The Central Bureau of Investigation has arrested a Pune-based botany teacher in connection with the alleged paper leak in the 2026 undergraduate National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, said the Union government on Saturday.

The exam is conducted for admission to undergraduate medical courses in India. This year, more than 22 lakh candidates had appeared for the test.

The botany teacher has been identified as Manisha Gurunath Mandhare. She was appointed as an expert by the National Testing Agency and had access to Botany and Zoology question papers as part of the examination process, said the Union Ministry of Education in a press release.

She was arrested in Delhi. On Sunday, she was sent to 14 days of CBI custody, reported ANI.

This came a day after the Union government said that the CBI had arrested the main accused in the paper leak case from Pune.

The Centre identified the alleged “kingpin” as PV Kulkarni, a chemistry lecturer involved in the examination process on behalf of the National Testing Agency.

Mandhare’s role

According to the Ministry of Education, Mandhare allegedly mobilised prospective NEET candidates through another accused, Manisha Waghmare, who was arrested on Thursday.

Special coaching sessions were conducted at Mandhare’s home in Pune in April, “where several questions from Botany and Zoology were allegedly disclosed, discussed and dictated to students”, the ministry alleged.

Candidates were reportedly instructed to write down the questions and mark them in textbooks, and many of the questions matched those in the examination conducted on May 3, it added.

Mandhare holds a Master of Science degree in Botany and had been working at Pune’s Modern College of Arts, Science and Commerce since 2002, according to The Indian Express. She was due to retire in seven months.

According to Nivedita Ekbote, the principal of the college, Mandhare had been associated with the National Testing Agency for the past five years.

Probe so far

So far, nine people have been arrested in the case from multiple cities, including Delhi, Jaipur, Gurugram, Nashik, Pune and Ahilyanagar. Out of these, five accused have been produced before court and remanded to police custody for interrogation, while two others were produced in Pune and later shifted to Delhi after transit remand.

The test on May 3 was cancelled after the Rajasthan Special Operations Group began investigating allegations that a “guess paper” circulated before the examination contained questions closely matching the actual paper.

The “guess paper” contained around 410 questions, of which about 120 matched the questions asked in the chemistry section, according to the Rajasthan Police.

The National Testing Agency has announced that the re-exam for the 2026 NEET-UG will be held on June 21.

At a press conference, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said there was a “breach” in the command chain for the May 3 test. “We accept it and take responsibility to improve it,” added Pradhan.

He also announced that NEET-UG will be computer-based from next year.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Sneha.

Also read: Why the National Testing Agency continues to fail students in India

Compressed natural gas prices were on Sunday increased by Re 1 per kg across Delhi and several other cities in northern India, marking the second hike in 48 hours, The Hindu reported.

With the latest revision, CNG in Delhi now costs Rs 80.09 per kg, up from Rs 79.09 per kg following a Rs 2 increase announced on Friday.

The latest rise takes CNG prices in the capital above Rs 80 per kg for the first time.

Indraprastha Gas Limited, the largest CNG distributor in north India, said the latest revision was intended to “marginally offset the impact of increase in input gas cost along with steep appreciation of [the United States Dollar]”.

The company added that, despite the increase, CNG continued to offer savings of up to 45% in running costs compared with vehicles using other fuels at current prices.

The revised rates in Noida and Ghaziabad were Rs 88.7 per kg, while CNG in Gurugram rose to Rs 84.12 per kg.

The latest increase follows broader fuel price revisions announced on Friday when petrol and diesel prices in the country were raised by around Rs 3 per litre each.

Petrol now costs Rs 97.77 per litre, while diesel is priced at Rs 90.67 per litre, in Delhi.

The rise in fuel price comes on the back of rising global oil prices and supply concerns amid the conflict in West Asia.

Union Minister Kiren Rijiju said on Friday that India had limited petrol and diesel price increases to 3.2% and 3.4%, while several other countries had seen much sharper rises, The Economic Times reported.

The hike comes as oil marketing companies face mounting pressure with global crude prices continuing to rise amid the war in West Asia. Benchmark Brent crude was trading at $109.2 per barrel on Sunday. The price of Brent was $78 per barrel on February 27, a day before the conflict started.

On May 10, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged citizens to revive some work-from-home practices adopted during the Covid-19 pandemic to reduce fuel consumption. It was among the measures he proposed to help the country withstand global economic uncertainties and supply chain disruptions amid the conflict.

Referring to the disruption around the Strait of Hormuz and rising energy prices, Modi said that imported petroleum products should be used “only as per need” to lessen the impact of the conflict on India’s economy.

India imports 88% of its crude oil needs and about half of its natural gas requirement. This mostly comes through the strait, which has been effectively blocked due to the conflict in West Asia.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The National Investigation Agency on Friday filed a chargesheet against five persons in connection with a Cambodia-linked human trafficking and cyber slavery case that involved luring young persons from India with fake job offers.

In a statement on Tuesday, the agency said the chargesheet was filed before a special NIA court in Patna under sections of the Indian Penal Code.

According to the agency, the accused were part of an organised trafficking syndicate that targeted young persons “on the pretext of legitimate jobs and handsome salaries”.

The NIA said the persons were then trafficked to Cambodia, where their passports were seized and they were forced to work for scam companies involved in cyber fraud operations.

“Any resistance on their part [was] met with mental and physical torture, including electric shocks, forceful confinement, denial of food and water etc,” the agency alleged.

Investigators identified Anand Kumar Singh, also known as Munna Singh, as the alleged kingpin of the network, saying he worked with associates in Cambodia and recruited victims through sub-agents and travel agents in India.

The NIA alleged that he charged between $2,000 and $3,000 for each person sent to fraudulent companies in Cambodia. However, the agency said he remains absconding.

Three others, Abhay Nath Dubey and Rohit Yadav from Uttar Pradesh, and Abhiranjan Kumar from Bihar, were arrested in February after arriving in Delhi from Cambodia. Another suspect, Prahlad Kumar Singh, is currently out on bail.

The agency said investigations are underway to identify other members of the syndicate and uncover the full extent of the conspiracy.

On February 5, the Indian government told Parliament that nearly 7,000 Indian citizens had been rescued from cybercrime centres in Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos between 2022 and 2025.

On February 20, a United Nations report detailed instances of torture, sexual abuse and exploitation, food deprivation, solitary confinement and other human rights abuses suffered by persons trafficked from several countries into cybercrime operations in Southeast Asia and beyond.

Terming it a “wicked problem”, the report sought urgent attention to the critical need for a human rights solution to the crisis.

In January 2025, Scroll published a series of extensive reports about Chinese crime syndicates that run cyber crime centres from Southeast Asia, mainly Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos. These highly sophisticated “scam compounds” are staffed with thousands of persons, many of them from India, who are lured with fake job offers and then forced to work on scamming people back home.

However, those who make scam calls from such centres are victims themselves, having been lured into going abroad through fake job offers, Scroll found. When they tried to leave, they were “beaten mercilessly”.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Read Scroll’s reportage of the cyber-scam centres:

• India’s cyber-scam epidemic is part of a multibillion global industry. This series traces a full arc

• The scammers who got scammed: How jobless Indians were lured into cyber slavery

• I travelled to ground zero of the cyber scams targeting India. Here is what I found

Girdlers’ carpet, manufactured in the 17th century by artisans of the Mughal Empire, is no ordinary piece of furnishing. It was commissioned by Robert Bell, an influential merchant and one of the founding directors of the English East India Company, as a gift for the Worshipful Company of Girdlers during his final tenure as its Master in 1634.

Active since the medieval period, the Company of Girdlers specialised in the manufacture of girdles, belts, and associated metal works and received its patent from Edward III in 1327.

The thread of Girdler’s carpet bears the imprint of a chequered past: arduously procured from Lahore, it travelled many miles from Surat to reach London in 1634, where it served as a table covering in the courtroom hall of the Company of Girdlers.

Even though the hall was consumed by the Great Fire of 1666, the carpet was saved by the presence of mind of its caretaker. It would later endure the Blitz of 1940-’41, the sustained campaign of aerial bombing of London and other British cities during the Second World War.

Between these two brushes with destruction, the carpet was given a new lease of life in 1899.

On the advice of the director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Mayor of London, Alfred J Newton – a prominent businessman known for his role in the public listing of the luxury retailer Harrods and Master of the Worshipful Company of Girdlers from 1898 to 1900 – together with the Father and Wardens of the Company, set in motion a careful programme to have it restored.

The process involved cleaning, repair and framing: ink stains were removed, tears were mended by the Decorative Needlework Society, and the carpet was returned to the Hall in 1900, set within a large oak frame bearing the inscription, “The Gift of Robert Bell, Master, A.D. 1634, in remembrance of his love”.

The carpet is on permanent display at the current premises of the Worshipful Company of Girdlers in East London.

On May 16, 1900, a luncheon banquet was held at Girdlers’ Hall in London to celebrate the restored splendour of this remarkable carpet. Attended by the Secretary of State and members of the Council of India, the occasion was presided over by Newton, and toasts were raised to the reigning monarch, Victoria, to Robert Bell, and to the Worshipful Company of Girdlers.

The speech accompanying the toast was delivered by George Birdwood, an idiosyncratic advocate of Indian handicrafts over industrial machinery. Born in 1832 in Belgaum, Bombay Presidency, into a family long associated with the East India Company, Birdwood later returned to England as an expert on Indian languages and material culture.

At the banquet for the Girdlers’ carpet, he reflected on practices of commemorating the dead across cultures, recalling the “eastern” sweets served at the Parsi festival of Muktad or Farvardin, which he had attended in Bombay, before inviting the audience to raise their glasses to the memory of Robert Bell in accordance with an old ritual:

“Ter bibe, vel totiens ternos, sic mystica lex est; vel tria potanti, vel ter tria multiplicanti.”
(Drink three times, or three times three; such is the mystic law: either three cups, or thrice three).

This couplet is drawn from the fourth-century playful arithmetic poem Griphus ternarii numeri (“Riddle of the Number Three”) by Decimus Magnus Ausonius. Written within the classical Greek and Roman tradition of symposium drinking games, the poem celebrates the symbolic power of the number three through a series of mythological, natural, and philosophical triads.

During his speech, Birdwood described rituals observed by artisan communities in cities such as Ahmedabad, Baroda, Surat and Bombay upon completing a work, where craftsmen publicly displayed the object and celebrated its beauty with fellow artisans by sharing sugared sesame seeds as tokens of goodwill and remembrance.

Shortly before concluding, he reflected on the symbolism of carpets in West and South Asia, describing them as representations of the universe or of divine paradise, and observing that many of the names given to these rugs imported into Europe translated as “place of worship”.

Here, Birdwood appears to conflate prayer rugs, which often depict a mihrab, a niche or alcove indicating the direction of prayer, similar to those found in mosques, with the carpets used to cover floors, windows, furniture, and even walls.

Paintings from the period show that carpets, accompanied by sumptuous mats, mattresses, cushions, awnings, and curtains, animated both public and private spaces, indoors and outdoors alike, ranging from mosques and dargahs to the imperial court’s audience hall, harem chambers, dining halls, terraces, and gardens, and even the wilderness during picnics or on hunting excursions.

Such Mughal carpets prominently featured nature-inspired floral and animal motifs, drawing on the lush gardens cultivated within the empire.

Art historians, such as Walter B Denny and D Fairchild Ruggles, argue that notions of earthly and heavenly paradise, and the heavenly garden and earthly palace, commingled in the architectural and design language of the period. Creating gardens of perpetual bloom, filled with diverse birds and animals, required immense wealth and thus signalled cultural and economic status.

Yet such gardens also expressed a deeper aspiration: by resisting seasonal decay and withstanding drought or frost, these permanent gardens embodied human mastery over nature and the spectre of death. Through the transportation and transplantation of flora and fauna from distant regions, patrons reshaped their immediate surroundings, asserting control over natural cycles.

In this sense, like paradise, they may ultimately have promised the triumph of life eternal over death. As a corollary, the textiles and furnishings adorned with real and imagined floral and faunal motifs extended curated nature and associated meanings into built spaces.

Mughal-era craft

Floral motifs appear both on the dark blue border and across the main red field of the Girdlers’ carpet. Measuring 24 feet by 7 feet 6 inches, this carpet with a woollen-piled surface was woven with cotton warps and wefts.

It is made of at least seven colours: red, blue, green, brown, black, white, and yellow. Like other Mughal carpets, these shades were extracted from plants and insects. Blue dyes were derived from indigo, whereas reds came from lac insects (Kerria lacca) and madder roots such as chay (Oldenlandia umbellata) and manjishtha (Rubia cordifolia). Greens and yellows were produced from turmeric, safflower, yellow larkspur, Himalayan rhubarb, hemp, and indigo; blacks and browns from catechu, myrobalan, teak leaves, pomegranate peels, and walnut shells.

With a density of 224 hand-tied knots per square inch – sixteen knots per warp inch and fourteen per weft inch – this exquisitely crafted carpet bears witness to the skill of Mughal-period craft communities.

Art historian Sylvia Houghteling observes that although carpets in the Mughal period were woven on fixed upright looms, their defining quality lay less in the loom itself than in the painstaking process of knotting. Unlike flat-woven textiles, where pattern emerges through the interlacing of warp and weft, knotted-pile carpets were made by tying innumerable small wool knots, creating the dense, raised surface characteristic of their texture.

This method demanded sustained manual skill: the weaver worked knot by knot, guided by a predetermined design – often set out in a taʿlim or symbols and code – and translated it into form through careful execution and memory.

Yet, as the 17th-century account of Francis Pelsaert, an agent of the Dutch East India Company in Agra, suggests, this extraordinary labour yielded only modest returns. A carpet maker earned only five to six tankas (a copper coin valued at one-twentieth of a rupee) a day, even when working from dawn to dusk.

The Girdlers’ carpet reveals additional dimensions of the exacting craft of carpet making in early modern South Asia: the adaptability and creative range of the weavers, evident in the incorporation of custom design elements, some of which were not intrinsic to conventional Mughal carpets.

Exemplifying early modern bespoke luxury, the Girdlers’ carpet is personalised with two eagle-crested emblems representing Eagle House in Wimbledon, the country residence Robert Bell built in 1613. Bell’s initials appear on either side. At the centre, the coat of arms of the Worshipful Company of Girdlers, rendered in reverse.

This inversion likely resulted from an error during the design transfer process, when a traced or stencilled drawing was accidentally reversed before being pounced – an oversight the weavers, unfamiliar with the design, did not detect during execution. The coat of arms consists of a shield with three gridirons, or girdle-irons, symbolising the Company’s historic craft of making girdles and associated metalwork.

Above the shield appears the Company’s patron saint, St Lawrence, who, according to legend, was burned to death on a gridiron; he is depicted holding the Book of the Gospels in his right hand and a gridiron in his left.

Below this image is a scroll bearing the Company’s motto, “Give thanks to God,” which appears correctly oriented, suggesting that it was not traced at the same time as the coat of arms and was likely added later.

How did these customised details reach the weavers? Although Robert Bell never set foot in South Asia, his position as a director of the East India Company gave him privileged access to objects crafted by Mughal artisans and transported to England aboard Company ships operating in the Indian Ocean.

In 1614, William Edwards, stationed in India, wrote to Thomas Smythe that he was sending to London a consignment of quilts and carpets commissioned by Bell for personal use, with his initials woven along their margins in a specified pattern.

Unfortunately, the fate of these furnishings is unknown, but 16 years later, during the reign of Shah Jahan (1628-1658), Bell instructed Thomas Rastell, who had been appointed president of the English East India Company’s council at Surat in 1630, to procure a wool-pile Mughal carpet intended as a gift for the Girdlers’ Company.

As in the earlier instance, Bell likely supplied drawings of the custom designs he wished to incorporate into the carpet. The East India Company initially covered the cost, which Bell promised to reimburse.

Within a year of reaching Surat, Rastell died of illness, though not before ensuring that weaving had begun in Lahore. Nearly two and a half years elapsed before news finally reached London that the carpet was ready for shipment. Writing on January 25, 1633, Rastell’s successor, Joseph Hopkinson, reported that he was dispatching a carpet for Bell from Surat.

Akbar’s patronage

Although references to knotted-pile carpets in South Asia predate the 16th century, it was under Akbar that sustained imperial patronage enabled the industry to expand and flourish.

Notably, Abu’l Fazl, Akbar’s court historian, uses the term kilim as a catch-all for carpets, even though in Iran and Central Asia it more specifically denoted flat-woven textiles. Other terms for carpets in South Asian sources include bisat and qalin.

While the needs of the earlier Mughal emperors were met through Persian imports, Abul Fazl observes that under Akbar, the carpets of Iran and Central Asia lost some of their preeminence as weavers from diverse regions settled in the Mughal realm and fostered a flourishing trade. He also highlighted the remarkable scale of carpets produced in imperial workshops, some reaching up to 55 feet in length.

Akbar’s carpets, especially those woven with brocade, along with awnings, tents, and screens made of cloth of gold, European velvet, wool, and damask silk and satin, were destroyed in 1579 when the farrashkhana, or storeroom for such portable encampment structures and furnishings, caught fire. Nevertheless, carpet production, both under direct courtly patronage and through mercantile private enterprise, continued to thrive across the Mughal Empire, particularly in cities that served as imperial capitals and commercial centres.

Key sites of production included Fatehpur Sikri, Agra, Surat, Ahmedabad, Amber, Jaunpur, Kashmir, and Multan; however, Lahore consistently emerges as the principal centre of production and the primary marketplace for carpets in the Mughal Empire.

Mughal wool-piled carpet production primarily relied on sheep’s wool, but artisans also used pashmina – from the Persian pashm, meaning wool – to produce knotted-pile carpets of exceptional refinement. This delicate fibre, twice as fine as sheep’s wool, came from the soft undercoat of mountain goats grazing across the high-altitude plateaus of southeastern Ladakh and western Tibet. From there, it entered established trade circuits: sent to Kashmir for shawl weaving or carried onward to Lahore for textile and carpet manufacture.

Pashmina’s fineness enabled extraordinarily dense knotting, resulting in some of the most finely wrought carpets of the Mughal world. Writing in 1634, Abd al-Hamid Lahori, court historian to Shah Jahan, praised the output of Lahore’s workshops, observing that their carpets were so soft and refined that those produced in the royal ateliers of Safavid Persia paled in comparison.

A sizeable collection of 17th and 18th-century Mughal carpets acquired by the rulers of Amber from dealers in Lahore is now part of the City Palace Museum in Jaipur. The Dutch East India Company obtained a Lahore carpet for the Emperor of Japan in 1650, which is now housed in Kyoto.

In fact, the first shipment of carpets to England in 1615, sent via Surat, consisted entirely of pieces from Lahore and included Bell’s initial consignment of quilts and carpets embellished with his initials. Probably inspired by this, Thomas Roe, the English ambassador to Jahangir’s court, set out in search of such wares, scouring the lanes of Ajmer, only to realise that the kind he desired could be found only in Lahore.

In 1618, he commissioned one bearing his coat of arms. There is no record of its survival beyond the fact that it was bequeathed in his will to his cousin, Sir Henry Roe. Robert Bell’s customised carpets, especially the Girdlers’ carpet, continued to inspire the East India Company officers’ collection of Mughal art.

William Fremlin, President of the Company’s Council at Surat from 1637 to 1644, commissioned South Asian weavers to produce a carpet bearing his coat of arms in the central field. Both its field and borders depict scenes of animal hunts. Known as the Fremlin carpet, it is now held at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

These carpets, carried across oceans, bear witness to the circuits of connoisseurship that ran through the Mughal and British empires.

Knot by knot, these carpets retain the imprint of the hands and labour of largely anonymous artisans working in South Asia. Fragile and in constant need of care, they continue to speak across centuries, revealing not only remarkable craftsmanship but also the entangled histories of exchange, connoisseurship and survival woven into their threads.

Neha Vermani is an Honorary Fellow in the Faculty of Arts & Humanities at Durham University. She is a historian of early modern South Asia, and her research focuses on the intersections of food practices, material culture, and scientific and ethical discourses on the body, the senses, and the natural world.

Bandi Bhageerath, son of Union minister Bandi Sanjay Kumar, surrendered before the police in Telangana on Saturday evening, hours after the High Court declined to give interim protection from arrest in a Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act case, the Hindustan Times reported.

Bhageerath was arrested from Narsingi near Hyderabad and was taken to Pet Basheerabad police station, Cyberabad Police Commissioner Ramesh Reddy said.

Bhageerath was later produced before a magistrate, who sent him to judicial custody till May 29, his lawyer Karunasagar was quoted as saying by ANI.

The parents of a girl, reported to be a 17-year-old, have alleged that Bhageerath befriended their daughter on the pretext of marriage and sexually assaulted her at a farmhouse in Moinabad on December 31.

Based on the girl’s statement, the police added charges of rape under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and aggravated penetrative sexual assault under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act to the first information report.

Bhageerath has also registered a complaint, accusing the girl and her family of blackmailing and extorting him of Rs 5 crore. Based on his complaint, the police registered a case of extortion and criminal intimidation against the girl and her parents.

A High Court vacation bench of Justice T Madhavi Devi had heard the matter till midnight on Friday, the Hindustan Times reported. She reserved orders on the anticipatory bail petition by Bhageerath and said that the verdict would be delivered on May 21.

While Bhageerath’s lawyer urged the court to grant interim protection from arrest until the anticipatory bail plea was decided, the judge said that she was not inclined to issue any interim directions, according to the newspaper.

The Cyberabad Police claimed that during investigations, Bhageerath “admitted to have committed the said offence”, after which he was arrested.

