Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Sunday said that eviction drives in the state were only targeting Miya Muslims and not Assamese people, reported PTI.

No eviction would take place in the Guwahati hills until the Assembly polls, added Sarma, blaming the media for allegedly spreading rumours.

“Miya” is a derogatory term for Bengali-speaking Muslims. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Assam has often labelled the community as “infiltrators” who are allegedly taking over resources, jobs and land of the indigenous people.

Elections to the 126-member Assam Assembly are due in the first half of the year.

“The BJP has been in power in the state for 10 years now,” Sarma was quoted as saying. “Where has eviction been carried out in Guwahati hills.”

He added that eviction notices would be issued to Muslim migrants found to be residing in the hills.

Since the BJP came to power in Assam in 2016, multiple demolition drives have been conducted in the state, mostly targeting areas populated by Bengali-speaking Muslims.

On January 5, Sarma claimed that the government has reclaimed close to 1.5 lakh bighas of land in the course of the eviction drives, Northeast Now reported.

The chief minister’s remark on Sunday came a day after he said that only Miya Muslims were being served notices under the special revision of electoral rolls in the state.

Unlike in 12 states and Union Territories, the Election Commission is not conducting a special intensive revision exercise in Assam. Instead, on November 17, it had directed the state chief electoral officer to conduct a “special revision” of electoral rolls.

Several Opposition parties have accused the BJP of conspiring to delete the names of a large number of genuine voters from the state’s electoral rolls amid the exercise and filed police complaints.

On Saturday, Sarma said that there was “nothing to hide”.

“We are giving them trouble,” the chief minister had said, referring to his earlier statements that “Miyas” would face problems in his regime. He added that serving them notices as part of the special revision exercise was a way to “keep them under pressure”.

On Sunday, the chief minister also accused the Congress of pandering to the Muslim community.

“The Congress has said that it has received 750 applications from prospective candidates seeking party ticket,” PTI quoted Sarma as saying. “What they did not say is that 600 of these applicants are ‘Miyas’. Only about 120-130 applicants are Hindus.”

Sarma added that the Congress has “become a threat to our religion, culture, and the more convincingly we defeat them, the more we can save our state and [community].”

He also said that details regarding alleged links between Assam Congress president Gaurav Gogoi and Pakistan would be made public soon.

“I want to reveal it by January 31. But since there is the Union Budget on February 1, there might be a delay by a day or two,” he was quoted as saying.

The BJP has repeatedly claimed Gogoi’s wife has connections with Pakistan and its intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence.

Bhima Madvi was last seen by his family being taken away by security personnel from their village, Rekhapalli, on December 4. Three days later, his cousin Sukram Madvi found him lying lifeless on a cot inside the security camp at Wattewagu.

The police claim Bhima, 46, died by suicide. But his family suspects he was beaten to death by the security forces.

Separated by about three km of forests, Rekhapalli and Wattewagu lie in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district, in a block called Usur. Until a few years ago, Usur was largely under the sway of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), the banned group that has been waging an insurgency in the forests of central and eastern India for decades.

The Maoists ran a parallel state in the villages of Usur, governing every aspect of life through a network of organisations and committees.

Since 2024, however, the state has aggressively expanded its presence in the area by establishing a grid of security camps, most of them manned by the paramilitary soldiers of the Central Reserve Police Force.

Of the 52 new security camps that came up in 2025 in Bastar, the region in southern Chhattisgarh of which Bijapur is a part, 22 were established in Bijapur. Seven of those came up in the Usur block alone.

Rekhapalli is now surrounded by two camps. The first came up in Kondapalli, three km away, across the Talperu river. It was followed a month later by the camp in Wattewagu, which according to local residents, houses the COBRA – Commando Battalion for Resolute Action - an elite anti-Naxal force within the CRPF.

In CRPF’s parlance, both the camps are called “forward operating bases” – set up with the purpose of “breaching the enemy’s core areas by sustained operations”.

The establishment of these camps, said residents of Rekhapalli and other villages within their operational radius, has forced the Maoists to retreat. With Maoist armed cadres no longer visiting the area, village-level Maoist organisations have ceased to function, and many lower-level Maoist functionaries have surrendered to the police, local residents said.

Effectively, as a young man put it, entire villages have come under a new kind of “command”.

As a result, security forces now frequently patrol the area.

It was during one such patrol – not the first – that CRPF personnel from the Wattewagu camp took away Bhima.

For the residents of Rekhapalli, his detention and death have underscored the radical change sweeping through the area – one that they say, has left their lives more unpredictable than before.

A contested death

A week after Bhima’s death, I travelled to Rekhapalli. It took me a four-hour bike ride from the district headquarters, via Awapalli town, cutting through thick teak forests and crossing half a dozen shallow water streams, to reach the village. Lying on the banks of Talperu river, it is a large village with 105 houses, spread across three hamlets.

Bhima lived with his mother, his wife, and four children in one of these hamlets, in a small two-room house enclosed within a large open space. Two tall palm trees swayed above, while hens, cocks and goats ran around the house.

On the morning of December 4, security forces showed up at the house, asking for Bhima.

“They entered the house with their shoes, threw open our granary, rumbled through the grain stock, threw out our belongings,” recounted Dewe Madvi, Bhima’s 75 year-old mother.

Bhima was not at home. His neighbour, Mangu Madkam, said the security forces beat him up, asking about Bhima’s whereabouts.

Claiming they had spotted a bullet shell lying near it, they also asked him to open a blue drum, Mangu said. They suspected the drum contained weapons and explosives.

Mangu said he refused to do their bidding. “What if they planted the explosives themselves and fixed a case against me,” he reasoned. He claimed that he had already spent a year and half in prison when the police booked him in a false case a few years ago. He was not willing to risk it again, he said, holding his two children close to him.

After about an hour, Bhima was found at his cousin Sukram’s house, where they had gathered to meet visiting relatives.

Mangu said the security personnel dragged him along with Bhima and another villager to separate spots in the forest. He was beaten up and asked to reveal where the Maoists had hidden their explosives – information that he said he did not have.

About two and half hours later, he and the other man were allowed to return home with their bruises. But Bhima was taken away. “That was the last we saw of him,” said Bhima’s wife, Pande Madvi, her voice choked with sobs.

When Sukram tried to intervene to stop Bhima being taken away, the officer leading the security patrol took Sukram’s phone and dialled his own number from it, asking him to contact him later. Sukram saved the number as “Cobra Sahab”.

The family called the officer several times over the next two days, requesting him to release Bhima. The officer asked the family to come to the Kondapalli market on December 6, but when they went there, no one showed up, Sukram said.

Instead, the next day, he was summoned to the Wattewagu camp. There, he found Bhima dead.

In a letter she wrote to the governor of Chhattisgarh, Bhima’s wife has asked for “a high level judicial probe” into her husband’s death. She suspects that Bhima was beaten to death by CRPF personnel.

Asked for comment, the CRPF officer heading the Wattewagu camp said that he had already given a written statement to the magistrate. He refused to respond to further questions, or even disclose his name, before disconnecting the phone call.

The police superintendent of Bijapur district, Dr Jitendra Yadav, told Scroll that Bhima had died by strangling himself with his own towel. He suspected it could be because Bhima had helped the police identify spots where the Maoists had hidden their weapons and therefore, feared reprisals from the insurgents. He confirmed that a magisterial enquiry into Bhima’s death was underway.

The superintendent also claimed that Bhima was “a lower-rung sangham sadasya” – member of Maoist village committees – who had turned over and “helped the police in many ways in the past”.

Sukram denied the allegation. “Bhima lived in the village, he never went out,” he said.

A slew of surrenders

Three months before Bhima died, seven people in Rekpalli had surrendered to the police, admitting that they were members of a village committee that had actively supported the Maoists.

The decision to surrender was taken collectively in a public meeting held in Rekhapalli, said Unga Sodi, the village chief.

The seven included six men and one woman. The village residents felt it was best that they surrender to the police to prevent harassment of others by the security forces who would come looking for Maoists in Rekhapalli.

But were the seven people Maoist cadres, I asked. Armed cadres do not live in the villages, responded Sodi Bami, one of the seven members of the now-defunct village committee. He explained that when armed cadres visited, he and the other members of the village committee would support them by arranging food for them, keeping vigil and organising meetings. The committee members never acted on their own, he said. They relied on the armed cadres and leaders to provide them direction.

With the armed cadres no longer visiting Rekhapalli, Bami added, the committee no longer had a role to play in village affairs.

Bami also recounted how they surrendered to the police. Thinking it was safer to surrender in neighbouring Telangana, four of them travelled to Bhadrachalam on October 12. But Telangana Police handed them over to Chhattisgarh Police. The three others who followed them were intercepted even before they reached Telangana.

The woman member was sent back home the next day with a letter testifying that she had surrendered at the Pamed police station. But the six men were subjected to a week of questioning, Bami said. Later, they were sent to Bijapur district headquarters where they were given vocational training for a month before being allowed to return home. They were neither given a training certificate nor a surrender document, he added.

Back in the village, the group hoped that their brush with the police was over and they could return to a quiet life. But in November, the security forces showed up in the village asking for those who had surrendered. They also asked for Bhima Madvi, said Mangu Madkam. Bhima was not around – he had gone to another village to attend a relative’s funeral.

The village residents said they had no idea why the security forces were interested in Bhima. In November 2024, too, they had detained Bhima along with several others for the village, subjecting them to a week of questioning before they were released, Rekhapalli residents recounted.

Explaining why the security forces were frequently visiting Rekhapalli, Bijapur police superintendent Yadav said that intense surveillance was necessary in villages that had been under the shadow of the Maoists for about four decades. It was important to keep tabs on those who had surrendered, he said, since according to the police’s intelligence network, these areas are still being visited by the Maoists.

But doesn’t this put those who have surrendered at risk, I asked Yadav. In 2025, the Maoists had killed 27 civilians in Bijapur, including contractors and villagers, while 33 civilians were killed in 2024. It was not clear how many of these were linked to the surrenders.

Those who have surrendered are cautioned against immediately returning to their villages, the police superintendent said. Instead, they are advised to look for work in nearby towns until the police can free the area of Maoist presence, he said, adding that the state was making steady progress towards that goal. Bijapur district, with roughly 600 villages, now had 108 security camps to support anti-Maoist operations. “We have so far penetrated 170 villages of Bijapur, which was unthinkable a few years ago,” Yadav said.

The same question was put to the residents of Rekhapalli and nearby villages – was it not risky for those who had surrendered to return home? The response was categorical: those who have surrendered with the consent of the villagers are not harmed.

“Only those who surrender secretly, face a threat,” said Nagesh Punnem, the sarpanch of Nela Kanker panchayat that includes Rekhapalli and three other villages.

He cited the example of two people in Nela Kanker who had been killed by the Maoists in October 2025 because they had surrendered secretly and were suspected of being police informers.

Thirty-three others from the Nela Kanker panchayat who had surrendered to the police in the last two years – with the consent of the villagers – had come back to live a regular life without facing any trouble from the Maoist party, Punnem said.

But they faced harassment from the security forces, said several of those who had turned themselves in. Well after they had surrendered, they continued to be summoned to the police station to mark their presence every week. And the security forces continued to periodically come to their villages to check on them.

Beatings followed by treatment

There was a reason why security patrols were not welcome, local residents explained.

In Komatpalli, a village near Rekhapalli, residents recounted what they had experienced on December 4, the day Bhima was picked up. That day, security personnel from Wattewagu camp also visited their village, said Laxman Madvi, a resident of Komatpalli. He alleged that the security forces beat up several villagers and took two men away.

The next morning, when villagers went to the camp to request for the release of the two men, the camp authorities asked them to take those injured in the beatings the previous day to the Kondapalli field hospital for treatment. The hospital exists inside the CRPF camp at Kondapalli.

Some of the injured people had to be carried on cots to Kondapalli since they were unable to walk, Ladman Madvix said. They were administered injections, but no written medical records were shared with them.

“Maar kar ilaj bhi karte hain” – they first beat us up and then treat us – laughed the villagers.

This was not the first time that security forces had beaten them up, said a panchayat member who requested anonymity.

In October, when Komatpalli had celebrated Nuka Pandum, a pre-harvest festival, security forces had surrounded the village and beaten up nearly 30 men, including the village gayta and pujari – healer and priest – who were conducting the rituals, said several residents.

Scroll attempted to seek a response about these allegations from the officer heading the Wattewagu camp but he disconnected our phone call.

According to residents of Komatpalli, in November alone, security personnel had patrolled their village and its forests and farms three times. Each time someone was beaten up, they alleged. “We don’t run away, but they stop and question us on the movement of the Maoists. If we say we do not know, they beat us up,” said the panchayat member.

Frequent CRPF patrols were making it difficult for them to work in their fields without fear, the village residents said. This had disrupted the busy agricultural season when Adivasi farmers harvest and thresh grain.

Earlier in the year, they had suffered an economic setback during the tendu patta season. The collection of tendu leaves, which are used to roll country cigarettes called beedis, is a major source of income for the Adivasis of southern Chhattisgarh. In 2025, the state government banned private contractors from the trade and tasked the forest department with directly purchasing the tendu patta from the collectors and depositing the money in their accounts. But since most people in Bijapur’s Usur block do not have bank accounts, they were unable to participate in the trade.

Uncertain futures

Tumirguda, home to about 35 families, is one of the three hamlets of Rekhapalli.

Ramesh Madvi, a resident of Tumirguda, said that 14 men from the hamlet were currently in prison, facing a slew of Maoist-related cases. Their families were under severe financial strain, unable to bear the legal costs to fight the cases that continue to drag on.

In Bhima Madvi’s house, there were other worries.

While his three daughters lived in the village, his son was enrolled in Class Five in a government residential school in the Usur block headquarters. He had rushed back home hearing the news of his father’s death.

Sukram, Bhima’s cousin, who is a college graduate, expressed concern about his nephew’s future. “I do hope he is able to resume his studies later,” he said.

All photographs by Malini Subramaniam.

Eleven security personnel were injured after six improvised explosive devices allegedly planted by Maoists exploded during an anti-Maoist operation in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district on Sunday, reported The Indian Express.

The explosions took place in the forested area of Karregutta Hills, according to PTI.

Of the injured personnel, 10 were from the District Reserve Guard, a unit of the Chhattisgarh Police, while one was from the Central Reserve Police Force’s Commando Battalion for Resolute Action, or the CoBRA unit.

The injured CoBRA unit officer was identified as Rudresh Singh, a sub-inspector with the 210th battalion, the official quoted as saying.

The Union government has vowed to end Maoism by March 31, 2026.

In 2025, the number of “most affected” districts came down from six to three. These are Bijapur, Sukma and Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh.

On December 16, the Union government told Parliament that 2,167 “Left-wing extremists” had surrendered and 335 had been killed in the first 11 months of 2025. More than 940 had been arrested.

Overall, more than 1,800 such persons had been killed and over 16,000 had been arrested between 2014 and December 1, 2025. More than 9,580 had surrendered during the period.

Also read: As Maoists retreat, why many fear security forces in Chhattisgarh villages

United States Senator Ted Cruz told donors of the Republican party in the past year that he had been “battling” the White House to secure a trade agreement with India, but White House economic adviser Peter Navarro, US Vice President JD Vance and, “sometimes”, President Donald Trump were resisting the deal, according to audio recordings obtained by Axios.

Without a trade deal with Washington, Indian goods are facing a combined US tariff rate of 50%. A 25% so-called reciprocal duty was imposed on August 7, followed by an additional 25% punitive levy on August 27.

The punitive tariffs were introduced as part of Trump’s pressure campaign against countries purchasing discounted oil from Russia amid Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

The audio recordings, around 10 minutes in length, were reportedly provided to Axios by an unidentified Republican member and were recorded in early and mid-2025 during closed-door meetings with donors.

In the recordings, Cruz, who is also a member of the Republican party, reportedly also criticised the Trump administration’s tariff-driven trade policy.

Trump has been using punitive tariffs as a trade policy since the beginning of his second term in office in January 2025.

Cruz told donors that the tariffs could “decimate the economy and lead to his [Trump’s] impeachment”, Axios reported.

He also said that after Trump announced a policy imposing a 10% baseline reciprocal levies on imports from nearly all countries in April 2025, he and a small group of Republican senators held a “lengthy call” with the president, urging him to reconsider the tariff-driven trade policy, according to the American news website.

The call, which stretched past midnight, “did not go well”, Cruz said, adding that Trump was “yelling” and “cursing” during the conversation.

Bihar’s former Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav was on Sunday appointed as the national working president of the Rashtriya Janata Dal.

The RJD did not previously have the post of a national working president.

The appointment was announced during the inaugural session of the RJD’s national executive meeting, where party president Lalu Prasad Yadav handed over the appointment letter to his son in the presence of senior leaders. Bihar’s former Chief Minister and Lalu Prasad Yadav’s wife Rabri Devi was also present at the event.

The party described the appointment as the “dawn of a new era”.

एक नए युग का शुभारंभ!

श्री @yadavtejashwi जी बनाए गए राष्ट्रीय जनता दल के कार्यकारी अध्यक्ष! @yadavtejashwi pic.twitter.com/BLFvzXJsJh

— Rashtriya Janata Dal (@RJDforIndia) January 25, 2026

The organisational reshuffle comes after the RJD’s poor performance in the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections.

Leading the Mahagathbandhan alliance with the Congress, the party won 25 of the 143 seats it contested.

However, the RJD emerged as the single largest party in terms of vote share, and Tejashwi Yadav retained his Raghopur seat.

The development also came amid tensions within the Lalu Prasad Yadav family.

In recent months, Tejashwi Yadav’s siblings, including his estranged elder brother Tej Pratap Yadav and sister Rohini Acharya, have made public remarks indicating discord within the family and the party.

In a social media post, Acharya, who is based in Singapore, criticised the appointment, congratulating “the sycophants and the ‘infiltrator gang’ on the coronation of the ‘prince turned puppet in their hands’”.

When asked about Acharya’s remarks, Tej Pratap Yadav said: “Yes, what she says is right.”

However, he said he would not comment on the matters concerning the RJD since he was no longer in the party, PTI reported.

सियासत के शिखर - पुरुष की गौरवशाली पारी का एक तरह से पटाक्षेप , ठकुरसुहाती करने वालों और " गिरोह - ए - घुसपैठ " को उनके हाथों की "कठपुतली बने शहजादा" की ताजपोशी मुबारक ..

— Rohini Acharya (@RohiniAcharya2) January 25, 2026

Tej Pratap Yadav, a former state minister, was expelled by his father from the party in May for six years for “ignoring moral values” in his personal life.

This came after a controversy erupted surrounding a post from Tej Pratap Yadav’s Facebook profile, which featured a photo of him with a woman named Anushka Yadav. The post, which was later deleted, said that she and the former state minister had been in a relationship for 12 years.

Several social media users referred to Tej Pratap Yadav’s marriage to Aishwarya Rai, daughter of former Bihar minister Chandrika Rai, in May 2018. They asked why he had married her if he was in a relationship with another woman at the time.

Tej Pratap Yadav and Aishwarya Rai separated months after getting married and their divorce proceedings are underway in a Patna court.

At the time, Tej Pratap Yadav claimed that his social media profiles had been hacked, and that his photographs had been “wrongly edited to harass and defame me and my family members”. He urged his well-wishers and followers not to “pay heed to rumours”.

In September, Tej Pratap Yadav founded the Janshakti Janata Dal.

Six Opposition parties in Assam on Sunday submitted a memorandum to the state’s chief electoral officer, alleging that “illegal, arbitrary and unlawful” bulk objections were filed against genuine voters in the state amid the special revision of electoral rolls.

They further said that this could result in the exclusion of large numbers of voters due to alleged “anomalies, discrepancies and unlawful interference” by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

The memorandum was submitted by the Congress, the Raijor Dal, the Assam Jatiya Parishad, and the three left parties – the Communist Party of India, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist).

Unlike in 12 states and Union Territories, the Election Commission is not conducting a special intensive revision exercise in Assam. Instead, on November 17, it had directed the state chief electoral officer to conduct a special revision of voter rolls ahead of Assembly elections, expected to be held in March-April.

The door-to-door verification took place in the state between November 22 and December 20. The process did not involve document verification, unlike the special intensive revision.

On December 27, the Election Commission said that the names of more than 10 lakh voters were identified to be deleted in Assam after a house-to-house verification process under the ‘special revision’ exercise. The final list will be published on February 10.

Claims and objections to inclusions and deletions in the draft electoral rolls can be filed between December 27 and January 22. These are to be disposed of by February 2 and the final electoral roll is scheduled to be published on February 10.

In their memorandum on Sunday, the parties alleged that bulk objections had been filed against genuine voters, primarily on the grounds that they were either deceased or had permanently shifted residence.

They claimed that electoral officers in several Assembly constituencies had issued notices to voters in violation of legal provisions, including by providing very short notice periods and failing to mention the grounds on which objections had been raised.

The parties also alleged that a large number of objections were fake and filed without the knowledge of the purported objectors.

According to them, several persons whose names appeared as objectors had publicly stated that they had no knowledge of filing such objections, and that their Election Photo Identity Card numbers and mobile numbers had been misused by unknown persons.

The memorandum also alleged that booth-level officers, acting on instructions from electoral registration officers, were carrying out suo motu deletions of names of genuine voters. It claimed that some booth-level officers had said they were coerced into doing so or that their signatures had been obtained under false pretences.

The parties said that voters who had been affected by eviction drives were being prevented from submitting Form 8 applications to change their place of residence. According to the memorandum, such voters were not being allowed to apply either online or offline, “only with a view to oust them from the final electoral rolls”.

The memorandum also alleged “unlawful and illegal interference” in the special revision exercise at the co-district office in South Kamrup. It named three Bharatiya Janata Party office-bearers, alleging that they had been frequently present inside the office and had influenced officials to issue bulk objection notices during the revision process.

The memorandum also flagged the statement made by Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Saturday that only Miyas and not Hindus or Assamese Muslims were being served notices under the special revision exercise.

“Miya” is a derogatory term for Bengali-speaking Muslims. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Assam has often labelled the community as “infiltrators” who are allegedly taking over resources, jobs and land of the indigenous people.

“Such a statement is arbitrary, mala fide and wholly unconstitutional as it betrays a predetermined intent to target a specific community and undermines the neutrality of the electoral process,” the parties said in their letter to the Election Commission.

They asked the chief electoral officer to summarily reject illegal bulk objections without calling voters for hearings, take action against those who filed unlawful objections, and ensure a reasonable time is given for hearings in genuine cases.

They also demanded that officials be restrained from suo motu deletions, that eviction-affected voters be allowed to submit Form 8 applications, and that unauthorised persons, including political party office-bearers, be barred from influencing officials involved in the revision.

The memorandum also called for the registration of a first information report against those allegedly found tampering with the revision process in South Kamrup, among other demands.

