Muslims rely on, making waqf-based housing, schooling, small businesses, and social support charity more precarious. This reduction of control combined with increased risk of de-waqfisation or adverse bureaucratic decisions, represents a material threat to livelihoods and communal welfare, even if the law does not explicitly label it as such.

Reducing Muslim community control over its key resources that existed in the past has roused anxieties of exposing waqf properties to estate loss, eviction, and economic marginalization. In that case, the reforms may have the intended or unintended outcome of a structural attack on Muslim livelihoods by dismantling traditional waqf-based institutions of economic support, housing, education, and charity.

Under the amended law, waqf-lands may be deemed government property if their legal status is not formally submitted within a fixed time period. Section 3A(1) stipulates that “No person shall create a waqf unless he is the lawful owner of the property.” This means that any economic activity based on informal or customary waqf such as homes, small shops or businesses becomes vulnerable to legal challenge.

Section 36(1A) requires that “from the commencement of the Act … no waqf shall be created without execution of a waqf deed.” In practice, this introduces higher legal and transaction costs for poor or uneducated waqifs and small local institutions who previously relied on oral or informal dedications. Given the informal nature of large swathes of land title in India, this threatens the security of many waqf properties. Such loss of waqf status may lead to the dispossession of communities or individuals whose livelihoods depend on those properties. These could include residents of poor housing, small businesses, small shops and markets around mosques or dargahs, schools and madrasas, and properties whose income was used to give financial support to widows and orphans.

The threats are greater in a context in which right-wing governments are dismantling even the meagre affirmative action support for the Muslim community that existed in the past, like scholarships. In such conditions, powerless members of the community can at best hope for support from within the community.

It is not my argument that the managers of waqf properties were always performing these duties in an exemplary, blameless way. But however imperfectly, this was a potential resource for the disadvantaged Muslim to access for her dignified survival. It serves an even more critical life-support mechanism for impoverished and vulnerable Muslims when the state has pulled back from its duties toward this section of citizens. The fear is that this alternate pathway to education, livelihood and social security, can now be effectively blocked or made more arduous.

Therefore, even if it is noted that Muslims face grave disadvantages in employment, there are few policies in place to protect them. Such policies could include building better educational infrastructure in Muslim majority areas, training more Muslim teachers, enhancing the quantum and coverage of scholarships for Muslim children and youth, and taking strict action against discrimination. On the contrary, the effort is in the reverse direction, with many scholarship schemes for minority children either wound up or severely under-budgeted, and the state with its laws and policies assaulting the efforts of persons of Muslim identity to earn a livelihood with dignity and safety.

Laws to prevent ‘spit jihad’

None less than a chief minister – Pushkar Singh Dhami of Uttarakhand – issued detailed guidelines to his police and health departments to prevent instances of people spitting in food. One of these is a hefty fine of up to Rs 1 lakh for this offence. Also CCTV cameras are made mandatory in their eatery kitchens and all hotel staff need to undergo a police verification. He termed the offences that the law seeks to prevent and punish as “thook jihad”.

The Uttar Pradesh chief minister also announced his resolve to bring in a tough statute to curb contamination of food and beverages with human waste, spit, inedible items or other filthy material. It would make it mandatory for food centres to display the names of their owners, for cooks and waiters to wear masks and gloves and, like in Uttarakhand, for CCTVs to be installed in hotels and restaurants.

Adityanath also instructed officials that those who indulge in such jihad should be charged under non-bailable sections of the law, and punished with imprisonment and fine. He dog-whistled about other suspected jihads as well. He instructed strict action against staff working in an eatery if found to be an “intruder or an illegal foreign citizen.” This is a widely used dog-whistle for Muslims.

He should also face harsh punishment to any staff member of an eatery if he uses false names; that there should not be a single activity of adulteration of food items and beverages by “anti-social elements” through the concealment of their true identity. While opening a three-storey “floating restaurant” in Gorakhpur, Adityanath again made a dig at alleged “thook jihad”. “It’s good, at least what you get here won’t be the juice from Hapur. You won’t get rotis with spit on them. Whatever you get here, will be pure.”

Adityanath’s reference to Hapur was to the arrest of two persons – the juice stall owner and a minor – for allegedly contaminating juice with human urine. BBC reports that these government directives followed the unverified videos on social media showing vendors spitting on food at local stalls and restaurants – and one video depicting a Muslim house-help mixing urine into food she was preparing. (It is another matter that the police later found that she was of Hindu identity).

In these states, the police did not need a specific law to detain and charge people for allegedly spitting into food. BBC reports that even before the ordinance in Uttar Pradesh, the police in Barakanki arrested restaurant owner Mohammad Irshad for allegedly spitting on a roti, charging him with disturbing peace and religious harmony.

Supreme Court to Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand: “DO NOT FORCE THE OWNERS OF EATERIES ALONG THE KANWAR YATRA ROUTE TO DISPLAY THEIR NAMES OUTSIDE SHOPS”.
SupremeCourt stays UP and Uttarakhand govt direction that eateries along the Kanwariya route should display the names of the… pic.twitter.com/m2w18kcLeB

— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) July 22, 2024

Likewise, the Uttarakhand police arrested two hotel workers in Mussoorie – Naushad Ali and Hasan Ali – for allegedly spitting in a saucepan while making tea. They were charged with causing public outrage and jeopardising health.

Several other arrests also were made. In Gautam Buddha Nagar, police arrested a restaurant worker called Chand for allegedly spitting on rotis while making them at the eatery. In Saharanpur a minor boy was arrested for allegedly spitting on rotis while he was cooking them. The restaurant where the boy worked was also sealed, and a crime registered for promoting enmity between different grounds on the grounds of religion, etc. Again in Shamli, a juice vendor named Asif was arrested for allegedly spitting into the mosambi juice while he was squeezing the fruit with a hand-operated juicer.

In 2020, a man named Naushad was arrested for “thook jihad” by the Uttar Pradesh police in Meerut. They acted on the complaint of Hindu Jagran Manch leader Sachin Sirohi. Members of this group first assaulted him before complaining to the police that he spat into rotis. The police arrested him under the National Security Act. Later, it dropped the NSA charges and he was let off on bail. However, The Wire reports that all chapati shops refused to hire him, fearing a backlash. Naushad had always denied spitting in the food, but he spent three months in jail and then became jobless.

Conclusion

The scale, the reach and the magnitude of harm unleashed by the RSS-BJP project to annihilate Muslim livelihoods is immensely worrying. The debilitating damage to the life and livelihood chances of Indian Muslim citizens is partly the result of the spread and virulence of violence of embedded cadres of affiliates of the far-right Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh. The public statements of Bharatiya Janata Government leaders reflect and amplify the toxic prejudice and hate.

But behind all of this is the state backing of this project by a series of laws, policies and state actions. For me, the conclusion is inescapable. These signal what can only be described as a momentous project of vast ethnic cleaning.

I am grateful for the extensive research support of Sumaiya Fatima and Syed Rubeel Haider Zaidi

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

The Supreme Court’s recognition on June 19 of the right to walk safely as part of the right to life has implications that extend well beyond pedestrian safety. It raises a broader question about what Indian cities choose to build and what they continue to neglect.

Walking remains the most common mode of transport in Indian cities, accounting for roughly one-quarter to one-third of all trips according to the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy India. Yet pedestrians receive among the least attention in urban planning and public investment.

For decades, urban development has been measured through highways, flyovers, expressways and metro corridors. New roads and projects completed are announced frequently, while the public spaces people use every day – pavements, crossings, bus stops and road edges – remain poorly planned or absent altogether.

The result is that Indian cities have invested heavily in roads without investing enough in the streets that make those roads usable.

This distinction is important because roads and streets serve different purposes. Roads are designed to move vehicles efficiently. Streets support everyday urban life. Every metro journey begins and ends with a walk. Children walk to school, workers walk to bus stops and elderly citizens walk to neighbourhood markets.

Streets simultaneously accommodate public transport, utilities, drainage, vending and green cover. They are among the most intensively used public assets in any city, yet they are rarely planned or managed as complete public systems.

