Before the sun shines on the Arabian Sea, fisherman Mariyani Miyelpillai, 73, is already turning his kattamaram raft homeward. He must escape another summer morning turning too hot and dense to bear.

Fishing solo off the seam where Thiruvananthapuram and Kanyakumari districts meet, his work days have turned into a test of endurance. His raft must be propelled by sheer muscle power, adding to the already challenging heat. “I go for fishing at 5 am, but come back by 8 am, whether I get enough fish or not,” he told Mongabay-India. “I cannot manage this heat.”

As the sun moves past the Tropic of Cancer, ushering in summer, a certain heaviness settles on skin and breath for veteran fishers like Miyelpillai. So does Tarsila Thresya, 54, a fisherwoman. “I go early to sell fish by the roadside. I’m back by 5.30 pm or 6 pm. Earlier it was okay, but now the heat is increasing a lot. Sometimes I put a towel on my head, but it does not help.”

Humid heat intensifies

Amidst more frequent and intense heatwaves, the southwestern coast is facing another quieter, insidious shift – rising humid heat. Air so soaked with moisture that sweat no longer cools. On tropical coasts, especially before the monsoon, this is getting closer to dangerous levels as studies show – the human body struggles to cool itself, touching the limits of adaptation.

Closer to home, heat stress along India’s coasts has intensified significantly since 1981, driven by the combined rise in temperature and humidity, a new long-term study led by scientists at the India Meteorological Department shows.

Analysing data from 1981 to 2020, IMD Pune scientist P Rohini and colleagues show that wet-bulb temperatures – a measure of temperature with humidity – have increased across all seasons. The risks are spreading unevenly and largely under-recognised across the country’s humid shorelines.

The trend is clear – a steady shift toward warmer, more moisture-laden air. Extreme heat and humidity events have intensified, particularly since the early 2000s, the IMD study shows. As the climate warms, the atmosphere holds more moisture, amplifying heat stress. This effect is especially pronounced along the east coast, where humidity is rising faster with each degree of warming than on the west coast, as the IMD study shows.

As Rajeevan Madhavan Nair, Vice Chancellor of Atria University, Bengaluru, and former secretary in the Ministry of Earth Sciences, who co-authored and supervised the IMD study, told Mongabay-India, there is a “clear and concerning intensification” of heat stress over recent decades.

He explained that the IMD study shows a significant rise in frequency and duration of heat stress events. It also shows strong warming across both maximum and minimum temperatures, as well as increased thermal discomfort affecting crowded coastal areas. “It has implications for public health, labour productivity, and urban planning,” he noted.

“The findings highlight the urgent need for: heat action plans tailored to coastal microclimates; climate-resilient urban design; early warning systems and adaptive labour policies,” he added.

Measuring humid heat

Scientists measure humid heat using wet-bulb temperature – a metric that combines heat and humidity, unlike the more familiar dry-bulb temperature, which records air temperature alone.

“Housed within a white wooden enclosure, co-located thermometers measure WBT and DBT. The wet-bulb thermometer features a damp wick; as water evaporates, it draws latent heat from the bulb, lowering the reading,” explained P Vijaykumar, assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Science, University of Kerala. “Because the ambient humidity dictates the evaporation rate, higher humidity levels result in less cooling.”

“According to theory, every 1 degrees celsius rise in global temperature results in an approximate 7% increase in atmospheric moisture capacity,” Vijaykumar added. That translates into a double burden of increased humidity and heat.

“While the uneven station distribution and geographical differences between the two coasts limit the robustness of a direct inter-coastal comparison, the IMD study identifies key trends. By integrating reanalysis data – such as sea surface temperature and moisture flux – the study traces decadal shifts in WBT,” he commented.

“The rarity of studies employing four decades – across two periods, 1981-2000 and 2001-2020 – of daily observations underscores the novelty of these findings, which are essential for understanding future coastal heatwave scenarios.”

Health impacts

Scientists note that humid heat has significant health, socio-economic, and environmental implications. “WBT levels are critical determinants of heat exhaustion and heatstroke; these findings have significant implications for human health and safety,” Vijaykumar pointed out.

Extreme heat is not just uncomfortable – it is dangerous. Research shows that heat becomes far more dangerous when combined with high humidity. In such conditions, the human body struggles to regulate its temperature. Normally, sweating helps cool the body – but when the air is already saturated with moisture, this mechanism begins to fail.

It affects human health across a spectrum, from mild heat stress to life-threatening heatstroke. As heatwaves become more frequent, the risks are rising, especially for those with limited access to shelter, healthcare, or cooling, scientists note.

Humidity plays a critical role. As moisture in the air increases, the body’s ability to cool itself through evaporation declines, making even moderate temperatures feel oppressive and, at times, dangerous, even lethal.

Heat stress is a major contributor to weather-related deaths worldwide. It can worsen existing health conditions, including cardiovascular disease and mental health disorders, and place severe strain on vulnerable individuals – particularly the elderly, those with underlying illnesses, and people engaged in outdoor labour.

Physiological studies warn that rising temperatures, coupled with increasing humidity, are pushing human tolerance toward critical limits. As Simon Surinju, 60, a fisherman who launches his kattamaram at 4 am from Vizhinjam harbour in Thiruvananthapuram and heads south toward

Thengapattinam in Kanyakumari on good days, says it tests his limits: “Sometimes it feels like my skin is burning. My body is always sweating. I pour water on myself and paddle fast. Often, my head starts spinning. I feel dizzy.” He now makes a point of returning before 10 am. “I pour water over my head and body. It helps for a while. Then I paddle faster.”

Recent research shows that even the widely cited survivability threshold of 35 degrees celsius wet-bulb temperature may overestimate what the body can endure, especially for older adults and those exposed to the sun or sustained activity. But the impacts are not uniform – age, health, physical fitness, and behaviour all shape how individuals experience and survive heat.

Climatic shift

Underneath these trends lies a broader climatic shift. The Indian Ocean is warming, feeding more moisture into the atmosphere and sustaining hot, humid conditions along the coast. As temperatures rise, the air holds more water vapour. The result is not just warmer days, but a different kind of heat altogether — one that lingers, saturates, and presses inward.

Studies now show that extreme humid heat is rising rapidly worldwide, in some places nearing or even exceeding the limits of human survivability. For those who work outdoors — fishers, labourers, vendors — and for the elderly, the risks are immediate and physical.

Lancet Countdown research shows that heat exposure limits labour productivity and adversely affects health. In 2022, India lost an estimated 191 billion potential labour hours due to heat exposure, marking an increase of 54% compared to the 1991-2000 baseline. That means the country potentially lost an estimated $219 billion, equivalent to 6.3% of GDP.

By century’s end, rising heat stress could cut work performance in India by as much as 30%-40%, forcing a rethink of how to protect those who labour under relentless heat, as another study shows.

The IMD study calls for a region-specific heat stress index based on wet-bulb temperature for India. “To achieve this, the operational forecasting system will require the assimilation of high-resolution humidity observations across space and time,” its authors noted. “The forecast must include real-time WBT products and impact-based alerts that convey the hazardous WBT levels into actionable advisories to the public.”

This article was first published on Mongabay.

Sugar-free products with sugar. ‘Real’ juices with artificial ingredients. Misleading food ads are fuelling a public health crisis in India. Help Scroll expose the systemic failure. Support our investigation.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was “willing to guarantee” that no injustice will be meted out to any state through the proposed delimitation of Lok Sabha constituencies. No state’s proportion of representation in the Lower House of Parliament would be altered, he added.

When voting took place on whether to introduce the bills earlier in the day, 251 MPs voted in favour and 185 opposed it. Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal said that there will be an “equal, 50% increase” in the strength of the Lower House of Parliament through the legislation.

The Congress alleged that the intention of the government was to introduce delimitation “through the back door”. Read on.

How Modi government aims to use women’s representation to expand Lok Sabha using 2011 census numbers

The Supreme Court directed the Election Commission to publish a supplementary electoral roll in West Bengal to include voters whose appeals against deletions have been accepted by the appellate tribunals. The first phase of polling will be held on April 23 and the second on April 29, with the votes to be counted on May 4.

The bench said that persons whose appeals have been cleared by the tribunals before April 21 should be included for voting in the first phase of the Assembly elections. Those who are cleared by April 27 should be included in the final electoral rolls for the second phase of the polls, it added.

The court also clarified that filing an appeal against exclusion from the voter list in itself would not entitle a person to vote. Read on.

Millions of Bengalis may lose their vote. Not over citizenship but due to clerical errors, writes Shoaib Daniyal

The United States said that it will not renew waivers that had allowed countries, including India, to purchase Iranian and Russian oil without triggering sanctions. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the waivers pertained to oil “on water prior” to March 11.

The US had on March 5 granted Indian refiners a 30-day waiver allowing them to buy Russian oil stranded at sea amid the war in West Asia. The relaxation allowed India to secure additional Russian oil supplies amid global disruptions, with refiners reportedly ordering around 30 million barrels during the period. Read on.

The Congress suspended five of its MLAs in Haryana for allegedly voting against the party’s candidate in the Rajya Sabha elections in March. The suspended members are Shalley Chaudhary, Renu Bala, Jarnail Singh, Mohammad Illyas and Mohammad Israil.

They were suspended for allegedly violating organisational discipline, state Congress chief Rao Narender Singh said. The Congress has 37 MLAs in a 90-member Assembly. Read on.

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The Bombay High Court on Thursday verbally told Republic TV and its editor Arnab Goswami not to add any “embellishments” while reporting about the financial transactions and the ongoing investigations against businessperson Anil Ambani, Live Law reported.

Justice Arif Doctor did not pass a gag order against the news channel but asked Goswami to tone down the tenor of his reporting against Ambani.

While no one can be stopped from reporting on legal proceedings, it must be confined to facts emerging from court orders and records, the judge said.

Ambani had in March filed a defamation suit against Republic TV and Goswami claiming that the reports on the news channel about his financial transactions caused irreparable damage to his reputation.

His petition sought a temporary injunction against ARG Outlier, the parent company of Republic TV, Goswami and other unknown entities.

At an earlier hearing, the judge had asked Republic TV and Goswami to reduce the rhetoric in his reporting, Bar and Bench reported. The court had also refused to curb the news channel from reporting Ambani, but said that it should not publish “below-the-belt” news.

On Thursday, advocate Mahesh Jethmalani, representing Republic TV, said that the news channel’s reporting fell within the confines of “fair comment”.

If the businessperson provides a list of comments made by Republic TV to which he has objections, they could be reconsidered if the news channel feels that such remarks were truly offensive, the advocate added.

During the proceedings, the judge also drew a line between factual reportage and commentary that rouses interest in a case, Bar and Bench reported.

“Public interest in knowing is one thing,” the legal news portal quoted the judge as saying. “Can you evoke and rouse their interest by adding embellishments is another.”

The judge also noted that the dispute could be settled and was “imminently resolvable”.

Declining to pass a restraint order, the judge listed the matter for further hearing on April 29.

The suit

In his suit, Ambani claimed that he is aggrieved by articles authored and published by the defendants, and circulated through their news channels and social media platforms, Live Law reported.

The allegedly “offending publications and offending statements” claim to report on the regulatory proceedings initiated by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with Reliance Communications Limited, Reliance Home Finance Limited and Reliance Commercial Finance Limited, the suit was quoted as saying.

The suit added that Republic TV and Goswami were aware that Ambani had ceased to be the non-executive director of Reliance Communications Limited in November 2019 and never held any managerial or operational position in either of the companies, Live Law reported.

“The companies were distinct entities, and the applicant was not involved in the day-to-day management and decision-making operations of the companies,” the legal news portal quoted the suit as saying.

It added: “Despite knowing these facts, the defendants have chosen to maliciously, falsely and irresponsibly impute a libelous/slanderous/damaging personal connection between the allegations under investigation with respect to the companies and the applicant.”

Ambani stated in his suit that the defendants had repeatedly, through their publications, falsely portrayed him as being personally responsible for the alleged financial misconduct, including by using sensationalised headlines, allegedly defamatory commentary and allegedly derogatory insinuations, Live Law reported.

The Supreme Court has directed the Election Commission to publish a supplementary electoral roll in West Bengal to include voters whose appeals against deletions have been accepted by the appellate tribunals, Live Law reported on Thursday.

Persons whose appeals have been cleared by the tribunals before April 21 should be included for voting in the first phase of Assembly elections, said a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi. Those who are cleared by April 27 should be included in the final electoral rolls for the second phase of the polls.

All decisions made by the tribunals on the addition and deletion of voters by those dates must be reflected in the final voter lists.

The first phase of polling will be held on April 23 and the second on April 29. The votes will be counted on May 4.

The order was passed on Monday but was made public on Thursday.

The court said that filing an appeal against exclusion from the voter list in itself would not entitle a person to vote, Live Law reported.

The bench was hearing a plea urging it to ensure that the persons whose appeals were pending before the tribunals are allowed to vote.

The Election Commission had frozen the electoral rolls for the first phase of polling on April 9.

The bench had on Monday dismissed a petition by persons whose appeals against exclusions from the voter rolls are pending before appellate tribunals, but allowed the petitioners to pursue their appeals before the tribunals.

The court had at the time also said that it cannot allow persons to vote if their appeals challenging their exclusion from the voter list are pending before the appellate tribunals. More than 34 lakh such appeals have been filed before the appellate tribunals, the bench had noted.

However, the court had indicated that it might consider the plea to allow the publishing of supplementary electoral rolls to include the persons whose appeals are accepted before polling.

The Election Commission on February 28 published the final electoral roll for West Bengal, showing that more than 61 lakh voters had been excluded. However, the process had continued with about 60 lakh “doubtful and pending” cases remaining under adjudication based on their objections to their exclusions from the draft rolls published in December.

Several supplementary lists were released, in which the names of more voters have been included.

The process had concluded on April 6 after judicial officers adjudicated the 60 lakh claims and objections. However, voters who were removed during the adjudication process can appeal in 19 tribunals set up for the purpose.

On February 20, the Supreme Court ordered that judicial officers of the rank of district judge or additional district judge be appointed to help complete the revision exercise in the state.

On March 10, the top court ordered the formation of appellate tribunals composed of former High Court chief justices and judges to hear appeals against exclusions. A person whose claim for inclusion in the electoral rolls has been rejected by a judicial officer can approach the tribunal.

Nearly 91 lakh voters have been removed from West Bengal’s voter lists as part of the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls. The deletions represent nearly 11.9% of the state’s electorate of 7.6 crore that existed before the revision process began.

Also read: Millions of Bengalis may lose their vote. Not over citizenship but due to clerical errors

Welcome to The India Fix by Shoaib Daniyal. A newsletter on Indian politics.

As always, if you’ve been sent this newsletter and like it, to get it in your inbox every week, sign up here (click on “follow”).

Has Pakistan pulled off a diplomatic coup of sorts?

The past week, Islamabad has emerged as a key mediator, getting Washington and Tehran to declare a ceasefire and also getting them to talk for the first time since the Iranian revolution.

While the talks have now been called off with the United States saying it will naively blockade Iran, does the Islamabad summit mean a shot in the arm for Pakistan’s global image?

To break it down, Scroll speaks to US political scientist and Pakistan expert, Christine Fair. This is a slightly edited version of our conversation.

So is this a diplomatic win for Pakistan or is too much being read into this?

No, I think it’s without doubt a huge diplomatic win. Over the past 14-15 months, Pakistan has really been able to insert itself back into the US policy agenda. It began with Pakistan handing over this so-called mastermind of the Abbey Gate attack in Kabul. [Indian journalist] Praveen Swamy describes this man as anything but a mastermind. He describes him as a low-level operative and a chicken farmer [laughs]. But nonetheless, the US and Pakistan went ahead with this drama, and the US accoladed Pakistan back.

Pakistan also was an early donator to Trump’s son’s crypto scam, which was basically a pay and play. During Operation Sindoor, Pakistan also snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.

I call this the politics of Pakistan’s chaploosi [sucking up].

It played to Trump’s ego, nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize, backed Trump when he claimed that Trump had averted a nuclear crisis. And the Indians, in contrast, didn’t play along at all – to India’s disadvantage. This is just the apotheosis of what has been a trajectory that’s been building well over the past more than a year.

So you raise a couple of two key points there. One is Trump and the other is Operation Sindoor. Do you think Pakistan wouldn’t have been where it is now if there wasn’t Trump, if the US had a more “normal” president?

If we had a sane president instead of an egotistical maniac, I don’t think Pakistan would be where it is. Personally, I think what happened at Operation Sindoor was a path-dependent event. I also think that had Operation Sindoor not happened, this [Islamabad] summit may not have happened.

Take us back to Operation Sindoor. Why do you think that was a moment which led to the Islamabad summit?

Trump was saying that he personally was involved in the de-escalation of the crisis, that he averted nuclear war, that he averted the death of millions. Every Indian official, top to bottom, pushed back on this, saying it absolutely wasn’t true, which precipitated for India this 50% tariff nonsense.

Pakistan, by contrast, in a diplomatic jujutsu move, played into it. They said, yes, Trump, you did this. You saved millions. You averted nuclear disaster. And then they nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize, which is something that Trump is maniacally obsessed over.

I think there’s a clip of Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif at the US at the Board of Peace where he is rather embarrassingly trying to inveigle himself into Trump’s good books. It’s almost painful to watch. But you’re saying that’s actually got Pakistan some rewards.

I call it chaploosi for a reason. They’re really good at it. President Biden was very resistant to it. But Pakistan’s charms play right into Trump’s egotistical, maniacal nature.

It is quite a reversal because after the United States withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, there were talks of no global role for Pakistan at all. And now they’re hosting the Islamabad summit. And a lot of this is being driven by, as you are very eloquently putting it, chaploosi. India has always had an aim of isolating Pakistan diplomatically. Do you see this as also a loss for India? Is it, to some extent, a zero-sum game in South Asia?

Indians views this as a zero-sum game. If there is something good for Pakistan, then it must be bad for India. I don’t view it this way at all. Because India has also had very good relations with Iran. And in a different world, you could have imagined India playing that role.

But look at the messaging that came out of the Modi government about India not being a broker country. The messaging that came out of the Indian government did not do itself any great favors.

So you’re saying in international circles, when reportedly S Jaishankar called Pakistan a “dalal” nation…

I was honestly astonished at the use of the word dalal. Every Hindi speaker knows, every Urdu speaker knows what dalal means. Even this white lady knows what dalal means [laughs]. I don’t think it served India at all to use that kind of language. It made India look churlish, jealous, and that it saw the world as a zero-sum game.

Now, in fact, this probably does reflect how India views the situation. But those are the things that are best kept unsaid.

You’re saying India should not have actually vocalised its displeasure. It should have just played this out.

It should have played it out. It certainly should not have used the word dalal. I mean, it means pimp. It’s really a word that’s beneath someone of his stature. When there are so many other synonyms that he could have used. Of course, it also means middleman or broker, but everyone knows on the street what dalal means.

Minister of State Shri Pabitra Margherita offered solemn respects on behalf of the Government of India at the 40th day (Chehelum) mourning ceremony organized by the Embassy of Iran in New Delhi.

India–Iran relations are anchored in deep rooted civilizational, cultural and… pic.twitter.com/atZle5aKk4

— Randhir Jaiswal (@MEAIndia) April 12, 2026

Pakistan’s got the limelight. There are world leaders flying to Islamabad. The world media is looking at it. But in a near to medium term, what does this mean for the country of Pakistan as well as its security establishment?

I think the Indians would have behooved themselves to just sit this one out, because it doesn’t change Pakistan’s economic precarity. It doesn’t change the fact that Pakistan is a supporter of terrorism.

What I thought was really fascinating, and I didn’t see too much commentary about it, even while the negotiations were going on, Pakistan sent a fleet of aircraft to Saudi Arabia as a part of its mutual defence pact. So Pakistan is also in a very precarious situation. How does it manage its relations with Saudi Arabia while it’s attempting to play this role of peace broker between the United States and Iran?

Riyadh wanted to activate the Pakistan-Saudi defence pact during the Iran war, and Pakistan resisted it. How do you see this pact going forward in the near to medium term given that West Asia is going to be a bit of a hot mess?

I’m not a Saudi Arabia expert so I don’t want to veer too far away from my wheelhouse, but I think it puts Pakistan in a pretty significant predicament. The very fact that it was sending aircraft to Saudi Arabia, even while the negotiations were going on in Islamabad is actually a pretty big deal that very few people have remarked upon.

And what’s in no one’s control is Israel. I think Israel is the biggest spoiler. Israel, more than any other country, wants the US to continue the conflict in Iran because basically Israel is a free rider. Israel is getting its primary foe depreciated at the American taxpayers expense, and it has no incentive to play along. So these are issues that are well beyond Pakistan’s control.

The Pakistani government also said that there was still the possibility of ongoing negotiations, which was at odds with what the Americans said. So the status of play is a little bit unclear.

Do you think Israel would be unhappy that Pakistan has this role, given that Israel and Pakistan don't really have the best of relations?

At different points in time, Pakistan has floated the balloon of normalising relations with Israel. Musharraf tried this. He floated this balloon and he was shot down.

Pakistanis realise that if they were to have this relationship with Israel, that it would really solidify their relationship with the Americans. So they understand that endpoint. But it’s how you get there that is the huge challenge, given that Pakistan has spent so much of its state effort proselytising to Pakistanis how terrible the Israelis are.

And to be fair, I think that Israelis are terrible. What they’re doing in Gaza is genocide. What they’re doing in the West Bank is ethnic cleansing. What they’re doing in Lebanon is unacceptable. But the kind of vitriolic propaganda that Pakistan has spent decades spreading about Israel will really make it difficult for Pakistan to to make a pragmatic approach towards normalising relations with Israel.

But at different points in time, as I said, the army has floated this balloon.

I think the Pakistan passport is not valid for Israel.

Right now, the talks, it seems, have failed, although, of course, you never know in politics what’s going to happen tomorrow. Do you think the talks failing will actually reflect badly on Pakistan or just the fact that it mediated it is good enough?

No, I don’t think it reflects poorly on Pakistan at all. I’ve been very critical of the negotiation team that the United States sent. It sent [United States Special Envoy to the Middle East] Witkoff and it sent [Trump’s son-in-law] Kushner. Neither of these gentlemen have a clue about nuclear proliferation, about Iran’s nuclear programme. Neither of these gentlemen have a clue about Iran. So we sent our junior varsity team, but the Iranians, in contrast, sent a highly sophisticated team.

Americans are just generally clueless about Iran. Just because Iran has been diplomatically isolated from the United States doesn’t mean that Iran is diplomatically isolated. I think Americans underestimate the sophistication of Iranian diplomats and Iranian policymakers. And the simple fact, as far as I can tell, is that the Americans were not there to negotiate. They were there to issue ultimatums. And if you don’t come with the mindset that we’re here to negotiate, which means not everyone gets what they want, these talks were doomed to fail.

You think the US just went to Islamabad prepared to torpedo talks? They knew that they wanted conflict to break out again?

I think there was a desire for an off ramp because the Americans are deeply opposed to this war. Gas prices are soaring.