On January 9, five Opposition parties in Assam filed a police complaint accusing the ruling BJP of conspiring to delete the names of a large number of genuine voters from the state’s electoral rolls.

Waiting is often described as an inconvenience, a symbol of inefficiency. In the Indian judicial system, though waiting and delays are widespread, they seem invisible: no order is passed, no force is used, no decision is communicated. One simply waits.

An estimated 5.34 crore cases were pending across Indian courts as of September. According to the National Judicial Data Grid, the reasons for the backlog included no available counsel (which accounted for the maximum number of cases delayed), missing witnesses or documents and stays on proceedings by the higher courts.

When the courts decide on constitutional questions such as rights, liberty or equality, waiting is described as a problem of capacity – a logistical explanation.

From a citizen’s point of view, waiting is more than an administrative failure but an experience: like being arrested, stopped at a checkpoint, denied a licence or turned away from a government office. It is one of the ways the state makes its presence felt in everyday life.

The experience of judicial delays carries constitutional weight. The coercive power of the state becomes visible in arrests, notices, seizures, prohibitions. But power is less easy to recognise when it looks passive – and delay rarely looks like authority and power in motion.

Consider the choreography of waiting. You arrive early. You are told to sit. Your turn is not announced, often due to error. When you ask the person behind the desk what is happening, if at all anyone replies, the answers are vague. Time passes without acknowledgement. You learn not to ask too many questions and whom not to annoy. Patience becomes a survival strategy.

Lawyers experience this every day in the courts. The listed time of a hearing has little meaning since the actual hearing may take place hours later or not at all. One waits without complaint because complaining risks consequences. But lawyers are also complicit in normalising this because we translate delay into procedure, as something inevitable. This is how the system works, we tell clients. In doing so, we help launder power into routine.

The constitutional vocabulary of equality, dignity and liberty struggles to capture this experience of inordinate delays because there is no single moment to challenge nor an identifiable violation.

Article 14 of the Constitution, which promises equality before the law, loses meaning if some wait endlessly while others are heard swiftly. Similarly, personal liberty under Article 21 is weakened when bail and appeals arrive too late to matter and the right to seek remedies against the state, under Article 32, is rendered hollow when relief comes after irreparable harm has already occurred.

To recognise waiting as a constitutional experience is to insist that time is a medium of power and therefore of responsibility. This Republic Day, India’s judiciary must recognise that justice delayed is not merely justice denied, but a constitutional failing.

How long is too long

Constitutional law is most comfortable examining visible exercises of power, say, when the state arrests someone, demolishes a building or bans a book. But the judiciary struggles to confront routine inaction like in cases which drag on for years without a hearing or a decision.

The courts have repeatedly acknowledged judicial backlogs and issued directions to correct this. Yet these have rarely translated into treating delays as a violation of rights. The law does recognise that excessive delays can be unfair, what lawyers call the “delay doctrine”, but this is applied in exceptional situations, after the damage has been done. It treats delays as an anomaly rather than a routine way in which power is exercised.

The ordinary, low-grade delays that shape most interactions between citizens and the state – in courts, government offices and regulatory bodies – remain largely invisible. Some wait far longer than others, just as some files move much faster than many others. The Constitution promises equality before the law but this covert inequality produces a hierarchy.

The courts have asked how long is too long. However, delay is experienced differently by the state and the citizen. Institutions wait, with little cost, but for individuals the toll is personal, economic and psychological.

This asymmetry corrodes the rule of law, training citizens to internalise subordination while rewarding those who can bypass queues. Over time, delays change what the law feels like in practice, shifting from a system of rights into a system of endurance.

Delays also lock people into systems, even when those systems fail them. The longer one waits, the higher the psychological cost of walking away. Over time, waiting becomes a form of pressure, keeping people bound to a process that no longer feels responsive.

Unlawful practices, such as illegal demolitions that are reviewed only after homes are already destroyed, or arbitrary licence cancellations that take years to be corrected, continue because cases crawl through files, hearings and appeals so slowly that by the time the law responds, the damage is long forgotten.

Delay thus diffuses accountability: no single official appears responsible, and there is often no timely decision that can be meaningfully challenged. Power is quietly wielded through delay.

Waiting becomes a form of governance through time. Because time feels natural, as hours and days go by, the authority embedded in that passage of time can feel natural. However, the Constitution does not recognise “natural” power: it recognises exercised power.

Unexplained delays suggest that the state does not feel obliged to account for its time and nor does it fully recognise the person who waits as someone entitled to respect and justification.

None of this requires bad faith. Ordinary administrative functioning, without reflection, can produce deeply unequal constitutional experiences.

The Constitution promises a relationship between a citizen and the state grounded in justification, respect and reciprocal obligation. Yet, delays persist within legal systems that are supposed to uphold rights and ensure accountability.

Judicial reform must begin by reframing delay itself as a violation of constitutional guarantees owed to citizens.

The Supreme Court has often spoken about backlogs in terms of efficiency, infrastructure, and disposal rates. But a constitutional perspective demands something more. Delays must be treated as a rights issue, requiring justification and explanation, not merely administrative correction.

Delays can certainly be justified. But unless they are recognised as a slow violation of constitutional values, waiting will continue to be treated as an inconvenience rather than as what it often is: a durable form of governance that operates precisely because it does not announce itself as power.

Paras Sharma is an advocate practising in the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

In the 12 years since Scroll was launched, India has been attempting to reconstruct the very foundations on which the Republic has been built.

Since 2014, our rulers have taken the bulldozer to the values of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity envisaged by the Constitution that came into effect on January 26, 1950. Our liberal democracy is being remodelled as an edifice based on the tremulous pillars of majoritarianism.

Indians are being convinced that democracy rests on the brute superiority of numbers – ignoring the fact that our Constitution guarantees equal rights for all and protects minority communities against discrimination.

The process of re-engineering the framework is fuelled by injustice. At Scroll, we have not only tried to explain the malign impulses that motivate these designs, we have reported on the human cost they have extracted.

We have been on the ground to report on the lynchings of Muslims; the arrests of dissident lawyers, professors and poets in the controversial Bhima-Koregaon case; the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act that inserted a religion-based exemption into Indian law; the attacks on Christians and the constraining of choice under the guise of so-called anti-conversion laws; and the abrogation of Constitutional provisions that afforded limited autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir – India’s only Muslim-majority state.

More recently, we have been reporting on the cruel deportations of Bengali-origin Muslims whose citizenship status has been deemed unreliable by the often-arbitrary decisions of foreigners tribunals. We have also written about how the process to “purify” the electoral rolls through a “special intensive revision” could result in the mass disenfranchisement of India’s most vulnerable citizens.

These reporting efforts, as our readers know, do not come cheap. As Scroll marks our 12th anniversary this Republic Day, we ask you to sign up for a subscription and recommend us to others who may be interested in our work.

On our part, we will continue to bear witness, without fear or favour.

At precisely 10.18 am on Thursday, January 26, 1950, India formally completed its transition from a British Dominion to a Sovereign Democratic Republic. In the high-domed Durbar Hall of Government House in New Delhi, the outgoing Governor-General, C Rajagopalachari, read out the proclamation announcing the establishment of the Republic of India.

Shortly thereafter, Rajendra Prasad was sworn in as the first President of India, while Jawaharlal Nehru continued in office as Prime Minister under the new constitutional order.

In his address after taking the oath, Prasad drew attention to the historical weight of the moment, observing that the country was entering “a new phase of our national life” in which authority would henceforth flow from the Constitution and the people. He reminded the nation that independence had now been placed on a firm legal foundation, stating that the Constitution was intended to serve as “the instrument through which the will of the people shall find expression”.

The choice of January 26 was deliberate. The date marked the twentieth anniversary of the Purna Swaraj declaration of 1930, when the Indian National Congress had proclaimed complete independence as its goal. While August 15, 1947, marked the end of colonial rule, January 26, 1950, marked the commencement of self-governance under a Constitution framed by Indians themselves.

The ceremonial transition

Following the swearing-in ceremony, President Rajendra Prasad set out in a ceremonial procession through the streets of the capital. He travelled in a 35-year-old state coach drawn by six Australian horses, escorted by the President’s Bodyguard. The 8-km route from Government House to the Irwin Stadium – now the Major Dhyan Chand National Stadium – was lined with large crowds. Citizens filled the pavements, balconies, rooftops, and trees to witness the first public procession of the head of state of the Republic.

Speaking earlier in the day, Prasad had emphasised the collective nature of the new political arrangement, noting that the success of the Republic would depend not only on institutions but also on civic conduct.

“Whatever the Constitution may or may not provide,” he said, “the welfare of the country will depend upon the way in which the people and those in authority conduct themselves.”

At the Irwin Stadium, the celebrations took on an international character. The chief guest was President Sukarno of Indonesia, symbolising India’s engagement with newly independent nations of Asia and its interest in fostering cooperation among countries emerging from colonial rule.

The ceremony included a 31-gun salute, the unfurling of the national tricolour by President Prasad, and a march-past by the three wings of the Indian Armed Forces. The parade was limited in scale, consisting largely of infantry units and mounted regiments, reflecting the character of the early Republic’s armed forces rather than the mechanised displays of later years.

Constitutional mandate

Underlying the day’s public ceremonies was the coming into force of the Constitution of India at midnight. Drafted by the Constituent Assembly, with BR Ambedkar as chairman of the Drafting Committee, the Constitution established India as a sovereign, democratic republic and defined the framework of governance.

In his address, President Prasad underlined that the Constitution was not merely a legal document but a guide for public life. He stated that it sought to secure “justice, liberty, equality and fraternity” for all citizens, and cautioned that these ideals would acquire meaning only through their faithful application in everyday governance.

One of the Constitution’s most significant provisions was the adoption of universal adult franchise. By granting the right to vote to every adult citizen, regardless of literacy, property, gender, or social standing, the new Republic extended democratic participation to nearly 300 million people.

1950 :: First Republic Day Parade of India

(Photo - Homai Vyarawalla ) pic.twitter.com/Rimpb2qAgs

— indianhistorypics (@IndiaHistorypic) January 24, 2023

First evening

As evening descended, New Delhi was illuminated to mark the occasion. Public buildings, including the North and South Blocks of the Secretariat, were lit up, and the capital remained crowded well into the night. In his first message to the nation as president, Prasad reiterated that the Republic was founded on responsibility as much as on rights, reminding citizens that “democracy depends upon the capacity of the people to govern themselves”.

January 26, 1950, thus marked the operational beginning of the Republic of India. With the Constitution in force and the first President installed, sovereignty was vested in constitutional institutions and, through them, in the people of India.

Hasnain Naqvi is a former member of the history faculty at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai.

A man and a woman jumped from the second floor of a pizza shop in Uttar Pradesh’s Shahjahanpur district after they were allegedly accosted by members of a Hindutva organisation on Saturday, PTI quoted police officials as saying.

Both of them sustained serious injuries and are undergoing treatment.

While they were waiting for the food they had ordered at the shop, members of a Hindutva organisation started questioning them about their caste, the police were quoted as saying.

After they said that they were both Hindu, some persons started filming them.

The 21-year-old man then pulled out a window bar and jumped from the second floor, the police said, adding that the 19-year-old woman followed him, according to PTI.

The police arrived at the spot after receiving information about the incident, Superintendent of Police Rajesh Dwivedi was quoted as saying. He said at the time that no complaint had been filed in the matter so far.

“We will take strict action as soon as we receive a complaint,” Dwivedi had said at the time.

On Sunday, Shahjahanpur Police said that a first information report had been registered based on a complaint it had received. The investigation was underway, it added.

Bangladesh’s interim government on Sunday expressed shock about former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina being allowed to virtually address a press conference in Delhi, saying that the event set a “dangerous precedent” for the future of the country’s bilateral ties with India.

In a statement, Dhaka said that Hasina had “openly called for the removal” of the interim government and issued “blatant incitements to her party loyalists and general public to carry out acts of terror” to derail the upcoming national elections in Bangladesh.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs has not commented yet on Dhaka’s statement.

In her first address to the media since her ouster in August 2024, Hasina on Friday accused Muhammad Yunus, the head of the country’s interim government, of being a “murderous fascist”. She also called for a United Nations investigation into the unrest and political developments in Bangladesh since her government collapsed.

The former prime minister’s comments were made in an audio speech played during a press conference held at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of South Asia in Delhi. The speech came ahead of the general elections scheduled for February 12, the first since she was ousted.

Hasina had fled to India in August 2024 after several weeks of widespread student-led protests against her Awami League government. She had been in power for 16 years.

After her ouster, Nobel laureate economist Yunus took over as the head of Bangladesh’s interim government.

On Sunday, the Bangladeshi foreign ministry said that it was “deeply aggrieved” that while India had not acted on Dhaka’s request to extradite Hasina, the former prime minister had been “allowed to make such inciteful pronouncements from its own soil”.

“This clearly endangers Bangladesh’s democratic transition and peace and security,” the ministry claimed.

Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal in November sentenced Hasina to death for crimes against humanity in connection with the deadly crackdown on the protesters in 2024.

In December, Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that it was for Hasina to decide whether she wanted to return to Bangladesh.

The Indian government allowing the press event to take place in the national capital and letting “mass murderer Hasina to openly deliver her hate speech” was against the norms of bilateral relations, including the principles of respect for sovereignty and non-interference, Dhaka alleged.

This constituted “a clear affront” to the people and the government of Bangladesh, it added.

“It sets a dangerous precedent vis-à-vis the future of Bangladesh-India relations and may seriously impair the ability of the future elected polity in Bangladesh to engage, shape and nurture mutually beneficial bilateral relations,” the statement added.

The Bangladeshi foreign ministry said that the “unabashed incitements” by the Awami League leadership demonstrated why the Yunus government had banned it. It added that it would hold Hasina’s party responsible for “violence and terror” in the run-up to and during the polls.

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

Hasina had in October described the ban as unjust and said that it could undermine the legitimacy of the elections. She also warned that millions of her supporters would boycott the polls unless her party is allowed to participate.

Hasina’s speech

On Friday, Hasina said that the UN should “conduct a new and truly impartial investigation into the events of the past year”. Only the “purification of truth” would allow Bangladesh to reconcile and move forward, she said.

Hasina alleged that Bangladesh had entered “an age of terror”, claiming that press freedom had been “extinguished”, religious minorities faced continued persecution, and law and order had collapsed.

She also called on Dhaka to “stop intimidating” journalists, Opposition parties and members of her Awami League, and “restore trust in the judicial system”.

Hasina claimed that the unrest in 2024 had been “meticulously engineered by Yunus and his accomplices” to oust her. After the collapse of her government, the frenzy of militant extremism has caused fear across the nation, Hasina alleged.

The former prime minister claimed that there had been a “treacherous plot” to give away Bangladeshi territory and resources to foreign interests, alleging that Yunus had betrayed the nation.

Also read: For Hindutva groups, Bangladesh is the new Pakistan

A case has been filed against three persons for allegedly vandalising the shrine of 18th century philosopher and Sufi poet Baba Bulleh Shah in Uttarakhand’s Mussoorie, ANI reported on Sunday. The persons are allegedly linked to a Hindutva group.

The shrine, located within the premises of the Wynberg-Allen in the town, was vandalised on Saturday, the news agency reported. The vandals used hammers and iron rods.

Religious books kept inside the structure were also damaged, ANI quoted the first information report as having alleged.

The three persons accused in the matter have been identified as Hariom, Shivayun and Shraddha, ANI reported. Twenty-five to thirty unidentified persons have also been accused in the matter.

They have been booked under sections of the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita pertaining to acts prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony between groups, disturbing public tranquillity, and injuring or defiling places of worship with intent to insult the religion.

No person has been arrested so far and the matter is being investigated.

In Dehradun, Uttarakhand, Sufi poet Baba Bulleh Shah's shrine was vandalised by fringe elements associated with Hindu Raksha Dal. These goons were seen chanting Religious slogans while vandalising the interiors of the Shrine. pic.twitter.com/l46usWTbcJ

— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) January 25, 2026

Sharing a video of the shrine being vandalised, Pinky Chaudhary, the chief of the Hindu Raksha Dal, said on social media on Saturday that he “salutes” the Hindutva group’s Uttarakhand unit.

“My Hindu Raksha Dal team today sent Bulleh Shah, who was in Devbhoomi for 70 years, back to Pakistan,” he said.

Devbhoomi was a reference to Uttarakhand.

Dehradun Senior Superintendent of Police Ajay Singh told the news agency that the case was filed based on a complaint filed by members of the Muslim community.

Rajat Agarwal, the president of the Baba Bulleh Shah Committee, alleged that the incident was “not merely damage to a religious site, but a conspiracy to disrupt the peaceful atmosphere of Mussoorie”, ETV Bharat reported on Sunday.

Hindutva organisations had objected to the expansion of the shrine, alleging that it was illegal and built on government land. The committee denied the allegation that the structure had been built on government land, ETV Bharat reported.

The structure is located on the land of a private school, which had allowed the shrine to be set up “years ago”, Agarwal was quoted as saying, adding that administrative inquiries had found no encroachment.

Shah died in 1757. His grave is located in Kasur, Pakistan.

Less than two weeks into the new year, the US State Department posted an image on its official social media account declaring in capital letters, “100,000 visas revoked.”

The message highlighted the immigration crackdown that has marked US President Donald Trump’s first year back in office.

About 8,000 of those visas, the post claimed, had been held by international students but “who had encounters with U.S. law enforcement for criminal activity”. “We will continue to deport these thugs to keep America safe,” the Instagram announcement declared.

It is unclear how many of the students whose visas were revoked are Indian. The Indian Embassy in Washington DC did not respond to Scroll’s questions about the numbers of Indian students who may have had their visas cancelled and whether such students had been given guidelines about how to proceed.

While illegal immigration has dominated Trump’s agenda from the outset, he has intensified scrutiny on one group as never before: international students.

They have been targeted with sweeping restrictions on entry into the US, unprecedented vetting rules and sudden cancellations of current student visas and, in the case of students from over 20 countries, suspensions of future ones being issued.

Scroll analysed every official notification issued by the Trump administration since it took office, affecting the more than 1.58 million international students in the country. Since May 2025, the US has altered or mandated new policies governing student visas almost every month.

“Hostility towards international scientists and researchers isn’t unheard of in the United States,” said Vivien Leung, an assistant professor of Political Science at the Santa Clara University. However, the current administration’s crackdown on foreign students is “unprecedented”, she said.

“I don’t think we have ever seen such a direct push towards excising international students,” Leung continued.

Screening, vetting and visa chaos

It began in May, four months after Trump took office. On May 27, US embassies and consulates around the world were instructed to immediately halt scheduling new student visa appointments. The cable, obtained by Politico, cited “an expansion of required social media screening and vetting”.

The move appeared to be an extension of the administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian protests on campuses across the US. Issued just weeks before the start of the fall semester at American universities, the message did not spell out what this expanded social media scrutiny would entail.

Some students became afraid of posting news or messages about Gaza on social media. Others became apprehensive about sharing anything critical of the US government at all.

Shortly after, on June 6, 2025, the US Department of State made an official announcement that effective June 9, it had “partially suspended” issuing certain non-immigrant visas to citizens of Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela. This included student visas.

It ended with a note: “This Presidential Proclamation only applies to foreign nationals who are outside the United States on the effective date AND do not hold a valid visa on the effective date”.

It took until June 18 for the administration to address the May visa halt.

The State Department announced that the screening of student visa applicants’ social media profiles and broader “online presence” would require applicants to set their accounts to “public”.

“A US visa is a privilege, not a right,” the announcement said. “Every visa adjudication is a national security decision”.

Soon after, Scroll spoke to Indian student visa applicants and reported on the increased anxiety this new policy caused. Students who had already applied for their visas but were awaiting decisions scrambled to understand what this meant for them.

Those who were yet to apply cataloged every trace of their online presence – even if inactive. Additional anxiety was caused by WhatsApp messages claiming that even those with no social media presence had reason to be nervous as this could also be a red flag for visa officials.

Two months later, the BBC reported that the US had revoked over 6,000 student visas. Over 60% of them, the State Department told the outlet, were due to previous criminal charges ranging from driving under the influence of intoxicating substances, assault, burglary and “support for terrorism” – a phrase it did not elaborate on.

The same month, on August 28, the administration took it a step further. The Department of Homeland Security proposed limiting the duration of stay for international students. This followed repeated signals from Trump administration officials about ending provisions that allowed students to work in the US for some time after they had finished their courses.

It also recommended imposing a maximum period of four years for all international and exchange students. But students – especially those in PhD programmes in the US – often take longer to complete their degrees, according to studies by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics and National Center for Education Statistics.

Soon after, the administration added another item to its immigration agenda: ending, or at least restricting, Optional Practical Training. This provision allows international graduates to work in their field as an extension of their student visas, without applying for separate permits.

The proposed rule cited “fraud and national security concerns” and the need to “protect US workers from being displaced by foreign nationals”.

It remains unclear whether the proposal will be formalised, or when a decision might be taken.

If implemented, immigration and education experts say it would deal a significant blow to international students. Optional Practical Training, they argue, is one of the strongest incentives drawing foreign students to American universities.

Indian students in the US – a population that surpassed China recently – are the largest beneficiary of the Optional Practical Training extension in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics fields, as per a 2024 report by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

As many as 48% of all those who choose this option to work after completing their studies were Indians as of last year.

Now, in just the first three weeks of 2026, the administration has suspended entry and new visa issuance – including student visas – for citizens of 20 countries. They include Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan and Palestine. Another 15 countries have been placed under a “partial ban list”.

Issuing new student visas, as it happens, are suspended as per both the lists.

Leung, who teaches American politics in one of California’s oldest graduate institutions, the current administration has targeted higher education and science, driven by the xenophobia of its support base. “International students are at the centre of all of that,” she said.

Restricting their entry and perilling their futures in the US, Leung believes, would have “deep ramifications in the economy”.

British journalist and broadcaster Mark Tully, known as the BBC’s “voice of India”, died on Sunday. He was 90.

He had been in hospital for a week, ANI reported.

Born in Kolkata, Tully moved to the United Kingdom before returning to India for work in 1965. He started as an administrative assistant at the British state broadcaster and went on to become the BBC’s bureau chief in New Delhi, a position he held for two decades.

Tully’s reportage included wars between India and Pakistan, the Emergency, riots, the Bhopal gas tragedy and Operation Blue Star.

In 1984, Indira Gandhi, the prime minister at the time, had ordered the military operation to extract Sikh militants who had allegedly stored weapons inside the Golden Temple premises.

Tully and his colleague Satish Jacob were the only journalists to report from inside the Golden Temple about the fortifications there, prior to the military operation.

In 1975, the BBC was expelled from India during the Emergency. Tully, who was the BBC’s Delhi correspondent at the time, was given 24 hours to leave the country after the organisation refused to sign a censorship agreement.

Tully believed that the BBC’s role during the Emergency proved crucial for its Indian audience.