Ownership gap

Around the locality in which I live in Delhi, metro construction has continued for several years. Along one stretch that I walk regularly, I instinctively cover my face as vehicles pass because construction material remains exposed and dust accumulates along the edge of the road. Pavements disappear without warning and walking becomes an exercise in avoiding debris, traffic and uneven surfaces.

This experience is hardly unique to Delhi. Across our cities, pedestrians navigate roads where footpaths were never built or exist only in fragments. Dusty shoulders become informal walking space until they are occupied by parked vehicles, shop spillover or construction material.

Where pavements do exist, they are frequently blocked by electric poles, transformers, utility trenches or encroachments. These are often treated as isolated civic complaints, but together they point to a complex governance challenge.

Indian cities and pavements are basically an obstacle course — this level comes with extra bollards 😂🤣😳😁

📍Punjagutta, Hyderabad pic.twitter.com/VdzTHczyiY

— Aravind Unni (@aravindunni23) May 13, 2026

Responsibility for streets is divided among several agencies. Municipal corporations build and maintain pavements; Public Works Departments construct roads; the Traffic Police regulate movement; metro agencies restore roads after construction; electricity distributors install poles and transformers; water, sewerage and telecom agencies repeatedly excavate the same corridors; and contractors complete projects and leave.

Each agency manages one component, but none is responsible for the street as a whole.

Construction receives political attention because it is visible and measurable. Maintenance, coordination and street management rarely receive the same attention despite determining how citizens experience the city every day.

Good economics

The problem begins even before maintenance. Most road projects are still conceived around the carriageway, with pedestrian infrastructure added later, if at all, by different agencies. As a result, many roads are tendered without pavements, shade, drainage, accessible crossings or organised space for utilities, parking and vending.

India’s next challenge is therefore not simply building more roads but building complete streets. A complete street treats the entire public realm as infrastructure by integrating carriageways, continuous footpaths, drainage, lighting, tree cover, accessible curbs, vending zones, parking management and road-edge treatment within a single project rather than leaving each element to different agencies.

The returns from this approach extend far beyond mobility and infrastructure. Better-managed streets reduce dust pollution by limiting exposed road edges and construction spillover. An IIT Delhi study found that interventions such as paving unpaved roads, repairing potholes and fixing broken footpaths reduced local PM2.5 concentrations by between about 15% and 27% across three pollution hotspots in Delhi.

This video is part of The News Minute and Newslaundry’s investigative series on how pavements across Indian cities are being taken over, misused, or erased, leaving pedestrians with shrinking space to walk. @samrahattar reports pic.twitter.com/oZJeJzqZPV

— TheNewsMinute (@thenewsminute) February 24, 2026

Tree-lined streets reduce heat exposure during increasingly frequent heatwaves. Walkable neighbourhoods increase footfall for local businesses and improve access to public transport by making first- and last-mile journeys easier. Street maintenance is also labour-intensive, creating employment in landscaping, sanitation, repairs and public space management while improving the performance of infrastructure that cities already possess.

Good streets also make cities safer. Places where people can comfortably walk tend to support more active public life, stronger neighbourhood commerce and greater natural surveillance. Infrastructure that is safe for children, elderly citizens and persons with disabilities invariably creates a safer environment for women, workers, students and everyone else.

Creating an opportunity

Transport, air pollution, public health, climate resilience and road safety are usually discussed as separate policy challenges. In practice, they intersect on the same streets.

The Supreme Court’s judgment should become more than a direction to improve footpaths. It should encourage governments to rethink how streets are conceived, designed, tendered, financed and managed.

India’s next phase of urban development should be judged not only by how many roads are built, but by whether those investments create streets that are safe, accessible and usable for everyone.

The court has recognised the right to walk safely as part of the right to life. Delivering that right now requires Indian cities to recognise streets as essential public infrastructure rather than treating them as the leftover space beside roads.

Kabeer Arora works on urban policy, climate resilience and public institutions. The views expressed are personal.

The Union government on Saturday directed messaging application Telegram to take down pirated films and other copyrighted material on its platform, reported PTI.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has sought an action-taken report from the application within 15 days, according to the newspaper.

Continued non-compliance could attract legal action under the Information Technology Act, 2000, and the Information Technology Rules, the ministry added.

In March, the platform was directed to take down more than 3,000 channels linked to pirated content, Hindustan Times reported.

The notice on Saturday came a day after the Union government sought details from Telegram and Signal of the safeguards they have put in place to prevent fraud and impersonation through username-based communication features.

On Wednesday, the Centre had asked WhatsApp to pause the rollout of a similar feature.

In Saturday’s notice, the ministry told Telegram to strengthen systems to detect, report, disable access to and remove pirated content, according to the Hindustan Times.

The platform was also directed to act against repeat channels, groups, bots, accounts and administrators that repeatedly share such material.

The notice is aimed at creating a “clear shift from piecemeal takedown to platform accountability”, The Hindu quoted an unidentified official as saying.

Copyright infringement is not only a civil violation but also a criminal offence under the 1957 Copyright Act and the 1952 Cinematograph Act, PTI quoted the Union government as saying.

“The ministry has made it clear that Telegram cannot merely wait for the government to identify each piracy channel one by one,” unidentified officials told the news agency. “A purely reactive, channel-by-channel takedown approach may not be enough to demonstrate due diligence by the platform.”

In June, the platform was blocked for a week due to concerns of paper leak ahead of the re-examination for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test.

‘Notice has no clear basis in law’

Stating that the notice issued to Telegram on piracy has no “clear basis in law’, the digital rights organisation Internet Freedom Foundation asked the Union government to state the provision of law under which it was issued.

“Telegram is neither a digitial news publisher nor a OTT service provider,” stated the organisation. “Beyond the this, no provision of the IT Act lets the executive order an intermediary to build filtering systems.”

It pointed out that Telegram’s architecture, where files are forwarded, re-encoded, renamed and rebuilt, “is a poor fit for fingerprinting, and encrypted secret chats (enabled by the platform) cannot be scanned without breaking encryption”.

“What can be built in fifteen days is a blunt filter that removes lawful speech to avoid risk,” stated the Internet Freedom Foundation.

It added that this was the third regulatory action against Telegram within 15 days.

“IFF is sounding the alarm on the rapid acceleration of digital authoritarianism in India under the guise of moral panics and social issues,” said the organisation. “We demand regulatory governance than the control of platforms by the Union government.”

Internet Freedom Foundation
Statement on the Information and Broadcasting Ministry’s piracy notice to Telegram

New Delhi, 4 July 2026

As per a press handout on 4 July the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting issued a notice to Telegram over pirated films and OTT content,… pic.twitter.com/08v5mqIHEi

— Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) (@internetfreedom) July 4, 2026

Edited by Sneha.

How can a government after 78 years of Independence deny people the right to clean drinking water? What happened to the promise of “Har Ghar Jal” – of drinking water in every home?

Since mid-May, these are the questions being raised by the residents of Chanot village in Haryana’s Hansi district. Chanot is one of the 121 villages in Hansi district, which was demarcated as a new district in December.

The protests were triggered by a new 30-km water pipeline that is being laid from the Bhakra canal to Hansi town to supply drinking water. The residents of Chanot have demanded a connection to the pipeline, which runs through the village.

The pipeline is being laid as part of the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation, or AMRUT, scheme to provide water to urban households.

By June, about 50 residents of Chanot, including women and an octogenarian, began an indefinite fast demanding resolution of water and electricity problems.

At the protest site, plastic bottles filled with dirty yellow and black water have been strung up from a tent. Sitting under the tent, Chanot residents point to the bottles and tell news reporters, “This is the water we have been drinking for the past 20 years. The water is not even safe for our animals.”

Women, who shoulder the burden of collecting water, say they have had to rely on contaminated sources such as village tanks, groundwater and makeshift rainwater storage.

Hansi, Haryana: In Hansi, talks were held between the district administration and protesting villagers of Chainat over a water dispute. No final decision was reached

Dharna Committee member, Anoop says, "We have placed our demand that the pipeline going to Hansi city should be… pic.twitter.com/nv31sNdzxO

— IANS (@ians_india) June 4, 2026

The government has offered to lay another drinking water pipeline under the Jal Jeevan Mission meant for rural areas. However, Chanot’s residents have objected to the proposal saying that the alternative eight-kilometre pipeline will have to be powered by a motor. But due to irregular electricity supply and voltage fluctuation could disrupt water supply.