But Trump is, there’s just no other way to put it, a clown. He is unknowledgeable. He is unsophisticated. Iran is playing chess, and he’s playing Hungry Hungry Hippos. He’s out of his depth. He doesn’t have a clue. And now he’s got this policy of issuing a naval blockade over the Strait of Hormuz when one of the policy objectives was having free navigation in the Strait of Hormuz. And you can see that he’s flailing. He doesn’t really know how to put the toothpaste back into the tube. And I think he also really underestimated how much leverage the Iranians have.

Where do you see China in this? We just discussed the fact that Pakistan has managed to inveigle itself back into Washington’s good books. Would this worry Beijing? Does this lessen Beijing's control over Islamabad?

That’s a view that’s very popular in India. But if you actually look at the history of the relations that Pakistan has had with the United States and China, it’s never been a zero sum game. And it’s not at present. I think the more interesting role that China is playing is aiding the Iranians in targeting the Americans. And not just the Chinese, also the Russians are helping the Iranians to target the Americans. They’re providing intelligence, and they’re also providing ordinance. I think that’s a much more serious concern than the perceived zero-sum game that Pakistan-China relations exist at the expense of US-Pakistan relations.

In fact, from China’s point of view, because China basically views Pakistan instrumentally, it wants to prop up Pakistan so that it can be a problem for India. If the United States historically provides armaments and munitions to Pakistan, that actually advances China’s interest because it’s happening not on the Chinese exchequer. So neither the US nor China view relations with Pakistan as a zero sum game. Maybe in diplomatic talking points, but in all practicality, they don’t view it as a zero-sum game.

Pakistan’s position right now globally is almost really quite unique? To have such strong ties with both the US and China. Is there any other country like that today who could play this role?

I’m not a sinologist so I can’t speak to the panoply of China’s diplomatic relations but at first blush that sounds about right.

And this has been a long time strategic objective for Pakistan? If you go back to Nixon, it always saw itself as a bridge between the US and China?

I’m not sure that Pakistan currently views itself as a bridge. I think it has a relationship with China. It pursues that relationship. It’s a pretty comprehensive relationship.

In contrast, the relationship that Pakistan has with the United States at present is not really comprehensive. We’re not providing armaments to Pakistan. Economic assistance has been really low, going back to when Trump at one point basically cut off funding to Pakistan.

If you actually look at the real terms denominated in dollars, there’s nothing there in the US-Pakistan relationship.

You think it’s very precarious? Is there a scenario where when Trump leaves office, this relationship might actually be really downgrade or even collapse?

With the exception of tactical objectives, the US and Pakistan don’t share strategic objectives. The US still is worried about terrorism. Pakistan remains committed to terrorism. So the US and Pakistan have very few overlapping strategic interests.

So this is a huge win for Pakistan: that it was able to basically negotiate or host this incredibly profound breakthrough in US-Iran relations. There hadn’t been this level of negotiations since 1979. But it doesn’t change the fact that the substance of the US-Pakistan relations, when you look at the dollars, it’s really not there.

Which is why you’re saying New Delhi is possibly overreacting.

Yes, I think it’s beneath India to behave this way about this.

How does this play out internally within the Pakistani state? Does this strengthen the army’s hand? I think I remember a friend joking to me that the biggest loser from all of this possibly is Imran Khan.

The [US] president personally thanked Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir. So this is a huge boon for the Pakistan army. But the Pakistan army has completely consolidated control over the Pakistani state. So what was the marginal boon given the complete capture of the state that the Pakistani army has effectuated? I’m not so sure.

So in the near to medium term, it really doesn’t mean much even for the Pakistan army?

I don’t think so.

What is the view within Pakistan? Are Pakistanis happy with what’s happened? Or is the opposition of the army still big enough to paper over some of these wins?

I can’t go back to Pakistan because they were not happy with my book on the Pakistan Army. So I don’t really feel comfortable saying much on this. What I have heard is that after Operation Sindoor, the contempt that people had for the Pakistan Army diminished and it was replaced with support for the Pakistan Army.

What I have heard from friends, and I have no independent means of verifying it, is that the antipathy towards the army is slowly creeping in again and I don’t really see this changing. This diplomatic coup won’t change the way ordinary Pakistanis view the Pakistan army.

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a petition against orders issued by the Election Commission transferring several officers in West Bengal ahead of the Assembly elections, reported Bar and Bench.

“It happens everywhere,” the legal news portal quoted a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul Pancholi as saying. “Not the first time.”

However, the bench added that the legal issue raised by the petitioner regarding the poll panel's failure to consult the state government on the decision was valid. “We are not intervening in it as of now,” the bench said. “Question of law is kept open.”

The reshuffles were ordered after the schedule for the Assembly elections was announced on March 15. Among those who were transferred were the chief secretary, the home secretary and the director general of police, along with several Indian Administrative Service and Indian Police Service officers.

A petition was subsequently filed in the Calcutta High Court, which argued that the large-scale reshuffles in West Bengal would disrupt the functioning of the state administration.

The petitioner added that the decision amounted to an arbitrary and punitive use of power under Article 324 of the Constitution.

Article 324 gives the superintendence, direction and control of elections to the Election Commission.

The petitioner also contended that the move undermined principles of federalism.

On March 31, the High Court dismissed the petition, saying that it found no evidence of mala fide intent in the poll panel’s orders. It said that there was no evidence of administrative paralysis, adding that the replacements had been appointed and that similar or larger reshuffles had taken place in other states where polls are being held.

The petitioner then moved the Supreme Court.

In the Supreme Court on Thursday, advocate Kalyan Banerjee, appearing for the petitioner, said that the process followed by the Election Commission was in contravention of the 1951 Representation of People Act. He also said that there was no consultation with the state government before the move.

Banerjee added that “1,100 officers were transferred overnight”.

“Under what authority?” he asked. “This happened for the first time in West Bengal…”

The chief justice noted that there was a “trust deficit” between the Election Commission and the West Bengal government.

Dismissing the petition, the bench kept the question of law open to be decided in another appropriate case.

In the transfer orders issued on March 16, the Election Commission had directed that those transferred out of their positions should not be posted in any election-related assignment till the completion of the polls.

The orders had triggered a row, with Trinamool Congress MPs walking out of the Rajya Sabha.

The Assembly elections will be held in two phases on April 23 and April 29 in the state. The votes will be counted on May 4.

A caste and socio-economic survey conducted by the Telangana government has found that Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are three times more backward than General Castes, The Indian Express quoted Backward Classes Welfare Minister Ponnam Prabhakar as saying.

The survey was conducted in 2024-’25 by the state’s Congress government. Its findings were released on Wednesday.

The survey found that Backward Classes are 2.7 times more backward than General Castes, The Indian Express reported.

The table presents the social category-wise population distribution from the SEEPC survey in Telangana.
•Scheduled Castes (SC):
61,84,319 people (17.43%)
•Scheduled Tribes (ST):
37,05,929 people (10.45%)
•Backward Classes (BC – excluding Muslim minority):
1,64,09,179 people… pic.twitter.com/uU75fyGTgE

— IPRDepartment (@IPRTelangana) April 15, 2026

According to the study, 135 of the 242 castes in Telangana are more backward than the Composite Backwardness Index, PTI quoted an Independent Expert Working Group set up by the government to analyse the survey as saying. The 135 castes account for close to 67% of the state’s population.

The index is used by the state government to scientifically quantify the backwardness of castes.

Sixty-nine of the 135 groups are Backward Classes, 41 are Scheduled Castes and 25 are Scheduled Tribes.

“Expectedly, all the 18 castes within the more privileged ‘General Caste’ category that account for 12% of the total population fall well below the state CBI [Comprehensive Backwardness Index] average,” PTI quoted the expert working group as saying.

The study found that “every backward caste is not equally backward”. It found 107 castes were less backward than the state average.

The 107 groups included all 18 castes in the general category, 64 from the Backward Classes, 18 from the Scheduled Castes and seven from the Scheduled Tribes, PTI reported. The 107 castes account for 29% of Telangana’s population.

The survey covered more than 3.5 crore households. It used 42 indicators, including income, employment, education levels, land and property ownership and access to medical and civic infrastructure, according to The Indian Express.

Those facing backwardness have been left behind in education and job opportunities, lack access to proper housing, clean drinking water, functional toilets and are economically unstable, the study said.

About 50% of the Scheduled Castes are daily wage workers, as compared to only one-tenth among General Castes, the report said, according to The Indian Express. Only 5% of the Scheduled Tribes had jobs in the private sector, while more than 30% of General Castes had well-paying private employment, it added.

Telangana Deputy Chief Minister Bhatti Vikramarka Mallu said that based on the findings, specialised benefits, including financial support, will be extended to the 135 groups who face backwardness, The Indian Express reported.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said he was “willing to guarantee” that no injustice will be meted out to any state through the proposed delimitation of Lok Sabha constituencies.

Modi said he wanted to assure the House that no part of the country would be discriminated against during the process, and no state’s proportion of representation in the Lower House of Parliament would be altered.

When an Opposition MP asked if he could guarantee this in the bills, the prime minister said that he was willing to verbally use the words “guarantee” or “promise” if needed.

Earlier in the day, the Union government introduced in the Lok Sabha three bills on redrawing the boundaries of electoral constituencies and expediting the implementation of women’s reservations in Parliament and state Assemblies.

Here are more top updates from the special session of Parliament:

• Bills introduced: Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal had earlier on Thursday told the Lok Sabha that through the bills introduced by the Centre, there will be an “equal, 50% increase” in the strength of the Lower House of Parliament, which will translate to 815 seats, ANI reported.
• Of these, 272 seats, or one-third, will be reserved for women, the minister said, and claimed that no state will face any reduction in its representation.
• While Meghwal introduced the 2026 Constitution One Hundred and Thirty-First Amendment Bill and 2026 Delimitation Bill, Union Home Minister Amit Shah tabled the 2026 Union Territories Laws Amendment Bill.
• Division of votes: Voting took place in the Lok Sabha on Thursday on the introduction of the three bills. Of those present in the House, 251 voted in favour and 185 opposed introducing the bills, based on a count of vote slips.
• ‘Delink women’s bill and delimitation’: Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi alleged that the intention of the government was not to implement women’s reservation, but to introduce delimitation “through the backdoor”. He remarked that Meghwal was merely repeating what Shah had said three years ago during the discussion on the Women’s Reservation Bill.
• Gogoi said: “At the time too, the Congress had supported women’s reservation, but had asked for the process to be simplified so that it would be implemented immediately. At that time too, we had demanded that the quota should not be linked to delimitation, and our stand is the same today.”
• Congress MP Venugopal alleged that the government’s intention behind introducing the delimitation bill was to take away protections introduced by former Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Venugopal was referring to the freeze on delimitation that was put in place in 1976 and extended in 2001.
• Muslim quota demand: Samajwadi Party MP Akhilesh Yadav asked whether the government considered Muslim women also to be part of “aadhi aabadi”, or half the population, The Indian Express reported. In response, Shah remarked that the Samajwadi Party could give all its election tickets to Muslim women if it wanted. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said that speaking about Muslim women’s reservation is unconstitutional as a quota cannot be granted based on religion.
• Stalin protests: Earlier on Thursday, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin burnt a copy of the delimitation bill in Namakkal as part of the statewide protest against the proposed amendments to the law, The Hindu reported. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief described it as a “conspiracy and a black law”. He urged people to hoist black flags in every home and public place on Thursday.

Delimitation bill

The Union government is seeking to increase the strength of the Lok Sabha to 815 from 543 and to operationalise the 33% quota for women in the Lok Sabha and Assemblies under the 2023 Women’s Reservation Act. A three-day special session of Parliament to discuss these bills began on Thursday.

The Opposition INDIA bloc has said that while it supports women’s reservation, it will oppose the bill for delimitation of Lok Sabha seats.

Opposition parties have said that population-based delimitation would give an undue advantage to northern and central states in the Lok Sabha, as the proportion of seats in the North would be higher. They also noted that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has greater support in northern states than in the South.

Although speculation about the amendment to the law had been rife in political circles for the past two weeks, copies of the draft legislation were shared with MPs for the first time on Tuesday.

Article 82 of the Constitution states that after every census is completed, the allocation of Lok Sabha seats to each state must be adjusted based on changes in its population.

The current composition of the Lok Sabha is based on the 1971 Census. According to the 84th Amendment Act of 2001, constituency boundaries were frozen until the first census after 2026.

The census, which began on April 1, is expected to conclude in 2027.

The bill that will be introduced in Parliament proposes to amend Article 82 of the Constitution to remove the entire proviso. This will pave the way for delimitation to take place based on the latest census, which was held in 2011.

Also read:

• How Modi government aims to use women’s representation to expand Lok Sabha using 2011 census numbers
• ‘Unconstitutional’: Opposition says delimitation must not weaken voice of southern states

The Allahabad High Court has expressed concern about a “disturbing trend” of false first information reports being registered by third parties under Uttar Pradesh’s anti-conversion law, Bar and Bench reported on Thursday.

A division bench of Justices Abdul Moin and Pramod Kumar Srivastava was hearing a petition challenging an FIR registered against three Muslim men under the 2021 Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act.

The FIR, filed by the father of an 18-year-old woman, alleged that one of the men had “enticed” his daughter. He claimed that there was a likelihood that the men would attempt to convert her religion and force her into marriage.

The three men also faced charges under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.

However, the woman in a statement recorded before a magistrate denied claims made by her father, Bar and Bench reported. She added that she was in a consensual relationship with one of the accused men, adding that she had not been coerced into conversion or marriage.

The woman also expressed willingness to live with the man and further raised concerns about harassment from Hindutva groups, Live Law reported.

On Monday, the court said that the “statement of the victim vis-a-vis the allegations as levelled in the FIR gives rise to a disturbing trend which is being noticed time and again by the courts of law pertaining to FIRs being lodged by third parties” under the state’s anti-conversion law.

The bench noted that the statement submitted by the woman indicates that she is apprehensive of her safety and the safety of her relatives, adding that she is also “apprehensive of being harassed and troubled by the various organisations”.

The court noted that despite her statement, the investigating officer had dropped only allegations of rape against the petitioner and continued proceedings under the anti-conversion law, The Hindu reported.

It described this as a “peculiar turn” and said that further investigation appeared unwarranted given the woman’s clear account. The bench also indicated that the conduct of the investigating officer suggested that he may be acting under pressure or external influence.

In its order, the court directed the state’s additional chief secretary (home) to file a personal affidavit on the steps being taken to address such “false” cases.

It also summoned the woman’s father to explain why action should not be taken against him for filing what the court described as a “patently false, fake and frivolous FIR”.

The bench stayed the arrest of the petitioner and directed that security be provided to all parties involved.

The United States will not renew waivers that had allowed countries, including India, to purchase Iranian and Russian oil without triggering sanctions, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Wednesday.

Bessent said that the waivers pertained to oil “on water prior to March 11”. “So all that has been used,” he told reporters.

The US had on March 5 granted Indian refiners a 30-day waiver allowing them to buy Russian oil stranded at sea amid the conflict in West Asia. The US treasury secretary had at the time described the move a short-term measure aimed at keeping global oil supplies, and maintained that it would not “provide significant financial benefit” to Russia.

The relaxation allowed India to secure additional Russian oil supplies amid global disruptions, with refiners reportedly ordering around 30 million barrels during the period, NDTV reported.

A week after granting the waiver to India, Washington extended a similar 30-day licence to other countries for Russian crude loaded before March 11. That waiver expired on April 11.

A similar relaxation covering Iranian oil shipments loaded before March 20 is set to expire on Sunday.

The waivers were introduced as temporary measures to ease pressure on global markets amid disruptions linked to Iran, allowing the purchase of oil already loaded onto vessels before specified deadlines.

India is a net importer of oil and gas, with around 80% to 85% of its energy requirements met through imports.

Global oil prices have spiked due to the conflict in West Asia, with Iran having blocked the strategic Strait of Hormuz for most commercial shipping. The narrow waterbody connects the Gulf to the Arabian Sea. About 20% of the global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint.

The developments on Wednesday came against the backdrop of earlier tensions between Washington and New Delhi over India’s continued purchases of Russian crude.

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

On February 7, Trump issued an executive order to remove the additional 25% punitive tariff on imports from India over New Delhi’s purchase of Russian oil. This brought the effective US tariff rate on Indian imports to 18% after the interim trade deal was agreed to.

Track updates from the West Asia war here.

The Chhattisgarh Cabinet on Wednesday decided to set up a high-level committee to prepare a draft of a uniform civil code for the state.

It has become the third Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled state to take steps towards implementing such a code. While Uttarakhand began implementing a common personal law framework in January 2025, the Gujarat Assembly passed a uniform civil code bill on March 25.

The Uniform Civil Code refers to a common set of laws governing marriage, divorce, succession and adoption for all citizens. Currently, the personal affairs of religious and tribal groups are based on community-specific laws, largely derived from religious scripture.

Chhattisgarh’s Uniform Civil Code panel will be headed by former Supreme Court judge Ranjana Prakash Desai. She had also headed the committees based on whose recommendations the Uttarakhand and Gujarat governments framed their Uniform Civil Code bills.

On Wednesday, the Chhattisgarh government said that in order to create a draft law that “simplifies and unifies” personal laws of diverse communities and to make such a code legally sound, the committee will invite suggestions from citizens and experts.

The draft law will later be presented before the state cabinet and Assembly, the government said.

“As envisaged under Article 44 of the Constitution of India, the move towards a Uniform Civil Code is aimed at ensuring legal uniformity, simplifying judicial processes, and promoting religious as well as gender equality,” The Hindu quoted an unidentified government official as saying.

Article 44 of the Constitution says that the state should “endeavour to secure for the citizens a Uniform Civil Code throughout the territory of India”. However, the provision is part of Directive Principles of State Policy and is thus not legally binding.

Commenting on the cabinet decision, the Congress said that a uniform civil code would harm Chhattisgarh’s Adivasi communities, which account for over 30% of the state’s population.

“The tribals are the only ones in the state who have special constitutional protections compared to other people living in the state,” The Hindu quoted state Congress president Deepak Baij as saying. “Apart from this, there is no other class in Chhattisgarh for which special civil rights are applicable.”

Baij alleged that the BJP was trying to “rob the interests of the tribals” by introducing a uniform civil code.

Introducing a common personal law has long been on the BJP’s agenda. Last year, BJP-ruled Uttarakhand became the first state to implement the Uniform Civil Code after independence. A common civil code has been in place in Goa since the Portuguese Civil Code was adopted in 1867.

In its campaign for the Uniform Civil Code in Uttarakhand, the BJP had mainly targeted Muslim personal law, arguing that it discriminated against women as it allows Muslim men to practice polygamy, inherit a greater share of property, initiate divorce and deny alimony.

Legal experts have said that Uttarakhand’s Uniform Civil Code is drawn primarily from Hindu personal law and could lead to the erasure of the personal law practices of minority communities.

Two Muslim Congress councillors were booked in Madhya Pradesh’s Indore after they refused to sing the patriotic song Vande Mataram during the budget session of the municipal corporation last week, IANS reported on Wednesday.

The case was filed under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to promoting enmity between different groups on the grounds of religion, race and place of birth, and doing acts prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony, following complaints from Bharatiya Janata Party councillors, The Indian Express reported.

Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police Ram Snehi Mishra said that Rubina Iqbal Khan and Fauzia Sheikh Aleem allegedly disrespected the national anthem, IANS reported.

Mishra added: “During the inquiry, it was also observed that the incident led to tension affecting social and religious harmony, and created differences among the public.”

The incident took place on April 8 during the civic body’s budget session, when a dispute erupted over the singing of Vande Mataram.

Aleem questioned whether any rule or law required the singing of the song and later walked out of the House, while Khan said during the proceedings that her faith did not permit its recitation, The Times of India reported.

The exchange triggered protests from BJP members inside the House, who purportedly shouted: “If you have to live in India, you will have to say Vande Mataram!”

“भारत वर्ष में रहना होगा, तो वंदे मातरम कहना होगा!”…..: BJP पार्षद

वंदे मातरम को लेकर इंदौर नगर निगम में हंगामा।

कांग्रेस पार्षद फौजीया शेख अलीम ने कहा कि वंदे मातरम जबरदस्ती नहीं बुलवा सकते। ये कहते हुए सदन से हुई बाहर!

वैसे वंदे मातरम कहने में आपत्ति क्या है? pic.twitter.com/5MjEtCvHpF

— Shubham Shukla (@Shubhamshuklamp) April 8, 2026

Khan later apologised for her “provocative” choice of words, the newspaper reported.

Police officers said that both councillors were questioned for two days before the FIR was registered, The Indian Express reported.

Assistant Commissioner of Police Vinod Dixit told the newspaper that they “cited religious reasons” during the questioning. “We told them they were elected to a constitutional post and their religious compulsions should not have been part of the decision,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.

Chief Minister Mohan Yadav on Saturday said that the incident “was unfortunate” and reflected “poorly on the character of Congress representatives”, ANI reported.

He said that senior Congress leaders, including state president Jitu Patwari and national leader Rahul Gandhi, should explain why such behaviour was being encouraged, which he described as “insulting the sacrifices of patriots”.

Yadav further said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had “won the nation’s heart” by embracing all six verses of Vande Mataram, while alleging that Congress remained “trapped in its double standards”.

#WATCH | Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh: On Congress councillor refuses to sing Vande Mataram in Indore, CM Mohan Yadav says, "... A Congress councillor refused to sing Vande Mataram in the municipal council was unfortunate, reflecting poorly on the character of Congress representatives.… pic.twitter.com/DWkf3FCHUj

— ANI (@ANI) April 11, 2026

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

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

In October 1937, the Congress Working Committee had passed a resolution adopting the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram as the national song. The Bharatiya Janata Party has long alleged that the Congress had agreed to drop the four stanzas to “appease Muslims”.

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

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

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

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

Also read Vande Mataram debate: The novel in which the poem appears is a cry for freedom – but from whom?

The notification chimed on my phone: “Order received – Rs 20 for 3.2 km delivery.” I looked at the address, started my bike, and began what would become a two-month journey into India’s platform economy.

By the time I delivered that first order – a 20-minute hunt through narrow lanes to find a customer’s house in the dark – I had earned my first Rs 20 as a gig worker. More importantly, I had begun to understand the vast gap between the gig economy’s promises and realities.

This wasn’t planned research. In September 2024, while studying rural employment programmes in Maharashtra, I kept encountering young migrants who moonlighted as delivery workers. As the thinktank NITI Aayog projected India’s gig workforce would triple to 23.5 million workers by 2029-’30, I realised that understanding this growth required more than interviews and surveys. It required experiencing the algorithm’s control first-hand.

Entering the algorithm

Becoming a delivery partner proved deceptively simple. After downloading the app and providing basic details (phone number, bank information, and Aadhaar card), I encountered the first revealing requirement – Rs 400 sign-up fee plus Rs 2,000 for branded clothing and delivery bag, deductible from future earnings. The platform extracted payment before I had earned a single rupee.

What the platform did not require was equally telling. No driving licence verification, no helmet confirmation and no safety training for work involving constant road navigation. I was registering not as an employee but as an “independent contractor” using “aggregator services” – legal language that shielded the company from employment obligations while maintaining operational control.

The training videos, available in multiple Indian languages, covered app navigation thoroughly but offered little about worker rights, transparency about earnings or dispute resolution. I could skip entire sections – a design prioritising quick onboarding over worker preparation. Within hours, I was approved to start deliveries, though insurance coverage would only activate after two successful orders.