‘No wrongdoing from our side’, claims Union minister

Kumar on Saturday said he wanted to reassure well-wishers, supporters and Bharatiya Janata Party workers that “there has been no wrongdoing from our side”.

“We have complete faith in the legal process and truth will ultimately prevail,” he said in a social media post.

The Union Minister of State for Home Affairs said that in the past week, his family had gone through an emotionally difficult phase.

“The situation affected my entire family deeply,” Kumar said. “My mother suffered a heart stroke during this difficult phase, which was very traumatic. But in these testing times, the immense love & support extended by lakhs of people across the country gave me strength to stand firm.”

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

India’s external affairs ministry on Saturday rejected an award reportedly issued by a court of arbitration about maximum pondage at Indian hydroelectric projects on the Indus river system, calling it null and void.

Pondage refers to water that accumulates behind the dam of a run-of-the-river hydroelectric plant. It is mainly used to regulate the supply of water and to account for fluctuations in the flow of a river.

“India categorically rejects the present so-called award, just as it has firmly rejected all prior pronouncements of the illegally constituted CoA [Court of Arbitration],” Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said. “India has never recognised the establishment of this so-called CoA. Any proceeding, award, or decision issued by it is null and void.”

The external affairs ministry said that India’s decision to hold the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance remains in force. The decision was taken in the wake of the April 22, 2025 Pahalgam terror attack.

Our response to media queries on matters pertaining to the illegally constituted so-called Court of Arbitration ⬇️

🔗 https://t.co/rTnEGIO10K pic.twitter.com/EfGKmj1kA3

— Randhir Jaiswal (@MEAIndia) May 16, 2026

As of Sunday morning, no official statement about the award was available on the website of the Permanent Court of Arbitration. However, a press release from May 11 states that a three-day hearing on Pakistan’s request for “interim measures and on Treaty Status” ended on April 28.

India did not participate in the hearing, the press release noted.

The Court of Arbitration is a five-member arbitration panel headed by Sean D Murphy. It was set up in January 2023 at Pakistan’s request after the country questioned the design of India’s Kishenganga and Ratle hydroelectric projects, according to The Hindu.

India has declined to take part in the proceedings, arguing that the questions before it fall within the ambit of a neutral expert appointed by the World Bank.

Written by Neerad Pandharipande.

On May 10, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s motorcade drove through Gujarat’s Jamnagar, a town known for housing the world’s largest oil refinery. Videos showed hundreds of Bharatiya Janata Party supporters lining the route, waving party flags and cheering.

This political roadshow came just hours after Modi had called on Indians to adopt austerity measures to help weather the economic choppiness set off by the war in West Asia.

At a rally in Hyderabad earlier that day, shortly after the conclusion of elections in several states, Modi had urged citizens to revive work-from-home practices adopted during the Covid-19 pandemic to reduce fuel consumption. He also called on his fellow citizens to use public transport and to carpool.

The prime minister also urged Indians to avoid non-essential foreign travel for a year.

India imports about 90% of its crude oil requirements. Most of this is shipped in through the Strait of Hormuz, which has been effectively blocked since the war between United States-Israel and Iran began on February 28. The constrained supply has driven up global oil prices by ‌more than 50% since the conflict began.

Conserving foreign exchange reserves, Modi said, was “an act of patriotism”.

Hours before making the appeal, Modi had held another roadshow in Hyderabad.

Modi’s long convoys prompted social media users to point to the gulf between the restrictions the prime minister was urging his fellow citizens to adopt and his own actions.

To many Indians, the events in Telangana and Gujarat seemed quite superfluous.

On May 11, the day after the Jamnagar motorcade, Modi travelled to Gujarat’s Somnath for a religious ceremony to mark 75 years of the inauguration of the restored Hindu temple there. The event included an airshow by fuel-guzzling aircraft of the Indian Air Force’s aerobatics team. In Somnath, Modi was the star of yet another roadshow.

On May 11, there was another roadshow in Vadodara a day before Modi travelled to Assam for the swearing-in ceremony of the state Cabinet. The event in Guwahati would not seem to have required Modi’s presence: after all, the BJP was forming its third consecutive government in the state.

On May 7, just three days before Modi called for austerity, he had been in Patna for another swearing-in ceremony. This time, it was merely an expansion of the state’s Cabinet. Of course, it involved a roadshow for Modi.

This led to questions about whether it was essential for Modi and other leaders of the ruling National Democratic Alliance to participate in these events.

After three days of intense criticism about the contradictions, the media carried claims – attributed only to “sources” – that the size of Modi’s convoy had been reduced “immediately after his speech in Hyderabad”. Social media was suddenly filled with videos of NDA leaders suddenly using electric vehicles or taking public transport.

On May 15, as Modi began a five-nation tour, social media users wondered if the visit was necessary amid the economic troubles. While a head of government’s tours are planned several weeks or months in advance, the energy shock caused by the conflict had been predicted more than two months ago.

Within days of the conflict breaking out, several countries had introduced measures to conserve fuel. India had also partly increased the price of commercial liquefied petroleum gas cylinders on April 1.

Why did Modi delay his call for austerity till May 10 even though this course of action seemed inevitable all along?

Why was saving fuel evidently not a consideration for several weeks of election campaigning?

These perceived excesses in the time of austerity would seem to signal to Modi’s fellow citizens that austerity is not essential if their prime minister isn’t walking the talk himself. As one cartoonist begged Modi, “No foreign trips, please work from home.”

Also read: Modi’s austerity appeals are a misplaced solution for India’s economic woes

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

Paper leaks. The re-exam for the 2026 undergraduate National Eligibility cum Entrance Test will be held on June 21. The National Testing Agency made the announcement as the test conducted on May 3, in which more than 22 lakh students appeared, had been cancelled following allegations of a paper leak.

The Central Bureau of Investigation has arrested at least seven persons and conducted searches at several locations in the country in connection with the case.

Johanna Deeksha reports about why the National Testing Agency continues to fail students in India.

A place of worship dispute. The Madhya Pradesh High Court held that the disputed Bhojshala-Kamal Maula mosque complex in Dhar district is a temple of the Hindu deity Saraswati. The bench quashed a 2003 order of the Archaeological Survey of India, which allowed Hindus to perform prayers on the premises on Tuesdays and Muslims to offer namaz in the complex on Fridays.

It also allowed the Muslim side to seek alternative land in the district to build a mosque. The court said it arrived at its decision on the basis of the precedent laid down by the Supreme Court in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case.

From Babri to Gyanvapi, how India’s courts have helped escalate Hindutva claims on mosques, explains Umang Poddar.

Contempt proceedings. Delhi High Court judge Swarana Kanta Sharma initiated contempt of court proceedings against Aam Aadmi Party leaders Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia, and several others, for allegedly defaming and vilifying her on social media in connection with the liquor policy case. However, Sharma recused herself from hearing the Central Bureau of Investigation’s revision petition against their discharge in the case.

This came after Kejriwal and others said in April that they would boycott the proceedings before Sharma after the judge rejected their petition demanding that she recuse herself from hearing the case.

Also on Scroll last week

• How slow counting of votes in Bengal helped BJP win a lost seat from Trinamool
• Why five new districts in Ladakh have led to fears of exclusion, gerrymandering
• Indian hospitals are pushing robotic surgery, but do you really need it?
• Gujarat fisherfolk in crisis after two summers of war
• Why US has accused some Indian students of misusing visa provision that allows practical training
• India’s massive judicial backlog can be tackled by a simple legal provision that already exists
• Why India must abandon the post-1991 economic ideology and forge its own path – like China
• Who is responsible when underage drivers cause fatal crashes? Indian law needs a reform
• ‘Baapya’ review: A gender bender about a man who loved a woman who was always a man
• Review: In ‘Exam’, tough questions and wishy-washy answers

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On August 6, 2019, I was having coffee with a group of colleagues at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru. We were discussing the abrogation, the previous day, of Article 370 in Kashmir. One of the younger members at the table, a computer scientist, remarked: “What we have now is not Modi 2.0, but Shah 1.0.” It was, of course, the new home minister who had planned and piloted the downgrading of India’s only Muslim-majority state.

Perhaps to see this as “Shah 1.0” was an exaggeration, but now there was little question that Amit Shah was not just the second-most powerful man in government but the only minister with any real authority and independence of action apart from the prime minister himself.

The Modi-Shah jugalbandi has had its precedents. Consider the partnership, in government, between Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel in the early years of independent India. While the poisonous polemics of contemporary politics represents them as rivals and adversaries, in truth they were friends, colleagues, and co-workers. Amidst the ruins of Partition, faced with the challenges of scarcity and privation, conflict and division, a united and democratic India might never have come into being had Nehru and Patel not worked together.

Patel played the leading role in uniting India territorially, by bringing the princely states on board, modernising the administrative system, taming the violent extremists of the Hindu Right and a communist Left, and getting a recalcitrant Congress to support the process of Constitution-making being directed by BR Ambedkar.

At the same time, Nehru played the leading role in uniting India emotionally, by assuring equal rights to religious and linguistic minorities and to women, and by energetically advocating universal adult franchise in the face of bitter elite opposition to it.

A mixed blessing

To be sure, Nehru and Patel had their differences, yet they worked heroically to submerge them in the larger national interest. It is also true that they had the support of remarkably able ministers like Ambedkar and of competent civil servants. Nonetheless, historical scholarship has authoritatively demonstrated the central, indeed defining, role their partnership played in forging a nation from its fragments. (Apart from my own India after Gandhi, readers might wish to consult Rajmohan Gandhi’s scrupulously researched biography of Vallabhbhai Patel.)

After Patel died in December 1950, and Ambedkar resigned the following year, Nehru towered over all other figures in the cabinet, which may have been a mixed blessing. The next duopoly to define Indian politics emerged only in the late 1960s, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi appointed the former diplomat, PN Haksar, as her principal secretary. Haksar quickly became more powerful than any of Mrs Gandhi’s cabinet ministers.

Between 1970 and 1975, he was her right-hand man and most influential adviser. He played a role in planning the prime minister’s finest hour – the liberation of Bangladesh – and in promoting high-quality science in such vitally important spheres as agriculture and space. On the negative side, it was also Haksar who was instrumental in designing Mrs Gandhi’s damaging economic policies of centralisation and control.

In 1975, Haksar was cast aside in favour of the prime minister’s second son. The partnership between Indira and Sanjay Gandhi was responsible for the country’s descent into authoritarianism through the suppression of civil liberties, the censorship of the media, the taming of the judiciary, making the bureaucracy and police subservient to mother and son, and the jailing of all political opponents. And unlike the partnership between Indira Gandhi and Haksar, it had no redeeming features at all.

The next significant partnership to emerge in government was between PV Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh, prime minister and finance minister in the years 1991-1996. Rao and Singh together helped liberate the country from the license-permit-quota raj, setting in motion three decades of steady economic growth that has since made a major dent in poverty, created a large middle class, and enhanced India’s stature in the world.

Majoritarian tendencies reined in

Next came the partnership between Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani. Through the 1980s and 1990s, they worked together to make the Bharatiya Janata Party the major national challenger to the Congress Party. When the BJP was in office between 1998 and 2004, Vajpayee served as prime minister and Advani as home minister. They continued the path of economic liberalisation set in motion by Rao and Singh, helped along by well-qualified cabinet colleagues such as Yashwant Sinha and Jaswant Singh.

Meanwhile, the fact that they could rule only as part of a multi-party coalition meant that the majoritarian tendencies of the sangh parivar were not given absolutely free play. (The Vajpayee-Advani jugalbandi has been analysed in recent works by Vinay Sitapati and Abhishek Choudhary.)

In 2004, the BJP unexpectedly lost power. For the following decade, the country was ruled by a multi-party coalition with the Congress as the dominant partner. Once more, two individuals exercised more authority than all the others: the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi.

Directed by Singh, the country’s economic progress continued to be impressive; guided by Sonia Gandhi and her National Advisory Council, valuable attempts were made to erect a social security net for the poor. These gains of the partnership were unfortunately offset by a lack of clarity as to with whom the real locus of authority lay.

It should have of course been the prime minister; yet by nature Singh was timid and risk-averse, and allowed Sonia Gandhi far too much say in matters properly under his domain alone (such as education policy).

And now, in Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, we have the most recent of what by my count is the seventh case of a duopoly in our politics, whereby two individuals and their partnership have come to play a vital role in the affairs of India and Indians. In terms of time, this is the most enduring of all the jugalbandis discussed here.

Modi and Shah worked closely together in Gujarat politics between 2002 and 2014, and in national politics since 2014. In this period, they have never lost political power; indeed, they have expanded their power, first by making Gujarat a one-party state and then by expanding the BJP’s footprint all over India.

When considered in terms of political longevity and political success, then the Modi-Shah partnership looks impressive. Yet if one looks at how they have achieved power, and what they have done once in power, their record is much darker. To achieve power, they have broken rival parties by a mixture of coercion and bribery, intimidated the press and made it a vehicle of personal and party propaganda, tamed the judiciary, used draconian measures to put dissenters (including non-violent dissenters) in prison, weakened Indian federalism, and compromised the integrity of previously independent public institutions (and of the Election Commission of India above all).

After coming to power, they have favoured a few select capitalists (including two from their home state), driven away foreign investors, failed to generate employment in manufacturing, politicised scientific research, and devastated our forests, water, air and soil, these measures collectively undermining the future economic prospects of the country.

The damage done to our democratic fabric and the stalling of our economic rise by the Modi-Shah jugalbandi are worrisome enough. And we have in addition the continuing attacks on our traditions of social and cultural pluralism overseen and even orchestrated by them. Wherever the BJP is in power, Muslims are marginalised and humiliated. They are effectively made second-class citizens, without a voice, living on the sufferance of the majority community.

As noted in an earlier column, under Modi and Shah India is closer to being a Hindu Pakistan than at any previous time in its history.

I have been a university teacher, where I had to assign grades – A+, A, A- down to F – to students taking the courses I taught. I am also a cricket nut, accustomed to making lists of, for example, the greatest bowlers of all time, ranked 1, 2, 3 down to 10.

I will here resist assigning numbered grades to the seven jugalbandis featured in this column, or ranking them in order of positive achievement. Yet so far as one can judge, the verdict of history will be that the first of these partnerships was unquestionably the finest and most constructive, and the third and the seventh probably the most damaging and destructive.

This article first appeared in The Telegraph.

Ramachandra Guha’s latest book, Speaking with Nature: The Origins of Indian Environmentalism, is now in stores. His email address is ramachandraguha@yahoo.in.

Motorola India sues tech platforms for ‘defamatory’ reviews as Centre tightens online regulations

This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology’s impact outside the West.

Motorola wants social media platforms to take down “defamatory” reviews of its devices in India. But the way it’s doing this has digital rights activists alarmed.

In March, Motorola’s India arm sued major companies and their platforms – Google, Meta, X, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Threads – over more than 360 posts by users that allegedly portray its devices as unsafe. The American phonemaker has asked courts to order the removal of this content and also prevent similar posts from appearing in the future.

Such claims have circulated widely online for years. What sets this case apart is Motorola’s decision to name platforms as co-defendants rather than pursuing standard requests to take down specific posts.

The Indian government has been tightening online content regulations in recent years. Against this backdrop, the Motorola case could make platforms more likely to remove content quickly to avoid legal risk, digital rights experts told Rest of World.

“Motorola could have filed takedown requests with the social media platforms. … Instead, it bypassed that and chose to name them as co-defendants,” said Jayshree Bajoria, Asia associate director at watchdog Human Rights Watch. “Social media platforms are already likely to over-censor legitimate expression to comply with the proposed IT rules and recent changes, to retain their safe harbor protection. A civil defamation case like this has a similar chilling effect on freedom of speech and expression.”

On April 17, an Indian court issued a temporary injunction ordering the removal of all existing defamatory content about Motorola – including negative campaigns, abusive remarks, and boycott campaigns – until the next hearing in June.

Meta, Google, and YouTube did not respond to Rest of World’s detailed request for comment at the time of publishing. X does not have a public-facing email for media enquiries.

A Motorola-like defamation case could never happen in the US as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act shields platforms from being liable for user-generated content.

India is home to the largest user base for YouTube and Instagram, and is among the top five countries for X.

Saurabh Gupta, a content creator who has made videos on Motorola’s durability and service, called out the company in a post on X, saying its legal action was a “direct killing” of freedom of speech. Gupta, who runs a Hindi-language YouTube channel called Gupta Information Systems with more than 1.8 million followers, is one of 24 plaintiffs named in Motorola’s lawsuit.

The smartphone industry is split on the matter.

Sunil Raina, managing director of Indian smartphone maker Lava, said companies can choose to respond by intimidating or improving when faced with criticism. “One silences the feedback. The other silences the need for it,” he wrote on X.

Madhav Sheth, the former Realme CEO who tried to reintroduce Chinese brand Honor’s phones in India, sided with immediate legal action for “any platform or individual found spreading fake news or unverified ‘exposés.’”

Legal experts are particularly concerned about the inclusion of a “John Doe” provision in the complaint, which allows action against unidentified future creators.

This order allows creators like musicians and filmmakers to protect their intellectual property in cases where the wrongdoers are anonymous or unknown. It’s also used to discover perpetrators of crypto theft and data breaches. Celebrities have used it to stop miscreants from using their likeness. But Motorola’s ask broadens its scope to murkier territory.

“John Doe orders were designed for piracy cases involving genuinely unidentifiable infringers, and their migration into defamation litigation is a significant expansion of judicial remedy,” Apar Gupta, tech lawyer and founding director of digital rights group Internet Freedom Foundation, told Rest of World. “The chilling effect operates before any creator is even named, because the order’s existence signals to the entire ecosystem that critical content carries legal exposure. Worse, platforms faced with subsequent takedown requests citing the John Doe order will typically comply rather than litigate.”

Gupta is also skeptical about Motorola’s removal request, including URLs that date back to 2019.

“Content that has been online for five or more years without prior legal action raises questions about delay, acquiescence, and the genuineness of the alleged injury,” he said.

Since 2021, amendments to the Indian IT rules have been building pressure on social media platforms. Companies have had to set up local offices, appoint grievance officers, and add AI labeling to comply with new rules. The window to take down any unlawful content was recently shortened from three days to less than three hours.

The government’s recent and proposed amendments “are geared towards signalling to platforms that they need to comply, while also making it harder for them to contest or push back,” Prateek Waghre, a technologist-turned-public policy researcher and a fellow with the Tech Policy Press nonprofit, told Rest of World.

In general, governments and companies “will use whatever means they have at their disposal to suppress speech they do not like,” Waghre said.

Ananya Bhattacharya is a reporter for Rest of World covering South Asia's tech scene. She is based in Mumbai, India.

This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology’s impact outside the West.

Chief Justice Surya Kant on Saturday claimed that his reported remarks comparing some unemployed youngsters to “cockroaches” had been misquoted by sections of the media, Live Law reported.

Kant said it was baseless to claim that he criticised young people in general.

Earlier in the day, the chief justice had been quoted as saying by PTI that some unemployed youngsters were like “cockroaches”, and that they go on to become social media or Right to Information Act activists and start attacking the “system”, PTI reported.

The remarks were made when a bench of Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi pulled up a lawyer for filing a petition seeking directions to the Delhi High Court to designate him as a senior advocate, The Indian Express reported.

There were already enough “parasites” in society attacking the judiciary, he said, adding that lawyers should not join hands with them.

“There are youngsters like cockroaches, who don’t get any employment or have any place in profession,” PTI quoted Kant as saying. “Some of them become media, some of them become social media, RTI activists and other activists and they start attacking everyone.”

After the remarks were criticised on social media, Kant claimed he had specifically criticised “those who have entered professions like the Bar [legal profession] with the aid of fake and bogus degrees,” according to Live Law.

“Similar persons have sneaked into the media, social media, and other noble professions as well, and hence, they are like parasites,” he said.

The chief justice was further quoted as saying: “Not only am I proud of our present and future human resource, but every youth of India inspires me,” the chief justice was quoted as saying by Live Law. “It is not an exaggeration to say that Indian youth have great regard and respect for me, and I too see them as the pillars of a developed India.”

The case

The petitioner told the bench that it was the third time that he was moving the Supreme Court, The Indian Express reported. He argued that the High Court had failed to comply with an earlier direction of the top court to reconsider the matter expeditiously, and had deferred or rejected applications.

The counsel for the High Court told the bench that interviews for the position of a senior advocate were underway.

Kant told the petitioner that the “whole world might be eligible for senior designation, but at least you are not”, The Indian Express reported.

The chief justice added that if the High Court makes the petitioner a senior advocate, the Supreme Court will “set it aside” on account of his “professional conduct”.

Bagchi also asked if the petitioner had no other matter to pursue, the newspaper reported. “This is the standing of a person who expects to be conferred a senior gown?” the judge was quoted as having asked.

The chief justice claimed that a large number of law degrees in Delhi could be fake, adding that the Supreme Court would want the Central Bureau of Investigation to verify this because the Bar Council of India was not taking any action, The Indian Express reported.

While dismissing the petition, the Supreme Court said that the petitioner “indulges in filing frivolous petitions”, according to the newspaper.

The petitioner apologised and sought permission to withdraw the petition. The bench agreed to let him withdraw his application.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar and Neerad Pandharipande.

The Union government on Saturday imposed restrictions on silver imports, moving several categories of the metal from the “free” to the “restricted” category.

This means that the imports will now require authorisation from the Directorate General of Foreign Trade under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

As per the notification issued by the authority, governmental approval will be needed to import silver bars containing 99.9% or more silver, as also other silver bars under specific Harmonised System codes, or HS codes.

Certain categories of silver imports will also now be subject to Reserve Bank of India regulations.