“We were very widely listened to, but Mrs [Indira] Gandhi hated us and the government [did] too, since we were defying them,” Tully told Fair Observer in 2015. “They thought that by closing the office and throwing me out, they would close the BBC down, but they didn’t – the BBC continued. There were lots and lots of people who were very grateful to the BBC, and we had not damaged our credibility.”

He later wrote several books including about the events leading up to Operation Blue Star, one about the first four decades of independent India and No Full Stops in India, which was a collection of essays. The Heart of India, a work of fiction, was published in 1995.

Tully, who became an Overseas Citizen of India, continued to write books, essays, analysis and short stories about India.

He was knighted in 2002 and received the Padma Bhushan, India’s third-highest civilian honour, in 2005.

Several journalists, academics and politicians on Sunday expressed their condolences about Tully’s death.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that Tully’s “connect with India and the people of our nation” reflected in his work. “His reporting and insights have left an enduring mark on public discourse,” Modi said on social media.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said: “We saw him as one of our own.”

Also read: From Emergency to Modi: How the BBC has played a major role in India

A case has been registered against five minor Muslim girls under the anti-conversion law in Uttar Pradesh for allegedly forcing their 16-year-old Hindu friend to wear a burqa, The Times of India reported on Saturday.

While the alleged incident took place in Moradabad district’s Bilari town in December, it came to light after the police said they have filed a case in the matter following a complaint by the Hindu girl’s brother, the newspaper reported.

The five minors have been booked under sections 3 and 5(1) of the UP Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, which prohibits religious conversions by misrepresentation, force, fraud, undue influence, coercion and allurement.

Kunwar Akash Singh, the superintendent of police (rural) in Moradabad, told the newspaper that the investigation into the matter is underway.

The Hindu girl’s brother, Daksh Chaudhary, told The Times of India that his sister “was talking to one of the girls whom she had met about two months back and had been going out regularly with”. The five Muslim girls “who took away my sister in burqa may have had some ill intention”, Chaudhary was quoted as having alleged.

The brother alleged that the Muslim girls had attempted to brainwash his sister to convert to Islam, The New Indian Express reported on Saturday.

On Sunday, Bharat Samachar quoted the Hindu girl as alleging that the Muslim girls had attempted to force her to wear the burqa and convert her religion. “I was told that you would look good wearing a burqa,” the girl told the news portal.

She also alleged that the Muslim girls had earlier insisted her to eat non-vegetarian food.

In response to the video posted on social media, the police reiterated that a case had been registered in the matter and legal proceedings were underway.

A purported video of the incident widely shared on social media showed the girls in an alley. One of them is seen wearing a burqa, with another girl trying to assist her.

In UP's Moradabad, a video had surfaced on social media with a claim that 5 Muslim girl students forced their Hindu friend to wear Burqa and were luring her for religious conversion. Now, an FIR has been registered against the 5 girls. pic.twitter.com/i11ChaaIpF

— Piyush Rai (@Benarasiyaa) January 24, 2026

The Times of India quoted an unidentified police officer as saying that the girls were “on their way to a restaurant which crosses the victim’s brother’s shop”.

“They didn’t want him to know about it,” the officer was quoted as having said. “Fearful of getting caught, the Hindu girl may have worn her friend's burqa.”

The matter was being probed to find out the background of the girls and whether there was any motive behind their actions, the officer was quoted as saying.

Commenting on the video posted on social media platform X, Moradabad Police had said on January 16 that the investigation had revealed that the girl “had worn the burqa herself only to escape from her brother”.

“No facts related to any criminal incident or religious conversion were found,” the police had said.

It had added that legal action was being taken following a probe against persons posting misleading videos and claims, based on the family’s complaint.

A Delhi court on Saturday acquitted activist Medha Patkar in a 20-year-old defamation case filed against her by Delhi Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena, reported Bar and Bench.

Judicial Magistrate First Class Raghav Sharma of the Saket Courts stated that Saxena had failed to prove that Patkar made defamatory statements about him during a television program in April 2006.

The case was filed when Saxena was heading the Ahmedabad-based non-governmental organisation National Council for Civil Liberties. Saxena alleged that Patkar had made defamatory allegations about the NGO receiving civil contracts, which he had denied.

The court held that Patkar was not a panellist on the program in question and only a pre-recorded video clip of hers was played during the telecast, reported PTI.

“It is important to note that neither the reporter who actually recorded the audio-video nor any person who had seen the accused making the impugned statements has been examined as a witness,” the judge was quoted as saying by the news agency.

He added that the video played during the telecast appeared to be a part of an interview or a press conference held by Patkar.

It is essential to submit the entire video and audio of the press conference for the court to establish anything, the judge held.

He said that Saxena had failed to produce the original video footage or the recording device that recorded the allegedly defamatory statements. As a result, the allegations cannot be established, the judge added.

In August, the Supreme Court had upheld Patkar’s conviction in a separate defamation case filed in 2001 by Saxena.

Saxena had alleged that Patkar had defamed him in a press note titled “True face of patriot”, which the activist had issued in November 2000.

In May 2024, Metropolitan Magistrate Raghav Sharma convicted Patkar in the case. She was found guilty of criminal defamation and held liable to serve two years in jail, pay a fine, or both.

The court also observed that Patkar had accused Saxena of “mortgaging the people of Gujarat and their resources to foreign interests” and held the allegation to be a “direct attack” on his integrity and public service.

While upholding the decision, the Supreme Court had modified the probation condition requiring her to appear before the trial court periodically, instead allowing her to furnish bonds.

Beyond the highways that cut through farmlands, down winding paths that lead into Amaragori village in West Bengal’s Howrah district, stands the Gajalakshmi temple. Its red walls have been darkened with time.

The carvings on its terracotta panels are beginning to recede into the brick. Floral roundels and trellises, a Durga pantheon, rows of birds and men setting out to sea struggle against oblivion. A crouching man stares back at the viewer from one corner panel, inches away from a gaping crack opened up by a tree that now grows out of the temple.

The Gajalakshmi temple was built in 1729 by a wealthy local family, like most of Bengal’s terracotta temples.

Many were built as family shrines by prosperous landed merchants who made their fortunes in the colonial economy of the 18th and 19th centuries. Some of these temples were built by merchants’ guilds.

According to folk art historian Tarapada Santra, there were about 234 such terracotta temples across Howrah district in the 1970s. Many of these quietly moulder away in the neighbouring districts of South Bengal.

They are found in the courtyards of family homes, though the family itself may have scattered or died out. They crop up in the middle of market places, or in lonely spots which once hummed with activity.

At a time when Bengal’s colonial architecture is being rediscovered and explored by research scholars, heritage enthusiasts and cultural organisations, conservation efforts have largely bypassed the terracotta temple, a vital part of Bengal’s built heritage.

The neglect of Bengal’s brick temples is the result of colonial biases that continue to shape the idea of architectural heritage in independent India.

Built mostly between the late-17th and late-19th century, these temples had neither the aura of hoary antiquity nor the prestige of valuable stone to recommend them to foreign Indologists in their construction of India’s past.

With the flight of capital and talents to Calcutta, the metropolis of opportunity and modernity under British rule, the villages of Bengal went into economic decline. In the colonial imagination, the temples were relegated to a pre-modern past that was not worth preserving.

West Bengal’s economic fortunes did not look up after 1947, as the state struggled to deal with the cataclysmic fallout of Partition. For successive state governments, heritage conservation was a luxury and the terracotta temples were not a priority. After all, they were not built by mighty dynasties, nor did they commemorate famous victories or coronations.

As terracotta temples slowly disappear from Bengal, they take with them a slice of the region’s layered cultural history, formed by waves of external influence blending indigenous knowledge. What remains of this storied past must be salvaged.

Texts in terracotta

In their choice of material and form, Bengali builders showed remarkable architectural wisdom. The temples are made of brick, bamboo and clay, readily available material in this fertile region. Their roofs replicate the curving slopes (chalas) of thatched village huts, ensuring the easy drainage of rainwater.

A long history of cultural assimilation under Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and even colonial rule has produced syncretic styles and novel temple forms. The simple charchala (four-sided) structure of the early temples evolved into more complex forms with the passing of time. The chalas multiplied in steps to add height. Sometimes, they were surmounted by ratnas (turrets). Several later temples are flat-roofed, resembling the mansions of the rich in the 19th century, thus reflecting changes in the rural landscape.

Abjuring the use of expensive stone, which had to be brought from other regions, the makers of these temples chose to craft local clay into richly engraved panels. Terracotta, in the hands of unsung village artisans, sings of the religious and quotidian life of the community.

Stories from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the life of Krishna jostle for space with folk deities on the terracotta panels. From the 18th century onwards, social scenes and battles scenes from recent historical memory appear on the walls. These temples are also texts in terracotta waiting to be deciphered.

What isn’t ‘Indian art’

Yet, it is this very uniqueness of Bengal’s terracotta temples that has excluded them from the imagination of Indian art. In the quest for a national idiom after Independence, the terracotta temples, built in a regional style long after the major temples in other parts of India, proved to be a disadvantage.

For instance, architect Srishchandra Chatterjee wrote in favour of a School of Indian Architecture and Regional Planning in 1948. He mentioned several schools of Indian architecture but ignored the terracotta temples of Bengal.

Similarly, many Indians have heard the story of the discovery of the Ajanta caves, but only a handful know how scholar David McCutcheon stumbled upon the Chandranath Shiva temple, with European figures on its walls, while accompanying director Satyajit Ray during the shooting of the film, Abhijaan, in Hetampur.

The evolution of the 19th-century Bengal school of art has been researched but studies of the terracotta temple are scarce, stymied by the untimely death of notable field researchers like McCutcheon and folk art historian Tarapada Santra. Otherwise, Mukul Dey’s Birbhum Terracottas, published by the Lalit Kala Academy in 1959, remains a path-breaking compendium.

Poor conservation

Today, a few of the terracotta temples are protected by the Archaeological Survey of India. These include the famous complexes at Bishnupur as well as those in Ambika Kalna and Jaydev Kenduli in Bardhaman district, all built by relatively important local feudatories.

A handful of temples are nominally under the protection of the state’s archaeological department but their maintenance leaves much to be desired. Take the Dadhimadhab temple, built some years after the Gajalakshmi temple in the same village. Carved panels above the entrance to the sanctum, once mentioned in a survey by Santra, appear to have been plastered over.

Social and economic factors also played a part in the destruction of terracotta temples. They were built to signal wealth and influence, but they did not become hubs of economic activity, which meant they faded from community life.

Now abandoned or owned by fragmented families, the structures have been vandalised or engulfed by vegetation which cracks open walls and brings the roof down. In many cases, there are too many stakeholders in the families that own them, leading to deadlocks in decisions over upkeep. Some structures have been razed to the ground as the land they stood on proved more profitable than derelict temples.

Even structures that remain strong are sometimes marred by well-meant but inept attempts at maintenance, with kitsch replacing the original craftsmanship. At several temples in Howrah district, for instance, paint on terracotta panels has blunted the sharpness of the engravings, diminishing the play of light on the panels as the sun changes. Ceramic tiles pave brick plinths and porches, their cold hardness at variance with the earthy warmth of the original brick.

It is the same story across the districts of South Bengal. With no clear advisory on conservation or financial support from the state, owners and local stakeholders have opted for cheap makeovers, resulting in technicolour terracotta and crude workmanship.

Temples in Howrah’s Rautara village and Birbhum district’s Surul village have been painted red with synthetic colour.

At the Rautara temple, a number of missing panels have been replaced with mass produced terracotta tiles featuring mainly the figure of Hanuman. The dhoti-clad, bow-bearing figure, executed in shallow relief, is a jarring contrast to the naturalness of the primates in the older panels.

Green shoots

In recent years, improved connectivity has brought urban bloggers and terracotta enthusiasts to the temple sites. Many post about them, stoking interest among Kolkata’s middle classes. Organisations such as the Birla Academy of Art and Culture in Kolkata and the Delhi Art Gallery have started conducting tours.

Terracotta enthusiasts from Kolkata have started initiatives to involve local communities in conservation. For instance, Kamal Banerjee, a heritage activist from Kolkata, recounts how community participation helped save terracotta temples in Chamka in West Midnapore district and Joypur in Bankura district. The projects aimed to clear access to the temples and encourage locals to keep them clear of undergrowth. This is a recurrent task, funded by enthusiasts from the city and abroad.

In Chamka, a member of the Nag family, who own the temple, got all stakeholders on board with the project. The temple has now regained prominence with the local community gathering there for festivals.

In Joypur, the temple cleaning was completed just before the outbreak of Covid-19 in 2020. During the lockdown, news reached Banerjee that well-meaning but overzealous local residents were planning to “restore” the temple. The block development officer was contacted and he dissuaded them from going ahead with uninformed conservation and restoration.

If terracotta temples are to survive, they must be linked to the lives and livelihoods of those around them. Few remain centres of religious activity, which has shifted to new, more easily maintained temples. They could, however, generate economic activity. Creative efforts at conservation are urgently needed.

Tourism projects could involve local stakeholders, particularly women, students and indigenous artists. Homestays, local guides, opportunities to taste the local cuisine could be organised in a way that does not disrupt the life of the community but offers livelihoods

Suchandra Chakravarty retired as an associate professor of English from The Bhawanipur Education Society College.

The Union government has directed social media platforms to take down a video of a 29-year-old man being shot dead in Manipur’s Churachandpur district by unidentified assailants, reported The Hindu on Saturday.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued the takedown order on Thursday on the grounds that the video was “likely to disturb public order”, according to the newspaper. The order came after a request from the Ministry of Home Affairs under the Information Technology Act Section 69A.

Section 69A states that online content can be blocked on grounds such as national sovereignty, security of the state, friendly relations with foreign countries or public order.

The man, Mayanglambam Rishikant Singh, was a member of the Meitei community. He was shot dead on Wednesday at a village named Nathjan. For the past month, he had been staying in the Churachandpur district with his wife Chingnu Haokip, who belongs to the Kuki-Zo community.

A purported video of the killing, which surfaced on Wednesday night, showed the man sitting on the ground in the dark. He could be seen pleading with folded hands to persons not seen in the video, after which two shots were fired at him.

The video carried the text “No peace no popular government”, in a reference to attempts to restore an elected government in Manipur.

Manipur has been under President’s Rule since February 2025, when Bharatiya Janata Party leader N Biren Singh resigned as the chief minister.

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

After Mayanglambam Rishikant Singh’s killing, the state government had also moved the Manipur High Court seeking directions for social media platforms to take down the video of the incident.

On Thursday, the court issued notice to the Union Government in this regard and asked it to place on record information on the progress of removing the viral clips from all platforms by the next date of hearing, scheduled for February 18, reported PTI.

The video of Singh’s killing was initially shared on WhatsApp from an IP address based in Guwahati.

The Kuki National Organisation, an umbrella group of Kuki militant outfits, denied allegations that it had given Singh “permission to visit” the area. It claimed that it neither knew about his visit nor was it involved in the killing.

On January 4, as a pastor named Bipin Naik was conducting a prayer meeting in the village of Parjang in Odisha’s Dhenkanal district, a Hindutva mob attacked him. His hands were tied up, he was beaten with sticks and garlanded with slippers, and force-fed cow dung.

After more than two weeks of inaction, nine people were detained in the matter on Wednesday, The Hindu reported.

Odisha has a long history of anti-Christian violence. In January 1999, Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons were burnt to death as they slept in their jeep. In December 2007 and August 2008, in large-scale attacks on Christians in Kandhamal district, Hindutva mobs killed 100 people and injured nearly 20,000.

The attack on pastor Naik is part of the continuing pattern of systematic violence perpetrated by Hindutva groups on Christian communities, which are largely composed of Dalits and Adivasis.

In the last fiscal year, the Rashtriya Christian Morcha documented about 87 attacks against Christians, said bishop Pallab Lima, the organisation’s state general secretary. Of these, the police registered cases relating only to 15 incidents, while action was taken in only three or four cases, he said.

Lima observed that while anti-Christian sentiment had always existed in Odisha, Hindutva groups had been emboldened by the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the state – the party swept the Assembly elections in Odisha in June 2024, ending the Biju Janata Dal’s 24-year reign.

Activists noted that under the new state government, accusations of forced conversions had increased.

Odisha was the first state to enact an anti-conversion law – the Odisha Freedom of Religion Act, which was enacted in 1967. But “for decades there were hardly any convictions under this law”, said a minority rights activist, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution.

In recent years, though, the law has been frequently invoked by Hindutva groups who monitor prayer meetings, attack participants and then drag them to police stations to be booked under it.

“This has contributed to a climate of fear and vulnerability among Christian communities,” the activist said. “While the anti-conversion law allows complaints to be filed by the converted person or close relatives, in practice it is often these third-party groups who initiate the process, using allegations of conversion to legitimise violence and silence victims.”

The activist also expressed dismay at the lack of action from the police in such incidents.

“In many of these cases, the police response has been inadequate or delayed,” this person said. “Some incidents of violence have occurred in the presence of the police, while in other cases the police have expressed helplessness.”

Often, while perpetrators are set free, the victims of their attacks are detained or booked. “When local remedies fail, victims are forced to seek justice through higher authorities, human rights bodies, or the courts, a process that is long and exhausting,” the activist said

Activists observed that this pattern of communal violence in the state seemed particularly illogical, given that almost 94% of Odisha’s population is Hindu.

“There is no reason why they should feel insecure,” said political scientist Bijay Bohidar. “Virtually speaking, the state is already a Hindu rashtra.”

Hindus control the bureaucracy, education, media and medicine, he said. “There are hardly any Christians or Muslims in positions of power,” Bohidar said. “So the majority have no reason to feel threatened by the 2% minority population of Christians.”

He said that anti-Christian violence in Odisha was a strategy to divert the attention of citizens from the government’s failure to fulfil its promises.

“They have a lot to distract the public from, like growing unemployment, the gradual transfer of resources from people to corporations, the complete collapse of the educational system and perpetuation of inequality in an intergenerational manner,” Bohidar said. “How else will they cover this all up?”

He argued that the right to religious conversion was an important constitutional freedom.

“How many people actually choose their own religion?” he said. “Most people just inherit it from their families, they don’t read religious scriptures and pick the one they like the best. So it is the right to religious conversion that gives actual freedom to people to exercise their agency.”

But he and others worry that anti-minority sentiment is becoming even more firmly entrenched in Odisha.

“The minds of people have been affected in a very deep way,” Bohidar said. “I think even if the BJP is defeated from power in the future, the RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh] mindset will not go away soon.”

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

Governors vs the Opposition. The governors in three Opposition-ruled southern states had run-ins with the governments there this week. On Thursday, protests erupted in the Karnataka Assembly after Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot only read out two lines from his customary address to the joint session of the state legislature. Gehlot objected to 11 paragraphs in the speech prepared by the state’s Congress government.

The speech contained criticism of the Union government, including its introduction of the new rural employment guarantee act.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah alleged that Gehlot had violated the Constitution as he was bound to read the address prepared by the Cabinet and “has no authority to substitute it with a speech of his own”.

On Tuesday, Tamil Nadu Governor RN Ravi walked out of the Assembly without delivering the customary address. This is the fourth consecutive year that Ravi has walked out during the opening ceremony. He alleged that the Assembly had disrespected the national anthem and that his mic had been switched off during the proceedings.

On the same day, in Kerala, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan edited Governor Rajendra Arlekar’s address to the Assembly. After Arlekar left the Assembly, Vijayan told the House that the governor had made changes to three paragraphs in the speech. Among the changes, Arlekar said that Kerala was facing financial stress arising from “curtailment of advances”, while the speech approved by the Cabinet had attributed the stress to “adverse Union government actions that undermine the constitutional principles of fiscal federalism”.

The struggling rupee. The Indian currency fell to an all-time record low of 91.9 against the United States dollar on Friday. It has plummeted more than 2% this month after falling about 5% in 2025.

The slide has continued amid foreign fund outflows and risk aversion triggered by geopolitical tensions.

Proving your identity. The Supreme Court told the Election Commission to publish the names of 1.2 crore persons against whom the poll panel had raised “logical discrepancy” objections during the special intensive revision in West Bengal. The names should be displayed in gram panchayats, block offices and ward offices, the court said.

Logical discrepancies include a mismatch in parents’ names, low age gap with parents and cases where parents have more than six children.

The court said that persons who had received notices from the Election Commission could submit their documents or objections through booth-level agents. If the documents submitted as proof are found to be unsatisfactory, the persons should be given an opportunity to be heard, the bench said.

It also verbally observed that the Class 10 admit cards issued by the state education board must be accepted as a proof in the enumeration process.

Also on Scroll last week

• ‘Attempt to silence national press’: Four Kashmiri journalists get police summons
• In Assam, ‘forged’ forms aimed at deleting thousands of Muslim voters ring alarm bells
• Why the chatter about a separate Jammu state is back in J&K politics
• ‘Legally untenable’: Why UP police arresting people for offering namaz is a misuse of the law
• Is ‘fair use’ really fair to artists under Indian copyright law?
• Why an Uttarakhand district has banned paddy farming in the summer
• When India needed support, Venezuela stood firmly by its side
• Silence as citizenship: The burden of being a ‘Good Muslim’ in India
• Review: Timothee Chalamet reigns supreme in ‘Marty Supreme’
• Review: ‘Border 2’ is ‘Border’ too, the whole package better packaged

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.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Saturday that only Miyas, and not Hindus or Assamese Muslims, were being served notices under the special revision of electoral rolls in the state, reported PTI.

“There is no controversy over the special revision,” the chief minister was quoted as saying by the news agency. “Which Hindu has got notice? Which Assamese Muslim has got notice? Notices have been served to Miyas and such people, else they will walk over our heads.”

“Miya” is a derogatory term for Bengali-speaking Muslims. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Assam has often labelled the community as “infiltrators” who are allegedly taking over resources, jobs and land of the indigenous people.

On December 27, the Election Commission said that the names of more than 10 lakh voters were identified to be deleted in Assam after a house-to-house verification process under the ‘special revision’ exercise. The final list will be published on February 10.

Unlike in 12 states and Union Territories, the Election Commission is not conducting a special intensive revision exercise in Assam. Instead, on November 17, it had directed the state chief electoral officer to conduct a “special revision” of electoral rolls.

The door-to-door verification took place in the state between November 22 and December 20. The process did not involve document verification, unlike the special intensive revision.

Assembly elections are expected to be held in March-April.

Several Opposition parties have accused the BJP of conspiring to delete the names of a large number of genuine voters from the state’s electoral rolls amid the exercise and filed police complaints.

On Saturday, Sarma said that there was “nothing to hide”, reported PTI.

“We are giving them trouble,” said the chief minister, referring to his earlier statements that Miyas would face problems in his regime, according to the news agency.

He added that serving them notices as part of the special revision exercise was a way to “keep them under pressure”.

“They have to understand that at some level, people of Assam are resisting them,” said the BJP leader. “Otherwise, they will get a walkover. That is why some will get notices during SR, some for eviction, some from border police.”