Algorithms become bosses

Working for a platform means surrendering to digital management in ways traditional employment rarely demands. The app does not just facilitate work – it monitors, evaluates and controls every aspect of it. Location tracking runs continuously, monitoring speed, route efficiency and idle time. Push notifications arrive constantly, pressuring workers to stay online during peak hours or accept additional orders.

The incentive structure reveals sophisticated behavioural control. Daily and weekly bonuses appear achievable but require completing lengthy shifts – often six to 10 hours – and maintaining high acceptance rates. Rejecting more than three orders during a shift triggers penalties, forcing workers to accept unprofitable deliveries. When I set my maximum delivery distance to 4 kilometres, the system still assigned me an 8-km order I felt compelled to accept.

Earning calculations remain deliberately opaque. Workers cannot see customer locations before accepting orders, making informed decisions impossible. This control extends beyond work hours. The platform’s internal marketplace encourages workers to spend earnings on company-branded merchandise, phone accessories, and investment products. Frequent notifications about discounts pressure workers to convert labour into platform-specific consumption, tightening economic dependence.

True cost of every delivery

During my shifts, I met Vishal, a 34-year-old delivery partner who had moved to Nagpur from a small town in Vidarbha three years earlier seeking better employment opportunities. After struggling to find stable work, he turned to food delivery 18 months ago. Our conversation during restaurant waits revealed the hidden economics that platforms never discuss.

“My phone plan costs Rs 400 monthly for 2GB daily data,” Vishal explained. “But during peak hours, especially when I work 10-12 hour days, I need top-ups. The GPS and constant app usage drain data faster than you’d think.” His total monthly mobile expenses, including extra data packages, averaged Rs 600.

Six months earlier, he had replaced his smartphone after the old one developed lag issues that cost him orders. The Rs 14,000 replacement, bought on EMI, still consumed Rs. 1,200 monthly from his income.

Vehicle maintenance proved costlier than expected. Puncture repairs were necessary roughly once monthly due to Nagpur’s uneven roads and construction debris, costing Rs 50 each time. Regular bike servicing, chain adjustments, brake repairs, and minor fixes averaged Rs 800 monthly. “I carry a power bank that cost me Rs 1,500,” he said, patting his delivery bag. “My phone battery dies twice daily from constant GPS tracking and customer calls.”

The fuel mathematics was stark. With petrol at Rs 103 per litre in Nagpur, Vishal’s bike consumed approximately 1.8 litres daily, covering 60 km-70 km across lunch and dinner shifts. His monthly fuel bill reached Rs 5,100 – over a third of his gross earnings. “City traffic forces you to idle at signals and in jams, which kills mileage,” he observed.

Traffic violations represented an unpredictable expense. When delivery deadlines grew tight, the temptation to cut corners increased. “I’ve paid Rs 2,000 in signal-jumping fines this year,” Vishal admitted. “The app doesn’t consider real traffic conditions when setting delivery times.”

Despite racing through traffic, navigating confusing apartment complexes, and ensuring orders reached customers hot and fresh, Vishal rarely received additional compensation. “There’s no tip culture here like in other big cities,” he explained. “I make sure food reaches customers within the promised time, sometimes risking my safety to avoid delays, but customers just take their order and close the door. I don’t even remember when I last received a tip – maybe twice in the past 18 months, and both were just Rs 10-20.” The app’s tipping feature, while available, remained largely unused by Nagpur customers accustomed to fixed pricing.

The platform extracted additional costs through mandatory expenses. The branded delivery bag cost Rs 2,000 (deducted from earnings), and replacement after wear required personal expenditure. The company t-shirt, while provided, required constant maintenance.

“My wife washes my uniform twice a week because it gets dirty and sweaty from riding in traffic and heat,” Vishal said. “She spends extra time and money on detergent, but platforms never count this household labour.” The frequent washing meant buying replacement shirts every few months as the fabric wore out quickly.

When we calculated his monthly expenses – fuel (Rs 5,100), maintenance (Rs 800), mobile costs (Rs. 600), phone EMI (Rs 1,200), punctures (Rs 50), and fines (Rs 170 average) – they totalled Rs 7,920. From his gross monthly earnings of Rs 14,000, this left Rs 6,080 as actual income, or roughly Rs 200 per day for 10-hour shifts.

The long-term health costs remained uncounted. After 18 months of delivery work, Vishal experienced persistent back pain from prolonged riding and poor bike ergonomics. “My back hurts every evening, but I can’t afford to take breaks or see a doctor regularly,” he said. “This work is aging my body faster than it should.” The platform provided basic accident insurance but nothing for occupational health issues that develop gradually.

“People see the delivery charge and think we’re getting rich,” Vishal concluded with a wry smile. “They don’t see what it actually costs to keep this bike running, my phone charged, and myself healthy enough to work tomorrow.”

Encounters on the street

My interactions with customers, restaurant staff, and fellow workers revealed the social dynamics underlying platform capitalism’s facade of seamless service. Customers tracking their orders in real time often grew frustrated when deliveries were delayed due to traffic, unclear addresses, or slow restaurant preparation. The app’s promise of precision – “delivered in 30 minutes” – created unrealistic expectations that workers ultimately managed.

Restaurant experiences varied dramatically. Established outlets treated delivery workers professionally, maintaining separate pick-up counters, and providing wait-time estimates.

However, the growing ecosystem of “ghost kitchens” – unmarked food operations within residential buildings – presented unique challenges. These businesses, optimised for app-based ordering, often lacked proper signage, or dedicated pick-up areas. I spent considerable time navigating narrow residential lanes searching for kitchen operations hidden within apartment complexes, guided only by vague app directions.

Conversations with other delivery workers, typically during restaurant waits or traffic stops, revealed shared frustrations across platforms.

A 32-year-old partner working for a competing service captured a common sentiment: “There’s no respect in this job. My wife tells me to change into the company t-shirt midway, not wear it when leaving home. People don’t talk nicely and sometimes create issues about payment.”

Promise and reality

India’s policy response to gig work reveals the tension between recognising worker needs and maintaining platform flexibility. Rajasthan became the first state to pass comprehensive gig worker legislation in July 2023, establishing a welfare board and mandating 1-2% transaction fees from platforms to fund social security. The law requires platforms to register workers and provide transparent data about earnings and commissions – information companies have historically guarded closely.

Recent developments suggest broader policy momentum. In the budget for 2025, the union government announced health insurance coverage for gig workers through the PM-JAY scheme, with 10 million workers expected to benefit immediately.

A pilot programme launched in September 2024 registered four major platforms – Urban Company, Zomato, Blinkit, and Uncle Delivery – on the e-Shram portal, preparing the infrastructure for nationwide social security coverage.

However, implementation remains challenging. The central government’s Code on Social Security, 2020 recognises gig workers as a separate category but lacks finalised rules across most states.

While Rajasthan’s law is progressive, it does not classify gig workers as employees or integrate existing labour protections. Karnataka has introduced a similar draft bill in 2024, but enforcement mechanisms remain unclear across state boundaries.

The inconsistent regulations across states create confusion for mobile delivery platforms trying to follow the rules. They also make it difficult for workers to carry their benefits with them when working in different states. More fundamentally, these measures focus on social security while avoiding the core question of whether gig workers should have collective bargaining rights, minimum wage protections, and the ability to challenge algorithmic management decisions.

Broader economic logic

My two-month experience illuminated how the gig economy represents not disruption but acceleration of existing trends towards worker insecurity. Platforms have successfully created a workforce that assumes traditional employer responsibilities – equipment provision, risk management, and skill development – while discarding traditional worker protections around wages, working conditions and job security.

This model’s political economy becomes clearer when considering its timing and context. India’s gig economy emerged during formal job creation struggles and agricultural distress, providing platforms with workers seeking income opportunities.

The rural youth I originally interviewed often relied on family support to purchase the smartphones and motorcycles essential for platform work – sometimes from earnings in government welfare schemes like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and PM Kisan Samman Nidhi.

Platforms benefit from what economist David Weil calls “fissured workplace” dynamics, where lead firms control value chains while avoiding direct employment relationships. This structure allows them to maintain market position and profit margins while regulatory and economic risks fall on individual workers.

NITI Aayog’s optimistic projections assume platform job creation will address India’s unemployment challenges. However, my experience suggests such work often represents economic desperation rather than genuine choice. The absence of social protection, health benefits, or retirement security makes gig work a survival strategy rather than a sustainable career path for most participants.

Towards dignity

Looking back over those two months, I delivered roughly 30 orders and earned approximately Rs 1,200 – an amount that barely covered fuel costs for my journeys. More significantly, I experienced how a platform transforms workers into algorithmic subjects, responsive to digital stimuli designed to maximise platform value rather than worker welfare.

The gig economy’s rapid expansion in India reflects broader failures in creating dignified employment opportunities for the country’s growing workforce. Rather than addressing structural economic problems, platforms exploit them, converting unemployment and underemployment into profit-generating mechanisms.

India needs more than the current patchwork of welfare measures. Essential reforms should include transparent algorithmic management, where workers understand how earnings are calculated and orders are assigned. Platforms should bear responsibility for equipment costs, health insurance, and accident coverage rather than externalising these to workers. Most importantly, gig workers need meaningful representation in decisions affecting their livelihoods, whether through recognised unions or platform governance structures.

The workers I met deserve more than algorithmic management disguised as entrepreneurial opportunity. They need recognition that their labour – delivering food in all weather conditions, navigating chaotic traffic, maintaining professionalism despite customer frustration – constitutes essential work that deserves basic dignity and security.

The Rs 20 I earned for my first delivery represents more than a wage. It symbolises the distance between the gig economy’s promises and its realities, between platform rhetoric about empowerment and workers’ lived experience of navigating an increasingly precarious economic landscape.

As India’s policymakers celebrate the gig economy’s growth potential, they should remember that behind every platform’s success story are millions of workers trying to make ends meet in an economic system that privatises their risks while socialising their benefits.

Until this gap closes, India’s gig economy will remain a source of survival rather than prosperity for those who power it. The true measure of success will not be transaction volumes or platform valuations, but whether these workers can build stable, secure lives for themselves and their families. That transformation requires acknowledging that flexibility without security is not freedom – it is precarity by design.

Kasim Saiyyad is a PhD candidate in applied economics and management at Cornell University, New York, and a Tata-Cornell Institute Scholar. His research focuses on agriculture, livelihood, and nutrition economics in low- and middle-income countries.

This article was first published in The India Forum.

A group of 59 children from Bihar’s Araria district travelling to Odisha to study at a madrasa were stopped at Cuttack station by the railway police, their parents told Scroll on Wednesday evening.

A local news report said the children were “rescued” by the Railway Protection Force and handed over to the Cuttack Child Welfare Committee. But their parents told Scroll that their children were headed for the Jamia Islamia Riyaztul Oloom madrasa in Jagatsinghpur, about 40 km from Cuttack.

Advocate MD Nawaz Hassan, who is representing the parents in Araria, told Scroll that a maulvi from the madrasa was not allowed to take the children, who are being kept at a government-run shelter home by the Child Welfare Committee, Cuttack. Scroll has a list of the 59 children and their names and addresses.

SK Shareef, the maulana who heads the Jamia Islamia Riyaztul Oloom madrasa, told Scroll that the teachers accompanying the children had Aadhaar cards and consent letters from their parents. “These two documents are adequate,” said Shareef. “But the police detained the children after producing this.” Shareef said he not travelled Cuttack so far.

Scroll contacted Manoj Vishwas, chairperson of the Cuttack Child Welfare Committee, but he did not respond to calls and messages. This report will be updated if he replies.

An inspector with the Railway Police Force, Cuttack, told Scroll that so far the police have not registered a first information report. “The case is under investigation,” he said.

Hassan, the advocate for the parents, said that four to five men were with the children, but the police inspector said there was only maulana with the group.

“Some children were seven to eight years old. That is very young,” said the police inspector. “This raises suspicion, especially if the person accompanying them has no concrete answers.”

The inspector said that the railway police asked for the admission forms of the madrassa and if the parents had visited the madrasa before. “The person said no. So we decided to hand over the children to the CWC for further inquiry,” he said.

It is the third case this month of children from Bihar headed to madrasas in other parts of India being “rescued” and the second such instance in Cuttack.

On Wednesday, Scroll had reported how the Madhya Pradesh railway police claimed to have rescued 163 children but their parents had said the children were headed to madrasas in Karnataka and Maharashtra to study.

On April 1, the Odisha railway police detained a maulana who was travelling with 14 boys from Bihar’s Kishanganj to Odisha’s Salepur. The children had gotten down at Cuttack railway station when the police found them, a policeman told a local news publication.

In this instance too, the 59 children were stopped at Cuttack railway station on April 14. This was part of Operation “Nanhe Faristey”, which the Railway Protection Force carries out to protect vulnerable children and prevent child trafficking.

The children’s parents are too poor to travel to Cuttack and have approached the Araria Child Welfare Committee for help, said Hassan, the advocate for the parents.

Rinku Verma, chairperson of the Araria Child Welfare Committee, confirmed that the children’s parents had reached out on Wednesday. “We have contacted the CWC in Cuttack,” said Verma.

He claimed the maulvi did not have paperwork or transit documents to show that the children had been transferred from a school to a madrasa. “Such a large group of children can attract suspicion and the police acted accordingly,” said Verma.

The Cuttack Child Welfare Committee has sought a letter from the Araria committee confirming the names and details of the 59 children and their purpose of travel. “That process is ongoing,” said Shareef. “Once the letter comes, hopefully the children will be released.”

Mohammed Tanvir Alam’s two sons and a nephew, are among the children who were travelling to Cuttack. Alam had sent his children with his cousin, Aabid, who was dropping his son to the madrassa.

Alam, who is a tractor driver in Raniganj in Araria district, told Scroll that his 14-year-old son Zulfikar had attended the madrasa last year. “This year I decided to send my younger son too,” Alam said.

Alam’s children used to attend a government school in Raniganj. “They would spend more time playing outside instead of studying,” said Alam. “I thought they would learn some discipline in the madrasa.”

The Bharatiya Janata Party-led government’s decision to summon a special session of Parliament on Thursday to discuss bills to expand the size of Lok Sabha has ignited a debate that goes beyond mere seat arithmetic.

The increase in the number of seats is being framed as a constitutional necessity to ensure better representation for the growing number of voters. In effect, the move appears to be the latest brick in a structural wall being built to imprison Indian democracy.

We are witnessing a transition where the machinery of governance increasingly reflects the political management of the People’s Republic of China, moving away from the deliberative friction of Western democratic models – most notably the high-scrutiny system of the United States.

Perils of a mammoth parliament

The push for delimitation – redrawing the boundaries of electoral constituencies – threatens to create a mammoth Parliament of over 800 seats in Lok Sabha.

It would seem to mirror the model embodied in China’s National People’s Congress. When the nearly 3,000 deputies of the National People’s Congress meet in Beijing every year, all they do is provide a veneer of democratic legitimacy to decisions already finalised by the Party’s central leadership.

A legislature of such gargantuan proportions is inherently unwieldy. When hundreds of members are squeezed into a session, meaningful deliberation vanishes. Individual scrutiny of bills becomes impossible, and the executive’s grip tightens: the floor becomes a site of acclamation rather than accountability.

By expanding the House while simultaneously weakening its oversight committees, the state ensures that Parliament remains ornamental – architecturally grand but democratically hollow.

This stands in contrast to the United States Congress. Despite the population of the US tripling over the last century, the number of members of the House of Representatives has been capped at 435 since 1911. The American model is predicated on the belief that for a representative to be effective, they must have a distinct voice.

In a smaller, capped legislature, an individual member can influence a committee, hold up a partisan bill and command national attention. This “constructive friction” is the engine room of democracy. But by opting for a mammoth Parliament instead, the BJP-led government is choosing to drown individual MPs in a sea of numbers, effectively migrating all real power to a centralised executive office – the Indian version of China’s Politburo.

The meek opposition

Already, the structural dilution of the legislature is accompanied by a chilling transformation of the political landscape: the curated weakening of the opposition. In China, the “United Front” system allows for eight minor parties – but they exist on the condition of absolute subservience to the Communist Party. They are not competitors; they are consultants.

While these parties – such as the China Democratic League – hold seats in the National People’s Congress, they are constitutionally bound to accept the “leading role” of the Chinese Communist Party. Rather than offering adversarial dissent, they help strengthen the facade that the government is representative, while ensuring that legislative outcomes align with strategic goals.

India’s political ecosystem is tilting toward a similar controlled pluralism. Through the aggressive use of the investigative agencies against political rivals, the choking of their political funding and the engineering of defections, the ruling party is hollowing out the opposition. The goal appears to be an India where opposition parties still exist – to maintain the appearance of democracy for the world – but are too fractured and intimidated to pose a real challenge.

Like the minor parties in China’s National People’s Congress, they are being relegated to the role of a “meek opposition”, allowed to speak only within the boundaries set by the ruling party.

The unitary state

The most striking parallel between the two systems lies in the project of cultural homogenisation as a prerequisite for national power. China’s stability is built upon the bedrock of Han-centrism, where the state actively subordinates minority identities – Uighur, Tibetan, or Mongol – to a singular, state-defined “Chineseness”.

India is currently pursuing its own version of internal consolidation through the lens of Hindutva, seeking to redefine “Indianness” through a specific religious and linguistic identity.

By creating the narrative that India is a “civilisational state”, the ruling party has positioned itself as the “vanguard” of a cultural rejuvenation. Much like the Chinese Communist Party is indistinguishable from the Chinese state, the attempt here is to make the ruling ideology indistinguishable from national identity.

Those who dissent are not merely political opponents; they are framed as “anti-national,” echoing the Chinese Communist Party’s rhetoric against “splitists” and “subversives”.

This cultural shift finds its structural anchor in a long-standing war on federalism. Rooted in the ideology of “one nation, one people, one culture”, the ruling party has long viewed India’s diverse state identities as obstacles to a centralised core.

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief MS Golwalkar’s 1961 memorandum to the National Integration Council provides the foundational blueprint for this shift, explicitly denouncing federalism as a “fundamental mistake” and advocating for a “One Country, One Legislature, One Executive” model.

Delimitation is the ultimate tool for this Golwalkarian consolidation. By basing representation purely on population, the system effectively penalises the Southern states for their success in controlling their populations.

This stands in stark contrast to the US Senate, which grants every state two seats regardless of size to prevent the “tyranny of the majority”. India, conversely, is mirroring China’s management of its provinces, where local identities are subordinated to a singular interest directed from the centre.

The ultimate justification for this shift is the promise of “authoritarian stability”. The argument is seductive: to compete with the Dragon, India must stop “quarreling” and start “building”. Proponents of this idea suggest that a single-minded focus on development, unencumbered by the “friction” of dissent, is the only path to greatness.

The Argumentative Indian

But India is not China. Our diversity is not a bug to be fixed; it is our primary resilience. China’s stability is brittle, maintained by a staggering security budget and total surveillance. If India swaps its democratic soul – and the effective, deliberative strength of a true legislature – for a Chinese-style “efficient” machine, it risks losing the safety valves that have kept this subcontinent together.

We must remember Amartya Sen’s descriptions of the “Argumentative Indian”. For millennia, India’s strength has been its tradition of public debate, intellectual pluralism and the ability to voice disagreement.

Sen contended that this “argumentative” nature is not a hindrance to development but a prerequisite for justice and social well-being. To swap the Argumentative Indian for the Leaping Dragon is to trade a robust, self-correcting democracy for a fragile, top-heavy monolith.

Development without dissent is not a “New India” – it is a borrowed model that has historically led to the stifling of the human spirit. As the new, massive Parliament prepares to seat its hundreds of members, we must ask: are we building a monument to the vocal, deliberative spirit of our citizens, or a fortress for a one-party state?

The author is the Deputy Law Secretary to the Government of Kerala and author of “The Supreme Codex: A Citizen’s Anxieties and Aspirations on the Indian Constitution”. Views expressed are personal.

As summer approaches in Jharkhand, mahua flowers begin blossoming by the end of March. The warm and dry conditions are ideal for harvesting the mahua flowers as they fall to the ground. But rainfall and hailstorms in late March and early April have disrupted this delicate process.

“This time due to the rains, many flowers started rotting when they were laid out to dry,” said Kuldeep Minj, a farmer from Jharkhand’s Latehar district.

Traditionally, mahua flowers are not plucked from trees but gathered from the ground and then dried under sunlight for up to three days to be properly preserved. “If the flowers don’t dry properly they start to get sticky and rot,” said Minj, who usually harvests flowers from trees on his land and a nearby forest.

Up north in Punjab, farmers were expecting a rich yield from wheat. “The quality of the crop this year was excellent,” said Jagmeet Singh, a farmer from Kotli village of Punjab’s Sri Muktsar Sahib district. “Otherwise, we usually had to spray insecticides worth Rs 1,000-1,500 per acre.”

That was until April 4.

Two weeks before Singh was to harvest his crop, a sudden hailstorm dashed all his hopes. “The hailstorm lasted for only 35-40 minutes but damaged almost 80% of the crop,” said Singh. “Never in my life have I seen a hailstorm in the season of wheat harvest.”

The rain and hailstorms were the result of an active western disturbance.

These are cyclonic winds that develop over the Mediterranean region and move westwards, bringing snow and rain in the Himalayas and north-western India. But this year, even farmers in eastern India have felt the impact.

Western disturbances are not unusual for this time of the year but there has been a change in the behaviour and timing of these weather systems, say experts.

“Usually, we find western disturbances being active in January and February,” said Anand Sharma, former deputy director general of the regional meteorology centre at Dehradun. “Now, we are seeing that it is being more active in March and April – this year it seems to be like that.”

The India Meteorological Department data shows that India experienced 27% more rainfall than the normal for this season between March and early April.

Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at Pune’s Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, said warming seas could be intensifying the western disturbances. The interaction with a warmer, moister Arabian Sea and nearby regions may have resulted in heavier rain, intense movement of heat and moisture, which can lead to more damaging hail and storm activity, said Koll.

“Their characteristics…may be shifting in ways that can increase agricultural risk during sensitive crop stages,” said Koll.

The Centre estimates that rain and hail has damaged standing rabi crops across almost 2.5 lakh hectares as of April 8, said agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Rabi crops are sown during the winter and harvested in late spring.

Scroll spoke to farmers in Punjab, Rajasthan and Jharkhand and found that wheat, mustard, chickpeas, and forest produce like mahua had suffered the most damage.

Heavy rain, huge losses

In Punjab, excess rain in early April caused water-logging in wheat fields across the state. The state recorded 20mm of rainfall, against the normal of 3.3mm, according to the Punjab meteorological department.

Around 1.31 lakh acres of standing wheat, the main rabi crop, was affected, said the Punjab government. Districts like Fazilka, Moga, Sri Muktsar Sahib, Bathinda, Mansa and Tarn Taran are the worst hit.

Between April 2 and April 8, east and north-east India saw 51% more rainfall than usual, central India saw 57% above normal rain, and the northwest witnessed 3% more than normal rain, according to the India Meteorological Department.

Jharkhand recorded 9.1mm of rain, 201% more than the usual 3.1 mm, in the first week of April. The India Meteorological Department noted that the state experienced rain, hail, gusty winds and thunderstorms almost the entire week.