They say that a direct T-connection to the new, high-pressure urban pipeline being laid through the village will reduce overall costs.

Somesh Kumar, who claimed to be a former president of the Haryana Sarpanch Association, intervened in the protest and got a T-joint fitted to the new pipeline around June 20, said news reports. Kumar claimed the T-joint had been approved by the state government, reported The Tribune.

Days later, on the night of June 23, Hansi district officials and the police removed the T-joint on the pipeline saying it had been illegally installed. The police fired teargas shells as protests turned violent.

The khap panchayats of nearby villages and farmer leaders have voiced their support for the protest in Chanot. Leaders of the Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) have also visited Chanot.

The agitation in Chanot resonates across many villages in Haryana where there is a severe shortage of water despite the elaborate network of canals from the Bhakra dam. The Bhakra Dam lies on the Sutlej River in Himachal Pradesh.

Haryana has a network of 521 canals that depend on the dam as well as tubewells. But Chanot represents the tip of the state’s water scarcity problem.

Earlier in June, the Hansi Police filed a first information report against 31 farmer leaders and protesters for blocking a road. Around the end of June, the local administration blocked social media accounts that were sharing updates and details of the protest in Chanot.

For now, the government does not seem to have any plan in place to deal with this crisis except to criminalise every legitimate protest by citizens, even if it is for the right to drinking water.

Nandita Haksar is the author of Shooting the Sun: Why Manipur Was Engulfed by Violence and the Government Remained Silent (Speaking Tiger, 2023).

A Delhi court on Saturday rejected the bail petitions filed by activists Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam in the 2020 riots conspiracy case, reported Live Law.

Additional Sessions Judge Sameer Bajpai of Karkardooma Courts said that he was bound by the Supreme Court’s order from January that denied them bail, according to Bar and Bench.

In its order rejecting bail for Khalid and Imam, a bench of Justices Aravind Kumar and NV Anjaria had said they could file fresh petitions after all protected witnesses are examined or after one year.

The bench had, however, granted bail to Gulfisha Fatima, Meeran Haider, Shifa-ur-Rehman, Shadab Ahmed and Muhammad Saleem Khan.

Khalid, Imam and the other activists had been arrested between January 2020 and September 2020 in connection with the communal violence that broke out in North East Delhi in February 2020 between supporters of the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act and those opposing it. The violence had left 53 dead and hundreds injured. Most of those killed were Muslims.

The persons accused in the matter have been charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act, the Arms Act and sections of the Indian Penal Code.

The police have claimed that the violence was part of a larger conspiracy to defame the Narendra Modi government and was planned by those who organised the protests against the amended Citizenship Act.

On Saturday, pointing out the conditions laid by the Supreme Court in January for Khalid and Imam to seek bail, the bench said: “Thus, following the said order of the Supreme Court, this court cannot entertain the applications and grant bail to the applicants”.

It added: “In fact, the applications are not maintainable and they are hereby dismissed.”

In their fresh pleas filed in June, the activists contended that despite six months having passed since the Supreme Court denied them bail, there had been no meaningful progress in the trial.

The arguments on the charge are incomplete, Imam had argued, adding that he has been in jail for nearly six years.

Appearing for Khalid on Saturday, advocate Trideep Pais also told the court that there has been no “recovery, no statement leading to any discovery” while he continues to be in custody, reported Live Law.

Khalid and Imam’s fresh applications had come nearly a month after a Supreme Court bench on May 18 criticised the January order, observing that “bail is the rule and jail is an exception” even in prosecutions under the anti-terror law.

The observations criticising the January verdict had been made while hearing an unrelated bail plea of a person booked under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

On May 22, a Supreme Court bench of Justices Aravind Kumar and PB Varale referred the matter relating to bail in anti-terror law cases involving prolonged incarcerations to a larger bench.

Edited by Sneha.

R Rajagopal, a former editor of The Telegraph, on Saturday received his renewed passport after a months-long ordeal that followed his removal from West Bengal’s voter rolls during the special intensive revision exercise, he told Scroll.

Rajagopal, who was editor of The Telegraph between 2016 and 2023, had applied to renew the document in February.

On June 27, he said that he had been removed as a voter in West Bengal during the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in March, apparently because neither his nor his father’s name could be traced in the 2002 electoral rolls.

Rajagopal said that his name had been excluded by the Election Commission, citing “logical discrepancies”, which refer to situations such as a mismatch in parents’ names, a small age gap between parents and children or parents being recorded as having more than six children.

On June 17, the Regional Passport Office in Kolkata told him that the police had submitted an adverse verification report on his passport renewal application, citing his deletion from the voter rolls.

He added that he was informed that the alternative documents he had submitted were insufficient.

No additional documents sought

However, between then and the issuance of his renewed passport, the authorities sought no additional documents from Rajagopal, he told Scroll.

He said that Kerala Chief Minister VD Satheesan had on Monday written to West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari regarding the case. On the same day, the Kolkata passport office emailed him asking him to request fresh police verification.

Rajagopal’s family hails from Kerala and he was born in Thiruvananthapuram. His father was the former state secretary of the non-profit organisation Gandhi Smarak Nidhi in Kerala.

“At no point were any additional documents sought,” he said.

Soon after the email, he received a message that his passport had been processed.

In view of this, he said it seems clear that his case had been expedited only because of the political pressure.

‘Government needs to clarify’

The journalist pointed out that the Union government and the administration in West Bengal should clarify whether the data collected during the special intensive revision exercise could be used for any other purpose besides revising electoral rolls.

“Unless and until there is policy clarity on this issue, it is difficult to claim any real relief,” he said.

He told The Probe that if the voter roll revision data could be used arbitrarily by the police, “it is a dangerous situation for people”.

Voter roll revision and citizenship

The special intensive revision of voter rolls in West Bengal was carried out before the Assembly elections in April.

Final rolls published in February initially excluded more than 61 lakh voters, with the process continuing through supplementary lists and adjudication of about 60 lakh “doubtful and pending” cases.

By April 6, about 91 lakh voters, nearly 11.9% of West Bengal’s electorate before the revision process began, had been removed from the electoral rolls.

Ahead of the Assembly elections, about 34 lakh appeals were reportedly pending before appellate tribunals. Of these, 27 lakh were filed by persons who were excluded from the voter list. The tribunals, set up as part of the special intensive revision process, had allowed 1,607 names to be added back to the electoral rolls.

The voter list revision has taken place in several other states such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala in the past year. The third phase is underway in 16 states and three Union Territories.

On May 27, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls conducted by the Election Commission, saying that the exercise “advances the constitutional imperative of free and fair elections”.

However, the court said that the poll panel’s inquiries for the purpose of including a person in the voter list do not mean that it can decide whether the person is an Indian citizen.

On Wednesday, the Ministry of External Affairs reiterated that the passport is a travel document and not proof of citizenship.

Written by Sneha. Edited by Sara Varghese.

Also read: An ex-editor writes: My name was deleted during SIR. Now police won’t clear my passport application

The Shri Badrinath Kedarnath Temple Committee on Friday ordered an inquiry into allegations of misappropriation of donations at the Badrinath shrine in Uttarakhand, reported The Indian Express.

All employees and officials involved in counting donations have been issued show-cause notices, ANI quoted the temple committee chairperson, Hemant Dwivedi, as saying.

The development came days after allegations emerged that donations made to the Ram temple in Ayodhya had been embezzled.

The Uttar Pradesh government has constituted a Special Investigation Team at the request of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, which manages the temple, and has initiated legal proceedings based on its recommendations. The SIT is expected to submit a final report next week.

The allegations in Badrinath were made by Dehradun-based outfit Bhairav Sena, reported The Indian Express.

Bhairav Sena had alleged on social media that Dwivedi’s personal assistant was involved in the alleged embezzlement, an unidentified official of the temple committee told the newspaper.

However, Dwivedi said that he does not have a personal secretary, reported ANI.

“The person being referred to as the ‘personal secretary’ is actually a regular employee of the Badri-Kedar Temple Committee,” he added.

The temple committee’s Chief Executive Officer, Sohan Singh Rangad, said surveillance camera footage from the Badrinath temple premises had been reviewed on Friday However, nothing conclusive was found, reported The Indian Express.