Sarma added: “We will do some utpaat [mischief], but within the ambit of law… we are with the poor and downtrodden, but not those who want to destroy our jati [community].”

This came a day after the Assam Congress and Raijor Dal chief Akhil Gogoi filed separate complaints with the police against the BJP for allegedly attempting to tamper with voter lists in the Boko-Chhaygaon Assembly constituency.

In a complaint filed at the Boko Police Station on Friday, Boko Block Congress Committee chief Tuleswar Rabha claimed that BJP leaders, along with a few locals and office staff, entered the election branch of the Boko co-district commissioner’s office in the evening a day earlier.

He alleged that the group attempted to access the electoral roll revision portal using a government password to delete and include names using data from Form 7.

Form 7 of the Election Commission is the official application used to object to the inclusion of a name or to request the deletion of a name from an existing electoral roll.

In his complaint in Jorhat, Gogoi said that he had received video footage a day earlier showing four persons “unlawfully entering and operating inside the Boko co-district commissioner’s office, Kamrup (Rural), Assam”.

He added that the video footage showed the four persons “unauthorisedly accessing” official documents and electronic databases.

“As such, there may be every possibility to illegally adding fictitious voters’ names and deleting names of genuine voters, without any lawful authority,” the Sivasagar MLA said.

On January 7, the Congress, the Raijor Dal, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) and the Assam Jatiya Parishad also filed a police complaint, accusing Assam BJP president and MP Dilip Saikia of being involved in an alleged conspiracy to delete the names of a large number of genuine voters from the state’s electoral rolls.

The parties claimed that Saikia had directed the Hindutva party MLAs to ensure the deletion of the names of “anti-BJP voters” in at least 60 of the state’s 126 Assembly constituencies.

Odisha’s Nabarangpur district has been declared “Naxal-free” after nine Maoists surrendered in neighbouring Chhattisgarh, PTI quoted the police as saying on Saturday.

Seven of those who surrendered were women and the group carried a combined bounty of Rs 47 lakh.

They were active in Nabarangpur and neighbouring Dhamtari district in Chhattisgarh, the police were quoted as saying.

“With their surrender, Nabarangpur district has become free from Naxal activity,” PTI quoted the police as saying in a statement.

Of Odisha’s 30 districts, Maoist activity is now confined to pockets of seven districts, PTI quoted an unidentified police officer as saying. These are Kandhamal, Kalahandi, Bolangir, Malkangiri, Koraput, Rayagada and Boudh.

On December 16, the Union government told Parliament that 2,167 “Left-wing extremists” had surrendered and 335 had been killed in the first 11 months of 2025. More than 940 had been arrested.

Overall, more than 1,800 such persons had been killed and over 16,000 had been arrested between 2014 and December 1, 2025. More than 9,580 had surrendered during the period.

The Union government has vowed to end Maoism by March 31, 2026.

In 2025, the number of “most affected” districts came down from six to three. These are Bijapur, Sukma and Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh.

The International Cricket Council has formally informed the Bangladesh Cricket Board that Bangladesh has been replaced by Scotland in the upcoming men’s T20 World Cup after it refused to travel to India.

Since January 4, the interim government in Bangladesh has been saying the country’s cricket team does not want to travel to India for the world cup, citing what it alleged was a “violent communal policy” of the Indian cricket board.

This came after the Kolkata Knight Riders on January 3 dropped Bangladeshi cricketer Mustafizur Rahman from its squad ahead of the 2026 edition of the Indian Premier League, following instructions from the Board of Control for Cricket in India.

Rahman had been dropped amid diplomatic tensions between New Delhi and Dhaka after the killing of a Hindu man in Bangladesh in December. India has repeatedly condemned hostilities against religious minorities in the country.

Bangladesh had been urging the International Cricket Council to shift its matches to Sri Lanka, where Pakistan is also scheduled to play.

Bangladesh was in Group C alongside England, West Indies, Italy and Nepal. The team was scheduled to play its first three group stage matches in Kolkata followed by one in Mumbai.

On Wednesday, the International Cricket Council said that the Bangladesh Cricket Board had repeatedly linked its participation in the tournament to an “isolated and unrelated development” concerning one of its player’s involvement in a domestic league”.

The linkage has no bearing on the tournament’s security framework, it had said at the time.

Security assessments, including independent reviews, have indicated that there was no threat to Bangladeshi players, media persons, officials and fans at venues in India, the council had said.

Also read: For Hindutva groups, Bangladesh is the new Pakistan

In August 2023, the Indian parliament approved a bill authorising the establishment of the Anusandhan National Research Foundation and the act came into force on February 5, 2024. As a funding agency for scientific research, the Anusandhan National Research Foundation is charged with raising and disbursing around $6 billion to universities and research laboratories over five years.

Of the proposed target, the Anusandhan National Research Foundation is expected to invert current funding ratios by raising at least 70% from non-governmental sources, including industry and philanthropy. Industry contribution to research today stands at 36% overall. State funding for science is today at 64% and when seen as Gross Expenditure on Research and Development, in percentage of GDP, has been 0.66% (2018-’20) and 0.64% (2020-’24). For comparison, the equivalent figure for the US stood at 3.59% in 2023 and China was at approximately 2.5% in 2023-’24.

This is not the first time that India has considered an independent funding body for science research at an arms-length from the government. The idea was already proposed in 1944 by the biologist Archibald Vivian Hill in his report to the British Government of India about the post-war reconstruction of India. Hill envisioned a “Central Organisation for Scientific Research” while Indian scientists with the National Institute of Sciences at the time proposed a “National Research Council.” Since independence, the government or administration of science for development in India has been important to those in India and interesting to observers outside.

Two decades after Hill, the American educationist and activist Ward Morehouse (1929-2012) comprehensively surveyed the organisation of science in India yet again and wrote a 500-page manuscript, Sarkar and Vigyan (“Government and Science,” Hindi) in 1967 and a revised version in 1970. These drafts that surveyed the first 20 years after independence have remained unpublished to date. Historian David Arnold, in his paper on “Nehruvian Science”, noted that in 1961, India had 400,000 science and technology degree holders and 70,000 full time researchers. Between 1948-1960, state expenditure on scientific research grew from Rs 10.8 million to Rs 133.7 million. We can understand the thinking behind and the implications of these numbers in Morehouse’s work. No other book-length critical account of science under Nehru’s leadership has been written thus far.

This book is a witness of its time. Morehouse explores the Indian state as administrator and chief patron of scientific research. In his words, this is an account of “public patronage of scientific work in India – about three-quarters of the total in the mid 1960s: industrial research, atomic energy, and agricultural research.”

Morehouse makes three main claims: first, about the bureaucratisation of science in India, evident in the book’s title. He then speaks about the difficulties of building enduring institutions for science, in contrast to the more common leader-dependent organisations, and finally, he speaks to the concerns related to the social structures within which science and scientific institutions in India function. Morehouse’s arguments and observations remain astonishingly relevant today.

In preparation, Morehouse interviewed over a hundred key figures in Indian science and science policy, organised a conference with them in New York, and had access to robust documentation from the Research, Survey, and Planning Organization Unit of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. Today’s commentators on science in India may well envy the robustness of the data to which he had access.

I stumbled upon the manuscript a few years ago and have now prepared it to be published. Drawing on my introduction to the soon to be posthumously published Sarkar and Vigyan: Government and Science in Nehru’s India, I make a case for what we might gain from reading Morehouse today.

Contemporary Debates

Sarkar and Vigyan is necessary reading today not only as a primary source, for historical reasons, or for the interesting intellectual journey of its author, but also because of its relevance to contemporary debates on science, technology, and development in India. This book is a reminder of some of the questions already posed, debated, discredited, ignored, or abandoned in the past.

Morehouse’s approach to public policy and science in India was to centre the goal of reducing inequality on the path to social justice. There are two moments when he could still have published this book in the 14-year period between 1970 – when Morehouse revised the manuscript – and 1984 when, following the gas leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, we saw a complete shift in Morehouse’s thinking on science for development.

The first is the long seven years between 1971, when he published Science in India and 1978, when he signed the statement on “The Perversion of Science and Technology: An Indictment.” Signed at the 14th meeting of the “World Order Models Project” (Poona, July 1978) by Rajni Kothari, Shiv Visvanathan, and Giri Deshingkar, among others, this statement called for a rejection of the contemporary approach to science and development. In calling for a reorientation of science, the statement still carried the belief that a different kind of science could – and should – shape development.

The other moment when Morehouse could have published the book was between 1978-’84. During this time, he was still interested in India and published a report on the state of policy and research and development for electronics in India (1983) but his faith in science and technology as drivers of development was shattered by the “world’s worst industrial disaster”, a gas leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal. Bringing justice to the victims and survivors of the tragedy completely swallowed his attention until he died in 2012.

Even then, years after he first wrote it, Sarkar and Vigyan would still have been relevant as a critique of the obstacles to a social transformation shaped by science. Perhaps the academic critique of his manuscript was far too strong, perhaps he found it difficult to get a publisher of his choice or, perhaps his interest in revising a long manuscript simply waned with time.

Government ‘before’ science

Six years before Morehouse’s first draft, the British bureaucrat and scientist Charles Percy Snow published Science and Government (1961), which likely informed Morehouse’s choice of title. Snow was important for Morehouse’s thinking on the purpose of science and engineering in developing societies. It is, however, interesting that he flipped the order – government came before science.

At the risk of reading too much into what may have been a stylistic choice, in putting government before science in India, Morehouse may well be suggesting the primacy of bureaucracy in the organisation of science in India, an argument he makes strongly in this book.

In his use of Hindi, we may read that this level of bureaucratisation was likely specific to India, or at least true of India in particular ways. Finally, and this too is drawn from his use of Hindi, Morehouse seemed to indicate that the strong arm of administration was located in Delhi – the capital – rather than other parts of the country where Hindi was not a working language. Bureaucratisation was a concern then and remains one today in the debates on science in India today.

‘Appropriate Technology’

Technology, even more than science, is now seen as the panacea for all problems – and this book offers one genealogy for why that came to be the case.

The late 1960s were a moment of transition. Morehouse captures these final years of an era when the first generation of independent India’s leadership was giving way to the next: the physicist Meghnad Saha passed away in 1956, prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1964, Homi Bhabha (of the nuclear program) in 1966, Vikram Sarabhai (of the space programme) in 1971, and the statistician Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis in 1972. Each of them believed in the power of science for development and global relevance.

Internationally, after the student protests of 1968, critiques of science and engineering as being overwhelmingly beholden to the state went briefly mainstream. Morehouse was writing at the threshold of this transition, and the book is marked faintly by the tensions of thinking about social justice in the shadow of statism and big science and technology.

Along the way, Morehouse became associated with Ernst Friedrich Schumacher’s Intermediate Technology Development Group (United Kingdom, 1965), focusing, among other things, on a Gandhian approach to technology and economics. Schumacher, the German-born British statistician and economist, published Small is Beautiful (1973), a book that sought to recenter people and integrate the environment into government policies.

Given this association, it is curious that Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi does not figure meaningfully in the book. Missing also is a reference to the work of the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (est. 1962) and more generally, the people’s science movement in India, as well as a direct engagement with the debate on appropriate technology led by, among others, chemist Amulya Reddy at the Applied Science and Technology for Rural Areas, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

In effect, disagreements on how to develop science and utilise technology to alleviate poverty are missing from the book. Was there a Delhi Consensus, and was it so strong that Morehouse had to wait for a disaster before any critique of the Nehruvian project captivated his imagination?

‘The White Brahmin’

When Morehouse started writing, Walt Whitman Rostow’s The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960) was well absorbed by American bureaucracy of the Cold War. Rostow begins, “With the phrase ‘traditional society’ we are grouping the whole pre-Newtonian world…the dynasties in China; the civilisation of the Middle East and the Mediterranean; the world of medieval Europe.” The US, argued Rostow, had the responsibility to lead the newly independent nations through the stages of industrial development toward democracy and prosperity. Under the Lyndon Johnson presidency, Rostow would go on to advocate Operation Rolling Thunder for the carpet bombing of North Vietnam. In the year that Morehouse was writing the first draft of this book, George Basalla published The Spread of Western Science: A Three-Stage Model (1967) about the introduction of what appears to be an almost alien modern science into any non-European nation.

Both Rostow and later Basalla are broadly covering the same terrain as Morehouse. It is interesting, then, that Morehouse’s approach is at a distance from both Rostow and Basalla even as he held on to his faith in a “scientific revolution for the third world.” Morehouse was acutely aware of his position as an American in India. He knew that his claims about what mattered to Indian leadership and to Indian scientists was written through foreign eyes. In the spirit of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American (1955) and Eugene Burdick and William Lederer’s The Ugly American (1958), Morehouse wrote The White Brahmin – a critique of American presence and behaviour in India and in the world during the Cold War (Illustrated Weekly of India, 1970).

A lot has changed since Morehouse wrote the book. Aspiration to global power and the specter of a rising China has tenuously taken over earlier goals of modernisation in India. Today, Indian science and politics are taking stock of capabilities in science and engineering, and not surprisingly, also of the Nehru era. The Anusandhan National Research Foundation is tasked with delivering internationally competitive research. How that unfolds – and if it can do so while addressing the major concerns around how science is organised in India, including those that Morehouse posed decades ago – remains to be seen. If we want to trace genealogies of the socio-technical imaginaries of our time and re-evaluate problems with the organisation of science and engineering in India, then this is a book worth reading.

Jahnavi Phalkey (CASI Spring 2025 Visiting Scholar) is a historian of science, filmmaker, and the Founding Director of Science Gallery Bengaluru. She was awarded the Infosys Prize in Humanities (2023).

The article was first published in India in Transition, a publication of the Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania.

The Madras High Court has quashed an order issued by the Tamil Nadu government to collect sensitive personal data on the social background of higher secondary students in model schools, saying that the move violated their right to privacy, Bar and Bench reported on Saturday.

Model schools were established in Tamil Nadu to coach higher secondary students to clear competitive exams and help them secure admission to premier higher educational institutions.

The matter before the bench pertained to an order issued by the state Education Department on September 4, 2025, which directed government-run model schools to collect personal and social background information from students studying in Classes 9 to 12, Bar and Bench reported.

The information to be collected comprised 25 questions about the social and familial background of the students, including whether they were from refugee, nomadic or gypsy communities, migrants from other states, or from oppressed caste backgrounds.

Other questions included whether students had gender non-conforming identities, were survivors of abuse or violence, or had families with a history of substance abuse, the legal news portal reported.

The order directed teachers to collect the information from students and upload it on a portal.

On January 5, Justices G Jayachandran and KK Ramakrishnan of the Madurai bench held that collecting such data without a clear purpose also amounted to discrimination against students from vulnerable backgrounds.

“The data sought to be collected as well as the manner in which, it is to be documented…is absolutely in violation of privacy and…is clear discrimination and ill-treatment of the students of the model school,” the legal news portal quoted the bench as saying.

The move would only demoralise students who came from “stigmatic” social backgrounds, it said, adding that it was an “absolute abuse of power”.

The order came in response to a writ petition filed before the court challenging the direction.

Earlier, the authorities of the model schools had maintained that the details were being collected to ensure special attention could be given to students who required it.

While quashing the order, the court noted that the counsel representing the authorities was unable to provide justification for the collection of such information. The bench added that it was also not explained what kind of special attention the students were expected to receive.

The bench further rejected the authorities’ argument that the data was being collected in their role as parens patriae, Bar and Bench reported.

Parens patriae, which is Latin for “parent of the country”, is a legal doctrine allowing the state to act as the ultimate guardian for individuals unable to care for themselves, such as children, the incapacitated, or the disabled, intervening to protect their welfare and interests when their natural caretakers fail or are absent

Last December, Delhi hosted a concert by AR Rahman and his Sufi ensemble. On paper, this was an accessible concert, at least for wheelchair users who could afford the premium tiers priced at Rs 6,000 or Rs 25,000. The lowest-priced ticket, at Rs1,000, offered no wheelchair access at all. The Rahman concert was symptomatic of a larger issue – one where accessibility is treated as a luxury feature rather than a basic design requirement.

Many other musicians like Sunidhi Chauhan, AP Dhillon, and Papon came and captured Delhi in the same month. Unfortunately, unlike Rahman, even money could not buy you access to these concerts.

And we are only talking about accessibility for wheelchair users here. People with visual, hearing, or sensory impairments do not even enter the conversation in most cases. Are they not seen as individuals who have a right to access and enjoy public spaces?

Some countries such as the United Kingdom have made considerable progress in terms of mainstreaming accessibility for different disabilities. In addition to the Equality Act of 2010 that makes access a statutory right, many organisations including universities, event management and ticketing platforms and charities have guidelines on designing inclusive events.

This is an outcome of years of disability rights advocacy that has made accessibility a core part of how people think about public spaces.

Attitudinal barriers

So, why are live events still not universally accessible nearly a decade after the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act came into force? In India, people with disabilities are treated with indifference at best and prejudice at worst. We grow up consuming television and popular culture that ridicules difficulties in speaking (“atki hui cassette” in Aankh Micholi), hearing (Bunty Malhotra in Housefull 3), walking (“Langda Tyagi” in Omkara), normalising disdain and embedding it deep within our collective consciousness.

These attitudes do not remain on screen – they actively shape how public infrastructure is imagined, funded, and prioritised. When people with disabilities are stereotyped as belonging to “special” schools or distant, segregated spaces, they are rendered invisible in everyday public life.

This institutionalised invisibility means event organisers do not perceive them as a legitimate audience. And when a group is not recognised as an audience, its needs are never designed for. This results in them being systematically excluded from the very public spaces where leisure, culture and social life unfold.

Apart from attitudinal barriers, organisers often point to practical concerns such as fear of backlash “if something goes wrong” or the additional resources required to make venues accessible. But these claims ring hollow because when accessibility is built into planning from the outset, it does not significantly inflate costs.

Another common argument is that accessible venues offer poor returns as not many people with disabilities attend such events. Of course they wouldn’t if the venue itself isn’t accessible. This argument is circular: without access, there is no attendance; without attendance, access is never built.

Some bright spots

Not all is grim in India, though. The recently concluded Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa is an exemplar of accessible and inclusive events. In addition to being wheelchair accessible, exhibitions were curated with multisensory elements such as tactile installations, Braille, audio descriptions, and visual cues to include Deaf and Blind audiences.

Coldplay’s 2025 concert provided vibration jackets that enabled deaf individuals to feel the rhythm and beats and actually feel the music. In fact, Coldplay has been prioritising inclusivity and has ensured that their events cater to people with different needs. Another example is the India Art Fair, which not only offers tactile and Braille artworks along with sign language interpretation but also provides quiet rooms for people with cognitive disabilities who may need respite from sensory overload.

Making live events accessible is ultimately a matter of intent. People with disabilities are not a niche market but citizens with equal rights to culture, leisure and public life. Investing in accessibility is both socially just and economically sound – brands gain goodwill, loyalty, and reach, while people with disabilities get to participate in leisure and culture on equal terms and with dignity.

While having a legislation which mandates accessibility is certainly necessary, its objective falls flat if there is no concomitant effort to visibilise people with disabilities and bring them into public discourse.

On paper, India has an extremely strong legislation in the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act. However, on the ground, its implementation continues to be dismal, especially when it comes to events. This is reflected in an absence of a commitment towards accessibility by most Indian musicians.

As Siddhant Shah, Founder of Access for ALL (the organisation that made Coldplay’s India experience accessible), puts it, “Accessibility should not be seen as a virtue. It should become a habit. It should be something we live by every day, not something we do only to look good.”

Seventy-nine years after Independence, the conversation around disability still often gets restricted to skilling, employment and pensions. However, persons with disabilities are complete human beings with a spectrum of needs and desires. It is time we start looking at them as complete human beings with a right not just to life, but to live. It is time we start looking at them as a market and not just as a charity.

More importantly, it is time to look for “us” in them because everyone in the world is temporarily able bodied and when we are designing for the disabled, we are designing for universal access.

Nipun Malhotra is a disability rights advocate He is the founder of Nipman Foundation and director of The Quantum Hub. Teesta Shukla is a senior analyst at The Quantum Hub.

India on Friday voted against a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution that censured Iran’s crackdown on the recent anti-government protests.

The resolution, also demanding an end to “brutal repression” by Tehran, was passed by the 47-member council. While 25 members of the council voted in favour of the resolution, 14 abstained. Seven, including India and China, opposed it.

Ambassador of Iran to India Mohammad Fathali on Saturday thanked New Delhi for its “principled and firm support” of Tehran “including opposing an unjust and politically motivated resolution”.

“This stance reflects India’s commitment to justice, multilateralism, and national sovereignty,” Fathali said.

I extend my sincere gratitude to the Govt. of India for its principled and firm support of I.R. of Iran at the UN_HRC, including opposing an unjust and politically motivated resolution. This stance reflects India’s commitment to justice, multilateralism, and national sovereignty. pic.twitter.com/kLFnqpNjmB

— Iran Ambassador Mohammad Fathali (@IranAmbIndia) January 24, 2026

The protests, which began on December 28, initially focused on discontent about rising inflation. However, they later expanded as protesters in more than 100 towns demanded an end to clerical rule.

On Friday, the council in its resolution said that it “deplores the violent crackdown of peaceful protests” resulting in thousands of deaths, and urged the Iranian government to “respect, protect and fulfil its human rights obligations”.

The resolution asked Tehran to take measures to end and prevent extrajudicial killing, enforced disappearance and arbitrary arrests.

The toll in the crackdown on the protests is at least 5,000, AP quoted activists as saying on Friday.

The United States-based Human Rights Activists News Agency was quoted as saying that the toll includes more than 4,700 protesters, over 200 demonstrators affiliated to the Iranian government, 43 children and 40 civilians who had not participated in the unrest.

This would make the protests the deadliest unrest in Iran in several decades.

More than 26,800 persons have been detained by the authorities in a widening arrest campaign, AP quoted the US-based human rights group as saying.

On Wednesday, the Iranian government said that the toll was more than 3,100. More than 2,400 of those killed in the protests were civilians and security personnel and the remaining, Tehran claimed, were “terrorists”.

On January 8, the Iranian government snapped internet access and telephone lines, largely cutting off the country from the outside world. The authorities have accused the US and Israel of inciting the unrest.

The restrictions were eased on January 13, AP reported. However, text messaging services were still down and internet users were only able to connect to government-approved websites locally.

The internet shutdown has made it difficult for international human rights groups to independently verify the toll.

On Friday, to deepen scrutiny of Tehran’s actions, the UN body also extended for two years and broadened the mandate of the independent investigators gathering evidence to ensure accountability for human rights violations in Iran.

The collector and district magistrate of Koraput district in Odisha have directed officials to impose a one-day ban on the sale of non-vegetarian food items on Republic Day, Monday, ANI reported.