The Government of India has tightened the policy regarding the import of silver bars, changing their status from 'Free' to 'Restricted' with immediate effect. pic.twitter.com/k4Zyq4W2rO

— ANI (@ANI) May 16, 2026

This comes in the context of the government seeking to tighten oversight on imports of precious metals, so as to ease pressure on foreign exchange reserves. This may also help reduce the country’s trade deficit and support the weakening rupee.

Earlier this week, the government raised import tariffs on gold and silver to 15% from 6%.

Demand for gold, particularly as an investment, has risen in India following a recent rally in prices and weak equity returns over the past year.

India has been trying to discourage gold imports and in recent weeks had imposed a 3% integrated goods and services tax on gold and silver imports, prompting banks to halt purchases for more than a month. As a result, gold imports in April fell to their lowest level in nearly 30 years.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday urged citizens to avoid buying gold and adopt “nationally responsible” lifestyle choices to help the country withstand global economic uncertainty caused by the war in West Asia.

Written by Neerad Pandharipande.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu on Saturday announced that the government will offer incentives of Rs 30,000 to families for the birth of a third child and Rs 40,000 for a fourth one, PTI reported.

Naidu said at a public meeting in Narsannapeta in the Srikakulam district that the government will announce further details in a month. The chief minister said that the time has come for society to work together to increase birth rates, according to PTI.

The Telugu Desam Party chief had in March unveiled a policy aimed at raising the state’s Total Fertility Rate by paying a financial incentive of Rs 25,000 for couples who have a third child.

Speaking in the Legislative Assembly at the time, Naidu had highlighted that Andhra Pradesh faces a declining birth rate and an ageing population. He warned that if fertility rates are not stabilised, nearly 23% of residents could be elderly by 2047.

“Currently, about 58% of families have only one child, around 2.17 lakh families have two children, and nearly 62 lakh families have three or more children,” he had said. “Around three lakh families have only one child instead of two, while another three lakh families have more than two children.”

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Union government has told the Delhi High Court that non-governmental organisation Oxfam India was found to be involved in “a negative and malicious campaign against the Assam tea industry” and was a “probable instrument of foreign policy”, The Indian Express reported on Saturday.

In its submissions to the court, the Union home ministry alleged that inquiries by central agencies and the Central Board of Direct Taxes found that the NGO was violating provisions of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act.

FCRA registration is mandatory for any non-profit organisation in India to receive funds from abroad.

Oxfam was purportedly indulging in “activities detrimental to the national economic interest” by entering into an “agreement with another association and funded it to mobilise communities against the coal industry with help of local unions”.

Oxfam India was among 5,932 non-governmental organisations whose registrations under the FCRA had ceased on January 1, 2022, either because they did not apply for renewal or the home ministry refused to sanction their applications for renewal. Oxfam India is in the latter category.

Oxfam India moved the High Court against the Centre not deciding on its renewal application. The Union government was instructed in November 2022 to decide on its petition within six weeks.

In December 2022, the home ministry rejected the application and denied the renewal of Oxfam India’s FCRA registration.

In February, the ministry told the High Court that it was willing to consider Oxfam India’s application for a fresh FCRA registration without prejudice, The Indian Express reported.

On Friday, the High Court was told by the Union government’s counsel that this application was under consideration by the ministry.

Allegations against the NGO

However, in its submissions to the court on Thursday, the ministry alleged that Oxfam India “was found to be corresponding with foreign governments and multilateral organisations in order to put pressure on the Government of India”.

Oxfam India denied the charge in its submissions on May 12 and said that foreign contribution donors had paid government money for specific purposes.

“…when they sought for the update regarding the status of contribution made by them, [Oxfam India] merely informed their diplomatic mission in India on their request, which was a necessary exercise,” the newspaper quoted the NGO as saying.

The home ministry also said that Oxfam India was allegedly found to be involved in a “negative and malicious campaign” against the tea industry in Assam.

Oxfam India had run a campaign in 2019 to increase the wages of tea garden workers based on a report published by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai from October that year, The Indian Express reported.

The ministry added that the NGO projected “opinionated statements in the media” against the industry.

This caused “harm to the interests of the Indian tea industry generally”, the ministry said, adding that this was done “likely to unwarrantedly stir up agitation against the state government”.

Replying to the allegation, the NGO noted that this campaign had led to the wages of the tea garden workers being increased in 2022.

In its submissions, the ministry also told the High Court that Oxfam India entered into an agreement with another association and funded it to mobilise communities against the coal industry with the help of local unions.

This was despite the NGO being registered only for social programmes, it added, according to The Indian Express.

“Such activities are not compatible with its stated FCRA objectives and are detrimental to the nation’s economic interest,” the ministry said.

However, the NGO said that although the organisation, Environics Trust, had requested funding, “no such fund was provided”, according to the newspaper.

Oxfam India further noted that the Union government in its December 2022 order had introduced “for the first time allegations relating to UNICEF [United Nations Children’s Fund] funding, the Assam tea campaign, receipt of funds in utilisation accounts, transfer of funds to other entities, administrative expenditure beyond 20%, and speculative use of FC [foreign contribution]”.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read: FCRA licence crackdown has plunged India’s non-profit sector into a crisis

The Bharatiya Janata Party government in West Bengal has decided to conduct a re-verification of all caste certificates issued in the state since 2011 on account of allegations of large-scale irregularities during the tenure of the previous Trinamool Congress regime, PTI quoted an official as saying on Friday.

The official added that the State Backward Classes Welfare Department on Friday issued letters to district magistrates across the state directing them to begin the re-verification process. The order will cover about 1.6 crore certificates issued over the past 15 years, The Times of India reported.

Of these, about 1 crore are Scheduled Caste certificates, 21 lakh Scheduled Tribe certificates and 48 lakh Other Backward Classes, according to the newspaper.

The order on Friday said that the “authenticity and genuineness” of several certificates had been challenged by various quarters. The re-verification of the caste certificates will be carried out by the respective issuing authorities as per the prevailing norms, the newspaper quoted the order as saying.

Any certificate found to have been issued improperly will invite legal repercussions and strict action, it added.

State Tribal Development and Backward Classes Welfare Minister Kshudiram Tudu told PTI that several fake and irregular SC, ST and OBC certificates had been issued during the previous TMC government.

Earlier, the minister had also said that strict action would be taken against officials under whose supervision such certificates were issued.

The order on Friday comes after the BJP defeated the TMC in the Assembly elections on May 4, ending the 15-year rule of the Mamata Banerjee-led party.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The West Bengal Police on Friday filed a first information report against Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee for allegedly provocative speeches he made during campaigning for the Assembly elections, including alleged threats directed at Union Home Minister Amit Shah, India Today reported.

The FIR was based on a complaint filed by a man identified as Rajib Sarkar on May 5, a day after the election results were announced, at the Baguiati Police Station. His complaint alleged that Abhishek Banerjee made inflammatory remarks during campaign events held between April 27 and May 3.

The speeches made by the TMC’s national general secretary promoted enmity and disturbed public tranquillity, his complaint alleged, adding that it also included threats directed at the Union home minister.

Speaking to The Indian Express, Sarkar said that Banerjee “used strong language, challenging Amit Shah to face the public without central security after the election results, and claimed that the Trinamool Congress would finish the game that he alleged was started by the BJP”.

The case on Friday was filed at the Bidhannagar Cyber Crime Police Station under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to provocation with an intent to incite a riot, promoting enmity and hatred, criminal intimidation and circulation of false information, rumors to incite hatred.

The provision pertaining to promoting enmity and hatred is a non-bailable offence with imprisonment of three years and a fine.

Banerjee was also booked under the Representation of the People Act for allegedly attempting to unduly influence voters.

The FIR alleged that the speeches contained provocative, threatening and inflammatory content capable of creating public disorder and disturbing communal harmony, India Today reported.

On May 4, the BJP defeated the TMC in the Assembly elections, ending the 15-year rule of the Mamata Banerjee-led party.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Trinamool Congress’ Rajganj candidate Swapna Barman on Friday alleged that unknown miscreants set fire to her house in Jalpaiguri.

The fire, which broke out at about 8 pm, was doused and no one was inside the house during the incident, The Indian Express Bengali quoted the police as saying.

Barman, a heptathlete, claimed that she had been receiving threats after she lost the recent Assembly elections in West Bengal and that her family was also being intimidated, the newspaper reported.

The police are investigating what caused the fire, if it was a case of arson and if there was a political conspiracy, reports added.

“If I had known before that this would happen, I really wouldn’t have come [into politics],” Barman said on social media on Friday. “Today, they even burned down my house.”

“Entering politics was a mistake,” Barman told the Siliguri Times.

Barman had joined the TMC in February ahead of the state elections. She lost to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s candidate Dinesh Sarkar by more than 21,400 votes in Rajganj, a seat held by the TMC since 2009.

Widespread political violence and instances of alleged communal intimidation were reported in West Bengal after the BJP on May 4 defeated the TMC in the polls, ending the 15-year rule of the Mamata Banerjee-led party.

Barman had won a gold medal at the 2018 Asian Games and the heptathlon event at the 2017 Asian Athletics Championships. She was conferred with the Arjuna Award in 2019 for outstanding performance in sports.

On Saturday, Abhishek Banerjee, the TMC’s national general secretary, claimed that “BJP goons” had set fire to Barman’s house, adding that India had “failed” her.

India FAILED YOU, dear Swapna. @Swapna_Barman96

The first Indian heptathlete to win an Asian Games Gold Medal for the nation, Swapna Barman carried India’s flag with pride on the global stage. She later joined the Trinamool Congress with the hope of serving people and was our… pic.twitter.com/si4QVh2tOJ

— Abhishek Banerjee (@abhishekaitc) May 16, 2026

“The first Indian heptathlete to win an Asian Games gold medal for the nation, Swapna Barman carried India’s flag with pride on the global stage,” Abhishek Banerjee said on social media, adding that she had joined the TMC to serve the public.

“Yesterday, BJP goons set fire to her home,” the TMC leader said. “Let that sink in. An athlete who brought glory to the nation is being repaid with violence, intimidation and fear – simply because she chose to stand with the Trinamool Congress. This is the grim reality under BJP’s watch…”

Abhishek Banerjee said that the BJP government must provide an answer and that political violence cannot become the new normal.

“If supporting the Trinamool Congress now means risking your safety, your family and even your home, where are we headed, as a nation?” he asked. “If this is how an athlete who brought glory to India is treated for her political choices, the state of democracy should worry every Indian.”

TMC spokesperson Tanmoy Ghosh urged Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari and BJP’s state chief Samik Bhattacharya to “take note of this matter”, and expressed hope that the political discourse and public statements “remain respectful and responsible”.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Leah Thomas.

Also read: ‘Voted for change but this feels same’: Kolkata reels under political violence after BJP victory

The Supreme Court on Friday ordered the Uttar Pradesh Police to produce before it two men arrested in a case related to the workers’ protest in Noida in April after a family member alleged custodial torture, Bar and Bench reported.

The men Aditya Anand and Rupesh Roy must be produced before the court at 2 pm on Monday, a bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan ordered.

The bench was hearing a plea filed by Anand’s brother. He alleged that Anand had been tortured by the police in custody after he was arrested for allegedly inciting violence during the protests, The Indian Express reported.

Colin Gonsalves, the counsel for Anand’s brother, told the court that the man was an engineer working at a factory and ran a library for children. Anand’s speeches at the protests focussed on workers’ rights and that recordings were available to support this claim, the lawyer was quoted as having contended.

On April 13, about 40,000 to 45,000 workers from several industrial units had gathered in parts of the city to press long-standing demands that their salaries be increased.

The protests came amid increasing gas prices because of the supply disruption caused by the conflict in West Asia.

The protests had turned violent. Videos widely shared on social media showed some protesters throwing stones and vandalising property, as security personnel tried to bring the situation under control.

On April 14, more than 350 persons had been arrested in connection with the violence.

On Friday, Gonsalves sought an independent investigation into the matter, Bar and Bench reported. “Now things have got a little bit out of hand,” Gonsalves was quoted as having said.

He also alleged that lawyers representing Anand were being physically obstructed.

The counsel for the Uttar Pradesh government denied the allegations of the men being tortured in custody and said that due process had been followed, the legal news outlet reported.

The state government also denied allegations that the grounds of arrest had not been provided to Anand when was arrested.

Witnesses had alleged that the police personnel deployed to contain the violence on April 13 had beaten up the protesters.

On April 16, a video surfaced online showing police personnel assaulting women. The video was shared on social media platforms by several users, including the Uttar Pradesh Congress, who alleged that it showed police personnel in Noida lathi-charging and manhandling women workers on the day of wage hike protests.

The police commissionerate in Gautam Buddha Nagar district denied this. It said that “prima facie, the video appears to be morphed or AI-generated and does not seem to be from Noida, but rather from some other location.”

However, eyewitnesses, who did not want to be identified because of the fear of facing backlash from the authorities, told Scroll that the video accurately captured the scene they had witnessed.

Scroll also used geolocation analysis and matched the video against a press photo to establish that the location was indeed Block A and Block B of Noida’s Sector 6. Scroll visited the spot and spoke to several people who had seen the police assault. Questions sent to Commissioner of Police Laxmi Singh at the time did not elicit a response.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

• Noida and beyond: India’s workers are being shortchanged. They deserve a fair deal
• Fact check: Despite official denial, viral video showing police beating women workers is from Noida
• Watch: Called ‘Naxal’, thrashed by Noida police for asking for wage hikes

“This is not Pakistan, where you can use armed forces to remove someone from power,” said the Trinamool Congress politician Tapash Chatterjee, his voice rising in disbelief. “In our country, leaders have always been changed democratically.”

Chatterjee, who joined the Trinamool in 2015, was till last week the MLA from Rajarhat New Town, a suburban seat near Kolkata airport. His was one of the 207 seats that the Bharatiya Janata Party won as it stormed to power for the first time in West Bengal.

However, Chatterjee insists that the election was stolen from him. He points out that he finished with more votes than anybody else when counting concluded late on the night of May 4. The data put out by the Election Commission of India bears this out.

Although Chatterjee had secured the highest number of votes at the end of the day, election officials did not give him a certificate declaring his win. The next day, these officials added some more votes to the candidates’ tally and awarded the seat to the BJP.

His constituency is now at the centre of the controversy over what happened in Bengal on the day of the results.

The Trinamool claims that the BJP colluded with the Election Commission to slow down the counting of votes in its strongholds and sped it up in seats that the BJP was winning. As a result, a BJP win seemed imminent by mid-afternoon even though only a fraction of the votes had been counted.

In Rajarhat New Town, BJP workers then violently drove away despondent Trinamool counting agents, even as central forces watched, allowing counting fraud to take place, Tapash Chatterjee alleged. Besides him, Scroll spoke to other candidates and party workers to piece together an account of what transpired in the constituency’s counting centre on May 4.

The process

The Election Commission had set up a total of 330 polling stations in this constituency on the day of the vote. After voting concluded, the 330 electronic voting machines from these stations were taken to Bidhannagar College, the designated counting venue.

On May 4, the day of counting, it was expected that postal ballots would be accounted for first, as is usually the case. Election officials had informed all the candidates that machine votes would be counted across 17 rounds after this.

In each of the first 16 rounds of counting, the number of votes polled by each candidate in 20 different machines would be recorded. And in the final round, the votes from the remaining 10 machines would be counted.

For this purpose, 20 tables had been set up in the college. Every round of counting would involve opening one voting machine on a table and recording its result on a chart. Candidates were also asked to appoint a counting agent for each table to observe the process.

Typically, candidates tabulate their own result by putting together the numbers that they receive from their counting agents. This goes on in parallel with the counting carried out by election officials.

After each round of counting, candidates can match their own results with the trends displayed by the Election Commission at the counting centre. In case of a discrepancy, candidates can seek a clarification from the officials and even ask for a recount.

Once all the votes from postal ballots as well as machines have been counted and no disputes remain, the Election Commission’s returning officer records the final tally. The candidate with the highest number of votes is declared the winner and handed a certificate.

Why so slow?

In Rajarhat New Town, a total of 1,032 votes had been cast by postal ballot. When they were counted on the morning of May 4, it emerged that Piyush Kanodia, the BJP candidate, had secured 487 of them, while Tapash Chatterjee of the Trinamool received 363. This would be the first and last time that Kanodia would lead Chatterjee that day.

As soon as the counting of machine votes began, the Trinamool leader raced ahead. At the end of five rounds, Chatterjee led Kanodia by more than 11,000 votes. But the process, the Trinamool politician complained, was moving very slowly.

“They [the BJP] devised this strategy,” Chatterjee alleged. “Where we were winning, they slowed down the counting. And where they were winning, it was quick.”

Chatterjee’s allegations are borne out by events in Bidhannagar College itself, which functioned as the counting centre for three seats. The BJP won two of these by sizeable margins and the results for them were announced on the evening of May 4 itself. But the counting for Rajarhat New Town went on till the next day.

Election researchers, too, had pointed out that counting in Bengal was progressing at a slower pace than other states whose votes were being tallied on the same day. By noon, the trends showed that the BJP was winning big even though only about a sixth of all the votes cast had been counted.

The then chief minister herself made these allegations, connecting slow counting to election fraud.

“I am requesting all our candidates and counting agents to not leave their centres,” Mamata Banerjee pleaded with her workers in a short video address soon after noon on May 4. “This is the BJP’s plan. There is no need to feel disappointed. Only three or four rounds have been counted so far. Don’t get scared.”

Banerjee’s fears came true in Bidhannagar College.

“Once it became clear that they [the BJP] were winning nearly 200 seats [in Bengal], they started beating up my counting agents,” Chatterjee, the Trinamool candidate from Rajarhat New Town, alleged. “They took away their badges and tore them up [to prevent further entry].”

Though Bengal saw unprecedented deployment of Central paramilitary forces in this election, Chatterjee claims they did not stop the violence in Bidhannagar College. “The central forces did not intervene,” he alleged. “They were totally biased.”

An exodus

Around 4 pm, his counting agents began to trickle out of the counting centre one by one, his daughter Aratrika Bhattacharjee told Scroll. Bhattacharjee, a municipal councillor from the party, was standing outside the whole day.

“Every one of our counting agents came out crying,” she remembered. “Their badges had been snatched away from them. There was no way they could go back in.”

Kanodia, the BJP candidate, denied these accusations. “This is a complete lie,” the 43-year-old said. “He [Chatterjee] should accept that he has lost the election.”

He, in turn, attributed the slow speed of counting to a purported discrepancy in his opponent’s vote tally that stalled the process after the tenth round. By this time, Chatterjee had a 14,000-vote lead over him, according to data put out by the Election Commission.

However, Samruddha Das, one of Kanodia’s counting agents, was more candid when he spoke to Scroll. “Wherever the fight was tough for us, counting took place slowly,” he explained.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) candidate Saptarshi Deb, who finished a distant third from this seat, also suggested that the slow counting had hit the Trinamool adversely. “When news came in that the BJP was leading everywhere, the Trinamool’s counting agents got demoralised,” he recalled. “After some commotion, a big chunk of them left.”

By early evening, Chatterjee just had a handful of party workers from the area to keep him company, Deb added. That made their task harder, he reasoned, because counting was still taking place on 20 different tables spread across two separate rooms.

Scroll emailed questions regarding the alleged violence on counting day to the police commissioner of Bidhannagar, Tripurari Atharv, and Ashish Choudhary, the Election Commission-appointed police observer for this constituency. This piece will be updated if they respond.

A shrinking lead

Both Chatterjee and Kanodia alleged that election officials had deliberately misrecorded results shown by the machines to favour the other side.

The Trinamool candidate alleged that his substantial lead was systematically wiped out in later rounds of counting after many of his agents had left the premises. He claimed that he would win the seat by 20,000 votes if all the votes were counted again.

On the other hand, the BJP candidate accused his opponent of using his influence over the local bureaucracy to manipulate the results in the initial rounds. He said that he would have won by 15,000 votes if the process was fair from the beginning.

Who would count votes was a highly contentious issue in this election. The Trinamool even moved the Supreme Court against the Election Commission’s decision to deploy Union government employees as counting supervisors. In Rajarhat New Town, the returning officer belonged to the West Bengal Civil Service, while the general observer was an Indian Administrative Service officer from the Odisha cadre.

Deb, the CPI(M) candidate from this seat, admitted that he did not have a shot at winning the election. His party had long opposed both the BJP and the Trinamool, he added.

But when asked if election officials had manipulated the results that evening, Deb backed up the Trinamool’s claims. “Some manipulation did take place,” he said. “The BJP was not in a position to win this seat. Over 30% of the voters here are minorities.”

When Deb and his counting agents left Bidhannagar College around 11 pm on May 4, all 17 rounds of counting had been concluded. Chatterjee of the Trinamool was still leading by a narrow margin of 316 votes.

Even at that hour, Chatterjee’s daughter stood outside, waiting for her father to come out of the counting centre as the declared winner from this seat. About 60 workers from the Trinamool were with her.

But the situation would change very quickly just then.

“Around midnight, more than 500 BJP workers arrived there in one go,” she claimed. “They started shouting at us and smashed the windows of my car. We were left with no choice. We had to flee.”

Chatterjee, too, returned from the college empty-handed about two hours later. The former MLA alleged that when he asked election officials to give him the winning certificate, a BJP worker threatened to murder Shahanowaj Ali Mondal, one of his last remaining counting agents.

“Will you take the certificate with you today or his dead body?” the worker whispered into his ear, Chatterjee claimed.

The BJP candidate rubbished Chatterjee’s accusations. “Before he says such things, he must explain why so many people from his area were not able to vote in the past,” Kanodia retorted, suggesting that the Trinamool had practised voter suppression in previous elections.

‘Hello? Hello?’