Koll said that rains that reached eastern India, including Jharkhand, may have been a result of the same large-scale western disturbance. But the rain may also have been affected by moisture from the Bay of Bengal, local instability, and convective processes over eastern India, said Koll.

Minj, from Jharkhand’s Latehar district, said that four to five days of continuous rain in the area had damaged four to five quintals of mahua flowers. “This is a loss of Rs 5,000-6,000,” he said. In Mahuadanr block, mahua flowers are sold for Rs 50 to 60 per kilo. “The rain also impacts the colour and taste of the flowers, and so the ones that survive fetch a lower price in the market.”

For small-time farmers like Jagmeet Singh in Punjab, the losses are mounting. “I have incurred a total loss of Rs 8-9 lakh due to the rainfall,” he said. He had taken loans anticipating a good harvest. Singh owns five acres of land but also cultivates 15 acres of land on a contract of Rs 75,000 for two crops a year. He also spends Rs 30,000 per acre for two crops in a single year.

Singh has paid one installment to the landlord but the next payment is looming. “Had there been no hailstorm, I would have easily earned Rs 20,000 per acre on the land I have taken on contract,” he said. “Now, I have to look for means to pay the remaining amount to the landlord while I earned nothing from this land.”

“Our situation is really bad.”

Hail destroys wheat crops, mahua

Apart from the rainfall, hailstorms have proved to be especially destructive this year.

In Rajasthan’s Bikaner district, farmer Kailash Jhakar said hail and rainfall in April were not unheard of, but they had become a lot more frequent in the last five years. What shocked Jhakar was the hail, as big as lemons, which completely destroyed crops in at least 11 villages of tehsil Lunkaransar.

“It was mostly wheat and isabgol,” said Jhakar, explaining that since isabgol, or psyllium husk, is a short plant, the hail completely destroyed it. “Once the hail covers the crop, anything under it gets completely spoiled,” he said.

In the case of wheat, the rains first bent the crop and then the hail “brought it to the ground completely”, leaving nothing to harvest.

Rajasthan recorded 535% more rain than normal in early April, according to the state office of India Meteorological Department.

Hanumangarh district, bordering Bikaner, recorded 812% more rain than normal for the period. Here, wheat is the dominant rabi crop, followed by mustard and chickpea. Typically, farmers harvest mustard and chickpea by late March and wheat by April 15. When rain and hail battered the region between April 2 to April 8, wheat was ready to be harvested and sold, but still on the fields.

“It is not the rain that causes so much damage, but the hail,” said Charanpreet Singh, a farmer and the district coordinator of Bharat Kisan Union. “With hail, nothing is left of the crop. It is not even worth giving it to cattle.”

In Jharkhand’s Bolba block of Simdega district, farmer Raghunandan Singh and his family usually harvest mahua flowers from about 60 sixty trees, some on their land and others in a nearby forest. In good conditions, they can collect 12 kg to 15 kg of flowers per day – each kilo of flowers sells for Rs 42 - Rs 45 in Bolba.

“...Hailstorms damaged almost 40% of the flowers in the trees,” said Singh. “After that the continued rain didn’t allow us to dry the remaining 60% of the flowers properly.”

Migrating to earn money

In regions like Jharkhand where agriculture depends on the rain, forest produce such as mahua and sal flowers provide farmers a steady stream of income from March to May until monsoon.

Raghunandan Singh said there were virtually no irrigation facilities in Bolba block, which had suffered due to the rain. Many were pushed to seasonally migrate for work because of the loss of income from mahua flowers, he said.

Minj from Mahuadanr block in Latehar district said many people in the region relied on the money earned from mahua flowers to buy paddy seeds and prepare for the sowing season in May and June. “Now people will have to take up wage labour to earn that money,” he said.

Hoping for compensation

With several weeks to go for the monsoon to arrive, farmers in Punjab and Rajasthan are hoping that compensation will help them tide over the losses from unseasonal weather.

Charanpreet Singh of Hanumangarh district in Rajasthan estimated that the damage to wheat crops was spread across almost 9,000 acres. “One acre gives a farmer a guaranteed Rs 60,000 upon sale of wheat,” he said.

He has submitted a letter to the district office requesting support. “Each year, the district collector’s office initiates a survey for damage, but so far in the previous years, no farmers had received compensation,” said Singh. In Bikaner, Jhakar said the tehsildar’s office had started damage assessment on the ground.

Experts, however, note that hailstorms occur in patches, limiting damage to those areas. “Individual farmers would have suffered damage, but it is not the case that all farmers across the state would have had the same extent of damage since hailstorms have a patchy nature,” said Sharma, the former deputy director general of the Dehradun regional meteorology centre.

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The Supreme Court stayed the transit anticipatory bail granted to Congress leader Pawan Khera by the Telangana High Court in a case registered by the Assam Police. The bench said it was “surprised” by the High Court’s April 10 order.

Riniki Bhuyan Sarma, wife of Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, had filed a first information report against Khera after he claimed on April 5 that she holds passports in several countries.

Appearing for the Assam Police in the Supreme Court, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said that Khera filing his plea in Telangana was a “complete abuse of process”. Read on.

In a fresh affidavit, Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal has said that Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma should recuse herself from hearing the Central Bureau of Investigation’s challenge to his discharge in the Delhi liquor policy case as her children were empanelled as counsels with the Union government. They are both allocated cases by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who is appearing before the court for the CBI, noted Kejriwal.

He argued that the apprehensions of bias are “direct, grave and impossible to ignore”.

Videos of Kejriwal arguing his case in person before the High Court had been shared widely on social media. However, the court has directed the police to remove unauthorised videos of the former Delhi chief minister from circulation. Read on.

The toll in a boiler blast at a power plant owned by Vedanta Limited in Chhattisgarh’s Sakti district climbed to 19. Seventeen injured persons were being treated at several hospitals.

The explosion is said to have taken place in a steel tube carrying superheated steam from the boiler to the turbine at the power plant. After the tube burst, superheated steam with a temperature of about 600 degrees Celsius fell on workers having their lunch, according to reports.

The sub-divisional magistrate of Dabhra has been asked to conduct an inquiry and submit a report within a month, said District Collector Amrit Vikas Topno. Read on.

The Enforcement Directorate conducted raids at the home of Aam Aadmi Party leader Ashok Mittal, who replaced Raghav Chadha as the party’s deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha, in connection with alleged foreign exchange violations. Among the premises raided was the campus of Lovely Professional University in Punjab’s Phagwara city.

Mittal is the founder and chancellor of the university. Two linked institutes in Haryana’s Gurugram were also searched. Read on.

Bharatiya Janata Party leader Samrat Choudhary took oath as the chief minister of Bihar, a day after Janata Dal (United) chief Nitish Kumar resigned from the post. He is the first BJP chief minister of the state.

JD(U) leaders Bijendra Prasad Yadav and Vijay Kumar Choudhary were sworn-in as the deputy chief ministers. Read on.

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The Opposition INDIA bloc on Wednesday said that while it supports women’s reservation, it will oppose the Union government’s bill for delimitation of Lok Sabha seats.

The process of fixing the boundaries of electoral constituencies is called delimitation.

After a meeting of INDIA bloc parties in Delhi, Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge told reporters that the Opposition together “have one stand”.

“We oppose this [delimitation] bill,” he said. “We are not against women’s reservation. There is no clarity on census…We are against delimitation bill definitely.”

He said the Opposition was against the “politically motivated” manner in which the Union government was introducing the bills.

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said that the Bharatiya Janata Party was going to lose the Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, and claimed that the “Delimitation Commission is a weapon in the BJP’s hands to get a majority”, ANI reported.

He said that the Opposition had demanded that the women’s reservation in Parliament and Assemblies be implemented from the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, but was ignored by the government.

“All Opposition parties want women’s reservation to be done based on 543 parliamentary seats,” he said. “We are against the provisions of delimitation. We want women’s reservation to be implemented from the next Lok Sabha elections.”

“This delimitation is very dangerous,” Ramesh added.

Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) MP Sanjay Raut said “we will take collective action and defeat the bill”, ANI reported.

Communist Party of India leader Annie Raja said that the Opposition supports women’s quota “without any conditionalities” but was not in favour of the government’s “anti-constitutional or federal agenda”, ANI reported.

Leaders of the Congress, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Trinamool Congress, the Samajwadi Party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar), Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) were present at the meeting at Kharge’s residence in Delhi.

The meeting came ahead of a three-day special session of Parliament in which the Union government will introduce bills to increase the strength of the Lok Sabha to 850 from 543.

The 2026 Constitution 131st Amendment Bill, one of three draft legislations being introduced, requires a two-thirds majority of votes in Parliament to pass. The ruling National Democratic Alliance does not have a two-thirds majority in either Houses of Parliament.

मोदी सरकार संसद का विशेष सत्र बुलाकर बेहद त्रुटिपूर्ण और असंवैधानिक परिसीमन की प्रक्रिया को लागू करने वाली है।

आज इस मुद्दे पर कांग्रेस अध्यक्ष श्री @kharge के आवास पर महत्वपूर्ण बैठक हुई। इस बैठक में नेता विपक्ष श्री @RahulGandhi और विपक्षी दलों के नेता मौजूद रहे।

📍 दिल्ली pic.twitter.com/pPaF0pbbK4

— Congress (@INCIndia) April 15, 2026

Delimitation bill

Although speculation about the amendment to the law had been rife in political circles for the past two weeks, copies of the draft legislation were shared with MPs for the first time on Tuesday.

Article 82 of the Constitution states that after every census is completed, the allocation of Lok Sabha seats to each state must be adjusted based on changes in its population.

The current composition of the Lok Sabha is based on the 1971 Census. According to the 84th Amendment Act of 2001, constituency boundaries were frozen until the first census after 2026.

The census, which began on April 1, is expected to conclude in 2027.

The bill that will be introduced in Parliament proposes to amend Article 82 of the Constitution to remove the entire proviso. This will pave the way for delimitation to take place based on the latest census, which was held in 2011.

In its statement explaining the bill’s objectives, the government said that while freezing the seats on the basis of population in the 1971 census served an important policy purpose, “the country’s demographic profile has since undergone substantial changes” as reflected in the latest census.

It also cited “significant inter-state and intra-state population shifts, rapid urbanisation and migration, and disproportionate growth in certain regions, resulting in wide disparities in the population and the constituencies”.

The amendments will also operationalise the 33% quota for women in the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies under the 2023 Women’s Reservation Act “through delimitation exercise to be undertaken on the basis of the population figures of the latest published census”, the government said.

The latest published census was in 2011.

It said that the next census and the delimitation exercise after that “will take considerable time and thus, delay the effective and dedicated participation of women in our democratic polity”.

Opposition parties have been saying that population-based delimitation would give an undue advantage to northern and central states in the Lok Sabha, as the proportion of seats in the North would be higher. They also note that the ruling BJP has greater support in northern states than in the South.

Also read:

• How Modi government aims to use women’s representation to expand Lok Sabha using 2011 census numbers
• ‘Unconstitutional’: Opposition says delimitation must not weaken voice of southern states

Opposition leaders on Tuesday said that the three bills that the Union government has proposed to increase the number of seats in the Lok Sabha are unconstitutional, asserting that the voice of the southern states in Parliament should not be weakened by this.

At a special session due to begin on Thursday, the Union government will introduce three bills on the delimitation of constituencies, ostensibly to allow early implementation of provisions to reserve seats for women in Parliament and state Assemblies.

The process of fixing the boundaries of electoral constituencies is called delimitation.

The bills will increase the strength of the Lok Sabha to 850 from 543. Of these, 815 seats will be from the states and 35 from the Union Territories.

In a statement on social media, Congress MP KC Venugopal said that the bills were “extremely ill-timed” and posed serious questions that the Narendra Modi government must answer.

“Under the garb of bringing forward women’s reservations, the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] is looking to bulldoze a deeply flawed, unconstitutional and anti-federal delimitation exercise,” Venugopal said. “What was the tearing hurry to introduce this with such little notice?”

Noting that two major states are going into elections, the Alappuzha MP said that holding a “special session for this shows the true devious intentions of this fascist regime”.

Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu are set to be held on April 23, while West Bengal will head to the polls in two phases on April 23 and April 29. The votes will be counted on May 4.

Venugopal added that delimitation “fundamentally alters” the political future of a state. “There should be widespread consultation before delimitation is rolled out, and this effort to irreversibly, dangerously damage Indian democracy will not be tolerated,” he said.

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said that the bills were uploaded on BR Ambedkar’s birth anniversary and that the delimitation provisions were an “insult to his legacy and a reflection of his warning – delivered in the Constituent Assembly on November 25, 1949 – about the dangers of a government that isn’t guided by constitutional morality”.

The Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill is extremely ill-timed and poses serious questions that the Modi government must answer.

Under the garb of bringing forward women’s reservations, the BJP is looking to bulldoze a deeply flawed, unconstitutional and anti-federal…

— K C Venugopal (@kcvenugopalmp) April 14, 2026

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said that states that prioritised population control would face injustice under the proposed exercise. He added that the voice of the southern states in Parliament should not weaken due to delimitation.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin on Tuesday warned of a massive agitation in the state if its interests were harmed in the delimitation of Lok Sabha seats proposed by the Union government.

“If anything is done that harms Tamil Nadu or that disproportionately enhances the political power of northern states, we in Tamil Nadu will not remain silent,” the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief said on social media. “Tamil Nadu will rise. Tamil Nadu will register its protest with full force.”

In a video message, Stalin accused the Union government of attempting to unilaterally proceed with the exercise without consulting any political party or any state government.

“This hurried attempt to push through delimitation is a blatant assault on democracy by the BJP government,” the DMK chief said. “More than that, it is a direct assault on the rights of states.”

The chief minister said that southern states had followed population control and family planning measures as advised by the Union government.

“Is this now the punishment for having done what was asked of us with discipline?” Stalin asked.

Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy on Tuesday wrote a letter to the prime minister, saying that women’s reservation, delimitation and the increase in the Lok Sabha seats were not inter-connected.

Reddy said that the Congress supports the women’s reservation and demanded that the quota be immediately implemented in the Lok Sabha and the Assemblies.

Delimitation exercises had been carried out in the past without changing the number of seats and “only changed boundaries of constituencies within states”, said the chief minister, adding that such an exercise can be undertaken.

Reddy said that the “real contentious issue” is the proposed increase in the Lok Sabha seats.

If the exercise is conducted on a pro rata basis, without considering economic contribution and socio economic and human development outcomes, it “will lead to a severe and irreversible distortion in federal balance”, he said.

Pro rata means allocating units proportionally based on a specific factor, such as quantity, rather than equally.

Reddy also proposed a hybrid model for seat expansion. Under this approach, if Lok Sabha seats are increased from 543 to 850, half of the additional seats should be allocated based on population. The remaining half should be distributed based on Gross State Domestic Product indicators, he added.

The chief minister also asked Stalin to spearhead a united front of southern states against the proposed exercise, The Hindu reported.

Dear Shri @narendramodi Ji

I am writing this open letter to you in response to the latest proposal to increase Lok Sabha seats to 850.#LokSabhaDelimitation pic.twitter.com/4M566g78kU

— Revanth Reddy (@revanth_anumula) April 14, 2026

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said on Tuesday that the Union Government had introduced the bills on delimitation with the intention of dividing the state and India, The Hindu reported.

Speaking at an election rally at Domjur in Howrah, the Trinamool Congress chief said that the BJP was attempting a delimitation exercise without a full majority at the Centre, adding that they require the support of two parties to stay in power.

Banerjee was referring to the BJP winning 240 Lok Sabha seats in the 2024 general elections, a significant dip from its tally of 303 seats in 2019. A party or alliance requires 272 seats in the 543-member Lower House of Parliament to form a government at the Centre.

With the BJP falling 32 seats short of the majority, it had formed the Union government with the support of its partners in the National Democratic Alliance, including the Telugu Desam Party and the Janata Dal (United).

“They [BJP] are doing it [delimitation exercise] for political mileage at a time when they don’t have a majority,” the newspaper quoted her as saying. “They are in power owing to the support of two other parties. Those two parties are supporting them because they fear the ED [Enforcement Directorate] and CBI [Central Bureau of Investigation].”

Biju Janata Dal chief Naveen Patnaik on Wednesday said that his party will support the delimitation bill only if Odisha’s political rights are protected, ANI reported.

“This is not just an issue of numbers,” he said in a letter to Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi. “The bill hits directly at the spirit of cooperative federalism enshrined in the Constitution.”

“Currently, Odisha has 21 MPs, about 3.9% of the total,” ANI quoted Patnaik as having said. “If the amendment is passed, Odisha's representation will rise to 29, but its proportion will fall to 3.4%. Odisha...faces a potential 15% loss in political representation nationally.”

The former chief minister said that Odisha’s “political voice and influence will be taken away to be redistributed” among other states, quoting reports as saying that the state will be the “fourth biggest loser” in the exercise.

Communist Party of India (Marxist) MP John Brittas described the bills being introduced in the name of implementing women’s reservation as a “death warrant” for federal India.

In a social media post, the Rajya Sabha member said that the bills would strip southern states, which have successfully implemented population control measures, of their rightful political power.

Brittas noted that the Union government had rejected the Opposition’s demand for detailed discussions and consultations before proceeding with these constitutional amendments.

“In short, these bills reflect a cunning strategy to reduce southern India to a political colony of the north,” he said. “Even assuming the proposed Delimitation Commission ensures a pro-rata increase in seats, it would still deliver a severe blow to federal balance.”

He added: “In politics, absolute numbers matter far more than mere ratios.”

The bills being introduced in the name of implementing Women’s Reservation amount to a death warrant for federal India.
The accompanying Delimitation Bill, presented as part of this exercise, would strip southern states — which have successfully implemented population control… pic.twitter.com/b8TZvTiCHs

— John Brittas (@JohnBrittas) April 14, 2026

Rashtriya Janata Dal MP Manoj Jha said the bills placed before MPs “offer little clarity”, The Indian Express reported.

“Even widely discussed indications from within and around Parliament find no reflection in the text,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “This opacity raises a reasonable apprehension that the government is withholding its full intent, making the urgency around the amendment appear more façade than reform.”

In effect, the proposal opens the door to early delimitation and a substantial expansion of the Lok Sabha, Jha added.

Earlier on Monday, Congress leader Sonia Gandhi said that any delimitation of electoral constituencies that involves increasing the strength of the Lok Sabha must be politically, and not just arithmetically, equitable.

In an article published in The Hindu, Gandhi said that delimitation – the process of redrawing the boundaries of electoral constituencies – must not put smaller states and states that have been pioneers in family planning at an absolute or relative disadvantage.

Draft legislation on delimitation

Although speculation about the amendment to the law had been rife in political circles for the past two weeks, copies of the draft legislation were shared with MPs for the first time on Tuesday. Parliament will reconvene for three days starting Thursday.

Article 82 of the Constitution states that after every census is completed, the allocation of Lok Sabha seats to each state must be adjusted based on changes in its population.

The current composition of the Lok Sabha is based on the 1971 Census. According to the 84th Amendment Act of 2001, constituency boundaries were frozen until the first census after 2026.

The census, which began on April 1, is expected to conclude in 2027.

The bill that will be introduced in Parliament proposes to amend Article 82 of the Constitution to remove the entire proviso. This will pave the way for delimitation to take place based on the latest census held in 2011.

In its statement explaining the bill’s objectives, the government said that while freezing the seats on the basis of population in the 1971 census served an important policy purpose, “the country’s demographic profile has since undergone substantial changes” as reflected in the latest census.

It also cited “significant inter-state and intra-state population shifts, rapid urbanisation and migration, and disproportionate growth in certain regions, resulting in wide disparities in the population and the constituencies”.

The amendments will also operationalise the 33% quota for women in the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies under the 2023 Women’s Reservation Act “through delimitation exercise to be undertaken on the basis of the population figures of the latest published census”, the government said.

The latest published census was in 2011.

It said that the next census and the delimitation exercise after that “will take considerable time and thus, delay the effective and dedicated participation of women in our democratic polity”.

Also read: How Modi government aims to use women’s representation to expand Lok Sabha using 2011 census numbers

Nineteen persons were killed and 17 injured on Tuesday after superheated steam from a boiler tube blast rained on them at a power plant owned by Vedanta Limited in Chhattisgarh’s Sakti district, AFP reported.

The injured are being treated at several hospitals, the district police chief told the news agency.

The explosion is said to have taken place at about 2.30 pm in a steel tube carrying superheated steam from the boiler to the turbine at the power plant located in Singhitarai village, PTI reported.

An unidentified official told The Indian Express that after the tube burst, superheated steam with a temperature of about 600 degrees Celsius fell on workers having their lunch. “Some others who were walking in open spaces also got injured,” the official said.

Ajit Naskar, one among the several workers from West Bengal at the plant, told reporters that they had been hired to paint the premises, The Indian Express reported.

“The incident happened around 2.30 pm when we were just starting our work post-lunch,” the newspaper quoted Naskar as saying. “Suddenly I heard a blast and there was smoke everywhere. We were at a height of 17 metres. I was in one corner so I hid inside a cupboard.”

He added that about 40 to 50 persons were doing the painting work at the time of the incident.

In a statement, Vedanta Limited said that the incident had occurred at the Unit 1 boiler of the power plant in Singhitarai, The Indian Express reported.

“Our immediate priority is to ensure the best possible medical assistance and treatment for all those affected,” the newspaper quoted the statement as saying. “We are extending full support to the injured and are closely coordinating with medical teams and local authorities.”

It added that an investigation has been initiated into the incident.

District Collector Amrit Vikas Topno said that the sub-divisional magistrate of Dabhra has been asked to conduct an inquiry and submit a report within 30 days, PTI reported.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his condolences and announced an ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh from the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund for the next of kin of the deceased. He also announced Rs 50,000 for the injured.

Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai also described the incident as “extremely distressing and heart-wrenching”. He added that the state government will provide financial assistance of Rs 5 lakh to the families of the deceased workers and Rs 50,000 to the injured.

The Bharatiya Janata Party leader added that instructions had been issued to ensure proper and free treatment for all the injured.

He also said that the Bilaspur commissioner has been ordered to investigate the incident.

“Strict action will be taken against anyone found guilty,” Deo said on social media. “The government is continuously monitoring the entire matter and stands in full sensitivity and commitment with the affected families.”

Vedanta said that it will provide Rs 35 lakh compensation and employment to the families of the persons who died. The company said it will give Rs 15 lakh to those injured, continue paying their salaries until they recover, and provide counselling support.

The Opposition Congress demanded that a first information report be filed against the plant management and a judicial inquiry be conducted into the incident, PTI reported.

Alleging negligence on the part of the plant management, Congress leader Sushil Anand Shukla on Wednesday also accused the state government of attempting to shield those responsible.

He demanded compensation of Rs 1 crore to the families of the deceased and Rs 50 lakh for the injured.

The Andhra Pradesh Police on Wednesday detained Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party Media General Secretary Pudi Srihari for social media posts about Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, PTI reported.

The police alleged that Srihari had shared posts that contained “strong language and visuals”, which were allegedly violent and “inflammatory”, NDTV reported.

The posts could disturb public order, the news outlet quoted the police as having alleged.

The YSR Congress Party condemned the detention of Srihari, describing it as an “illegal arrest”.

In a social media post by the party, Tirupati MP M Gurumoorthy accused the police of “illegitimately” seizing Srihari’s mobile phones and laptop during the “illegal arrest”.