In a letter issued on Friday, the administration instructed all tehsildars, block development officers and executive officers in the district to enforce a ban on the sale of “meat, chicken, fish, eggs and other non-vegetarian items” on the day.

Odisha: Koraput Collector & DM has written to all Tahsildars, all Block Development Officers and all Executive Officers of the district to issue an official order in their jurisdiction for prohibition on selling of meat, chicken, fish, egg, etc and non- vegetarian food on the… pic.twitter.com/4WmcCMtOXv

— ANI (@ANI) January 24, 2026

In 2025, the Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation had ordered all slaughterhouses and meat shops within its jurisdiction to remain closed on Independence Day. The move had sparked a row, with Opposition parties describing it as “food policing”.

Also read: The illogic of meat bans

The Assam Congress and Raijor Dal chief Akhil Gogoi have filed separate complaints with the police against the Bharatiya Janata Party for allegedly attempting to tamper with voter lists in the Boko-Chhaygaon Assembly seat on Thursday during the “special revision” of electoral rolls.

Unlike in 12 states and Union Territories, the Election Commission is not conducting a special intensive revision exercise in Assam. Instead, on November 17, it had directed the state chief electoral officer to conduct a “special revision” of electoral rolls.

The door-to-door verification took place in the state between November 22 and December 20. The process did not involve document verification, unlike the special intensive revision.

Assembly elections are expected to be held in March-April.

In a complaint filed at the Boko Police Station on Friday, Boko Block Congress Committee chief Tuleswar Rabha claimed that BJP leaders, along with a few locals and office staff, entered the election branch of the Boko co-district commissioner’s office in the evening, PTI reported.

The complaint named Zila Parishad member and South Kamrup district BJP general secretary Prahlad Biswas, South Kamrup district BJP secretary Mrinmoy Boro, South Kamrup district BJP Scheduled Tribes Morcha secretary Buddheshwar Rabha, two employees of a local gas agency and unnamed election officials.

It alleged that the group attempted to access the electoral roll revision portal using a government password to delete and include names using data from Form 7.

Form 7 of the Election Commission is the official application used to object to the inclusion of a name or to request the deletion of a name from an existing electoral roll.

Rabha said that the alleged attempt came to light at around 8.30 pm on Thursday, following which the group was confronted. He demanded an impartial enquiry into the matter and action against those involved.

Gogoi also filed a complaint on Friday at the Jorhat Police Station, saying that he had received video footage a day earlier showing four persons “unlawfully entering and operating inside the Boko co-district commissioner office, Kamrup (Rural), Assam”.

He added that the video footage showed the four persons “unauthorisedly accessing” official documents and electronic databases.

“As such, there may be every possibility to illegally adding fictitious voters’ names and deleting names of genuine voters, without any lawful authority,” the Sivasagar MLA said.

He added that the video showed that the group allegedly entered the office unauthorised on Thursday night and that none of them appeared to be government staff or other officials.

The complaint also named Biswas, Boro, Rabha and an employee of a gas agency.

He claimed that the activity was being carried out without permission from the Election Commission and appeared to have been done “with mala fide intention to manipulate the electoral roll for political gain, especially in view of the [upcoming elections]”.

The Raijor Dal chief added that the alleged act could not have been carried out without the help of Boko Co-District Commissioner Priyanshu Bharadwaj, Kamrup (Rural) District Commissioner Debo Kumar Mishra and the chowkidar at the Boko co-district commissioner’s office.

He sought the registration of a first information report under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to theft, forgery, criminal trespass, and forged document or electronic record and using it as genuine.

The actions also violated provisions of the 1950 Representation of People Act, the complaint said.

A few points regarding the article on generic drugs (“Hard questions remain about the quality of generic drugs in India”)

​1. The authors claim the results are “too good to be true” compared to historical data.

Historical data, like the 2017 survey, often focused on smaller, unregulated manufacturers. Dr Abby Philips’s study focused heavily on centralised procurement – Jan Aushadhi. Centralised systems have strict pre-dispatch testing. The 100% success rate suggests that when the government acts as a bulk buyer, the quality control at the source is more rigorous than at the local, unorganised retail level.

2. Private labs might have been biased or intimidated by the government’s “flagship scheme”.

Professional NABL-accredited labs risk their licences and international reputation if they falsify data. Furthermore, Philips’s study was crowdfunded and public; any discrepancy discovered later would destroy his own credibility as a public health advocate. The transparency of the Twitter thread acts as a safeguard against “under-the-table” bias.

3. A drug can pass a lab test for purity but fail to work in the human body (bioequivalence).

This may be technically correct, but the authors are moving the goalposts. Pharmacopeial testing (purity, dissolution, disintegration) is the legal legal standard for quality in India. While Bioequivalence is the “gold standard” for efficacy, a drug that passes pharmacopeia standards is legally and scientifically considered “Standard Quality”. Demanding bioequivalence for every single common generic (like Paracetamol) would exponentially increase medicine prices, defeating the purpose of affordable healthcare.

​4. Generics for sensitive issues (like transplant or thyroid) are risky without bioequivalence studies.

There is a consensus here. Most doctors agree that for narrow therapeutic index drugs (example, levothyroxine, cyclosporine), patients should ideally stick to the same brand to avoid minor fluctuations. However, using this specific “high-risk” category to cast doubt on all generics (like common antibiotics or painkillers) is a logical fallacy that creates unnecessary “medicine hesitancy” among the poor.

​5. One-off testing doesn’t prove the factory produces good medicine every day.

It may be true, but this is why we have the Revised Schedule M (India’s updated Good Manufacturing Practices). The government has recently made international-grade manufacturing standards mandatory for all MSME pharma units. Testing market samples is the only way a third party can verify the system. If market samples consistently pass, it is a strong indicator that the underlying manufacturing process is stabilising.

6. ​The study results would be worse if samples came from small, local private pharmacies.

This argument actually supports the case for Jan Aushadhi. If the “centralised bulk strategy” produces 100% quality results, the solution isn’t to doubt generics but to expand the Jan Aushadhi model and centralised procurement to all states to eliminate the “smaller, poor-quality manufacturers” the authors are worried about. – Suraj Anandan

Sinhala Buddhism ‘tarnished’

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, it is said. That captures The Robe and the Sword: How Buddhist Extremism Is Shaping Modern Asia by Sonia Faleiro (“Militant Buddhism: A long history of how Sri Lankan Buddhist monks treated non-practitioners”). The author has twisted Hindu ideologies with compassionate philosophy of Buddhism to tarnish the spiritual elements of the great religion of Buddhism. The excerpt is made up of mudslinging towards Buddhism and its followers in Sri Lanka.

To better understand Buddhism, one needs to study Buddhist doctrines and the fundamentals of Buddha’s teachings by the monks who are monastically educated, especially elderly monks who have reached the higher levels of spiritual attainment. The clergy of all religions are fallible and one cannot randomly interview novice monks or monks who were not educated about Buddha’s teachings.

The Mahavamsa is not the Buddha’s teachings. Mahavamsa, or the Great Chronicle, is considered the world’s longest and unbroken historical record of Sri Lanka since 543 BCE. Mahavamsa is also updated as a modern continuation in volumes under the ministry of cultural affairs of Sri Lanka. In a nutshell this book is nothing but a potboiler. – Asela Unantenne

***

Every country in the world has their own culture and religion. There is no such thing as a multi-cultural country. There are many examples of countries who tried to experiment with multiculturalism and failed.

Sri Lanka is the only country the Sinhalese have. If they lose it, they will become like the Jews before the creation of the State of Israel, orphans travelling the world with no purpose, freedom, identity or dignity. The Hindus mentioned in the article were responsible for the death, mutilation and sacking of Sinhalese cities. They stole the wealth of the Sinhalese, turning them into paupers while destroying Buddhist temples.

The Mahavamsa has also been falsely interpreted to portray King Dutugamunu as some sort of Sinhalese Buddhist supremacist. It is a pity that this article is favoured towards the minorities but does not paint the Sinhalese as people who have their own identity to maintain and protect.

When people talk about Sinhalese Buddhist supremacists, they never shift their focus towards minorities who are not satisfied with whatever they have been given. If the minorities are subjected to intimidation due to a “sinhala buddhist supremacist” attitudes, where do they get the freedom of speech, religion and access to basic human rights and have coexisted alongside us for 78 years of independence? – Wathsara Halangoda

The administration in Madhya Pradesh’s Indore district has deployed survey teams and set up two temporary hospitals in Mhow after residents fell ill after consuming allegedly contaminated drinking water, PTI reported on Saturday.

In a statement, the administration said that at least 12 suspected cases of persons suffering from a stomach infection were detected in Mhow’s Patti Bazaar area on Friday. However, the news agency quoted residents as having claimed that about 24 persons had fallen ill after allegedly consuming contaminated water in the neighbourhood.

This came a month after more than 1,400 persons fell ill in Indore’s Bhagirathpura area due to water contamination, with symptoms including vomiting, diarrhoea and dehydration. The cases were first reported on December 24.

While residents of the locality had claimed that the outbreak had led to 25 deaths, a status report submitted by the state government to the court on January 15 reported seven deaths, including that of a five-month-old boy, PTI reported.

The authorities in Indore had earlier said that residents of the Bhagirathpura area had complained that the water supplied to them had an unusual smell.

In Mhow on Friday, 12 teams were deployed in Patti Bazaar on directions of District Collector Shivam Verma, and more than 80 households had been surveyed, the administration was quoted as saying in a statement.

It added that two temporary hospitals had been set up in the area.

The Mhow town, officially Dr Ambedkar Nagar, is located about 23 km away from Indore city.

Twelve suspected patients had been identified and were undergoing treatment, including some in hospital, PTI reported. Two persons had recovered and had been discharged.

Blood and water samples were being collected for testing in Patti Bazaar.

The statement added that the administration had also roped in local paediatricians and two other child specialists in the affected area, PTI reported.

The Tamil Nadu Assembly on Friday unanimously adopted a resolution urging the Union government to continue with the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act to ensure that the right to work of persons living in rural areas is protected, PTI reported.

Chief Minister MK Stalin, while moving the resolution, said that the 2025 Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission Gramin Act that replaced the MGNREGA was “designed in a manner that undermines the livelihoods of rural people across India, the financial structure of the states, the self-reliance of the local bodies and employment opportunities for the rural women”.

The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief said that Opposition parties had objected to the new Act, adding that he had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi against the new law on December 18.

However, the Union government passed it without regard to the voice of the public, he added.

The 2025 VB-G RAM G Bill, replacing the MGNREGA, was given assent by the president on December 21, two days after it was passed by Parliament amid protests by Opposition parties.

The MGNREGA was introduced in 2005 by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance and aimed at enhancing the livelihood security of households in rural areas. The scheme guaranteed 100 days of unskilled work annually for every rural household that wants it, covering all districts in the country.

Under the new law, the number of guaranteed workdays will increase to 125, while states’ share of costs will rise to 40%. The Union government will continue to bear the wage component, with states sharing material and administrative expenses.

The legislation has drawn criticism from economists and labour rights experts.

Apart from Tamil Nadu, the Assemblies in Telangana and Punjab have also adopted resolutions demanding that the Union government retain the MGNREGA. The Karnataka Cabinet has decided to move the Supreme Court against the VB-G RAM G Act.

On Friday, Stalin said that all initiatives, whether an infrastructure project or a scheme to provide livelihood, had been implemented efficiently without discrimination in Tamil Nadu, PTI reported.

The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief claimed that the Union government was not releasing funds based on progress of a project. The Centre was deliberately avoiding the immediate release of funds, showing a “step-motherly” attitude towards the development of the state, he alleged.

TNLA_Resolution: #Withdraw_VBGRAMG #Restore_MGNREGA!

மக்களின் தேவையின் அடிப்படையில் அமைந்த #MGNREGA திட்டத்துக்குப் பதிலாக ஒன்றிய பா.ஜ.க. அரசு கொண்டு வந்துள்ள #VBGRAMG வேலை உறுதித் திட்டமே அல்ல, அது அழிவுத்திட்டம்! கிராமப்புற மக்களின் வாழ்வாதாரத்தை ஒழித்துக்கட்டும் சதி!

இதன்… pic.twitter.com/emgPzE4l3l

— M.K.Stalin - தமிழ்நாட்டை தலைகுனிய விடமாட்டேன் (@mkstalin) January 23, 2026

Referring to the MGNREGA, the chief minister added that Rs 1,026 crore for wages and Rs 1,087 crore for material components remain unreleased, PTI reported.

“Who is affected due to the delay of the funds,” the news agency quoted him as asking. “It is the common people and farmers living in the rural areas of Tamil Nadu.”

Why is there discrimination against our state, Stalin asked.

The chief minister added that under the VB-G RAM G Act, employment was not provided as a right but was based on a provisional allocation determined by the Union government. The name of Mahatma Gandhi has also been removed and replaced in the Act with ulterior motives, he added.

“This House insists that the scheme must continue under the name of Mahatma Gandhi to forever commemorate the principles and the path he laid out for this nation,” the news agency quoted him as saying in the Assembly.

“This House unanimously urges the Union government to ensure that the Right to Work of rural people is upheld as per [MGNREGA] and that funding is guaranteed based on the demand for employment,” he added.

The chief minister said that the Union government should abandon the “new practice of arbitrary financial allocation based on ‘provisional estimates’ and continue the previous practice of demand-based funding”.

He added that the funding ratio should be revised to match the MGNREGA contribution pattern.

BJP criticises adoption of resolution

Later on Friday, the Bharatiya Janata Party questioned the adoption of the resolution in the Tamil Nadu Assembly, asking whether it had the constitutional authority to do so when the law had been passed by Parliament, The Hindu reported.

Speaking to reporters, BJP MP Sudhanshu Trivedi asked if any district panchayat or municipal corporation had the authority to pass a legislation saying they would not follow the state laws.

“If not, the same logic applies in this case as well,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “And I would like to ask [Congress leader] Rahul Gandhi ji whether the Constitution is in danger if an Act of Parliament is being openly defied by a state Assembly”.

The Congress is an ally of the DMK.

Tamil Nadu is expected to head for Assembly elections in the next three to four months.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday said that more than 110 persons had died in West Bengal because of anxiety about the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls in the state, The Hindu reported.

Banerjee said three to four persons were dying of suicide every day, PTI reported. The Trinamool Congress chief said that the Election Commission and the Union government should take responsibility for the deaths.

“Why will the case not be filed against EC?” Banerjee asked at an event to mark the birth anniversary of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. “The Election Commission of India will have to take responsibility for these deaths, the Government of India will also have to take responsibility.”

The chief minister has been accusing the Election Commission of harassing voters and endangering democratic rights through the voter roll revision process.

In recent months, several booth-level officer in West Bengal have died allegedly by suicide or illnesses due to the alleged work pressure during the process. In one case in October, a 95-year-old man died allegedly by suicide as, according to his family, he was anxious about being excluded from the voter list.

In November, Banerjee in a letter to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar said that the voter roll revision process had reached an “alarming” and “dangerous” stage, emphasising that the manner in which it was being carried out was unplanned and chaotic, and putting citizens and officials at risk.

The draft electoral rolls for West Bengal under the voter roll revision exercise were published on December 16. The names of more than 58 lakh voters were removed from voter lists in the state as they had either died, migrated outside the state or did not submit their enumeration forms.

The deletion from the draft roll is provisional and citizens can object to their names being removed from the list. Citizens whose names have been dropped from the list can file their claims and objections.

At an event on Thursday, Banerjee was quoted by PTI as saying that people, including senior citizens, were having to line up at the special intensive revision camps for hearings and wait for five to six hours in the open every day.

“Citing logical discrepancies, they [poll panel] are picking up issues like surnames of Bengalis which had been known and accepted for years,” the chief minister said.

“I am known as both Mamata Banerjee and Mamata Bandyopadhyay,” she said. “In the same way, Chatterjee and Chattopadhyay are the same surname. Thakur also came to be known as Tagore during British rule.”

Logical discrepancies include a mismatch in parents’ names, low age gap with parents and cases where parents have more than six children.

On Monday, the Supreme Court told the Election Commission to publish the names of 1.2 crore persons against whom the poll panel had raised “logical discrepancy” objections.

The court said that persons who had received notices from the Election Commission could submit their documents or objections through booth-level agents. If the documents submitted as proof are found to be unsatisfactory, the persons should be given an opportunity to be heard, the bench said.

It also verbally observed that the Class 10 admit cards issued by the state education board must be accepted as a proof in the enumeration process.

West Bengal is expected to head for Assembly elections in the three to four months.

Besides West Bengal, the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls is underway in 11 states and Union Territories.

For the last few days, Mridul Basumatary, a 28-year-old resident of Bhoroluwa Gaon, a village in Upper Assam's Lakhimpur district, has been trying to convince his neighbours that he has not filed any complaints against any resident of the village.

On January 18, 250 Bengal-origin Muslim residents of his village were informed that Basumatary, a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s youth wing, had filed objections to the Election Commission, asking their names to be taken off the voter roll of Ranganadi Assembly constituency.

But Basumatary denied doing so. “How could I doubt the people of my own village?” he told Scroll. “They have been living here since my grandfather's time. I have known them since my childhood. I know all of them. We have grown up together. How can I doubt their citizenship?”

A special revision of electoral rolls is on in Assam, ahead of the Assembly elections this year.

The first draft of the state’s voter roll was published on December 27, after a door-to-door verification by booth level officers. This was followed by the claims and objections process, when voters get the opportunity to flag anyone they believe should not be on the voter list.

As Scroll reported on Thursday, in several Muslim-majority districts and areas of Assam, bulk objections have been filed against voters, seeking to strike their names off the electoral roll.

Strikingly, some of these complaints have been called out as “fake”. Scroll found at least seven people who denied having filed the complaints, even when their names, voter identity cards and phone numbers had been used in the objection forms.

Basumatary, a booth agent appointed by BJP, is one of them. “Someone forged my signature, used my phone number and voter ID number to file complaints against 250 people,” he told Scroll. “I was shocked.”

He has filed complaints with the North Lakhimpur deputy commissioner and the district election officer.

As Opposition parties accused the BJP of manipulating the revision process, two more people with links to the party – a party member and a booth level agent – told Scroll that their details were misused to file objections against voters without their knowledge. A fourth person accused a BJP worker of getting him to sign an objection form under false pretences.

Kamakhya Prasad Tasa, the BJP parliamentarian from Assam’s Kaziranga, said the Opposition parties were misleading the people. “Anyone can file complaints and objections. It is for the Election Commission to take a final call,” Tasa told Scroll. “Has any voter’s name be deleted yet? No. They are creating noise over a non-issue.”

A flood of fake complaints

Across the state, hundreds of Form 7 applications – the document signed by a voter seeking to strike others off the roll – are being called out as fake.

In addition to Basumatary, Scroll found three people in Ranganadi assembly constituency, whose phone numbers and voter identity cards were allegedly used without their knowledge to file objections against at least 200 people.

Nayan Mondal, a resident of Bishnupur village, said that over 150 people from his village had received notices that he had filed objections against their inclusion in the voter list. “I don’t know who made the complaints,” he told Scroll. “My EPIC [Election Photo Identity Card] number and phone number have been misused and forged. These people are my neighbours and they have been living here even before my birth.”

Another resident of Ranganadi assembly constituency, Nishikanta Das, too, told Scroll that his name, phone number and voter ID have been falsely used to make objections against the voters of Borbam Pathar and Singhara villages in Lakhimpur district. “Someone called me up and said that I have filed complaints and objections against Muslim voters,” Das, a cultivator, told Scroll. “I was shocked. Later, I filed written complaints to the election office stating that I have not asked to delete any voters.”

Even BJP workers and agents appear to be caught unawares by the scale of the objections.

Like Basumatary, Pinki Biswas Roy is a booth level agent appointed by the BJP in Phulbari village of Ranganadi constituency.

She claimed that her signature was forged and voter card misused to file objections against 53 people in her village. “I have not filed any objections and I am thinking of filing a written complaint,” the 24-year-old said.

In another constituency in Lakhimpur district, a BJP worker was named in a police complaint over filing fake objections against 500 Muslim voters, alleging that they had shifted.

“There are about 2,300 voters in my village, of whom about 500 Muslims received summons,” said Ubaidur Rahman, a resident of Ahmedpur Block village in Nowboicha constituency. “All the objections were made by someone named Dulal Hazarika.”

On January 20, Rahman filed a police complaint at Bihpuria police station, alleging misuse of electoral process. He said that he would persist till a first information report is filed in the case.

Hazarika told Scroll that he had not filed any objections. “I have received five- six phone calls in the last three days that I have filed objections against them," he said. “But that is not true.” However, he is yet to file a complaint about the misuse of his name.

BJP workers named in complaints

On January 16, Bishnu Das, a voter of Barhampur assembly constituency in Nagaon district filed a complaint with the Nagaon district election office.

He alleged that his name and Election Photo Identity Card number have been misused to file objections against 75 voters during the ongoing special revision.

In his complaint, Das accused a BJP worker of getting him to sign on a paper that “was written in English”. “When I asked about [the purpose of the form], he told me that I would receive an electric rickshaw from the BJP MLA Jitu Goswami [if I signed it],” he said in the complaint, seen by Scroll. “I am an illiterate person and cannot read or understand English. I was not informed that the paper was related to deletion of voters' names.”

He went on to say that he knew the 75 voters personally and had “never applied or agreed to delete their names from the voter list.”

Das alleged that the BJP worker threatened to get him arrested in a false case, if he asked too many questions.

A day before Das’s complaint, the Hojai unit of the All Assam Minorities Students’ Union, an influential students’ body representing both religious and linguistic minorities, had filed a police complaint against Das and two other complainants.

Between them, the three men named in the complaint had filed forms asking for the names of 142 voters of Barhampur constituency to be struck off the voter rolls.

On January 20, the Nagaon district administration issued a public notice that hearings in Barhampur constituency, as well as Nagaon-Batadraba and Raha assembly constituencies were being suspended after several complaints of fake objections.

The district administration took action on the basis of a complaint from Arfi Begum, a 64-year-old retired government employee of Nagaon district, who had received a notice asking her to appear for a hearing.

A 19-year-old booth level agent appointed by the BJP, Bishal Roy, had filed an objection against her inclusion in the electoral roll of Nagaon-Batadraba constituency, claiming that she had died.

Begum said she was shocked to receive the objection notice and filed a written complaint with the district election officer the same day. The next day, she attended the hearing with all relevant documents. Bishal Roy, she said, did not turn up and so the complaint was rejected. He told Begum that he had not filed the complaint.

Scroll’s calls to Roy’s phone went unanswered.

Begum said: “I have worked as a government employee for the last 35 years in the Nagaon district commissioner office. I am from Sivasagar and I belong to the Assamese Muslim community. Now I am being made a bohiragoto (outsider).”

In Biswanath district, Ahmed Ali, a 62-year-old maulana of Adaveti village, filed a police complaint against a BJP member Ranjan Adhikari after the latter filed an objection, saying that Ali had died and so his name should be struck off the rolls.