The next morning, Chatterjee was informed that the last few rounds of counting would be conducted again. He wrote an email to election officials registering his protest against this move. “How can further counting take place without giving us protection?” he asked.

He said that worries about his safety led to him not showing up for the recount.

On its website later that day, the Election Commission added an 18th round of counting to the results for Rajarhat New Town. In this round, the BJP candidate got 637 votes while Chatterjee received just five. Before this, the lowest number of votes that the Trinamool leader secured in any round was 1,926.

The votes from this new round were enough to flip the final result. The BJP had won the seat by a wafer-thin margin of 316 votes. In a remarkable coincidence, this was the exact number by which Chatterjee had led Kanodia at the end of the previous day.

This reporter called Mohammed Alimuddin, the returning officer for Rajarhat New Town, to ask him why the extra round was added to the results. The officer serves as the manager of the Minority Affairs and Madrasah Education department in the West Bengal Minorities’ Development and Finance Corporation.

First, Alimuddin picked up the phone and confirmed that he could hear my voice. But this suddenly changed after I introduced myself as a journalist. “Hello? Hello?” he strained before hanging up. When I called him again, his phone was switched off. He did not respond to messages either.

Shilpa Gourisaria, the district election officer for North 24 Parganas, where Rajarhat New Town is located, also did not respond to calls and messages. Scroll sent questions to Alimuddin, Gourisaria and the chief electoral officer of West Bengal by email. This story will be updated if they respond.

When Scroll visited Kanodia’s office a week after his unlikely win, it was buzzing with visitors and party workers. They claimed that the extra round of counting was necessitated by a technical glitch. An electronic voting machine had apparently faltered in one of the later rounds of counting, so officials had to physically count its paper slips. After the recount, these additional votes were added to each candidate’s tally and this was recorded as the 18th round of counting.

Free and fair

Speaking to Scroll, BJP workers argued that whatever they did was only to neutralise the Trinamool’s strong-arm tactics to manipulate polls.

“That is why we sent I-PAC [Indian Political Action Committee] packing this time,” said one BJP worker in Kanodia’s office, referring to Trinamool’s political consultancy firm which wrapped up its operation in Bengal after one of its directors, Vinesh Chandel, was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate. “It was important for us to take them out.”

Kanodia, too, believed that he was in the right. “Dirty tricks have always been used in West Bengal, but this time I stood up against them,” the new MLA of Rajarhat New Town said. “That is why I won. If I had given up, I would have lost.”

Meanwhile, the former MLA Tapash Chatterjee’s home wore a deserted look. The few admirers who still stuck around talked about how brave he was for staying at the counting centre after most of his agents had left. They had heard stories of other MLAs and even ministers who supposedly threw in the towel much earlier in the day.

“Being an Opposition MLA is also important,” Chatterjee explained. “Democracy has been murdered here. This is what happens when the referee plays for one side.”

Scroll’s occasional diarist curates the headlines in the first fortnight of May.

May 1

‘No offence made out’: Supreme Court clears Delhi Deputy CM Parvesh Verma and BJP’s Anurag Thakur in 2020 hate speech case – The Indian Express

Agreeing with the conclusion that “no cognizable offence is made out” against former Union Minister Anurag Thakur and Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Parvesh Sahib Singh Verma, the Supreme Court has cleared the two BJP leaders in a complaint that they delivered alleged hate speeches targeting those protesting the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in Delhi in January 2020.

May 2

ED empowered under Modi govt. to fight ‘cancer’ of financial crimes, not target anyone: MoS Finance – The Hindu

Union Minister of State (MoS) for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary on Friday (May 1, 2206) said that under the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has been vested with the powers necessary to effectively combat financial crimes and terror funding, not to target anyone.

May 3

NIA seeks documents from Mumbai Press Club after gathering attended by Bhima Koregaon accused – Scroll

The National Investigation Agency on Friday sought documents from the Mumbai Press Club related to a social gathering that was attended by some of the persons accused in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon case who are out on bail, the Mumbai Press Club said in a statement emailed to members.

This came two days after the Mumbai Press Club suspended three members for having “facilitated” the gathering, which was held on January 19.

May 5

Assembly elections: Results in four States, U.T. triumph of democracy and Constitution, says Modi – The Hindu

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday described the outcomes of the elections in four States and a Union Territory as a triumph of democracy and the Constitution, suggesting that voters chose stability and development amid the crisis in West Asia and broader global turmoil.

Analysing the results, Mr. Modi said people in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala rejected the governments that practised “divisive politics” and sought to create conflicts on issues such as language, food habits, and regional identity, and chose mutual development and unity.

May 6

SC says PIL has become ‘paisa interest litigation’ – The Hindu

Supreme Court judge Justice B.V. Nagarathna on Tuesday (May 5, 2026) said Public Interest Litigation (PIL), a unique mechanism initiated by the Indian judiciary post-Emergency to “bring social justice within the reach of the common man”, has lately metamorphosed into ‘private interest litigation’, ‘publicity interest litigation’ and even ‘paisa’ and ‘political’ interest litigation.

Justice Nagarathna’s oral observations follow submissions made by the Union government in the Sabarimala case to do away with PIL jurisdiction. “The time has come not merely to recalibrate public interest litigation, but to remove it,” the Centre had submitted through Solicitor General Tushar Mehta.

May 7

India’s new sports policy for Pakistan: No to bilateral ties, yes to global events – The Indian Express

In an Office Memorandum issued on May 5, the Sports Ministry stated that ‘Pakistani players and teams will be able to participate in multilateral events hosted by India,’ while also signalling a more supportive visa regime for athletes, officials and international federation representatives.

The policy draws a firm line between bilateral and multilateral sport. “In so far as bilateral sports events in each other’s country are concerned, Indian teams will not be participating in competitions in Pakistan. Nor will we permit Pakistani teams to play in India,” the memorandum said. But in the same breath, it clarifies that for international competitions, “we are guided by the practices of international sports bodies and the interest of our own sportspersons.”

May 8

A year after Operation Sindoor, two schools bear the cost of conflict in Pulwama and Poonch – The Hindu

With Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) on the other side of the nearby hills, the Christ High School in Poonch is finding it hard to bury the memories of the war. …

Three students – Zain Ali and Urwa Fatima, twins who were in Class 5, and Vihaan Bhargav of Class 8 – were killed in Pakistani shelling when they were trying to move to safer locations between May 7 and 11. They were among 21 civilians, including five children, who died on this side of the border during Operation Sindoor.

Around 141 km away from the Poonch school, another school in Pulwama district tells a story of loss. The school was damaged in a blast, but since the nature of the explosion is still unknown, it does not fall in the compensation list of those who suffered damage in the conflict and were provided relief money. A two-storey building of the high school, Madrasa Taleem ul Quran, in Pulwama’s Wuyan was hit by an unidentified aerial object before sunrise on May 7. Locals said the administration neither provided any compensation for the loss nor revealed the cause of the explosion that ripped through the school building.

May 9

BJP’s victory in Bengal will plug a big hole in national security, says Amit Shah – The Hindu

During his address, the Home Minister, who presided over the BJP Legislature Party meeting, emphasised that the victory was not only about the BJP’s expansion and about the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance forming a government in its 21st State. “The BJP promises the people of Bengal and the country that we will identify and remove every infiltrator from India. And let me say from this stage – people who call this polarisation are mistaken. This is not about polarisation. This is about national security,” Mr. Shah said.

“The biggest importance of this victory is that it plugs one of the biggest holes in India’s national security. Now, infiltration and cow-smuggling will become impossible in West Bengal,” Mr. Shah asserted.

May 10

‘Johnny Johnny Yes Papa’ is against Indian culture: UP Education Minister – The Indian Express

“What does this rhyme teach (us) – Johnny Johnny Yes Papa, Eating Sugar No Papa, Telling Lies No Papa, Open Your Mouth Ha Ha Ha. These lines teach children to tell lies. No one ever thought about how this rhyme imparts wrong lessons to young children.”

The minister added, “Our culture is ‘Sarvajan Hitay, Sarvajan Sukhay’ (for the welfare of all, for the happiness of all). But this rhyme ‘Rain Rain Go Away, Come Again Another Day, Little Johnny Wants To Play, Rain Rain Go Away’ teaches children ‘Swantah Sukhay (self happiness)’. This is not our culture.”

May 10

WFI issues 15-page show-cause notice to Vinesh Phogat, stops her from competing till June 26 – The Indian Express

The Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) has issued a 15-page show-cause notice to wrestler Vinesh Phogat, accusing her of indiscipline, violations of anti-doping regulations, and breaches of United World Wrestling (UWW) rules.

The federation has also barred her from competing in domestic events until June 26, effectively delaying her planned return to competitive wrestling.

The suspension from domestic competition is also likely to derail her hopes of making a comeback in time for major international events, including the Asian Games cycle leading up to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

Earlier this year, the former world championship medallist had indicated her intention to return to the sport and was targeting the National Open Ranking tournament in Gonda in UP, scheduled to begin this Sunday. Gonda is the home turf of former WFI chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, a former MP, who was accused of sexual harassment by six women wrestlers. On May 3, Vinesh said she was one of the six who had complained against him.

PM Modi opts for alternate route in Hyderabad to avoid inconvenience to wedding guests – Punjab Kesri (From IANS)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s power-packed Sunday, with multiple programmes and events slated in three states – Karnataka, Telangana and Gujarat, grabbed extra attention mid-way in HITEC City (Hyderabad), where he broke the protocol for the convenience and comfort of a wedding party and guests.

The Prime Minister’s compassionate and warm-hearted gesture won the hearts of those present and drew praise from legislators and public representatives, belonging to rival parties. The Hyderabad International Convention Centre (HICC), the place where PM Modi’s helicopter was to land from Bengaluru, was also the wedding venue where BRS MLC MC Koti Reddy’s son was to get married tonight.

The moment when it was brought to the notice of the Prime Minister that the wedding of BRS MLC M.C. Koti Reddy’s son, Ajith Reddy, with Laxmi Sowjanya, IPS Karaikal, was scheduled at the same venue, he instructed the officials for alternate landing arrangements.

Notably, the wedding arrangements were made well in advance, with invitations already distributed to nearly 5,000 guests.

The change in the Prime Minister’s landing arrangements came on his instructions, as he sensed the inconvenience and trouble that the last-minute security arrangements could have caused, to an auspicious and special occasion for the family.

With PM Modi choosing a longer route for his convoy and facilitating a comfortable and memorable marriage to the couple, it has become a talking point in the HITEC city.

This compassionate, considerate gesture of PM Modi and also his humane leadership reinforce the principle that putting people above self and beyond any political differences remains his guiding mantra.

May 11

Poll officer Manoj Agarwal — who oversaw SIR, faced TMC ire for ‘bias’ — appointed Bengal Chief Secretary by BJP govt – The Indian Express

The BJP government in West Bengal on Monday appointed the state’s Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Manoj Agarwal as the next Chief Secretary.

Agarwal, who is set to retire in July, had faced criticism from the Trinamool Congress (TMC) during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. The move comes days after the government appointed the Election Commission’s special observer for West Bengal, Subrata Gupta, as an advisor to Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari.

May 12

Vijay appoints his astrologer as OSD – The Indian Express

With actor-politician Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) formally appointing astrologer Rickey Radhan Pandit Vetrivel the Chief Minister’s Officer on Special Duty (OSD), the party has brought into its inner structure a figure long associated with political astrology, numerology and high-profile predictions in Tamil Nadu’s power circles.

May 13

Vijay’s government revokes order appointing astrologer Rickey Radhan Pandit as OSD (Political) to CM – The Hindu

The Tamil Nadu government, on Wednesday (May 13, 2026), revoked its Government Order (G.O.), which appointed Rickey Radhan Pandit Vettrivel – an astrologer – as the Officer on Special Duty (Political) to Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay, following criticism from various quarters, including those made in the Assembly earlier in the day.

May 13

IT firms paid record ₹1.3 trn to shareholders in FY26 despite AI headwinds – Business Standard

India’s top 16 information-technology (IT) services companies in FY26 paid its shareholders a record high amount of around ₹1.3 trillion in dividend and share buyback even as the industry faced a threat to its traditional business configurations from artificial-intelligence (AI) models.

The amount is 36.3 per cent higher than the payout of around ₹95,400 crore for FY25. This is the industry’s fastest growth in payout in the last nine years.

May 11

India’s Modi to begin five-nation tour, including UAE, amid Middle East crisis – Reuters

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will embark on a five-nation tour taking in the United Arab Emirates and Europe from May 15-20, India's foreign ministry said in a statement on Monday, as the Middle East crisis drives up global oil prices and strains India's foreign currency reserves.

Modi is to visit the UAE on May 15 and subsequently travel to the Netherlands, ⁠Sweden, Norway and Italy, the statement said.

May 14

PM cuts size of convoy after fuel conservation appeal – The Hindu

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has substantially downsized the strength of his convoy, days after making an appeal to the people for the rational use of fuel-powered vehicles amid the West Asia crisis, a move subsequently followed by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Chief Ministers in several States.

Mr. Modi’s fleet size has been reduced while ensuring that all essential components of his security arrangements remain in accordance with the Special Protection Group (SPG) protocols. After his appeal during a recent speech in Hyderabad, the decision was reportedly implemented during his visits to Gujarat and Assam. The PM has also asked for already available electric vehicles to be part of his convoy.

May 14

Congress high command defers announcement of Kerala CM designate to May 14 – The Hindu

The Congress high command has deferred announcing the party’s Chief Minister designate for Kerala, ostensibly until Thursday (May 14, 2026). …

Meanwhile, the “raging group war” in the Congress over the top post threatened to spill over into the high command’s backyard. Anonymous posters in English condemning Mr. Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, MP, for allegedly supporting Mr. Venugopal appeared in the latter’s constituency in Wayanad.

May 15

Bhima Koregaon case: NIA seeks cancellation of bail for activists Varavara Rao, Sudha Bharadwaj – Scroll

The National Investigation Agency on Friday moved a special court in Mumbai seeking that the bail granted to activists Varavara Rao and Sudha Bharadwaj in the Bhima Koregaon case be cancelled.

...

In its applications seeking the cancellation of bail for Rao and Bharadwaj, the NIA contended that they attended a meeting at the Mumbai Press Club along with other persons accused in the case on January 19. This violated their bail conditions, alleged the agency.

It claimed that the gathering was convened with the intention of “propagating the ideology of the proscribed organisation Communist Party of India (Maoist) and to deliberate upon the future course of action for spreading the ‘Urban Naxal’ movement…”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday denied a report that the Union government was planning to impose a tax on foreign travel amid the economic crisis triggered by the conflict in West Asia.

The prime minister’s denial on social media came after CNBC-TV18 reported on Friday that the cess would be imposed for one year to mitigate the impact of increased global crude oil prices and higher import costs.

The temporary tax proposal was being discussed at the “highest levels”, the news channel had reported.

Modi said that the report was “totally false”, adding that there is “not an iota of truth” to it.

“There is no question of putting such restrictions on foreign travel,” the prime minister said. “We remain committed to improving ‘Ease of Doing Business’ and ‘Ease of Living’ for our people.”

After Modi’s comments, CNBC-TV18 said that its report was “not accurate” and that it had been withdrawn.

This came five days after Modi called for austerity to withstand the economic headwinds created by the conflict.

On Sunday, Modi urged citizens to revive some work-from-home practices adopted during the Covid-19 pandemic and use public transport to reduce fuel consumption. These were among the measures he proposed to conserve India’s foreign exchange reserves.

Modi also urged the public to avoid non-essential foreign travel for a year and appealed to citizens to avoid destination weddings abroad during the period, saying that conserving foreign exchange reserves was “an act of patriotism”.

He also advised the public to avoid non-essential gold purchases to reduce pressure on foreign exchange outflows.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read: Modi’s austerity appeals are a misplaced solution for India’s economic woes

Hateful speech mainly targeting India’s Muslim and Christian minorities have become, since 2014, a routine and increasingly normalised element of India’s public life.

Hate speeches commonly resound on political platforms. These have become the principal currency of election campaigning. They reverberate in what pose to be religious discourses. They resonate in television studios, on social media, in newspapers and cinema.

India led by Narendra Modi has been marked also by the conspicuous and consistent reluctance of the police and courts at every level to prevent, investigate or punish even dangerous hate speech that directly incites violence. Hateful speeches cumulatively have created a vast, alternative common sense that depicts the Muslim as disloyal, violent and lustful and the Christian as people who have been bribed by charitable social services to abandon their birth religion.

Many citizens who are appalled by the consistent failure of the criminal justice system to act against hate speech call for a dedicated hate speech law, believing that if such a statute is legislated, the spread of the poison of hate speech will be halted. Based on such beliefs, the legislatures in two Congress-led states, Karnataka and Telangana, have voted to pass the country’s first hate speech laws. The Karnataka law is awaiting presidential assent at the time I write this, and the Telangana law has been referred to a legislative committee.

I will argue, first, that it is not the absence of law that explains the failures of the executive and courts to punish hate speech. It is the absence of will, sometimes spurred by ideology. And second, that the hate speech laws canvassed by the two Congress governments are probably well-meaning, yet inherent in them are dangers of the misuse of the laws to suppress dissent and persecute minorities.

Despite the Supreme Court directing police to register hate-speech cases suo motu, the situation on the ground appears to have changed little.https://t.co/QubP4OYmkT

Ratna Singh reports on the apex court's latest stances on #hatespeech

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

What explains the impunity that hate speech enjoys in India today?

It is true that before the Karnataka law and Telangana bill, India did not have a dedicated hate speech law. But this does not mean that India’s statute books did not criminalise hate speech. The Scheduled Castes and Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 lists speech acts that are calculated to humiliate and demean Dalits and Adivasis as punishable atrocities under this law.

The section in the Indian Penal Code most related to hate speech is Section 153A (Section 196 of the BNS or the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita) which penalises “promotion of enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc., and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony”. Section of the 153B IPC (Section 197 BNS) penalises “imputations, assertions prejudicial to national-integration”.

Besides these, Section 295A IPC (Section 299 BNS) penalises “deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs”. Section 298 IPC (Section 302 of BNS) penalises “uttering, words, etc., with deliberate intent to wound the religious feelings of any person”. Section 505(1) and (2) IPC (Section 195 of BNS) penalise publication or circulation of any statement, rumour or report causing public mischief and enmity, hatred or ill-will between classes.

Then clearly it is not the absence of hate speech law that explains the persistent failures of the criminal justice to prevent, punish and deter hate speech. The problem clearly lies elsewhere. Is it in the reluctance (or partisanship) to apply hate speech law that the problem lies?

I have, along with my colleagues in the Karwan e Mohabbat, filed close to a hundred complaints against hate speeches by senior public functionaries like chief ministers and union ministers, elected members of parliament, religious leaders and media anchors. We have specially focussed on hate speeches during election cycles since 2024.

Our experience with what we see as constitutionally necessary efforts for strategic litigation has been consistent. The local police station in almost every case refuses to file our complaints. Our appeals to higher levels in the police also hit a blank wall. Trial courts are rarely more responsive. And recourse to the higher courts results sometimes in platitudes condemning hate speech but rarely any decisive action.

A rare exception was in October 2022, when a bench of Justices KM Joseph and Hrishikesh Roy decried what they described as a “climate of hate (that) prevails in the country”. They directed the police chiefs of Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand to not await formal complaints but instead to take suo motu action against hate speech cases. The judges warned that failure to comply would be viewed as contempt. This direction was later extended to all states and union territories in April 2023.

However, in a pattern that has become worryingly commonplace, the police around the country have with few exceptions refused to comply with this order. Far from suo moto action, they have declined even to file our complaints for dangerous hate speech. Responding to one of my complaints to the police against the Assam chief minister who declared that it was his job to trouble Bengali-origin Assamese Muslims, he threatened instead to file a 100 FIRs against me.

VIDEO | Golaghat: “I will file at least 100 cases against him”, says Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma (@himantabiswa) on writer and social activist Harsh Mander's complaint against Assam CM over alleged hate speech targeting Bengali-speaking Muslims.

(Full video available on PTI… pic.twitter.com/z2NqcRnOJu

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) January 31, 2026

I was one among many petitioners who filed applications drawing attention to the rampant disobedience of the police and the executive of the orders of the Supreme Court to file complaints against hate speech of their own accord. The highest court refused to entertain these applications and returned them to the high courts or the local police.

On November 25, 2025, Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta declared that the apex court was “not inclined to monitor every incident of hate speech,” and that police stations and High Courts were competent to deal with such cases. They did not attend to the fact that we petitioners were compelled to approach the highest court precisely because police stations, trial courts and high courts did not ensure that hate speech complaints were registered, investigated and chargesheeted. Simply sending our applications back to these very agencies was creating a loop of structural inaction.

Likewise, the Election Commission of India consistently turns a deaf ear to hate speeches by senior public functionaries of the BJP, including the prime minister, home minister and chief minister, even though these are clear violations of the model code of conduct.

We encountered a similar pattern of platitudinous condemnation by the highest court of hate speech but no relief in its order of 28 April 2026. A Bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta observed in a 125-page judgment that “Hate speech, at its core, stems from a perception of difference that breeds exclusion, where the ‘other’ is viewed as alien, inferior, or undeserving of equal regard.”

It warned that as long as the binary of “us” and “them” persisted, the promise of fraternity would remain unrealised, and true constitutional belonging would prove elusive. “Hate speech is not merely a deviation from acceptable discourse; it is fundamentally antithetical to the constitutional value of fraternity and strikes at the moral fabric of our Republic. It also runs counter to the deeper civilisational ethos of India…. The philosophical underpinning of this ethos finds expression in the ancient maxim of ‘vasudhaiva kutumbakam’, the idea that the entire world is one family.”