The police confirmed that Srihari’s electronic devices were seized, adding that he will be produced before the court, The Hindu reported.

“The ruling TDP [Telugu Desam Party] is making a mockery of democracy by enforcing the ‘red book constitution’ to book illegal and false cases on the YSRCP functionaries and leaders in the state of Andhra Pradesh,” the party quoted Gurumoorthy as having alleged.

He said that the party “will knock on the judiciary to fight for justice and to expose the undemocratic practices of the ruling coalition”.

Tirupati MP condemns illegal arrest of YSRCP general secretary (Media)

Tirupati MP Dr M Gurumoorthy has strongly condemned the illegal arrest of Pudi Srihari, former CPRO to former Chief Minister Y.S.Jaganmohan Reddy, who is serving as the YSRCP General Secretary (media… pic.twitter.com/KVhMMMGaFU

— YSR Congress Party (@YSRCParty) April 15, 2026

Stand-up comic detained for joke about Andhra deputy CM

In a separate case, stand-up comedian Anudeep Katikala was detained by the Andhra Pradesh Police on Tuesday in Uttar Pradesh’s Prayagraj for his jokes about Deputy Chief Minister K Pawan Kalyan, The Indian Express reported.

Katikala, a resident of Hyderabad, was in Prayagraj to visit his parents who live there, when he was arrested.

The police in Kakinada said that the comedian was arrested in a case filed based on a complaint by Jana Sena Party leader B Venkata Krishna who accused Katikala of “spreading false information through social media to disrupt peace and order, inciting enmity and creating pandemonium”, The News Minute reported.

Kalyan, an actor-turned-politician, is the chief of the Jana Sena Party.

The comedian has faced threats of physical violence from Kalyan’s supporters over a clip he recently posted of his stand-up performance where he joked about Tollywood actors and fan culture.

Katikala faces charges under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to defamation, statements containing false information, spreading rumours or alarming news with the intent to promote enmity between different groups and insulting the modesty of a woman.

He is also accused of publishing obscene material in electronic form under the Information Technology Act.

Several persons were injured and two vehicles of the security personnel were torched after a clash broke out between residents and security forces in Manipur’s Bishnupur on Tuesday.

The clash began after protesters attempted to intercept a vehicle in the Thinungei area, suspecting that armed members of Kuki groups were travelling in it, India TodayNE reported. The situation turned violent as the occupants allegedly refused to engage with those who intercepted the vehicle.

The protesters had blockaded an area along the Tiddim Road amid unrest in the region in connection with a rocket blast in Bishnupur’s Tronglaobi on April 7, which killed two children.

After the clash on Tuesday, security personnel were deployed, who fired tear gas shells to force the crowd to disperse, India TodayNE reported.

The Manipur Police said that on Tuesday morning, a team comprising the Central Industrial Security Force, Assam Rifles and Manipur Airport Police arrested a suspected drug peddler named Mohammed Sabir Ahamed at Imphal airport.

The authorities had seized suspected brown sugar from his checked-in baggage.

The police claimed that Ahamed, during interrogation, disclosed information about a concealed cache of arms and ammunition in the Kwakta area of the Bishnupur district. Security forces were travelling to the area when they were stopped near Thinungei, the police said.

They added that the movement of security personnel “was obstructed by local persons following the spread of mischievous and unverified rumours regarding the identity and purpose of the personnel”. The situation escalated when some members of the group turned violent, the police said.

The crowd was forced to disperse using “minimum necessary force”, including tear gas, the police said. “During the incident, some members of the public sustained injuries, and necessary medical assistance was provided,” they added.

Four persons have been arrested in connection with the violence and the police are attempting to identify others who were allegedly involved.

The Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday conducted raids at the home of Aam Aadmi Party Rajya Sabha MP Ashok Mittal, as well as several other premises linked to him in Punjab and Haryana, in connection with alleged foreign exchange violations, PTI reported.

This came about two weeks after Mittal replaced AAP leader Raghav Chadha as the party’s deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha.

Among the premises raided were the campus of Lovely Professional University in Punjab’s Phagwara city, and two linked institutions in Haryanas’ Gurugram, Tetr College of Business and Masters Union College of Business, PTI quoted unidentified ED officials as saying.

Mittal is the founder and chancellor of Lovely Professional University.

The Enforcement Directorate also conducted raids at other entities that are part of the Lovely Group, including Lovely Autos, Lovely Sweets, and the Lovely Distance Education Centre, The Tribune reported. The central agency also searched premises linked to the MP’s family members, including his brothers Ramesh Mittal and Naresh Mittal.

The Enforcement Directorate’s action was based on an inquiry into alleged violations of the Foreign Exchange Management Act.

Commenting on the raids, Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal remarked that Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeared to have begun preparations for the Punjab elections, expected to be held next year. “But the people of Punjab will not tolerate this,” he said in a social media post. “They will give a befitting reply to the [Bharatiya Janata Party].”

Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann too alleged that the raids were part of the BJP’s preparations for elections, and described the ED’s actions as “typical Modi style”.

भाजपा द्वारा पंजाब चुनाव की तैयारी शुरू… आम आदमी पार्टी के राज्य सभा सांसद अशोक मित्तल के घर और यूनिवर्सिटी में ED की रेड..typical मोदी स्टाइल..
हम भो पत्ते नहीं
जो शाख से टूट कर
गिर जाएँगे
आंधियो को कह दो अपनी औक़ात में रहें

— Bhagwant Mann (@BhagwantMann) April 15, 2026

A Class 5 student on Tuesday died and more than 100 fell ill after eating allegedly contaminated or stale food at a government-run Adivasi residential school in Odisha’s Mayurbhanj district, ANI reported.

On Tuesday, the students of the Kakabandha Ashram School in the district’s Rasgovindpur block on Sunday complained of discomfort and fell ill after eating a meal that included fermented rice or “pakhala”, mashed potatoes and mango chutney, The New Indian Express reported.

The dishes were “not mentioned in the authorised menu”, PTI quoted unidentified officials as having claimed.

More than 100 students were taken to healthcare facilities. Sixty-seven of them were transferred to hospital in Baripada in critical condition, PTI reported.

Among them, Rupali Besra, who was admitted in the intensive care unit on Monday, died a day later during treatment, the news agency quoted Mayurbhanj District Collector Hema Kanta Say as saying.

A police case has been registered based on a complaint filed by Besra’s mother, Say added.

The school’s headteacher, Jayant Kumar Panigrahi, has been suspended for negligence on duty, PTI reported.

On Tuesday, Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi expressed grief and announced a compensation of Rs 3 lakh to her family.

Karanjia Sub Collector Dayasindhu Parida told ANI that the government will provide Rs 7 lakh ex-gratia to the family of the student.

The residents of the area where the student belonged clashed with the police during her funeral on Tuesday, ANI reported. They attacked the police vehicle carrying her body with firecrackers and tried to block the funeral procession, demanding justice and enhanced compensation.

The police resorted to lathi-charge to control the situation, the news agency reported.

About 250 Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshis were feared missing after their boat capsized in the Andaman Sea, the United Nations’ refugee and migration agencies said on Tuesday.

The persons include women and children. The trawler had departed from the border town of Teknaf in southern Bangladesh and was on its way to Malaysia. It reportedly sank because of heavy winds, rough seas and overcrowding, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration stated.

It was unclear when the accident had occurred. The whereabouts of the persons on Wednesday were also unclear.

Hundreds of thousands of persons from the ethnic Rohingya community have been fleeing into Bangladesh since 2017 after a violent crackdown by the Myanmar government in the mid-2010s. More than a million Rohingya refugees are currently living in Bangladesh.

The incident reflects the “dire consequences of protracted displacement and the absence of durable solutions” for the Rohingya community, the UN agencies said on Tuesday.

The violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state has faded the community’s hopes of safe return in the near future, it said.

“Shrinking humanitarian assistance, challenging living conditions in refugee camps and limited access to education and livelihoods are pushing refugees to take such dangerous sea journeys in search of safety and opportunity,” the agencies added.

Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday filed a fresh affidavit seeking that Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma recuse herself from hearing the Central Bureau of Investigation’s challenge to his discharge in the Delhi liquor policy case, flagging her children’s empanelment with the Union Government, Live Law reported.

Kejriwal’s affidavit stated that advocates Ishaan Sharma and Shambhavi Sharma, the judge’s son and daughter, have been empanelled as counsels by the Centre.

Kejriwal highlighted that they are both allocated cases by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who is appearing before the court representing the CBI, Hindustan Times reported.

“The very law officer and legal establishment representing the prosecuting side before this Hon’ble Court is also part of the institutional mechanism by which Central Government cases and Government work are allocated to the immediate family members of the Hon’ble Judge hearing the matter,” Kejriwal said.

An empanelled counsel is a lawyer selected by a government body, public sector undertaking or organization to represent their legal cases for a designated period.

Kejriwal argued that the apprehensions of bias are “direct, grave and impossible to ignore”, Live Law reported.

On Wednesday, the former Delhi chief minister told the court that he had not been given enough time to file a rejoinder and had left the courtroom on Monday with the court’s permission as the hearing continued beyond the usual court hours, ANI reported.

He argued that this impeded his right to a fair hearing.

On Monday, Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma had reserved her verdict in a previous plea filed by Kejriwal and others who were discharged in the case.

During that hearing, Kejriwal, who argued the matter himself, had verbally submitted that there was a social media discussion regarding the professional association of the judge’s children with the Union government, Live Law reported.

He said then that established traditions have seen judges recuse themselves if their kin had associations with any of the parties appearing in the matter.

Videos of Kejriwal arguing his case in person before the High Court on Monday had been shared widely on social media. However, the High Court subsequently directed the police to remove unauthorised videos of Kejriwal’s arguments from social media platforms, Bar and Bench reported.

The case

The CBI had alleged irregularities in the Delhi government’s liquor excise policy, which has since been scrapped. Based on the CBI case, the Enforcement Directorate also launched an investigation into allegations of money-laundering.

The policy came into effect in November 2021. It was withdrawn in July 2022 with Vinai Kumar Saxena, the Delhi lieutenant governor at the time, recommending an investigation into the alleged irregularities of the policy.

The two central agencies alleged that the Aam Aadmi Party government at the time modified the liquor policy by increasing the commission for wholesalers from 5% to 12%. This allegedly facilitated the receipt of bribes from wholesalers who had a substantial market share and turnover.

On February 27, the trial court discharged Kejriwal and 22 others accused by the CBI in the case. There was no overarching conspiracy or criminal intent in the excise policy, the Rouse Avenue Courts had ruled.

The trial court also criticised the central agency for implicating Kejriwal without any cogent material. It said that the chargesheet had several gaps not supported by any witnesses or statements.

However, the High Court on March 9 stayed the adverse observations made by the trial court about the CBI. The matter was heard by Sharma, who prima facie observed that the trial court’s findings were erroneous.

Kejriwal had written to the chief justice of the High Court seeking the transfer of the case from Sharma to another judge, but the request was declined. The former Delhi chief minister had contended that no specific reasons had been recorded for commenting against the trial court’s order.

He also noted that the judge had earlier denied bail to several persons accused in the case who had been subsequently granted relief by the Supreme Court.

The Aam Aadmi Party chief sought the transfer on the ground of a “grave, bona fide, and reasonable apprehension that the matter may not receive a hearing marked by impartiality and neutrality”.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday stayed the transit anticipatory bail granted to Congress leader Pawan Khera by Telangana High Court in a case registered by the Assam Police, Bar and Bench reported.

Transit anticipatory bail is a temporary protection from arrest granted in one state to enable persons to approach the courts where the case has been filed.

The High Court had granted relief to Khera on April 10 after the Congress leader approached it seeking protection following a first information report filed by Riniki Bhuyan Sarma, wife of Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.

The FIR was filed after the Congress leader claimed on April 5 that he had documentary evidence that showed that Riniki Bhuyan Sarma holds passports of the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Antigua and Barbuda. Himanta Biswa Sarma and his wife refuted the allegations.

The case was registered at the Crime Branch Police Station in Guwahati on charges of defamation, forgery and criminal conspiracy.

After the High Court issued its order, the Assam government approached the Supreme Court.

In the Supreme Court on Wednesday, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Assam Police, said that there was nothing in Khera’s petition that established territorial jurisdiction in Telangana, Live Law reported.

He added that the High Court also overlooked the fact that one of the offences the Congress leader had been accused of carried a maximum punishment of 10-year imprisonment.

The court noted that Khera had earlier submitted during the hearing that his wife was living in Hyderabad. In response, the solicitor general said that her Aadhaar card showed her to be a resident of Delhi.

“If this is the case, a person can buy properties across the country, and seek anticipatory bail from the places they choose,” Live Law quoted Mehta as saying. “This is forum-shopping, if not forum-choosing.”

Describing it as a “complete abuse of process”, the solicitor general added that Khera, in his petition, had not explained why he could not approach courts in Assam or whether his wife owned property in Hyderabad.

On its part, the Supreme Court observed that it was “surprised” by the High Court’s order.

On April 7, the Assam Police went to Khera’s home in Delhi to question him in connection with his claims about the Assam chief minister and his wife.

Khera was not at home when the police arrived, and the authorities searched the house, said Assam Police Assistant Commissioner Debojit Nath.

Nath added that electronic devices and “incriminating material” were seized from Khera’s home. However, he did not disclose what the material was.

On April 6, Himanta Biswa Sarma alleged that the documents cited by the Congress had been supplied by a Pakistani social media group.

The chief minister had also claimed that the Congress had used details from a passport that had been allegedly lost. This document, he claimed, had been uploaded to the Pakistani social media group. “They photoshopped it,” he said at a press conference.

The Maharashtra government has made it mandatory for all licensed rickshaw and taxi drivers in the state to have basic knowledge of Marathi from May 1, PTI quoted transport minister Pratap Sarnaik as saying on Tuesday. The government will conduct a statewide inspection drive to enforce the rule, the minister added.

In a statement issued by his office, Sarnaik warned that the licences of drivers who are unable to clear the Marathi proficiency test will be cancelled.

Unidentified officials told The Hindu that the test will assess whether a driver can read a signboard or document in Marathi, write a basic sentence and hold a simple conversation in the language.

In his statement, the minister also said that existing rules requiring knowledge of the local language for issuing driving licences were already in place, but were widely being ignored.

Sarnaik claimed that the transport department had received several complaints – especially from the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar and Nagpur – about drivers being unable or unwilling to communicate with passengers in Marathi, The Economic Times reported.

“It is everyone’s duty to learn the language of the region where they conduct business,” the newspaper quoted the Shiv Sena leader as saying. “While it is important to be proud of one’s mother tongue, it is equally vital to respect the state’s language while working there.”

The enforcement of the mandate from May 1, which coincides with Maharashtra Day, will not be limited to drivers alone. Sarnaik said that action will also be taken against transport officials found guilty of issuing licences in violation of the mandate.

In 2025, several attacks were reported in Maharashtra on persons for not speaking or allegedly insulting Marathi.

Bharatiya Janata Party leader Samrat Choudhary on Wednesday took oath as the chief minister of Bihar, replacing Janata Dal (United) chief Nitish Kumar.

Samrat Choudhary is the first BJP chief minister of Bihar.

JD(U) leaders Bijendra Prasad Yadav and Vijay Kumar Choudhary were sworn in as deputy chief ministers in the new government.

Kumar, Bihar’s longest-serving chief minister, resigned from his post on Tuesday. He was the chief minister for nearly two decades in all, having taken oath for the post ten times.

Soon after Kumar resigned on Tuesday, the BJP elected Samrat Choudhary, who was the deputy chief minister in the government led by the JD(U) chief, as its legislative party leader. Later in the day, he was also elected the leader of the National Democratic Alliance in the state.

Samrat Choudhary’s political career

Samrat Choudhary, who hails from Bihar’s Munger district, entered politics in 1990 as a member of the Rashtriya Janata Dal led by Lalu Prasad Yadav. He was first inducted as a minister in 1999 in the RJD government headed by Rabri Devi, where he held the agriculture portfolio.

However, Samrat Choudhary resigned soon afterwards as he was under 25 years of age, the minimum required to hold a ministerial post.

In 2000, Samrat Choudhary won the Parbatta Assembly seat as an RJD candidate. He went on to become the party’s chief whip in 2010.

Samrat Choudhary shifted to the JD(U) in 2014 and was also said to have orchestrated the crossover of 13 RJD MLAs to the Nitish Kumar-led party, according to The Indian Express. He was appointed Minister of Urban Development and Housing during the nine-month tenure of Jitan Ram Manjhi as chief minister.

Samrat Choudhary joined the BJP in 2017 and became the leader of the Opposition in the Bihar Legislative Council in 2022. When Kumar left the Mahagathbandhan and returned to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance in 2024, Samrat Choudhary was appointed deputy chief minister.

Nitish Kumar’s resignation

Kumar’s resignation came after he was elected to the Upper House of Parliament on March 16 for the first time. He was sworn in as a Rajya Sabha MP on Friday.

In the Bihar elections held in November, the JD(U) had won 85 seats, almost doubling its tally of 43 seats from the 2020 polls. However, the BJP emerged as the single-largest party with 89 of the 101 constituencies it contested.

Kumar, while announcing his candidature for the Rajya Sabha elections on March 5, had said that he had desired to serve in all four legislative roles at the state and central level – a member of the Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council, as well as of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.

He was a member of the Legislative Council and he had previously served as an MLA and a Lok Sabha MP.

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Two days before a special session of Parliament, the Union government shared three bills with MPs. If passed, they would lead to political constituencies being redrawn on the basis of population data from the 2011 census.

The Constitution 131st Amendment Bill proposes to increase the strength of the Lok Sabha to 850 from 543. This will be done by amending Article 82 of the Constitution to remove the provision that froze the number of Lok Sabha seats based on the 1971 census.

The bill also proposes to allow Parliament, based on simple majority, to decide which census will serve as the basis of delimitation. While the 2026 Delimitation Bill is silent about which census will be used, the government stated that it will be based on the “latest published census”. That would mean the enumeration exercise that took place in 2011. The move is expected to reduce representation of the southern states, which have a slower population growth.

According to the proposed amendment of the 2023 Women’s Reservation Act, constituencies in the Lok Sabha and the state Assemblies will be reserved for women on rotational basis after each round of delimitation. Read on.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin warned of a massive agitation in the state if its interests were harmed in the delimitation exercise. “If anything is done that harms Tamil Nadu or that disproportionately enhances the political power of northern states, we in Tamil Nadu will not remain silent,” said the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief.

He also accused the Union government of attempting to unilaterally proceed with the exercise without consulting any political party or any state government. Read on.

Hindi belt Opposition parties support delimitation, disagree with ally MK Stalin, reports Anant Gupta

Following protests by factory workers in Noida, the Uttar Pradesh government announced an interim hike in minimum wages for skilled and semi-skilled labourers. However, workers said that the revised rates were insufficient and demanded further hikes.

Effective retrospectively from April 1, the revised wages set the minimum monthly pay at Rs 13,690 for unskilled workers, up from Rs 11,313. The pay for semi-skilled workers was increased to Rs 15,059 and Rs 16,868 for skilled workers in Gautam Buddh Nagar and Ghaziabad.

The Uttar Pradesh Police also said that it had arrested more than 350 persons in connection with the workers’ protest that turned violent on Monday. Read on.

Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar resigned as the Bihar chief minister on Tuesday. Soon after, the National Democratic Alliance in the state elected Deputy Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary as its legislative party leader.

Choudhary will be the BJP’s first chief minister in Bihar. Kumar resigned from the post three days after he took the oath as a Rajya Sabha MP for the first time.

In a social media post, Kumar said that the new government in Bihar “will have my full cooperation and guidance”. Earlier on Tuesday, he recommended that the governor dissolve the Cabinet. Read on.

As Nitish Kumar quits as Bihar chief minister, what will happen to his politics of social justice? write Ashwani Kumar

Vinesh Chandel, director of political consultancy I-PAC, was remanded to the custody of the Enforcement Directorate for 10 days in a money-laundering case linked to an alleged coal smuggling operation in West Bengal. The court said that the accused was evasive during the investigation and may tamper with evidence.

The ED has alleged that a hawala operator linked to an alleged coal smuggling syndicate facilitated transactions worth tens of crores of rupees to Indian PAC Consulting Private Limited, the registered entity of I-PAC.

The political consultancy is managing the Trinamool Congress’ election campaign for the upcoming Assembly polls, which will be held in two phases on April 23 and April 29. Read on.

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There is a story that, a few decades ago, used to make audiences at development conferences visibly uncomfortable. A researcher would ask: in which city is infant mortality higher – Thiruvananthapuram, capital of one of India’s poorer states, or New York City, in one of the world’s wealthiest countries?

The answer, documented by economists including Amartya Sen and Jean Drèze in their work on human development, was New York.

Kerala’s decades of public investment in health, education and women’s empowerment had produced outcomes that shamed far richer places. It was, and remains, one of the most striking arguments ever made for what committed socialist governments can do with limited means.

I was reminded of this recently – not by a seminar paper, but by potholes on the street where I live.

Some years ago, a colleague of mine from the Centre for Development Studies, who was serving as finance minister of Kerala’s Left Democratic Front government, briefly held additional charge of the Public Works Department.

He wasted no time. He put the PWD on a campaign footing: photograph every pothole, set targets, repair them fast. As a finance minister he understood the numbers, but he also understood something simpler and more powerful – that every cyclist, motorcyclist, and car driver who had learned to navigate Kerala’s cratered roads on the daily commute would immediately feel, in their bones, that the government was paying attention. The political payoff of small mercies, he knew, can be substantial.

Treating a symptom

I thought of him on April 11, when I listened to Zohran Mamdani speaking to Al Jazeera. Mamdani, of course, is the mayor of New York and arguably the second-most-prominent elected figure in the United States after the President. The subject was not foreign policy or fiscal reform. It was, importantly, about potholes.

In Mamdani’s first hundred days as mayor, his administration has filled 100,000 potholes. He was careful to give credit where it belonged: to the 300,000 municipal workers who are, in his words, the beating heart of the city.

But he was equally clear that filling potholes is only treating the symptom. His workers are now investigating the structural causes of road failure and the city plans to repave more than a thousand miles of road.

The pothole, for Mamdani, is not a trivial problem. It is a test. When citizens must navigate crumbling roads every day, their faith in the capacity of government to deliver anything – let alone the larger ambitions of a socialist programme – is quietly eroded. Fix the road and you begin to restore that faith.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani helped fill the 100,000th pothole of his administration on Staten Island Monday.

The mayor said it’s the most potholes the Department of Transportation has filled in the first 100 days of a year in more than a decade. pic.twitter.com/ncK3b9Ioui

— Spectrum News NY1 (@NY1) April 6, 2026

Mamdani invoked a telling distinction, between what he called “sewer socialism” – the pejorative term for a left politics content to manage drains and dustbins while leaving deeper structures untouched – and what he called “sidewalk socialism”, a politics that begins with what people experience in their daily lives and uses that trust to build towards something more ambitious.

His larger programme includes taxing the wealthiest individuals and corporations to close a $5 billion budget deficit, so that the working-class people who built New York can finally afford to live in it. He aims to expand childcare and confront the housing crisis that has made the city uninhabitable for ordinary people.