He added that the inquiry committee will submit its report based on available evidence, CCTV footage and statements from the parties concerned, PTI reported.

Dwivedi said the inquiry committee’s report would be made public.

Allegations in Ayodhya

The contents of the preliminary report submitted by the SIT on June 23 to the Uttar Pradesh government have not been made public.

However, unidentified persons aware of its contents told The Indian Express that the report highlighted alleged lapses, inadequate supervision and negligence in the handling, maintenance and counting of donated cash and valuables.

On June 25, a first information report was filed against eight persons based on a complaint by the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust. All eight accused have been arrested.

They were booked under provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to theft by a clerk or servant, criminal breach of trust, stolen property and criminal conspiracy.

The accused had allegedly misappropriated donations collected through the donation boxes installed on the temple premises.

A day after the arrests, the trust’s general secretary, Champat Rai, and trustee Anil Mishra resigned from their posts on “moral grounds” amid the controversy.

The Ram temple in Ayodhya was built on the site of the Babri Masjid, which was demolished by Hindutva extremists on December 6, 1992, because they believed that it stood on the spot where the Hindu deity Ram was born.

In 2019, the Supreme Court held that the demolition of the Babri mosque was illegal but handed over the land to a trust for a Ram temple to be constructed. At the same time, it directed that a five-acre plot in Ayodhya be allotted to Muslims for a mosque to be built.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Also read:

• The RSS man at the centre of Ram temple trust’s controversial run in Ayodhya

• In Ayodhya, it’s Sangh Parivar vs Sangh Parivar as Ram temple fund ‘theft’ charges blow up

The Union government on Saturday designated 23 persons allegedly linked to Pakistan-based terror groups Jaish-e-Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jamaat-ud-Dawa and The Resistance Front as terrorists under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

The persons are accused of being involved in recruiting and training militants, facilitating infiltrations, providing logistical support, financing, weapons supply, drone-based delivery of weapons and planning or coordinating terror attacks in India, the Union home ministry stated.

The list includes 17 Pakistani citizens and 6 Indians, Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s office said. However, they are all believed to be currently residing in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

The persons included in the terror list are Jaish-e-Mohammed’s Abdullah Jehadi, Ashfaq Ahmad, Ghulam Fareed, Hafiz Abdul Shakoor, Masood Ilyas Kashmiri, Maulana Imdad Ullah Makki, Mohammad Mussadiq, Mufti Muhammad Asghar Khan and Waseem Noor Jat.

Others included to the list are Lashkar-e-Taiba’s Abdul Rauf, Abid Quyoom Lone, Bilal Ahmad Mir, Firdous Ahmad Bhat, Hafiz Khalid Waleed, Haroon Rashid Ganai, Maulana Saifullah Khalid, Mohammad Yaqoob, Molana Yousaf Taibi, Nazir Ahmed Gujjar, Owais Farooz, Qari Yaqub Sheikh and Rana Iftikhar.

Some of them also belong to Lashkar-e-Taiba’s affiliate groups The Resistance Front and the Jamaat-ud-Dawa.

Lashkar-e-Taiba’s Mohammed Shaheed Faisal, who is also linked to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, was also added to the list, the home ministry said.

Among those designated as terrorists are persons accused of playing a role in the November 2016 attack on the Indian Army camp in Jammu and Kashmir’s Nagrota and the April 2022 attack on security forces in the Union Territory’s Sunjwan.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Sara Varghese.

July 4 marks the 250th anniversary of the day America’s colonists issued a declaration stating their desire to be free of British rule. The anniversary is an occasion to revisit two questions that are fundamental to US history: what motivated the American colonies to turn against their overlords across the Atlantic? And how did an outmanned colonial military defeat a superior British fighting force?

An unlikely country – India – factors into both answers. Let’s review them, in reverse chronological order.

In April 1775, war broke out between the American colonies and the British. The colonists won that first battle of what became known as the Revolutionary War. While the British had more experience, more troops, and more money, they could never conquer the colonists. For several years, the two sides battled to a stalemate. But the tide turned in 1781. What changed? To answer that, let’s look at a battle fought the previous year – in India.

Soldiers from the East India Company – a de facto arm of the British government – were enmeshed in what became known as the Second Anglo-Mysore War. The battle stemmed from Britain’s seizure of a port controlled by the French government in Mahé, on the Malabar coast, in 1779. Portions of India were under French rule at the time.

The port was closely aligned with Mysore’s ruler, Haidar Ali, and he responded to its seizure the following July by mounting a massive invasion of the Carnatic region, deploying 80,000 troops. Two months of warfare followed, with the decisive battle fought on September 10 in the town of Pollilur. The use of what was then cutting-edge rocket technology helped Ali and his troops prevail.

The East India Company suffered 3,000 fatalities and lost nearly half its officers. It was “the severest blow that the English ever sustained in India,” according to a leading British military official of the era, Sir Hector Munro.

The outcome was wake-up call to the British, who feared French encroachment. Soon afterwards, the British doubled the number of troops they had in India, which meant reducing their presence in the Revolutionary War. It was a critical decision – and one that would have far-reaching consequences.

The reallocation helped the British achieve military parity with India in what become known as the Second Anglo-Mysore War, which concluded in 1784 with the Treaty of Mangalore. But this came at the expense of the fighting forces in the American colonies.

The British were henceforth short staffed, and unable to keep up with the colonists, who in January 1781 won a key battle in South Carolina. Nine months later, the two sides squared off in Yorktown, a city in Virginia. But the British, with 8,000 troops, could not compete with the nearly 20,000 troops representing the Americans and the French.

On October 19, Britain’s military leader in the American colonies, Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis, surrendered, effectively ending the Revolutionary War (though battles would continue for another two years). Soon thereafter, America’s political leaders gathered to celebrate the American victory.

At the event, they toasted Haidar Ali – “May he continue to be a scourge to the British!” The duke of Manchester later declared, “The neglect of not having a proper naval force in America was the cause of the calamity.”

That sentiment is amplified in a forthcoming book by the University of Chicago’s Steven Pincus: “In many ways the defeat . . . at Pollilur led ineluctably to Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown.” Pincus adds, “No explanation for the emergence of the American state can be complete without consideration of developments on the Indian subcontinent.”

Hyder Spanks the English

To show that the English did not have sole rights on myth making, here is a cartoon by Antoine Borel, showing Hyder Ali of Mysore giving a British officer a thorough spanking while a French soldier smirks and supplies the twigs. pic.twitter.com/6sAVrbRKYv

— Folkloristan (@folkloristan) May 22, 2025

The story of India’s role in American colonists wanting to break free of the British begins in 1757. That’s when the East India Company won a landmark battle in the Indian city of Palashi (often Anglicised as “Plassey”). The victory gave the East India Comopany control over Bengal, which was home to 25 million-30 million people at the time. And it led the British to assert themselves throughout India – taking control of taxation in Bengal and other regions.

But there was one element the British could not control: the weather. In 1768, North East India received little rain, and the following summer it received none. The ensuing drought was devastating. It severely handicapped the local farmers. By 1770, a full-fledged famine broke out; estimates of the number of deaths range from 1 million to 10 million. (The episode was memorialised a century later in the celebrated novel Anandamath by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay.)

The famine’s impact was exacerbated by the East India Company’s actions – or inactions. The East India Company had access to food that was not distributed, some rice was hoarded for profiteering, and tax collections continued – sometimes with higher assessments than in the pre-famine period. William Dalrymple, the eminent historian of India, has called the Company’s conduct during this period, “one of the greatest failures of corporate responsibility in history”.

Accounts of the East India Company’s malice in Bengal eventually made their way into publications that were read throughout the American colonies. And those accounts helped stir up the already smoldering anti-British sentiments that would lead to the Declaration of Independence.

One such account from 1771, titled “Letter from a Gentleman in India,” painted a gruesome portrait of what had happened in Bengal. The author wrote, “On our arrival here, we found a river full of dead human carcasses floating up and down, and the streets crowded with the dead and dying, without anyone attempting to give them relief.” It was reprinted in papers in American colonies such as Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island.