All of this would be unexceptionable if it was accompanied by action to ensure that hate speech is investigated and punished. However, in the studied absence of this, these words sound banal. The court cannot be faulted for refusing to “prescribe detailed statutory schemes or to frame provisions akin to legislation” because this “would amount to judicial law-making and would impermissibly trench upon the functions assigned to the legislature.”

The court acknowledged deficiencies in the application of the existing law relating to hate speech, but suggests that this is a problem in “specific cases”. It fails to address what is visible in plain sight to citizens who belong to groups that are targeted by hate speech, that neither the police nor courts are effectively protecting their rights and deterring hate speech. The judges merely enjoin upon the law enforcement authorities to ensure a faithful and even-handed implementation of the existing laws, deliberately unmindful of their failure to do so not merely in “specific cases” but as a settled mode of abdication of their constitutional duties.

I would argue that courts should not stop even at demanding that the law on hate speech should be stringently applied. Even this is not enough. First, it must punish police officials who fail to register and investigate complaints of hate crimes. And second, it must acknowledge that hate speech is no ordinary crime. It thrusts vulnerable minorities into a zone of abiding dread, and lays the ground for justifying hate violence. The court needs to demand also from the executive that it heals the social fissures created by hate speech, reassures the targeted minorities of their security and equal citizenship, and takes steps to actively advance fraternity in society.

4 months, 50 rallies, same offenders. Presence of BJP MLAs and MPs.

Will the Supreme Court hold Maharashtra DGP in contempt at least 50 times? For it was the court that had said that it would amount to contempt if such hate speech rallies were allowed by the police. pic.twitter.com/CtIq5lflet

— Saurav Das (@SauravDassss) March 20, 2023

Defining hate speech

During the nationwide protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 that for the first time explicitly denied undocumented Muslims the same rights to access citizenship as people of other faiths, senior BJP leader and union minister Anurag Thakur shouted the slogan “Desh ke gaddaron ko…” (Traitors to the nation), and the crowd responded Goli maroon saalon ko (Shoot the ***)!

Senior leader of the CPI(M) Brinda Karat unsuccessfully pursued for over six years through trial courts, the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court her plea that a police complaint for hate speech be filed under Section 153(a) of the IPC. The Supreme Court in April 2026 said after carefully pursuing the record, it concluded that Anurag Thakur had committed no crime, because no community was mentioned and there was no explicit incitement to violence.

This is an extraordinary judgment by any standards. If “shooting the traitors” is not an incitement to violence, then what is? But even more than this, the crowd that Thakur addressed and any impartial observer would have no doubt that the speech targeted Indian Muslims. This is because of the discourse of the RSS and BJP going back decades that alleges that Indian Muslims are treacherous to the nation.

Do the Karnataka law and Telangana bill remedy gaps and problems in existing hate speech provisions in the BNS?

Let us see first how the laws delineate hate speech. The Karnataka law defines hate speech to include “any expression which is made, published, or circulated, in words either spoken or written or by signs or by visible representations or through electronic communication or otherwise, in public view, with an intention to cause injury, disharmony or feelings of enmity or hatred or ill-will against person alive or dead, class or group of persons or community, to meet any prejudicial interest.” It defines prejudicial interest to mean bias on the grounds of religion, race, caste or community; sex, gender, sexual orientation, place of birth, residence, language, disability, or tribe.

This appears to be at first sight a compelling definition; but it is not all-encompassing. Telangana’s definition is similar. What any definition of hate speech needs to underline more explicitly is that hate speech is not episodic. Its hateful character cannot be assessed by looking at its content in isolation. Hate speech is typically cumulative, and what might seem less obviously hateful when seen alone can be revealed as hateful when seen against an on-going discourse of hate.

Advocate Shahrukh Alam in a discussion with me pointed to the merit of the under-used Section 153(B) (now Section 197 of the BNS). This criminalises any imputation that a class of persons, by reason of their being members of any religious, racial, language or regional group or caste or community, do not bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India and the sovereignty and integrity of India; or recommends that they be denied or deprived of their rights as citizens of India.

This formulation much more clearly defines the everyday lived reality of discrimination and persecution by hate speech, especially of Indian Muslims today. Open incitements to violence tragically are also not uncommon. But the kind of hate speech that millions of Muslims encounter in their everyday life – in workplaces, local communities, television discussions, cinema and social media – is that which casts doubts or denies their loyalty and equal belonging to the Indian nation.

Flaw in hate speech laws

However, the central flaw of both the Karnataka and Telangana hate speech law drafts is the great power that these statutes vest in the hands of the state. It is state authorities who will decide what constitutes hate speech and what does not, and the courts will assess this. The Karnataka law also contains provisions for vicarious liability of the organisation to which the alleged perpetrator of hate speech belongs. It further vests the executive with massive powers of surveillance and pre-censorship, to even ban events and gatherings in which there is the possibility of hate speech or to order social media companies to pull down hateful posts.

If we presume that the state authorities will always act in “good faith” in exercising these powers, then we can possibly justify empowering the state in these ways. There indeed are occasions when such prohibitions on gatherings have prevented hate speech and hate mobilisations.

One example was when a movement started by Hindutva formations called for ethnic cleansing of Muslim residents from Uttarakhand for 2023. This had the tacit support of the state government led by chief minister Dhami. It began in the town of Purola in Uttarkashi district with claims of “love jihad” in the form of a bid of a Muslim man to elope with a Hindu minor. It mattered little that a court later found the entire story to be a falsehood.

In Purola, anti-Muslim marches were taken out, demanding that Muslim traders leave the town. “Eviction” notices were pasted on their shops.

The alleged abduction of a teenage girl set off the campaign by Hindu groups, who called it a case of ‘love jihad’. https://t.co/WMpSnV3wtH pic.twitter.com/QIIl50EHSD

— Scroll.in (@scroll_in) June 19, 2023

Shops and homes of Muslim residents were marked with black crosses, eerily reminiscent of Nazi Germany. Many Muslim families fled the city, some permanently. Many “mahapanchayats” were announced across the state to extend this project of ethnic cleansing.

The state government initially did nothing to prohibit these gatherings. However, after a group of retired civil servants who are committed to defending constitutional practice called the Constitutional Conduct Group wrote to the chief secretary and police head of the state to disallow further mahapanchayats, the state authorities prohibited these gatherings. Local Muslims experienced the return of even a tenuous sense of security as the result of this ban on panchayat meetings that were likely to be rife with hate speech.

However, such “good faith” action by state governments has been rare especially since 2014. We have already noted that even after the Supreme Court in the autumn of 2022 directed the police to suo moto register police complaints against hate speeches, they have mostly disobeyed these orders and even – in the direct experience of this author – refused to register such complaints. This is not surprising.

The 'love jihad' case that drove out Muslims from Purola in Uttarakhand was a false case fabricated by RSS worker Aashish Chunar. The minor girl told the court that police tutored her to accuse Khan and Saini of trying to abduct her. Report by @sighyushhttps://t.co/MYFPbJ8voV

— Abhishek (@AbhishekSay) July 17, 2024

The reason is that hate speech is not an ordinary crime between people of relative equal power. Hate speech thrives – as it does in India under Modi and the US under Donald Trump – in conditions of immense asymmetry of power. Even in ordinary times, the state cannot always be trusted to stand firmly and unambiguously with the targets of hate speech against those who wield their power also through the exercise of hate speech. But much less when the state itself is deeply invested ideologically in the project of hate targeting vulnerable and powerless minorities – like Muslims and Christians, Dalits and Adivasis in Modi’s India and immigrants in Trump’s America.

Despite the American First Constitution Amendment that mandates the state to defend free speech even if it is hateful (intervening only when there is direct incitement to violence), today the world stands witness to the persecution of students and faculty in American universities who defend the rights of the Palestinian people against Zionist hate and what many regard to be genocidal violence targeting Palestinian civilians, children, health and aid workers and journalists. This is not new. Look back at the McCarthyism of the late 1940s and 1950s in the US, when people of socialist convictions were severely persecuted.

Therefore, if a hate speech law empowers an already powerful state to judge the legality of citizen’s communications – whether on public platforms, in print, television and social media and in various art forms – this gravely endangers dissenting speech which is critical of the state or majoritarian citizen formations.

If powers of the kind legislated in Karnataka and Telangana are exercised by authoritarian and corrupt governments which might be ideologically committed to projects of exclusion and hate targeting vulnerable minority communities, there is a high possibility of the laws being weaponised to repress, censor and persecute dissenters and minorities.

Where do we move from here? I find myself perched as though at the cleft of a vast rock. I refuse to subscribe to the free speech fundamentalism of the American First Constitutional Amendment which defends even hate speech as a fundamental human right. Hate speech can extract too high a toll in the morale and sense of security and equal belonging of members of minority groups to be permitted. Holocaust survivors remind us that it was not in the gas chambers that the Holocaust began. It started with hate speeches against Jews, but also against the Roma and Sinti, against disabled people and against homosexual men.

On the other hand I am unwilling to trust the state – which demonstrably in many countries in the world are powered by majoritarian, anti-minority and sometimes fascistic ideologies – to regulate and punish hate speech.

This dilemma is hard to resolve. But this much to me is clear. Let us not draft and support laws to ostensibly combat hate speech that further empower ideologically driven government to further oppress minorities and dissenters. And at the same time let us build a much stronger citizen movement to condemn and reject hate speech, whether in the orations of those who hold the country’s highest offices, those who wear the robes of religious saints, or those who entice us into cinemas with films that rouse in the viewers their basest sentiments of violent loathing.

The battle against hateful speech that fosters fear, loathing and violence against vulnerable people cannot be left to a potentially partisan state. A world in which hate is no longer considered legitimate or normal can be accomplished only when citizens of goodwill join hands to combat the politics of hate.

I am grateful for the extensive research support of my colleague Omair Khan and the advice of advocate Shahrukh Alam and legal scholar Nizamuddin Siddiqui. I alone am responsible for the views expressed in this essay.

Harsh Mander is a peace and justice worker and writer. He leads Karwan e Mohabbat, a people’s campaign for solidarity and justice for the survivors of lynching and hate violence. He is visiting faculty in the South Asia Institute of Heidelberg University. His latest book, Under Grey Smoggy Skies: Living Homeless on the Streets of Delhi Cities, is in the bookstores.

The Central Bureau of Investigation has arrested the main accused in the alleged paper leak in the 2026 undergraduate National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, said the Union government on Friday.

In a press release, the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions identified the alleged “kingpin” as PV Kulkarni, a chemistry lecturer involved in the examination process on behalf of the National Testing Agency.

Kulkarni, who is from Maharashtra's Latur, was arrested in Pune, it added.

On Tuesday, the National Testing Agency, which conducts the exam, cancelled the 2026 NEET-UG following allegations of a paper leak. The exam is conducted for admission to undergraduate medical courses in India.

This year, more than 22 lakh candidates had appeared for the test.

The CBI filed a first information report in the matter based on a complaint by the Union Ministry of Education. The central agency has arrested at least seven persons till now and conducted searches at several locations in the country.

On Friday, the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions claimed that Kulkarni had access to the question papers.

“During the last week of April 2026, he allegedly mobilised students with the help of another accused, Ms Manisha Waghmare, who was arrested by CBI on 14.05.2026, and conducted special coaching classes for these students at his residence in Pune,” read the ministry’s press release.

It added that Kulkarni allegedly dictated the questions along with options and correct answers during the special coaching classes.

“The questions so dictated were handwritten by students in their notebooks and have exactly tallied with the actual question paper of the NEET-UG 2026 Examination held on 03.05.2026,” stated the ministry.

It further said that the investigation conducted so far has brought out the “actual source of the chemistry paper leak as well as the role of middlemen involved in mobilising students who allegedly paid several lakhs of rupees to attend the special coaching classes where the question banks were dictated and discussed”.

The ministry also said that the CBI had conducted searches at several locations and seized incriminating documents, electronic gadgets and mobile phones.

Detailed forensic and technical analysis of the seized items is underway, it added.

The ministry noted that of the seven already arrested by the central agency in the case, five had been produced before a court and remanded to seven days’ police custody for questioning.

“The other two accused, who were arrested yesterday, are being produced before the court in Pune for transit remand and are being shifted to Delhi,” it said.

The test on May 3 was cancelled after the Rajasthan Special Operations Group began investigating allegations that a “guess paper” circulated before the examination contained questions closely matching the actual paper.

The “guess paper” contained around 410 questions, of which about 120 matched the questions asked in the chemistry section, according to the Rajasthan Police.

Re-exam on June 21

Earlier on Friday, the National Testing Agency announced that the re-exam for the 2026 NEET-UG will be held on June 21.

At a press conference, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said there was a “breach” in the command chain for the May 3 test. “We accept it and take responsibility to improve it,” added Pradhan.

He also announced that NEET-UG will be computer-based from next year.

Written by Leah Thomas. Edited by Sneha.

West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Friday said that three Indian Police Service officers have been suspended for allegedly mishandling the case pertaining to the rape and murder of a doctor at Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in 2024, The Indian Express reported.

The officers are Vineet Goyal, who was the Kolkata police commissioner at the time, Abhishek Gupta, the then deputy commissioner of police (north), and Indira Mukherjee, who was the deputy commissioner of police (central).

Speaking to reporters, Adhikari claimed that the officers had offered bribes to the family of the victim and had conducted press conferences without a written order, the newspaper reported.

Departmental proceedings will be initiated against them, the Bharatiya Janata Party leader added.

The mother of the doctor, Ratna Debnath, on May 4 won the Panihati constituency in the West Bengal Assembly elections on a BJP ticket.

She defeated Tirthankar Ghosh, the Trinamool Congress candidate, by over 28,000 votes. Overall, the BJP won 206 seats in the 294-member West Bengal Assembly, ending the 15-year rule of the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC.

The case

On August 9, 2024, the 31-year-old trainee doctor was found dead on the premises of the state-run hospital. The death had sparked protests across the country.

Sanjoy Roy, who was convicted for the doctor’s rape and murder, was sentenced to life imprisonment in January 2025.

In February 2025, the Calcutta High Court admitted an appeal filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation seeking a death sentence for Roy.

After the rape and murder came to light, the West Bengal Junior Doctors’ Front led protests for several weeks, demanding the resignation of senior officials and an end to the “threat culture” in the state’s medical centres.

Healthcare services in West Bengal were hit for several weeks due to the strikes.

The CBI is separately looking into alleged tampering of evidence in the case and alleged corruption at the medical facility. Those accused in the case include the hospital’s former principal Sandip Ghosh and an ex-officer-in-charge of the Tala police station.

Also read: Interview: RG Kar protester is ‘shocked, shattered’ to see victim’s mother contest on BJP ticket

In February this year, 45 people headed towards jewellery shops in Rohru, a town in Himachal Pradesh. But shopping was not their agenda. The group was a squad of forest rangers, guards and van mitras, on a mission, Operation Clawing Back, to raid shops to seize jewellery allegedly made from claws and teeth of leopards and feathers of protected birds. This raid illustrates a wider phenomenon in the Himalayas.

Illegal wildlife trade is happening across eight countries in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region and has doubled from 2019 onwards compared to 2018 and previous years, found a study published in January 2026. The research was conducted by Babar Khan and Kesang Wangchuk at the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development in Kathmandu, Nepal.

India and China recorded thousands of seizure incidents, with carnivores, elephants, pangolins, and various endangered animals trafficked for live trade, body parts, and traditional medicine, according to the research. Illegal wildlife trade is the fourth largest illicit transnational activity in the world. It remains an attractive business for poachers and smugglers, with Southeast Asia at the epicentre of much of this crime. Over 12,000 species of animals and plants have been traded internationally in recent years.

A threat to biodiversity and the mountain ecosystem

The Hindu Kush Himalaya stretches over 3,500 kilometres from west to east, spanning either all or part of these eight countries – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan. The region hosts four global biodiversity hotspots – Himalaya, Indo-Burma, and the Mountains of Central Asia and the Mountains of Southwest China.

It is home to rare and endemic species such as red pandas, snow leopards, one-horned rhinos, Asian elephants, and Bengal tigers.

There is also a link between illegal wildlife trade and zoonotic diseases, where more than 75% of pandemics can be traced back to wildlife. The increase in wildlife trade from 2019-21 has been linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, revealed the study. Due to lockdowns, there was less law enforcement and surveillance.

People also faced economic hardship and the food supply chains were disrupted, which pushed communities towards poaching. For instance, the study showed that India reported a 151% increase in poaching during the pandemic and Nepal and Bangladesh also recorded a rise in such incidents.

“It’s not about a few species being killed, taken away from their habitats or trafficked to another place. Actually, it’s a big threat and menace to the mountain ecosystem, which unfortunately is very fragile,” said Babar Khan, regional lead at ICIMOD.

Wildlife being sold within the Hindu Kush Himalaya region and across its borders also has high human stakes — 1.8 billion people living in the high mountain systems and downstream Asia depend on this biodiversity for their livelihoods and other ecosystem goods and services, Khan told Mongabay-India.

Drivers of wildlife trade

The foremost driver of this illicit trade is the consumer demand for wildlife products, according to the study. People acquire wildlife as luxury and fashion items, speciality foods and exotic pets. There is also a growing demand for traditional Chinese and Tibetan medicines and folk remedies, which use wildlife derivatives.

“As far as Tibetan and Chinese traditional medicine are concerned, we cannot just paint them with a broad brush. We have to look at the nuances,” said Tsewang Namgail, a wildlife biologist and director at the nonprofit Snow Leopard Conservancy India Trust. He pointed out that other traditional healing systems in the Himalayas such as Ayurveda also use biological materials and should be considered in the bigger picture to avoid bias.

To meet consumer demand, a large variety of species is taken from the wild. The study lists carnivores, elephants, pangolins, testudines, antelopes, snakes, birds, lizards, amphibians, crabs, insects, and flowering plants as trafficked species.

While live animals made up the largest trafficked group to be sold, the commodities included specimens, skins, ivory artefacts, roundwood, scales, horns, tusks, bones, claws, teeth, meat, shells, gall bladders, skulls, feathers, and furs.

These species then become a part of crossborder trade, found the study. “The illegal goods were taken through porous borders and also high mountain passes that were poorly monitored. Because of difficult terrain and complex geography, monitoring has been difficult,” said Kesang Wangchuk, who works as intervention manager for human-wildlife coexistence at ICIMOD.

Socio-economic inequalities in the Himalayan countries also lead people to engage in poaching, according to the researchers. “The poachers lure the communities that are low income, often poor, with fewer economic opportunities and trap them into this huge business, for which they take a huge risk, but get very little return,” explained Khan.

What is also driving this trade is weak law enforcement and corruption, according to the study. The extreme climate of the mountains limits vigilance by law enforcement authorities and traffickers also frequently bribe officials at rural checkpoints. The Hindu Kush Himalayan region lacks sufficient wildlife crime enforcement personnel and technology. Non-wildlife officials on duty at checkpoints often struggle to identify wildlife derivatives in processed forms, noted Khan.

Khan notes that he was also surprised by the scale of digital wildlife trade. In recent years, social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, X and WhatsApp have emerged as marketplaces for wildlife trading. “We came to know that there are huge syndicates of illegal wildlife trade operating through digital platforms. They were not selling or buying these products in their common names. They were using coded names and codes for different products,” he said.

Regional cooperation

For this study, the researchers conducted a systematic literature review in 2022, using specific keywords across Scopus, Google Scholar, and ResearchGate. They screened 125 articles and reviewed 96 of them closely.

They also analysed wildlife trade and seizure data for the region spanning 2001 to 2020 from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and the Trade Records Analysis of Flora and Fauna in Commerce (TRAFFIC) databases for the 20-year period. Namgail described the study as a valuable snapshot of the region that gives a bigger picture, achieved through triangulating multiple data sources.

A review of this nature also has its limitations. For instance, the search was restricted to English-language publications and the search terms were not broadened to include the names of all eight Hindu Kush Himalayan countries, which may have missed national and local literature.

Namgail also noted that searching by individual country names could have yielded a much richer body of literature. Wangchuk acknowledged that the true volume of illegal wildlife trafficking in Hindu Kush Himalaya is likely much higher than the data reflects, since the study depended largely on seizure data, which only captures crimes that were detected.

The study recommends strengthening institutional capacities for legislation and enforcement. It also calls for greater regional cooperation. “Every country in the Himalaya knows that illegal wildlife trade is a threat to biodiversity conservation but to have a strong check on this trade, the regional cooperation is not strong. They haven’t come forward and made a very strong transnational decision to control the trade,” Wangchuk told Mongabay-India.

There is the South Asia Wildlife Enforcement Network, a regional intergovernmental wildlife law enforcement support body of eight South Asian countries, but it is not effective enough, so the Hindu Kush Himalayan countries need to strengthen regional collaboration to tackle this challenge effectively, said Khan. Namgail emphasised that a greater cross-border collaboration is key apart from building awareness, especially in India and China, which make up a third of the world’s population.

Wangchuk suggested mapping trafficking supply chains using satellite imagery and GPS tracking to identify poaching hotspots and trading routes and called for deeper investigation into which digital platforms are being used and how. “In the future, researchers can focus on the illegal trade of keystone species and animals that are critical to the HKH ecosystem,” suggested Namgail.

Khan emphasised that wildlife trade is a risk for zoonotic diseases, citing the example of a 2003 incident when a shipment of exotic African rodents to a pet store in Illinois sparked the United States’ first Mpox outbreak. He suggested adopting a One Health approach to address the risk of zoonotic disease linked to illegal wildlife trade – one that treats the health of humans, animals, plants and the ecosystem as inseparable, ensuring the protection of all.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

The Indian rupee closed at a record low of 95.8 against the United States dollar on Friday.