But none of that, he seemed to suggest, is possible without first demonstrating that government works – that when something is broken in front of you, someone will come and fix it.

The parallel with Kerala is not accidental. Kerala’s Left built its political legitimacy over decades through exactly this combination: visible public goods – roads, schools, hospitals, ration shops – delivered with enough consistency that citizens came to believe the state was, at least partially, on their side.

The infant mortality statistic that once startled conference rooms was not a miracle. It was the cumulative result of nurses showing up, of primary health centres being staffed, of a public distribution system that functioned. The grand vision was made credible by mundane execution.

Both Kerala and New York are, in their very different ways, conducting an experiment in whether the Left can govern – not just agitate, not just critique, but actually run things. The conditions could hardly be more different: a state of 35 million people in tropical India with a long tradition of mass mobilisation, and the financial capital of the world, politically turbulent, fiscally strained, demographically fractured.

Yet the instinct is recognisably the same: start with what people walk on, drive on, live with every day. Earn the right to be heard on the harder questions.

But there is a complication closer to home, and it is one I cannot ignore. Kerala went to the polls on April 9. The Left Democratic Front is seeking a third consecutive term, a rare ambition in Indian electoral politics.

In Kozhikode, 30-year-old Faizal staged a unique protest by bathing in a pothole filled with rainwater. Locals have demanded repairs for 3 years with no response. #Kerala pic.twitter.com/k55oDpJGm5

— Ashish (@KP_Aashish) September 29, 2025

Yet its second term gave many of us pause. The government pursued infrastructure on a grand scale: six-lane highways, new ports, tourist circuits, and a quietly expanding embrace of private enterprise in health and education. These are not without merit. But they sit uneasily with the tradition of grassroots public investment that made Kerala’s development model famous in the first place – the tradition that once produced those startling infant mortality figures.

As it happens, the road next to my home was tarred a few months ago. It is already full of potholes – serious ones. I had always assumed that bad roads were a problem particular to countries like India, the price of thin budgets and thinner institutions. Learning that the richest city in the world has the same problem was, I confess, a small and somewhat rueful consolation.

The pothole outside my home is, I suspect, a small symptom of shifted priorities. When governments reach for the large and the visible – the highway interchange, the gleaming hospital-corporation – the lane outside the ordinary citizen’s home can wait.

People notice. Even those of us with a lifelong sympathy for the left, for the labouring class, for the idea that government exists to serve the many, are raising an eyebrow.

The pothole is not a trivial problem. It is a mirror.

John Kurien is a reflective development practitioner. He lives in Kozhikode.

Every year, Mohammed Sajjad’s two sons travel nearly 1,800 km from their home in Bihar’s Araria district to Karnataka’s Bidar to attend classes for eight months at a madrasa.

“They get free education, free meals and free books there,” Sajjad said. “We don’t have a very good education system in Bihar so I started sending them to the Bidar madrasa three years ago.”

On the morning of April 11, Sajjad’s two sons – 13-year-old Shahnawaz and 11-year-old Shahbaz – boarded the Patna Purna Express from Patna station along with 13 other boys from their village, Kundilpur. They were accompanied by their 21-year-old teacher, Mohammad Zahir, who is from the same village, Sajjad said. They were supposed to reach Maharashtra the next day and travel onwards in a bus to Bidar.

But that night, around 8, a team of Government Railway Police and Railway Protection Force forced the children to alight from the train at Katni railway station in Madhya Pradesh, alleging that they were being trafficked. Their teacher, Zahir, was booked under Section 143 (4) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which relates to child trafficking.

The children with Zahir were not the only group to face scrutiny. The team of railway police said they “rescued” 163 children, all between the ages of seven and 18, from different coaches of the same train. Eight men accompanying them were booked.

While the majority of the children were from Bihar’s Araria and Supaul districts, 10 children were from Uttar Pradesh’s Banda district. The parents of several children in Kundilpur categorically told Scroll that their children were not being trafficked.

Sajjad said he knew Zahir, who had studied at the Bidar madrassa and become a hafiz – someone who has memorised the Quran. “We all sent our children with him because we knew him,” he said.

Most parents in Kundilpur village are too poor to afford travel fare to Madhya Pradesh to bring their children back. The village pradhan has written a letter to the Government Railway Police to confirm that the children were not trafficked and had permission to study at madrassa.

The parents have also recorded a video, stating that the 15 children from the village were going to study at a madrasa and asked that they be released. They sent the video to the Madhya Pradesh police over WhatsApp.

“Police proof mangta hai, gareeb aadmi kaise jayega wahan tak,” a woman says in the video. ‘The police are asking for proof. How will a poor person travel so far to give proof?’

“This is harassment,” Mohammad Salauddin, Zahir’s brother, told Scroll. “Just because a Muslim man is accompanying some Muslim children, he is being targeted.”

Vijay Gothariya, deputy superintendent of police, Government Railway Police, did not respond to calls or messages from Scroll asking for more details about the incident.

This is not the first time that children travelling from Araria to a madrasa have been stopped in this manner. In 2023, 59 children from the district accompanied by five men were stopped by the railway police and admitted to shelter homes in Jalgaon and Nashik. The five men, who taught at madrasas in Maharashtra, were arrested on charges of trafficking even though their parents confirmed that the children were being sent to the madrassa.

A year later, the government railway police closed the case against the men, saying that there was no evidence against them.

The complaint

According to the first information report, which Scroll has seen, the police action was prompted by information from a member of Katni’s child welfare committee, Durgesh Sharma.

When Scroll contacted Sharma, he confirmed that he had flagged a possible trafficking incident to the police and the train was intercepted. But he refused to comment further. Sharma was present at the station when the children were deboarded.

Yogesh Singh Baghel, the chairperson of Katni child welfare committee, said he was out of Katni and did not know the details of the case.

The FIR states that 163 children were found accompanied by eight adults with no documentation and “with intention to push the children into child labour”.

Sajjad, however, denied the police claim. “I had given my sons my Aadhaar card and their Aadhaar cards,” he said. “My contact number was with them. The police could have called me to verify. But I did not receive any call in the last two days. Now I don’t know how to bring my children from Katni.”

Sajjad added that he was unaware where the police had taken his sons.

According to the FIR, the police found a 34-year-old man travelling with over 100 children from Bagadehra village in Araria district, while a 27-year-old man was found travelling separately with a group of 10 children from Supaul.

Three children from Nasaini village in Uttar Pradesh’s Banda district were travelling with another 21-year-old man. Another 20 children from Taran village in Araria were traveling with a 23-year-old man. Ten children, in separate groups, were travelling from Mahalgaon in Araria with two more men, aged 19 and 30 respectively.

The first information report does not say that the children were part of a coordinated trafficking effort.

Scroll was able to verify that 30 children from Kundilpur in Araria and a village in Supaul were headed for the Darul Imamdiya madrasa in Bidar. Its maulana Mohd Zakir told Scroll that the madrasa has a boarding capacity of 35 children and was expecting the children to arrive from Bihar.

“We have written to the Madhya Pradesh police and we have submitted pictures of our madrasa as proof,” he said.

Another 100 children from Bagadehra, also in Araria district, were headed for Jamia Ashrafia Anjuman-e-Islamia in Maharashtra’s Udgir, parents of three children told Scroll. They were accompanied by their teacher Saddam Hussain, who has been named in the FIR.

A letter from the Anjuman-e-Islamia madrasa, which Scroll has seen, confirms the same. It states that 100 students from Bihar were travelling on April 11 in a train to Nanded railway station to the madrasa, where they are taught English, Marathi, mathematics along with religious texts.

Azizur Rahman, who heads the madrasa, said Hussain had this letter on him in the train. “The children were supposed to get off at Nanded station and take a bus to Udgir,” Rahman said, adding that Hussain worked as a teacher since 2016 at the madrasa and helped several students travel from Bihar.

For now, the children have been housed at government-run child protection homes in Jabalpur and Katni. “The matter is under investigation. Till we are able to ascertain that it is not a case of child labour, we will keep them at shelter home,” said Manish Vyas, chairperson of Jabalpur’s Child Welfare Committee.

Mohammad Mehdi, spokesperson of Association for Protection of Civil Rights in Jabalpur, said the eight men detained have cooperated with the police and provided all documents. “We are legally representing them. There were different groups of children from different villages. They were headed to different madrasas,” he said.

Zahir, who has been named an accused, was detained on Saturday night and released on Sunday. He told Scroll that they tried to explain that the children were going to a madrasa with permission from parents. “We even called the madrasa and the management spoke to the police,” Zahir said. “We were ready to call the parents. But we were detained even after all this.”

AK Khan, a local activist in Katni, said he is helping the children contact their parents. “We spoke with some parents,” he told Scroll. “It is clearly not a case of child trafficking.”

Long journey for parents

For many parents, the free education in these madrasas is the only hope for a better future for their children.

Mohd Ashique sells vegetables in Bagadehra and never finished primary school.

He has four children who have been studying at Jamia Ashrafia Anjuman-e-Islamia madrassa in Udgir for the last two years. “My children were not regular in school in Bihar,” he said. “They did not enjoy going to class. We thought of sending them to Maharashtra for a better education.”

The boarding, meals and education are free. Ashique only has to pay their train fare.

Once he sent his children to Udgir, more parents from the village were interested. “The teacher Saddam Hussain is from our village,” Ashique said. “Last year, he took 50 to 60 children with him. This year, several parents wanted to send their children and the number rose to 100.”

Among the 100 children are Nursaba Jumni’s two sons Rashid and Asif.

She told Scroll that the school’s form and identification proof were with Saddam Hussain. “We don’t understand why the police detained him and our children when he had the paperwork,” she said.

Both Jumni and Ashique came to know that their children were detained in Katni from television news.

“The police called us later and asked us to bring identification proof, ration card, Aadhaar card and documents related to the school. I have all this in my bag,” she told Scroll on Monday evening from a train, a day after she – and 40 other parents – left for Katni.

The journey to Katni has cost each parent Rs 1,000-Rs 1,500. “We first took a bus to Patna,” said Jalal Khan, whose 12-year-old son Guddu was also detained. “From there we took the train. We are labourers. We don’t have money to travel. But there was no option. The police asked us to submit proof and take our children.”

Khan reached Katni late on Monday night. He and other parents from his village slept outside the police station. He said they were summoned on Tuesday afternoon with all documents.

Ashique, the vegetable seller, was among them. He said the police had no reason to interrupt the children’s journey. “The teacher had the necessary documents,” he said. “Ye prashasan pareshan kar rahi hai bas.” This government is just harassing us.

For weeks, the Modi government has claimed that it was convening a special session of Parliament to speedily implement the Women’s Reservation Act. However, on Tuesday, two days before the session is to begin, draft bills shared with MPs reveal the government wants to make deeply consequential changes to the composition of the Lok Sabha that go far beyond increasing political representation for women.

The bills, if passed by Parliament, could lead to political constituencies being redrawn on the basis of population data from the 2011 census. This could significantly reduce representation for the southern states since the current representation is based on the 1971 census. Since then, birthrates in southern states have been lower than in northern ones.

The special session is being held when campaigning for Assembly elections is underway in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, both of which account for a significant number of Opposition MPs. The special session will draw them away from the battle ground.

Opposition parties have said that population-based delimitation would give an undue advantage to northern and central states in the Lok Sabha, as the proportion of seats in the North would be higher. They also note that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has greater support in northern states than in the South.

The three legislations are the 2026 Delimitation Bill, the 2026 Constitution 131st Amendment Bill and the 2026 Union Territories Laws Amendment Bill.

Increasing the strength of the Lok Sabha

The Constitution 131st Amendment Bill builds on the 2023 Women’s Reservation Act, which reserved 33% of seats for women. It proposes to increase the strength of the Lok Sabha to 850 from 543. Of these, 815 seats will be from the states and 35 from the Union Territories. While 543 MPs are currently elected to the House, the Constitution formally caps the strength of the Lok Sabha at 550.

More consequentially, this bill alters the basis for the 2023 Women’s Reservation Act, which reserves one-third of the seats in the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies for women. These reservations were to take effect only after a census was conducted. The census, which began on April 1, is expected to conclude in 2027.

The Constitution 131st Amendment Bill proposes to amend Article 82 of the Constitution to remove the provision that froze the number of Lok Sabha seats based on the 1971 census. The 84th Amendment Act of 2001 then froze constituency boundaries until the first census after 2026.

The process of fixing the boundaries of electoral constituencies is called delimitation. Article 82 of the Constitution states that after every census is completed, the allocation of Lok Sabha seats to each state must be adjusted based on changes in its population.

Based on 2011 census

The delimitation bill to be introduced in the special session is silent about which census will be used as the basis for the delimitation exercise. However, the government, in a statement explaining the objectives of the Constitutional Amendment Bill, said that delimitation will be based on the “latest published census”.

“…the objective of the proposed bill is to operationalise one-third reservation for women…through delimitation exercise to be undertaken on the basis of the population figures of the latest published census,” says point six in the statement of objectives.

That would mean the enumeration exercise that took place in 2011.

Controlled by Parliament

For now, the decision on which census is to be used as the basis for delimitation depends on an amendment to the Constitution, This requires a two-thirds majority of votes in Parliament.

However, the Constitution 131st Amendment Bill proposes to allow Parliament, based on simple majority, to decide which census will serve as the basis of delimitation.

This means that Parliament will be able to carry out delimitation without requiring another constitutional amendment.

Uncertainty about share of representation

A delimitation exercise based on the 2011 census is expected to change the proportion of seats in the Lok Sabha. It could reduce representation of the southern states.

The southern states, which have a slower population growth rate, have repeatedly expressed concern that population-based delimitation could give an undue advantage to northern and central states in the Lok Sabha, as the proportion of seats in the North would be higher.

Psephologist and political activist Yogendra Yadav said in a tweet on Tuesday that there was nothing in this bill to ensure that the current proportion of seats in each state would be maintained.

Women’s seats on rotation basis

According to the proposed amendment of the 2023 Women’s Reservation Act, constituencies in the Lok Sabha and the state Assemblies will be reserved for women on rotational basis after each round of delimitation.

The amendments to the law will operationalise the 33% quota for women in the Lok Sabha and Assemblies under the 2023 Women’s Reservation Act, the government said in a statement explaining the objectives of the bill.

The 2023 Women’s Reservation Act reserves one-third of the seats in the Lok Sabha and Assemblies for women. However, the reservations were to be effective only after a census is conducted.

All the proposed changes will take effect only after the current Lok Sabha and the state Assemblies are dissolved at the end of their tenures.

The Union government will introduce bills on Thursday to increase the strength of the Lok Sabha to 850 from 543.

Of these, 815 seats will be from the states and 35 from the Union Territories.

While 543 MPs are currently elected to the House, the Constitution formally caps the strength of the Lok Sabha at 550.

Although speculation about the amendment to the law had been rife in political circles for the past two weeks, copies of the draft legislation were shared with MPs for the first time on Tuesday. Parliament will reconvene for three days starting Thursday.

The process of fixing the boundaries of electoral constituencies is called delimitation. Article 82 of the Constitution states that after every census is completed, the allocation of Lok Sabha seats to each state must be adjusted based on changes in its population.

The current composition of the Lok Sabha is based on the 1971 Census. According to the 84th Amendment Act of 2001, constituency boundaries were frozen until the first census after 2026.

The census, which began on April 1, is expected to conclude in 2027.

The bill that will be introduced in Parliament proposes to amend Article 82 of the Constitution to remove the entire proviso. This will pave the way for delimitation to take place based on the latest census held in 2011.

In its statement explaining the bill’s objectives, the government said that while freezing the seats on the basis of population in the 1971 census served an important policy purpose, “the country’s demographic profile has since undergone substantial changes” as reflected in the latest census.

It also cited “significant inter-state and intra-state population shifts, rapid urbanisation and migration, and disproportionate growth in certain regions, resulting in wide disparities in the population and the constituencies”.

The amendments will also operationalise the 33% quota for women in the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies under the 2023 Women’s Reservation Act “through delimitation exercise to be undertaken on the basis of the population figures of the latest published census”, the government said.

The latest published census was in 2011.

It said that the next census and the delimitation exercise after that “will take considerable time and thus, delay the effective and dedicated participation of women in our democratic polity”.

Also read: How Modi government aims to use women’s representation to expand Lok Sabha using 2011 census numbers

On April 2, the Union government announced that the Budget Session of Parliament would be extended and that the Houses would reconvene on April 16 for three days. The government subsequently said that Parliament will consider amendments to the 2023 Women’s Reservation Act and hinted that delimitation could also be on the agenda.

The 2023 Act reserves 33% of the seats in the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies for women. However, the reservations will be effective only after a census is conducted, followed by a delimitation exercise.

On Monday, Congress leader Sonia Gandhi said that any delimitation of electoral constituencies that involves increasing the strength of the Lok Sabha must be politically, and not just arithmetically, equitable.

Southern states, which have a slower population growth rate, have repeatedly expressed concern that population-based delimitation could give an undue advantage to northern and central states in the Lok Sabha, as the proportion of seats in the North would be higher.

Also read:

• Hindi belt Opposition parties support delimitation, disagree with ally MK Stalin
• Modi’s new parliament could see Hindi belt gain, South lose power at the Centre

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin on Tuesday warned of a massive agitation in the state if its interests were harmed in the delimitation of Lok Sabha seats proposed by the Union government.

“If anything is done that harms Tamil Nadu or that disproportionately enhances the political power of northern states, we in Tamil Nadu will not remain silent,” the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief said on social media. “Tamil Nadu will rise. Tamil Nadu will register its protest with full force.”

The process of fixing the boundaries of electoral constituencies is called delimitation.

Stalin’s remarks came ahead of a special sitting of Parliament, which will begin on Thursday. During the session, the Union government will introduce bills to increase the strength of the Lok Sabha to 850 from 543.

Of these, 815 seats will be from the states and 35 from the Union Territories. Tamil Nadu currently has 39 seats in the Lower House of Parliament.

In his video message, Stalin noted that the bills will be introduced in Parliament on Thursday and accused the Union government of attempting to unilaterally proceed with the exercise without consulting any political party or any state government.

“This hurried attempt to push through delimitation is a blatant assault on democracy by the BJP government,” the DMK chief said. “More than that, it is a direct assault on the rights of states.”

Also read: Delimitation bill: Centre proposes to increase Lok Sabha seats to 850 from 543

Stalin said that his message “served two purposes: to speak about the grave danger that has now reached the very doorstep of Tamil Nadu, and to issue a clear warning to the Union BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] government”.

The DMK chief added that this duty cannot be set aside even amid the campaigning for the Assembly elections in the state, which will be held on April 23. The votes will be counted on May 4.

He also noted that the special sitting of Parliament was “being forcibly convened in the midst of elections in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal”.

The polls in West Bengal will be held in two phases on April 23 and April 29.

He added that the state government had consistently cautioned against the delimitation exercise.

“Not only in Tamil Nadu, but across India, we brought together chief ministers of states that stand to be affected, as well as leaders of major political parties, and convened a joint action committee meeting in Chennai,” he said.

Hon’ble Prime Minister, this is Tamil Nadu’s final warning.

மாண்புமிகு பிரதமர் அவர்களே, இது தமிழ்நாட்டின் இறுதி எச்சரிக்கை!#TNwillFightTNwillWin pic.twitter.com/v9wkYYM6MO

— M.K.Stalin - தமிழ்நாட்டை தலைகுனிய விடமாட்டேன் (@mkstalin) April 14, 2026

In March 2025, a joint action committee of Opposition-ruled states led by Stalin had adopted a resolution against the proposed delimitation exercise.

The Tamil Nadu chief minister said that southern states had followed population control and family planning measures as advised by the Union government.

“Is this now the punishment for having done what was asked of us with discipline?” Stalin asked.

He added that there had been no response from Prime Minister Narendra Modi to earlier demands for assurance in Parliament that southern states would not be harmed by delimitation.

Stalin also noted the lack of transparency about the exercise, saying that no explanation had been provided so far about the proposed constitutional amendment. “When such secrecy surrounds this process, it only strengthens the suspicion that grave danger lies beneath,” he added.

The chief minister said that “elections and the exercise of power are secondary to us”, adding that the rights of the states matter.

“If Tamil Nadu is affected, we will make the entire nation take notice,” Stalin said.

Telangana CM criticises delimitation bill

In a letter to the prime minister, Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy said on Tuesday that the women’s reservation, delimitation and the increase in the Lok Sabha seats were not inter-connected and that confusion was being created in the minds of the public.

Reddy said that the Congress supports the women’s reservation and demanded that the quota be immediately implemented in the Lok Sabha and the Assemblies.

Delimitations had been carried out in the past without changing the number of seats and “only changed boundaries of constituencies within states”, said the Telangana chief minister, adding that such an exercise can be undertaken.

Reddy said that the “real contentious issue” is the proposed increase in the Lok Sabha seats.

If the exercise is conducted on a pro rata basis, without considering economic contribution and socio and human development outcomes, it “will lead to a severe and irreversible distortion in federal balance”, he said.

Pro rata means allocating units proportionally based on a specific factor, such as quantity, rather than equally.

Also read:

• Entry vs authority: Two bottlenecks will shape reality of women’s reservations

• In tables: Delimitation could also cut SC, ST and Muslim representation

The Jammu and Kashmir Police on Tuesday said that eight persons have been arrested for allegedly vandalising a school during protests against a teacher allegedly sexually harassing a student in Baramulla district’s Sopore.

An unidentified police officer told PTI that the teacher, identified as Ghulam Hassan Mir, had been booked on Monday on charges of sexual assault.

🚨 Sopore Police arrested 8 miscreants involved in vandalism during a student protest; 25 more identified. Strict action underway against those disturbing public order.@JmuKmrPolice @KashmirPolice @dig_north @IftkharTalib

— Sopore Police (@SoporePolice) April 14, 2026

The Directorate of School Education Kashmir also suspended Mir from his post at a government higher secondary school in Sopore and ordered a departmental inquiry, India Today reported.

On Monday, students staged protests demanding action against the accused. The demonstrations escalated into clashes and vandalism, prompting police action.

In addition to the eight arrested for vandalism, the police stated that 25 others have been identified in connection with the protests.

“Strict action underway against those disturbing public order,” it added.

A Delhi court on Tuesday remanded Vinesh Chandel, director of political consultancy I-PAC, to the custody of the Enforcement Directorate for 10 days in a money-laundering case linked to an alleged coal smuggling operation in West Bengal, Bar and Bench reported.

Chandel was arrested by the central agency on Monday night and produced before Additional Sessions Judge Shefali Barnala Tandon of the Patiala House Court shortly after. The hearing continued till early hours of Tuesday.

In a 24-page order, Tandon said that Chandel’s custody was required to “unearth further proceeds of the crime and identify the complete modus operandi related to the offence”, including other beneficiaries and accomplices, the Hindustan Times reported.

The judge said that the accused was evasive during the investigation and may tamper with evidence.

I-PAC, or the Indian Political Action Committee, has managed the Trinamool Congress’ election campaigns, including the 2021 Assembly elections, and is managing the party’s campaign for the upcoming Assembly polls.

The polls will be held in two phases on April 23 and April 29. The counting of votes will take place on May 4.