Later, in 1773, a prominent critic of British rule, John Dickinson, from the state of Pennsylvania, wrote a scathing article about the East India Company’s actions in India. He said their conduct “for some Years past, has given Ample Proof, how little they regard the Laws of Nations, the Rights, Liberties, or Lives of Men. They have levied War, excited Rebellious, dethroned lawful Princes, and sacrificed Millions for the Sake of Gain.” He went on to reference their “most unparalleled Barbarities, Extortions and Monopolies,” which he said, “stripped the miserable Inhabitants of their Property, and reduced whole Provinces to Indigence and Ruin.”

He blamed the East India Company for the famine, charging it with having “engrossed all the Necessaries of Life, and set them at so high a Rate, that the Poor could not purchase them.” He warned that the Company’s chief minister was determined “to executive his Plan of enslaving America,” and that the company had “now, it seems, cast their Eyes on America, as a new Theatre, whereon to exercise their Talents of Rapine, Oppression and Cruelty.”

In 1774, a celebrated bishop serving the colonies, Jonathan Shipley, delivered a speech in which he suggested that the famine in Bengal could be replicated in America. The speech was reprinted in large cities throughout the colonies.

THOMAS PAINE: "I prefer peace. But if trouble must come, let it come in my time, so that my children can live in peace." pic.twitter.com/8SOhUgRAa2

— The Conservative Alternative (@OldeWorldOrder) May 13, 2026

The commentary undoubtedly influenced the thinking of Thomas Paine, another vocal critic of the British. The author of a celebrated anti-British pamphlet Common Sense, in 1774 he wrote a withering diatribe against the East India’s Company’s chief executive in Bengal, Robert Clive. “Fear and terror march like pioneers before his camp,” wrote Paine, “murder and rapine accompany it, fame and wretchedness follow in the rear.”

India, wrote Paine, was “a bloody monument of unnecessary deaths”.

The widespread commentary about the East India Company’s actions in India sparked fear among the colonists that they could meet the same fate as the people of Bengal. Coupled with several other measures, such as the British tax on Indian tea, the colonists’ revolutionary fervor steadily escalated.

When the Continental Congress in the US issued its Declaration of Independence in July 1776, there were references to the “long train of abuses”, “history of repeated injuries” and “absolute tyranny” of the British in the American colonies. The indictment mirrored commentary about British malfeasance in India.

The influence of Indians on America’s early history – both as military victors and as famine victims – is a potent reminder of the unlikely ways nations can be impacted by seemingly unrelated events in faraway places.

Today, India’s influence on the United States continues, though that influence looks very different from the past. It emanates from vibrant companies that export goods and services to America – and through millions of Indian-Americans who occupy prominent places in medicine, information technology, and other dynamic sectors of the US economy.

Matthew Rees, a former White House speechwriter, is the president of Geonomica, a US-based ghostwriting firm, and a contributing editor to the South Asian Herald.

Statements about making Tamil Nadu a separate country will not amount to sedition in today’s social context, the Madras High Court has said. Instead, a person making such a comment will be viewed as having mental health issues, it observed.

Such a statement can at best cause “annoyance and therefore, in the present social milieu, the mere publication of that sentence cannot be considered as inciting hatred against the nation” or the Indian government, the bench of Justice D Bharatha Chakravarthy said in a June 29 ruling.

The observation was made while quashing a sedition case against two publishers. They had been booked under Section 124 of the Indian Penal Code in 2019. In 2022, the Supreme Court ordered proceedings and criminal prosecutions for sedition under the section to be kept in abeyance.

The publishers had moved the High Court challenging the case, which was pending before a magistrate court.

The matter pertains to a book released in 2014 by publishing house Kalagam Pathipppagam, which is run by the petitioners. The book was authored by a separate person who had died while the case was being heard.

The book allegedly stated that in 1967, one Tamizharasan had proclaimed in Coimbatore that Tamil Nadu should be a separate nation, and guerrilla warfare should be adopted in order to “divide and secede”.

The petitioners argued that a division bench of the High Court had previously quashed sedition proceedings in a similar case involving another book.

Opposing the publishers’ petition, the state argued that the book amounts to sedition if it contained a statement that Tamil Nadu should secede and that guerrilla warfare would be carried out to that end.

The bench rejected the state’s argument. Chakravarthy said that the essence of sedition lay in written or visible representation “bringing into contempt, or exciting or attempting to excite disaffection towards the government”.

The judge said that the Supreme Court had held that such acts must be considered “in the light of the current social milieu and the times in which we are living”.

The court observed that while “it will be true that during the days of Tamizharasan in 1967, when he formed the Tamil liberation front, etc., such a speech or publication would have incited hatred or contempt” to the Indian government. “But in today’s scenario, India as a nation, is unified by heart and soul,” it added.

Mere recording of what had happened does not amount to an attempt to incite hatred, the bench observed.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Sara Varghese.

Vivek Kumar has made Jantar Mantar his home since June 20, the day that the Cockroach Janta Party began a sit-in protest at the site. The 19-year-old wakes up every day at 6 am, goes to the nearby Bangla Sahib Gurudwara to freshen up and comes back to volunteer with the campaign.

“The Cockroach Janta Party is not a party, but a family,” he said. “Abhijeet Dipke [founder of Cockroach Janta Party] has given me a platform to express myself. Before this, I used to be scared of the government. But I have become fearless now.”

Kumar is not alone. Hundreds of young people have been gathering every day at Jantar Mantar to demand the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan for repeatedly failing to hold examinations for medical college seats and government jobs in a secure manner.

Who are these cockroaches? What are their hopes and dreams? And what is keeping them going?

Scroll visited the protest site over several days to find out.

The Indus Waters Treaty will stand in abeyance till Pakistan “irrevocably” stops its support for cross-border terrorism, the Union government reiterated on Friday.

New Delhi’s position on the treaty is consistent, said Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal.

The comment came in response to a reporter’s question about a conference organised by Pakistan on the Indus Waters Treaty.

India had suspended the treaty in April 2025 in response to the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam.

Pakistan had at the time described India’s suspension of the treaty as an “act of war” and warned that it would respond with “full force across the complete spectrum of national power”.

India and Pakistan signed the Indus Waters Treaty in 1960 with the World Bank as an additional signatory. The pact sought to divide the water of the Indus river and its tributaries equitably among the two countries. Under the treaty, water from three eastern rivers, Beas, Ravi and Sutlej, were allocated to India and that from the three western rivers – Chenab, Indus and Jhelum – to Pakistan.

The treaty also permits both countries to use the other’s rivers for certain purposes, such as small hydroelectric projects that require little or no water storage.

Experts told Scroll at the time that the suspension of the treaty implies that India is no longer accountable to Pakistan for using, regulating or stopping the flow of the water of the Chenab, Indus and Jhelum rivers.

In June 2025, Union Home Minister Amit Shah told The Times of India that India will never restore the Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Union government on Friday issued orders to block seven battery management applications after some users misused them to remotely stall e-rickshaw batteries, The Indian Express reported.

Videos widely shared on social media showed persons using the apps to wirelessly disable the batteries of nearby e-rickshaws through Bluetooth, leading the vehicles to stall on roads. The incidents had highlighted cybersecurity risks and led to concerns about the safety of passengers.

The apps, many of which are developed by Chinese companies, are meant for use by owners of lithium ion batteries to monitor charge levels, voltage, temperature and the health of the cells.

On Friday, the government asked technology companies Apple and Google to remove the applications from their app stores, The Indian Express reported.

There is an app named BAT-BMS.

BMS stands for Battery Management System.

By connecting it via Bluetooth to compatible e-rickshaw BMS, one can easily view battery stats and switch the power supply off, stopping the running e-rickshaw on the road. It's working range is between… pic.twitter.com/JkjrQkub04

— Simpu Singh (@Simpu_SinghIND) July 1, 2026

Stranding vehicles on roads is a punishable offence, The Hindu quoted an unidentified official as saying.

In Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain, the police held a person for allegedly demanding money from e-rickshaw drivers after using one of the apps to stop their vehicles, the newspaper reported.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Union government on Friday issued notices to messaging platforms Telegram and Signal seeking details of the safeguards they have put in place to prevent fraud and impersonation through username-based communication features, the Hindustan Times reported, quoting an unidentified government official.