During the intraday trade, the currency breached the 96-per-dollar mark on account of rising global oil prices due to the war in West Asia and inflation concerns. It settled 22 paise lower from Thursday’s close.

So far this year, the rupee has registered more than 6% losses and has depreciated nearly 2% in the past six trading sessions, PTI reported.

In terms of the stock market, the benchmark Sensex fell 160.7 points to close at 75,237.9 and Nifty dropped 46.1 points to settle at 23,643.5.

On Thursday, global oil prices had risen more than 7% to a four-year high following a report that US President Donald Trump was planning for an extended blockade of Iranian ports.

The benchmark Brent crude on Friday traded at $109 per barrel, up 3.1% in futures trade.

The US and Israel launched an attack on Iran on February 28, claiming that Tehran’s action posed an existential threat to Israel. Washington acts as a guarantor of Israel’s security.

Iran retaliated by striking US military bases in the region and Israel, and targeted major cities in Gulf countries and some ships.

Iran has also effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz since the war broke out on February 28. About 20% of the global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint.

India imports 88% of its crude oil needs and about half of its natural gas requirement. This mostly comes through the Strait of Hormuz.

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 Madhya Pradesh High Court held that the disputed Bhojshala-Kamal Maula mosque complex in Dhar district is a temple of the Hindu deity Saraswati. The bench quashed a 2003 order of the Archaeological Survey of India, which allowed Hindus to perform prayers on the premises on Tuesdays and Muslims to offer namaz in the complex on Fridays.

It also allowed the Muslim side to seek alternative land in the district to build a mosque. The court said it arrived at its decision on the basis of the precedent laid down by the Supreme Court in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case. Read on.

From Babri to Gyanvapi, how India’s courts have helped escalate Hindutva claims on mosques, explains Umang Poddar

Opposition leaders questioned whether the Narendra Modi government had entered into a quid pro quo arrangement, under which the United States was reportedly planning to drop charges against Adani Group chairperson Gautam Adani in a fraud case. “The compromised PM has not struck a trade deal, but a bargain for Adani’s release,” claimed Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.

This came a day after The New York Times reported that the US was planning to drop charges against Adani for allegedly orchestrating a $265 million fraud scheme to bribe officials in India for solar energy contracts, and then misrepresenting the company’s anti-bribery practices to investors in the US.

Commenting on this, Rashtriya Janata Dal MP Manoj Kumar Jha said the Opposition had earlier pointed out that India’s trade deal with the US “was unfair, lacked balance and ignored India’s interests”. “…the picture is now quite clear to me about what the reality behind the scenes was,” he added. Read on.

The re-exam for the 2026 undergraduate National Eligibility cum Entrance Test will be held on June 21. The National Testing Agency made the announcement as the test conducted on May 3, in which more than 22 lakh students appeared, had been cancelled following allegations of a paper leak.

During a press conference, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said there was a “breach” in the command chain for the May 3 test. “We accept it and take responsibility to improve it,” added Pradhan.

He also announced that NEET-UG will be computer-based from next year. Read on.

Why the National Testing Agency continues to fail students in India, reports Johanna Deeksha

The National Investigation Agency moved a special court in Mumbai seeking that the bail granted to activists Varavara Rao and Sudha Bharadwaj in the Bhima Koregaon case be cancelled. The court has directed the activists to respond.

The agency contended that they attended a meeting at the Mumbai Press Club along with other persons accused in the case on January 19. This violated their bail conditions, it alleged. Read on.

The Allahabad High Court granted bail to eight of the 14 Muslim men who were arrested after they organised an iftar party on a boat in the river Ganga and allegedly ate chicken biryani. They had moved the High Court after a session court in Varanasi denied bail to all the accused men on April 1.

They face charges of hurting religious sentiments, public nuisance and extortion. Charges that punish publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form have also been invoked. Read on.

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The undergraduate National Eligibility cum Entrance Test will be computer-based from next year, said Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Friday.

The announcement came against the backdrop of the cancellation of the test conducted on May 3, following allegations of a paper leak. The exam is conducted by the National Testing Agency for admission to undergraduate medical courses in India.

This year, more than 22 lakh candidates had appeared for the test.

Pradhan said on Friday that the decision to cancel the exam was taken in favour of meritorious students.

There was a “breach” in the command chain despite the National Testing Agency following recommendations submitted by the Radhakrishnan committee, said Pradhan.

“We accept it and take responsibility to improve it,” the minister added.

He was referring to the high-level committee, led by former Indian Space Research Organisation Chairperson K Radhakrishnan, that was formed after allegations of paper leaks and irregular grace marks emerged in the NEET-UG exam in 2024.

The committee had reportedly submitted 95 recommendations to reform the process.

Despite this, the test on May 3 had to be cancelled after the Rajasthan Special Operations Group began investigating allegations that a “guess paper” circulated before the examination contained questions closely matching the actual paper.

The “guess paper” contained around 410 questions, of which about 120 matched the questions asked in the chemistry section, according to the Rajasthan Police. The Central Bureau of Investigation filed a first information report in the matter based on a complaint by the Union Ministry of Education.

Earlier on Friday, the National Testing Agency said that the re-exam for the 2026 NEET-UG would be held on June 21.

Later in the day, Pradhan told reporters that the suspected leak had come to light after objections were received through the National Testing Agency grievance system about alleged overlaps with “guess papers”, following which an inquiry was initiated.

Speaking about the investigation into the leak, the minister said: “Whether someone is within the NTA [National Testing Agency] or outside it, no one will be spared.”

On using a computer-based test next year, Pradhan said that this mode is comparatively better than the Optical Mark Recognition.

“It is a bit protected,” he said. “Cybercrime has become a big world in itself. There are challenges, however, we will have to trust the system of our country.”

Following the cancellation of the exam on Tuesday, the CBI arrested at least seven persons and conducted searches at several locations across the country in connection with alleged irregularities and the paper leak. Of these, two were arrested on Thursday.

In its FIR, the central agency has invoked charges under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to criminal conspiracy, cheating and criminal breach of trust, the Prevention of Corruption Act and the 2024 Public Examinations Prevention of Unfair Means Act.

Written by Leah Thomas. Edited by Sneha.

The National Investigation Agency on Friday moved a special court in Mumbai seeking that the bail granted to activists Varavara Rao and Sudha Bharadwaj in the Bhima Koregaon case be cancelled.

The court has directed the activists to respond to the applications, The Indian Express reported.

Rao was granted interim medical bail by the Bombay High Court in February 2021 and the bail order was confirmed by the Supreme Court in August 2022. Bharadwaj was granted default bail by the Bombay High Court in December 2021 as the agency had not filed a chargesheet within the stipulated time of 90 days.

In its applications seeking the cancellation of bail for Rao and Bharadwaj, the NIA contended that they attended a meeting at the Mumbai Press Club along with other persons accused in the case on January 19. This violated their bail conditions, alleged the agency.

Also read:

Bhima Koregaon case: How lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj got bail after three years in jail

It claimed that the gathering was convened with the intention of “propagating the ideology of the proscribed organisation Communist Party of India (Maoist) and to deliberate upon the future course of action for spreading the ‘Urban Naxal’ movement…”

The bail conditions for Rao and Bharadwaj barred them from contacting or communicating with other accused persons, said the NIA.

In April, the Mumbai Press Club suspended three members for having “facilitated” the gathering on January 19. The NIA had, on May 1, sought documents from the press club related to the gathering.

A Mumbai City Civil Court on May 7 stayed the expulsion of one of the Mumbai Press Club members, Gurbir Singh.

It held that on a preliminary reading, action had been taken against him “only with an intent to prevent him from contesting the elections of the club”, according to The Indian Express.

Also read:

Anand Patwardhan: The taming of the Mumbai Press Club

The case

The Bhima Koregaon case pertains to the violence that broke out near Pune on January 1, 2018, a day after a conclave called the Elgar Parishad was organised to mark the 200th anniversary of the battle of Bhima Koregaon. One person was killed in the violence and several others were injured.

The NIA has alleged that the Elgar Parishad was part of a larger Maoist conspiracy to stoke caste violence, destabilise the Union government and assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Sixteen people were arrested in the case.

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

Of the 16 accused persons, 14 have been released on bail. Jesuit priest Stan Swamy, who was also accused in the case, died in prison in 2021.

Another accused man, Surendra Gadling, got bail from the Bombay High Court on May 4. However, he remains in jail as his bail application in the 2016 arson case is pending before the Supreme Court.

Written by Neerad Pandharipande. Edited by Sneha.

The Manipur Police on Friday said that 28 of about 38 persons from the Kuki and Naga communities who had been taken hostage by armed groups in the state’s Kangpokpi and Senapati districts have been released, reported PTI.

The abductions had taken place as fresh violence erupted in Manipur on Wednesday after three church leaders were killed and five others injured when the vehicles they were travelling in were ambushed while they were returning from a meeting in Churachandpur to Kangpokpi. Another civilian was also killed and his wife wounded in Noney district.

On Thursday, Manipur Home Minister Govindas Konthoujam said that the administration was “actively holding discussions with civil society groups and political leaders to secure the release” of the abducted persons.

An unidentified police officer told PTI on Friday that 12 Naga women from Konsakhul village had been released at Makhan on Thursday. Four men and ten women from the Kuki community held in Senapati were also handed over to security forces late on Thursday night, added the officer.

“Two Salesian brothers of Don Bosco [a religious order in the Catholic Church], including one from Nagaland, were also released by armed groups at separate locations,” the newspaper quoted the officer as saying.

Another police officer told The Indian Express that the total number of persons being held hostage was uncertain, which made the situation more difficult.

Groups on both sides had raised “ultimatums” on Thursday, threatening an escalation in the situation if the hostages were not released by the other side, the newspaper reported.

After the attack on Wednesday, the apex body of the Kuki tribes, Kuki Inpi Manipur, alleged that the armed Naga group Zeliangrong United Front-Kamson faction was behind the actions. However, the authorities said that the involvement of militant outfits was being investigated.

The developments come amid tensions between Kukis and Nagas in Ukhrul that had erupted on February 7 after an alleged assault involving members of the Tangkhul Naga and the Kuki-Zo communities escalated into clashes.

The fresh violence came against the backdrop of the ethnic clashes that broke out between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo-Hmar communities in the state in May 2023, leaving at least 260 persons dead and more than 59,000 persons displaced. There were periodic upticks in violence in 2024 and 2025.

Edited by Sneha.

The Madhya Pradesh High Court on Friday held that the disputed Bhojshala-Kamal Maula mosque complex in Dhar district is a temple of Hindu deity Saraswati, reported Live Law.

A bench of Justices Vijay Kumar Shukla and Alok Awasthi quashed a 2003 order of the Archaeological Survey of India, which allowed Hindus to perform prayers on the premises on Tuesdays and Muslims to offer namaz in the complex on Fridays.

The court allowed the Muslim side to seek alternative land within Dhar district to build a mosque, Bar and Bench reported. If such a request is made, the state government “may consider the said application in accordance with law”, the judges said.

The bench said that historical literature and archaeological references showed that the site was a centre for learning Sanskrit and had a temple dedicated to the deity Saraswati.

The court directed the Union government and the Archaeological Survey of India to decide on how to administer and manage the property, Bar and Bench reported. “ASI will have full supervisory control over the preservation, conservation and regulation of religious practices,” the bench said.

On March 11, 2024, the Madhya Pradesh High Court directed the Archaeological Survey of India to carry out a survey of the site on a plea by a group called the Hindu Front for Justice, which has claimed that the mosque was constructed by “destroying” Hindu temples.

The Archaeological Survey of India found in July 2024 that the mosque was constructed using parts from earlier temples at the site.

The Hindu Front for Justice had argued that the Kamal Maula mosque was constructed during the reign of Alauddin Khilji between the 13th century and 14th century by “destroying and dismantling ancient structures of previously constructed Hindu temples”.

On Friday, the Madhya Pradesh High Court said it arrived at its decision on the basis of the precedent laid down by the Supreme Court in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case from Ayodhya, according to Bar and Bench.

In November 2019, a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court held that the demolition of the Babri mosque in 1992 was illegal, but handed over the land to a trust for a Ram temple to be constructed. At the same time, it directed that a five-acre plot in Ayodhya be allotted to Muslims for a mosque to be constructed.

Also read: From Babri to Gyanvapi, how India’s courts have helped escalate Hindutva claims on mosques

More than four years later, the Ram temple was inaugurated in Ayodhya in a ceremony led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 22, 2024.

The Madhya Pradesh High Court on Friday remarked that every government has a “constitutional obligation to ensure preservation and protection of not only ancient monuments and its structures, including temples of historical and archaeological importance, but also of sanctum sanctorum as well as the deities of spiritual importance”, Live Law reported.

Edited by Sneha.

The Supreme Court on Friday set aside an order issued by the Delhi High Court that had suspended the life sentence of expelled Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kuldeep Singh Sengar in the 2017 Unnao rape case involving a minor, Bar and Bench reported.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi asked the High Court to either decide on the petition filed by the former Uttar Pradesh MLA against his conviction within three months or pass a fresh order on the application seeking the suspension of his sentence, according to Live Law.

The order came on a petition filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation against the High Court’s decision on December 23 to suspend Sengar’s jail sentence and allow his release during the pendency of his appeal against his conviction in the rape case.

Despite the High Court order, Sengar was to remain in jail as he is also serving a 10-year sentence in connection with the custodial death of the complainant’s father.

During the hearing on Friday, the Supreme Court disagreed with the High Court’s observation that the offence of “aggravated penetrative sexual assault” under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act was not made out against Sengar, Bar and Bench reported.

The High Court had observed that, on the face of it, the facts of the case did not fulfil the conditions required to apply the stricter offence under Section 5 of the Pocso Act as Sengar did not fall within the definition of a “public servant”.

Section 5 of the Pocso Act sets out conditions in which a “penetrative sexual assault” against a child is treated as a more “aggravated” offence. An aggravated offence is treated as serious because it is committed under special or severe circumstances that make the crime graver than usual.

Under the Act, an offence becomes “aggravated penetrative sexual assault” when it is committed by persons holding positions of authority, such as a public servant or a police officer within their jurisdiction, members of security forces, or staff of hospitals or prisons.

An aggravated offence carries a minimum sentence of 20 years, which can be extended up to life imprisonment under the Act.

In 2019, a trial court convicted Sengar, noting that, since he was an MLA at the time of the incident, he qualified as a “public servant” under Pocso. This made the offence a serious one and attracted a harsher punishment.

Disagreeing with the High Court’s argument, the Supreme Court on Friday said that it does “not endorse the hyper-technical conclusion of the High Court”, Bar and Bench reported.

Bagchi noted that “this is a penal legislation which protects children from sexual exploitation”.

On the other hand, Sengar’s counsel asked whether the Pocso Act was applicable at all.

“I am in the position to show that the prosecutrix is not a minor,” the legal news portal quoted his counsel as saying. “The AIIMS [All India Institute Of Medical Sciences] board says she was not a minor. All reports are in his favour still he is in jail.”

The case

In December 2019, a trial court in Delhi convicted Sengar and sentenced him to life for raping a woman in Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao in 2017. She was a minor at the time.

In March 2020, Sengar and his brother, among others, were also sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment for the killing of the woman’s father in judicial custody. The killing had taken place after the father had been arrested in April 2018 allegedly at Sengar’s behest under the Arms Act.

He died in custody on April 9, 2018.

In June 2024, the High Court rejected the petition filed by Sengar for the suspension of his sentence in the custodial death case. On January 19, the High Court once again rejected his attempt to secure interim relief in the matter.

Edited by Sneha.

The Allahabad High Court on Friday granted bail to eight of the 14 Muslim men who were arrested after they organised an iftar party on a boat in the river Ganga and allegedly ate chicken biryani, reported Live Law.

The 14 men had been arrested after a video of the iftar party was widely shared on social media on March 16.

Eight of them moved the High Court after a session court in Varanasi denied bail to all the accused men on April 1.

They had also been denied relief on March 23 by Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Amit Kumar Yadav, who said that the offences allegedly committed by the men were of “a serious nature and non-bailable”.

The eight men who were granted bail on Friday are Mohammad Azad Ali, Mohammad Tahseem, Nihal Afridi, Mohammad Tauseef, Mohammad Anas, Mohammad Sameer, Mohammad Ahmed Raza, and Mohammad Faizan.

All men accused in the matter face charges under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita sections pertaining to defiling a place of worship with intent to insult the religion of a class, deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of a class by insulting its religious beliefs and promoting enmity between groups.

They were also booked under sections pertaining to public nuisance, fouling water of a public spring or water reservoir, disobeying a public servant’s order and sections of the Water Prevention and Control of Pollution Act.

The police later added charges of extortion under threat of death or grievous hurt to the case. This came after the owners of the boat alleged that the men forcibly took the boat.

Charges under the Information Technology Act section 67, which punishes publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form, have also been invoked.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Opposition leaders on Friday questioned whether the Narendra Modi government has entered into a quid pro quo arrangement, under which the United States Department of Justice is reportedly planning to drop charges against Adani Group chairperson Gautam Adani.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that the decision to drop the charges came after Gautam Adani hired a legal team led by Robert J Giuffra Jr, one of US President Donald Trump’s personal lawyers.

Commenting on the report, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said on social media: “The compromised PM has not struck a trade deal, but a bargain for Adani's release.”

Compromised PM ने trade deal नहीं, अडानी की रिहाई का सौदा किया।

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) May 15, 2026

In a similar vein, Rashtriya Janata Dal MP Manoj Kumar Jha was quoted as saying by PTI: “…Whether you call it quid pro quo or something else, it now seems clear why we were demanding clarity on the trade deal.”

Jha said the Opposition had earlier pointed out that India’s trade deal with the US “was unfair, lacked balance, and ignored India’s interests”.

“Looking at the other side as well, the picture is now quite clear to me about what the reality behind the scenes was,” said the MP.

India and the US agreed on a framework for the interim trade deal on February 2. While the agreement has reduced US tariffs on Indian goods to 18% from 50%, Opposition parties have expressed concerns that the interests of farmers and small and medium enterprises may be jeopardised through the agreement.

An Indian delegation had travelled to the United States in April for meetings with American officials to advance negotiations for the bilateral trade agreement, PTI reported. A delegation from the US is expected to visit India for the next round of talks, although the dates for it have not been finalised yet, according to the news agency.

Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal asked whether the Centre had agreed to the US’ demand not to buy oil from Russia in exchange for the dropping of charges against Adani.

रूस से तेल ना ख़रीदने का क्या ये कारण है? https://t.co/05gkdXv8tb

— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) May 15, 2026

The Trump administration has been claiming that India’s purchases of Russian oil have been fueling its war on Ukraine. However, the US government had in April extended a waiver allowing countries, including India, to purchase sanctioned Russian oil and petroleum products that had already been loaded onto ships till May 16.

On Friday, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi quoted The New York Times as claiming that Giuffra made an offer to US justice department officials that Adani would invest $10 billion in the US economy and help create 15,000 jobs if the charges against him were dropped.

“From one businessman to another – you help me, I help you and let's seal the deal – there was never a fraud, not any charges,” said Chaturvedi, commenting on the claim.

https://t.co/1piNXyV4nz
From one businessman to another- you help me, I help you and lets seal the deal ~ there never was a fraud, nor any charges.
“Another slide also offered the government a sweetener: If prosecutors dropped the charges, Mr. Adani would be willing to invest…

— Priyanka Chaturvedi🇮🇳 (@priyankac19) May 14, 2026

Allegations against Adani

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

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

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

Written by Neerad Pandharipande. Edited by Sneha.

The United States Department of Justice is planning to drop fraud charges against Adani Group chairperson Gautam Adani, The New York Times reported on Thursday.

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

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

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

The decision to drop the charges came after Gautam Adani hired a legal team led by Robert J Giuffra Jr, one of US President Donald Trump’s personal lawyers, The New York Times reported.

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

One slide also allegedly made an offer that Gautam Adani would invest $10 billion in the US economy and help create 15,000 jobs if the charges against him were dropped, according to the newspaper.

On November 13, 2024, eight days after Trump won the presidential election, Gautam Adani congratulated the Republican leader on social media and said his conglomerate was committed to investing $10 billion in the US and creating up to 15,000 jobs.

Even if the criminal charges are dropped, Gautam Adani is still expected to pay financial penalties, The New York Times quoted persons aware of the case as saying.

During the same meeting, the lawyer also sought to resolve a parallel civil case filed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission against Gautam Adani, The New York Times reported. On Thursday, the US markets regulator reached a settlement with Gautam Adani in the matter, the Financial Times reported.

As part of this settlement, Gautam Adani agreed to pay $6 million, while his nephew Sagar Adani agreed to pay $12 million, Bloomberg reported. Sagar Adani will pay $12 million.

Adani Green Energy, a subsidiary of the Adani Group, told stock exchanges on Friday that the “company is not a party to this proceeding, and no charges have been brought against it”.

However, it confirmed that Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani had agreed to the “payment of a civil penalty”, while stating that the decision was made “without admitting or denying the allegations made in the civil complaint”.

The final judgement of the US Eastern District Court of New York is awaited, the company said.

The US Department of Treasury, which is separately investigating the conglomerate for shipping Iranian gas in violation of United States sanctions, is also preparing to impose its own penalty, The New York Times reported. This penalty could be about $275 million, the newspaper quoted persons with knowledge of the matter as having said.