Delhi: ED took I-PAC Director and Co-Founder Vinesh Chandel out of the judge’s residence. pic.twitter.com/0v7glTQ8Ik

— IANS (@ians_india) April 14, 2026

On April 2, the ED had searched Chandel’s residence in Delhi, as well as the premises of another I-PAC director, Rishi Raj Singh, in Bengaluru and former Aam Aadmi Party communications in-charge Vijay Nair in Mumbai, among others, as part of the investigation.

The agency’s case stems from a November 2020 first information report registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation about an alleged coal smuggling syndicate that was used to “steal and illegally excavate coal from [Eastern Coalfields Limited] leasehold areas in West Bengal”.

The ED has alleged that a hawala operator linked to the network facilitated transactions worth tens of crores of rupees to Indian PAC Consulting Private Limited, the registered entity of I-PAC, PTI reported.

The central agency had also conducted searches on January 8 at the political consultancy’s office in Kolkata’s Salt Lake area, the home of its head Pratik Jain and the office of a trader in the city’s Posta neighbourhood as part of the investigation into alleged money laundering.

The January searches led to a political dispute after Mamata Banerjee arrived at Jain’s home around noon while the search was underway and stayed for about 20 to 25 minutes. She then came out with a file and claimed that the central agency’s officials were “taking away” party documents ahead of the Assembly polls.

After the raids, the Trinamool Congress and I-PAC had moved the Calcutta High Court, challenging the legality of the searches. The central agency also approached the High Court, alleging “illegal interference” in its work.

The Enforcement Directorate’s petition in the Supreme Court was filed under Article 32 of the Constitution, which grants individuals the right to move the top court for enforcement of their fundamental rights.

In its order on Monday, the court said that Chandel had used hawala channels for the movement of funds the company generated and “allowed utilisation of unaccounted cash/informal transfers outside the banking system”, the Hindustan Times reported.

He also made false statements under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act by denying the existence of cash transactions and misrepresented that the company dealt exclusively with political parties, the judge added.

“…whereas investigation has revealed transactions with multiple third-party entities without any legitimate business purpose, thereby deliberately misleading the investigation,” the newspaper quoted Tandon as saying.

The accused has also “deliberately attempted to destroy material evidence and obstruct” the course of the investigation, the judge said.

Later on Monday, Trinamool Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee criticised Chandel’s arrest, saying it “shakes the very idea of a level playing field”.

“At a time when West Bengal should be moving toward free and fair elections, this kind of action sends a chilling message: If you work with the opposition, you could be next,” he said on social media. “That’s not democracy-that’s intimidation!”

The arrest of Vinesh Chandel, co-founder of I-PAC, barely 10 days before the Bengal elections, is not just alarming- It shakes the very idea of a level playing field.

At a time when WB should be moving toward free and fair elections, this kind of action sends a chilling message:…

— Abhishek Banerjee (@abhishekaitc) April 13, 2026

The Bharatiya Janata Party in Tamil Nadu on Tuesday promised Rs 2,000 per month to women heads of households and three free liquefied petroleum gas cylinders every year in its manifesto for the upcoming Assembly election.

The Hindutva party also promised a subsidy of Rs 25,000 for women to purchase e-scooters, a 3% stamp duty concession for first-time women homebuyers and a one-time household assistance scheme of Rs 10,000.

The party also said that it will increase the benefits under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi by adding a top-up of Rs 3,000 in addition to the existing support amount of Rs 6,000, The Times of India reported.

Union minister JP Nadda, who released the manifesto, accused the state’s ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam of engaging in corruption and nepotism. He alleged that several DMK leaders were involved in cash-for-job scams and tender irregularities, according to India Today.

During the Launch of BJP Tamil Nadu Manifesto - Creating a New Era through Lotus Promise 2026. https://t.co/eDWVOA8bMo

— Jagat Prakash Nadda (@JPNadda) April 14, 2026

The Tamil Nadu elections will be held on April 23 and the votes will be counted on May 4.

The DMK had released its manifesto on March 29. The state’s ruling party promised to double the monthly handout given to each of the 1.3 crore women under the Kalaignar Magalir Urimai Thogai scheme to Rs 2,000.

The Chief Minister MK Stalin-led party also proposed the Illathu Arasi scheme, under which a Rs 8,000 coupon would be provided to all “non-income tax paying” homemakers to buy any electronic home appliances based on their needs.

Also read: The cash handout burden and its underlying politics

Following protests by factory workers in Noida on Monday, the Uttar Pradesh government on Tuesday announced an interim hike in minimum wages for skilled and semi-skilled labourers, The Hindu reported.

The revised interim wage rates, effective retrospectively from April 1, set the minimum monthly pay at Rs 13,690 for unskilled workers, up from Rs 11,313. The pay for semi-skilled workers was increased to Rs 15,059 and Rs 16,868 for skilled workers in Gautam Buddh Nagar and Ghaziabad.

In other municipal corporation areas, wages have been fixed at Rs 13,006 for unskilled workers, Rs 14,306 for semi-skilled workers and Rs 16,025 for skilled workers. The amounts will be Rs 12,356, Rs 13,591 and Rs 15,224 in the remaining districts.

The revision followed discussions between the state labour department, industry representatives and worker groups after protests over wages and working conditions escalated on Monday, The Indian Express reported.

The government also clarified that claims on social media of a uniform Rs 20,000 minimum wage were incorrect.

However, PTI quoted workers as saying that the revised rates remained insufficient and demanded further hikes.

One worker, Awdhesh Mishra, was quoted as saying that the protest would continue until their wage demands were met.

“We work 12 hours, but don’t get the salary accordingly,” he said. “What will we eat and save? We want salary between Rs 18,000 to Rs 20,000.”

Another worker, Soni Singh, said that companies have stopped providing food, and noted that liquefied petroleum gas cylinders have become costlier, PTI reported.

“We work for 12-14 hours but they give overtime of just 3 hours,” she said. “We want Rs 20,000 salary.”

VIDEO | A day after violent protests by workers in Noida, the Uttar Pradesh government has hiked minimum wages across worker categories. Awdhesh Mishra, a worker, says, "The protest will continue till the time we get the salary that we are demanding. We work 12 hours, but don't… pic.twitter.com/epB8Zjo5Nz

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) April 14, 2026

More than 350 arrested, say police

The Uttar Pradesh Police on Tuesday arrested more than 350 persons in connection with the workers’ protest, ANI reported.

Gautam Buddh Nagar Additional Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) Rajeev Narain Mishra told the news agency that several persons had misused social media to allegedly spread rumours and misinformation.

The arrests took place a day after the protests in Noida turned violent. Videos widely shared on social media on Monday showed some protesters throwing stones and vandalising property, as security personnel tried to bring the situation under control.

Gautam Buddh Nagar Police Commissioner Laxmi Singh said that in the past two days, several WhatsApp groups had been created using quick response, or QR, codes to add workers, The Indian Express reported. This indicated the possible role of an organised network, the newspaper quoted Singh as saying.

The police officer said that “certain elements within the crowd involved in such acts [of violence]” had been arrested, adding that more persons will be held.

“Their funding sources will also be investigated; should it be discovered that they received financial assistance from outside the state or the country, appropriate action will be initiated in that regard as well,” she added.

Singh said that route marches had been conducted on Tuesday morning. Workers had gathered at three locations and “were peacefully dispersed within just 15 minutes” after a dialogue with the authorities, she added.

Six arrested in Haryana over labour protests

In neighbouring Haryana’s Manesar, six men were arrested on Monday for allegedly inciting violence during a workers’ strike on April 9 at the Industrial Model Township, The Hindu reported.

Those arrested have been identified as Akash, Harish Chand, Pintu Kumar, Raju Singh, Shyambir and Ajit Singh.

According to the Gurugram Police, they were among the key conspirators behind incidents of vandalism, arson, throwing of stones and assaults on company staffers and police personnel during the strike.

According to investigators, digital evidence, including WhatsApp chats, suggested a planned effort to provoke unrest, including discussions about using petrol bombs, The Indian Express reported.

“The investigation further revealed that most of the arrested individuals are not labourers and have no professional association with the companies in Gurugram,” an unidentified officer told the newspaper. “They are accused of infiltrating the strike to incite workers toward violence.”

The protests in Uttar Pradesh began last week after the Haryana government increased monthly minimum wages to Rs 19,000 from Rs 14,000. The minimum wage in Uttar Pradesh was Rs 13,000 before the protests.

The Punjab Assembly on Monday unanimously passed a bill proposing life imprisonment and a fine up to Rs 25 lakh for any act of “sacrilege” involving the Guru Granth Sahib, The Hindu reported.

The Jaagat Jot Sri Guru Granth Sahib Satkar Amendment Bill 2026 was tabled by Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann during a special session of the Assembly. The bill proposes stringent amendments to a 2008 law on sacrilege.

Mann said the amendments address long-standing gaps in the framework left by previous governments.

“If the Sri Guru Granth Sahib is not safe in Punjab, then where else can it be?” the newspaper quoted the Aam Aadmi Party leader as saying. “This bill is a historic milestone to check beadbi [sacrilege]…”

On Saturday, the state Cabinet approved the stringent amendments and cleared the bill. The decision followed several incidents of beadbi, or sacrilege, that have “deeply hurt public sentiments” and caused unrest, the government stated.

It said that existing provisions under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, including Section 298, Section 299 and Section 300, “do not prescribe sufficiently stringent punishment to act as an effective deterrent”.

Section 298 penalises damaging or defiling a place of worship or sacred object with the intent to insult a religion. While Section 299 pertains to deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings, Section 300 deals with causing disturbance to a lawful religious assembly or ceremony.

Stronger legal measures were required to safeguard the sanctity of the religious scripture and promote communal harmony, the government added.

The proposed amendment came amid long-standing demands in the state for stricter laws punishing such acts. Attempts in 2016 and 2018 to introduce similar legislation, including provisions for life imprisonment, did not become law as they either failed to receive a presidential assent or had lapsed.

State government data showed that nearly 597 cases of “sacrilege” were reported in the past decade, including 480 involving Sikh scriptures and shrines, 92 related to Hindu religious sites, 14 to Muslim shrines and texts and 11 to Christian places of worship.

Only 44 of the first information reports resulted in convictions.

Also read: A man on a cellphone tower in Punjab is at centre of gathering protest for anti-sacrilege law

An under-construction house linked to the main accused person in the killing of a 26-year-old man in Delhi’s Uttam Nagar on Holi was partially demolished by the municipal corporation on Monday, before the Delhi High Court temporarily halted further action, Bar and Bench reported.

The civic body has claimed that the demolition was part of a routine drive against unauthorised construction, the Hindustan Times reported.

However, the Delhi High Court restrained the civic body from taking any further coercive action against the property of the accused person for 10 days, Bar and Bench reported.

Justice Amit Bansal granted one week to the family of the accused man to approach the Municipal Corporation of Delhi Appellate Tribunal and challenge the demolition order.

The plea before the court was filed by the daughter of the accused man, Ismail, who has been in Tihar Jail since March 5 in connection with the killing of the man on Holi.

The daughter, Shehnaz, argued that the demolition was being carried out without giving the family an adequate opportunity to be heard and alleged that the action was punitive in nature.

“What I have done is exactly what is there in every building,” Bar and Bench quoted her as saying. “I am being picked and chosen, the whole locality is identical.”

The court has directed the civic body to respond to the petition.

On March 4, a man named Tarun Bhutolia died after being severely injured in a clash during Holi celebrations. The clash began when a water balloon accidentally thrown by an 11-year-old girl from the third floor of a building fell on a Muslim woman standing below.

The incident had led to an argument between the two neighbouring families from different religious communities.

The 26-year-old’s killing had sparked tensions in the area. Several vehicles were damaged and some were set on fire during protests by residents, following which police and paramilitary personnel were deployed.

On March 8 as well, the authorities demolished allegedly illegal portions of a property linked to Umardeen, another man accused of being involved in Bhutolia’s death.

Shortly after, the Delhi High Court restrained the municipal body from carrying out further demolitions of properties belonging to those allegedly involved in the clash for a week.

Separately, on March 14, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi sealed and demolished portions of 70 shops in the area as part of a drive against alleged encroachments.

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

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

Watch: How a clash between two families on Holi in Delhi became a larger flashpoint

The Madhya Pradesh High Court granted bail to two men arrested last month in Raisen district after they appeared in an Instagram reel expressing support for Iran amid the war in West Asia.

The men, Wasim Khan and Yousuf Mehafooz, were arrested on March 8 on charges of promoting enmity between groups.

A day earlier, a man named Brajesh Chavariya had filed a police complaint saying that he had seen a reel in which the men were seen saying that “everyone together” was going to support Iran. “Hindustan ka musalman na kal dara tha na ham aaj darengey [Indian Muslims were not afraid yesterday, and nor are they afraid today],” the post said.

In an order passed on April 9, Justice Ramkumar Choubey said that the post referred to a protest in favour of a foreign country and could not be construed as promoting enmity between groups on based on religion, race or place of birth.

The judge said that the material cited by the police showed that the case was registered only based on what was said in the Instagram reel.

“It also appears that the police has registered an FIR against the applicants even without having sufficient material constituting the alleged offence,” Choubey said. “Therefore, it is a fit case in which the applicants on bail may be released on bail.”

The court ordered Khan and Mehafooz to be released on bail, subject to their furnishing personal bonds of Rs 50,000 each, with one surety of the same amount.

When Sudhir Dhawale was growing up in Nagpur’s Dalit-dominated Indora area in the 1970s, a calendar depicting a child with a pistol hung on the wall of his family’s rented home. It bore a slogan declaring that rights are not handed out – one has to fight to seize them.

“It was just a poster but it brought the understanding through cultural means that we needed to agitate,” said the 57-year-old Marathi poet, activist and co-founder of the Republican Panthers Caste Annihilation Movement. “We could not hope our rights would automatically flow.”

That realisation has driven Dhawale for much for his adult life. He has worked relentlessly to ensure that India’s most marginalised people receive the basic rights that every human deserves – using culture as a weapon to achieve that goal.

Culture, Dhawale said, is the medium for organising. It gives one class or group the opportunity to bond and empathise with others.

In India, where agriculture is still a major source of livelihood, “life has a different rhythm”, he said. He elaborated: “The khat khat khat pace or frenzy of a highly capitalised world hasn’t quite overwhelmed us as yet. Oral tradition which speaks of one’s suffering to another still prevails. The song becomes the medium for understanding their lives and toiling.”

Currently out on bail in the Bhima-Koregaon case in which 16 lawyers, college professors, poets and human rights workers have been accused of conspiring to organise a caste riot near Pune in 2018, Dhawale took time off from his work editing the bi-monthly Marathi magazine Vidrohi to explain his ideas about culture, politics and social change.

“Those who have truly understood culture are those who have made history,” he said.

Dhawale’s cultural activism draws from the folk forms of Maharashtra, which have long been intertwined with resistance and revolution. The experiences of ordinary people have been reflected in the kirtans of the region’s mystic poets, powadas or traditional ballads of heroism focusing on Shivaji and the theatrical tamasha form.

From the 18th century, lok shahirs or folk singers began to articulate social and political messages in simple language. Both the Satyashodak movement of caste reformer Jyotiba Phule and the Ambedkarite movement used this form effectively.

Dhawale’s passion for the arts came relatively late in life, a result of being exposed to the activities of Left political outfits when he was in college.

Radical activists Anuradha and Kobad Ghandy were living in slums in Nagpur, where they set up student organisations, trade unions and cultural groups. Dhawale and his classmate Surendra Gadling – an advocate who is a co-accused in the Bhima Koregaon case – began attending song sessions.

“The songs…struck a chord because it was about people,” said Dhawale. About our joys, our sorrows and so it was natural to lend our voices. We would join in the chorus.”

These activities brought them in touch with the Vidyarthi Pragati Sanghatana, a students’ outfit that, the police later claimed, had links with banned Maoist groups.

It was the era of Afro hairstyles and breakdance. Dhawale sported one and was proficient in the other. But it was also a time of social ferment. The Vidyarthi Pragati Sanghatana taught the young man and his friends how to organise and take politics to the people.

Dhawale became associated with the Aavhan Natya Manch, which began as the cultural wing of the Vidyarthi Pragati Sanghatana. They would hold performances in neighbourhoods and street plays outside colleges, factory gates and slums.

“One of the plays on the state of education was titled Shiksa ka Circus, a scathing critique on the system,” Dhawale said. Sambhaji Bhagat, the hugely creative shahir or folk poet from Mumbai, wrote and sang Garv Se Kaho Hum Insaan Hai – say with pride that we’re human.

It was a response to the Hindutva slogan, Garv Se Kaho Hum Hindu Hai, (Say with pride that we’re Hindu), which was becoming more popular as Bharatiya Janata Party leader LK Advani began his rath yatra across the country demanding a Ram temple on the site of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya.

As Dhawale became more immersed in these organisations, he left home in 1989 to live in the office of a progressive group that survived on contributions.

At that time, the Namantar Andolan had been going on for a while. The Dalit movement to have Marathwada University renamed after Babasaheb Ambedkar had a profound impression on the young man.

“I gained the political understanding of how, in reality, there was little or no democracy in the lives of Dalits,” said Dhawale.

Though the Maharashtra legislature had approved the change in 1978, the decision faced enormous opposition from members of the upper castes. Dalit settlements across Marathwada were attacked.

For Dalits, the Namantar movement was an assertion against a caste-driven society where education was the prerogative of the privileged. Gradually the movement became an expression of self-respect and dignity.

The movement kicked off on November 11, 1979, with a march by Jogendra Kawade, an MLA and founder of the Peoples Republican Party, from Nagpur’s Deekshabhoomi – where Ambedkar and 400,000 others had converted to Buddhism in 1956 – to the district magistrate’s office to press for the change.

On December 3, four Dalits died when police opened fire on protesters. “I was nine years of age when it began,” said Dhawale. “While I was too young to know the full implications, some incidents occurred which impinged in my political consciousness.”

It took until 1994 for the name of the university to be changed. As the Namantar movement stretched on, Dhawale became involved with it.

Among the other Dalit campaigns he helped organise was one demanding justice for Manorama Kamble, a Dalit domestic worker who was found dead in her employer’s house in Nagpur’s Jarripatka aea, in March 1994.

The police registered a case of rape and murder. The Republican Party of India called for a morcha and bandh but the traders of Jarripatka refused to close their shops. The ensuing fracas resulted in protestors being lathi charged. This incident reaffirmed Dhawale’s distrust of a system in which elected representatives and the police were not interested in ensuring justice for Dalits.

The razing of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, was another landmark incident in the evolution of Dhawale’s political consciousness. “The Muslims had agreed to abide by the legal and Constitutional decision-making but the Hindutva leaders lawlessly brought the Masjid down,” he said.

During this period, progressive organisations were sharpening their strategy of using culture not just to spread political consciousness but also use songs and street plays to organise. Among those who came to Nagpur from Mumbai to offer insights was Vilas Ghogre, the Dalit balladeer and member of the Aavhan Natya Manch. Armed with the simple iktara, he sang about the plight of labourers and lives of the marginalised.

Then there was Gaddar, the poet and singer whose work combined radical left ideas with Ambedkarite principles, who visited Nagpur in 1992. The hall Aavhan had booked for his performance was sold out. But the police withheld permission for the event.

The organisers went to court. But even though the performance was given permission to proceed, the police sealed the venue. Anticipating this, the organisers had booked an alternative venue. But here too, the police stopped the audience at the gates.

“We announced we would hold a performance right there on the streets,” said Dhawale. A local Dalit artist named Sanjeev Jeevane, dressed in Gaddar’s iconic style with bare chest and a blanket slung across the shoulder, clutching a staff, began performing.

Meanwhile, the organisers attempted to bring Gaddar to the venue. The police responded with a vicious lathi charge on the crowd.

The incident had personal repercussions for Dhawale. He was set to get married to an activist of the Stree Chetana Sanghatan in June 1992. Instead of a traditional celebration in a wedding hall, the couple booked an ordinary one.

“The police got hold of an invitation and believed it was a ruse to actually hold a Gaddar performance,” Dhawale said. “They sealed this hall. Fortunately, some of our guests rushed to the police and convinced them it was just a wedding. Permission was granted provided we agreed not to sing.”

The wedding was held. It made the news, with the papers the next day carrying the headline “All is well.”

“And yes,” added Dhawale with a smile, “songs were sung.”

By the mid-1990s, however, the progressive movement began to dissipate. Prominent organisers went underground. Shambhaji Bhagat had left Aavhan.

Dhawale moved to Mumbai where his wife had found a job as a nurse with the Railways. He had a disappointing stint as a journalist because the newspaper he was at kept extending his period as an apprentice, refusing to pay him.

The lull in his cultural activism was broken by the violence in Ramabai Nagar on July 11, 1997. Ten Dalits were killed and 26 injured when the State Reserve Police opened fire on crowds protesting against the desecration of a statue of Ambedkar.

Three days later, on July 15, the poet Vilas Ghogre died by suicide in his home in the north eastern suburb of Mulund. He wrote “Ambedkari Ekta Zindabad” (A salute to Ambedkai unity) on the wall and hung himself with a trademark blue scarf. The previous year, Ghogre’s pregnant daughter had died. He was also deeply disturbed by the Ramabai killings.

Dhawale went on to write Sangeet Vadlache, Krantikari Lokshahir Vilas Ghogre Yanchi Shahir aani Jeevan, a book that traces Ghogre’s belief that revolutionary consciousness and folk culture are inseparable.

A man is being rounded up for protesting police firing in Ramabai Nagar that killed 10 Dalits http://t.co/uM2pMm73h5 pic.twitter.com/VDQJ57ZQNI

— Ambedkar Caravan (@AmbedkarCaravan) July 11, 2015

Folk culture has never been mere entertainment or about aesthetic pleasures but about social transformation, Dhawale wrote. Cultural resistance, he said, is integral to political struggle – and song is a vital tool in this battle.

Ideas like this have not sat well with the authorities. Dhawale was first arrested on January 2, 2011, after he returned from a Dalit conference, and charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act with sedition and waging war against the Indian state.

He was acquitted in 2014 but arrested again on June 6, 2018 in the Bhima Koregaon case.

He continues to write. Among his latest poems is one on the Mahad satyagraha, led by Ambedekar on March 20, 1927, where he and thousands of followers had marched to the tank in Maharashtra’s Raigad and drunk water from it to protest against the casteism which denied them the right and access to public resources.

“O Bhima
When you bent down to take a handful,
All the tanks became the Chavdar Tank.”

Freny Manecksha is the author of Behold, I Shine: Narratives of Kashmir’s Women and Children.

India is likely to experience below-normal rainfall during the southwest monsoon season, the India Meteorological Department said on Monday.

This is the first time in 11 years that a shortfall in rainfall has been forecast.

The IMD has projected rainfall at 92% of the Long Period Average of 87 cm for the June to September period.

The expected shortfall is primarily due to the likely development of El Niño conditions in the equatorial Pacific Ocean after June, the weather agency said.

The El Niño weather phenomenon involves the warming of ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific. It typically occurs every few years and has been linked to reduced monsoon rainfall over India. La Niña has the opposite effect of El Niño.

The IMD said that the impact of El Niño is expected to become more pronounced in the latter half of the monsoon season, particularly in August and September, due to a lag between its development and its influence on Indian weather patterns.

At present, weak La Niña-like conditions are transitioning towards neutral conditions.