“He wanted to [delete my vote] by falsely showing me dead,” Ali said. “There are about 450 voters in my booth. But only 30 of us, all Muslims, were served notices.”

Adhikari, the BJP worker, refused to take Scroll’s calls.

Political parties object

Opposition leaders and representatives of the Bengal-origin Muslim community in Assam, too, alleged that the fake objection forms were an organised attempt to delete Muslim voters at the behest of the BJP.

They pointed to statements made by Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and other BJP leaders, which they say have influenced election officials to manipulate the process.

Sarma has recently declared that preparing a correct voter list is "BJP’s agenda". "Is it not our responsibility to check that illegal Miyas' names are not included in the voter lists. Checking that our lands are not under the control of illegal Miyas is our duty. People had voted for us to do these works only," Sarma said.

Miya Muslims is a pejorative term used for Bengal-origin Muslims in Assam, who are often vilified as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh despite having roots in Assam that go back before Independence.

My letter to Chief Election Commisioner of India @ECISVEEP about extending the time for hearings of Form 7 objections/deletions & co relating data with the NRC list released in 2019 in Assam.

I have given specific examples of @BJP4Assam workers filing form 7 in bulk with fake… pic.twitter.com/leCzE4eMKl

— Sushmita Dev সুস্মিতা দেব (@SushmitaDevAITC) January 23, 2026

Debabrata Saikia, the leader of Opposition in Assam Assembly, in a letter to Election Commission alleged that “local BJP leaders are involved in the removal of the names of electors who were previously enrolled in the electoral rolls.”

“It is significant that many of the affected electors belong to the Muslim community, along with other indigenous residents who have lived in the area for generations,” he said.

Trinamool Congress MP Sushmita Dev on January 19 met Assam Chief Election Commissioner Anurag Goel and flagged the fact that false complaints by unknown and non-existent entities are being used to intimidate and harass genuine voters. “The complainants are being filed by people who don’t exist and don’t appear for the hearings,” Dev told Scroll. “It is targeted against the minorities and I suspect it is by the BJP.”

The hills of Eravikulam wake slowly. Before sunrise, the slopes are almost invisible, holding the last cold breath of night. Then a thin, colourless light appears over the rounded grass ridges and reveals shola hollows, rock faces, and faint animal paths. A Nilgiri tahr steps out near its main point Rajamala, pausing above a cliff as if listening for something familiar in the wind.

Located close to the famed hill town of Munnar in Idukki district of Kerala, Eravikulam looks inevitable today, as if these vast expanses of high grassland had always been destined to become a national park. Nothing about its present stability indicates how close it once came to vanishing under a file stamp at the state revenue department.

Fifty years ago, the same slopes, now described as prime habitat of the highly endangered Nilgiri tahr, were listed as surplus land under Kerala’s ​m​uch-celebrated and revolutionary land reform programme.

The grasslands that hold the highest concentration of Nilgiri tahr in the world, apart from supporting vast spreads of Strobilanthes kunthiana, known as kurinji or Neelakurinji, which blooms once in 12 years, were treated in official language as “vacant”, “idle”, and “available for redistribution” among the landless.

When grass was insignificant

In fact, the misunderstanding did not begin in the 1970s. It began much earlier, when colonial hunters arrived in their old plantation town, Munnar, with rifles. In British estate records, the high grass country above Munnar was referred to by names such as “top grass”, “spare slope”, “estate waste”, indicating that it was not of any use.

Hunters travelled to shoot Nilgiri tahr on weekends and took trophy photographs beside carcasses on the bare granite of Anamudi. Grass was treated as the space between the tea and the forest. The colonial eye looked at slope vegetation and saw only entertainment. That vocabulary persisted in settlement records, revenue manuals, and land classification documents long after independence. Grass was not timber. Grass was not a plantation crop. Therefore, grass was considered nothing.

When Kerala vested private forests with the state after 1971, revenue officers used that inherited language. Everything not under the tea estate boundaries was considered surplus by default. The administrative categories were dangerous because they carried a century of misunderstanding. Land not classified as a plantation was marked ready for redistribution. Officials in Munnar repeated a familiar line in those years. Grass has no purpose. It appeared regularly in file notes and in discussions with foresters.

Quiet persuasion

Environmental activist and senior journalist MJ Babu, who lived in Munnar during the 1970s, recalled how persistent that official view was. Revenue officers questioned why anyone would want to protect an area where nothing edible or tall seemed to grow. He remembers the response of a certain conservationist in the plantation town. They relied on a simple ecological truth. Growth, they said, does not mean height. “Life here moves sideways, not upwards,” they said. “It is not a tree. It is a slope.”

Babu believed persuasion worked best in that time before public protest shaped conservation. He remembers one evening in the early 1970s, when a sceptical senior revenue officer went to Rajamala. He watched a herd of Nilgiri tahr move in single file across a narrow cliff ledge with slow confidence. At dusk, the officer said only one sentence. “This cannot be chopped.” That line marked the beginning of a shift in the file language that would eventually save Eravikulam.

Memories of slopes

Before any forest officer took an interest, Munnar’s famed Muthuvan tribal community protected the slopes in their own quiet way. Tribal forest watcher PV Sreenith said that his elders understood breeding cliffs and grazing patterns of the endangered species long before government surveys arrived in Munnar. They knew where the animals moved naturally through rock formations before calving season near the Lakkom forest region, and which ridges bachelor herds used when moving between grass patches. They learned by repeating the same walk for generations. No formal training was involved.

Muthuvan Krishnan, who lived as a living repository of forest knowledge in Eravikulam till the age of 85 and passed away on July 30, was a long-time watcher of Nilgiri tahr under the forest department. “We never used the word protect,” Krishnan used to remind visitors. “We called it respect.” He also described how elders sometimes misled surveyors by inventing stories of dangerous leopards or sudden landslides to keep them away from maternity slopes. Their methods were simple, but their effect was long term. “Grass listens,” he said. “Heavy steps break it.”

Retired Indian Forest Service officer James Zachariah, who worked for long in Eravikulam as a divisional forest officer, recollects how science began to influence policy decisions at around the same time through the work of several researchers. They moved through the slopes with notebooks, tracking seed dispersal, sketching shrubs, and studying the Neelakurinji, the plant that flowers once in twelve years.

He observed that policy sees flowering, not waiting, but waiting is the life of kurinji. The plant remains underground for most of its cycle, storing energy until a single collective bloom. Today, threats such as soil compaction from tourism and road construction, and climate change, pose risks to this ancient ecosystem, underscoring the need for careful management and community engagement to protect Eravikulam’s delicate balance.

At first, the scientific arguments were not enough. But they were not alone. Behind the shift was MK Ranjitsinh of the Central Forest Department, an architect of the 1972 Wildlife Protection Act, who repeatedly spoke to the Prime Minister about Eravikulam based on reports from scientists and a Scotsman with a deep attachment to those hills. That Scotsman was JC Goldsbury, a former officer of the Gurkha Regiment during World War II who later served as manager of Vagavur Estate under the Kannan Devan Company.

Goldsbury knew every footpath, ridge line, and unseen gully in what later became the national park. He argued that building a motorable road through this landscape would destroy its wildness. He believed the essence of Eravikulam lay in its lack of roads. In April 1976, the then Prime Minsiter Indira Gandhi visited Kochi to inaugurate the first ship keel at Cochin Shipyard.

Then, Navy Chief Admiral OS Dawson arranged a helicopter to take her to Munnar so she could see Eravikulam from the air. But unforeseen political developments led to urgent meetings, and she had to refuse the flight. She said, “Next time I come, we will go to Munnar.” That next time never came. Dawson later flew over the hills himself, photographed them, and sent the pictures to her. The images showed long ribbons of grass, shola patches like dark tears in the green, and slopes like frozen waves. It was those images, not speeches, that helped persuade the highest levels of government that Eravikulam mattered.

Rice, files and a sanctuary

There is a little-known episode from 1974 that demonstrates how unusual the sanctuary’s creation was. Kerala needed rice from the central stores during a food shortage. Union Food Minister Annasaheb Shinde, who also handled forest matters, told Kerala minister Baby John that rice stocks would be expedited if Kerala moved quickly to create a Nilgiri tahr sanctuary at Munnar, as it concerned the Prime Minister. The conversation produced momentum in a file that had stalled for months. A resource as ordinary as rice helped shift the fate of a wild grassland. Ranjitsinh, who held the additional charge of union food secretary, played the catalyst.

By 1975, forest officer G Mukundan drafted the sanctuary notification. Chief Conservator KK Nair supported it, and Forest Minister KG Adiyodi signed it. Kannan Devan Company promised to support patrolling expenses and involve Muthuvans as watchers. It was the first time a corporation, a government, and tribals came together for conservation. That year, Eravikulam became a national park, well ahead of the Silent Valley movement that would become a national symbol of environmental protest in the 1980s.

Eravikulam’s story remained largely hidden because it did not involve demonstrations or confrontations. It depended on persuasion, memory, and timing rather than slogans. Silent Valley needed public mobilisation and political struggle. Eravikulam needed a change in file description and a few crucial decisions made quietly.

Fifty years later, the numbers speak of success and risk. Recent census findings show 2,668 Nilgiri tahr across Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Kerala has 1,365. Eravikulam alone supports 841. Officials say the number is considerably fair. But they hide worrying details. Tea plantations, roads, and tourism infrastructure genetically isolate the Eravikulam population. Wildlife veterinarians warn that diseases such as canine distemper, which can spread from stray dogs entering park fringes, could devastate the herd. Rangers have documented injuries from dog attacks on young tahr.

The Neelakurinji faces quieter threats. Tourism during bloom years compacts the soil where seeds lie dormant. Botanists have documented uneven bloom patches, delayed flowering on certain ridges, and reduced seed germination. Climate change brings erratic monsoons, prolonged dry spells, and warmer nights, disrupting the ​12-year cycle. The effects show themselves slowly, often invisibly.

The next 50 years

The shola-grassland mosaic demands humility. The fragmented corridors between Eravikulam, Chinnar, and Pampadum Shola need restoration to allow genetic exchange among tahr populations. Strict controls on feral dogs entering from nearby settlements are necessary to prevent disease. Scientific monitoring of kurinji cycles is required to understand shifts in flowering patterns under climate stress.

MJ Babu has said that the true challenge now is not changing the law but changing attention. Conservation originally succeeded in Eravikulam through persuasion. That method works only if new generations are willing to see the landscape correctly.

Eravikulam will always remain in the shadow of Silent Valley in public memory, but it came first. Silent Valley needed a protest. Eravikulam needed patience. Silent Valley was the country’s visible awakening. Eravikulam was its quiet rehearsal.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

Minimum temperatures are likely to fall by 3 degrees to 5 degrees Celsius in northwestern India, including Delhi, over the next 24 hours, the India Meteorological Department said on Friday.

The drop in temperatures came after rainfall and snowfall in the northern parts of the country.

The weather department said that light to moderate rainfall and heavy snowfall were recorded at most places in Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh, and at isolated locations in Uttarakhand on Friday.

Between Thursday night and Friday morning, snowfall was recorded in Shimla, Manali, Keylong, Kufri, Bharmaur, Gulmarg, Kupwara, Pahalgam, Kukernag, Qazigund and Banihal, among other places. Snowfall was also reported for the first time this season in parts of Uttarakhand.

Heavy snowfall across the Kashmir Valley on Friday led to the cancellation of all flights at Srinagar airport, India Today reported. Icy conditions, particularly in the higher reaches, also forced the closure of several key highways and roads.

Current weather conditions indicate that normalisation of operations may take longer than expected. Snow clearance activities are ongoing at Srinagar Airport, and passengers are requested to stay in touch with their respective airlines for updates. @MoCA_GoI @AAI_Official… pic.twitter.com/1Hc9jMJ2WS

— Srinagar Airport (@SrinagarAirport) January 23, 2026

The India Meteorological Department has also forecast dense to very dense fog during morning and night hours in isolated parts of Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh between Saturday and Monday.

Another intense western disturbance is expected to affect northwest India between Monday and Wednesday, bringing isolated heavy rainfall and snowfall over the western Himalayan region on Tuesday, the Hindustan Times reported.

Northwestern India has been witnessing one of its driest winters on record, with an 84.8% rainfall deficit in December and an 84% shortfall during the first 10 days of January, leaving hill regions largely snowless during the peak winter period, the newspaper reported. This deficit is expected to reduce following the current spell of snowfall, the weather department said.

The Karnataka High Court permitted bike taxis to operate in the state, allowing a batch of petitions filed by cab aggregators Ola, Uber and Rapido against the ban on the service. The bench held that bikes used for taxi services fell within the definition of “transport vehicles” under the Motor Vehicles Act.

The state government cannot deny them permits on the grounds that bikes were not transport vehicles, said the court. Bike taxi operators could file applications to get contract carriage permits to operate motorcycles as bike taxis, it added.

In April, a single-judge bench ordered all bike taxi services to stop operations in Karnataka. The court had referred to a 2019 expert committee report, which considered the impact of bike taxis on traffic and safety. Unless the state government frames rules and guidelines to permit bike taxis, such vehicles cannot be permitted, the court had held. Read on.

Bike taxis are exploding in India – but are facing government roadblocks, writes Vineet Bhalla.

The Indian rupee fell to an all-time record low of 91.9 against the United States dollar. The Indian currency, sliding 41 paise during the day, continued to lose its value amid foreign fund outflows and risk aversion triggered by geopolitical tensions.

Speculative buying of the dollar by offshore players had also contributed to the fall. The rupee fell more than 1% this week as foreign investors have withdrawn about $3.5 billion from Indian equities in January so far. Read on.

The Bombay High Court granted bail to Kabil Kala Manch artists Sagar Gorkhe and Ramesh Gaichor, who are accused in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon case. A division bench allowed their bail application on the grounds of long incarceration.

Gorkhe and Gaichor were arrested in September 2020. The court was hearing their plea against a February 2022 order of a special National Investigation Agency court that denied them bail.

The NIA has accused Gaichor of using the Elgar Parishad event on December 31, 2017, to make inflammatory speeches to incite violence and “propagate Naxal activities and Maoist ideology”. It has alleged that Gorkhe used his cultural song and dance performances to propagate Maoist ideology. Read on.

The Delhi High Court set aside the bail granted to a Muslim man accused of being involved in clashes and stone-throwing during a demolition drive near a mosque and a graveyard at Turkman Gate in the national capital on January 7. The clashes had broken out when the Municipal Corporation of Delhi was carrying out the demolition on land adjoining the Faiz Elahi mosque.

The 25-year-old man, Ubedullah, was among the 18 persons arrested in the case. He was booked under sections of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to rioting and attempt to murder.

On Tuesday, Ubedullah was granted bail by a trial court, just a week after it denied bail to five other persons accused in the case. The High Court said that the trial court’s order was “cryptic and unreasoned” and had not addressed the prosecution’s arguments. It directed the trial court to reconsider the man’s plea. Read on.

The toll in the crackdown on the recent protests in Iran is at least 5,000, human rights activists have said. This would make the ongoing protests the deadliest unrest in Iran in several decades.

The protests, which began on December 28, initially focused on discontent about rising inflation. However, they later expanded as protesters in more than 100 towns demanded an end to clerical rule.

The United States-based Human Rights Activists News Agency has said that the toll includes more than 4,700 protesters, over 200 demonstrators affiliated to the Iranian government, 43 children and 40 civilians who had not participated in the unrest. Read on.

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

The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice in a writ petition filed by a Hindutva group seeking directions for the Archaeological Survey of India and other central organisations to take over control of the Arulmigu Subramania Swamy temple on the Thirupparankundram hill near Madurai in Tamil Nadu, Live Law reported.

The petition has also sought permission to light a lamp permanently, for 24 hours a day, on a stone pillar located on the hill. The hillock has the Arulmigu Subramania Swamy temple and the Sikkandar Badhusha dargah.

The petitioner, the Hindu Dharma Parishad, has further sought directions from the court to allow the entire Thirupparankundram hill to be lit with lamps during the Karthigai Deepam festival, held in November or December, and to permit devotees to offer prayers at the site on that day, the legal news outlet reported.

A bench of Justices Aravind Kumar and Vipul M Pancholi issued notice to the Union government, the Archaeological Survey of India, the Tamil Nadu government, the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department, the Madurai district collector, the Madurai Police commissioner and the executive officer of the temple.

When the matter was taken up, Kumar asked whether the case was still pending before the Madras High Court.

The counsel for the Tamil Nadu government told the court that on January 6, a division bench of the High Court had upheld a single judge’s order allowing the lighting of the lamp, and that the parties were considering filing a special leave petition challenging the decision.

The controversy arose after temple devotees sought permission to light a lamp at the stone pillar. On December 1, a single judge bench of the Madras High Court, led by Justice GR Swaminathan, ruled that the pillar was a deepathoon, or a structure meant for holding lamps, and directed the temple to restore the tradition of lighting the lamp at the site.

The judge had also held that the practice would not infringe upon the religious rights of the nearby Muslim shrine.

The Tamil Nadu government, the temple authorities and the dargah management, among others, had challenged the order, raising concerns about law and order, ownership of the site and the nature of the ritual that had been allowed.

On January 6, a Madras High Court bench of Justices G Jayachandran and KK Ramakrishnan upheld Swaminathan’s ruling. The bench had observed that the stone pillar is located on the land that belongs to the temple.

It had directed the temple management to light the lamp during the Karthigai Deepam festival.

However, the court had said at the time that the lamp should be lit only by members of the temple management and that the public would not be allowed to accompany them.

Separately, on December 9, a group of Opposition MPs submitted an impeachment notice to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla against Swaminathan, saying that the judge’s recent orders and actions have been viewed as “disruptive to social harmony and detrimental to integrity of the judiciary”.

The impeachment notice had come against the backdrop of Swaminathan’s order in the Thirupparankundram matter.

The MPs had stated that Swaminathan’s conduct had raised serious questions regarding the impartiality, transparency and secular functioning of the judiciary. They alleged that the judge had shown undue favouritism towards a senior advocate and lawyers from a particular community in deciding cases.

Also read: ‘RSS agenda, favours Brahmins’: The controversial career of a Madras HC judge under impeachment fire

Were roads never built to Chardham (“How the highway to Hinduism's holiest shrines became a death trap”)? Whenever hills are cut, landslides follow for at least three to five years until the unstable areas become stable. Instability has been compounded by large-scale deforestation since the 1910s when a huge part of the forest cover was cut till the Chipko movement brought attention to devastation.

If roads are not widened, there may be accidents what with huge SUVs vying for space with smaller cars, not to mention the frequent bad driving manners of big car owners. So cursed if you do or don’t. Don’t try to make a living by criticising others. – Debasis Basu

***

Good work on the video on Chardham landslides but I feel it is incomplete (“On the road to Chardham, a landslide every two kilometres”). As shown in the video, there is data on when the road was built, the day and timing of landslide, and the weather condition. You now need high-resolution digital elevation models to understand the slopes above and below the road, calculate rock the mass and work out the instability factor.

Engineers cut rock mass along the road and do not understand how the rock mass above is going to behave. You also need to look into stratigraphy, which is the study of rock layers, and aspects of rock facies, which examines rock characteristics, and their strength and regolith thickness, or deposits, over the slope. Work this out and you have the solution.

If you are not geologist, collaborate with one for help. There is a desperate need for guidelines for making road in landslide prone region. Hope this comment helps. – Dhananjay

Trump’s Venezuela move

This is a stupid article (“When India needed support, Venezuela stood firmly by its side”). Politicians then and now have different objectives. It is a different matter that Venezuelans stood by India back then when their representatives were elected through a democratic process unlike now when their leader has not been democratically elected and has exploited his people and destroyed the economy.

[Editor’s note: In April 2013, Nicolas Maduro was elected president with a narrow victory margin. His opponent demanded a recount. In June 2013, the National Electoral Council said its audit found no discrepancies in the result.]

Venezuelans in Venezuela and outside are rejoicing the removal of Maduro since he had ensured the capture of all institutions, from the military to the courts and election commissions. How many Venezuelans has this writer spoken to? I personally know many who are overjoyed. It’s not a case of opposing imperialistic powers but that someone realised the oppression of the Venezuelans as well as the fact that, strategically, Maduro had allowed the presence of China, Russia and Iran in America’s backyard, threatening the country’s security.

Trump has solved two problems in one go. Also, Venezuela’s oil infrastructure is poor. Gaining from Venezuela’s is a distant objective but the people of Venezuela will also benefit from the oil economy which has been destroyed by Maduro. – Mohit Chuganee

***

Oil is big business and Americans are fixated on suspected losses due to Venezuela’s oil sale. This leads to other conclusions, like Venezuela sending illegal migrants through the south Mexican border. But jumping to wrong conclusions and making a country and its president a scapegoat for a whole lot of crimes of a whole lot of impoverished, poverty-stricken people of many South American nations is an easy way threaten real criminals. – Paul John

Ladakh must learn from Bhutan

Wonderfully put (“Why steel roofs in Ladakh are a sign of the region’s political and social crises”). This is the price of modernity. I was posted in Leh in the mid-1980s but even in those days the change was becoming apparent. It is sad but the old order must make way for the new. We must learn from countries like Bhutan and Switzerland: preserving ecology and maintaining a clean environment is the main focus. – DS Sarao

Don’t target Sambhaji Raje

Kindly mention the names of historians who have recorded Sambhaji Raje as a “debauched” and unfit ruler (“Harsh Mander: How Nazi cinema finds a reflection in Hindutva films”). The speakers should not have dragged Sambhaji Raje into this debate without thoroughly examining genuine books in Marathi. Check the work of a genuine historian and if you are satisfied, remove this sentence yourselves. – S Malode

The Delhi High Court has set aside the bail granted to a Muslim man accused of being involved in clashes and stone-throwing during a demolition drive near a mosque and a graveyard at Turkman Gate in the national capital on January 7, PTI reported on Friday.

The clashes had broken out when the Municipal Corporation of Delhi was carrying out the demolition on land adjoining the Faiz Elahi mosque and a nearby graveyard.

The mosque was not damaged during the drive, PTI had quoted an unidentified official of the civic body as claiming at the time. However, unidentified police officials had told the news agency that the situation escalated after social media posts claimed that the mosque was being demolished, leading to a large crowd gathering at the site.

They claimed that around 150 to 200 persons were involved in the violence, and six police personnel, including the local station house officer, were injured.

Ubedullah (25) was among the 18 persons arrested in the case, The Indian Express reported. He was booked under sections of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to rioting and attempt to murder.

On Tuesday, Ubedullah was granted bail by a trial court, just a week after it denied bail to five other persons accused in the case.

While opposing the bail in the trial court, the prosecution had relied on security camera footage and the disclosure statement of a co-accused, alleging that Ubedullah was part of a violent crowd that obstructed the police, threw stones and damaged public property, PTI reported.