In April, Gautam Adani reportedly moved a US court seeking that the fraud case filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission be dismissed on the grounds that it constituted an impermissible extraterritorial application of American law.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Also read:

• What does US law say about Adani’s indictment – and can he be charged in India?
• Adani US indictment: The Indian solar deals for which Rs 2,029 crore was allegedly paid in bribes
• Modi leads, Adani follows: Is India’s diplomacy in lockstep with a private group’s global expansion?

The Supreme Court on Thursday questioned why a Union Cabinet minister should be part of the selection committee that appoints the chief election commissioner and the two other members of the poll panel, Live Law reported.

A bench comprising Justices Dipankar Datta and Satish Chandra Sharma made the observations while hearing six petitions challenging the constitutional validity of a 2023 law that governs the appointment of the Election Commission members.

The Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office Act states that the head of the poll panel and the two other members are to be appointed based on the recommendations of a selection committee comprising the prime minister, a Union Cabinet minister and the leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha.

The composition of the panel means that the government enjoys a 2:1 majority over the leader of the Opposition, if there is a difference of opinion.

The law that was passed by Parliament in December 2023 replaced an arrangement created by a Supreme Court judgement in March 2023 that had formed a selection committee consisting of the prime minister, the leader of Opposition and the chief justice.

On Thursday, Datta remarked that it was not enough for the Election Commission to be independent, and that it also had to be seen as independent.

“The third member should be somebody who is a neutral person,” he verbally observed, according to Live Law. “He should select. Why should it be a minister from the Cabinet?”

He further questioned whether the Opposition leader was merely “ornamental”, Bar and Bench reported.

“It will always be 2:1,” Datta said. “Why do you put up this show of independence in the body? Will a member of Cabinet go against the prime minister?”

Attorney General R Venkataramani, representing the Centre, argued that the court should not strike down a law on account of hypothetical bias.

“We have to eat the pudding to know if it is bad,” PTI quoted him as saying. “Unless the ECs [election commissioners] demonstrate a lack of independence in their actual functioning, the law cannot be held invalid.”

The attorney general argued that Parliament had the absolute right to enact the law, and that it is not bound by the “stop-gap” arrangement suggested in the March 2023 Supreme Court judgement.

He said the earlier ruling was issued under Article 142 of the Constitution, which allows the Supreme Court to pass orders to ensure complete justice, and did not amount to a binding law under Article 141, PTI reported.

Article 142 pertains to the Supreme Court’s discretionary power to pass orders to ensure complete justice. Article 141 states that the law laid down by the Supreme Court will be binding on all courts in India.

Datta observed that the independence of the Election Commission was a constitutional feature because free and fair elections depended on it.

Retired Indian Administrative Service officer SN Shukla, appearing on behalf of petitioner Lok Prahari, argued that the 2023 law did not ensure the independence of the poll panel, Live Law reported.

He described the legislation as “a fraud on the Constitution”, and alleged that a provision replacing the Cabinet secretary with a Union minister in the selection committee was added at the last moment, without a justification being put forward before Parliament.

Referring to the current Election Commission, Shukla said neither Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar nor Election Commissioner Sukhbir Singh Sandhu had served as a chief electoral officer in a state, Live Law reported.

Sharma however, noted that IAS officer regularly work as returning officers and election observers.

“They do have the experience in management and conduct of elections,” the judge told Shukla. “They are IAS officers. You were also one. They have worked as returning officers and observers.”

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Also read: Explainer: How Modi government’s new bill aims to wrest control of Election Commission appointments

The Jharkhand High Court on Thursday called custodial deaths the “worst kind of crime” and a “profound failure of the constitutional machinery”, while ordering fresh inquiries in 262 cases.

The court ordered fresh judicial inquiries after it was informed that the state had bypassed mandatory legal procedure in these cases. A division bench of Chief Justice MS Sonak and Justice Rajesh Shankar was hearing a public interest litigation filed by one Mohammed Mumtaz Ansari.

The court examined state data about 427 custodial deaths between 2018 and 2026. It noted that the state’s affidavit itself said that 262 of these cases were inquired into by executive magistrates instead of judicial magistrates, despite a legal requirement for judicial inquiries.

It said it was “shocked beyond words” at the scale of non-compliance on the matter.

The bench observed that bypassing mandatory judicial inquiry provisions amounted to “administrative lawlessness” and violated constitutional guarantees of equality before law and right to lifel

“The right to life is not a mere biological concept, it is an expansive guarantee that inherently encompasses the right to live with human dignity,” the bench said, adding that even if a person is accused or convicted of a crime, their “entitlement to a dignified and peaceful life remains inviolable”.

The court also highlighted inconsistencies in the state’s figures, noting that the total number of inquiries reported did not match the number of custodial deaths, calling the data “mathematically irreconcilable”.

The court rejected the state’s approach of treating executive inquiries as compliant with law and reiterated that judicial inquiry was a statutory requirement.

The bench also directed the authorities to identify officials responsible for the lapses and submit compliance reports. It then disposed of the matter with detailed directions for reinvestigation, compliance monitoring and institutional reforms.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande

The Calcutta High Court on Thursday directed the West Bengal Police to ensure the safe return of persons allegedly displaced from their homes, shops and properties by violence following the Assembly elections, irrespective of their political affiliation, Live Law reported.

The directions were issued during hearings on public interest litigations alleging post-poll violence in the state.

Chief Justice Sujoy Paul said that it would be “lawful for the police authorities to strictly maintain law and order at the ground level”, The Telegraph reported.

Former Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee appeared as an advocate for one of the petitioners in the case.

“Even the children are not spared,” the Trinamool Congress chief told the court, according to The Telegraph. “Women are not spared. Minorities are not spared. I am handing over a list of 10 persons who have been murdered.”

Banerjee claimed that the violence was taking place in the presence of the police.

The Trinamool Congress chief, while exiting the premises, was heckled with shouts of “chor [thief]” by some lawyers, according to the newspaper. Banerjee claimed that she had been physically assaulted.

During the hearing, advocate Kalyan Bandopadhyay also appeared for the Trinamool Congress and sought an independent probe, preservation of CCTV footage and protection for displaced persons, Live Law reported.

“Our workers were brutally assaulted by the ruling party supporters,” the legal news outlet quoted him as saying. “Our workers became homeless and were forced to leave their homes. No one of our workers is able to stay in their home”

The state and Centre opposed the petitions, calling the claims vague and unsupported.

Deputy Solicitor General Dhiraj Trivedi appearing for the police, said the veracity of “stray photos” mentioned in the petitions will have to be verified, according to Live Law.

Trivedi asked, “Which time, what date, who were the assailants? Who were the complainants? A petitioner cannot make wild allegations in a PIL without evidence.”

He said that while there “might be disturbances in many places”, equating them with post-poll violence was “not fair”.

The Bharatiya Janata Party won the West Bengal elections on May 4, ending the Trinamool Congress’ 15-year rule in the state. The BJP won 207 seats, while the TMC secured 80 constituencies.

Since the results, widespread political violence has been reported in the state, including the killing of Chandranath Rath, an aide to West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari.

The Trinamool Congress condemned Rath’s killing and expressed grief over the deaths of its party workers in separate incidents of violence across the state.

On May 12, the investigation into Rath’s killing was handed over to the CBI. Three persons have been arrested in the case so far.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande

Also read: ‘Voted for change but this feels same’: Kolkata reels under political violence after BJP victory

The prices of petrol and diesel were on Friday increased with immediate effect amid rising global oil prices and supply concerns amid the conflict in West Asia.

In Delhi, the price of petrol increased by Rs 3 per litre to Rs 97.77 per litre from Rs 94.77 per litre. Diesel will cost Rs 99.67 per litre instead of Rs 87.67.

The price of petrol was increased by Rs 3.29 per litre in Kolkata, by Rs 3.14 per litre in Mumbai and Rs 2.83 per litre in Chennai.

Diesel would cost Rs 3.11 more per litre in Kolkata, Rs 3.11 per litre in Mumbai and Rs 2.86 per litre in Chennai.

Commenting on the increase in fuel prices, Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday said that the public “will pay the price” for what he described as the Narendra Modi government’s mistake. “The Rs 3 shock has already arrived, the rest of the collection will be done in instalments,” Gandhi said on social media.

The hike comes as oil marketing companies face mounting pressure with global crude prices continuing to rise amid the war in West Asia. Benchmark Brent crude was trading at $106.6 per barrel on Friday. The price of Brent was $78 per barrel on February 27, a day before the conflict started.

On Monday, the Union government had ruled out any immediate bailout package for state-run oil companies despite losses linked to the crisis in West Asia.

The clarification had come as concerns grew about under-recoveries, the gap between the cost of producing fuels such as petrol, diesel and liquefied petroleum gas and their retail selling prices.

Union Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Sunday that oil companies were facing under-recoveries of about Rs 2 lakh crore, with losses of up to Rs 1 lakh crore projected in the current quarter.

Puri had said that oil companies were purchasing crude oil, gas and liquified petroleum gas at elevated international prices while continuing to sell fuels at unchanged retail rates to shield consumers, leading to losses of up to Rs 1,000 crore a day.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged citizens to revive some work-from-home practices adopted during the Covid-19 pandemic to reduce fuel consumption. It was among the measures he proposed to help the country withstand global economic uncertainties and supply chain disruptions amid the conflict.

Referring to the disruption around the Strait of Hormuz and rising energy prices, Modi said that imported petroleum products should be used “only as per need” to lessen the impact of the conflict on India’s economy.

India imports 88% of its crude oil needs and about half of its natural gas requirement. This mostly comes through the strait, which has been effectively blocked due to the conflict in West Asia.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Sara Varghese

The re-exam for the 2026 undergraduate National Eligibility cum Entrance Test will be held on June 21, the National Testing Agency said on Friday.

The test conducted on May 3 had been cancelled following allegations of a paper leak. The exam is conducted by the National Testing Agency for admission to undergraduate medical courses in India.

More than 22 lakh candidates had appeared for the May 3 test.

The Central Bureau of Investigation has arrested at least seven persons and conducted searches at several locations across the country in connection with alleged irregularities and the paper leak. Of these, two were arrested on Thursday.

The test held on May 3 was cancelled after the Rajasthan Special Operations Group began investigating allegations that a “guess paper” circulated before the examination contained questions closely matching the actual paper.

The “guess paper” contained around 410 questions, of which about 120 matched the questions asked in the chemistry section, according to the Rajasthan Police.

The CBI filed a first information report in the matter based on a complaint by the Union education ministry. It has invoked charges under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to criminal conspiracy, cheating and criminal breach of trust, the Prevention of Corruption Act and the 2024 Public Examinations Prevention of Unfair Means Act.

The 2024 examination was also hit by allegations of paper leaks and irregular grace marks, leading to nationwide protests.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Sara Varghese.

About 25 foreign citizens had been detained or arrested for allegedly voting in the recent Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry using identity documents obtained allegedly fraudulently, The Hindu reported.

While most of those detained were found to have voted in Chennai, two foreign citizens allegedly did so in Puducherry.

Under Election Commission rules, overseas electors must remain Indian citizens and must not have acquired citizenship of another country. Non-Resident Indians are allowed to register as voters under the Representation of the People Act but are required to produce an original Indian passport at polling stations.

The foreign passport holders were stopped by the immigration authorities at airports in Chennai and Madurai after officials saw marks of indelible ink on their fingers during departure checks.

The operation to crackdown had begun last week, The Hindu reported.

Cases have been registered under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the Representation of the People Act and other laws.

Chennai Additional Police Commissioner A Radhika told The Times of India that first information reports were filed based on complaints from the Foreigners’ Regional Registration Office in Chennai.

The persons accused in the matter have been released on bail, The Times of India quoted the police as saying.

Investigators were quoted as saying that most of the persons who had been detained were Sri Lankan citizens. The others were British, Canadian and Indonesian citizens.

The persons arrived in India shortly after the election was announced and allegedly stayed back after polling, possibly waiting for the indelible ink marks to fade before attempting to leave India, the police alleged.

The polls in Puducherry were held on April 9 and in Tamil Nadu on April 23.

“We conducted discreet inquiries and alerted the authorities who detained 25 to 30 persons as they prepared to board flights,” The Hindu quoted an unidentified senior official as saying.

One man of Indian origin who had become a British citizen in 2015 was allegedly found to have voted in the Pattukottai Assembly constituency. He was detained at the Chennai airport while attempting to board a flight to London.

Some of the arrested Sri Lankan citizens were identified as Ranjini (59), Sarfudeen (68), Nilanthi (44), Jeyanthan (40), Charlie Balachandran (48), Chakravarthy Logapriya (50) and Sunitha Chakravarthy (48), PTI reported.

Others arrested included Ayyadurai (53), a British citizen, Tittin Mariatti (47) from Indonesia, and Jitthendranath (38) from Canada.

A report has been submitted to the Election Commission, an unidentified official told The Hindu.

Investigators are also examining records of other foreign citizens who arrived in India before polling day and have not yet left the country.

The cases have emerged even as the Election Commission conducted a special revision of electoral rolls in 12 states and Union Territories including Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.

More than 74 lakh names were removed from Tamil Nadu’s electoral rolls during the exercise. The final voter list published in February showed that the state had 5.6 crore electors.

In Puducherry, the number of voters fell by more than 77,300 after the revision. The total electorate declined from more than 10.2 lakh before the exercise to 9.4 lakh in the final rolls, marking a net reduction of 7.5%.

In Tamil Nadu, actor-politician Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam, on its electoral debut, emerged as the single-largest party with 108 seats, falling short of the majority mark of 118 in the 234-member Assembly.

The TVK formed a coalition government with the support of the Congress, the Left parties, the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi and the Indian Union Muslim League.

In Puducherry, the All India NR Congress-led National Democratic Alliance won 18 of the 30 seats.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar

For decades, the Indian judiciary has been described as a “leaking tap” – a system where the inflow of new cases consistently outpaces the rate of disposal, leading to a staggering backlog of over five crore cases.

While solutions, ranging from increasing the number of judges to digitising records, are frequently proposed, the most potent weapon against pendency already exists in the statute books: the restriction on adjournments.

If Indian courts were to strictly follow the “Rule of Three” as mandated by law, the judicial system can radically transform from a marathon of delays into a sprint toward justice.

Culture of adjournment

The legal framework for curbing delays is surprisingly robust. Order XVII, Rule 1 of the Code of Civil Procedure explicitly states that no more than three adjournments shall be granted to a party during the hearing of a suit.

The newly enacted Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita has tightened the screws on the criminal side, capping adjournments at two. The law even mandates that costs must be imposed on the party seeking the delay.

However, a “culture of adjournment” has turned these mandatory provisions into mere suggestions. In practice, the average case in a subordinate court sees between 12 and 30 adjournments. If the judiciary were to bridge the gap between law and practice, the impact on court disposals would be exponential.

Time cost

To understand how following the law will reduce the backlog, one must look at the “time cost” of a single adjournment. Every time a case is adjourned, the court’s administrative machinery – from the peshkar to the stenographer – spends time re-scheduling, re-notifying, and re-filing. Multiply this by 30 listings a day, and a judge spends nearly half their working hours merely managing a calendar rather than adjudicating merits.

If courts followed the law of strictly limiting adjournments to three, the disposals will increase by over 25%. Right now, the average increase in the pendency is less than 3% per year. It is easy to see that each year the pendency will reduce instead of increasing. When the “exit” from the system is sped up through faster disposals, the backlog begins to drain naturally.

Deterrent effect

Adjournments are rarely sought for genuine emergencies. They are frequently used as a strategic tool. Litigants with a weak case use “date-seeking” to exhaust the resources of their opponent or to wait for witnesses to lose their memory or interest. When courts ignore the legal limit on adjournments, they inadvertently subsidise this behaviour.

If the law were followed, the “strategic adjournment” would disappear. Lawyers will be forced to come prepared, and litigants will know that their day in court is fixed.

This will have a deterrence effect where frivolous litigation decreases because the strategy of waiting it out is no longer viable. Following the law will clean the docket of cases that exist only because they are allowed to linger.

Salem Advocate paradox

The primary hurdle to this reform is a 2005 Supreme Court ruling in the Salem Advocate Bar Association case, which held that the three-adjournment limit is not absolute and can be bypassed in “extraordinary circumstances”. Though intended to ensure justice is not sacrificed for speed, this exception has become the rule.

To truly tackle the backlog, the judiciary must redefine “extraordinary”: an unwell lawyer or a missing file are routine administrative hurdles. If courts began treating the “Rule of Three” as a hard boundary – by imposing heavy, deterrent costs for any deviation – the legal fraternity would adapt. Professionalism will increase as the “adjournment culture” decreases.

The Socio-Economic Dividend

The backlog is also an economic problem. It is estimated that judicial delays cost India nearly 1.5% to 2% of its gross domestic product annually. Land is locked up in litigation, contracts are unenforceable and capital remains stagnant.

A court system that follows the law on adjournments will provide a fixed timeline. For an investor or the average citizen, knowing that a dispute will be settled in a fixed number of hearings is more valuable than the outcome itself.

By clearing the backlog through procedural discipline, the judiciary would unlock frozen assets and restore public faith in the rule of law.

Discipline as reform

The Indian judiciary needs to follow the laws it already has. The “Rule of Three” is a ready-made solution for the pendency crisis. Increasing the number of judges and adopting artificial intelligence are long-term goals but they are supply-side fixes. Restricting adjournments is a process-side fix that does not require a new budget, infrastructure or legislation.

If judges say no to the fourth adjournment request, the message will ripple through the legal system. India’s mountainous judicial backlog will start looking far more manageable. In the battle against pendency, the most revolutionary act a judge can perform is simply to follow the law. Can Indian courts be persuaded to follow the law and refuse the fourth adjournment?

Shailesh Gandhi is a former Central Information Commissioner.

The Indian government on Thursday described as “unacceptable” an attack on an Indian-flagged vessel off the coast of Oman a day earlier.

While the attack took place amid the war in West Asia, it was not immediately clear who carried out the strike. The dhow, or a mechanised wooden vessel, subsequently sank, India’s shipping ministry said.

Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that all the Indian crew on board the ship are safe.

“We deplore the fact that commercial shipping and civilian mariners continue to be targeted,” Jaiswal said. “India reiterates that targeting commercial shipping and endangering innocent civilian crew members, or otherwise impeding freedom of navigation and commerce, should be avoided.”

Our statement on the attack on an Indian-flagged ship off the coast of Oman ⬇️

🔗 https://t.co/whly2BJ4TJ pic.twitter.com/PF0wAQ14zY

— Randhir Jaiswal (@MEAIndia) May 14, 2026

The war

The United States and Israel launched an attack on Iran on February 28, claiming that Tehran’s action posed an existential threat to Israel. Washington acts as a guarantor of Israel’s security. Iran retaliated by striking Israel and US military bases in the region, targeting major cities in Gulf countries and ships.

Tehran also effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterbody connecting the Gulf to the Arabian Sea, for most international commercial vessels, triggering a global energy crisis. About 20% of global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint.

The peace talks between Iran and the US that were held in Islamabad, Pakistan collapsed on April 12 but the ceasefire in the region has largely held.

Iran’s foreign minister in India for BRICS

The attack on the Indian-flagged ship on Wednesday also comes as Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived in New Delhi to participate in a BRICS Foreign Ministers’ meeting on Thursday and Friday, ANI reported.

The BRICS grouping comprises India, Brazil, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Washington views the group as attempting to become an economic counterweight to the US.

Addressing the gathering in New Delhi, Araghchi urged the members of the grouping and other countries to “unequivocally condemn the violations of international law” by the US and Israel, ANI reported.

The Iranian foreign minister added that Tehran viewed BRICS as a symbol of the emergence of a new world order, one in which the global south is one of the “main architects” of the future of the world.

“What was once an ambitious ideal has become a reality, but it is a fragile one,” the news agency quoted him as saying. “Declining imperialist powers are seeking to turn back the clock and are reacting with desperation and aggression as they seek to downgrade.”

Araghchi also described Iran's confrontation with Western powers as part of a larger struggle against “Western hegemony”, adding that Tehran’s actions were tied to the interests of BRICS countries.

Written by Leah Thomas. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Delhi High Court’s Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma on Thursday initiated contempt of court proceedings against Aam Aadmi Party leaders Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia and several others for allegedly defaming and vilifying her on social media in connection with the liquor policy case, Bar and Bench reported.

Sharma, however, recused herself from hearing the Central Bureau of Investigation’s revision petition against their discharge in the Delhi liquor policy case.

“It could be that if I keep hearing this case, Arvind Kejriwal and other people might think that I have a grudge against him,” the legal news portal quoted her as saying. “That’s why I’ve thought that this particular case will be heard by some other bench.”

The development comes after the former chief minister, Sisodia and another AAP leader, Durgesh Pathak, decided in April to boycott the proceedings before Sharma in the petition filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation against the trial court order discharging them and several others in the case.

On April 20, Sharma rejected a petition filed by the AAP leaders demanding that she recuse herself from hearing the case. Their petition raised concerns about “perceived ideological proximity”, referring to her attending an event of an organisation linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

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

Kejriwal also argued before Sharma that she had repeatedly passed orders in favour of the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate in the liquor policy case.

On Thursday, the judge said that the present order on her recusal should not be understood as a transfer of the matter merely because such demands were made by Kejriwal and the others, Bar and Bench reported.

Noting that she had already rejected their demand for recusal, Sharma said that subsequent events such as the initiation of contempt proceedings had given rise to different issues. “Therefore, let it be a reminder that you pay a personal price for constitutional courage,” she was quoted as saying.

The judge said that Kejriwal had taken to social media against her instead of filing an appeal before the Supreme Court.

During the hearing, Sharma flagged a letter and a video that she said were circulated online by Kejriwal and the others, which announced their boycott of the proceedings after she had refused to recuse herself from hearing the case.