Despite the expected El Niño, officials noted that certain factors could moderate its impact. These include the possible development of a “positive” Indian Ocean Dipole later in the season and slightly below-normal northern hemisphere snow cover between January and March, both of which tend to support higher rainfall in India.

The Indian Ocean Dipole is the Indian Ocean counterpart of the El Niño-La Niña phenomena in the equatorial Pacific Ocean.

The forecast follows two consecutive years of surplus monsoon rainfall in 2024 and 2025.

The IMD’s early forecast, issued in mid-April, is intended to support planning for agriculture, water management, and energy needs.

India receives more than 70% of its annual rainfall during the monsoon months, making the season critical for farming, drinking water supply, hydroelectric power generation, and groundwater replenishment.

Light falls on a hand-sculpted pedestal with two busts, backs to each other. Below one is the inscription “Dr Rohith Vemula”, a reminder of the unfulfilled dream of the doctoral scholar who died by suicide at the Hyderabad Central University in January 2016.

This sculpture, by Kailash Khanjode, was among the most striking of artworks inspired by Ambedkar and reflecting anti-caste movements on display at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale which concluded on March 31.

On the other side of the pedestal is Pochiram Kamble. Thirty-eight years before Vemula’s death, Kamble was burnt alive by rioters in August 1978.

This was the year the Maharashtra legislature in 1978 passed a resolution to rename the Marathwada University after BR Ambedkar, sparking violent opposition from upper castes. Dalit localities in the region were attacked.

An inscription above Kamble’s bust reads “Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar University” and another below that says “Jai Bhim”. A Marathi report notes that Kamble had died chanting “Jai Bhim”.

Circling from Kamble to Vemula and back again, the sculpture seems to present caste prejudice as unchanging and continuous.

Khanjode’s sculpture is part of a larger art project, Ginning Justice, by Rohit Athavale and Sachin Banne, depicting Mumbai’s caste and religion-segregated housing, and the history of labour in the cloth mills that were started by Kolhapur royal Chhatrapati Rajarshi Shahu in 1906. A cotton gin or engine separates fibres from seeds, hence the name “Ginning justice”.

Tiles put together depict the very literal divisions in housing in Mumbai and urban India. On the walls outside the venue were more tiles: some depicting the Buddha and Ambedkar, while fragments of some tiles were painted with the silhouettes of the millions who labour and work in India’s cities.

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In between the faceless silhouettes were some that strikingly seemed to resemble Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule, the 19th century anti-caste ideologues of Maharashtra.

In the Unity of Mind, Spirit and Society by Kartik Kambar and Basavaraj Talawar, two paintings place Ambedkar alongside Basava, a 12th century philosopher of the Bhakti movement, and the Buddha.

Behind the rich, deep-blue palette is the Buddhist dhammachakra, which also represents Ambedkar setting in motion the “wheel of justice” towards emancipation.

The display note states that the artists, Kambar and Talawar, situate the three figures within a “continuum anti-caste thought and ethical reform in South Asia”.

At the centre of Prabhakar Kamble’s installation Vichitra Natak, or The Theatre of the Absurd, is a tombstone marking the “annihilation of caste”. It is a reference to the title of a speech Ambedkar was stopped from delivering at a convention in Lahore in 1936. The text was later released as a booklet under the title Annihilation of Caste.

Kamble’s installation aims to depict how caste is upheld through everyday objects, such as water pots. In one corner are a bunch of hooks that resemble those used in butcher shops to hang meat.

Spread out in parts on the adjoining wall is a painting of an Ambedkar statue in a steel cage. In some parts of the country, statues of the chairman of India’s Constituent Assembly, which drafted the Constitution, are often unironically secured behind metal bars to prevent deliberate destruction or damage.

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Shrujana N Sridhar displays Ambedkar’s constitutional philosophy using Buddhist prayer wheels, and then adds a more revolutionary touch. On the floor are clay fragments bearing lines from the Manusmriti, which can be stepped on, “turning scripture into residue”.

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The Constitution lights up the whole display.

Finally there is The People’s Orchestra by Rutuja Sonawane, an art installation on the Swar Samrat brass band, which was started 50 years ago by her father Bhagwan Sonawane in the village of Satana in Maharashtra.

The display note states that the musicians played a repertoire of original compositions rooted in Ambedkarite teachings, many of which were written by Sonawane.

The biennale may have ended but the art continues on the walls of Fort Kochi.

April 14 is Ambedkar Jayanti.

Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal on Monday told the Delhi High Court that the orders issued by Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma and her conduct outside the court has created reasonable apprehensions in his mind about getting a fair hearing in the liquor policy case, Bar and Bench reported.

The former chief minister made the statements in his petition seeking that Sharma recuse herself from hearing the challenge filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation to his discharge in the case.

During the hearing on Monday, Kejriwal, appearing in person, claimed before Sharma that she had repeatedly passed orders in favour of Enforcement Directorate and CBI in the liquor policy case.

He claimed that there was a “pattern” in which “every single argument of ED, CBI is endorsed by the court”, adding that every petition filed by the two central agencies had been converted into judgements, The Times of India reported.

The AAP chief added that this trend, which he had observed in several earlier orders, had contributed to his apprehensions.

Citing the pace at which certain proceedings had been conducted in the case, Kejriwal also claimed that no other matter was being heard “at this speed”, especially those concerning the “most prominent” political opponents, the newspaper reported.

He also raised concerns about “perceived ideological proximity”, referring to Sharma attending an event of an organisation linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The RSS is the parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

“If your honour is attending a programme of a particular ideology, then it creates reasonable bias,” The Times of India quoted the former chief minister as having told the court.

Kejriwal added that he, along with the AAP, opposed this ideology.

During the proceedings, the AAP chief said that the matter did not pertain to the integrity of the judge but to the perception of fairness, the newspaper reported. Referring to previous Supreme Court judgements, he added that reasonable apprehension alone can justify recusal.

The judge reserved her verdict in the plea after the hearing that lasted for about four and a half hours, Bar and Bench reported.

Sharma said that this was the first time that someone had asked her to recuse herself, the legal news portal reported.

“I have learnt a lot on the recusal jurisdiction,” she was quoted as saying. “I hope I will give a good judgement.”

जरा ध्यान से सुनिए जज मा. स्वर्ण कांता शर्मा जी को क्यों इस केस से खुद को अलग कर लेना चाहिए।
ये तो सिर्फ एक कारण है ऐसे कई कारण @ArvindKejriwal जी ने कोर्ट को बताया।
क्या आपको याद है इन्ही न्यायमूर्ति महोदया ने ED के हक़ में क्या फैसला दिया था? pic.twitter.com/xM3XljoVmZ

— Sanjay Singh AAP (@SanjayAzadSln) April 13, 2026

Kejriwal, along with AAP leaders Manish Sisodia and Durgesh Pathak, and other persons accused in the matter including Vijay Nair and Arun Ramchandra Pillai, have sought that the judge recuse herself because of the grounds of a reasonable apprehension that she lacks impartiality, The Hindu reported.

Their plea cited previous rulings by Sharma in related cases as proof of bias.

At the previous hearing on Wednesday, the CBI opposed the applications filed by Kejriwal and the others seeking Sharma’s recusal.

In its response before the High Court, the CBI argued that the judge’s decision to attend a legal seminar organised by the Akhil Bharatiya Adhivakta Parishad, a lawyers’ organisation linked to the RSS, cannot be treated as evidence of ideological bias.

The CBI argued that the claim was untenable, adding that if attending events shows ideological bias of any judge, “then [a] large number of sitting High Court and Supreme Court judges would have to recuse [themselves] from hearing any case where politically exposed persons are accused”.

The case

The CBI had alleged irregularities in the Delhi government’s liquor excise policy, which has since been scrapped. Based on the CBI case, the Enforcement Directorate also launched an investigation into allegations of money-laundering.

The policy came into effect in November 2021. It was withdrawn in July 2022 with Vinai Kumar Saxena, the Delhi lieutenant governor at the time, recommending an investigation into the alleged irregularities of the policy.

The two central agencies alleged that the Aam Aadmi Party government at the time modified the liquor policy by increasing the commission for wholesalers from 5% to 12%. This allegedly facilitated the receipt of bribes from wholesalers who had a substantial market share and turnover.

On February 27, the trial court discharged Kejriwal and 22 others accused by the CBI in the case. There was no overarching conspiracy or criminal intent in the excise policy, the Rouse Avenue Courts had ruled.

The trial court also criticised the central agency for implicating Kejriwal without any cogent material. It said that the chargesheet had several gaps not supported by any witnesses or statements.

However, the High Court on March 9 stayed the adverse observations made by the trial court about the CBI. The matter was heard by Sharma, who prima facie observed that the trial court’s findings were erroneous.

Kejriwal had written to the chief justice of the High Court seeking the transfer of the case from Sharma to another judge, but the request was declined. The former Delhi chief minister had contended that no specific reasons had been recorded for commenting against the trial court’s order.

He also noted that the judge had earlier denied bail to several persons accused in the case who had been subsequently granted relief by the Supreme Court.

The Aam Aadmi Party chief sought the transfer on the ground of a “grave, bona fide, and reasonable apprehension that the matter may not receive a hearing marked by impartiality and neutrality”.

The Supreme Court on Monday verbally remarked that in West Bengal, the Election Commission appeared to have deviated from the special intensive revision procedure that it had adopted in other states by introducing a new category of “logical discrepancy”, Live Law reported.

In the special intensive revision of electoral rolls, logical discrepancies refer to a mismatch in parents’ names, low age gap with parents and the number of children of the parents being more than six.

However, the bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi dismissed the petition by persons whose appeals against exclusions from the voter rolls are pending before appellate tribunals, Live Law reported. But the court allowed the petitioners to pursue their appeals before the tribunals.

It clarified that “necessary consequences shall follow” if the petitioners’ appeals are allowed, Live Law reported.

The court also noted on Monday that it cannot allow persons to vote in the West Bengal Assembly elections whose appeals challenging their exclusion from the voter list are pending before the appellate tribunals, Bar and Bench reported. More than 34 lakh such appeals have been filed before the appellate tribunals, the bench noted.

However, the court indicated that it might consider the plea to allow the publication of supplementary electoral rolls to include the persons whose appeals are accepted before polling, Live Law reported.

During the hearing on Monday, Bagchi also questioned the Election Commission on what would happen if the winning margin of a candidate was less than the number of voters excluded during the revision process.

“Suppose margin is 2% and 15% of electorate who are mapped could not vote, then maybe, we are not expressing any opinion, but we would definitely have to apply our minds,” Live Law quoted him as having remarked.

Bagchi said that there was a need to have a “robust appellate mechanism” to hear appeals by persons deleted from the electoral rolls.

Further, the judge remarked that the poll panel deviated from its stand in Bihar that individuals mapped in the 2002 voter rolls would not need to upload documents.

The Election Commission on February 28 published the final electoral roll for West Bengal, showing that more than 61 lakh voters had been excluded. However, the process had continued with about 60 lakh “doubtful and pending” cases remaining under adjudication based on their objections to their exclusions from the draft rolls published in December.

Several supplementary lists were released, in which the names of more voters have been included.

The petitioners demanded that the date of freezing of the electoral rolls, April 9, should be extended so that they can vote in the upcoming Assembly elections, Live Law reported.

The polls will be held in two phases on April 23 and April 29. The counting of votes will take place on May 4.

The petitioners had said that they had been mapped in the 2002 electoral rolls, and that they have Aadhaar cards and passports.

Initially, Kant had expressed reluctance to intervene in the matter, saying that the appellate tribunals should decide on the cases, according to Live Law. However, the counsel for the petitioners contended that the Election Commission was not cooperating with the tribunals by not producing documentary material.

Bagchi was then quoted as saying: “When the Bihar SIR was argued, the submissions of ECI were unequivocal that the 2002 list members need not give any document. Please see your written submissions in the Bihar case. You had said the 2002 electorate need not give documents.”

Lawyer Dama Seshadri Naidu, representing the poll panel, said that such persons do not need to upload documents, except those showing they are the same person as the one mentioned in the 2002 rolls, Bar and Bench reported.

To this, Bagchi remarked: “Now you are improvising the submissions which you made earlier.”

The judge also said that judicial officers who are taking part in the appellate process also would have made some errors during the adjudication process.

“If you go through 1,000 documents a day, if accuracy is 70% then the activity should be rated as excellent,” Bar and Bench quoted Bagchi as saying. “So, margin of error will be there and we need a robust appellate forum.”

Nearly 91 lakh voters have been removed from West Bengal’s voter lists as part of the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls. The deletions represent nearly 11.9% of the state’s electorate of 7.6 crore that existed before the revision process began.

The process had concluded on April 6 after judicial officers adjudicated the 60 lakh claims and objections. However, voters who were removed during the adjudication process can appeal in 19 tribunals set up for the purpose.

On February 20, the Supreme Court ordered that judicial officers of the rank of district judge or additional district judge be appointed to help complete the revision exercise in the state.

On March 10, the top court ordered the formation of appellate tribunals composed of former High Court chief justices and judges to hear appeals against exclusions. A person whose claim for inclusion in the electoral rolls has been rejected by a judicial officer can approach the tribunal.

Also read: Millions of Bengalis may lose their vote. Not over citizenship but due to clerical errors

A group of academics, activists and former bureaucrats on Monday expressed concern about the “complete lack of transparency” regarding the draft legislations on women’s reservation and delimitation that are proposed to be taken up during a special sitting of Parliament.

In a statement, the group of 262 citizens said that it is “shocking that the citizens of the country have been kept completely in the dark about the contents of the bills, their implications and the rationale for bringing these constitutional and legislative amendments”, given its far-reaching ramifications.

On April 2, the Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said that the Budget Session of Parliament will be reconvened on April 16 for three days to introduce “important bills”.

At the time, reports indicated that the session, which was to end on April 2, had been extended to take up amendments to the 2023 Women’s Reservation Act. The Union government did not explain why the session was being extended.

The 2023 Act reserves 33% of the seats in the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies for women. However, the reservations will be effective only after a population census is conducted, followed by a delimitation exercise.

Delimitation is the process of fixing the boundaries of electoral constituencies. Article 82 of the Constitution states that after every census is completed, the allocation of Lok Sabha seats to each state must be adjusted based on changes in its population.

The composition of the current Lok Sabha is based on the 1971 census. According to the 84th Amendment Act of 2001, the constituency boundaries were frozen until the first census after 2026.

The population census, which began on April 1, is expected to conclude in 2027.

During the reconvened session that will begin on April 16, the Union government is planning to introduce bills to amend the 2023 Act, delinking the 33% quota for women from the 2027 census and opting instead to conduct a delimitation exercise, The Indian Express had reported.

Earlier, the Congress had said that the Union government was proposing to increase the number of seats in the Lok Sabha by 50%. The constituencies in each state are also proposed to be increased by 50%, he said.

If delimitation is carried out in this manner, the strength of the Lok Sabha would increase to 816 from 543, with about 270 reserved for women. However, the proportion of the seats a state has out of the total constituencies in the House would remain unchanged.

Citing media reports, the citizens’ group on Monday said that the Union Cabinet had reportedly cleared three bills to ostensibly pave the way for 33% reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies from 2029, a delimitation bill and a separate bill to extend the quota to Union Territories.

“The draft legislations reportedly include a proposal for a uniform 50% increase in seats in the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies, raising the Lok Sabha’s strength from 543 to 816 and total Assembly seats from 4,123 to 6,186,” their statement said.

It added that the proposed laws will “fundamentally re-shape India’s electoral democracy and impact every voter” in the country.

The citizens also noted that details about the proposed legislations were “reaching people only through media reports based on ‘sources’”.

The statement said: “This is a flagrant violation of peoples’ fundamental right to information and the principles laid out in the Pre-legislative Consultation Policy.”

The 2014 policy requires ministries to publish draft legislation in the public domain for at least 30 days before being introduced in Parliament.

Noting the “tremendous impact” the proposed legislations will have on democracy, the citizens demanded that the Union government make the text of the bills public immediately and ensure it is publicised in multiple languages.

Their statement also sought that the draft bills be put through “robust” public consultation, in line with the Pre-legislative Consultation Policy.

“While we wholeheartedly support reservation for women in legislature, and many of us have been part of campaigns demanding the same, we strongly oppose the secretive, non- democratic manner in which the proposed legislations are being brought,” the statement added.

The group also said that it was a “profound irony, and a grave disservice to the democratic process, to introduce legislation for women’s empowerment while simultaneously excluding women” from the conversation.

The statement said: “A reform of such historic magnitude deserves transparent debate, public scrutiny and the inclusion of diverse voices to ensure it truly empowers people, rather than being rushed through in the midst of ongoing state elections as a political tool.”

After Rijiju had announced the decision to extend the Budget Session, Opposition parties claimed that the intention of the Union government to introduce amendments to the law during the Assembly elections was to gain electoral benefits.

While polling in Assam, Kerala and Puducherry concluded on April 9, the election campaign in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal would be underway on April 16.

Tamil Nadu will hold the polls in a single phase on April 23. The voting in West Bengal will take place in two phases on April 23 and April 29. The counting of votes in all states will take place on May 4.

Sugar-free products with sugar. ‘Real’ juices with artificial ingredients. Misleading food ads are fuelling a public health crisis in India. Help Scroll expose the systemic failure. Support our investigation.

The Supreme Court remarked that in West Bengal, the Election Commission appeared to have deviated from the special intensive revision procedure that it had adopted in other states. This was done by introducing a new category of “logical discrepancy”, it verbally observed.

However, the bench said it could not allow persons whose appeals against exclusion from the voter list are pending before tribunals to vote in the Assembly polls. More than 34 lakh such appeals have been filed so far, it noted.

In the revision of the electoral rolls, logical discrepancies refer to a mismatch in parents’ names, low age gap with parents and the number of children of the parents being more than six.

The court also said that the poll panel had deviated from its stand in Bihar that individuals mapped in the 2002 voter rolls would not need to upload documents. It added that there needs to be a “robust appellate mechanism” to hear appeals by persons removed from the electoral rolls. Read on.

Violence erupted in Noida at a protest by factory workers seeking wage hikes. Videos shared on social media showed some protesters throwing stones and vandalising property, and security personnel trying to bring the situation under control. The protests led to traffic jams on several key roads in the city on Monday morning.

A large number of workers from several industrial units had gathered in parts of Noida to press long-standing demands that their salaries be increased. The protests began last week after Haryana increased monthly minimum wages to Rs 19,000 from Rs 14,000.

They also expressed concerns about unsafe workplaces, the lack of weekly holidays and grievance redressal mechanisms. Read on.

Iran said that the United States’ naval blockade, which will take effect at 7.30 pm Indian time on Monday, would be illegal and amount to piracy. The Iranian military warned that no port in the Gulf region and the Arabian Sea would be safe if its own were threatened.

The blockade is aimed at maritime traffic linked to Iran and ships travelling to or from non-Iranian ports will be allowed to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, the US military said. Read on.

The Supreme Court issued notices to the Election Commission and the Union government on a public interest litigation seeking fingerprint and iris-based biometric identification at polling stations to prevent electoral malpractices. The petition was filed by lawyer and Bharatiya Janata Party member Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay.

The court said that on a preliminary reading, the nature of the petition’s demands could not be considered for the ongoing elections. However, it added that “whether such a recourse deserves to be followed for the next parliamentary elections and/or elections of state legislatures needs to be examined”.

At the hearing, the petitioner argued that the system could be introduced in future elections to curb practices such as proxy voting and the inducement of voters. The bench noted that the proposal would require rules to be changed and involve a significant financial burden to the exchequer. Read on.

The Assam government approached the Supreme Court challenging a Telangana High Court order that granted transit anticipatory bail for one week to Congress leader Pawan Khera in a case registered by the Assam Police.

The High Court had granted relief to Khera on Friday after he approached it seeking protection following a first information report filed by Riniki Bhuyan Sarma, wife of Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma. The FIR was filed after the Congress leader claimed on April 5 that he had documentary evidence that showed that Riniki Bhuyan Sarma holds three foreign passports. Himanta Biswa Sarma and his wife refuted the allegations. Read on.

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Violence erupted in Uttar Pradesh’s Noida on Monday at a protest by factory workers seeking wage hikes, with arson, throwing of stones and vandalism reported from several parts of the city, PTI reported.

A large number of workers from several industrial units had gathered in parts of Noida to press long-standing demands that their salaries be increased.

The protests began last week after the Haryana government increased monthly minimum wages to Rs 19,000 from Rs 14,000, The Times of India reported. The minimum wage in Uttar Pradesh is Rs 13,000.

On Monday, several vehicles and other properties were damaged during the violence, which took place in the Phase 2 and Sector 60 areas.

Videos widely shared on social media showed some protesters throwing stones and vandalising property, and security personnel trying to bring the situation under control.

#WATCH | Uttar Pradesh: Vehicles and properties vandalised and stones pelted in Phase 2 of Noida where a large number of employees of a company gathered in protest over their demands for a salary increment. Heavy Police deployment made here to bring the situation under control.… pic.twitter.com/1B0axJZSBN

— ANI (@ANI) April 13, 2026

While some social media accounts claimed that security personnel had fired at protesters, the Noida Police said that the claims were incorrect. The police added that it was taking action against persons making false claims, adding that they had only used “minimal force” at one location where the protests had turned violent.

The demonstrators had been “instigated by workers from other states”, the police claimed.

The protests led to traffic jams on several key roads in Noida on Monday morning. The Delhi Traffic Police initially said that the agitators had blocked the Noida Link Road at the Chilla border, because of which the movement of vehicles had been severely hampered.

The Noida Traffic Police had released a video showing vehicles at the Chilla border being diverted.

However, Delhi Traffic Police said at 1.49 pm that the Chilla border had been opened for traffic.

यातायात अलर्ट/डायवर्जन
चिल्ला बॉर्डर की और जाने वाले यातायात को लगातार चरखा गोलचक्कर से यातायात का डायवर्जन कर संचालन किया जा रहा है।
यातायात हेल्पलाइन नं–9971009001 pic.twitter.com/KqyJ6FrHDd

— Noida Traffic Police (@Noidatraffic) April 13, 2026

On Sunday, Noida District Magistrate Medha Roopam held a meeting with Uttar Pradesh’s principal secretary (labour) and labour commissioner, during which several matters, including “the protection of workers’ interests, double payment for overtime, bonus, weekly holidays and workplace safety” were discussed.

Chief Minister Adityanath said that workers must get their dues and industries need to follow labour laws, NDTV reported. However, he told officials to take strict action against “anti-social elements” who were allegedly trying to incite workers.

Workers’ demands

The protesters have been demanding that the minimum wage in Uttar Pradesh be hiked, arguing that their counterparts in neighbouring Haryana get paid more for the same work.

They also expressed concerns about unsafe workplaces, the lack of weekly holidays and the lack of grievance redressal mechanisms, NDTV reported.

“We are just asking for two things,” the channel quoted Lakshmi, one of the demonstrators, as saying. “One is overtime pay, and the other is a minimum wage of Rs 20,000 a month. We are being exploited in our company. We aren’t given meals at the proper time, and there is no safety for women.”

On Sunday, after two days of protests, the Noida administration announced compulsory weekly offs for workers, double pay for overtime and work on weekly holidays, an annual bonus before November 30, and the payment of salaries by the 10th day of every month, The Times of India reported.