Ubedullah’s counsel had argued that the case against him rested entirely on security camera footage that did not show any overt act by him, The Indian Express reported.

The counsel added that there was no video of him or any call records showing that he was involved in the violence. The defence also submitted that Ubedullah was the only breadwinner in his family and caregiver to his paralysed father, the newspaper reported.

On Wednesday, the High Court set aside the bail.

Remanding the matter to the trial court for fresh consideration, Justice Prateek Jalan said that the bail order in favour of Ubedullah was “cryptic and unreasoned”, PTI reported.

While courts are cautious about interfering with an order granting liberty to a person, this was an “exceptional case”, Jalan was quoted as saying.

He added that the bail order did not consider the prosecution’s arguments and did not analyse the factors required while deciding a bail plea.

The trial court has been directed to reconsider the bail plea on Friday.

The demolition drive on January 7 had followed a December 22 order of the municipal corporation declaring that structures beyond 0.19 acres of land around the mosque were encroachments and liable to be removed.

The civic body had said that no documentary evidence had been produced to establish ownership or lawful possession of the land by the mosque’s managing committee or the Delhi Waqf Board. The mosque is located within the 0.19-acre land.

The corporation’s order was issued after a November 12 direction of a division bench of the High Court, which granted the civic body and the Public Works Department three months to clear 38,940 square feet of encroachments near Ramlila Ground at Turkman Gate.

However, on January 6, the High Court said that the matter “requires consideration” while hearing a plea filed by the mosque’s managing committee challenging the December 22 order.

The Bombay High Court on Friday granted bail to Kabil Kala Manch artists Sagar Gorkhe and Ramesh Gaichor, who are accused in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon case, reported Bar and Bench.

A division bench of Justices Ajay Gadkari and Shyam Chandak allowed their bail application on the grounds of long incarceration, according to Live Law.

The case pertains to the violence that broke out near Pune on January 1, 2018, a day after a conclave called the Elgar Parishad was organised to mark the 200th anniversary of the battle of Bhima Koregaon. Kabir Kala Manch was one of the 250 Dalit and human rights organisations that had organised the conclave.

One person was killed in the violence and several others were injured.

The National Investigation Agency has alleged that the Elgar Parishad was part of a larger Maoist conspiracy to stoke caste violence, destabilise the Union government and assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Gorkhe and Gaichor were arrested in September 2020.

On Friday, the High Court was hearing their petitions against a February 2022 order of a special National Investigation Agency court in Mumbai, which denied them bail.

The NIA court had said that the material on record suggested that they hatched a “serious conspiracy”, along with members of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), to overthrow the Modi government.

The High Court directed Gorkhe and Gaichor to be released on furnishing a personal bond of Rs 1 lakh each, along with sureties of the same amount, reported Bar and Bench.

It also directed them to appear at the NIA office in Mumbai on the first Monday of every month.

The NIA has accused Gaichor of using the Elgar Parishad event to make inflammatory speeches to incite violence and “propagate Naxal activities and Maoist ideology”, reported Live Law.

It has claimed that Gorkhe used his “performances” of cultural songs and dances to propagate Maoist ideology.

Among the accused in the Bhima Koregaon case, the Bombay High Court has granted bail to Rona Wilson, Sudhir Dhawale and Sudha Bharadwaj, while the Supreme Court has granted bail to Varavara Rao on medical grounds and to Shoma Sen, Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira on merits. In November, the Supreme Court also granted interim bail to Jyoti Jagtap.

One person accused in the case, Jesuit priest Stan Swamy, died in prison in 2021.

When the Supreme Court in 2023 granted bail to two people accused in the case, it noted that the primary evidence cited by the NIA – a batch of letters – was of “weak probative value or quality”. In addition, a digital forensics firm, Arsenal Consulting, concluded that false evidence had been planted on the laptops and devices of the accused persons.

Also read: How Kabir Kala Manch, the anti-caste cultural troupe, challenges the hierarchical social order

The Karnataka High Court on Friday permitted the operation of bike taxis in the state, allowing a batch of petitions filed by cab aggregators ANI Technologies, Uber and Rapido against the ban on the service, The Hindu reported.

ANI Technologies owns Ola cabs.

On April 2, a single-judge bench ordered all bike taxi services to stop operations in Karnataka within six weeks. The court referred to an expert committee report from 2019, which had considered the impact of bike taxis on traffic and safety.

Unless the state government frames rules and guidelines to permit bike taxis, such vehicles cannot be permitted in Karnataka, the court had held.

The six-week deadline for bike taxis to stop operation in the state was set to expire in May. However, cab aggregators later urged the court to extend this deadline. Accepting the request, the court had allowed Ola and Uber to continue their bike taxi services till June 15.

On June 13, a division bench refused to stay the single-judge bench’s order. However, the court sought the response of state authorities on appeals filed by the cab aggregators against the ban, while rejecting their request to continue interim relief.

The bench said it would have allowed the request had the state government been in the process of framing rules. However, since the government had decided not to permit bike taxis, such an order could not be passed, it said.

During their arguments in court, the cab aggregators had said that the ban violated their fundamental right to trade under Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution, Live Law reported.

The cab aggregators had also said that the state government cannot, by executive action, claim to have a larger right and override all these provisions, as that would be in contravention of the 1988 Motor Vehicles Act.

On the other hand, the state government had argued that a motorcycle cannot be a transport vehicle, Live Law reported. It added that the statutory definition did not contemplate its use for carrying passengers or for hire.

If a motorcycle were to be considered a transport vehicle, “it is not a passenger vehicle and not to be used for hire or reward”, it had added.

During the hearing on Friday, the court held that bikes used for taxi services fell within the definition of “transport vehicles” under the Motor Vehicles Act, Bar and Bench reported. It added that the state government cannot refuse or deny permits to such vehicles on the grounds that bikes were not transport vehicles.

Bike taxi operators could file applications to get contract carriage permits to operate motorcycles as bike taxis, it added.

The bench added that while the state government was free to examine all relevant aspects to decide whether to accept such applications, permits cannot be refused merely on the ground that the vehicle was a motorcycle.

Also read: Bike taxis are exploding in India – but are facing government roadblocks

The Greater Noida Police on Thursday arrested two more builders in connection with the death of a 27-year-old software engineer who drowned after his car fell into a waterlogged pit near a construction site in Sector 150 of Noida, PTI reported.

The incident had occurred on Saturday at around 12.30 am when the engineer, Yuvraj Mehta, was driving to his home in Noida from Gurgaon through dense fog, the newspaper reported. The accident took place at a point where the road takes a sharp turn.

Mehta is suspected to have driven straight ahead, causing his car to fly over a two-metre-wide drain and a low boundary wall before plunging into a 70-foot-deep water-filled pit near the construction site.

The engineer was allegedly trapped, first inside the vehicle and then outside, for nearly two hours while pleading for help before drowning, PTI reported. His car was fished out of the pit by the authorities at around 6.30 pm on Tuesday.

An unidentified police officer told PTI that those arrested on Thursday have been identified as Ravi Bansal, a resident of Faridabad, and Sachin Karnwal, a resident of Ghaziabad.

Another officer told The Indian Express that Bansal and Karanwal were office-bearers at Lotus Greens Constructions Private Limited, a real estate company linked to the site where the accident took place, and also held shares in the plot.

On Sunday, the Greater Noida Police registered a first information report against Lotus Greens Constructions Private Limited and another real estate company also linked to the plot, MZ Wiztown Planners Private Limited.

In a statement, the police had earlier said that “on the intervening night of January 16 and 17, a car driver, Yuvraj Mehta (27), died after drowning in a waterlogged plot due to alleged negligence on the part of the builder and its associates at a construction site of Lotus Greens”, PTI reported.

However, a spokesperson for Lotus Greens Construction had issued a statement saying that the company had “no role to play because the said plot was transferred in 2019-20 to… [another company] with the approval of the Noida Authority”.

On Tuesday, Abhay Kumar, a promoter at MZ Wiztown Planners, was arrested and sent to six days’ judicial custody a day later after the court directed police to investigate the drain lapses, The Indian Express reported.

Kumar, however, has maintained that the plot was sold to them by Lotus Greens Construction and was already excavated in 2020.

“However, the Noida Authority withheld commencement permission, paralysing the project,” the newspaper quoted him as claiming. Kumar had also said that the land allotted to him was part of the Sports City Project and the project was halted.

A case of culpable homicide, causing death by negligence and an act endangering life was also filed against the two companies on Monday.

On Wednesday, the police filed a separate FIR in connection with the case and booked five named officials of the two companies, charging them with violating environmental and pollution norms, besides negligence at the construction site, PTI reported.

The Uttar Pradesh government has also formed a special investigation team to probe the matter.

NGT takes suo motu cognisance of incident

On Thursday, the National Green Tribunal took suo motu cognisance of the incident based on a news report published by Times of India on Tuesday, Bar and Bench reported.

A bench headed by NGT chairperson Justice Prakash Shrivastava, along with expert member A Senthil Vel, observed that the matter prima facie indicated a violation of the 1986 Environment Protection Act and failures in taking corrective steps by authorities that contributed to the incident.

“The news item raises substantial issues relating to compliance with the environmental norms and implementation of the provisions of scheduled enactment,” Bar and Bench quoted the tribunal as noting.

The incident also raised environmental concerns linked to stormwater management and regulatory compliance, it added. The tribunal sought responses from the Uttar Pradesh goverment and the authorities in Noida.

Can media organisations use the work of independent artists without credit or payment? Does it not amount to a violation of an artist’s copyright?

In recent years, several independent photographers, filmmakers and writers have accused mainstream media organisations of using their photographs, videos and writings without proper attribution, and sometimes even presenting them as their own content.

The issue came into sharp focus in December when Emmy-nominated filmmaker and photographer Ronny Sen filed a civil suit against Zee News seeking Rs 18 crore in damages. He accused the channel of a deliberate act of copyright infringement, alleging it had used his exclusive videos documenting the transport of cheetahs from Africa to India without authorisation.

A commercial court in Kolkata admitted the suit and will hear the matter.

Sen told Scroll that what had happened was “quite outrageous”. He alleged that Zee didn’t only “steal the work but have claimed it as exclusive and suggested that only they had access to it”.

Zee News did not respond to Scroll’s email seeking a response to the allegation.

Sen said that he hopes that “courts will do something so that the rights of photographers like me can be secured”.

For Sen, this was not an isolated incident involving Zee News. He has pointed out that, as far back as 2014, one of his photographs was used by Zee News’s Bengali channel during coverage of protests in Jadavpur University without his consent.

One of Sen’s main arguments in his suit is that Zee News cannot rely on “fair use” because the video was not used “incidentally or just for brief news reporting”. Instead, the channel used the entire photograph “repeatedly, without giving him credit, and even falsely claimed it as their own with exclusive access”.

At the heart of the debate lies a phrase that is frequently invoked but rarely understood, “fair use” – or as Indian law calls it, “fair dealing”.

What is fair dealing?

While the term “fair dealing” is widely used in India, the doctrine itself is distinct from the concept of “fair use” in the United States.

Fair use, a feature of American copyright law, is considered relatively “open-ended and flexible”, said Mumbai-based copyright law advocate Pankhuri Upadhyay. Under US law, courts apply a four-factor test that looks at the purpose and character of the use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of the portion used, and the effect of the use on the potential market for the original work.

In India, the governing framework is Section 52 of the Copyright Act, which lists specific situations where the use of copyrighted material “does not amount to infringement”.

These include limited use for “criticism or review” and for “reporting current events and current affairs”, including public lectures. However, the law does not define fair dealing in clear terms, instead provides circumstances where it may be used as a defence if an instance of use is challenged.

Explaining how courts approach this, Pankhuri said that “commercial use is not automatically disqualified in India, but it does warrant greater scrutiny” and often weighs against a fair dealing claim.

Another key factor, she noted, is the “amount and substantiality of the work used”, warning that even short excerpts can count against fair dealing if they capture the most significant part of a creative work.

These factors, she said, are applied together, “not as a rigid checklist”.

Section 52 also makes author attribution mandatory in news reporting, while Sections 51 and 57 protect copyright and moral rights.

Advocate Prashant T Reddy, who practises in Delhi, added that even permitted uses cannot cross into “misrepresentation or distortion” that harms an author’s reputation.

Pankhuri emphasised that fair use is “not a rule but a defence”, and can only be determined by courts on a case-by-case basis.

‘Photographers have no rights?’

Media organisations are increasingly exploiting the work of photographers, Sen argued, because of a key structural shift within newsrooms.

“Media publications that used to hire photographers in the past don’t really hire anymore because there is a sense that images can be produced by anyone,” he said. However, when a story becomes important, “there is tremendous pressure on publications to generate some kind of visual material, and then there is a tendency by large media groups to use other people’s work without any due process”, he added.

Sen pointed out that photographers remain a “largely unorganised community, which makes it difficult for them to enforce their rights”.

“The crisis we see today is because photographers have been completely sidelined, and under pressure, big media organisations run photographs without consent,” Sen said. “Photographers, like any other creative professionals, put in just as much work. How is it that photographers have no rights?”

Photographer Gauri Gill echoed similar concerns. She said she was “disheartened” last year to discover that her photographs had been used “without permission by media organisations”.

Brilliant Gauri Gill took these viral photos of @MiraPagliNair and @ZohranKMamdani. She's being ripped off, they're being circulated without credit. These have her name on, let's share these and fix it. pic.twitter.com/hGsylPSKXY

— Karuna Nundy (@karunanundy) November 9, 2025

She recalled that in November 2025, major media organisations had taken her unpublished, older photographs of Zohran Mamdani, the New York mayor, with his mother Mira Nair, from her private Instagram account, without her permission. The images were subsequently made viral on social media.

Gill said she was upset that “major profit-making publications” had used her work without permission, credit, or payment, and chose to “let the matter go” instead of taking legal action.

“It has definitely given me pause to think and consider what to do in the future,” she added. “I was freely putting out original content on my Instagram account, just for the pleasure of sharing, and trusting people not to share without asking, but now, I don’t know.”

Gill said the problem has two sides – companies using images without permission or credit and individuals sharing photos online. “I wonder about the distinction in law as it applies to companies and individuals, print, TV and social media,” she said. “The internet has introduced a whole new dimension to the concern.”

Kolkata-based photographer Subhrajit Sen told Scroll that in May 2025, a major television network had “used his original photographs” while crediting itself as the source. The images were part of his work and had earlier been published with attribution by another publication.

Subhrajit raised the issue on Instagram, calling it “alarming and deeply irresponsible” to reuse his images without permission or credit, and said it violated his rights and reflected poorly on editorial ethics.

He said he took a stand publicly by posting about the issue on Instagram and tagging the news channel. It contacted him and “attempted to offer compensation”, which he declined. Subsequently, “they issued a public apology on LinkedIn”, he said.

Subhrajit said he chose not to approach the courts “as legal action is costly and time-consuming, especially against a large media house”. He also said the “lack of accessible contact details” left him with no option but to flag the issue on Instagram.

Another photographer, Ishan Banerjee, said he had a similar experience with the same television channel. After Subhrajit’s Instagram post, Banerjee said the channel used his photo and told him, “It’s just a photo. Why are you making a big issue?”

He said his credit request was refused, and the image was later quietly removed.

In its LinkedIn apology, the television channel said there was “absolutely no intention to misuse anyone’s work or to take credit for it”.

In April 2025, Delhi-based artist Anita Dube faced copyright allegations after using lines from poet Aamir Aziz’s poem Sab Yaad Rakha Jaayega in works shown and sold at Vadehra Art Gallery. Aziz accused her of theft, saying, “This is not conceptual borrowing. This is theft. This is erasure.”

View this post on Instagram

Aziz told Scroll that while the gallery came to a settlement with him, Dube did not. Aziz said that Dube tried to convince him that the use amounted to “fair dealing, claiming it was promoting his work”.

On legal action, he said approaching the court would itself require around Rs 2 lakh in court fees. “How struggling artists could afford such costs,” he said.

Mumbai-based photographer Prarthna Singh summed up the wider problem, saying the theft of creative work is rampant in India. Even when images are publicly available, she said, “that is not the way it should be used; even if it’s out in public, you should still reach out to the artist for permission”.

Burden of implementation

Speaking to Scroll, Delhi-based intellectual property lawyer Anshumaan Sahni explained that individuals often lack the resources needed to enforce their own copyright.

“Large corporations typically have strong systems in place to track copyright infringement and actively pursue violators,” he said. “However, when it comes to independent artists, photographers and writers, this system is against them because it requires constant vigilance.”

Sahni noted that even among individuals, there is a clear hierarchy. Since damages claimed in court have to be based on potential earnings lost by an artist, new artists are at a disadvantage.

“Someone who has goodwill and is already famous, there is a clear value attached to their work,” he said. “But for someone who is just starting, how do you value their work?”

While an established artist may be able to claim damages based on prior sales, “to pursue such a claim, the artist would often have to spend a significant amount on legal costs”, which Sahni said “strongly discourages independent artists” from seeking legal remedies.

Another Delhi-based intellectual property lawyer, Nishchal Anand, said that in many cases, a legal or takedown notice is sufficient. “Big organisations are also very conscious about their image, so they try to settle the matter outside court,” he said.

Anand stressed the need for artists to have “collective management organisations” to enforce their rights.

Advocate Reddy emphasised that “collective societies are important” because they will help reduce the high costs of enforcing copyright.

Once infringement occurs, advocate Upadhyay said, “the burden shifts entirely onto the artist”, and “the costs involved are insane”.

“Big organisations have power and money, and in many ways, the battle is already lost before it begins,” she added.

Questioning if the rule of law existed in Maharashtra, the Bombay High Court on Thursday asked whether Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has been “helpless” and unable to take action against a Cabinet minister whose son has evaded arrest for weeks in a rioting case, PTI reported.

The matter pertained to clashes that erupted between workers of Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s faction of the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party group led by Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar during the municipal elections in Raigad district’s Mahad on December 2.

The two factions, along with Fadnavis’s Bharatiya Janata Party, are part of the ruling Mahayuti alliance in Maharashtra.

Cross-first information reports were registered based on the complaints filed by the Shinde Sena and the NCP faction led by Pawar after the clashes.

Vikas Gogawale, who is the son of Cabinet minister and Shinde Sena member Bharat Gogawale, and his cousin Mahesh Gogawale were among those booked in the rioting and assault case.

The two men sought anticipatory bail in the case, but their applications were rejected by a sessions court on December 23, Live Law reported. Vikas Gogawale has allegedly been absconding since then, PTI reported.

In the court on Thursday, Justice Madhav Jamdar was hearing another application filed by Vikas Gogawale challenging a petition for anticipatory bail filed by Shreeyansh Jagtap, who is the son of former MLA and NCP leader Manik Jagtap, PTI reported.

Shreeyansh Jagtap had been granted interim protection from arrest in December.

Criticising the failure of the state government to trace Vikas Gogawale, the court asked: “Is the state’s chief minister so helpless that he does not say anything against even one minister?”

Jamdar added that ministers’ children commit crimes and roam freely, even staying in touch with their parents. “…but the police cannot find them?” PTI quoted him as saying.

The judge also sought to know if the police had recorded the statement of Bharat Gogawale, Live Law reported. Jamdar asked how he could continue to be a cabinet minister in the state when his son was accused of a crime and had absconded.

“Your police could have at least recorded the minister’s statement and let him say no he does not have any details about his son,” Live Law quoted the judge as saying. “If the state wants, it arrests a person within 24 hours but here more than a month has passed but you are unable to track him [Vikas Gogawale].”

Jamdar asked: “Is this the rule of law in the state of Maharashtra?”

Advocate General Milind Sathe, representing the state government, urged the court to adjourn the matter, saying that efforts were being made to “connect” with Vikas Gogawale.

In response, Jamdar sought to know what would be done after “connecting” with the absconding accused.

“I have instructions that the minister will be connecting with his son and thereafter he will be asked to surrender,” Sathe replied.

The judge subsequently listed the matter for hearing on Friday. He also directed the advocate general to ensure that Vikas Gogawale surrenders before the hearing, adding that appropriate orders would be issued otherwise.

The private correspondence of business leaders with political elites in South Asia has rarely entered the public domain. This absence has left historians with an uneven, often frustrating archival record of how economic power interacted with political authority.

Unlike in parts of Europe or the United States, where corporate archives, private papers, and elite correspondence have long been central to historical inquiry, most businessmen in the region have shown little inclination to preserve their records or open them to independent scholarly scrutiny. Even where large industrial houses have established archives, access is often conditional and carefully managed, limiting the scope for critical research.

This archival silence has profoundly shaped how the history of Indian capitalism is written. The result is a literature rich in policy analysis and institutional narratives but thin on the everyday exchanges, disagreements, and anxieties through which business leaders engaged the state. Economic power appears abstract and depersonalised, while political authority seems to operate in isolation from elite negotiation. The reality, of course, was far messier.

There are a few notable exceptions. The relationship between Mohandas Gandhi and industrial families such as the Birlas and Bajajs is relatively well documented, largely because Gandhi’s letters and writings were meticulously preserved and published.

Similarly, the Tata group has attracted sustained scholarly attention. In addition, several institutional histories and Medha Kudaisya’s biography of GD Birla shed light on business-state relations in the late colonial period. Yet these examples remain outliers.

For most industrialists, their political thinking and behind-the-scenes influence must be reconstructed indirectly – from scattered private collections, government files, or fleeting newspaper references.

It is in this context that surviving correspondence assumes particular importance. Two letters written by industrialist JRD Tata – one addressed to freedom fighter and writer KM Munshi in 1939 and another to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi nearly three decades later – offer a rare window into elite dialogue across two distinct political eras.

Spanning late colonial rule and the post-Independence developmental state, these letters, found in the National Archives of India, reveal how candid exchanges between business leaders and policymakers shaped, and sometimes unsettled, national debates.

Politics of dissent

In 1937, following the first provincial elections under the Government of India Act of 1935, the Indian National Congress formed a ministry in the Bombay Presidency. Led by BG Kher, the cabinet included prominent figures such as Morarji Desai, KM Munshi, and Yasin Nurie. One of the ministry’s earliest and most ideologically charged initiatives was the introduction of Prohibition – a policy deeply associated with Gandhi and explicitly promised in the Congress manifesto.

Prohibition, however, was never merely a moral project. As I have argued elsewhere, its implementation had significant fiscal implications. The policy entailed the introduction of an urban property tax designed to compensate for the loss of excise revenue from alcohol. This immediately provoked resistance from trading communities and urban landlords. Hindu, Muslim, and Parsi property owners alike opposed the measure, not on moral grounds but because it threatened their economic interests.

The Congress ministry, convinced of the moral righteousness of Prohibition, interpreted such opposition as obstructionist, even reactionary.

Newspaper reports and administrative records provide ample evidence of widespread resistance to Prohibition. What they reveal less clearly is how major industrial houses responded – and how the political leadership reacted when dissent came from the commanding heights of Indian capital.