“Though inside court Mr Kejriwal said he respects the court, outside court he orchestrated a coordinated campaign against me,” Bar and Bench quoted the judge as saying.

Referring to the allegations made against her including the relationship between the court and a political party, Sharma added that those seeking her recusal could have moved the Supreme Court.

She added that several members of the AAP had also repeated the allegations.

Sharma also noted that Kejriwal had claimed that the public would not have the confidence that she would rule against the Union government or the BJP, according to the legal news portal.

“On the face of it, the statement is not bona fide,” Bar and Bench quoted Sharma as saying. “Kejriwal imputed political motives to this court.”

If such allegations are allowed to be publicly circulated, it would prejudice the institution of the judiciary and lead to anarchy, the judge said.

About the allegations that she had attended the RSS event, the judge said that the video shared by the AAP leaders of her allegedly speaking there had been edited.

Sharma claimed that she was actually speaking at a college event.

“These great individuals edited the video,” Bar and Bench quoted her as saying. “…This has created an impression that this court got her promotion under the influence of so-and-so. These people knew that they were editing the video.”

Sharma said that she had been trained to accept fair criticism but the material circulated against her exceeded that threshold.

“However, sometimes remaining silent is not judicial restraint,” the legal news portal quoted her as saying. “…The utterances by the contemnors did not merely express disagreement but they lead to only one conclusion that it was a campaign of vilification not against this sitting judge but entire judiciary.”

On April 27, Kejriwal had said that he would not appear before Sharma. A day later, Sisodia and Pathak also told Sharma that they would not appear before her in the liquor policy case.

In separate letters, Kejriwal and Sisodia had reiterated their concern about Sharma’s “public association” with the Akhil Bharatiya Adhivakta Parishad, which is a lawyers’ group linked to the RSS.

The two party leaders also noted that Sharma’s son and daughter have been empanelled as counsels by the Union government. Kejriwal highlighted that they are both allocated cases by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who is appearing before the High Court representing the CBI.

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

The liquor policy 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 ED 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 AAP 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, Sisodia, Pathak and 20 others accused by the CBI in the case. There was no overarching conspiracy or criminal intent in the excise policy, the court had ruled.

The court had 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.

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 Election Commission announced the third phase of the special intensive revision exercise of voter rolls, which will take place in 16 states and three Union Territories. With this, the exercise will have covered voter lists in all states and Union Territories, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.

The poll panel said that in these three places, the exercise will be conducted later on account of the ongoing Census and adverse weather.

There are currently 36.7 crore voters in the states and Union Territories covered in the third phase of the exercise. Nearly 59 crore electors have been covered in the first two phases.

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

The Congress picked VD Satheesan as the next chief minister of Kerala, 10 days after the Assembly election results were announced on May 4. The Congress-led United Democratic Front won 102 seats in the 140-member Assembly, defeating the Left Democratic Front after a decade in the opposition.

The race for the chief minister’s post was believed to be between Satheesan, former Leader of Opposition Ramesh Chennithala and Congress General Secretary KC Venugopal.

On Thursday, Venugopal said that he welcomed the decision, and congratulated Satheesan. Read on.

The Bharatiya Janata Party government in West Bengal directed all state-run and state-aided schools to mandatorily sing Vande Mataram during morning assemblies. The school authorities have been asked to document the proceedings as proof that the directive is being implemented.

Every student must participate in singing the national song at the start of the school day, and heads of institutions have been instructed to ensure strict compliance.

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

Manipur Home Minister Govindas Konthoujam said that ‘more than 38 people’ belonging to the Naga and Kuki communities have been held hostage by several groups in the state. The government is holding talks with civil society groups and political leaders to secure their release, he said.

On Wednesday, fresh violence erupted in Manipur after three church leaders were killed and five others injured when the vehicles they were travelling in were ambushed while they were returning from a meeting in Churachandpur to Kangpokpi. Another civilian was killed and his wife wounded in Noney district,

The United Naga Council alleged that after the ambush, about 20 Nagas from the Konsakhul village had been held hostage by some persons from the village of Leilon Vaiphei. Read on.

Eighty-nine persons were killed on Wednesday in rain-related incidents in Uttar Pradesh, the state’s relief commissioner said. More than 50 people were injured and 87 homes were damaged, while over 100 livestock were also killed.

The deaths were reportedly caused by the uprooting of trees and electric poles, and structures such as houses and sheds being damaged. Read on.

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India’s Wholesale Price Index-based inflation jumped to 8.3% in April, its highest level in three-and-a-half years, according to data released by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry on Thursday.

This comes in the backdrop of rising global energy rates triggered by the conflict in West Asia. The Wholesale Price Index is a measure of inflation expressed by the changing prices of goods at the first instance of their bulk sale in India.

The last time wholesale price inflation in the country was higher than 8.3% was in October 2022, The Hindu reported. The index had stood at 3.9% in March.

Food inflation at the wholesale level remained relatively low at 2% in April, compared to 1.9% a month earlier.

The country’s retail inflation also rose by 3.4% in April, Reuters reported. Wholesale ⁠fuel and power prices jumped 24.7% year-on-year in April, against a rise of 1.05% in March.

In April, petroleum and natural gas prices rose 67.2%, the news agency reported.

Energy supplies to India have been disrupted since the conflict in West Asia broke out on February 28. Iran has effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of global petroleum liquids supply passes, for most commercial ships.

This has also affected liquefied petroleum gas supplies in India. India imports 88% of its crude oil needs and about half of its natural gas requirement. This mostly comes through the Strait of Hormuz.

On Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday urged to citizens to reduce fuel consumption in response to the global uncertainty linked to the West Asia war. Addressing an event in Vadodara, Modi urged people to work from home where possible, use public transport and opt for car-pooling.

On Sunday as well, while addressing a rally in Hyderabad, the prime minister had called for “nationally responsible” lifestyle choices and urged citizens to place “the country above all else” during the crisis.

Among the measures he proposed were reviving work-from-home practices adopted during the Covid-19 pandemic, avoiding non-essential foreign travel for a year and reducing edible oil consumption.

The war

The US and Israel launched an attack on Iran on February 28, claiming that Tehran’s action posed an existential threat to Israel. Washington acts as a guarantor of Israel’s security.

Iran retaliated by striking US military bases in the region and Israel, and targeted major cities in Gulf countries and some ships.

On April 17, Iran reopened the Strait of Hormuz to commercial vessels after a 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon. A day later, however, Tehran said it was reimposing strict military controls on the waterway, alleging “repeated breaches of trust” by the US.

On April 13, Washington began blockading Iranian ports to mount economic pressure on Tehran.

The developments come amid continuing uncertainty over whether fresh talks between Iran and the US will take place. An initial round of peace talks between Iran and the US in Islamabad collapsed on April 12.

In 2025, a district collector, a union minister, and a cycling advocacy group were motivated by the same thought: cycling for a pollution-free future. At the beginning of the year, BYCS India Foundation, a cycling advocacy group, urged major political parties to prioritise making Delhi a bicycle-friendly city.

In August, Union Minister for Youth Affairs and Sports, Mansukh Mandaviya, echoed the sentiment, framing cycling as “a solution to pollution.” In December, Andhra Pradesh’s NTR District Collector G Lakshmisha emphasised the importance of cycling not just for personal fitness, but to reduce emissions.

With more research highlighting that cycling can reduce pollution and move towards net-zero carbon goals, there has been a push to promote the familiar leisure activity as a climate solution.

However, a new study, published in Nature Cities, examined bicycling culture in cities of four low- and middle-income countries – Delhi and Chennai in India, Dhaka in Bangladesh and Accra in Ghana – and found barriers including lack of physical infrastructure as well as policy, implementation and gender gaps.

India is the sixth most-polluted country, according to the 2025 World Air Quality Report by IQAIR, with Delhi ranking as the fourth most polluted city worldwide.

“Whenever air pollution rises in Delhi, the conversation turns to reducing vehicular emissions. The government and the media advocate using public buses and bicycles instead of cars. But this is ironic because the government acts as an advocate, but nothing is done to improve the actual conditions that discourage their use,” says Rahul Goel, co-author of the study and an assistant professor at the Transportation Research and Injury Prevention Centre at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.

Infrastructure gaps and beyond

In February, residents in Gurgaon took to the streets on foot and by cycle to protest against high pollution levels. The participants reportedly took a pledge to prioritise walking and cycling to encourage others to choose sustainable ways of transport. With pollution levels consistently increasing, causing severe health risks, there has been more attention on non-motorised transport.

But the study shows that over the last two decades, the motor vehicle fleet has increased by 600%, making transport the fastest-growing contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in India. In major cities, transport accounts for nearly 30% of emissions, the study highlights. The researchers also note that the largest reductions are linked to shifts to low-carbon transport such as bicycling, which is also recognised by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The study finds that there is a limited understanding of how to increase cycling. The core issue is systemic, says Goel. “Bicycle infrastructure isn’t treated as routine practice in road engineering. Bicycle tracks are often added as special projects, as part of beautification. When major roads are built or upgraded, cycling infrastructure isn’t automatically included,” he explains.

He further adds that failure is most stark for cyclists because the infrastructure barely exists, and it’s minimal at best. Without basic infrastructure, how can cycling be promoted in the nation, he asks.

Sonal Shah, founder of The Urban Catalysts, an organisation focused on developing sustainable transport, points out that there are barely any unobstructed, levelled, and shaded paths, ones that don’t get encroached by vehicles during peak hours. “Compounding this is the lack of safe intersections such as traffic signals for pedestrians and cyclists and bicycle boxes,” she adds.

The study also reveals a stark disconnect. While urban planning mentions bicycling in cities such as Delhi, efforts to improve bicycling and equitable mobility through bicycle distribution under government schemes and philanthropic efforts are conducted with “little data on the mode and its user experience.”

Moreover, Sharif Qamar, fellow and associate director of the Transport and Urban Governance Division at The Energy and Resources Institute, notes that “transport decision-making has tended to prioritise motorised modes”. Interestingly, in a country where more than half of the working population travels by walking or bicycling, a major part of infrastructure investment focuses on motorised transportation.

Qamar points out that in Indian cities, in cases of road congestion, approvals for interventions such as flyovers, underpasses, and tunnels are often relatively straightforward. In contrast, cycling infrastructure typically involves lengthy, more complex processes and lacks enforcement against encroachment by motorised vehicles. He adds that similar patterns can also be observed in many Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. “The big-ticket infrastructure projects that favour motorists are given preference over solutions that are economical or impactful in reducing pollution or emissions,” he says.

Qamar also adds that on Indian roads, highways, expressways, city roads, and even rural areas, cyclists lack acceptance. “People look down on cyclists in ways that directly threaten their safety. This is a major behavioural and social issue,” he says.

Dust pollution, road conditions

Dust pollution and road conditions are causes of concern for cyclists, says Qamar. “Dust comes under the PM 10 category, and it is a major issue because cyclists and pedestrians are the first line of impact.”

Cyclists are exposed to vehicular fumes and dust from tyre friction on roads, Kannan shares. “As non-enclosed vehicle users who spend longer on roads, cyclists have extended exposure. For the same distance, cyclists stay on roads longer than two-wheeler or car users.”

When considering road conditions, there are multiple dimensions to consider, Kannan says. “Road surface condition, speed limits and management, how vehicles interact with each other, to name a few.” Potholes and sandy road surfaces can make cycling difficult. “Roads may also include medians, which are often designed for uninterrupted automobile movement but can make it difficult for bicyclists to cross. Any construction debris, fallen tree branches, or sand piles are usually pushed to the road edges, where cyclists usually ride,” she adds.

Qamar points out that dust pollution and road conditions are often not part of conversations regarding bicycling lanes. “The lanes are looked at from a construction and implementation perspective, not from the cyclists’ perspective. So, how many people are using the lanes and whether the existing lanes are usable by cyclists is still unclear,” he says.

Cyclists at risk

Over the years, India has launched non-motorised initiatives such as the Cycles4Change Challenge in 2020, under the Smart Cities Mission, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India, to support Indian cities in implementing cycling-friendly initiatives. However, bicycle lanes remain congested or absent in many cities in India.

The work undertaken under this initiative “has not met the expectations of the benefits they could accrue, particularly with respect to creation of dedicated cycle tracks,” Qamar says.

In cities like Delhi, Shah observes that many bicycle tracks are used by cars, two-wheelers and autos. “There is no enforcement ensuring that the bicycle track is accessible and safe. While cities like Bengaluru have implemented bicycle lanes, these were encroached by parked vehicles, and the lanes don’t provide security from unruly traffic,” she explains.

In 2023, 4,560 cyclist deaths were reported on Indian roads, according to the Road Accidents in India 2023 report by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways.

Furthermore, Shah says that in the current ecosystem, there is limited political will for promoting bicycling. “The main argument provided is that we have a very low share of cyclists,” she says.

The study evidences that some cities in high-income countries have made large investments in bicycling infrastructures, which have led to increased bicycling, decreased car use, reduced vehicular emissions and improved air quality. Many low and middle-income countries such as Bangladesh, Colombia and India, have followed these examples to invest in bicycling infrastructure, but the researchers highlight that development plans, traffic, and demographics are different.

Qamar stresses that the same solutions and infrastructure as high-income countries cannot be replicated in India without taking the local context, including geographical and demographic factors, into account. “There is a need to understand what works for India and what cyclists need,” he says.

Bicycling is largely undertaken by low-income adult men, as observed on the arterial roads in Ghana, Delhi, and Dhaka, which reflects the difference between cycling as a necessity and as an option, according to the study. Even while implementing cycling policies, it’s often presented as an option, but for a significant number of people in the country, there is no other choice. This means, the lack of physical infrastructure and safety constantly puts their lives at risk on a daily basis.

Gender bias in cycling culture

While infrastructure and policy have been talked about in cycling cultures, gender barriers remain a key challenge, but are often underreported. Goel points out that India is an extremely gender-unequal country, and it seeps into transport as well. “Transport is only one of many spheres where gender inequality becomes extremely visible,” he says.

The inequality isn’t that women don’t cycle, it’s that they cycle in different spaces, says Smruthi Bala Kannan, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor at Madras Institute of Development Studies. “During the study, we saw women as pillion riders, as passengers on bicycles. But very few women were actively riding bicycles on arterial roads,” Kannan explains. The study also found more women cyclists on arterial roads in Chennai than in the other three cities.

Kannan also stresses that the unequal access to vehicles, especially in resource-poor households, is a reason for fewer female cyclists. “When there are multiple vehicles in the house, there seems to be a hierarchy of who gets to use which vehicle and how far they travel. And the kind of use they put these vehicles to,” Kannan says.

Moreover, while men learn riding by themselves or with friends, women are often dependent on family members to learn, Shah adds.

Kannan also highlighted that the women’s cycling patterns differed markedly from the men’s. “Women used bicycles for shorter trips to work and made multiple stops along the way, doing household errands, and stopping occasionally. But men travelled longer distances and took more direct routes,” she says.

Prakash P Gopinath, co-founder of SheCycling, a women’s cycling programme, says there is a taboo that’s stubbornly cemented in cycling culture. “While it’s common for young boys and men to cycle, young girls and women are discouraged. They are told to depend on men for their travel needs and even mocked for wanting to learn,” he explains. SheCycling was started in Kochi, and now it’s present in other cities in Kerala and in Srinagar, Leh, and Pune.

Along with a lack of cycling space, accessibility to cycles, and training, Zeenath MA, co-founder of SheCycling, also points out that women constantly face eve-teasing and inappropriate behaviour on the road, which creates additional barriers for them.

What solutions could look like

The study also reveals an irony – bicyclists are “predominantly poor, politically disempowered and invisible to most policymakers.” But infrastructural interventions for bicyclists and organised advocacy usually happen in elite parts of the four cities aimed at converting car use. In this light, promoting cycling as a climate solution raises questions.

Goel emphasises that conversations about implementing cycling policies, building safer infrastructure, and providing comprehensive support for cycling to thrive are important, but they shouldn’t claim that they alone will solve the pollution problem, which is a multi-sectoral problem.

“Cycling requires sustained effort over years and a vision of widespread adoption before its pollution benefits materialise,” he says.

When it comes to addressing vehicular pollution, Shah questions why the focus is not on managing the demand for private vehicles. “A key change is to restrict and make it expensive to use your personal car simultaneously, while building the ecosystem for sustainable modes of transport,” he says.

For instance, SheCycling started in 2023 by teaching women from Kudumbashree, a women-led self-help group in Kerala that includes domestic workers and others doing small, informal jobs, mostly from lower-middle-income communities. To date, they have taught more than 800 women, including ASHA workers and anganwadi teachers. “About 40% of the women we taught are now riding,” says Gopinath. We need more such initiatives, he adds.

Kannan says talking to cyclists can help in learning from the geographies they occupy, how they navigate the roads, and what their needs and concerns are. “You don’t have to start from scratch, as there are already things that are working for bicyclists. For instance, there are bicycle distribution schemes offered by governments in different states, which are important to enable everyday bicycling alongside the policies’ goal of access to education and work,” she says.

However, the proposal of cycling as a solution for pollution contrasts with harsh realities. Shah also points out that it is also not safe to cycle when your city is polluted, “How do you promote cycling as a solution when it is unsafe to cycle or walk with extreme pollution and heat? How do you ask people to cycle when the environment makes it harmful?” she says.

While reducing vehicular emissions is a priority, there is a need for a long-term vision when it comes to seeing cycling through the solutions lens.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

Manipur Home Minister Govindas Konthoujam on Thursday said that “more than 38 people” belonging to the Naga and Kuki communities have been held hostage by several groups in the state, PTI reported.

“We are actively holding discussions with civil society groups and political leaders to secure their release,” the news agency quoted Konthoujam as telling reporters.

Fresh violence erupted in Manipur on Wednesday after three church leaders were killed and five others injured when the vehicles they were travelling in were ambushed while they were returning from a meeting in Churachandpur to Kangpokpi.

While the apex body of the Kuki tribes, Kuki Inpi Manipur, alleged that the armed Naga group Zeliangrong United Front-Kamson faction was behind the attack, the authorities said that the involvement of militant outfits was being investigated.

Another civilian was killed and his wife wounded in Noney district, PTI reported.

The United Naga Council alleged that after the ambush, about 20 Nagas from the Konsakhul village had been held hostage by some persons from the village of Leilon Vaiphei.

Shutdowns were called for by the Kuki Zo and Naga communities in Kangpokpi, Churachandpur and Chandel districts in the state to protest the killings.

The developments come amid tensions between Kukis and Nagas in Ukhrul that had erupted on February 7 after an alleged assault involving members of the Tangkhul Naga and the Kuki-Zo communities escalated into clashes.

Killing of the church leaders

The Kuki Inpi had identified the three church leaders killed on Wednesday as Reverend V Sitlhou, Reverend Kaigoulen and Pastor Paogoulen. They were part of the Thadou Baptist Association and were travelling back after a meeting of church leaders in Churachandpur.

Sitlhou had earlier served as the general secretary of the Manipur Baptist Convention.

“He had recently initiated a reconciliation meeting between Kukis and Nagas in Kohima, because of the current tensions between the two communities,” Thangtinlen Haokip, a leader of the Kangpokpi-based Committee on Tribal Unity, was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.

At the meeting in Churchandpur, Christian leaders from both communities had held discussions on peaceful coexistence, restraint and dialogue as the pathway to easing tensions between the groups, stated the Kuki Inpi Manipur.

The fresh violence comes in the backdrop of the ethnic clashes that broke out between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo-Hmar communities in the state in May 2023, leaving at least 260 persons dead and more than 59,000 persons displaced. There were periodic upticks in violence in 2024 and 2025.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Central Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday arrested five persons and conducted searches at several locations across the country in connection with alleged irregularities and a paper leak in the 2026 undergraduate National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, The Indian Express reported.

The undergraduate National Eligibility cum Entrance Test is conducted for admission to undergraduate medical courses in India.

A spokesperson from the CBI said that the “arrests – three from Jaipur, one from Gurugram, and one from Nashik – mark a swift crackdown” after the central agency filed a first information report on Tuesday.

While the two persons accused from Jaipur were identified as brothers Dinesh Biwal and Mangilal Biwal, the third person was Mangilal Biwal’s son Vikas Biwal, The Hindu reported. Yash Yadav was arrested from Gurugram and Shubham Khairnar from Nashik.

The arrests came after the National Testing Agency on Tuesday cancelled the 2026 NEET-UG that was conducted on May 3 following allegations of a paper leak.

The National Testing Agency, which conducts the entrance test for admission to undergraduate medical courses in India, announced that the test will be re-conducted and that the dates will be notified separately.

The cancellation was ordered as the Rajasthan Special Operations Group began investigating allegations that a “guess paper” circulated before the examination contained questions closely matching the actual paper.

The “guess paper” contained around 410 questions, of which about 120 matched the questions asked in the chemistry section, according to the Rajasthan Police.

On Wednesday, the Maharashtra Police detained two more suspects – Manisha Waghmare and Dhananjay Lokhande – and handed them over to the CBI, The Hindu reported.

The FIR registered in the matter by the CBI was based on a written complaint by the Union Ministry of Education, which invoked charges under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to criminal conspiracy, cheating, and criminal breach of trust, the Prevention of Corruption Act, and the 2024 Public Examinations Prevention of Unfair Means Act, The Indian Express reported.

An unidentified official told the newspaper that the CBI had seized incriminating materials and electronic devices, including mobile phones, after conducting multiple raids in several locations in the country.

“Several other suspects are under examination, and further searches are underway based on emerging leads,” the newspaper quoted the official as saying.

The 2024 examination was also hit by allegations of paper leaks and irregular grace marks, leading to nationwide protests.