The notice was two days after the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology had asked WhatsApp to pause the rollout of a similar feature.

“The rules apply to everyone,” the official told the newspaper. “Similar notices will be sent to Telegram and Signal on Friday.”

The ministry has asked Telegram and Signal to explain how they prevent misuse of features that allow users to communicate without revealing their phone numbers, according to The Times of India.

The ministry has raised concerns that such features could facilitate “scams, phishing, digital arrest frauds and identity impersonation”.

In Telegram’s case, the government has also asked why the platform should be allowed to continue offering the username feature.

The companies have been given three days to respond, The Times of India reported, quoting unidentified persons familiar with the matter.

The notices follow the ministry’s direction to Meta-owned WhatsApp on Wednesday to pause the rollout of its proposed username feature until consultations with the government are completed.

In response to the government’s concerns, WhatsApp said that, to protect against misuse, usernames associated with public figures, government entities, celebrities and verified accounts on its parent company Meta’s platforms had been reserved so they could only be claimed by their legitimate owners, The Indian Express reported.

A spokesperson for platform said that the users would still need a phone number to create and use an account, The Indian Express reported. The spokesperson added that persons would need to know a user’s exact username to contact them for the first time, with an optional username key providing an additional layer of control.

On Thursday, digital rights organisation Internet Freedom Foundation criticised the government’s action and called on the ministry to withdraw the notices issued to WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal.

The organisation said the new notices “widen an unconstitutional dragnet over privacy features” and that it had no basis in law.

The organisation argued that any restrictions on such features should be grounded in legislation rather than executive action.

It also called on the ministry to publish the notices and specify the legal provisions under which it was acting.

The foundation had said on Wednesday that the notice to WhatsApp amounted to “an attempt by the executive to decide what a company may build and ship, which no statute permits”.

Concerning development: Digital rights organisation

Describing the notices issued to Telegram and Signal as “concerning”, non-profit organisation Software Freedom Law Centre called on the Union government to explain the legal basis on which the action was taken.

The legal services organisation said that while concerns regarding online fraud, phishing, impersonation and cyber-enabled financial crime are legitimate, regulatory intervention affecting product design “must remain firmly grounded in law”.

It added that the username feature “is designed to enhance privacy by allowing users to communicate without exposing personal information”.

“Such apps are widely used by journalists, human rights defenders, lawyers and others who work in sensitive matters and may face heightened risks if their contact information is publicly disclosed,” the organisation pointed out. “Any regulatory action affecting such privacy-enhancing technologies must therefore be carefully justified and proportionate.”

It also pointed out that the Information Technology Act, 2000, or Information Technology Rules do not require intermediaries to justify or obtain permission before introducing lawful software features.

Concerns regarding phishing or online scams cannot justify the creation of an “unlawful approval mechanism for software features or question technology companies on their products through executive notices in the absence of a legal basis”, stated the Software Freedom Law Centre.

https://t.co/R7wWHi5L7Z's Statement on MeitY’s Notice Seeking Clarifications on the Username Feature

Media reports indicate that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (@GoI_MeitY) has now issued notices (“Notices”) to @telegram and @signalapp seeking… https://t.co/8Dg9ZLAsUJ

— SFLC.in (@SFLCin) July 3, 2026

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Every day, 21-year-old Amjad Hussain, from Tapatjuri village in the Nagaon district of Assam, walks one kilometre to his neighbour Dilwar Hussain’s house, where he weaves patis (mats) made from the agar tree to earn an income. His family considers this a small miracle considering that a few years ago, Amjad couldn’t even take a step without a walking stick.

“Three of my sons developed bodily deformations, which we later learnt was because of the water we drink,” says Amjad’s mother, Halima Khatun. Her sons were showing symptoms of skeletal fluorosis, which is caused by consuming water with excess fluoride content. Her daughter was spared from this “pani wala bemar” (water-borne disease), she says.

Dharani Saikia, a 62-year-old social worker based in Kampur town in Nagaon district, has been gathering evidence of fluorosis cases in Assam, particularly in Nagaon, Hojai and Karbi Anglong districts for over two decades. He says that as of 2020, 13 districts are affected.

In 2022, the Ministry of Jal Shakti confirmed fluoride contamination beyond safe levels in nine districts of Assam. However, no official findings detailing contamination levels of groundwater, number of affected people and symptoms have not been published since nearly a decade ago, when surveys were conducted in 2017-’18. Meanwhile, fluorosis continues to grip lives across the state.

How fluoride enters Assam’s water

Fluoride contamination in the state’s groundwater was first detected in 1999 by AB Paul, an engineer in the Public Health Engineering Department in Karbi Anglong.

PhD scholar Nikita Neog, who studies fluoride contamination across the state, says that geogenic factors play a role. “The Assam region is an extension of the Shillong plateau, which has Precambrian rocks rich in minerals like fluorite. These release fluoride into the groundwater. The World Health Organisation (WHO)’s safe limit for fluoride in drinking water is 1.5 mg/l, and anything exceeding that is not safe for consumption,” she says. A study Neog co-authored in 2021 tested groundwater samples from Nagaon, Kamrup Metropolitan and West Karbi Anglong districts detected a maximum of 9 mg/l in a sample from Nagaon.

In Tapatjuri village, more than 1,000 kids have contracted fluorosis, according to Saikia. “In Binakandi, there are 485 villages where most of the population has been affected, making it one of the worst fluoride-affected zones of Assam,” he says.

Tapatjuri falls under the Barhampur legislative constituency. Local legislator Jitu Goswami of the Bharatiya Janata Party says, “Fluoride presence has been detected in many places [in Barhampur] like Doboka and Kathiatoli. I have written to the Water Supply Department to look at the issue. Also, I am trying to raise awareness among people so that they avoid groundwater sources and use water from rivers and springs more.” So far, Goswami’s conversation with the department has not progressed further.

Natural or geogenic fluoride contamination, as in the case of Assam, largely impacts groundwater, leaving surface water resources such as rivers, ponds and springs generally safe.

Impacts of fluorosis on the human body

Saikia has observed that symptoms generally emerge years after consuming fluoride-affected water. He shares that mineral supplements seemed to improve the condition of many children with fluorosis, including his own son, who developed dental fluorosis in 2011.

Dr Jutika Ojah, Head of Department of Community Medicine, Gauhati Medical College and Hospital, adds that while mineral consumption can help manage fluorosis among children, there is no cure.

At levels of 0.5-1.0 mg/l, fluoride can help prevent tooth decay by strengthening the enamel. Higher doses, however, cause problems. “[Excess] fluoride affects humans in three ways – dental fluorosis, whose symptoms are discolouration, mottling, and pitting [of teeth]; skeletal fluorosis, whose symptoms are joint pain, stiffness, and deformities; and non-skeletal symptoms such as gastrointestinal issues and muscle weakness,” says Dr. Ojah.

“Management focuses on removing exposure and supportive care,” she says. She notes that in high-fluoride areas, around 10-30 cases are reported each month.

Dr Anuj Kumar Borah, a dental surgeon at the Kathiatoli Block Public Health Centre, says, “I get five to six patients with dental fluorosis symptoms every month. However, the actual number of cases will be much higher.”

While symptoms of fluorosis among children is sometimes manageable, some people live with fluorosis their entire lives.

Fifty-year-old Sadhani Kalita who lives a few kilometres from Amjad Hussain’s residence says, “I face constant pain in my body, and my feet get swollen. I also have fever, high pressure, and diabetes, for which I have to take medicines.”

A pipe dream

The Public Health Engineering Department launched the Jal Jeevan Mission Scheme in 2019 to provide piped water supply in rural areas, sourced from dams, springs and lakes. According to their data, of the 914 schemes handed over in Nagaon – one of the highest in the state – only 510, or roughly 55%, are functional.

The Public Health Engineering Department has also set up 83 water-testing labs in rural areas, according to Bhupen Barman, Assistant Engineer, Water Sanitation Support Organisation.

In the most recent tests, no fluoride was detected in water samples from taps installed under the Jal Jeevan Mission scheme, according to Barman. This indicates water provided by the scheme in the district is safe but fluoride could be present in other groundwater sources, he adds.