That silence was broken by a remarkable letter written by Tata on September 8, 1939, to Munshi, the home minister of the Bombay government. The letter is striking not only for its content but also for its tone. Tata dispensed with formal courtesies and plunged straight into the issue at hand: a rumour, allegedly circulated by Munshi, that the Tata group intended “gradually to get rid of their Hindu employees”.

“If this is correct,” JRD wrote, “I feel grieved that you should have given credence to such a fantastic rumour and also that, if you did believe it, you should have discussed the matter with third parties in preference to asking me or any of my colleagues directly.”

The bluntness of the opening is telling. It suggests a relationship in which a leading industrialist felt sufficiently secure – and sufficiently aggrieved – to challenge a senior Congress minister directly. Tata went on to remind Munshi that no Indian firm, regardless of community, could match his business group’s record on employment practices. The accusation, he implied, was not merely false but malicious.

Why had such a rumour gained currency? Tata made the connection explicit. Munshi, he suggested, was aggrieved by the Tata group’s refusal to support the Congress government’s Prohibition policy and had chosen to interpret this disagreement as evidence of an “anti-national outlook”.

This charge cut to the heart of the matter. Tata forcefully rejected the idea that dissent on an economic policy could be equated with disloyalty to the nation. “It is surely wrong,” he argued, “for a responsible minister to hold the opinion that for anyone to hold views different from those of the Government, particularly on an economic question such as this, is to be anti-national.”

The language is revealing for another reason. The term “anti-national” is often treated as a product of post-Independence political culture, yet here it appears firmly embedded in late colonial discourse. The letter demonstrates how easily the political elite could deploy nationalist rhetoric to delegitimise economic opposition – even when that opposition came from one of India’s most prominent industrial houses.

JRD Tata was careful to clarify that the Tata group’s objections to Prohibition were not motivated by narrow self-interest. The policy was flawed, he argued, not because it “touches our pockets” but because of the unsound procedures adopted by the government and the economic hardship inflicted on large sections of the population.

Whether or not one accepts this claim at face value, the letter underscores a crucial point: business opposition was framed, by the business leader himself, as a matter of public interest rather than private profit.

Munshi’s reply was polite and conciliatory, affirming his high regard for the Tata group. Yet it also conceded more than it denied. He expressed an “earnest desire” to dissipate the negative impression of the firm that was circulating in “high political and business circles”.

This acknowledgment suggests that JRD Tata’s complaint was not unfounded. Rumour, suspicion, and ideological policing were already part of the Congress government’s repertoire when dealing with elite dissent.

What stands out most is the confidence with which Tata addressed the political executive. The head of a major industrial house did not hesitate to challenge a minister, to accuse him of irresponsibility, and to defend the legitimacy of disagreement. This was not the posture of a timid capitalist seeking favour, but of an actor who saw himself as a stakeholder in national governance.

Speaking truth to power

Nearly three decades later, JRD Tata was still writing to those at the helm of political power. In 1968, with Indira Gandhi firmly ensconced as prime minister, he sent her a copy of his speech delivered at the 60th Annual General meeting of the Indian Merchants’ Chamber. “I hope,” he wrote, “that you may find at least parts of it of some interest.”

The understatement masked the boldness of what followed. In the speech, Tata ventured into one of the most sensitive areas of public policy: defence expenditure. Six years after India’s traumatic defeat in the war with China, defence was widely regarded as beyond criticism. Yet Tata deliberately challenged this consensus.

“If I may now rush in where angels fear to tread,” he remarked, “I believe that one avenue of considerable saving in expenditure lies in the realm of Defence expenditure.” He advocated more sophisticated procurement methods and the computerisation of inventory control – technocratic solutions that reflected his faith in managerial efficiency.

More provocatively, he questioned the culture of silence surrounding defence budgets. “While there can be no question that the military security of the country must be assured whatever the cost,” he argued, “I see no justification for the touching unanimity with which up to now any discussion of defence expenditure has been treated virtually as taboo.”

For Tata, defence spending – approaching Rs 1,000 crores annually – was one of the principal reasons why what was promised as a “decade of development” had turned into a “decade of disillusionment”. This was a damning assessment, delivered not from the margins but from the leadership of organised industry.

Even more striking was his foray into political analysis. In language that would be unthinkable for a corporate leader today, JRD Tata described India’s system as a “benevolent one-party autocracy” whose “façade of political stability and democracy in action” had long been sustained by the dominating personality of Jawaharlal Nehru.

“With Nehru gone,” he observed bluntly, “the façade has begun to crack.”

1950s :: JRD Tata With PM Nehru and Indira Gandhi pic.twitter.com/6tAlWCSFBo

— indianhistorypics (@IndiaHistorypic) August 6, 2022

This was not casual criticism. It reflected deep unease with the concentration of political power at the Centre and the absence of meaningful opposition. JRD Tata felt that the voice of the industry was treated with suspicion and mistrust and that the government’s crushing majority in Parliament meant it could follow economic policies from which it could not be moved.

Yet Tata’s critique was not nihilistic. He acknowledged the government’s achievements in education, health, electrification, science, technology, and heavy industry. Even in their “most misguided policies”, he conceded, political rulers were motivated by “the best of intentions and the belief that such policies would help the country forward”.

Indira Gandhi replied to JRD Tata, addressing him as “Dear Jeh”, saying that she would “read it with interest”. Indira Gandhi acknowledged receipt of the speech, a fact that is significant in itself. At a time when access to the prime minister was increasingly mediated by bureaucratic and political filters, the acknowledgment signals that Tata’s views were taken seriously, even if they were uncomfortable.

In fact Tata’s letter to Indira Gandhi (dated February 21, 1968) is annotated in thick black ink possibly by a staff at her office with the remark, “To be acknowledged.”

While there is no evidence that his recommendations on defence expenditure or political concentration translated directly into policy change, the exchange confirms that elite industrial opinion still had an audience at the highest levels of government.

This acknowledgment also highlights an important feature of post-Independence state-business relations: criticism from leading business figures was not automatically dismissed as illegitimate or self-serving. Instead, it was absorbed – selectively and cautiously – into the broader policy conversation.

The correspondence reflects a mode of engagement in which dissenting views could be expressed privately, acknowledged formally, and yet neutralised politically. In this sense, the exchange reveals both the confidence of a business leader willing to speak candidly and the resilience of a political system adept at listening without necessarily yielding.

Letters as historical evidence

Taken together, these two letters complicate any simple narrative of collusion or subservience between Indian big business and the state. They reveal a relationship marked by negotiation, tension, and mutual suspicion, but also by a shared sense of responsibility for national outcomes. JRD Tata emerges not as a silent beneficiary of political favour, but as an articulate, sometimes combative participant in public debate.

More broadly, the letters underscore the importance of private correspondence as historical evidence. In their absence, historians are left with official statements, policy documents, and retrospective memoirs – all of which flatten the texture of elite interaction. Where such letters survive, they restore contingency, conflict, and candour to the story of Indian capitalism.

That so few such documents are available is itself a political fact. The reluctance of business houses to preserve or open their papers has narrowed the archive and, with it, the range of questions historians can ask. Recovering and analysing these rare exchanges is therefore not merely an academic exercise.

It is essential to understanding how power has actually operated in modern India – and how dissent, even from the elite, has been managed, marginalised, or, at times, reluctantly accommodated.

Danish Khan is a historian and journalist based in London. His DPhil thesis titled Muslim Capitalism is under contract to be published by Cambridge University Press.

A key leader of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) carrying a Rs 1 crore reward on his head was among 15 suspected Maoists killed in a gunfight with security forces in the Saranda forest area of Jharkhand’s West Singhbhum district on Thursday, The Hindu reported.

Anal alias Patriam Manjhi alias Toofan Da, a central committee member of the banned group, had been on the radar of security forces since 1987.

He, along with 15 others, was killed in the gunfight near Kumbhdih village under the Chotanagra police station limits during a special operation being conducted by the Central Reserve Police Force’s Commando Battalion for Resolute Action, or the CoBRA unit, and the district police, The Indian Express reported.

The operation was continuing on Friday.

Jharkhand Inspector General (Operations) Michaelraj S said that the gunfight began around 6.30 am. He alleged that the suspected Maoists started firing indiscriminately and the security forces retaliated in self-defence, The Hindu reported.

The police officer added that 15 bodies and a large quantity of weapons had been recovered so far.

“Preliminary investigations have identified 11 of the 15 deceased Maoists, including Anal, who was not only carrying a reward of Rs 1 crore in Jharkhand but Rs 1.2 crore reward in Odisha and Rs 15 lakh reward by the National Investigation Agency,” The Hindu quoted Michaelraj as saying.

The inspector general added that there were 149 cases filed against Anal in Jharkhand’s Giridih district. He claimed that the Maoist leader had been responsible for explosions and violent acts carried out by the banned group in the Saranda forest area of Kolhan in Chaibasa since 2022.

Apart from Anal, others killed included Anmol Da alias Lalchand Hembram, who was a member of the Communist Party of India (Maoist)’s Bihar-Jharkhand special area committee, and carried a reward of Rs 25 lakh in Jharkhand and Rs 65 lakh in Odisha, the newspaper reported.

Hembram, who was a resident of Bokaro district in Jharkhand, had 149 cases against him.

Amit Munda, a member of the banned group’s regional committee, who was also killed, carried a reward of Rs 15 lakh in Jharkhand, Rs 43 lakh in Odisha and Rs 4 lakh from the NIA. There were 96 cases against him.

Sub-Zonal Committee member Pintu Lohra, who carried a reward of Rs 5 lakh in Jharkhand and had 47 cases against him, was among the dead, along with Laljit alias Lalu, who also carried a similar reward.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that the ongoing operation had achieved a major success “in the campaign to make the region free of Naxals through encounters, with the neutralization of the notorious bounty-wanted Naxal Central Committee member ‘Anal alias Patiram Manjhi’ worth Rs 1 crore and 15 other Naxals so far”.

“I once again appeal to the remaining Naxals to abandon the ideology that connects to violence, terror, and arms, and join the mainstream of development and trust,” he added.

The Union government has vowed to end Maoism by March 31, 2026.

Between January 17 and January 18, six suspected Maoists were killed in a gunfight with security forces in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district. On January 15, 54 Maoists surrendered before security forces in Bijapur. Forty-nine of them carried a cumulative bounty of Rs 1.4 crore.

On January 3, 14 suspected Maoists were killed in two separate gunfights with security forces in the state’s Sukma and Bijapur districts.

On December 16, the Union government told Parliament that 335 “Left-wing extremists” had been killed, while 2,167 others had surrendered in 2025. Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai told the Lok Sabha that 942 Left-wing extremists had been arrested this year.

Overall, more than 1,800 such persons had been killed, over 16,000 had been arrested, while at least 9,588 others had surrendered since 2014.

In October, the Union home ministry said that the number of districts across states affected by “Left-wing extremism” has come down to 11 from 18 in March.

In 2025, the number of “most affected” districts came down from six to three, it added. These are Bijapur, Sukma and Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh.

In the course of the Union government’s anti-Maoist offensive in 2025, key Maoist leaders like Uike and Madvi Hidma have been killed, while others like Vikas Nagpure, alias Anant, and Mallojula Venugopal Rao, alias Bhupathi, have surrendered.

A report by Malini Subramaniam for Scroll on Hidma’s killing noted that in the Andhra Pradesh village closest to where he was killed, no one heard gunfire.

She had earlier reported that while many of those killed in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region in 2024 were declared by the police to be reward-carrying Maoists, several families dispute the claim. The families claim that the persons killed were civilians.

Civil liberties groups and Opposition parties have also questioned some of these killings, alleging that they constitute “fake encounters”.

“I wish the sea was far away from here,” said wada pao seller Ashok Dharmameher. “Then this project would not be here.”

Dharmameher was among the thousands who participated in coordinated protests on Monday on National Highway 48 and the roads leading to the district collector’s office in Palghar district, 84 km north of Mumbai, to demonstrate against the proposed Vadhavan port, plans to build a “fourth Mumbai city” there and other development plans for the area.

One protest was led by the Vadhavan Bandar Virodh Sangharsh Samiti, an organisation that has been opposing the construction of the port. Another protest, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), related to problems with land acquisition for these projects. It involved a 44-km march that ended on Tuesday.

Some of the protestors, led by the Kashtakari Sanghatana, were demanding forest rights.

Dharmameher, a resident of Chinchani village village, 6 km from the proposed port, said that he earned enough to support himself and his wife. But with little information available about the projects in the area, he and many others fear they will be displaced from homes their families have lived in for decades.

Opposition to the Vadhavan port, planned off the coast in Palghar, has been mounting in recent years, especially from fishing villages in the district that fear they will lose their homes and livelihoods.

Though the port is planned to be located offshore, an extensive road and rail network will be built to connect it to National Highway 48 (which runs from Delhi to Chennai) and to other cities such as Nashik and Bhusawal. This would entail acquiring land in the area’s villages. In some places, residents have prevented surveys from being conducted.

The Rs 76,000-crore port is a joint venture between Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust and the Maharashtra Maritime Board. It will be spread over 17,471 hectares. Of this, 16,900 hectares have been earmarked for the port and 571 hectares for rail and road connections.

The project will also require land to be reclaimed, for which about 200 million cubic metres of sand will be quarried from a pit located 50 km off the Daman coast in nearby Gujarat. The reclamation will also use stones from quarries in Palghar taluka.

Vadhavan port is being developed along with a “fourth Mumbai” that will involve acquiring vast tracts of land in Palghar district. (After Navi Mumbai was built in the 1970s to decongest Maharashtra’s capital, a “third Mumbai” has been proposed in Raigad district.)

Also proposed in the area are an offshore airport, a textile park at Kelve, a new expressway and a freight rail corridor. Already, residents have had land acquired for the bullet train project that will connect Mumbai with Ahmedabad.

On Monday, in a memorandum to the chief minister submitted to the Palghar collector, representatives of 11 organizations representing fisherfolk, farmers, adivasis stated that these projects should be stopped as it threatened their environment and livelihoods.

They emphasised that the port was not legally permissible as Dahanu taluka, where the port is proposed to be located is an eco-sensitive zone. That is why the Supreme Court-nominated Dahanu Taluka Environment Protection Authority had in 1998 rejected the location of a port here, they noted.

The project violates Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, which assures the right to life and dignity, they contended.

The memorandum also cited the Public Trust doctrine, which asserts that natural resources are not the property of the government but are a public resource. The government is only a trustee of these commons.

The memo said that the public hearing for the project in 2024 ignored the widespread opposition to the proposal by residents and the Social Impact Assessment Report did not have plans to regenerate livelihoods for those who would be affected by it.

Importantly it stated that though the port authority had agreed to not begin work till the land acquisition process was completed in the case before the Supreme Court filed in May 2025, it was violating that commitment in some places. This, the memo noted, was contempt of court.

Among the participants in Monday’s protest was Devashree Kini, the deputy sarpanch of Vasgaon village in the district. “We don’t want this port or their jobs,” she said. “We are self -sufficient. This port will wipe out our existence and our next generation will be finished.”

Also in the crowd was Sachin Patil from Chinchani village, who owns seven acres of a chikoo and mango farm. He employs four people and said that he earns Rs 1.5 to Rs 2 lakh a month. After visiting Mundra port in Gujarat, he fears that the displacement he witnessed there will be repeated in Palghar. “I saw that land around the port was used for so many things, and here too our villages will be affected,” he said.

Palghar is an Adivasi-dominated district that was bifurcated from Thane in 2014. It lacks basic amenities and a tertiary hospital. One section of protestors was focused on demanding forest rights.

The Forest Rights Act grants individual rights such as habitation and cultivation as well as community rights such as grazing, fishing and collecting minor forest produce to forest-dwelling communities

Brian Lobo of the Kashtakari Sanghatana said that while the government acquired land for new projects, it had not settled existing claims of Adivasis under the Forest Right Act. There were over 3,000 appeals related to forest rights pending in the area. Of these, 600 related to wrong survey numbers, a crucial detail in cases when land is being acquired.

Prasad Shinde from Chahade village said even if the port was located offshore, the roads to the highway would require land to be acquired. Even though the authorities had assured residents that they would get jobs on these projects, Shinde was sceptical.

The only jobs available for residents here, most of whom are not educated, would be as sweepers, he remarked.

“Why doesn’t the government take the project to the north?” he said. “That is where people migrate from isn’t it and look for jobs in Palghar. We don’t want this new city also because we won’t have a place in it and we don’t want this port which will destroy our land and livelihoods.”

Jyoti Meher, secretary of the Maharashtra Macchimar Kruti Samiti, one of the organisers of the demonstration, explained what was at stake. “We are fighting for our existence and rights over natural resources,” she said.

Meena Menon is a freelance journalist and researcher.

On January 19, Sumona Rahman Choudhury and 14 other booth level officers in Assam’s Sribhumi district were called for a training session as part of the ongoing “special revision” of electoral rolls ahead of the Assembly elections this year.

The first draft of the state’s voter roll was published on December 27, after a door-to-door verification by booth level officers led to 10 lakh voter names being marked out for deletion. As is the norm, the Election Commission then invited claims and objections to further vet the draft roll for accuracy.

Any voter can file an objection if he believes someone has been wrongly included in the constituency’s electoral roll, using Form 7.

When Choudhary turned up for the session, she said that district officials handed her several objection forms, challenging the inclusion of 133 voters in her booth in Srimanta Kanishail village in Karimganj North assembly segment. The forms were “half-printed and half-handwritten”, she said.

All the objections had been filed by one person, who claimed that the 133 voters, all of them Muslims, had either permanently shifted from the village or were being enrolled twice.

But Choudhary, a teacher at the village government school, knew that to be false. “During the house-to-house enumeration, I found them at their residence and collected their signatures,” she said. “They have not shifted. They are genuine voters. The document of the Election commission that they signed is proof.”

Choudhary added: “Among the names was the headmaster of my school. Some of them are parents of my students. How could I ask them to come to a hearing to prove they are genuine voters?”

Who filed the objections?

Even more curiously, the list of 133 names included the complainant, Salim Ahmed, and his relatives. “This means Salim had filed an objection against his own inclusion,” Choudhary said.

She then called Ahmed to ask him if he had indeed filed the objections. “He denied it altogether,” she said. “He said he was not insane to have complained against himself, his brother and sister-in-law. ”

When Scroll contacted Ahmed, he had reached the Sribhumi district election office to file a complaint against the misuse of his name and voter identity card. “I have not filed any objections,” he said. “Do you think I will file a complaint seeking deletion of my own name?”

The Election Commission decided to exempt Assam, for now, from the controversial Special Intensive Revision that is being carried out in several states. But the ongoing special revision, which involves door-to-door verification of voters, has also led to widespread fears of disenfranchisement of minority voters – especially during the claims and objections process.

In several Muslim-majority districts and areas of Assam, bulk objections have been filed against voters, seeking to strike their names off the electoral roll. Thousands of voters are being called to hearings to prove that they are not dead or “permanently shifted” as the objections claim, triggering panic and anxiety among Bengal-origin Muslims.

As Choudhary discovered, the process is open to manipulation.

Scroll found six other instances in addition to Ahmed where people said their names, voter identity cards and phone numbers had been used without their consent or knowledge to file objections against hundreds of electors in several constituencies.

Complaints have been filed in several districts, alleging that voters were sought to be deleted in bulk in order to influence the electoral process. In Nagaon district, the hearing process has been suspended in three Assembly constituencies after complaints of fake Form 7 applications.

Any voter of an Assembly constituency can fill out a Form 7, seeking the deletion of names of other voters from the same constituency or raise an objection to their inclusion in the electoral rolls if they have died or if they have shifted out.

Videos have also emerged of Hindu voters, declaring that their names have been wrongfully used to seek deletion of other voters. The Lakhimpur and Morigaon district administrations have put out public notices, warning people from filing such dubious complaints.

Opposition parties and minority leaders have accused the BJP of pressuring the Election Commission officials to delete voters, especially Muslims. They pointed to recent statements by Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma calling for “illegal Miyas” to be deleted from the voter list.

Miya Muslims is a pejorative term used for Bengal-origin Muslims in Assam, who are often vilified as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh despite having roots in Assam that go back before Independence.

Similar allegations had surfaced in Karnataka’s Aland assembly constituency last year, where the names of 5,994 voters were sought to be deleted ahead of the 2023 state election through fake objection forms.

An FIR was registered on the alleged voter fraud based on a complaint filed by the Returning Officer. The police investigation revealed that a former Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Subhash Guttedar from Aland and his son Harshananda Guttedar allegedly hired a private firm to target voters and delete their names through forged Form 7s.

Scroll contacted the Election Commission, asking about allegations that there was a conspiracy to delete voters in bulk, and if forged Form 7 applications were being used for the purpose. The story will be updated if they respond.

‘One person filed over 100 objections’

A senior Election Commission official in Guwahati told Scroll that a voter can submit any number of such objections. “However, to prevent misuse of the process, if a person files more than five objections, an electoral registration officer will review the complaints individually,” the official said.

Once the Form 7 objections are filed, they are sent to BLOs for an on-ground verification, after which they are processed. However, in most cases, BLOs blindly accept the applications without verification and summon the voters for hearing, local political leaders told Scroll.

In Sribhumi, however, Choudhary and the other BLOs objected to the instructions from the district officials and the bulk objections. “In several cases, one person had filed over 100 forms,” Choudhary said.

She added: “We asked how we could initiate Form 7 against genuine voters. But the officials reiterated that we should go ahead.”

However, Choudhary stuck to her stance and returned the forms to the district election office.

Sribhumi district commissioner Pradeep Kumar Dwivedi, however, told Scroll that district officials were only following the procedure.

“It is the job of the BLO to verify whether an objection form is genuine or the objector authentic,” he said. “Based on that, they can summon people for hearing. Based on the outcome of the hearing, the ERO takes the decision. No name is deleted by bypassing the procedure. The process is being followed."

He added that even if a complaint has been filed with malafide intentions against legitimate voters, a hearing is necessary to establish the truth.

The scale of objections and summons has led several observers to draw parallels with the re-verification process during the process to update the National Register of Citizens in 2019, in which people were given – like with the special revision process – 24 hours to attend the hearings.

A senior Election Commission official quoted above told Scroll that about 56,000 objections have been rejected as of January 19. The claims and objections process had begun on December 27.

Advocate Masud Zaman claimed that election officials had told him that over 26,000 objections had been filed in five constituencies of Dhubri district, which is a Muslim-majority area.

The number was confirmed by Dhubri election officer Sugata Siddhartha Goswami. “Before calling people for a hearing, we will verify whether the forms are genuine or not,” Goswami said. “Both the objector and the person against whom the complaint has been filed will be called for hearing.”

Zaman pointed out that even if the complainants do not turn up or turn out to be fake, there is little redress for the voters being harassed. “I asked the election officials if legal action could be taken against those complainants who do not turn up. They had no reply.”