Ground realities

According to the Public Health Engineering Department, 83% of the state’s rural areas are covered by the Jal Jeevan Mission scheme. However, regular access to the water is limited because of operational challenges.

Bong Rongpi is employed as a Jal Mitra (workers that are trained in maintaining piped water systems by JJM) in Dhikharumukh village in Nagaon district, which provides piped water to four fluoride-affected villages. “The source of this water is the Udharjuri spring, which is three kilometres away. We draw water from the spring and store it in a 50,000-litre tank,” says Rongpi.

However, the process requires high-voltage power, which is hampered by frequent power outages. “During summer and monsoon, we sometimes don’t have power for a day or two at a stretch. During these times, people in the villages have to go back to groundwater sources,” he says. In these cases, the people are once again vulnerable to fluoride contaminated water.

Fluoride removal

A research group at Tezpur University led by Robin Kumar Dutta has developed a tool to remove excess fluoride from drinking water through certain chemical treatments, but there have been certain challenges to scale the tool and implement it in Assam.

Currently, a pilot of this tool is underway in parts of Yemen with support from Dutch-based nonprofit ZOA. Dutta, a professor in the Department of Chemical Sciences, has previously developed tools to remove arsenic and iron from water.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam MLA and former Tamil Nadu minister Anitha R Radhakrishnan was arrested on Friday for making remarks about Chief Minister Vijay that a member of the state’s ruling party alleged were derogatory.

Radhakrishnan, who represents the Tiruchendur constituency, was arrested at Authoor in Thoothukudi district shortly after the Madras High Court denied him anticipatory bail, reported Live Law.

Radhakrishnan had made the allegedly derogatory remarks during a public meeting held on June 20. He had been booked on June 23 under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace and statements conducing to public mischief, reported The Indian Express.

The complaint was filed by an office-bearer of the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam named S Selvam.

On Friday, he was inspecting records at the Authoor Town Panchayat when he was arrested.

DMK president and former Chief Minister MK Stalin asked the new Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam government “what was the urgent need to arrest” Radhakrishnan.

“Why did this ‘pure power’ administration – which has taken no action so far on the complaint filed by a gangrape survivor against the TVK MLA from Srivaikuntam – fail to show similar urgency in that case?” Stalin asked on social media.

He was referring to allegations against TVK MLA G Saravanan, who has been accused of supporting two men who raped a woman in May, reported The News Minute.

Stalin asked that if arrests are made for making defamatory remarks, “how many people would have to be arrested for the things today’s ministers say”.

“Without delivering any benefits to the people who voted for it, and having retained power through horse-trading, the chief minister seems to think he can bide his time by arresting Opposition parties that criticise him,” he alleged.

HC observations

Dismissing Radhakrishnan’s petition, Justice GK Ilanthiraiyan said that he should not have made the statements as an MLA.

“Being a member of the legislative assembly, what kind of speech you have spoken?” Live Law quoted the bench as asking. “Whoever it maybe, you have to respect the chief minister.”

It added: “In state of Tamil Nadu, since 1967, people from the cinema are being voted. Then why are you making these statements? You are not a layman. You are a member of the Assembly.”

Radhakrishnan had argued that his speech should not attract the sections he has been charged under.

“Whatever he has spoken may be defamation,” his counsel was quoted as saying. “But not these sections.”

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh urged Hindus to “thwart the conspiracies of anti-Hindu and anti-national forces”, who it claimed were trying to exploit the case about the alleged embezzlement of donations made to the Ram temple in Ayodhya. The general secretary of the Hindutva organisation, Dattatreya Hosabale, said the alleged thefts from the donation boxes at the temple had “deeply hurt the sentiments and faith of the entire society and Ram devotees”.

He added that said the RSS expects the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, which manages the temple, to treat the matter as an extraordinary one and “take effective steps to rectify all shortcomings in temple management and operations”.

This was the first public response of the RSS, the parent organisation of the Bharatiya Janata Party, since allegations emerged. Read on.

The RSS man at the centre of Ram temple trust’s controversial run in Ayodhya, reports Ayush Tiwari

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam MLA Anitha R Radhakrishnan was arrested for allegedly making remarks about Chief Minister Vijay that the police claimed were defamatory. The action against the former minister came hours after the Madras High Court denied him anticipatory bail.

DMK president and former Chief Minister MK Stalin asked the new Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam government why there had been an “urgent need” to arrest Radhakrishnan. He also asked why similar urgency had not been shown against TVK MLA G Saravanan, who has been accused of supporting two men who allegedly raped a woman in May.

Radhakrishnan has been booked under sections pertaining to intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace and statements conducing to public mischief. Read on.

The Union government issued notices to messaging platforms Telegram and Signal seeking details about the safeguards they have put in place to prevent fraud and impersonation through username-based communication features. Such features could facilitate “scams, phishing, digital arrest frauds and identity impersonation”, said the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

The action came two days after the ministry asked WhatsApp to pause the rollout of a similar feature. “The rules apply to everyone,” said an official.

In Telegram’s case, the government has also asked why the platform should be allowed to continue offering the username feature. The companies have been given three days to respond. Read on.

The Delhi High Court directed the Union government’s Grievance Appellate Committee to decide within 15 days an appeal seeking the removal of a video by YouTuber Dhruv Rathee. He had noted in the video that Hindu scriptures said that deities such as Ram and Krishna consumed meat and alcohol.

Lawyer Amita Sachdeva had filed the appeal against it, alleging that the video was derogatory, inflammatory and communally sensitive. She has also filed a criminal complaint, alleging that Rathee distorted Hindu scriptures and “mocked the sanctity of Sanatan Dharma”. Read on.

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

The Delhi High Court on Friday directed the Union government’s Grievance Appellate Committee to decide within 15 days an appeal seeking the removal of a video by YouTuber Dhruv Rathee, in which he claimed that Hindu gods consumed meat, reported Bar and Bench.

The Grievance Appellate Committee deals with the appeals of users against social media intermediaries regarding complaints about online content.

The court’s direction on Friday came on an appeal filed by lawyer Amita Sachdeva about a video Rathee uploaded on YouTube on March 21.

In the video, Rathee discussed dietary habits in Hindu scriptures. He noted that texts have mentioned that deities like Ram and Krishna consumed meat and alcohol.

Sachdeva alleged that the video is derogatory, inflammatory and communally sensitive, reported Live Law.

Appearing for the Union government, Additional Solicitor General Chetan Sharma told the court that YouTube should have taken down the video.

“Either Google [the parent company of YouTube] says they will do it now, or my ladyship may pass a judgement based on what the division bench has said,” said Sharma, referring to an order that held that the social media intermediary should check if any content is harmful and block it.

Sharma added: “He [Google’s counsel] should take it down and say he will not permit such fissiparous content that hurts the sentiments of the majority community.”

The counsel appearing for Google told the court that the company had given its response to Sachdeva and she has already filed an appeal before the Grievance Appellate Committee.

Disposing of the plea, the court told the committee to decide on the appeal within 15 days and said that “any disregard of this order will be taken note of seriously”.

Sachdeva has also filed a criminal complaint against the video before the magistrate court. She had alleged that Rathee distorted Hindu scriptures and “mocked the sanctity of Sanatan Dharma”.

Sanatana Dharma is a term some people use as a synonym for Hinduism.

The metropolitan magistrate has sought an action-taken report from the police, reported Bar and Bench.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh on Friday urged Hindus to exercise “patience and restraint” in connection with the alleged embezzlement of donations made to the Ram temple in Ayodhya and also exhorted them to “thwart the conspiracies of anti-Hindu and anti-national forces” who were allegedly trying to exploit the matter.

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

In a statement, the general secretary of the Hindutva organisation Dattatreya Hosabale said the alleged theft from the donation boxes at the temple had “deeply hurt the sentiments and faith of the entire society and Ram devotees”.

“We are all extremely pained and angered by this event,” he said.

Hosabale added that the Uttar Pradesh government had constituted a Special Investigation Team at the request of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, which manages the temple, and initiated legal proceedings based on its recommendations.

He said it was essential that anyone found guilty after the investigation should face severe punishment.

The RSS functionary also said the organisation expected the trust to treat the matter as an extraordinary one and “take effective steps to rectify all shortcomings in temple management and operations”.

He said this was “crucial” to ensure that the faith and reverence of Ram devotees remains “unbroken and steadfast”.

The general secretary added that the prevailing “confusion and uncertainty” surrounding the case must end and expressed confidence that the trust would strengthen public faith through proper financial management and transparent operational systems.

This was the RSS’ first public response since allegations emerged that donations from the Ram temple had been embezzled.

Commenting on the statement, Congress leader Pawan Khera said that Hosabale’s “performative condemnation” was a desperate attempt to sanitise the “loot” of funds from the Ram temple. He claimed that the purpose behind the video was to “lend legitimacy” to the Special Investigation team set by the Uttar Pradesh, and questioned why a preliminary report submitted by it on June 23 had not been made public.

The RSS is a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Dattatreya Hosabale's performative condemnation is not about exposing the loot of Ram Mandir funds. It is desperate damage control aimed at sanitising it.

The video's real purpose is to lend legitimacy to the UP government's SIT –… https://t.co/gqlFmZETYo

— Pawan Khera 🇮🇳 ಪವನ್ ಖೇರಾ (@Pawankhera) July 3, 2026

“The truth is that if the RSS were sincerely committed to safeguarding devotees' donations, embezzlement on such a scale would never have taken place at a temple that is directly under its own watch,” Khera remarked in a social media post.

Unidentified persons aware of the report’s contents told The Indian Express that it highlights alleged lapses, inadequate supervision and negligence in the handling, maintenance and counting of donated cash and valuables.

The SIT is expected to submit a final report next week.

On June 25, an FIR was filed against eight persons based on a complaint by the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust. All eight accused have been arrested.

They were booked under provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to theft by a clerk or servant, criminal breach of trust, stolen property and criminal conspiracy.

The accused had allegedly misappropriated donations collected through the donation boxes installed on the temple premises.

A day after the arrests, the trust’s general secretary, Champat Rai, and trustee Anil Mishra resigned from their posts on “moral grounds” amid the controversy.

The Ram temple in Ayodhya was built on the site of the Babri Masjid, which was demolished by Hindutva extremists on December 6, 1992, because they believed that it stood on the spot where the Hindu deity Ram was born.

In 2019, the Supreme Court held that the demolition of the Babri mosque was illegal but handed over the land to a trust for a Ram temple to be constructed. At the same time, it directed that a five-acre plot in Ayodhya be allotted to Muslims for a mosque to be built.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read:

• The RSS man at the centre of Ram temple trust’s controversial run in Ayodhya

• In Ayodhya, it’s Sangh Parivar vs Sangh Parivar as Ram temple fund ‘theft’ charges blow up

A day after India and Japan signed a series of agreements to boost supply chains and energy resilience, China said on Friday that the partnership between New Delhi and Tokyo “should not target” Beijing, reported AFP.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun was quoted as saying that countries should work to “foster understanding and trust”.

“Cooperation between nations...should not target or harm the interests of third parties, let alone serve as a pretext for forming exclusive cliques or stoking confrontation,” added Jiakun.

On Thursday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met his Japanese counterpart Sanae Takaichi, who is on a three-day visit to New Delhi.

They agreed to work more closely on critical minerals to boost resilience in their supply chains.

After the talks, Takaichi told reporters that both Japan and India were facing challenges including “weaponisation of the economy and non-market policies and practices”.

Her statement came in the wake of deteriorating ties between Tokyo and Beijing. In November, Takaichi said that Japan could intervene militarily to help protect Taiwan in the event of a potential Chinese invasion.

While China claims the democratically governed island as its territory, Taiwan has rejected Beijing’s sovereignty claims and has prioritised boosting the island’s homegrown defence capabilities.

Takaichi’s statement had resulted in Chinese authorities restricting flows of rare earths to Japan.

India and Japan are part of the Quad, or the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, which also comprises the United States and Australia.

In May, the Quad also announced initiatives to improve collaboration on critical minerals and emerging technology.

The Quad Critical Minerals Initiative Framework is designed to help the four countries coordinate investments to strengthen critical mineral supply chains.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Allahabad High Court on Thursday held that while the Places of Worship Act prohibits the conversion of the religious character of a place of worship from one faith to another, it does not prevent the state from acquiring such properties for a genuine public purpose, Live Law reported.

A bench of Justices JJ Munir and Arun Kumar made the statement while dismissing a petition filed by six shopkeepers and tenants from Varanasi’s Dalmandi area, who sought to stop a road widening and beautification project linked to the Uttar Pradesh government’s Shri Kashi Vishwanath Dham Corridor.

The petitioners sought protection against their eviction and asked the court to restrain the state from acquiring six mosques in the area, arguing that they had existed before August 15, 1947, and were therefore protected under the Places of Worship Act.

The six mosques are Anjuman Intezamia Masjid, Masjid Rangile Shah, Masjid Ali Raza Khan, Masjid Karimullah Baig, Masjid Nisaran and Masjid Sangamarmar.

The petitioners also contended that the project would deprive thousands of persons of their livelihoods, homes and places of worship.

They further alleged that the acquisition was arbitrary and was designed to “target a particular community”, Live Law reported.

Rejecting the plea, the court held that the 1991 Act was enacted to preserve the religious character of places of worship as they stood on August 15, 1947, by preventing their conversion from one religious denomination to another.

However, it said that this did not limit the state’s authority to acquire land, including religious property, for “secular and public purpose[s]” such as road development or infrastructure projects, The Hindu reported.

The bench added that this was subject “to the owner’s right to receive just and fair compensation”, Live Law reported.

The court also found that the petitioners, as tenants rather than owners of the properties, had limited standing to challenge the acquisition.

“We would think that the petitioners are more or less here, in order to protect their business and source of livelihood, rather than proprietary rights”, it noted, according to the legal news website.

Further, the court rejected the petitioners’ contention that they could seek protection for the mosques as Muslims. It observed that the structures were registered waqf properties and that responsibility for protecting them primarily rested with the respective mutawallis and the Waqf Board.

A mutawalli is the person incharge of administering and managing a waqf, which is property permanently dedicated under Islamic law for religious, charitable or pious purposes.

Moreover, the court also described the allegation that the acquisition was designed to target a particular community as an “odd” pleading.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Madhya Pradesh High Court on Wednesday took suo moto cognisance of death threats and communal abuse directed at a Muslim judge in Narmadapuram district after she convicted seven men in a 2022 case where a truck driver was assaulted by a group that claimed he was a cattle smuggler, Live Law reported on Friday.

On June 12, Additional District and Sessions Judge Tabassum Khan sentenced seven men for killing truck driver Sheikh Lala Nazir Ahmed in Barakhar village of Seoni Malwa tehsil.

Soon after, videos containing death threats and communal slurs were shared on social media. Videos also showed effigies of the judge being burnt in some of the protests.

On Wednesday, a division bench observed that such actions undermine judicial independence. The court directed that the Khan should continue to receive police protection as an interim measure.

Threats against judges “directly hampers the judicial independence and fearless working of our judicial officers”, Live Law quoted the bench of Justices Vivek Agarwal and Avanindra Kumar Singh as observing.

The court also directed the Madhya Pradesh director general of police and the additional chief secretary or principal secretary (home) to file personal affidavits detailing the steps taken to ensure Khan’s security and the action taken against those responsible for the threats.

The bench observed that judicial orders are subject to appeal and revision under the law. It added that “our judicial officer cannot be threatened merely because he or she chooses to pass a particular order and that is not of liking of the certain section of the society”.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court Advocates on Record Association issued a statement saying that it “unequivocally condemns the threats and targeted social media campaign” against Khan.

On June 23, the police registered a first information report against unidentified persons under provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to promoting enmity and using words to deliberately hurt religious feelings.

The case

On August 2, 2022, Nazir Ahmed and two others were transporting cattle from Nandarwada village to Maharashtra when their vehicle was intercepted near Barakhad by a mob armed with sticks and wooden rods, according to the prosecution.

Ahmed later died of his injuries, while the two others survived.

In her judgement, Khan held that the prosecution had proved the charges beyond reasonable doubt.

Despite the two surviving occupants turning hostile during the trial, the court relied on medical and forensic evidence, along with the recovery of blood-stained weapons and clothing to convict the seven men.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.